Belphegor said: “Sir Harold, whatever else you be charged with, here is a quest that turns all quests aside; a woman unjustly in trouble, to wit.”
“I don’t know about the unjustice,” said Shea. “But let’s see.” He addressed the weeping girl. “Who’s they? You mean the people who are holding the auto-da-fé on the monster?”
“Aye. No more monster than me. Am I a monster?” She spread her arms and Shea noticed that her dress was low cut in front.
“Marry, tears mend no torn bodices,” said Belphegor, just a trifle acidly.
“The—the priest t-t-took him down to the Saint’s cross for burning. Save him!”
Shea hesitated, then looked at Belphegor. The girl was frowning, but she said strictly: “Sir Harold, meseems that her plaint would be of that friend you bespeak.”
“I’m afraid so,” he said. “You take—no, you’ll need both hands for the bow, and I only need one for the sword. Giddy-ap, Roger.” He unsheathed the blade; the girl who had been doing the weeping tagged along behind.
The road turned a shoulder and slanted up a hillside from which figures were visible, moving against the skyline. One or two people turned round, but nobody seemed in the least curious about the spectacle of a Saracen and a red-headed bow-girl leading a monstrous warrior by a noose. As he topped the rise and pressed forward, Shea saw why. The road here ran along the outer edge of a wide terrace on the side of the mountain. On the innermost edge of the terrace, against the cliff, something had been carved which looked rather like a phallic symbol with a halo round its head. In front of this singular erection a huge pyre of wood was erected, and around it a hundred or so peasants were crowding.
The wood was burning vigorously, and in its center, bound to a stake by neck and all four legs, was a huge gray wolf. The logs on which it sat were already a bed of hot coals, the flames around it were consuming its bonds, but except for the fact that the wolf had its tongue out and was panting, it seemed utterly unconcerned with the proceedings.
Shea suddenly recalled the spell under which Atlantès had let Polacek and himself out of the castle’s flaming border, and wanted to laugh. Instead he said: “Hello, folks.”
Talk died in a circle like ripples spreading from a thrown stone in a pool. A man in a patched black robe, who had been throwing sticks toward the center of the fire, turned and came toward him, blinking with near-sightedness.
“What goes on, Father?” asked Shea.
The priest produced a cross and began to mumble. “Oh, that’s all right,” said Shea. “I’m not a Saracen, and anyway I’m a friend of the hermit of the mountain.” He indicated his prisoner. “See? We’ve captured Roger of Carena.”
The priest studied the prisoner’s face, pressing his own close. Roger hawked and spat, but only succeeded in adding another spot on the patched gown. The priest came toddling back toward Shea. “Worshipful sir,” he said, “I perceive you are a very mighty man, and I trow, a good Christian. Sir, in your might, perchance you can aid us. Here have we a very demon from the uttermost depths of hell, in monster form, but his master Beelzebub, who is the Lord of Fire, will not permit him to burn.”
Shea said: “I’m not sure he’s as bad as you think. Had it occurred to you that he might be just a good man under an enchantment?” He stepped forward and raising his voice, addressed the wolf: “Are you Vaclav Polacek?”
The wolf barked twice and nodded vigorously, then raising one paw to emphasize the point, tore away the burned rope that held it. There was a universal “Ooooh” and backward movement in the crowd.
“I thought Doc Chalmers told you to lay off that stuff,” said Shea, disgustedly. “Can you get loose?”
“Oow! Ououw! Ouououw!” said the wolf.
“Well, lay off it for a minute, for the love of Mike, till I get you off the hook.” He turned toward the priest. “It’s like I said. He’s a Christian squire under an enchantment. I am Sir Harold de Shea.” He did his best to strike an attitude. The priest looked at him with near-sighted skepticism.
“Votsy!” said Shea. “This guy don’t believe you’re the goods. If those ropes are burned through enough, come over here and lick one of his feet.”
