The Incorporated Knight
Incorporated Knight 01
(1987) *
L. Sprague de Camp & Catherine Crook de Camp
Contents
I – Two Yards of Dragon
II – The Smiling Sorcerer
III – The Count's Coronet
IV – The Sensuous Spider
V – The Virgins And The Unicorn
VI – The Sporting Sovran
VII – Svor The Stroller
VIII – Th e Pastoral Palace
IX – The Princess and the Promontory
X – A Contested Consummation
XI – A Jester's Jugglery
XII – The Crypt of a King
XIII – Heroes in Hiding
XIV – The Orthodox Ogre
XV – Stultified Seduction
XVI – The Gilded Guardhouse
XVII – A Surplus of Spouses
XVIII – Flowers in Fall
Book information
I – Two Yards of Dragon
Eudoric Dambertson, esquire, rode home from his courting of Lusina, daughter of the enchanter Baldonius, with a face as long as an olifant's nose. Eudoric's sire, Sir Dambert, said:
"Well, how fared thy suit, boy? Ill, eh?"
"I—" began Eudoric as his stocky, muscular body slumped into a chair in his father's castle hall.
"I told thee 'twas an asinine notion, eh? Was I not right? When Baron Emmerhard hath more daughters than he can count, any one of whom would fetch a pretty parcel of land with her. Well, why answerest not?"
"I—" said Eudoric, his serious face gathering into a frown beneath his dark hair.
"Come on, lad, speak up!"
"How can he, when ye talk all the time?" said Eudoric's mother, the Lady Aniset.
"Oh," said Sir Dambert. "Thy pardon, son. Moreover and furthermore, as I've told thee, an thou were Emmerhard's son-in-law, he'd use his influence to get thee thy spurs. Here thou art, a strapping youth of three-and-twenty, not yet knighted. 'Tis a disgrace to our lineage."
"There are no wars toward, to afford opportunity for deeds of knightly dought," said Eudoric.
"Aye, 'tis true. Certes, we must all hail the blessings of peace, which the wise governance of our sovran Emperor hath given us for lo these thirteen years. Howsomever, to perform a knightly deed, our youthful gallants must needs wayky banditti, disperse rioters, and do such-like fribbling feats."
As Sir Dambert paused, Eudoric interjected: "Sir, that problem now appears on its way to solution."
"How meanest thou?"
"If you'll but hear me, Father! Doctor Baldonius has set me a task, ere he'll bestow Lusina upon me, which should fit me for knighthood in any jurisdiction." Eudoric's old tutor Baldonius, a wizardry scholar who eked out his pension by occasional theurgies, lived in semi-retirement in a house in the forest.
"And that is?" said Sir Dambert.
"He's fain to possess two square yards of dragon hide. Says he needs 'em for his magical mummeries."
"But there have been no dragons in these parts for more than a century!"
"True; but, quoth Baldonius, the monstrous reptiles still abound afar to eastward, in the lands of Pathenia and Pantorozia. Forsooth, he's given me a letter of introduction to his colleague, a Doctor Raspiudus, in Pathenia."
"What?" cried the Lady Aniset. "Thou, to set forth on some year-long journey to parts unknown, where, 'tis said, men hop on a single leg or have their faces in their bellies? I'll not have it! Besides, Baldonius may be privy wizard to Baron Emmerhard, but it is not to be denied that he be of no gentle blood."
"Well," said Eudoric, "so who was gentle when the Divine Pair created the world?"
"Our forbears were, I'm sure, whatever the case with those of the learned Doctor Baldonius. Young people are always full of idealistic notions, like those that stirred the serfs of Franconia to wicked rebellion against their natural lords. Belike thou'lt fall into heretical delusions, for I hear the Easterlings have not the true religion. They falsely believe that God be one, instead of two as we truly understand—"
"Let's not wander into the mazes of theology," said Sir Dambert, his chin on his fist. "To be sure, the heretical Franconians believe that God be three, an even more pernicious notion than that of the Easterlings—"
"If I meet God on my travels, I'll ask him the truth oft," said Eudoric.
