D’Abrez dismounted, and his servants swathed him in a thick wool cape with a hood and poured water over him. They brought a charger to replace his tourney horse and put on it a long wool dress and hood, belted the surcingles, then shifted the saddle and tack over. I wished to suggest at this point that he not go face the worm alone, but he was a proud knight of Loretto, a champion, and I decided it was not my place to say such a thing.
His groom helped him into the saddle, and then he chose a lance from those on offer. He was not wearing a heavy tilting helm, but a lighter bascinet with a pierced visor to give him a good view, and through the visor I could see his dark, frowning, thoughtful face. He was a professional, expert in combat, and I supposed he was making calculations that I could only guess at.
His servants drenched his horse with water. Then he took the reins in hand, turned his mount toward the gap in the beech-hedge, and easily leaped the dike.
I think he was one of the bravest men I have ever seen. Wilmot’s courage I did not rate so highly, because he knew not what he was challenging; but d’Abrez had seen Wilmot struck down, and still he advanced alone to fight the fire-drake.
I watched the fight through the leaves of the hedge. D’Abrez came on slowly, keeping the pear-trees between himself and his quarry, and then at the last second put the spurs to his charger, lowered the point of his lance, and made a perfect, beautiful turn around a pear-tree to bring him face-to-face with the worm. There was a crack, the brilliant rainbow serpent-coils recoiled as if in surprise, and I was sure that d’Abrez had struck the dragon even though the lance had broken. He threw the broken lance down, reached for his hand-axe, and spun the horse about neat as an evolution in the horse-ballet. And then the grove lit with flame.
The fire was so bright it seemed to burn a great white hole in the world. I was blinded, and the air filled with screams. The hair on my neck rose at the sound. I blinked until my sight returned, and the first thing I saw was the horse and man both on fire, galloping blindly through the grove. Knight and charger screamed alike, d’Abrez in a deep howl, the horse a high-pitched shriek. They rebounded off pear-trees but kept flying, leaves and Winter Nelis tumbling to the ground in their path. I tore my eyes away from the horror to find the fire-drake, which for all I knew was charging us—but the worm was flying again, thrashing away through the grove.
The burning gallop ended when the horse fell and pitched its rider to the ground. We rushed through the hedge as quickly as we could, but by the time we arrived, there was no longer fire, but only smoke and death. The great champion of Loretto had been cooked to death in his coat of steel, and, cooking, he had screamed his lungs to tatters. I felt a great cold void where my heart should be, for I knew not how to view the shattering of such a titan.
The knight’s servants had to wait for the armor to cool, and then they stripped it off the body. I wished not to look at it, nor to smell it either. I desired myself back in Howel, sipping brandy before my tame domestic fire, with a volume of Rudland’s comic verse in my lap. Yet here I and the others were forced to cope with the occult fire of a great worm, a blaze from beyond the world.
More than one of d’Abrez’s servants burst into weeping at the sight of the corpse. Yet weeping, they wrapped it in a blanket and carried it away.
Now we were nine.
* * *
The huntsman and his guide crept after the dragon and reported that it had gone to ground in a cave. We all advanced to view the lair’s entrance and saw only a baleful darkness beneath an overhanging ledge. Before the cave climbed a meadow made for grazing, dotted with faded wildflowers, and with the sweeping track of the worm plain on the grass.
A cloud obscured the sun, and rain began to patter down. Drops rang off my helmet.
According to the sortilege, there were three knights who would attack the dragon before me, and their names were a testament to the erratic and often pretentious nature of Duisland spelling: Majerle (pronounced “Marley”), Molyneux (pronounced “Mollinju”), and Woolfardisworthy (pronounced “Woolsery”). I took them aside.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “I make no imputation against your courage, and neither do I make no extraordinary claims for my own bravery, but I think I might see a way to cope with this monster. If you would oblige by deferring to me, I will take your place, and fight the worm myself.”