“Wrrrower!” howled the wolf, and leaped against his ropes. They gave; there was a universal scream of terror from the assembled peasants and they scattered as the animal came leaping through the flames, throwing burning coals in all directions. The priest stood his ground, but his face was set in tight lines and he was vigorously fingering his rosary as the wolf that was Votsy sat down and licked at his feet. After a moment or two the priest put one hand down and gingerly patted his head, but removed the hand instantly as up the valley, in the direction they were going, a bugle sounded, “Rump-te-umpte-um-tum.” At least it sounded like a bugle. All the notes were flat.
Everybody gazed. Up the rise came a column of horsemen, headed by three who bore slender spears with dirty pennons of colored wool too heavy for the slow motion of their progress to lift and make clear. Behind them came the bugler, and behind them again, three knights in full plate armor with their helmets banging at their knees. Shea recognized Count Roland d’Aglante and Reinald of Montalban; the third had slightly more delicate features and a surcoat over his mail divided red and white across the middle, with a huge gold buckle occupying the center. They were followed by a score or more of mounted men-at-arms in iron hats with brims and mail-shirts of overlapping metal scales. His eyes were torn from the sight by an inarticulate burp from Roger, who suddenly seemed to have difficulty with his breathing, though the halter had not been pulled tight.
There was no point in trying to conceal anything. Shea stepped boldly to the center of the road and, holding his hand up like a traffic cop, said: “Hey!”
The bugle gave a toot, and the riders pulled up. Reinald cried: “ ’Tis the turban knight! How hight he—Sir Harold de—du Chaille? No matter. Hail, fair Belphegor!”
“Regard!” said the knight in the surcoat, in a high voice. “Roger of Carena, and in bonds. This may not be borne!” The knight vaulted down and Shea realized that “he” was a handsome, brown-haired woman of showgirl size. She whipped a dagger from her belt. Roger was apparently trying to use one of his feet to dig a hole to fall into, his gaze fixed on the ground. Shea thrust himself between the two. “Listen,” he said, “this guy’s my prisoner.”
Count Roland looked down from his horse benignly. “My lady and fair cousin Bradamant, peace; for this is good law. This young sir is a dubbed knight, Sir Harold de Shea, to wit, and if he holds Lord Roger bound it is by right of fair conquest.”
“Then I challenge him!” said Bradamant, picking at her belt for a pair of gloves. “For this is my very soul and love and I will assay all desperately upon the body of any who holds him. Lord Reinald, be my aid.”
“Cut them down!” said Reinald harshly.
Roland leaped down from his own horse, clanging like an earthquake in a kitchen. “Then must I even stand his, to make the balance fair; for this is a very gentle knight that has done me much service. Ho, Durandal!” He lifted up a great cross-hilted sword, and Belphegor drew back a couple of steps, snatching an arrow from her quiver and bending her bow—not at Bradamant but at Roger. Shea admired his wife’s presence of mind, even if the mind was not entirely her own. Reinald looked black, but Bradamant checked her rush, and gave a little laugh.
“Nay, gentles,” she said, “let us not fall on contention when Saracen banners be over the next crest, but dissolve this in amicable agreement. Sir Harold, my hand.” She put the dagger back and extended it.
Shea reached out and took it. “Okay, lady,” he said. “My story is that I need this guy in my business. A friend of mine is in Castle Carena and can’t get out, because Atlantès has built a wall of fire around it, and unless I deliver Roger there it’s no dice.”
“Ah, but—” said the lady warrior “—this is my more than friend and most dear love.” She waved a hand at Roger, who said, “Allah!” under his
breath. “Surely, it is less than knightly to keep us one from the other.”
“Yet even more so,” said Belphegor, putting her arrow back and stepping forward in evident enjoyment of the prospect of a legal argument, “—were he to fail his duty to his vavasour and liege lord who is held prisoner.”
“Ah, but the greater wipes out the less,” said Bradamant. “In making deliverance of Lord Roger to this Saracen, Sir Harold would fail in duty to the Emperor Charles, who is liege lord to us all.”
“Not to me,” said Shea.
The three knights gasped, and Roland’s face went a trifle grim. “Sir knight,” he said, “a truce to profitless discourse. You know me for your friend; will you hear my judgment in this cause?”