"Be not sacrilegious, thou insolent whelp! Still and all and notwithstanding, Doctor Baldonius were a man of influence to have in the family, be his origin never so humble. Methinks I could prevail upon him to utter spells to cause my crops, my kine, and my villeins to thrive, whilst casting poxes and murrains upon mine enemies. Like that caitiff Rainmar, eh? What of the arid seasons we've had, the God and Goddess know we need what supernatural help we can get. Else we may some fine day awaken to find that we've lost the holding to some greasy tradesman with a purchased title, with pen for lance and tally-sheet for shield."
"Then I have your leave, sire?" cried Eudoric, a broad grin splitting his square, bronzed, serious young face.
The Lady Aniset still objected; and the argument raged for another hour. Eudoric pointed out that he was not an only child, having two younger brothers and a sister. In the end, Sir Dambert and his lady agreed to Eudoric's quest, provided that he returned in time to help with the harvest and took along a manservant" of their choice.
"Whom have you in mind?" asked Eudoric.
"I fancy Jillo the trainer," said Sir Dambert.
Eudoric groaned. "That old mossback, ever canting and lecturing me on the duties and dignities of my station?"
"He's but a decade older than thou," said Sir Dambert. "Moreover and furthermore, thou shalt need an older man, with a sense of order and fitness, to keep thee on the path of a gentleman. Class loyalty above all, my boy! Young men are wont to swallow every new idea that flitters past, like a hoptoad snapping at flies. Betimes they find they've engulfed a wasp, to their scathe and dolor."
"He's an awkward wight, Father, and not over-brained."
"Aye, but he's honest and true, no small virtues in our degenerate days. In my sire's time there was none of this newfangled saying the courteous 'ye' and 'you' to mere churls and scullions, as I hear thee doing. 'Twas always 'thou' and 'thee' ..."
"How ye do go on, Dambert dear," said Aniset.
"Aye, I ramble. 'Tis the penalty of age. At minimum, Eudoric, the faithful Jillo knows his horses and will keep your beasts in foremost fettle." Sir Dambert smiled. "Moreover and furthermore, if I know Jillo Godmarson, he'll be glad to get away from's nagging wife for a spell."
-
So Eudoric and Jillo set forth to eastward, from the banneret knight's holding of Arduen, in the barony of Zurgau, in the county of Treveria, in the kingdom of Locania, in the New Napolitanian Empire. Eudoric rode his palfrey and led his mighty destrier, Morgrim. The lank, lean Jillo bestrode another palfrey and led a sumpter mule. Morgrim was piled with Eudoric's panoply of plate, nested into a compact bundle and lashed down under a canvas cover. The mule bore the rest of their supplies.
For a fortnight, they wended uneventfully through the duchies and counties of the Empire. When they reached lands where they could no longer understand the local dialects, they made shift with Helladic, the tongue of the Old Napolitanian Empire, which lettered men spoke everywhere.
They stopped at inns where inns were to be had. For the first fortnight, Eudoric was too preoccupied with dreams of his beloved Lusina to notice the tavern wenches. After that, his urges began to fever him, and he bedded one in Zerbstat. Thereafter he forbore, as a matter not of morals but of thrift.
When benighted on the road, they slept u
nder the stars—or, as befell them in the marches of Avaria, under a rain-dripping canopy of clouds. As they bedded down in the wet, Eudoric asked his companion:
"Jillo, why didst not remind me to bring a tent?"
Jillo sneezed. "Why, sir, come rain, come snow, I never thought that so sturdy a springald as ye be would ever need one. The heroes in the romances, like Sigvard Dragonslayer, never traveled with tents."
