“Believe me, I have often been in places with a high population of creatures that weren’t human.
They’re either evil, or they’re not. If they’re not, they either dislike or avoid humans, or like them. It’s just a matter of watching for signs and being ready to act on what you learn.” He mounted his horse and touched it with his heels. It moved off, Andromeda’s mule following. “Really, this is just another aspect of learning to fight. You have to be prepared for every move that your adversary could make, and have a counter ready in advance for it. A fight is not like—like a dance. A dance follows a pattern. A fight creates a pattern that you can see only after it is over. In a fight, or in planning strategy in advance, it doesn’t help to get agitated. You have to be calm enough to anticipate most moves, and you have to be trained enough to be able to make counters without having to think about them first.”
That just made her dizzy to think about, and certainly didn’t match what she had always thought warriors did. They just hit things, and tried not to get hit. Oh, there was training involved, of course, but it had all seemed quite random to her.
Then again, she had never actually watched train-
One Good Knight
211
ing in progress. All of that was kept quite out of the way of a Princess, even one known to escape from her confinement from time to time.
Actually—she’d never seen a real fight until she saw the Champion fighting the dragon.
“How long does it take to learn to become a warrior?” she asked, thinking now how naive her own ideas about escaping from the dragon had been.
George laughed. “How long does it take to become a dancer?” he asked. “Or a musician? It takes as long as it takes. Some people are naturally suited to it and are competent in a matter of months.
Others are not, and it can take them years.
Champions tend to be in the first category, and in, say, the highest ten percent of that category. We are very good, naturally. Then we train intensively.
Kings and Princes and Warlords have offered untold wealth for our services but—” He shrugged. “What would be the point of being a Champion if our services were for sale? There are plenty of mercenaries for that, many of them good.”
Unspoken, the words not as good as we are, finished that sentence. And yet it didn’t feel boastful. If felt more like a simple statement of fact.
Well, she had no way to judge, really. Except by reputation, which was that Champions were who you turned to when all was lost. Champions were the rescuers of the hopeless, the protectors of the innocent and, above all, the warriors no amount of money could buy.
212
Mercedes Lackey
She wondered what The Tradition would do to one that did sell his services to the highest bidder.
Probably something nasty.
“Do you factor The Tradition into your strategy?”
she finally asked, tiring of looking at his back.
“It’s one of the first things we learn to allow for or use,” he replied without looking back. “There is a Fairy Godmother associated with our Chapter-House who is always happy to advise us on these matters. A good thing, too. Working with The Tradition behind you is a powerful factor for success and trying to work against it is going to be an uphill battle.”
“And what if both you and your foe have The Tradition working for you?” she asked.
Now he turned and looked at her. “That,” he said slowly, “is one of my worst nightmares.”
Dinner tonight had the addition of some fresh meat, courtesy of George’s bow. He had scouted ahead and discovered there was no good camping spot that they could reach by sunset, so they had stopped earlier than usual, and he had gone out hunting. In her turn, she had done her best to make their camp a little more comfortable than usual; she had gathered thick beds of bracken, had found a few things like watercress to add to their food, and had added stones to the fire that they could put at their feet later as a source of all-night heat.
There was a curious dreamlike sense to this journey. Yes, they had begun it in fear and some pain.
One Good Knight
213
Yes, eventually they would find the dragon, and then the real difficulties would start. But for right now, they rode through a mountainous landscape of stony peaks and heavily wooded valleys, one of which was full of life but seemed curiously uninhabited.
“Curiously” because it was unusual in Acadia for neighbors to be unable to see the next farm or shepherds’ cot over. The landscape itself did not vary a great deal. They followed the road, a mere trace, over rocky mountainsides, down into the cool of the wooded valleys and back out on the other side. If it were not that some distinctive landmarks arose, were passed and receded into the distance, Andie would have had the uneasy feeling that they were on a circular, never-ending path, doomed to wander the Wyrding Lands until they died and became sad, restless ghosts.
Or perhaps they were already dead and on that journey.
But reassuringly odd things—boulders, ancient trees—came and passed with enough variation to make her feel certain that they were not caught in a dreamscape.
There was a stream nearby, and she decided it was more than time for a bath. And to wash all the spare clothing she had. She’d have washed George’s, too, except that he never got out of that armor.
She wondered what he looked like in ordinary clothing. She knew what he looked like in it, but with the helm off—beardless, androgynous, chiseled 214
Mercedes Lackey
and altogether like some idealized statue of the Young Warrior.
As they settled down for the evening and shared out the rabbit he had killed, he waited until her mouth was full before saying in a quiet voice, “I believe I have seen our benefactor.”
She paused, mouth open, rabbit leg poised just under her chin. She recovered quickly.
“Who?” she asked.
“More like a ‘what’—it is a small, furred animal. I saw it running off with the dragon scale. My guess is that it is a fox.”
A fox! Foxes often played roles in Traditional paths.
She nodded. “The question would be, who is using it, or is it doing this on its own?” she whispered back.
