In any ordinary situation, it would have been impossible for Gorp to catch up with the fleet-footed Blanchard, who for all his size and weight was one of the fastest horses Jim had seen in this world. But Brian, intoxicated by the prospect of the battle, would not override, or even crowd close to, the line of the Original Knights—although that line, as such lines generally did, was already beginning to resemble the forward dash of a mounted mob, rather than the disciplined, all-side-by-side cavalry charges that filmmakers in Jim's time had brought their audiences to expect.
Jim gained, accordingly; fast enough that he was no more than half a dozen horse-lengths behind Blanchard's powerful hindquarters, when the Knights ahead collided with the front line of Cumberland's horsemen. Jim, rising in his stirrups could see beyond them the ranks of foot-spearmen—halted, but still in order, untouched, roped together and holding their thick, twelve-foot spears—but unable to be useful to the few of Cumberland's men who were still on horseback where the middle had been—and Arthur was hewing right and left in the midst of these, yards beyond the mass of his Knights.
The next moment, Jim was clinging to the pommel of his saddle to keep from being thrown from it; as Gorp, in spite of his height and weight, was almost knocked off his feet by other horses. Cumberland's right-hand wing had cannoned into the melee from the side, into him and each other. And a second later, he had his shield held high over his head to ward off one of these riders, striking an overhand blow at him with what seemed to be a combination mace and ax.
—And Brian was still out of reach—in the din of battle, too far away to hear his voice.
But now both the right and left wings of Cumberland's horsemen had folded inward, mixing with the outer fringes of the Knights to form a solid barrier of men and horses between Jim and any straight route to Brian's side.
Jim looked around frantically for another route—just in time to see another of Cumberland's mailed horsemen, spear couched, charging at him. But as he turned to face the man and brought his shield around, the man's eyes widened and he pulled back on his reins so hard his horse's hind legs almost collapsed as it slid to a sudden stop.
"Ware!" shouted the man, lifting his spear and turning away. "Ware the Mage! Ware! Ware!"
Space widened around Jim, who suddenly realized that of course Cumberland—or even Morgan le Fay, for that matter—might, deliberately or in error, have described the arms painted on Jim's shield—a dragon, with a border of the magickian's red. Arms awarded by King Edward to Jim as a sort of reward for the fight at the Loathly Tower.
Now he could hear the warning being passed among all of the invaders; and no one came close to him. It was an eerie feeling, like being disembodied, to be ignored in the midst of this furious battle. Curiously, he found he was feeling left out.
He looked at the spearmen again. Some had gone down in some fashion; the rest were pulling themselves together into formation once more, cutting the ropes that bound them to those who now lay on the ground. In general, though, they were being all but ignored by the other combatants. How was it that they had taken such a hit and then been left alone?
But, Jim reminded himself, the why and how of that was unimportant. It was Brian he wanted to locate.
He stood up in his stirrups, hoping Gorp's height advantage over nearly all the other horses here would make it possible to get a better general view of the battle.
What he made out was that all the main effort seemed to be in the area where Arthur now rode—easily recognizable by his size and his white beard; and Jim, staring at him, could hardly believe what he saw.
He had taken it for granted that Arthur's days as a fighting man in any melee were long behind him. But what he saw proved no such thing. The King was still not only leading his Knights—but leading them by right of his personal battle skills.
Much of his younger muscle might be withered with age—though the effectiveness of his blows did not seem to bear out even that much—but the really amazing ability he was showing was a speed of reflex that would have been startling in someone highly trained and in his twenties. Jim could hardly believe anyone could do so well.
He watched as one of Cumberland's iron-clad horsemen began a sword-swing at the white beard. But by the time the heavy blade might have reached Arthur, the King's sword had struck back three times and the other was falling from his saddle. Jim remembered the QB being deeply moved as he had said "… When Arthur went to war, the earth fought for him, the sky fought for him. All fought for him. You cannot understand… you have not seen him as I have, his sword flashing like lightning in the melee…"
Well, Jim was seeing it now, and it was all true. Arthur's sword was flashing like lightning, and the white sky of Lyonesse, though it still had no cloud in it, seemed closer to the ground, in the westering sunlight. The earth—the animals whom the QB had said would be here—it felt like all things would fight for what they owned; if not for such a King.
And suddenly Jim understood. Of course, it made sense. His wolf-wise friend had been correct. All living things here in Lyonesse would join together to fight for a common resource; and that was the Old Magic. Only the Old Magic was common to all. It made possible this land, this place where legendary people and beasts of all sorts lived together.
—But there Jim saw Brian, just behind the King. Pellinore had been like a tower at Arthur's left side from the moment the two armies clashed together; and—surprisingly to Jim—Gawain had held as continuously on the King's right, the two of them keeping him arm free to attack all ahead of him.
Now Brian was clearly in sight, at the King's back, and warding that as Pellinore and Gawain guarded the two sides. Jim shouted to him. But his voice was lost in the roar of battle.
He spurred Gorp—something he had done only once before with the horse, having ordinarily no use for his spurs—toward the point where the Knights riding behind and with Arthur were thinnest—and some blind idiot from the forces of Cumberland chose that moment to come out of the melee and attack him.
