It was less than five minutes after that before Hob-One spoke to him again.
"We're getting to where I smelled them before, m'Lord," he said. "It's not exactly the same place we crossed over, last time; but if they're all around—"
"That's right, they are," said Jim. "Just see if you can get a whiff of them."
He sniffed the air himself. For a moment he was tempted to turn into his dragon body, since the dragon nose might be as good or even better than Hob-One's. But if Hob-One could do the job, it was just as well that neither Ned nor Hob-One should suddenly find themselves traveling with a dragon. In spite of the fact that their common sense would tell them that the dragon had to be Jim—and of course he would speak and reassure them of that, right away—they couldn't help reacting emotionally. If there was a choice between disturbing people and not disturbing people, then all things being equal it was much better not to disturb them.
"Do you smell anything at all yet?" he asked Hob-One.
"Not yet, m'Lord," said Hob-One, staring hard at the ground below. "I almost think—no, I don't. I almost think there's some smell of them, but maybe it's just from their being here some time past."
"Forgive me, m'Lord, Hob-One," said Ned diffidently, "but maybe we're too far up from the ground. If Hob-One would go down closer…"
Jim looked keenly at Hob-One. Hob-One was not exactly happy over the prospect of going closer to the ground, he saw. Jim remembered the hobgoblin's graphic description of how a hidden troll would let himself be covered by a snowdrift, and lie there until he smelled a prey come by, then explode out of the drift before whatever it was had a chance to escape.
"I don't know," said Jim. "Hob-One, do you think you might want to go down a little closer to the ground and see what you can smell then?"
"Well, no—I mean yes, m'Lord. Yes, of course," he said. "Of course I can go down closer and sniff harder. There's a drift right up ahead there—"
Before Jim could say anything more, Hob's waft of smoke had dived at an angle toward the snowdrift at the base of a large oak some fifty feet ahead. It was a drift that had piled up, Jim guessed, at least four feet or possibly more at the base of the heavy old oak. Either that, or there was a rise of ground right around the tree, which had caused the snow to make a hump up there. At any rate, Hob and his smoke slid down toward it as Jim and Ned came to a halt, some fifty feet above.
"M'Lord!" called up Hob-One triumphantly. "You were right. There is—"
The snowdrift exploded; and not one, but two—unthinkable to encounter two together at once!—night-trolls, the larger, silver-furred breed, erupted on either side of the hobgoblin; and before Hob-One could escape one of them had grabbed him up in one wide, long-taloned hand.
"What is it?" asked the troll who was not holding Hob of the one who was.
"I don't know," said the other, looking down at Hob-One. Neither of the trolls had evidently thought to look up; they seemed unaware of Jim and Ned overhead. "Some little thing. Hardly a mouthful."
Hob-One had not called for help. He was valiantly biting at the web of flesh between the taloned thumb and forefinger of the troll that held him, gnawing away with his little teeth at skin that was supposed to be able to turn the edge of a sword.
"M'Lord—" began Ned, in an alarmed voice; and the two trolls looked up. But Jim had already exploded, himself, in one of his rare fits of rage. In almost the same moment he was down on the ground with the two trolls and stabbing a pointing finger at both of them.
"Freeze!" he commanded. The two trolls were instantly motionless; their mouths, which had been opened to speak or snarl, making no sound whatsoever. They both glistened, now, as if they had been covered with a layer of molten glass.
Jim glared at them. It took a moment for his mind to come down from its rage and realize that, in his excitement, he had used the wrong word. The word he had meant to use was the familiar magic command of still. But twenty years of growing up with television not lacking in cop-and-crooks dramas had made him produce its twentieth-century equivalent; and the magic command had operated literally.
The trolls were indeed frozen.
Immediately his eyes jumped to Hob-One, expecting to find him coated in ice and motionless also. But Hob was not. The magic command clearly had struck, like lightning, only at the point at which it had been aimed. However, he was now struggling to pull himself out of an icy grasp, but without being able to.