“I don’t know, but since I started watching for it, I have seen signs of it several times. The end of a tail, eyes in the bushes, a pair of ears—when you know to watch for it, you can catch it without a lot of difficulty.”
Well, maybe he could. Spotting hidden foxes in the undergrowth was not the sort of thing a scholarly Princess had ever trained for.
“It is definitely watching us,” George continued,
“but I do not think it is overlooking us at the moment. It knows that once we camp for the night we aren’t going to do anything interesting, so I expect it goes hunting then.”
She nodded. “I suppose we should pretend we don’t see it—”
One Good Knight
215
“Exactly so. Because at some point we might want to try to catch it.”
And that would hopefully signal the end of the Quest.
She woke with a start. They were not alone in the camp.
Somehow the interloper had managed to get close enough to stand between them, staring down at them. It was hard to read his expression—
It was always hard to read the expressions of non-humans. But his body language, so far as she could tell, showed a combination of tension and exhilaration.
And if she was going to put a name to the expression in his eyes, it would be “rapture.”
“Oh!” he said with delight. “Oh! Two of you! I can’t choose!”
And the male Unicorn continued to stare at them both as if he had found his own personal paradise.
Her mind was always slow to wake up in the morning, and having a male Unicorn standing beside her wasn’t making things any easier. Part of her just wanted to stare back at him with the same rapturous delight that he was showing
. Because—well, because he was a Unicorn, of course! Magical, unbelievably magical, Unicorns practically breathed magic. He was to a horse what a horse was to a pig. Four tiny cloven hooves shone like burnished silver, slender legs as graceful as an antelope’s led to a slender body, a delicate neck with an arch like the stem of a lily-blossom 216
Mercedes Lackey
and a head like the blossom itself, crowned with that glorious pearly horn. And the eyes—big golden-brown eyes you could fall into and never come out of—
It’s a male Unicorn, Andie. Her brain prompted her with that information. Male Unicorns are attracted to female virgins, female Unicorns are attracted to male virgins. And what did he just say? “Two of you, I can’t choose—”
Two of you…
She sat bolt upright. George was glaring at the Unicorn as if the Champion was seriously contemplating doing something un-Champion-like like drawing sword and lopping his head off.
“You’re a girl!” Andie blurted.
George growled and pulled off her helmet. Yes, George was definitely a girl. Despite short hair and a firm jawline that a lot of young men would really have liked to own, now that she knew the truth, there was no doubt. The Champion was a young woman.
“I guess you don’t have to worry about me falling in love with you now,” Andie said faintly.
George—and now what was she going to call her companion?—transferred the glare she had been giving the Unicorn to Andie.
“I could have done without that particular remark.”
She glared at the Unicorn again. “You. Go. Now.”
The Unicorn stared at her for a moment, then drooped all over with dejection. His head went down, his ears went flat, his whole body sagged and some of the light went out of his eyes. His lower lip quivered.
One Good Knight
217
“You don’t like me?” he said forlornly.
“Only in stew,” George growled, and reached for her dagger.
The Unicorn gave a squeak of alarm and leapt up in the air, somehow turning in midair and coming down on all four hooves, but facing the opposite direction. He tore out as if George had set his tail on fire. Andie stared wistfully after him.
“That wasn’t very nice,” she ventured.
George gave an exasperated sigh. “The wretched thing could destroy in a heartbeat everything that allows me to be here. The spell that has been keeping Champions out of your land is very specific that no man intending to slay the dragon can pass the borders. Fairy Godmother Elena unraveled that, and that’s why I’m here. But if whoever set the spell finds out that’s how the Chapter got a Champion across the spell-barrier, the Magician can correct it and I’ll be forced out.”
Andie kept looking wistfully at the spot in the woods where the Unicorn had vanished, and George made an exasperated sound. “I don’t want to interrupt your reverie or anything, but we need to pack up our things and get out of here.”
She suited her actions to her words, and after a moment of hesitation, Andie followed suit. The Champion was right.
“Look, I know he was pretty,” the Champion continued, “but the blessed things are the worst nuisances in the world! They follow you around like 218
Mercedes Lackey
lost puppies, keep wanting to put their heads in your lap, moon over you, sigh at you and just generally get in the way. You know, the whole Traditional force for ‘if it’s pretty, it must be stupid,’ was never better exemplified than in a Unicorn. I can’t think of anything more useless than a Unicorn, unless it’s two Unicorns. And I won’t get into how their mere presence tells the entire world that you’re a virgin, which under some circumstances is something you might not want someone to know.”
“I—suppose,” she said reluctantly, and turned back to the Champion. “So if your name isn’t George, which obviously it isn’t—what is it, then?”
“You’d better remember to call me George in public,” the young woman warned. “Absolutely you had better. Unless you want the dragon to continue to have free rein here.”
Andie shrugged. “I’m not stupid,” she pointed out, nettled. “I can remember. But your name obviously isn’t George and I’m not going to call you that, all right? What is it? Georgette?”
