He turned his eyes on the QB as he said this, and kept looking. Jim, Brian, and Hob turned to stare. Where the QB had been, a tall, short-haired, black-and-white hound was now standing.
" '… It's only me,' the Lord QB's saying, my Lord," spoke up Hob—and he continued to translate as the QB went on in a low growl, mixed with whimpers. " 'This is the other of the two gifts of which I told you earlier that Merlin gave me. It has been sometimes useful for me when I was with not only King Pellinore, but his pack of hounds as well—to not look like prey when we were on the hunt for roebuck or fallow deer. If you have a length of leather thong on your baggage horse, I suggest you tie a length around my neck, and one of you hold the far end.' "
Jim turned toward the sumpter horse; Brian, however, had already seen his move and beaten him to it. He was already there and loosening the cover. It was probably just as well, Jim thought. Brian always knew where anything was among their baggage, and how to get it out without disturbing the other things there. He could also pack a horse in about a fifth of the time it took Jim to do it; and was inclined to get a bit testy at Jim's slow clumsiness.
The horses had all gone to nibbling on the grass, as they did any moment they were not being ridden or led. They would be a hundred pounds overweight apiece by the time they were brought back to Malencontri. Only for a moment had they paused to pay brief attention to the transformation of the QB. He now smelled like a dog to them, instead of smelling most noticeably of leopard and lion tail—the snakelike forward part of his normal form had little smell worth sniffing at more than once.
So they paid little attention to the change. Hounds were unimportant, unless they got underfoot.
"There!" said Brian, finishing the tying of some five feet of leather thong about the neck of the lurcher—as hounds of the QB's present shape and color were called. He passed the loose end to Jim, without a word, as if he was automatically in charge of anyone on a leash, turned away, and started to remount.
"I would think it better that we walk and lead the horses, as if we were taking them to some place to be tied up," said Dafydd. "Let us walk most easily; and if we are spoken to by anyone who speaks the language of my land, let me answer. I will explain you neither speak our tongue nor understand them."
They started off again, strolling rather than walking, and seeming to chat among themselves as the strangers about them were doing. The led horses and the hound on its leash lent some credence to them as people at home in this gathering—whose numbers were surprising to Jim—as their party mixed with the general crowd. They kept their voices low, and this, too, helped with their cover; for most of the other men walking around in clumps of two to half a dozen were doing the same thing, to keep some privacy to themselves while taking advantage of the open air.
The fall weather of the land above—from which these men had probably come, most of them, Jim thought—could have turned cold or rainy since he and his companions had left it. There would be more privacy, of course, in one of the tents ahead of them, at the far edge of the encampment—but a tent could be uncomfortably hot under the sun.
There was something of a sameness about all of those they passed, it seemed to Jim; though it was difficult to put his finger on exactly what that was. They were a raffish bunch, even the besworded ones, who should technically be knights. It was as if they were all adventurers or outlaws from America's Wild West days, in spite of their present good behavior. The only noisy ones were obviously drunk; and those were paying no attention to anyone but their immediate companions.
"I fear me," said Dafydd, in a voice even lower than he had been using up until now. "I had guessed these were mainly of our Drowned Land people and talking in the language of our country. But these people speak as all do in the land above."
Brian nodded, almost imperceptibly. They were deep into the crowd, now; and the tents were more visible. Behind them, it now appeared, there was a long picket line of horses, tethered and free of reins or saddle.
Beyond those, the slopes of the hills, topped by trees, that surrounded this open space on all sides.
"Hah!" said Brian triumphantly, but in almost a whisper. "The clean tents on the end will belong to those of importance—none less than knights of renown; and more like to be nobles of rank. If we can find an empty one and look around inside it, it will tell us much of who has it. Even a knight of small worth will carry his tablecloth and tableware—both of which should have his coat of arms on them—to say nothing of other stuff marked as his."
"If they are from across the narrow water to France and beyond, will you know them by the arms you see, Sir Brian?" said Daffyd.
