The Incorporated Knight

by L. Sprague De Camp

  A large, black, hairy object, moving briskly among the strands of the web, was fast approaching.

  Eudoric had a moment of panic. Fraka, he saw, had a body as big as a cask and eight hairy legs, each longer than a man is tall. As she came closer, it transpired that the strand of web on which he was caught was not the only one in that neighborhood. Several others slanted down to the ground nearby. If he had avoided the one he had struck, he would have blundered into another strand.

  In his panic, he sought to free himself from the web at all costs. Snatching up the lantern, he lifted the lid to apply its little flame to the strand that prisoned him. At that moment, however, the breeze —as he had feared it might—freshened and blew out the flame.

  Lowering herself on the nearby strands that slanted down to the ground, Fraka came close enough for Eudoric to see the fangs that tipped her foremost pair of mandibles. A foot long each, they resembled the ends of a pair of bull's horns: dark, shiny, curved, and needle-pointed. Her four forward eyes gleamed like great, round, dark jewels.

  Eudoric thought of trying to struggle out of his boot. Without help, however, this would take more minutes than Fraka would need to reach him. He wondered if he could unstrap his crossbow, charge it, and get off one quarrel before Fraka reached him. If he failed to kill with the first shot, he would be doomed, tethered as he was. And where in that bulbous body lay the vital organs? Perhaps a lusty thrust of the boar spear between the mandibles ...

  While these thoughts flashed through his mind, Eudoric fumbled for his igniter. The urge to get free of the web overrode all else.

  He brought out the little copper device, consisting of a tinder box with an open compartment on top and a little hammer bearing a piece of flint in its jaws. His hands shaking, Eudoric pulled out the little drawer containing the tinder. With forced deliberation, he put several pinches of tinder into the tray. Shielding the igniter with his free hand, he snapped the hammer.

  The igniter missed fire. Fraka was now almost within reach of his spear, and another stride would bring her foremost legs upon him. Her eight eyes— four in front, two on top, and one on either side— gleamed like onyx, and her mouth parts worked hungrily.

  Then Eudoric remembered the signal code. Frantically, he seized the hilt of his falchion and gave a series of tugs—long-short-short, long-short-short.

  Fraka hesitated, her forelimbs poised above Eudoric. The knight repeated the jerks, again and again.

  Instead of pouncing on Eudoric, Fraka reared back on her after legs and spread the four forelimbs, as if offering him her nether side. He noticed that the spider's underside was buff-colored, and the hairs on the belly were short and silvery instead of long and black like those on the rest of her body.

  As Eudoric repeated the signal, Fraka remained immobile in her spread-eagled pose. On her underside, just below the narrow waist, Eudoric saw what he supposed to be her genital opening, moving and working as if in lustful anticipation.

  Eudoric's mind raced, wondering how long he could make Fraka remain in her attitude of "Take me, I am yours!" Any time, the spider might get it into her cephalothorax that he was not, after all, her true love. Then she would eat him, as spiders of more usual size devoured flies.

  He might pick up the spear, which stood upright in the turf, and plunge it into her; but that would probably break the spell that held her. If he failed to kill with the first thrust, she would finish him in her death throes.

  Fraka's forelimbs twitched, as if she were coming out of her nuptial trance. Eudoric jerked the falchion, and the spider once more froze in position.

  Stooping, Eudoric again shielded the igniter with his hand. Watching Fraka, he cautiously held the device below the strand of web that touched his boot. Then he waited for a lull in the breeze.

  The wind took a long time to die. Eudoric had to jerk the web again to immobilize the arachnid. As he did so, a sudden puff of wind blew all the tinder out of the tray of the igniter.

  Cursing under his breath, Eudoric reloaded the tray. At last came another lull. Quickly, Eudoric snapped the hammer. The sparks spat into the tinder, which briefly blazed up.

  For a few precious seconds, the flame engulfed the web, which hissed and began to burn. Yellow flames ran up and down the strand, which parted like a snapping fiddle string. The falchion fell to the ground, and Eudoric found his leg free.

