"You cannot fight it, James," said Brian, still staring at the Worm. He fumbled out his sword. "You are not capable. You know and I know you are not capable."
"I must be capable this time!" said Jim. "Brian, put that sword back!"
"Ah!" said Dafydd, on the other side of Jim. He had his strung bow off his shoulder and was running his hand almost lovingly up and down the smooth length of the tapered shaft. "My arrows may not do any harm to the Worm, if Carolinus and Brian spoke truly about its thick hide, at the Loathly Tower; but I may be able to do something about that one last Hollow Man who rides it."
Even as he spoke, he had whipped an arrow from his quiver, fitted it to the bow and pulled it back until its head almost touched the woods.
He paused a moment, then let the arrow go. It leaped through the air toward the Worm and the Hollow Man and was almost to them when, in a lightning-swift move, the Worm threw up the forepart of its body and caught the flying arrow in its mouth. In a second it had chewed it into shards with those innumerable tiny, gleaming teeth, and swallowed it.
Eshan, on the Worm, rocked back and forth with laughter.
"Shoot at me all you like, bowman!" he shouted. "No arrow of yours can touch me, while I ride this steed."
Meanwhile, the Worm was still advancing toward them.
Jim looked back at Brian.
"You see, Brian, how it still comes on?" he said. "Face what's true. You can't fight him. I must. Tell me how!"
"God help me!" Brian's features were wrung with chagrin and self-hate. He jammed his sword back into its scabbard. "There's little enough I can tell you, James, except what Carolinus told me. Try to cut off its eyestalks first, and then simply do what you can to cut through that very thick, very tough, outer hide—and that is like cured leather several feet through, so that almost it can turn the edge of a blade itself—for its vital parts are deep within it."
He took a deep breath.
"There is no help for it," he said, in a calmer voice. "Perhaps… perhaps, James, it may that you will do as well or better than I, even, the time before. You have no skill as a swordsman—forgive me, I should say you have little skill as a swordsman. But skill is not so much called for here. Only strength. Just be sure you get those eyestalks cut so that it is blinded first; and then commence trying to cut your way into it, behind the part that it just now lifted to catch and eat Dafydd's arrow."
"At least, perhaps I can help with those eyestalks!" said Dafydd—and with the same swift sureness he launched two more arrows at the Worm.
Once more, the forefront of the Worm flashed up in time, the mouth caught the arrows and ate them.
"Go back behind that front part and then reach forward to cut the eyestalks—that is what I did," said Brian to Jim. "The eyes can turn to see you. But their judgment is off, it seems, looking backward, because this way I could reach and destroy them. Also, the reason for cutting the stalks in the first place is that there is something missing in the creature. Once it is blinded, it knows you are hurting it, but does not exactly know where you are doing it. So it turns about to reach you, blindly and unsurely."
"If you can keep it busy fighting you," said Dafydd, "perhaps then I can then put an arrow through that Hollow Man."
"I think not," said another voice, unexpected but familiar to Jim, Dafydd and Brian at least.
They turned to see that Carolinus had appeared beside them. The elderly magician, his white beard and mustaches blowing in the cold wind that continued to try to suck the strength from them, was wearing his usual faded red robe that covered him from shoulder to ankle. He looked very frail.
"I think not, Dafydd," he repeated. He pointed. "See!"
They looked, just in time to see Eshan slipping off the back of the Worm and disappearing as he went down on his stomach among the boulders and rubble.
"He cannot escape unless he comes into sight on the far side of that loose rock, in order to run behind the cliff," went on Carolinus. "Watch the far side of those boulders with an arrow at your bow. That is the only way you can help James now, Dafydd."
"Yes," answered Dafydd slowly. Arrow nocked to his bowstring but not drawn, he moved to his left several paces to where he could see all the far edge of the tumbled rock.
