“How are you this morning?” asked that young man, unabashed.
“My head beats with the cruel beat of an anvil, as you must know.” She turned back. “Come, Amoret, there is no salve like air, and if we start now we shall be at Satyrane’s castle as early as those who ride late and fast with more pain.”
“We’re going that way, too,” said Shea. “Hadn’t we better ride along with you?”
“For protection’s sake, mean you? Hah! Little enough use that overgrown bodkin you bear would be if we came to real combat. Or is it that you wish to ride under the guard of my arm?” She shook it with a clang of metal.
Shea grinned. “After all, you are technically my ladylove—” He ducked as she swung at him, and hopped back out of reach.
Amoret spoke up: “Ah, Britomart, but do me the favor of letting them ride with us! The old magician is so sympathetic.”
Shea saw Chalmers start in dismay. But it was too late to back out now. When the women had mounted they rode through the gate together. Shea took the lead with the grumpily silent Britomart. Behind him, he could hear Amoret prattling cheerfully at Chalmers, who answered in monosyllables.
The road, no more than a bridle path without marks of wheeled traffic, paralleled the stream. The occasional glades that had been visible near Castle Caultrock disappeared. The trees drew in on them and grew taller till they were riding through a perpetual twilight, only here and there touched with a bright fleck of sunlight.
After two hours Britomart drew rein. As Amoret came up, the warrior girl announced: “I’m for a bath. Join me, Amoret?”
The girl blushed and simpered. “These gentlemen—”
“Are gentlemen,” said Britomart, with a glare at Shea that implied he had jolly well better be a gentleman, or else. “We will halloo.” She led the way down the slope and between a pair of mossy trunks.
The two men strolled off a way and sat. Shea turned to Chalmers. “How’s the magic going?”
“Ahem,” said the professor. “We were right about the general worsening of conditions here. Everyone seems aware of it, but they don’t quite know what causes it or what to do about it.”
“Do you?”
Chalmers pinched his chin. “It would seem—uh—reasonable to suspect the operations of a kind of guild of evil, of which various enchanters, like this Busyrane mentioned last night, form a prominent part. I indicate the souring of the wine and the loss of the grapes as suggestive examples. It would not even surprise me to discover that a well-organized revolutionary conspiracy is afoot. The question of whether such a subversive enterprise is justified is of course a moral one, resting on that complex of sentiments which the German philosophers call by the characteristically formidable name of Weltansicht. It therefore cannot be settled by scientific—”
Shea said: “Yeah. But what can we do about it?”
“I’m not quite certain. The obvious step would be to observe some of these people in operation and learn something of their technique. This tournament—Good gracious, what’s that?”
From the river came a shriek. Shea stared at Chalmers for three seconds. Then he jumped up and ran toward the sound.
As he burst through the screen of brush, he saw the two women up to their necks in a little pool out near the middle of the river. Wading toward them, their backs to Shea, were two wild-looking, half-naked men in tartan kilts. They were shouting with laughter.
Shea did a foolish thing. He drew his épée, slid down the six-foot bank, and plowed into the water after the men, yelling. They whirled about, whipped out broadswords from rawhide slings, and splashed toward him. He realized his folly: knee-deep in water he would be unable to use his footwork. At best his chances were no more than even against one of these men. Two . . .
The bell-guard of the épée gave a clear ringing note as he parried the first cut. His riposte missed, but the kilted man gave a little. Shea out of the tail of his eye saw the other working around to get behind him. He parried, thrust, parried.
“Wurroo!” yelled the wild man, and swung again. Shea backed a step to bring the other into his field of vision. Cold fear gripped him lest his foot slip on an unseen rock. The other man was upon him, swinging his sword up with both hands for the kill. “Wurroo!” he yelled like the other. Shea knew sickeningly that he couldn’t get his guard around in time. . . .