French—some," said Brian; "but in any case, foreign arms will look foreign; and as I say, we may be able to tell more from other possessions there. We would have to see within a tent to know."
"And that is another question," said Dafydd. "How are we to part the flaps of a tent and look within without showing ourselves to anyone who chances to be there? We can not tell even if the tent is empty without going in to look." The hound on the leash in Jim's hand whimpered again. Jim looked down at him puzzled. The hound whimpered more emphatically, lifted his piebald head and sniffed energetically at the air, looked at Jim and whimpered yet once more. He looked toward the sumpter horse.
"What's he saying, Hob?" Jim asked.
"I don't know this time, my Lord," answered Hob's troubled voice from his place under the cover on the sumpter horse.
"What is it, QB?" Jim asked him in a voice calculated to reach only as far as the hound's ears. "Can't you talk so that Hob can understand you?"
The hound shook his head.
"Why not?" Impatiently, the hound lifted his right front paw and scratched at the underside of his throat.
"Because your throat's different? Your vocal cords… never mind," said Jim. "But it beats me how a wolf like Aargh can talk, and you can talk with a snake's head when you're yourself, and—"
QB growled briefly, shook his head violently, and made sniffing gestures at the air.
"He's angry because you don't understand, m'Lord," said Hob.
"Can you hear him talking?" asked Jim.
"No, m'Lord. I don't think he's talking. But I can feel he's angry you don't understand. He's trying to tell you something."
"He thinks we ought to sniff?"
Daffyd and Brian, intrigued, had drawn closer, so that—clustered together—they effectually hid the dog in their middle from the sight of those around. The hound growled once more and shook his head vigorously.
"He thinks he ought to sniff!" Hob said.
The hound nodded vigorously and gave a low-voiced bark of approval; as if to say Good two-legs! Jim resisted whatever impulse he might have had to wag his tail and lick the hound's nose.
"What were you thinking of sniffing at, QB?" he asked.
The hound pointed with his nose at the closed entrance to the nearest tent.
"Of course!" Dafydd, Brian, and Jim said, more or less at once. They broke up their tight grouping and began to stroll idly toward the nearest tent, Jim holding the leash and walking on the side closest to the tent row.
The hound pulled a little ahead, paused briefly to sniff at the closed flaps of the tent's entrance, then kept on going. They went on with him. In this manner they passed half a dozen tents, one of them so noisy with voices inside that they would have known to pass it up anyway. Some kind of drinking and dicing party seemed to be going on.
As they moved down the line, the angle at which the tents had been pitched slanted closer to the horse lines and the trees behind them. Also, the tents themselves were smaller and dingier. They came finally to one at which the hound first sniffed, then stuck his head in through the closed flaps.
"I had best take the horses around back out of sight," said Brian. "I can do it quietly."
It was true. Blanchard was likely to kick up a fuss on general principles if anyone but Brian tried to lead him about. Gorp and Dafydd's horse were easygoing
and did not care. The sumpter horse was indifferent.
"You know," said Jim, once Brian had taken care of this small duty, "with all these tents occupied even in the daytime like this—nearly all these men we see moving around outside must sleep outside, too, with no shelter."
"Of course," said Brian.
He might have said more; but the hound had now pushed his way, all but his cheerfully wagging tail, into the tent.
As casually as possible, they followed him.
"Whew!" said Jim, as he came in; and indeed, the tent stank. Smell was too kind a word for it. The reek was that of mingled spilled and rotting food, wine gone sour, and dirty clothing.
"Hah! As I looked for in such a coil as this!" said Brian, diving past Jim to snatch up a shield leaning against a pair of saddles. "Your old enemy and mine, James. Sir Hugh du Bois de Malencontri!"
And indeed, Jim saw, it was the arm amputated just below the shoulder, slightly bent at the elbow and dripping three drops of black blood, against a gold background—in heraldry it would be called something like A shield or, a naked arm embowed. It was about as attractive a coat of arms as Sir Hugh had been a knight. He had owned Malencontri before he was driven out after an attempt to conquer Malvern Castle and marry Geronde, by force.