"You see," continued Carolinus gently, his voice carrying easily to Dafydd in the utter stillness of the moment. Even the birds, though they still circled, but higher now, had fallen silent. "It isn't intended by the Dark Powers that you help James in any way. And Brian—you see that it's James who's to be tested, here. The Worm is for him and no one else."
"Cannot you tell him something more that will help, then, Mage?" Brian's tone was close to one of pleading.
Carolinus shook his head.
"I cannot," he said. "And if I could, I would not be allowed to. James, it's up to you."
The last words were addressed to Jim.
"You had best go for him on foot, then," said Brian, turning back to Jim. "Keep your sword arm as high as you can, approaching it, so that it may not trap it against your side; and keep your shield well up beside you also. Rest its top edge against the shoulder boss of your armor and its lower edge against one of your leg greaves. That way the great blow of its body's forepart back at you will not be able to drive these edges into you. It cannot break through the shield itself; and its mouth is so made that it cannot get a grip on the upper or lower edge of the shield, to wrest it from your grasp."
"Right," said Jim.
He paused and looked around.
"I'd like a drink of something first," he said. "My mouth is dry as ashes."
"Alas—" said Herrac, who had drawn close. But Carolinus was already pouring from a small bottle into a thick blue glass almost as large as the bottle; both of which had appeared without warning in his hands.
He handed the filled glass to Jim. Jim drank. The liquid looked and tasted like the milk Carolinus drank; however, it was something more. It not only satisfied Jim's thirst, but sent a fire of energy running all through him.
Suddenly he was light and strong. But then the feel of the strange wind came back upon him as well.
He felt again the emptiness, the coldness of a fear that had come to him upon that unnatural wind; but also, together with these emotions, there was a sort of resignation, an acceptance of what awaited him. He descended from Gorp, checked the position of the shield on his arm, drew his sword and began to walk to meet the approaching monster.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Jim and the Worm had started toward each other from about as far apart as the clearing permitted, diagonally across from each other on it. Looking toward the cliffs from Jim's point of view, he was at the right front edge of the clearing, just in front of the trees there; while the Worm had come into sight around the left edge of those same cliffs, which walled in nearly two-thirds of the clearing.
The Worm, for all its size, and the sudden lightning movement of its upper body, came on with relative slowness, certainly no faster than Jim was walking, and possibly more slowly.
He saw now that the upper part of its body, that part that had lifted so quickly to catch and swallow Dafydd's arrows in mid-air, was actually held slightly off the ground. Behind it, the Worm's body moved by a series of bones, or something like them, underneath the skin; the way a snake moves over the ground, except that the Worm came straight on, rather than wriggling from side to side to advance. He had not noticed this at the Loathly Tower fight because his attention had been all on the Ogre that was his particular opponent.
In this moment of utter stillness, as he moved forward, Jim's mind felt completely empty.
—No, not completely empty. Something was nagging at him. Some old memory was stimulating him to move toward an idea that might improve his chances of defeating the Worm. What was it?
Suddenly it came back to him. He stopped, swung about and strode, as hastily in his armor as he could, back toward where Brian, Carolinus, Dafydd, Herrac and his sons waited.
"I
've just thought of something," he said breathlessly, coming up to them. "Brian, Gorp's nowhere near as imaginative and high-strung as your war horse. I think maybe Gorp will carry me up to the Worm, where Blanchard wouldn't. I just remembered how, when I was in the body of Gorbash, the dragon, how I made the mistake of flying directly against the lance of Sir Hugh de Bois de Malencontri, who held my castle before me. I'd been warned about attacking an armored knight with lance by Smrgol, Gorbash's dragon grand-uncle. But I'd forgotten it completely. You remember how Sir Hugh wasn't hurt, but his lance pierced me through and I nearly died as a result?"
"Well I remember it," said Brian grimly.
"It suddenly struck me," said Jim excitedly. "I've got nothing to lose by trying to put a lance into that Worm from horseback. At full charge, with my weight and the horse's behind it, that lance point can't miss going in deep enough to do some serious damage to the vital parts of the Worm. If nothing else, it'll cripple the creature, so that it bleeds internally, and it'll be weakened when I come to fight it on foot."