It was a tall man, in his late thirties or early forties, with a clean-shaven face but with mad staring eyes and a small white froth on his lips, tinged with some darkness that might be blood—as if he had bitten them. There was nowhere for Jim to run. In any case, Brian had dinned into him "NEVER AVOID"—Brian's point being that anything less than meeting an opponent head-on put you at an angle of disadvantage; and if Brian did not know what the answers were, Jim certainly did not.
Jim turned Gorp's head accordingly, and the big horse, thoroughly excited by now and outraged by the spurs, could hardly wait to get at the enemy—whoever or whatever he might be, on two legs or four. The Cumberland knight had his spear couched. Jim had long since expended his on someone else, somewhere. He drew his broadsword, got his own shield up just in time, and they met.
There was a weird moment just before they collided, in which Jim seemed to glimpse a misty, winged shape around him. In the same instant he realized it was an attempt by his dragon self, triggered by the instinct of self-survival, to take charge of their shared body. Then it was gone as he and his attacker came together.
They hit shield to shield. There was the usual unbelievable shock. A horse's ten to twelve miles per hour might sound small to someone brought up in the world where Jim had been born and raised; but his own weight and that of his horse, meeting another two such bodies, traveling at much the same speed in opposition, made for an impact that blotted out the surrounding world for a moment.
Jim found himself riding blindly toward the thicker part of the melee, where Arthur was still mowing his way through their enemies. Still half-stunned, but with his own instinct for survival fully at work now, Jim pulled Gorp up and reined around, ready to face an attack about to be made on his back.
But his opponent was gone. Then Jim saw him, lying on the ground now, not moving, a thin, dark stream coming from the lower corner of his mouth. He must have been badly wounded internally before he had ever charged at Jim—poss
ibly somewhat out of his head—carried away with the idea of at least taking one other person else down to death with him. Jim felt a sudden strange sense of responsibility toward the man—as if somehow he could have saved the other's life if he had thought quicker and reacted less suddenly and instinctively.
He pushed the thought from him, for now, however, as he found himself facing the spearmen; and suddenly, for the first time, he saw that at last the animals had come to the battle.
Perhaps they had been there all along, close to or even among the spearmen—the little ones, anyway—biding their time. But now these same smaller ones were covering the ground in great leaps as they went toward the melee itself. Unconsciously, he had been looking for the larger animals, the adult bears, the stags, the mature boars who would be impossible to miss.
But at the moment, all that he could see were the smaller animals, like the squirrels, stoats, and weasels, swarming up to the throats of spearmen in the first and second ranks; and, as he watched, there was a scream that rose even above the general sound of the fighting behind Jim for a moment.
He looked and now saw an arm upheld—but an arm already beginning to swell above its wrist, showing under a torn sleeve. That arm had been poisoned; and there was only one mammal with a poisonous bite, and that was the short-tail shrew. The man would not die from his bite; but the quick swelling could have frightened him into thinking he was about to do so.
Jim had always believed the short-tail shrew was a native of North America, alone. He had not expected to find it here in what had once been part of the island that was England—but if there were lions, why not short-tail shrews?
This was Lyonesse, after all, where anything might be possible—and as this thought came to him, he saw a black-maned lion—possibly the one with the family who had been at the amphitheater. It moved among the other forest animals, calmly ignoring them and not being threatened or attacked by any of the men at a little distance behind him. Jim now made out a couple of large bears, smashing their way forward through the ranks of spearmen—effective in their way as Arthur was being in his, but by the use of massive strength rather than speed and skill.
There were now more animals than he thought could have been at the meeting in the forest; more than he had ever expected. The spearmen were being decimated; and now literal waves of small creatures were underfoot everywhere. As he watched, a stoat made a leap to the stirrup leathers of one of Cumberland's horsemen; and, more quickly than any human could react, another jump to his saddle, and a third to his face, beneath the visor.
They were too small to kill easily or surely, individually; but they were more than a distraction to men fighting with all their mind and body concentrated on a human opponent.
The larger animals, Jim saw, were hanging back at the fringes of the battle, where they took opportunities, when they arose, to attack individual intruders who were isolated. Here, the bears and the stags with full heads of horns threatened life—and took it.
Pellinore had been right. Such as these had never and probably would never win a battle by themselves—but they were potent allies.
With a jerk, Jim's thoughts went back to Brian. He whirled Gorp around and found that Arthur and those with him, including Brian, were not where he had seen them—it seemed only a few seconds before.
Then he located them—the knot of men that was Arthur, the men who guarded his back, and the men he relentlessly attacked, had continued to move farther into the thickest part of the mass of Cumberland's fighters.
Arthur was still working wonders with the swiftest sword work Jim expected to see anywhere in his lifetime; and the Originals—with Brian inexplicably allowed among them—were matching and overcoming any concerted effort by the enemy to concentrate on the King. Then—with a shock—Jim saw something else that set alarm bells ringing in that part of him that had been Carolinus's pupil these last few years.