They looked at each other. Woolfardisworthy scowled. He was a big man, with a russet-colored beard that he’d tied in little ribboned tails that draped over his gorget. He blew a contemptuous breath through the thick mustache that overhung his lip. “I will not have it said that my courage is any less than that of Dom Lorenso d’Abrez.”
That put the others in a dilemma, for even if I did not dispute their courage, it was clear that Woolfardisworthy did. Majerle cast an appraising eye at the cavern. “Yet I should not care to go into that cave,” he said. “Let us wait out the night, for the worm may come out, and then we can track it in the open.”
Relief descended on me. The matter of courage was postponed till the next morning, which I found myself pleased to do. Truly, though I hope I put on a brave enough face, I was no happier in facing the monster than Majerle.
We brought up the wagons and sumpter horses and pitched our camp on the far side of a shallow stream. It was a sober, cold, wet company that cooked its supper and went early to bed. We stood watches all night, in case the drake attacked, and so I stood in the dark for some hours with rain pouring off my oilskins and my pollaxe in my hand. I knew not what we would do if the worm attacked, other than die.
The rain faded before sunrise, and we cooked our pottage and porridge over damp, smoking wood while gray clouds streamed high in the firmament. Wrapped in blankets for warmth, shaking the water out of our possessions, and the breath of our horses steaming in the chill air, no one seemed very eager for battle. Yet, when there was no longer any reason for delay, we began to arm and mount our horses. Majerle resolutely avoided my eye as we crossed the stream and began to climb the hill that led to the meadow and the cavern.
The grass had rebounded and no longer showed the track of the fire-drake, and there were no new tracks, so Queen Natalie’s huntsman pronounced his opinion that the worm was still in the cave. Majerle looked from beneath his visor at the entrance shadowed by the great overhanging ledge. “Dom Lorenso may have mortally wounded it,” he said. “I think it may be dead.”
No one replied. Majerle took a halberd and stepped onto the field.
He was not a jouster and was dressed as a demilance trooper, with a breastplate over a thick suede buff coat and a burgonet with a full visor. He already wore a cloak for warmth, and he drew the hood over his head and let his men drench him with water. This had not helped d’Abrez, but perhaps Majerle would be more lucky.
He could not ride his charger into the cave, so he left his horse in the lane and advanced on foot. His cloak swept a dark trail on the dew-brightened grass. He did not aim directly for the cave, but took a roundabout way so as to avoid alerting the dragon. When he neared the entrance, he crouched low and peered around the corner into the darkness. Whatever he saw must have encouraged him, for he crept forward and prepared to descend into the cavern.
The cave lit up bright as the sun, and when the bright blooms faded from my eyes, Majerle was gone, leaving behind only that dark trail in the grass. The worm had taken him.
Now we were eight.
We looked at each other in silence, and then I turned to Molyneux. “Sir, I repeat my offer of yesterday,” I said. “If you will defer to me in the succession, I will do my best to bring the worm to heel.”
Woolfardisworthy made a scornful sound. “For you to advance,” he said to me, “two knights will have to give way, and Molyneux may, but I will not. I will not let it be said that you have more courage than I.”
Sir Edelmir Westley tried to intervene. “It is not a question of courage, sir,” he said. “It is a question of killing this dragon. We have not laid a finger on this beast
, and two men have died. It is not cowardice to admit that our plan has failed, and that we should attempt something else.”
Woolfardisworthy folded his arms across his big chest and blew a contemptuous gust through his overhanging mustache. “I will not yield my place,” he said. There was a silence.
“Well then,” said Molyneux. “Cavaliers, rest you merry. I must hope that my shield will serve.”
Again we went through the business of draping and dousing one of our number, and Molyneux strapped on his shield and took a cut-down lance in his right hand, to use as a short stabbing spear. The shield was no small buckler, but a large wooden mantlet of the kind used in sieges, for handgunners to hide behind. Molyneux had covered it with rawhide to keep it from bursting into flame. I viewed the unwieldy portable wall and thought it might serve as good protection against anything but the unworldly fires of the worm.