Thump! A rock bounced off the man’s head. The man sat down. Shea turned back to the first and just parried a cut at his head. The first kiltie was really boring in now. Shea backed another step, slipped, recovered, parried, and backed. The water tugged at his legs. He couldn’t meet the furious swings squarely for fear of snapping his light blade. Another step back, and another, and the water was only inches deep. Now! Disengage, double, one-two, lunge—and the needlepoint slid through skin and lungs and skin again. Shea recovered and watched the man’s knees sag. Down he went.
The other was picking himself out of the water some distance down. When Shea took a few steps toward him, he scrambled up the bank and ran like a deer, his empty swordsling banging against his back.
###
Amoret’s voice announced: “You may come now, gentlemen.” Shea and Chalmers went back to the river to find the girls dressed and drying their hair by spreading it to the sun on their hands.
Shea asked Britomart: “You threw that rock, didn’t you?”
“Aye. Thanks and more than thanks, Squire Harold. I cry your grace for having thought that slaughtering blade of yours a toy.”
“Don’t mention it. That second bird would have nailed me if you hadn’t beaned him with a rock. But say, why did you just sit there in the pool? A couple of steps would have taken you to the deep water. Or can’t you swim?”
“We can swim,” she replied. “But it would not be meet to expose our modesty by leaving the pool, least of all to the wild Da Derga.”
Shea forebore to argue about the folly of modesty that exposed one to death or to a fate that Britomart would undoubtedly consider worse. The blonde beauty was showing a much friendlier disposition toward him, and he did not wish to jeopardize it by argument over undebatable questions.
When they rode on, Britomart left Amoret to inflict her endless tale of woe on Chalmers, while she rode with Shea. Shea asked leading questions, trying not to reveal his own ignorance too much.
Britomart was, it transpired, one of Queen Gloriana’s “Companions” or officers—a “count” in the old Frankish sense of the term. There were twelve of them, each charged with the righting of wrongs in some special field of the land of Faerie.
Ye olde-tyme policewoman, thought Shea. He asked whether there were grades of authority among the Companions.
Britomart told him: “That hangs by what matter is under consideration. In questions involving the relations of man to man, I am less than those gallant knights, Sir Cambell and Sir Triamond. Again, should it be a point of justice, the last authority rests with Sir Artegall.”
Her voice changed a trifle on the last word. Shea remembered how she had mentioned Artegall the evening before. “What’s he like?”
“Oh, a most gallant princely rogue, I warrant you!” She touched her horse with the spurs so that he pranced, and she had to soothe him with: “Quiet, Beltran!”
“Yes?” Shea encouraged.
“Well, for the physical side of him, somewhat dark of hair and countenance; tall, and so strong with lance that not Redcross or Prince Arthur himself can bear the shock of his charge. That was how I came to know him. We fought; I was the better with the spear, but at swords he overthrew me and was like to have killed me before he found I was a woman. I fell in love with him forthwith,” she finished simply.
Singular sort of courtship, thought Shea, but even in the world I came from there are girls who fall for that kind of treatment. Aloud he said: “I hope he fell for you, too.”
Britomart surprised him by heaving a sigh. “Alas, fair squire, that I must confess I do not know. ’Tis true he plighted himself to marry me, but he’s eve
r off to some tournament, or riding to some quest that I know not the end or hour of. We’ll be married when he gets back, quotha, but when he does return, it’s to praise my courage or strength, and never a word to show he thinks of me as a woman. He’ll clap me on the back and say: ‘Good old Britomart, I knew I could depend on you. And now I have another task for you; a dragon this time.”
“Hm-m-m,” said Shea. “Don’t suppose you ever heard of psychology?”
“Nay, not I.”
“Do you ever dress up? I mean, like some of those ladies at Castle Caultrock.”
“Of what use to me such foibles? Could I pursue my tasks as Companion in such garb?”
“Do you ever roll your eyes up at Artegall and tell him how wonderful he is?”
“Nay, marry beshrew me! What would he think of so unmaidenly conduct?”
“That’s just the point; just what he’s waiting for! Look here, in my country the girls are pretty good at that sort of thing, and I’ve learned most of the tricks. I’ll show you a few, and you can practice on me. I don’t mind.”