  The knight snatched his spear and lurched back beyond Fraka's reach as the spider came abruptly out of her trance. When a flame ran up the burning strand to one of her legs, she whipped around with surprising agility and rapidly climbed the strands by which she had descended.

  Dropping his spear, Eudoric unslung his crossbow, cocked and loaded the weapon, and aimed. The after end of Fraka's bulbous abdomen would have been an easy shot. But Eudoric did not shoot.

  Fraka continued her scramble, growing smaller. The flame ran on up the burning strand to its junction with another. It became two flames, eating away the web in divergent directions; then three and four and six.

  Fraka continued her flight until she was a mere dot in a distant tree. Some of the flames in the nearer parts of the web fizzled out. Others spread; then they, too, died. A goodly part of the web had been destroyed.

  Eudoric unloaded, unbent, and shouldered his crossbow. Guided by his tree-trunk blazes, he made his way back to the edge of the wood.

  -

  Baron Rainmar's mouth fell open. "Thou—allowed-est—this—monster—to escape unscathed? No jest?" he gasped. "In the name of the God and Goddess, why? What demon of stupidity possessed thee?"

  Eudoric smiled. "Well, sir, ere I set out, you lectured me on knightly conduct. You commanded me to adhere most punctiliously to the rules thereof. One such rule is to protect the female kind; another is not to betray one who has given the knight her love.

  "I'm no spider of the family Gigantaraneae, as Your Lordship knows. Yet it was patent that, as a consequence of my tugging on her web, Dame Fraka saw in me her destined lover. She's not the sort of mate with whom I'd willingly consort; yet the fact that she was a female, who in her peculiar way did care for me, kept me from slaying her.

  "Forsooth, 'tis not a matter of much pith and moment. Fraka confines herself to Dimshaw Wood. If you'd guard your folk from her, forbid them to enter the wood. She does none harm where she abides."

  Rain mar struggled with his emotions. He tugged at two fistfuls of red beard. "Thou—thou—idiot! Ass! Fool! Witling! Incondite knave! I'll teach thee to play japes with me! Guards! Seize me this runagate! We shall see what ransom-—-"

  "Better not, my lord," said Eudoric, pointing at Rainmar's middle the crossbow, which, to furnish color to his tale, he had cocked and loaded while narrating his adventure. "Hands off your weapons, sirrah! Order your men out of sight. Now shall you accompany me until I'm safely on my way. Remember, at this range the square-headed bolt can punch through armor plate as through that new writing stuff called paper."

  With Eudoric s weapon trained on his kidneys, Rainmar preceded Eudoric out the front door, under the portcullis, and across the drawbridge to the greensward where Jillo held the horses. An instant later, Eudoric and Jillo were galloping away, while a fuming Rainmar screamed orders for pursuit.

  -

  The next time a band of masked robbers stopped the Zurgau-Kromnitch coach, a score of stout men-at-arms, lent by Sir Dambert and Baron Emmerhard for the occasion, rushed upon the attackers. The brigands lost five of their number, one to Eudoric's sword. Another lived long enough to confess, under torture, to having been sent by Baron Rainmar.

  Eudoric filed a civil suit in the imperial courts against the robber baron. The law's delays being what they were, the suit was still winding its way through the maze of courts long after Eudoric, Rainmar, and all the others mentioned in this tale were in their graves.

  At Castle Hessel, Maragda wept.

  -

  V – The Virgins And The Unicorn

  When Eudoric's stagecoach line was running smo
othly, its proprietor thought of expansion. He would extend the line from Kromnitch to Sogambrium, the capital of the New Napolitanian Empire. He would order a second coach. He would hire a scrivener to relieve him of bookkeeping ...

  The initial step would be to inspect the Sogambrian end of the route. So in Zurgau and Kromnitch he posted notices that, on a certain day, he would, instead of turning around at Kromnitch to return to Zurgau, continue on to Sogambrium, carrying those who wished to pay the extra fare.