The Champion winced. “Georgina,” she said, and added hastily and crossly, “Call me Gina if you want.
Just remember to—”
“Call you George in public, yes, I perfectly well understand that,” Andie replied just as crossly. “Try to look on the bright side, will you? At least now you won’t have to sleep in that armor.”
But Gina barked a laugh. “Firstly, if the dragon decides to come after us in the middle of the night, One Good Knight
219
it would be a good idea if I didn’t have to scramble after the scattered bits and hope I can dodge him long enough to get it on. And secondly, I wasn’t lying, it is more comfortable to sleep in this than it is to make up a bed in a pile of leaves.” But she paused, and added reluctantly, “I will admit to you that I’ll like to be able to get a bath and a change of clothing without hiding from you.”
Andie shrugged. “If it’s that comfortable, then by all means—”
“It is. I’m not the first Champion that’s had to hide his or her identity by any stretch of the imagination,” Gina replied, and looked around nervously.
“And hopefully our little spy doesn’t know enough about the differences between men and women to tell that I’m not a man.”
“If it’s a fox, I shouldn’t think so,” Andie said reluctantly. “A thing used to living in the wild isn’t going to get enough close views of people to be able to do that. The biggest difference so far as it can tell is that you’re in armor and have weapons and I don’t. For all I know, it might not even recognize that I am female.”
“I hope you’re right.”
The two of them made short work of the camp, and were back on the trail again in no more time than they usually took, Andie half on fire to ask questions, but at the same time afraid of being rebuffed. Gina was no more talkative than “George” had been on the long ride. But the questions were nearly eating her alive by the time they stopped for the night.
220
Mercedes Lackey
Once again, they set up camp early, but this time for a very different reason. “I want a scrub,” Gina announced, in a tone that suggested that “want”
was, perhaps, not nearly strong enough a term. “We might just as well take turns, if you think you can set a reasonable guard.”
“I can at least warn you if something is coming,”
Andie said, irritated at feeling so helpless. Odd that when it had been “George” who was on guard, it had not seemed to matter that Andie was about as helpless as a child when it came to defending herself, but now that it was “Gina,” she was chagrined and annoyed that all she knew about fighting and weaponry was “the pointy end goes in the enemy.”
Gina regarded her thoughtfully. “You can’t be everything, you know,” she said abruptly. “No one can.” And with that, she turned her attention to unpacking and setting up the campsite. “Let me scout out a place to bathe. I want you to get hobbles for the beasts and bring them along when I find a good spot.”
“Why?” she asked curiously.
“Well, for one thing, I don’t want them left alone at the camp,” Gina replied. “And for another, their senses are better than yours, and if something approaches, they’ll know before you do.” She ran her hand through her hair and scowled. “And stay alert. If ever there was a Traditional disaster waiting to happen, it’s this setup.”
“What?” Andie heaved the packsaddle off the mule and stared at Gina.
One Good Knight
221
Gina rolled her eyes. “Please, don’t tell me you’re that naive. Lady Warrior taking bath in open pond
‘guarded’ by a slip of a girl? That’s the fodder for at least a hundred lecherous—” She stopped and stare
d at Andie’s perplexed expression. “Good gods. You are that naive. Maybe I ought to call back that Unicorn.”
“No need to call me back, maiden!” said a swoon-ingly eager voice from behind both of them that made them jump. “I am already here, and so is my brother, my uncle and my second cousin twice removed.”
Four stunningly beautiful Unicorns stepped out of the underbrush. Andie stared at them, entranced.
If one had been gorgeous, four were overwhelming, the more so as they stepped daintily toward her and surrounded her. Unconsciously, she clasped her hands together and began to breathe heavily, Gina completely forgotten.
That is, however, until one of them glanced to the side and said, “Cousin? Why is the Warrior Maiden beating her forehead upon the tree?”
CHAPTER NINE
A bargain had been struck with the Unicorns. They could come along so long as they stayed out of sight on the trail and played guard at night or when Gina and Andie were taking baths. In return they were allowed to accompany them on the journey and to come into camp at night for petting and grooming and virgin-adoration.
“I’m not going to ask you to help us with the dragon,” Gina said. “And once we are out of your herd’s territory, you don’t have to come with us any farther.”
The first of them, predictably called “Florien,”
bobbed his horn. “Thank you, Warrior,” he said. “It will be grief to leave you, but we are not much use against a dragon. Rapacious men, yes—dragons, no.”
It was a good campsite. A cliff at their back had a series of ledges going down it that were rather like One Good Knight
223
terraces. At the bottom was a stream that supplied a large pond that watered the valley immediately below the ledge they were camping on. With four Unicorns standing watch, even Gina let her guard down, though she didn’t do so enough to let Andie have a bath at the same time.
As they switched places, Gina in a clean gambe-son, vigorously toweling her hair dry, Andie asked Florien, “Why did you follow us? And why bring your friends?”
One Good Knight Page 17