"To the nethermost hell with heroes of romances! They go clattering about on their destriers for a thousand cantos. Weather is ever fine. Food, shelter, and a change of clothing appear, as by magic, whenever desired. Their armor never rusts. They suffer no tisics and fluxes. They pick up no fleas or lice at the inns. They never get bees in their helms. They're never swindled by merchants, for none does aught so vulgar as buying and selling."
"If ye'll pardon me, sir," said Jillo, "that were no knightly way to speak. It becomes not your station."
"Well, to the nethermost hells with my station, too! Wherever these paladins go, they find damsels in distress to rescue or have other agreeable, thrilling, and sanitary adventures. What adventures have we had? The time we fled from robbers in the Turonian Forest. The time I fished you out of the Albis half drowned. The time we ran out of food in the Asciburgi Mountains and had to plod fodderless over those hair-raising peaks for three days on empty stomachs."
"The Divine Pair do but seek to try the mettle of a valorous aspirant knight, sir. Ye should welcome these petty adversities as a chance to prove your manhood."
Eudoric made a rude noise with his mouth. "That for my manhood! Right now, I'd fainer have a stout roof overhead, a warm fire before me, and a hot repast in my belly. If ever I go on such a silly jaunt again, I'll find one of those verse-mongers—like that troubadour, Landwin of Kromnitch, who visited us yesteryear—and drag him along, to show him how little real adventures resemble those of romances. And if he fall into the Albis, he may drown for all of me. Were it not for my darling Lusina ..."
Eudoric lapsed into gloomy silence, punctuated by sneezes.
-
They plodded on until they came to the village of Liptai, on the border of Pathenia. After the border guards had questioned and passed them, they walked their animals down the bottomless mud of the principal street. Most of the slatternly houses were made of logs or of crudely hewn planks, innocent of paint.
"Heaven above!" said Jillo. "Look at that, sir!"
"That" was a gigantic snail shell, converted into a small house.
"Knew you not of the giant snails of Pathenia?" asked Eudoric. "I've read of them in Doctor Baldonius' encyclopedia. When fullgrown, they—or rather their shells—are ofttimes used for dwellings in this land."
Jillo shook his head. " 'Twere better, had ye spent more of your time on your knightly exercises and less on reading. Your sire hath never learnt his letters, yet he doth his duties well enow."
"Times change, Jillo. I may not have the learning of Doctor Baldonius, or clang rhymes so featly as that ass Landwin of Kromnitch; but in these days a stroke of the pen were oft more fell than the slash of a sword. Here's a hostelry that look not too slummocky. Do you dismount and inquire concerning their tallage."
"Why me, sir?"
"Because I am fain to know, ere we put our necks in the noose! Go ahead. If I go in, they'll double the scot at the sight of me."
When Jillo came out and quoted prices, Eudoric said: "Too dear. We'll try the other."
"But, Master! Mean ye to put us in some flea-bitten hovel, like that which we suffered in Bitavia?"
"Aye. Did you not prate to me on the virtues of petty adversity, to strengthen one's knightly mettle?"
" 'Tis not that, sir."
"What, then?" asked Eudoric.
"Why, when better quarters are to be had, to make do with the worse were an insult to your rank and station. No gentleman—"
"Here we are!" said Eudoric. "Suitably squalid, too! You see, good Jillo, I did but yestereven count our money, and lo! more than half is gone, and our journey not yet half completed."
"But, noble Master! No man of knightly mettle would so debase himself as to tally his silver, like some base-born commercial—"
"Then I must needs lack true knightly mettle."
-
For a dozen leagues beyond Liptai rose the great, tenebrous Motolian Forest. Beyond the forest lay the provincial capital of Velitchovo. Beyond Velitchovo, the forest thinned out gradatim to the great grassy plains of Pathenia. Beyond Pathenia, Eudoric had been told, stretched the boundless deserts of Pantorozia, over which a man might ride for months without seeing a city.