"An excellent idea! A marvelous idea!" cried Brian. "But not you, James. Not you! You know that lance-work is the weakest of your fighting skills. However, I have taken the prize at more tourneys than I have fingers on both hands. Moreover, you are completely wrong. It was not the Worm that Blanchard feared so greatly. It was the Ogre, because of his twelve feet of height. To Blanchard he looked like a mountain, and Blanchard recognized the club in his hand for what it was. No, I will take Blanchard and a lance—and I promise you I will put it in behind the front part of the body, where it will do the most damage!"
He broke off.
"A lance!" he cried, looking about him. "Who will give me a lance? Fetch me a lance!"
"You may have mine," said Herrac. "I left it behind a tree, when it became plain that there would be no room for lance-work when we went in. Alan—you know where. Fetch it!"
His eldest son reined his horse around and galloped off. In a moment he was back with the lance.
There were two bright spots of color on Brian's cheek. He sat as straight on the back of Blanchard as if there had never been anything wrong with him. He took the lance and laid it diagonally across the shoulders of the horse, pointing forward; then clasped the butt of it under his upper arm against his side, and lifted the point clear of its support.
"A good lance—a good weapon!" he said.
For a moment the point of the lance held there, steady in mid-air, its steel point gleaming. But then, it began to sag; it drooped downward, until Brian was forced to rest its weight once more on Blanchard's shoulders, to keep from it going point-first into the ground.
There was an embarrassed silence all around. Brian sagged in his saddle.
"What a wretch I am!" he said savagely. "I have strength enough for a moment, but not enough to hold it up for more than that. And to place its point properly in the Worm I would need to keep it in air far longer than that. James, I cannot do it!"
"Never mind," said Jim, mounting Gorp, who had followed the other horse, partially out of curiosity. "Give me the lance—" He reached over and took it from Brian's now-lax grasp. The other knight was not looking at him, but staring at Blanchard's neck in utter dejection.
"You will never manage it, James," said Brian in a low, sad voice. "Forgive me! But it is, or would be, a hard task even for someone like myself to dodge the front of the Worm and still bury my point in the back part of its body."
"Still," said Jim, "I've got to try."
Simply the fact that he had made the decision seemed to give him strength. He rested the lance on the forepart of the saddle, to take its weight off Gorp's shoulders, and began to ride toward the approaching Worm.
"Wait!" shouted Brian behind him. "One second yet, James! There is a thing I can do, after all!"
He rode up level with Jim.
"Yes, James," he said almost triumphantly, reining his horse in, so that Jim was forced to stop Gorp for a second. "I need no hands to control Blanchard. He will respond to my knees. And I need strength only for a moment. In that moment I can do great damage. Hark to me a moment!"
"All right," said Jim, reining in Gorp. "But I haven't got all that many moments to waste."
"It will be no waste," said Brian. "Listen, James! I will ride Blanchard at full speed toward the Worm; and then, with a touch of my knees, direct Blanchard aside at the last moment before the creature can quite reach us. So we will go down along his side; and, as I pass, I can lean over and cut both eyestalks with a single slash of my sword. It is not even hard! It is child's play! Come you behind me if you will, James; but I ride ahead of you now to blind the Worm!"
Once more, it seemed as if he had never been wounded, never been exhausted. Brian lifted the reins and Blanchard broke into movement.
Jim lifted his own reins to send Gorp galloping after the other man; but almost immediately dropped them again. He could no more stop Brian now from what the other intended to do than Gorp could catch Blanchard of Tours. The great white horse on which Brian had spent all of his inheritance, except his lands and castle, was much faster than his size and weight indicated.
That speed had often given Brian an advantage, in battle and in tourneys, that others did not expect. In any case, thought Jim, watching Brian's figure rapidly approaching the Worm, there was no point stopping something that was pure will by something purely physical.
