by John Moore
“And did she?”
“She sent me a box of cookies.”
“They were good cookies,” put in Wendell.
“That sounds like a very nice gesture,” said Norville. “I am glad to hear that the commoners are maintaining a high moral standard. Why, I recently undertook a fact finding mission to some of the lands across the sea. I was much dismayed at the level of degeneracy there. Women walking the streets unaccompanied, young girls showing their ankles, some even cutting their hair short like a boy’s.”
“Sounds awful,” said Charming. “Why don’t you schedule me a rescue there and I’ll check it out myself?”
Norville made a noise that sounded like harumph.
“All right.” Charming swung his foot down and sat forward in his chair. “I’ll take a ride over and scope out the situation. But I’m not promising anything. I’ve told Dad many times I’ll not be a part of any expansionist schemes. As long as this Queen Ruby keeps her nose clean, I’m walking away.”
“Well then. I suppose we’ll have to be satisfied with that. But hesitation may put your life at risk.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll be the judge of that. What sort of defenses does she have? Any dragons in the kennel? Soldiers on the payroll? Knights?”
“Not according to our information. She seems to rely solely on her magic for protection.”
“Hmmm. Wendell!”
“Yes, Sire?”
“We travel light. Pack the new sword…”
“Endeavor,” said Wendell, holding it up.
“Yeah, yeah. Pack Endeavor, the Sheffield sword, the Nordic sword, and the crossbow.”
“Check.”
“The new shield with the crest, the ax, and the oak lance with the bronze handguard.”
“Got it.”
The Prince thought a minute and turned back to Norville. “You say this Ann babe is a real looker?”
“Our information is that she is very fine, yes.”
“Wendell, bring along a dozen roses, a box of candy, and a bottle of wine.”
“Check.”
“Also a large stuffed toy animal.”
“Right.”
“It never hurts,” said the Prince, “to be prepared.” He pushed off with his boot against the table and his chair slid back along the polished hardwood floor. He had once asked the castle decorator why all the floors were bare wood or stone, while the walls were hung with tapestry. The castle decorator had taken a deep breath and the Prince had beat a hasty retreat, before another lecture could be forthcoming.
Now he stood up, received his sword and belt from Wendell, and buckled it on. “We leave at daybreak, Wendell.”
“Yes, Sire.”
“Good luck, your Highness,” said Norville.
“Thank you.” The Prince paused at the door. “Ah, Count Norville?”
“Yes, your Highness?”
“Any progress on the slipper thing?”
“We are working on it, Sire.”
“Okay, then. Well, I’m off.” He shut the door firmly behind him, but Norville could still hear his bootsteps echo on the polished wood floor.
“THERE ARE KINGDOMS WHERE I wouldn’t have to do any of this.” They were walking their horses along the cobbled path that led west from Illyria. Leafy trees, oak and hickory and yew, overhung the road, and the ground was dappled with sunlight. “In the lands over the ocean, the girls will line up around the block to sleep with a prince. The wouldn’t care if he never slayed a horned toad.”
“Girls,” said Wendell. “Yuck.”
As instructed, Wendell had awakened the Prince in the dark hours of the morning. By daybreak his hero was ready to depart, dressed smartly in highly polished black riding boots, black pants, a white silk shirt, a light armor breastplate, and wearing his sword and buckler. The two young men strolled boldly through the castle halls, across the courtyard, and over the moat, capturing the admiring glances of the female servants up for the early morning chores, and the respectful looks of the men. They rode through the center of town, Wendell carrying the royal banner on a short staff. Those townspeople awake came out of the shops to line up alongside the road, the women waving the Prince on with their handkerchiefs, the men saluting, the girls starry-eyed, the boys envious. The prince rode tall in the saddle, morning sun glinting off his highly polished armor. (Wendell applied a light coating of clear lacquer to give it that extra shine.) His horse, a white stallion, (Wendell dusted its coat with flour) was prancing and chafing its bit, tossing its head from side to side and then straining forward, as if eager to see where this adventure would take him. Beside him, his young face stern with responsible thoughts, Wendell rode a sleek black stallion and led two pack horses, each burdened with camping equipment, gifts, and weaponry. At the city gates, the Prince turned his horse and dug his spurs into its side. The horse reared and from the saddle, the Prince waved once to the assembled throng. The crowed cheered. And Charming and Wendell trotted their horses into the soft golden haze of the morning sun.