Jim pointed at the troll-hand holding Hob-One.
"Unfreeze! Relax!"
The ice around the troll's hand shattered into a small shower of shards and the hand half opened. Hob pulled, but could not quite get free.
Jim reached out, spread the rough hand farther, and lifted Hob out, laying him against his chest in an automatic protective movement. Hob clutched at Jim's jupon, and Jim could feel the small body trembling against the palm of his supporting hand. He looked down and saw Hob staring off to one side.
"M'Lord! Ware!" cried Hob. Jim looked around him, and saw trolls coming at him from every side.
"Up, m'Lord!" Hob was calling to him. "Up!"
Jim felt a pressure between his legs, and looking down saw that there was a waft of smoke there, trying to lift him. But he did not feel like going up.
"You go up, Hob," he said; and he tried to put Hob down on the smoke, but Hob clung to him.
"I won't leave you, m'Lord!" The hobgoblin's voice was shrill. "Mount! You must up, and fly!"
"The hell I must!" He visualized himself and Hob enclosed in a glowing aura, of which the inner part that touched them was cool, but the outer part was at the temperature of boiling water. Just in time; the first few trolls reached him and stretched out their arms to take hold of him, plunging their hands into the glow and recoiling with howls of pain and anger.
"That's better," said Jim, turning to face them, still holding Hob to him. The unusual anger in him was flaring to a new high. "You'd like to take hold of a magician? Go ahead, help yourself!"
By this time he was surrounded by trolls, but none of them were within arm's length of the aura. The ones farther back had been roaring and growling, but as the silence of the ones standing immediately around Jim began to impress its way backward through the crowd, they too fell silent until there was no sound at all from any of them.
"That's better!" said Jim. He half turned to the two trolls who had captured Hob-One.
"Unfreeze," he told them. The ice around them shattered; they moved, stretching their arms and legs almost as if they could not believe that they would move again.
Jim turned back to the crowd.
"Never," he told them, "never attack a magician or a hobgoblin. Do you hear me?"
There was still a dead silence from the trolls around. Their eyes glittered; and as far as any expression could be read from their savage faces, they were baffled, but in no way intimidated.
"You," said Jim, picking out the largest troll in the front rank of the crowd that had come to surround him. "What are you all doing here? What are you here for? Answer me!"
The troll looked right and left, down at the ground, up again at Jim—and said nothing.
"I will speak!" shouted some voices from the back of the crowd. There was a swirl of movement through it and bursting suddenly through into the front rank, thrusting those immediately in front of it to right and left, came two identical trolls. They stopped just outside the nimbus, not only looking exactly like each other but standing exactly alike, with fist on hips.
"What are you doing here, magician? This is my territory!"
Jim stared. It was not what they had said that had startled him, but the fact that both had said it in exactly the same words at the same time, both of them using the word "my."
"Make me go, then," Jim answered.
The two stared at him savagely. Jim stared back, equally savage, but torn between two attractive possibilities—one of them being to make himself as big and tall as Rrrnlf the sea devil (though he would still only have the sam
e strength he had as a human being; the trolls wouldn't know that)—or to freeze them all and simply leave them there as living troll-statues.
No, maybe that second choice was a little too brutal. But in any case, he was in no mood to mince words with them. He waited for them to speak again.
Both the two trolls, moving eerily in the same moment and without saying a word, reached out cautiously toward the aura, felt the heat before they touched it, and pulled their hands back. They continued to stare at Jim.
"All right now," said Jim. "You two tell me. What are you doing here?"
"I wait for Mnrogar," they said.
"So, you're waiting for Mnrogar," said Jim. "Why are all the other trolls around, then? Are they waiting for Mnrogar too? And just one of you speak. I don't need both of you talking at once. Either one, but just one speak."
"I must speak with both mouths!" said the two trolls in perfect chorus. "I am one person. That's why I will fight Mnrogar and eat him. His territory is mine!"