She looked at the surrounding men-at-arms. Might as well put a good face on it, especially as Roland didn’t seem to be a bad guy. “Sure,” he said, “anything you say is all right with me.”
“And you, my lady Bradamant?”
“That will I.”
“Then hark.” Roland unslung his big sword from his belt and kissed the hilt. “This is my judgment, given in honor, as the holy St. Michael stands my aid: that Sir Harold de Shea release the Lord Roger to the Lady Bradamant. But since she has the ring that daunts all enchantments, she shall forthwith take oath to rescue Sir Harold’s lord from durance in Castle Carena. This deed I lay on her; and none other shall be accomplished till it be done.”
Belphegor clapped her hands. “Oh, well thought on!” she said. Bradamant’s face also expressed pleasure. She stepped to her horse, produced a sword almost as large as Roland’s and held it out to him. He lifted the hilt up before her; she kissed it and extended one hand: “I swear it,” she said, and turned to Shea. “Now handsell me your prisoner.”
“What do I do?” he asked.
“Place his hand in mine.”
“I can’t. He’s tied up.”
“Loose him, want-wit!” She stamped her foot.
Shea was not sure this was a good idea, but nobody else seemed to have any objections, so he stepped around behind the big man, and untied some of the knots, then as Roger gave an explosive sigh of relief, took one of his hands and laid it in Bradamant’s.
“Do you assign me all rights of war and ransom in this man?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Then I receive him.” She dropped Roger’s hand, and with a round-house swing, hit him a terrific slap on the side of his face. “Come, varlet!” Roger slowly lifted a numbed arm, and then, instead of hitting her back, surprisingly began to titter. “You accompany us to Carena.”
Roger’s face straightened out. “O my lady, I pray you, take me not back thither, where mine uncle will coop me up like a chicken.”
“Tish! Have I not the ring, which is proof against all that he can do? Sir Harold, will you ride with us?”
“Sure,” said Shea. He looked around.
The wolf that was Vaclav Polacek was nowhere to be seen.
Sixteen
Shea thought rapidly. Bradamant could probably be trusted to keep her word, and even if she couldn’t, there was no particular immediate danger to Doc and Florimel. But the danger to Vaclav was both immediate and particular, if they captured him again, someone was almost certain to think of strangling or using a silver weapon instead of the fire that failed. Very likely they would get him, too. He turned to the others:
“I think you could operate better at Castle Carena without us,” he said. “There’s a friend of mine in trouble, and I’m afraid I’ve got to do something about it. Bel—Belphegor, it’s the sweetheart of that girl. Will you come along?”
She put two fingers to her lips. “ ’Tis not in our compact. But—aye, that will I. Whither go we?”
“My guess would be that he’d be looking for that girl. Maybe we ought to go back to about where we found her.”
“Think you he would return by the village where so late they’d have burned him?”
“You have something there, kid. Votsy is as nutty as a fruitcake, but I think he’d be bright enough to cut around the back way.”
“Come, then,” said the girl. “I know some little of woodland trails.” She turned to the paladins. “Gentles, I salute you farewell till a happier meeting.”
The armored men raised their hands, the bugle blew again and the group broke up. A horse had been brought for Roger; Shea noticed that as he and Bradamant rode off in the direction of Castle Carena they were holding hands and not giving any particular attention to their route. In their condition, he wondered how good they would be at the business of getting Doc out of Castle Carena.
Behind the shrine the ground dipped sharply, then rose up a bank set with low bushes to the veritable forest beyond. Belphegor’s eyes swept it from side to side: “Thither lies his slot,” she said, pointing.
Shea could see nothing that looked like a trail, but when he plunged across the declivity at the girl’s heels and up the other side, there was a broken branch on one of the bushes, and beyond, where she waved a hand, the mark of a wolf’s pad, deeply impressed on the soft ground.
“Hey,” he said, “wouldn’t we save time by short-cutting along the road?”
She turned a laughing face. “Nay, who’d go roadwise when they could walk the free way of the forest? And more—it is the nature of the wolfish kind to be somewhat scatterwit in purpose. Trust me, we shall come on him the sooner by following direct. See, there turned he to the left.”