We watched with sinking hearts as he lumbered over the grass carrying his wooden wall. He dropped it on the grass before the cave, I think to catch his breath, and then he picked up the great shield and advanced upon the cave. No fire jetted forth, and Molyneux stepped over the threshold and vanished into shadow.
We waited. There was no sound, no fire, no clash of weapons. For all we knew, Molyneux had vanished from the very earth.
We were seven.
I turned to Woolfardisworthy. “Well, sir,” said I, “your turn has come at last. I wish you joy in it.”
He looked up at the cave beneath its overhang. His face had gone pale, and his eyes seemed big as blue platters. “Molyneux may have yet to engage,” he said. “We should give him more time.”
“He may be in trouble,” I said. “You will have the honor of rescuing him.”
He blew breath out through his thick mustache. “Let us have dinner first. I fight better on a full belly.”
“Nay,” said I. “It is your turn. You insisted on taking your place, and you would not yield it to another. Now you must follow Majerle and Molyneux.” I pointed at the cave. “And after you have gone into the dark tomb that awaits you, I may do what should have been done first thing this morning, before two brave men died.”
“I say again,” Woolfardisworthy insisted, “that I fight better on a full belly!”
“I have had a belly full of you,” cried Dom Nemorino d’Ormyl. “By the Pilgrim’s nose, must I throw you into the cave myself?”
The wide blue eyes turned to me. “Do you truly know how to kill that monster?”
“I have an idea that may serve,” I said.
Woolfardisworthy threw his hands up into the air. “At Sir Quillifer’s insistence,” said he, “I will yield my place to him.”
I snarled at him. “The time to yield your place was an hour ago!”
Woolfardisworthy folded his arms across his armored breast. “I have decided,” he said. “You may have my place. It is at your own request.”
“Coward!” said Dom Nemorino. “Turd!”
Woolfardisworthy scowled at him. “These aspersions are immaterial. Once I have chosen, I am immovable!”
“I’ll move you!” The Lorettan knight punched him over the ear with an armored fist. Woolfardisworthy clapped a hand to his head and reeled. “Fight me or fight the worm,” said Dom Nemorino. “But I tell you I am more terrible!”
Perhaps I inadvertently saved Woolfardisworthy from being massacred, because I seized him by his gorget and the skirt of his cuirass and hurled him through the hornbeam hedge and onto the field, where he fell in a crash of steel. I threw his burgonet after him. “Draw your sword,” I said, “and get you to the cave!” Never have I been so inclined to commit murder.
Woolfardisworthy picked himself up. “These affronts are unbecoming, incivil, and refractory,” he said. “I have done nothing to provoke them but accede to Sir Quillifer’s request.”
“Oh I have had enough,” said Sir Edelmir, and reached to one of the holsters on his courser and drew out a horse pistol nearly as long as his arm. He cocked it and pointed it at Woolfardisworthy’s head. “Go to the cavern, sir, or die here in the field.”
* * *
“They were fools,” you say, with that narrow look in your eyes, and you are perfectly correct. I had nothing to do with these high-born, taut-strung cavaliers, and I had never wished to be in their company. It was of no consequence to me if any of them died, or if they killed each other. But when all is considered, it were better Woolfardisworthy died fighting the dragon than being cut down by his friends.
* * *
Woolfardisworthy stared at the barrel pointed between his eyes, and then he shrugged and blew air through his overhanging mustache. “Ay, if you insist,” he said. “I will retrieve the matter, and you may surrender all the glory to me.” He put on his helmet and dropped his visor over his face. He did not bother to clad himself in wet wool, but drew his sword and marched out onto the grass. From the center of the meadow he paused to survey the cave before him, then crouched and went off on a slant, like Majerle, as if to take the cave by surprise. Yet when he reached the hedge that bounded the meadow, he did not begin to move along it toward the cave, but climbed over the march dike and vanished, leaving behind only a few beech-boughs waving in the wind.
I stared after Woolfardisworthy for a few seconds, and then I could not help but burst into laughter.