"He's alive still, after all then," said Jim.
"So it seems," replied Brian, his blue eyes gleaming. "God send he come my way."
Jim knew that Brian would like nothing better than to face Sir Hugh with any weapon at all, after what the man had done to Geronde, shortly after Jim and Angie had first come to this alternate world. But it had been Jim who had actually fought Hugh later, after the Malvinne episode—fought with great-swords and won. But Hugh had disappeared in the aftermath of the fight, when the King and Queen of the Dead had taken Malvinne, the renegade AAA magician.
Jim had thought then they had taken Hugh also.
Clearly not. It was a chilling thought that the man was still alive, active—and here. For one thing, he would recognize Jim and Brian on sight. If he had been among the men they had passed on the way to this tent… Jim shook the thought from him. Brian was still rummaging among the litter in one corner, and the hound was nosing at what looked like a pile of dirty clothes in another.
Brian looked up finally from his last investigation and dusted his hands.
"Since he is here, he may return at any moment—and he knows us," Brian said. "He may walk in here at any moment and there is no escape for us—"
"I am attending to that now, look you," said Dafydd; and indeed he was standing at the closed flaps of the tent entrance, with a few inches of it parted by the thumb and forefinger of each hand, peering through it. "I will warn if he comes."
"Well done!" said Brian. "And I will give us a way out."
He drew his dagger and slid the edge of its blade in a line from above his head almost to the bottom seam of the cloth wall of the tent's back, that faced the horse lines. Blanchard, smelling him on the other side of the slit, stuck his head forward against the tent back, as if to nuzzle his master. Brian pushed him back.
"QB," said Jim, "don't you think you might be better off, if trouble comes, if you change back to your ordinary shape?"
The hound shook its head. It whined.
"M'Lord," said Hob, seeing Jim frowning in puzzlement, "I think he means as a hound he might be overlooked."
"There's that," said Jim, nodding. "In his own shape he'd be inviting attack—"
"Ah, now!" said Dafydd from the entrance of the tent. "Here comes this Sir Hugh de Bois; and some seven of his friends with him, loose-drunk, but not to the point where they are less dangerous than they would be sober. We must get away."
There was a brief, tearing noise behind Jim, even as Dafydd spoke; and Jim turned to find Brian holding the slit open.
"This way," he said.
The hound slipped out. Jim, following, found he had to turn sideways and bend almost double to get through the gap in the cloth; and saw Dafydd, coming after him, do the same. Brian, who had been holding the cut edges open, came last, then pulled the sides of the slit back together as much as they would go. The cloth fell back into almost its original shape, with no more than a slight gap in the middle where their bodies had pushed through.
"With luck," said Brian, "it should take them a few minutes to see the cut; and even then it may seem as if someone tried to enter so to find what he could steal, but was frightened off by the sound of their coming. We have some moments. Sir Hugh and one from the Drowned Land who would know Dafydd are two too much for our safety here. Let us ride!"
"No," said Dafydd. "Walk—toward the far end of the horse lines we can see down there. Lead the horses as if that was our goal. The hound can follow on its own."
But the hound was no longer in sight. Jim stared around unbelievingly. He had never thought of the QB as someone to desert companions who were in danger.
But Brian had taken Dafydd's advice and was leading Blanchard, Dafydd doing the same with his horse and Gorp. The sumpter horse, still chewing on her last mouthful of grass, followed where the lead line took her.
"Ho!" called a strong male voice from the horse lines, "Anton, Alan, Guiscard—come look at this white destrier! A horse worth a hundred pounds if he's worth a penny!"
"Keep walking," said Dafydd. "Anything else will attract attention to us."
Brian and Jim did so, but Brian spoke.
"If it comes to a pinch, we must mount and ride. Blanchard can most likely outrun any horse here; so I may get away and you two be taken. If so, know I'll be back for you."
"Better for the Drowned Land you make your escape and live to tell the King and others what is here!" said Dafydd in a low voice.