Once out of sight, they immediately turned off the road, tethered the horses, and stretched out under a thickly foliated shade tree for a two-hour nap. In no particular hurry, the Prince changed into more casual clothes, then watered the horses, while Wendell laid out a midmorning repast of cold chicken, brown bread, cranberry salad, and cider. The sun was well along its arc by the time they resumed their journey. “The way I see it,” said Charming, “is that there is trouble pretty much everywhere we go, so there is no point hurrying from one place to the other. If we’re too late to rescue one princess, another will be snatched before too long.” Wendell, not a morning person either, did not argue.
At this pace it took almost a week to reach the edge of Illyria and enter the kingdom of Tyrovia. It began at the foothills of the mountains and extended up their chill and fog-shrouded slopes. High above the trees grew thick, with black and gnarly limbs, and strange forms lurked in the shadows beneath, or skulked from trunk to trunk with a quiet rustle of dead leaves. Down in the foothills, however, tracts of land had been cleared for neatly tended farms, studded with small thatched huts and laced with gaily running streams. The sun was still shining and a cool breeze coming down from the mountains made the day altogether pleasant. The Prince should have been in a good mood. But instead he was preoccupied with thoughts not uncommon in seventeen-year-old boys.
“Do you think the girls really show their ankles in foreign lands, Wendell?”
“I don’t care,” said Wendell crossly. He had been listening for a solid week to this sort of speculation. But his erudite reply was interrupted by a rough bass voice booming through the trees.
“None shall pass!”
Charming and Wendell quickened their horses. They broke out of the woods where the road led to the banks of a river. Spanning the river was a narrow wooden bridge, just wide enough to walk a horse across. Astride the bridge, legs apart, hands boldly on hips, was a tall, broad-shouldered, figure. He was made more imposing by the fact that he was dressed from head-to-toe in black armor. An evil-looking sword swung from his right hand, while his left held a crested shield. The crest was pretty much illegible, since it was painted in black on a black shield; still, there was little doubt that this was indeed the infamous, much feared, and little-respected Black Knight.
“You great metal-covered sod,” snapped a woman. She was carrying two buckets of milk on a yoke across her shoulders. “How am I going to get this to market, then? With the sun so high it will turn in a matter of hours.”
“None shall pass!” roared the knight again. His sword whistled as it cut the air an inch in front of her nose. She scrambled backwards, milk sloshing on her clothes as she retreated. “None shall pass.”
“How does he get his sword to make that noise?”
“He’s got a whistle built into the hilt,” explained Charming as he handed Wendell his reins. “An old trick. Kind of juvenile, I think.” He dismounted and shouldered his way through the crowd, coming to
the front with his hand resting casually on his sword. “Yo, Blackie. Good line. Think it up yourself?”
“It’s Prince Charming,” cried the peasants as one voice and the milkwoman finished, “He’ll teach that asshole a lesson.”
“Be off, young prince,” said the Black Knight. “I guard this bridge for the Wicked Queen. Step one foot on it and you die.”
“Great,” said Wendell. “Norville steered us wrong again.”
The Prince considered the river. Though swift, it was shallow and would be easy enough to wade across were he to go a little upstream, out of this jerk’s sight. But the peasants were watching and he did have his rep to consider “You made me a similar challenge last spring, Blackie. I seem to remember I kicked your ass.”
“Don’t call me Blackie,” muttered the knight.
“What?”
“I was drunk last spring, Charming.” Cold fury underscored his words. “Besides, I’ve been practicing. And furthermore, although you may be quick with a sword, I am fully armored this day and you are not.”
“Ah.” The Prince smiled. “But for how long?”