Jim found himself staring a little at them.
"What do you mean, you're one person?" he snapped. "I can see there're two of you."
"No, I am one. My mother tore me into two when I was born; but I have always been one. I am one. I live as one. I eat as one—and I fight as one. Mnrogar will die. No troll can win against me. I can take what territory I want at any time; and now the time has come for me to take his from he who calls himself the King of the Trolls."
"What good's that do?" asked Jim.
"Then there'll be no question about who's King of the Trolls. Because when I can take his territory, as I can any other, then all territories are mine. It is a new time for trolldom; at last under a new King. We will take all—all; and we will crack the bones not only of Mnrogar but of all such as you and any others who pretend to show strength in this island. All will be mine. Mine, forever!"
Jim discovered his anger was evaporating in the face of this new curiosity. Big as Mnrogar was, the two before him—who were indeed, individually bigger than any of the other trolls surrounding them—stood a good chance of together pulling him down. Particularly, since he seemed to be weary of living, after nearly two thousand years, and—if Aargh was right—with being alone.
This, it came to him in an unexpected flash of understanding, could be the source of the Dark Powers' thinking that they could disturb the Earl's party and, in essence, act against History during a Christian feast from which they were themselves shut out. They could not do anything here directly; but free-acting agents like the trolls could do it for them, since Naturals had the ability to affect History, at least to a certain extent.
This strange pair, that spoke simultaneously and used the first person when they spoke, must actually have been joined at birth—"Siamese" twins. That is, if they'd been telling the truth about being born as a single individual and their mother biting them apart.
Whether they actually believed they were one person in two bodies, or this was a clever plan of theirs to give them an advantage, did not really matter. The only thing that mattered was that other trolls were accepting it. If they actually were united in mind as well as personalities, of course, it would explain a lot of things. Working as a pair, instead of as individuals, they would indeed be able to overcome any other troll; and possibly to pull down larger game and generally get more food—even as they were growing up—than ordinary trolls. That would help to explain why they were larger now than the others of their kind, standing around them right now.
"You said you were born as one, and your mother tore you apart!" said Jim. "How can I believe that?"
Without a word, the two turned as one; presenting, one his right side, the other his left side, to Jim; and Jim saw the long ugly puckered scars from just below the ribs to the hip on each one.
Again, without a word, they turned back to face him.
"But if you've been separated," said Jim, "you can't consider yourself one person any more."
"I am one!" the two voices rang together.
Jim found himself inclined to believe that at least they believed it—and, judging from the trolls that surrounded them, these believed it also. If so, then the victory of the twins over Mnrogar might really create a danger, if the twins had enough wisdom to use the other trolls as a united force against even humans. Even if they did not, if the other trolls would take commands from these two, then game could be surrounded and driven, an area could be absolutely cleaned of all the animal life within it. And the same tactics, used against outlying farms or even small villages, could enable the trolls to live off livestock, or even groups of humans.
This would disrupt the kingdom of Britain in the fourteenth century of this world, so that human History would be distorted in a way that had never been foreseen.
The two now said something more; but Jim paid no attention. His mind was too busy examining this entirely new aspect of things. No wonder the Phoenix had not flown as it should. No wonder anything.
But this was not the sort of situation that could be, or ought to be, dealt with offhand. He needed to get away and have some time to think about it—above all to speak to Carolinus, if he could ever get in contact with Carolinus again—about what measures to take.
The worst of it was, he found himself thinking, that as a magician, he and all other magicians might be forbidden from interfering with the trolls under these circumstances. By the laws under which they as magicians operated, whether they could do so, or not, was another question he needed Carolinus's help in answering. There was no point in standing talking to these two, and the other trolls, further.
"I tell you," said Jim in the most ominous tone of voice he could manage, staring at the pair before him, "and I speak as a magician speaks. Take heed to what I say. If you go against Mnrogar, you are doomed!"