Something like a wedge of white mist, but seeming much more solid than mist, was moving through the battle, creeping like mist over the ground and the bodies, and approaching—not Arthur, but Brian—following Brian as each new opponent drew him off to one side. No mist ever acted like that.
Everything Jim had ever learned cried Magic! out of that mist. It was unbelievable that Morgan le Fay could have come back so soon, unless she had some means of knowing for sure that Northgales was now elsewhere. If so, she was after Brian, rather than Arthur. Without quite knowing why he knew it, he was as sure of it as if Merlin himself had spoken once more inside him—the mist was the sorrowful death that Merlin had spoken of, approaching Brian now.
Jim stood up in his stirrups and shouted.
"Brian! I'm over here! Look at me!"
But Brian did not hear him.
He shifted to his dragon neck and vocal cords; and with that powerful voice, he shouted again.
"Brian! Look this way!"
Some of the others following Arthur heard and looked—but Brian, busy with a bulky man carrying an oversized shield and wielding a long-handled mace, did not.
"BRIAN!"
Desperate, Jim dived one hand into his purse for the last of his magic fruits, a grape, and threw it into his mouth, biting down on it.
"Let him hear me in his head!" he commanded. "Brian! Look at me, Jim! Look to your left, and back toward the spearmen!"
Brian's opponent took a blow on the helm from Brian's broadsword; and slid, rather than fell, from his saddle. Brian reined the stamping, sweating Blanchard around to look for Jim at last… and finally saw him.
Chapter Forty-Five
"Brian! The animals—get in among the animals as fast as you can!" shouted Jim; and to the universe at large he called "QB! I need you, right now! Kineteté, if you can hear me, send the QB to me right away! It's a matter of life or death!"
Brian sat Blanchard, staring.
"The ANIMALS," yelled Jim frantically. "Brian! Get in among them—away from that mist coming at you! GO TO THE ANIMALS!"
As if he had suddenly woken up, Brian jerked on his reins, pulling Blanchard around and heading for the spearmen. They scattered before him as he galloped toward them. Then, when he made no attempt to strike at any of them, they lost interest in him, concentrating on getting away from the animals but milling back and forth between those and the trees of the forest that they had undoubtedly been warned against.
I should have simply used that last grape to turn him into a dragon again, Jim told himself—and immediately provided his own answer to why he had not.
Brian would never have gone. He would never have left the battle without a lengthy explanation about why he should; and there was no time for so many words.
That much had been understood in the back of Jim's mind without needing conscious thought in the seconds available. But now Jim was seeing his guess had been right. The wedge of mist came to within feet of the animal-infested spearmen—and stopped. Now, Jim was able to see in it dim, skeletal figures of men dressed only in rags, some of them still stirring and therefore alive, but all hanging in chains.
But it would come no farther, Jim told himself, enjoying the luxury of time to think, now that Brian had moved. Humans and Naturals were vulnerable to magic. Animals, trees, earth, sky, wind, and water—all the physical, nonhuman or non-humanlike things—were not. It was one of the things he had learned about magic when trapped in the castle of the rogue magickian Malvinne; and there were enough animals gathered here, so that this patch of earth was blocked off to any magical force that could be sent in to capture Brian.
But why capture Brian, for merely a spiteful gesture? Jim, himself, or Arthur were the key players against her—but Jim was warded and Arthur was a king and therefore Destined—immune to magic or anyone connected with it.
Right now Brian was simply sitting his horse, letting Blanchard sweat himself down into something like calmness. Jim looked back at the mist wedge, now retreating—and in the process caught sight of the lion, which was now forging in Brian's direction. Blanc
hard also saw the big cat approaching and began to dance. With that, Brian also turned in his saddle, saw the beast, and faced about, sword still in hand, all alert again.
"Hell's bells!" exploded Jim. None of the other animals were paying attention to Brian at all—perhaps the trees had identified those from the Lyonesse force as being friends rather than potential invaders. But the lion seemed to be an exception… if not one thing, it was another. Jim pushed Gorp through the mixture of animals and spearmen—who paid no more attention to him than they had to Brian.
At least if he could get to Brian's side in time, the lion would have two of them to deal with—and maybe if he, himself, turned into a dragon before its face, he could scare it off.
Happily, Gorp had not cooled off enough from his excitement that he seemed wary of going toward the approaching lion. But in any case, Gorp's reaction was beside the point, by the time they reached Brian and the panting Blanchard—held on a tight rein by Brian, for the destrier strongly distrusted the approach of the big cat. But the lion was acting very strangely.
Like all the large members of the cat family, lions could not purr. But this one, on reaching Brian, began rubbing his whiskers against Brian's left leg and going through various other feline behaviors expressive of friendship, if not downright affection.
"Stop!" cried a voice—and Jim reined Gorp back just in time; for the Questing Beast was barring his way.
"Move, QB!" shouted Jim. "I've got to help Brian!"
"Do not. I say, do not, Sir James!" said the QB. "Particularly at this headlong pace. We will approach slowly, together, in a moment. If you go alone now, and swiftly, the lion may take your coming for an attack. Sir Brian is in no danger!"
The Dragon in Lyonesse Page 48