“What do you mean?”
Slowly and carefully, his arms now well away from his sword, the Prince stepped onto the bridge and approached the Black Knight. The peasants and Wendell watched curiously as he stopped only a sword’s length away. But he leaned forward and spoke in a confidential tone that only the big man could hear.
“I mean sooner or later you are going to have to take a leak. And when you remove your codpiece, you will leave yourself open for — how shall I put it — the unkindest cut of all?”
The Black Knight’s knees drew together a fraction of an inch. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Mmm.” The Prince folded his arms. “Yep, I’ll bet it gets pretty hot standing in this sun all day. Especially in black armor. Why, I’d have drained half a dozen canteens by now, were I in your place.”
Behind his visor, the Black Knight’s gaze shifted involuntarily to an empty wineskin hanging from the bridge railing. “I can hold it,” he said hoarsely.
“Sure you can. And I admire you for it. Guarding a bridge like this, where you have to listen to the sound of this rushing water all day long.”
The Black Knight became suddenly aware of the river’s gurgle. “Shut up. Just shut up.”
“Trickling over the rocks, flowing between the stones, the constant sound of running water hour after hour…”
“Damn you.” The Knight lunged forward on wobbly legs. The Prince danced nimbly out of the way.
“Gosh, I didn’t mean to upset you. I’ll shut up then. You won’t hear another word out of me.” He put his elbows on the railing, crossed his legs and leaned back, smiling benignly at the Black Knight. The Knight scowled back. In the silence the sound of rushing water seemed to grow louder and take on a musical tone. Charming drummed his fingers silently on the rail. From beneath the bridge a dripping noise began and added itself the din.
Sweat broke out on the Black Knight’s forehead. He looked at the peasants, staring at him in mystified silence. The old woman set down her buckets.
The milk made a sloshing sound.
Wendell took a canteen from his pack and drank from it. Several of the men began passing a wineskin back and forth.
The Knight looked at Charming gazing across the stream, and wondered if he could leap suddenly and slice the kid’s head off.
Charming began humming an old sea chantey. The Black Knight gave one more mighty effort at concentration and then his nerve broke. “All right, you can pass, you little twerp. I’ll catch you on the return trip. Just get out of my sight.”
“Many thanks.”
“And don’t call me Blackie.”
“Sure thing.”
Charming winked to the crowd, collected the reins from Wendell and remounted. The Prince and his page crossed the bridge at the head of a procession of baffled but admiring peasantry. They looked back but once to see the Black Knight disappear behind a tree.
“What was that all about?”
“Tell you later,” said the Prince.
THEY REACHED THE CASTLE of the Wicked Queen the next day.
It was a hard ride. The road grew narrower, then steeper, and they had to dismount and walk the horses. A chill rain started, turning the already muddy road ever muddier. Twisted, storm-tortured trees lined their path, trunks dank with moss, tangled branches reaching out to snag the weary travelers. In the mountains the shadows fell suddenly and unexpectedly, fogs hung in the clefts and valleys, defying what pale sunlight penetrated their damp realm, and the uneasy snorts of the horses echoed strangely from the black rocks. The road terminated at a small plateau which held an even smaller village of a dozen or so dismal, rain-streaked huts and shops. It was late evening when they arrived and they rode down the single, deserted street, with only the occasional gleam of a tallow candle showing through the tightly shuttered windows. Perched on a crag overlooking the village was the castle.
It loomed before them, grimly black and foreboding. Rain slicked the crumbling stone; condensation clouded the cracked and dirty windows. From the moat arose a fetid mist. A cloud of bats circled the southern tower, from which a single red light gleamed like a bloodshot eye. The north tower dissolved halfway up into a jumble of scorched and shattered stone, as if it had been torn apart by an explosion. There was a crackle of lighting and a low rumble of thunder. The rain coursed down harder.
“This,” said Wendell, “is the spookiest place we’ve ever had to attack.”
“But it’s close to the school and to the shops,” Charming pointed out. “In real estate, location is everything.” He glanced into the moat, noted his reflection in the slimy waters, and finger-combed his wet hair.