Deliberately, he looked down at Hob-One, whom he still covered with his hand.
"Come, Hob-One," he said. "We'll leave these trolls to learn wisdom. Let's continue our journey to its destination."
With that, he visualized himself and Hob being back up in the air with Ned—and immediately they were. A sudden roar of outrage and frustration came from the trolls on the ground below them; and looking down Jim saw their faces up-turned. Jim let go of Hob, who slipped from his jupon and was instantly astride a waft of smoke, between him and Ned. Ned was still in the air where he had been left; but had somehow managed to turn over on his stomach, as if he had been trying to swim down to the ground.
"Did you see him? Did you see our Lord?" burbled Hob-One to Ned. "He stopped them. He frightened them. They couldn't do anything!"
"Forgive me, m'Lord," said Ned, still struggling to pull himself back into an upright position. "Forgive me, m'Lord," he said, "I could not come down to you. True, I only have my knife, but I would not have you think that I—"
"Not at all, Ned," said Jim. "I wanted you to stay up here. I'd have called you down if I needed you; and you'd have been able to come. Forget the trolls now, both of you, we need to get on to the Earl's castle. Tomorrow's not that far away, and there's a lot to do."
Chapter 34
The morning sun shone brightly down from a perfectly cloudless blue sky on the tournament area before the castle, brilliant with the colors of the banners and pennants around the lists and in front of the wooden stands, like football bleachers crowded with warmly dressed spectators; the barrier itself running the length of the field crosswise before them so that the two opposed knights would each ride down his own side of it. Large, round tents had been erected at each end of the list for the knights who were next to ride against each other.
It would have been nice to say that the sun beamed down, but that would not have been exact. There was nothing beamish about it; nor about the sparkling, but hard, winter blue of the sky. Nor was there any particular kindness to be found in the trampled, snowy surface of the grounds, the raw wood of the barrier and the unrelieved white of the tents.
Nor, for that matter, in the crowd itself
. The gentlemen and ladies there were certainly cheerful and merry—some of them were already in process of becoming merrier, even now, as they sat taking further anti-freeze protection from flasks of wine. But in spite of their good humor, they were here to see blood and violence—even possible death. As recently as the year 1318, Sir John Mortimer had been killed in just such a tournament as this, and buried with his ancestors in Wigmore Abbey.
There had been, in fact, a long list of tournament deaths even before that; going back to the notable one of Geoffrey of Brittany, son of Henry II of England, who had been killed in a tournament in 1168.
In any case, the stands were crowded. The only open seat visible was one on the left of the Earl himself, where the Bishop of Bath and Wells usually sat. But the Church officially disapproved of these rough sports; and so it would have been impolitic for the Bishop to lend his countenance to this one. Still, most of those seated there already were fully expecting him to slip in a little later, probably wearing the habit of a common monk with its hood over his head and drawn forward to hide his face.
If he had been there officially, it would have been his pastoral duty to condemn the tournament. There had been numerous prohibitions and bans; as early as the year 1130 there had been an interdict forbidding ecclesiastical burial to anyone fatally wounded in the sport. This usually happened to be quietly overlooked; but still, a tournament itself was not the sort of thing that the Bishop could officially avoid condemning, no matter how his martial heart might beat with his longing to be out there in the lists, himself; his faith and position forbade him from anything but disapproval of the sport.
No one else there was oppressed with such a sense of duty, however, unless it was Jim himself. He was sitting, eating what was, in effect, the breakfast he had missed several hours earlier, when he had gone out into the frosty air before dawn. His mission then (with no chance of refusing it) had been—with Brian, Ned Dunster, the two squires and a few trusty men-at-arms—to take Mnrogar, his armor and his boar-horse to a spot in the woods where they would be safely hidden from view; but close enough so that they could be brought out when the proper moment for the Black Knight's arrival had been reached, which would possibly be several hours from now.
The Dragon, the Earl ,and the Troll Page 38