###
They dined rather thinly that night, on coarse brown bread and cheese which Britomart produced from a pack at the back of her saddle. They slept in cushiony beds of fern, three inches deep. The next day they rode in the same arrangement. Chalmers rather surprisingly consented. He explained: “The young lady is certainly very . . . uh . . . verbose, but she has a good deal of information to offer with regard to the methods of this Busyrane. I should prefer to continue the conversation.”
As soon as they were on the road Britomart pulled up her visor and, leaning toward Shea, rolled her eyes. “You must be weary, my most dear lord,” she said, “after your struggle with those giants. Come, sit and talk. I love to hear—”
Shea grinned. “Overdoing it a little, old girl. Better start again.”
“You must be weary—Hola, what have we here?”
The track had turned and mounted to a plateaulike meadow. As they emerged into the bright sun a trumpet sounded two sharp notes. There was a gleam of metal from the other side. Shea saw a knight with a shield marked in wavy stripes of green drop his lance into place and start toward him.
“Sir Paridell, as I live!” snapped Britomart, in her policewoman’s voice. “Oft an ill-doer and always a lecher. Ha! Well met! Gloriana!” The last shouted word was muffled in her helmet as the visor snapped shut. Her big black horse bounded toward this sudden opponent, the ebony lance sticking out past his head. They met with a crash. Paridell held the saddle, but his horse’s legs flew out from under. Man and animal came down together in a whirlwind of dust.
Shea and Chalmers reached him together and managed to pull the horse clear. When they got Paridell’s helmet off he was breathing, but there was a thin trickle of blood at his lips. He was unconscious.
Shea gazed at him a moment, then had an inspiration. “Say, Britomart,” he asked, “what are the rules about taking the arms of a guy like that?”
Britomart looked at her late opponent without pity.
“Since the false knave attacked us, I suppose they belong to me.”
“He must have heard I was traveling in your company,” piped Amoret. “Oh, the perils I go through!”
Shea was not to be put off. “I was wondering if maybe I couldn’t use that outfit.”
Paridell’s squire, a youth with a thin fuzz of beard on his chin and the trumpet over his shoulder, had joined them. He was bending over his master, trying to revive him by forcing the contents of a little flask between his lips. Now he looked up. “Nay, good sir,” he said to Britomart, “punish him not so. He did but catch a glimpse of you as you rode up, and mistook this dame for the Lady Florimel.”
A flush of anger went up Britomart’s face. “In very truth!” she cried. “Now if I had no thought before of penalties, this would be more than I needed. Sir, I am Britomart of the Companions, and this Paridell of yours is a most foul scoundrel. Strip him of his arms!”
“What about me?” asked Shea insistently. “That tournament—”
“You could not ride in the tournament in a knight’s arms without being yourself knight, fair squire.”
“Ahem!” said Chalmers. “I think my young friend would make a very good addition to the knights of your Queen Gloriana’s court.”
“True, reverend sir,” said Britomart, “but the obligation of knighthood is not lightly undertaken. He must either watch by his arms in a chapel all night, and have two proved knights to vouch him; or he must perform some great deed on the battlefield. Here we have neither the one nor the other.”
“I remember how my Scudamour—” began Amoret.
But Chalmers broke in, “Couldn’t you swear him in as a kind of deputy?”
“There is no—” began Britomart, and then checked herself. “ ’Tis true, I have no squire at present. If you, Master Harold, will take the oaths and ride as my squire, that is, without a crest to your helmet, it might be managed.”
The oath was simple enough, about allegiance to Queen Gloriana and Britomart in her name, a promise to suppress malefactors, protect the weak, and so on.
Shea and Chalmers pulled off Sir Paridell’s armor together. His squire clucked distractedly through the process. Paridell came to in the middle of it, and Chalmers had to sit on his head until it was finished.
Shea learned that a suit of armor was heavier than it looked. It was also a trifle small in the breastplate. Fortunately Paridell—a plump young man with bags under his eyes—had a large head. So there was no trouble with the well-padded helmet, from which Britomart knocked off the crest with the handle of her sword.
She also lent Shea her own shield cover. She explained that Paridell’s engrailed green bars would cause any of half a dozen knights to challenge him to a death duel on sight.