  Eudoric got a letter of introduction from his silent partner, Baron Emmerhard of Zurgau. The letter presented Eudoric to the Emperor's brother, the Archduke Rolgang.

  "For a gift," said Emmerhard, fingering his graying beard, "I'll send one of my best hounds. Nought is done at court without presents."

  "Very kind of you, sir," said Eudoric.

  "Not so kind as all that. Be sure to debit the cost of the bitch to operating expenses."

  "At what value?"

  "Klea should fetch at least fifty marks—"

  "Fifty! Good my lord, that's absurd. I can pick upj-"

  "Be not impertinent with me, puppy! Thou knowest nought of dogs ..."

  After an argument, Eudoric got Klea's value down to thirty marks, which he still thought much too high. A few days later, he set out with a cage, containing Klea, lashed to the back of the coach. In seven days the vehicle, with Eudoric's helper Jillo driving, rolled into Sogambrium.

  Save once as an infant, Eudoric had never seen the imperial capital. By comparison, Kromnitch was but a small town and Zurgau, a village. The slated gables of the capital seemed to stretch away forever, like frozen waves of the sea.

  The hordes who seethed through the flumelike streets gave Eudoric pause. They paraded fashions never seen in rural parts. Men flaunted shoes with long, pointed toes, attached by laces to the wearer's legs below the knee; women wore yard-high conical hats. Everyone seemed in a hurry. Eudoric had trouble understanding the metropolitan dialect. The Sogambrians slurred their words, dropped whole syllables, and seldom used the old-fashioned familiar "thou" and "thee."

  Having taken quarters at an inn of middling grade, Eudoric left Jillo to care for the coach and team. Leading Klea, he made his way through a gray drizzle to the archducal palace. He tried on one hand to take in all the sights but, on the other, not conspicuously to stare, gape, and crane his neck like a bumpkin.

  The palace, sheathed in stonework carved in fantastic curlicues, in the ornate modern style, rose adjacent to the Cathedral of the Divine Pair. Eudoric had had enough to do with the court of his own sovran, King Valdhelm III of Locania, to know what to expect at the palace: endless delays, to be shortened only by generous tipping of flunkeys. Thanks to this strategy, Eudoric got his audience with the Archduke on the second day.

  "A bonny beast," said Rolgang, stroking Klea's head. Clad in gold-and-purple Serican silks, the Archduke was a fat man with beady, piercing eyes. "Tell me, Sir Eudoric, about this coach-wagon enterprise."

  Eudoric told of encountering regular coach service, unknown in the Empire, on his journey to Pathenia. He recounted bringing the concept back to his home in Arduen, Barony of Zurgau, County of Treveria, Kingdom of Locania, and of having a coach of Pathenian style constructed by local wainwrights.

  "This bears thinking on," said the Archduke. "I can foresee some effects adverse to good government. Miscreants could use your coach to flee from justice. Bankrupts could leave the site of their indebtedness and set up in business elsewhere. Subversive agitators could travel 'bout, spreading discontent and rousing the rabble 'gainst their betters."

  "On the other hand, Your Highness," said Eudoric, "if the business prosper, you may be able to tax it some day."

  The beady eyes lit up. "Aha, young sir! Ye've a shrewd instinct for the jugular vein! With that consideration in mind, I'm sure His Imperial Majesty will impose no obstacle to your enterprise. I'll tell you. His Imperial Majesty holds a levee at ten tomorrow. Be there with this pass, and I'll present you to my 'perial brother."

  Leaving the palace pleased by this unexpected stroke of fortune, Eudoric considered buying a fine new suit, although his thrifty nature winced at the idea of spending capital on another such garment before his present best had begun to show wear. He cheered up at the thought that he might well make a better impression as an honest rustic, clean and decent if not stylish, than as an inept imitation of a metropolitan dandy.

  -

  Next morning Eudoric, in plain russet and black, stood in line with a hundred other gentry of the Empire. Emperor Thorar IX and his brother passed slowly down the line, while an official introduced each man:

  "Your Imperial Majesty, let me present Baron Gutholf of Drin, who fought in the Imperial forces to put down the late rebellion in Aviona. Now he doth busy himself with the reconstruction of his holding, dyking and draining a new polder."