“He has gone for his dinner!” I said.
Sir Edelmir laughed as well. “Well, the whey-guts fustian has fled! He may walk to Howel with my blessing!”
It seemed that we were now six. Woolfardisworthy’s servants were abashed at their master’s flight and seemed not to know what to do. “Bide here for a while,” I told them. “You may yet be of service.”
Sir Edelmir looked at me. “Well, Sir Quillifer, as Woolfardisworthy is perfugio, it seems the lottery has at last fallen on you.”
At last I would be allowed to do what I’d intended to do from the first. All it had cost was the lives of two men.
I turned to my followers. “Come, my brave engineers! You know your business!”
They busied themselves in my wagon. Two men brought out the carriage on their backs, and the strongest carried the leather-wrapped barrel. The cart’s driver and Rufino Knott followed, bowling the spoked wheels before them.
The wheels were fixed on the axles, and then the gun was dropped into the carriage, and the capsquares bolted over the trunnions. In swift order, the ammunition was laid out before the gun, and the sponge, worm, and rammer laid on the grass nearby. The cartridges were brought out in a wooden bucket to keep the damp from the powder. Two of my sailors stripped the canvas top from my wagon, and a pair of swivel guns were fixed on the corners, and the slow-matches lit.
For I had long ago decided that Coronel Lipton’s leather gun deserved a field trial against the dragon, fire against fire, and to that end had acquired a crew from the Loyall and Worshipfull Companie of Cannoneers, three apprentices under the command of the lank-haired journeyman called Peel.
While the cannon was being readied, I pulled my cloak about myself and consented to a drenching, and Phrenzy’s dress soaked also. He misliked this and snorted in anger. I stayed away from his rolling eyes and threatening hooves, planted my pollaxe in the ground, and returned to the gun.
Peel handed me the linstock, with two burning matches set in its tip. “Load first with a carcass, Goodman Peel,” I said.
A cartridge, a flannel bag filled with costly corned powder, was rammed down the short barrel, and then a wad. The carcass, sticky with tar, was rammed down next, and there was no need for a second wad, for the barrel was tilted upward and the munition would not roll out. Peel pushed the vent prick into the touchhole to pierce the cartridge, then lifted his powder horn and poured fine, corned powder into the hole.
I peered along the barrel. “A little to the left, Goodman Peel.” One of the crew used a handspike to crow the trail around.
Peel looked along the barrel himself and adjusted the elevation with the quoin. I do not
blush to admit that it was he who actually laid and commanded the gun, being a professional who had worked with Mountmirail and Lipton in the weapon’s development. I held the linstock and pretended, for the sake of my dignity, to be in charge.
The knights looked at me with great surprise. Yet there had been cannon for two hundred years or more, for all that no one had entered legend through the use of such a weapon against a great monster.
“Gentlemen,” I told them. “It may be that the gun may provoke the worm to attack us. In that case, we should retire behind the wagons, and let my shipmates here fly at the beast with their murderers. And if the drake continues to vex us, I think we should then attack it all together. The worm is so long each of us will have a fathom of serpent to ourselves, to hew as we may.”
I looked along the short barrel again. The range was about seventy-five yards, which was point-blank, even for a small fieldpiece, and we could scarcely miss. I reached out with the linstock. “Stand back, friends,” I said, and the gunners stepped away and clapped their hands over their ears.
Standing well to the side, I touched the priming powder with one of the burning matches on the linstock, and the gun went off with a clap and bounded back four or five feet. I was trying to spot the fall of shot, and I saw the carcass strike the underside of the overhanging ledge and rebound into the cave.
Gunpowder scent stung the air. Peel’s crew leaped to their work. The gun was rolled back to its position, the sponge was dunked in water and run down the barrel to douse any burning flannel or tar, and another cartridge rammed down, and then a wad. Peel looked at me, a silent question on his attentive face.
“Bide a moment, goodman,” said I. “But ready a roundshot.”
Quillifer the Knight Page 18