She went more rapidly than Shea would have believed possible. The sun slanted down through the leaves in speckled patterns and occasionally a bird chirped or dipped and swooped away before him. His Saracen costume was not exactly what he would have chosen for the occasion, but he found himself suddenly happy.
Belphegor hummed a little air to herself as she examined some markings at the side of another little clump of bushes. “Here he turned aside to strike at some small game,” she announced. “A rabbit, belike. And here he lay to rest after the pursuit. We gain; press on.”
She was tireless; it was he who had to ask for the first halt, and later, for another. Toward what he judged to be noon they made the third pause by the side of a little stream from which they drank and shared half one of the birds left from the previous night’s supper. The girl frowned suddenly.
“Sir Harold,” she said, “it is passing strange, but meseems there is in this something familiar and not unsweet, as though all this were a twice-told tale. Yet sure am I that we have never wandered the wildwood together before.”
“Oh, yes we—” began Shea and then stopped. No use giving her a jar that might set up a resistance to her redeveloping memory. “Do you think we’ll find him?” he said instead, changing the subject rapidly.
“Oh, aye, and that soon. Come, let us be afoot again.”
She was on her feet in a single graceful motion and they were off. The wolf had certainly done a good deal of circling, either because he couldn’t make up his own mind, or perhaps because he had lost his way. Twice more they found places where he had rested, and then, as they passed another brook, the girl pointed suddenly. Shea saw a footprint into which the water was just oozing. He stopped, filling his lungs, and shouting: “Vaclav!”
There was a sound in the underbrush, and the wolf came trotting from behind a tree with his tongue out, shaking his head and bouncing in delight.
Shea said: “What was the matter? Get lost?”
“Arf!” said the wolf.
“Okay, now you’re found. Listen here, you prize idiot. You’ve nearly gummed the works for all of us. Now you stick by us and don’t get out of sight. I can handle some magic all right, but I don’t understand the higher sorcery well enough to disenchant you, so we’ll have to wait till we find Doc. As it is, it’s damned lucky Atlantès fireproofed you before you turned into a werewolf again.”
The wolf put its tail between its legs and emitted a moan of contrition. Shea turned his back and said to Belphegor: “Can you get us on the road to Castle Caren
a again?”
“Assuredly. It lies that way.” She pointed. “But do you find the woods that are my joy so comfortless?”
“It’s not that, kid. We got business. Afterward, we can come back here, if you like, and—oh, what the hell, let’s go.”
The approach of dusk found them still among trees.
While Shea made a fire, the wolf, under strict instructions, went to help Belphegor with her hunting, flushing game for her arrow and retrieving it afterward. She came back with five rabbits, two quail and a larger bird of some kind, remarking: “If we keep this adventure, I must even find some means of gaining new arrows. Two were lost on that bout, and though I have some skill as a fletcher, both tools and seasoned wood are wanting.”
The evening’s bag looked like a lot for three people, but the wolf ate everything they left and looked hungrily for more. Shea was glad that they didn’t have much farther to go at this rate. It would wear both of them out to feed the confounded animal.
The sun was already high in the morning when they came out on the track, a few hundred yards short of the fork where he had separated from Polacek on the outward journey. Now they were on the last lap. The wolf, which had been alternately trotting on ahead and dropping back as though it found their pace unbearably slow, suddenly came tearing up, whining and emitting little sharp howls.
“What’s the matter, old man?” asked Shea.
The wolf bounded, stiff-legged, nuzzling Shea’s legs and running a few steps back in the direction of Pau.
“Wants us to go back and find that girl, I guess,” said Shea. The wolf howled some more, then nipped Shea by the bagginess of his trousers and tried to lead him in the desired direction.
“Listen, I’m not—” began Shea, and then saw what the wolf had been trying to tell him. A column of dust was rising along the track, with heads moving beneath it. Belphegor shaded her eyes, then gave a little squeal. “The Saracens! By the foul fiend, how slipped they past Count Roland? And see—Medoro among them.”
The Complete Compleat Enchanter Page 41