"My companions are my companions," said Brian in an equally low, but hard, voice. "After my duty to them, I will have time to think of other kingdoms. Your land, Dafydd, is not mine!"
Dafydd said no more, only continued leading his horse; but Jim felt the sudden coldness between his two friends as if it was a brick fence between them. His mind scrambled for some way of removing it. Maybe it would just evaporate of its own accord, with time… here, Dafydd was a Prince. Little by little the habit of giving orders was taking him over—and Brian was the last in the world to take orders easily.
They were no more than halfway to the end of the horse lines.
But now, not three but five men from among the steeds were running toward them. They wore the patched and ragged clothing of those who were servants to men little better off than themselves; and the tall man in the lead, leaving the others behind with his long legs, was closing swiftly on Brian, who, with Blanchard held close behind him, was ahead of the others.
"Who rides a steed like that?" he asked Brian, walking backward now in front of him, a lean man in an archer's coat of boiled leather, too small for him, and with black hair above a face much pitted from smallpox.
"Out of my way, fellow!" said Brian. "Stand aside."
"Oh!" cried the man, whipping off a stained green cloth hat, not unlike a beret, and holding it wide from his body in an exaggerated, sweeping gesture. "I beg the grace of your forgiveness, noble Knight! Pray grant me the mercy of putting aside my great pertness toward you, my Lord! I did not know you were Royalty itself. My eagerness to touch the hem of your garment overcame me. May I grovel in the dust before your Lordship?"
Brian, his face expressionless, walked directly on toward the man, as if he was not there. At the last moment the individual from the horse lines leaped back.
"You touch me at your peril!" he shouted. "We are on duty here on the horse lines; and no man is to order us without authority!"
There was a long, narrow knife in his hand, now; and his fellows from the horse lines had caught up with him, several producing knives of their own. One man had a heavy cudgel, cut from a young oak, with the curve and swelling of the tree's root forming an ugly knob at its far end.
Brian came on, the tall man retreated again; but now the res
t were forming a ring around the little party; and now there were shouts from the line of tents, behind them.
"Where?" cried one drunken voice behind them. "Where's a horse worth a hundred pounds?"
"You going to buy it, Dahmer, with what you've got left from last night's dice-playing?" called someone else; and there was a burst of laughter, growing as those laughing came closer.
"That, and ten more like it, after this eve's play," said the first voice. "Wherezit, I say?"
"Right ahead," said someone else. "Too many people around to see it clear—you knaves stand aside so knights can see! No horse is worth a hundred pounds!"
"That one is," said an approaching voice that made Jim's heart sink in his chest. "I know it and the man who owns it. He owes it me for past debts. Come, help me collect!"
From behind now rose the pounding sound of running feet, and Jim tugged at his sword; but he was barely able to get it out before it seemed that they were closely hemmed in by bodies. Blows rained in from all directions. There was no room to use his sword. He could feel himself being struck from all angles, and the sun seemed to spin around him. The knobby end of the cudgel he had seen flashed at his head. He felt himself going down.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jim came awake in utter darkness, to an aching head followed by awareness of other pains, in succession like the waves of an incoming tide. His shoulders ached and his arms had no feeling in them. He discovered it was because his wrists were tied behind him—he had been lying on his back with them underneath his body,
Rolling over on his stomach, he flexed his fingers—or tried to—but like his arms, they were too numb for him to tell if he was actually moving them. He kept at it, though, and gradually feeling came back. Feeling—and a heavy, deadening ache.
The ache gave way to more specific pains—the bindings around his wrists were cruelly tight; and—following with a rush—came messages from a host of other places on his body that had been bruised, or cut.
He was in darkness. A darkness that, by its smell, was just such another tent as they had explored to find the shield with the arms of Sir Hugh de Bois… with whatever further extension of his name he had presently, since Malencontri was no longer his. But where a certain amount of sunlight had made its way through the cloth walls of the earlier tent, to let them see what they were doing, there was no such light here. It must now be nighttime.
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