They had eaten the last of their provisions at lunch. Shea had remarked to Chalmers on the difficulty of getting a bellyful of adventure and one of food on the same day. So the sight of Satyrane’s castle, all rough and craggy and set amid trees, held a welcome promise of food and entertainment. Unlike that of Caultrock, it had portcullis and gate open onto the immense courtyard. Here workmen were hammering at temporary stands at one side.
The place was filled with knights and ladies, most of them familiar to Britomart and Amoret. Shea quite lost track of the number he was introduced to. In the hall before the dinner trumpet he met one he’d remember: Satyrane himself, a thick bear of a man, with a spade beard and huge voice.
“All Britomart’s friends are mine!” he shouted. “Take a good place at the table, folks. Hungry, not so? We’re all hungry here; like to starve.” He chuckled. “Eat well, good squire; you’ll need strength tomorrow. There will be champions. Blandamour of the Iron Arm has come, and so have Cambell and Triamond.”
Four
At ten the next morning, Shea came out of the vaultlike castle and blinked into the morning sun. Armor pressed his body in unfamiliar places. The big broadsword at his side was heavier than any he had ever handled.
The stands were finished and occupied by a vocal swarm of gentlemen and ladies in bright clothes. At their center was a raised booth under a canopy. In it sat an old man with frosty-white hair and beard. He held a bundle of little yellow sticks.
“Who’s he?” asked Shea of Britomart, walking just a step ahead of him across the wide courtyard to a row of tents at the opposite side.
“Sssh! The honorable judge of the lists. Each time one of the knights scores a brave point he shall notch the stick of that knight, and thus the winner will be chosen.”
They had reached the row of tents, behind which grooms held horses. A trumpet blew three clear notes and a mounted herald rode right past them. Behind him came Satyrane, on a big white horse. He had his helmet off, and was grinning and bobbing his head like a clumsy, amiable bear. He held a richly carved gold casket. As he reached the front of the stands, he opened it up and took from it a long girdle, intricately worked and flashing with j
ewels. The trumpeter blew another series of notes, and shouted in a high voice:
“This is that girdle of Florimel which none but the chaste may wear. It shall be the prize of the lady judged most beautiful of all at this tourney; and she shall be lady to that knight who gains the prize of valor and skill. These are the rules.”
“Some piece of rubbish, eh, folks?” shouted Satyrane and grinned. Shea heard Britomart, next to him, mutter something about “No manners.” The woodland knight completed his circuit and came to a stand near them. A squire passed up his helmet. From the opposite end of the lists a knight came forward, carrying a long slim lance, with which he lightly tapped Satyrane’s shield. Then he rode back to his place.
“Do you know him?” asked Shea to make conversation.
“Nay, I ken him not,” replied Britomart. “Some Saracen; see how his helmet ends in a spike and crescent peak and his shoulder plates flare outward.”
The trumpet sounded again, two warning notes. The antagonists charged. There was a clang like a dozen dropped kettles. Bright splinters of wood flew as both spears broke.
Neither man went down, but the Saracen’s horse was staggering as he reached Shea’s end of the lists and he himself reeling drunkenly in the saddle, clutching for support.
Satyrane was judged winner amid a patter of applause. Shea caught sight of Chalmers in the stands, shouting with the rest. Beside him was a heavily veiled woman, whose slender-bodiced figure in the tight gown implied good looks.
Another knight had taken his place at the opposite end of the lists. The crowd murmured.
“Blandamour of the Iron Arm,” remarked Britomart, as the trumpet blew. Again came the rush and the whang of metal. This time Satyrane had aimed more shrewdly. Blandamour popped out of his saddle, lit on the horse’s rump, and slid to the ground amid a shout of applause. Before he could be pulled aside another knight had taken his place. Satyrane rode him down, too, but came back from the encounter with his visor up, calling “Givors!” and shaking his head as though to clear it.
A squire hurried past with a cup of wine. Britomart called at him: “Am I needed yet?”
The Complete Compleat Enchanter Page 16