  "Good, my lord of Drin!" said the Emperor. "We must needs show our deluded subjects, stirred to rebellion by base-born agitators, that we love 'em in spite of all." Thorar was tall, thin, and stooped, with a gray goatee, an obvious hair piece, and a creaky voice. He was clad all in black, against which blazed a couple of jeweled decorations.

  "Your Imperial Majesty," said the usher, "this is Sir Eudoric Dambertson of Arduen. He hath instituted the coach line from Zurgau to Kromnitch."

  " 'Tis he of whom I told you," said the Archduke.

  "Ah, Sir Eudoric!" creaked the Emperor. "We know of your enterprise. We'll see you anon on this matter. But—are ye not that Eudoric who slew a dragon in Pathenia and later fought the monstrous spider in the forest of Dimshaw?"

  Eudoric simpered with affected modesty. "Indeed, 'twas I, Your Imperial Majesty, albeit I came through more by good hap than by good management." He did not add that Jillo had killed the dragon, largely by accident; and that Eudoric, when he had the giant spider Fraka under his crossbow, had let her go on a sentimental whim.

  "Stuff, my boy!" said the Emperor. "Good luck comes to those prepared to make the most of it. Since ye've shown such adroitness with strange beasts, we have a task for you." The Emperor turned to the Archduke. "Have ye a half-hour to spare after this, Rolgang?"

  "Aye, sire."

  "Well, bring the lad to the Chamber of Privy Audience, pray. And tell Heinmar to dig Sir Eudoric's dossier out of the file."

  The Emperor passed on.

  In the Chamber of Privy Audience, Eudoric found the Emperor, the Archduke, the Minister of Public Works, the Emperor's secretary, and two bodyguards in silver cuirasses and crested helms. The Emperor was turning the pages of a slender folder.

  "Sit down, Sir Eudoric," said Thorar. "This bids fair to take time, and we'd not needlessly inflict sore knees 'pon loyal subjects. Ye are unwed, we see, albeit nearing thirty. Why is this?"

  Eudoric thought, the old boy might give the appearance of doddering, but there was nothing wrong with his wits. He said: "I have been betrothed, Your Imperial Majesty, but chance has each time snatched away my promised bride. That I am single is not from lack of inclination towards the other sex."

  "Hm. We must needs 'mend this condition. Rolgang, is that youngest daughter of yours promised yet?"

  "Nay, sire."

  The Emperor turned back. "Sir Eudoric, the gist is this. Next month, the Grand Cham of the Pantorozians comes on a visit of state, bringing a young dragon to add to the 'perial menagerie. As ye may've heard, our zoological collection is, after the welfare of the Empire, our greatest passion. But, for the honor of the Empire, we can't let this heathen Easterling outdo us in generosity.

  "Dragons are extinct in the Empire, unless a few still lurk in the wilder wastes. We're told, howsomever, that west of Hessel, in your region, lies the wilderness of Bricken, where dwell many curious beasts. Amongst these is a unicorn."

  Eudoric raised his eyebrows. "Your Imperial Majesty wants a unicorn to give to this Pantorozian?"

  "Aye, sir; ye've put the bolt in the gold. How 'bout it?"

  "Why—ah—sensible
though I be of the honor, Your Imperial Majesty, I know not whether I could manage it. As I told you, my previous escapes were more by luck than by skill or might. Besides, my coach line, requiring constant attention to detail, takes all my time—"

  "Oh, stuff, my boy! Ye crave a just wage for your labor, as do we all, however we bluebloods affect to be above base thoughts of material gain. Eh, Rolgang?"

  The Emperor winked. Eudoric found this ruler's genial cynicism refreshing after the elaborate pretence of the country gentry among whom he lived to care nothing for vulgar money. Thorar continued:

  "Well, at the moment we have no vacant baronies or counties to bestow, but my brother hath a nubile daughter. She's not the fairest of the fair—"