What he was looking at in Brian, what they were all looking at—for Herrac and his sons had now ridden up and halted their horses beside him—was a triumph of spirit over body. Brian's body, away from this instant and this clearing, could probably not walk a dozen steps without falling. But here and now, in the saddle, no one watching without knowledge of his weakness would take him for anything but a knight riding fresh to the encounter.
Brian was directing Blanchard forward at an angle to the Worm, and the Worm began to turn toward him; but at the same time Brian also turned Blanchard toward the creature. So that they seemed finally to be approaching head-on. A sort of low groan went up from all the watchers around the clearing, as the two came together; for it seemed there must be a head-on collision.
But at the last second, as the Worm's forepart flashed up, Brian seemed miraculously to slip by it on its opposite side; and at the same time he rose in his stirrups, and with his body and arm fully extended made one quick swing out from across his body with his sword. Both eyestalks parted at mid-stem, a couple of feet above the front of the blunt head, and fell. Then Brian was putting Blanchard about on a circle and starting him back toward Jim and the others.
"Oh, magnificent!" Herrac exclaimed. "Beautifully done! Did you mark it, my sons? You will never see such horsemanship and sword-work bettered in your life—probably you will never see anything near to approaching it. He must have judged the exact moment to pull aside from the front of the beast, the exact distance at which he must pass it; so that, at fullest, safest extent, he could make his cut from beyond its reach and sever the eyestalks! And all, to return to us safely as he does now. But—hurry to him—Alan, Giles! He will not make it back without help!"
In fact, Sir Giles and Alan reached opposite sides of Brian on Blanchard, just in time. Brian had let the great war horse slow to a walk, and all but collapsed in his saddle. As they got to him, he was just beginning to fall sideways out of it. One on each side of him, they caught him around the waist, supported him, and brought him back, still at a walk, to Herrac, Jim and the rest.
"Wonderful, wonderful, Brian!" said Jim, when Brian came close. But Brian's face was once again utterly bloodless, his whole face and body were limp and his face was the face of a man in a walking dream.
"I thank thee, James, for thy most courteous…" he began in a thin voice. But the voice gave out, his eyes closed; and he fell heavily against Alan, who was on his left side. The other sons clustered around to help hold him, but he was completely limp. It was obvious he could not even be held upright in the saddle.
"He must be gotte
n back to the castle with all dispatch!" said Herrac. "I fear already it may be too late. He may have pushed himself too far."
"Never mind!" said a sharp voice; and Carolinus was amongst them again. He pointed to Giles and Alan. "I'll send him back to the castle; and you two with him to explain things. Now!"
He snapped his fingers. Brian with Blanchard, Giles and Alan with their horses as well, disappeared.
"They are now in the castle courtyard," said Carolinus after a moment, "and your Liseth, Sir Herrac, has already been called and is running through the Great Hall to come to Brian."
"Carolinus!" said Jim. "The Accounting Office will crucify you for this!"
"It will, will it?" said Carolinus, his mustaches bristling. "It may just be I'll have a word to say to it, as well!"
He turned to look across the clearing.
"But James," he went on, "your Worm is still coming. Go at it now with the lance. Remember what Brian told you. Sword high, when it's time to fight it on foot, shield against the armor boss on one of your shoulders and the greave of one leg; and be sure to attack it well back from where the front part of its body lifts from the rest. You can go at it from the side, now. It hears through the ground with its skin, so it'll hear you coming, but it can't turn quickly enough to keep you from reaching it, behind its forepart."
"Right!" said Jim, lifting his reins in his left hand, while the other hand kept the lance balanced on the high pommel of his saddle before him.
"Wait!" said Carolinus urgently. "One other thing. Once you're in position to strike it with your sword, use the weapon point-first to pierce it; then simply hack your way in. By that time, it'll have you pinned, its front part against your shield, its mouth striving to reach you with its teeth and the ability it has to suck you in if it gets close to any part of you. But your sword arm will be free. Go now!"
The Dragon on The Border Page 38