A sudden cranking and grinding made Wendell start. The Prince merely glanced around calmly. The noise came from the drawbridge which hesitantly, in fits and starts, tried to descend. About a third of the way down, it broke free of whatever was obstructing it and fell, hitting the ground with a teeth-jarring crash and a rattle of rusty chains. Then silence reigned once more.
“Well,” said Charming. “That seems like an invitation.”
“Sire, perhaps we should scout the place out before we cross that bridge.”
“We’ve already scouted it out.”
“Perhaps we should scout it out again.”
“Oh, come now,” said the Prince. “They’re probably keeping dinner waiting for us. Mustn’t be rude.” His tone was light, his manner was not. With great care and an even greater show of uncaring casualness, he stepped onto the drawbridge.
But before he could advance, the castle door was flung open and a young woman appeared, silhouetted by the light from within. The Prince stepped back and motioned Wendell to move closer. “A babe!” he whispered. “Quick, hand me a stuffed animal. No, wait. Listen. She’s going to say, ‘It’s Prince Charming!’”
“You must leave immediately,” said the girl.
“Nice call,” said Wendell.
“Hey,” said Prince Charming. “I’m Prince Charming.”
“I know exactly who you are,” said the girl. Coming closer, Charming could see that she was quite, quite beautiful. Her hair was a long and deep, lustrous black; her eyes dark and liquid, framed by heavy lashes, and her lips were red, full and pouting. Her pale skin was smooth and without the slightest flaw or blemish. Her simple, low-cut blouse showed plenty of cleavage and the slit in her skirt ran clear up her thigh. Even the Prince, who had seen plenty of beautiful girls in his day, was momentarily dazzled.
“I know exactly who you are,” said Ann. Her voice, though concerned, was clear and musical. “Word of your arrival has preceded you. I have already heard the tale of how you defeated the treacherous Black Knight and slew a dozen of his minions on your way here.”
“Oh, that. It was nothing.”
“True. It was nothing compared to the danger you face from my stepmother. Her power is enormous and she has spen
t the last three days doing nothing but preparing horrible ways for you to die.”
“Say, you don’t mind if we get out of the rain, do you?” Charming and Wendell slipped past her into the castle.
“No!” said Ann. “I mean, yes, I do mind. You can’t come in!” It was too late. The Prince was already striding down the entrance hall, shaking water off his cloak and glancing incuriously at the tapestries that adorned the walls. They were spotted with mildew, for the inside of the Wicked Queen’s castle proved, if anything, to be only marginally less damp than the outside. Ann hurried after him.
“Your Highness, I appreciate your efforts to rescue me, but it is of no use. You cannot defeat Queen Ruby’s power and if you took me away she would only bring me back. You must leave now and save yourself.”
“Hey, nice dress. Make it yourself?”
“Yes.” Ann looked down at herself and a tinge of pink appeared in her cheeks. “This isn’t really me.”
“Of course not. Who is it?”
She tried to explain, awkwardly. “Your Highness, even before my father died, I long to get away from these mountains and this isolation. I dreamed of the day that some gallant knight errant would carry me off to a distant and more, well, cosmopolitan city. I even made some clothes that I thought would be more, um, inspiring to such a knight. But this was a mistake. An error in judgment. Rest assured, your Highness, that I am as sweet, pure, chaste, and innocent as any princess should be.”
“Yeah, great,” said the Prince, with a noticeable loss of enthusiasm.
An uneven grinding noise filled the air. Ann swung her head around nervously. “She’s pulling up the drawbridge! She has sealed the castle against exit! You are trapped!”
“Guess we’ll just have to stay for dinner then.” The grinding noise stopped, then started again. Then it stopped again. The drawbridge crashed back down. Charming raised his eyebrows.
“It’s those round things with the teeth on them…” explained Ann.
“Gears.”
“Right. I knew that. Some of the teeth are broken. She has tried to repair them but there’s only so much she can do with her magic, especially to iron gears.”