Yes, the innkeeper told him, there were plenty of dragons in the Motolian Forest. "But fear them not," said Kasmar in broken Helladic. "From being hunted, they have become wary and even timid. An ye stick to the road and move yarely, they'll pester you not unless ye surprise or corner one."
"Have any dragons been devouring maidens fair of late?" asked Eudoric.
Kasmar laughed. "Nay, good Master. What did maidens fair, traipsing round the woods to stir up the beasties? Leave them be, I say, and they do the same by you."
A cautious instinct warned Eudoric not to speak of his quest. Two days later, after he and Jillo had rested and renewed their equipment, they set out into the forest. For a league they followed the Velitchovo road. Then Eudoric, accoutered in full plate and riding Morgrim, led his companion off the road and into the woods to southward. They threaded their way among the trees, ducking branches, in a wide detour. Guided by the sun, Eudoric brought them back to the road near Liptai.
The next day they did the same, except that their circuit curved off to the north of the highway.
After three more days of this exploration, Jillo became restless. "Good Master, what do we, circling round and about so bootlessly? The dragons do dwell farther east, away from the haunts of men, they say."
"Having once been lost in the woods," said Eudoric, "I would not repeat the experience. Therefore do we scout our field of action, like a general scouting a future battlefield."
" 'Tis an arid business," said Jillo with a shrug. "But then, ye were always one to see further into a millstone than most."
At last, having committed the nearer byways of the forest to memory, Eudoric led Jillo farther east. After casting about, they came at last upon the unmistakable tracks of a dragon. The animal had beaten a path through the brush, along which they could ride about as well as on the road. When they had followed the track for above an hour, Eudoric became aware of a pungent, musky stench.
"My lance, Jillo!" said Eudoric, trying to keep his voice from rising with nervousness.
The next bend in the path brought them into full view of the dragon, a thirty-footer facing them on the trail.
"Ha!" said Eudoric. "Meseems 'tis a mere cockadrill, albeit longer of neck and of limb than those that dwell in the rivers of Agisymba—if the pictures in Doctor Baldonius' books deceive me not. Have at thee, vile worm!"
Eudoric couched his lance and put spurs to Morgrim. The destrier bounded ponderously forward.
The dragon raised its head and peered this wsy and that, as if it could not see very well. As the hoofbeats drew nearer, the dragon opened its jaws and uttered a loud, hoarse, groaning bellow.
At that, Morgrim checked his rush with stiffened forelegs, spun cumbrously on his haunches, and veered off the trail into the woods. Jillo's palfrey bolted likewise, but in another direction. The dragon set out after Eudoric at a shambling trot.
Eudoric had not gone fifty yards when Morgrim passed close by a massive old oak, a thick-girthed limb of which jutted into their path. The horse ducked beneath the bough. The branch caught Eudoric across the breastplate, flipped him backwards over the can-tie of his saddle, and swept him to earth with a clatter.
Half stunned, he saw the dragon trot closer and closer—and then lumber past him, almost within touching distance, to disappear on the trail of the fleeing horse. The next that Eudoric knew, Jillo was bending o
ver him, crying:
"Wellaway, my poor heroic master! Be any bones broken, sir?"
"All of them, methinks," groaned Eudoric. "What's befallen Morgrim?"
"That I know not. And look at this dreadful dent in your beauteous cuirass!"
"Help me out of the thing. The dent pokes most sorely into my ribs. The misadventures I suffer for my dear Lusina!"
"We must get your breastplate to a smith, to have it hammered out and filed smooth."
"Fiends take the smiths! They'd charge half the cost of a new one. I'll fix it myself, if I can find a flat rock to set it on and a big stone wherewith to pound it."
"Well, sir," said Jillo, "ye were always a good man ui" your hands. But the mar will show, and that were not suitable for one of your quality."
"Thou mayst take my quality and stuff it!" cried Eudoric. "Canst speak of nought else? Help me up, pray." He got slowly to his feet, wincing, and limped a few steps.
The Incorporated Knight Page 1
