The Iron Tempest

by Ron Miller

  Bradamant leaped upon her own mount and set off in hot pursuit. She crossed the clearing in a second and in the following second was far along the trail that Rashid and the giants had taken.

  She was puzzled to find no sign of her quarry—they could not have been very far ahead, yet now there was neither sound nor sight of them. Relunctantly, she reigned in her horse and listened. The forest was silent. What had happened? How could Rashid and the giants have disappeared so quickly and completely? If he were dead, how could they have caught and killed him so silently? With her sword gripped tightly in her mailed hand, she crept slowly forward, scrutinizing every sound and shadow, alert to an indefinable danger. At every turn, she expected an enormous fist to reach out and grasp her like a child might casually and thoughtlessly crush a moth.

  Instead, she found a castle. More a château than a fortress, she decided, beautiful but eerie in the silence it shared with the forest. It appeared to have been deserted for ages. As she drew closer, she saw that its delicate arches, columns and arcades were festooned with vines, creepers and moss, so much so that in places it looked as though the vast building had grown from the soft, moist earth like a vegetable mansion. Immersed in the submarine illumination that filtered through the overhanging forest, the château looked rather like some mossy porcelain castle at the bottom of an aquarium.

  She cautiously circumnavigated the château, but discovered no sign of either the giants or of Rashid. The thousand blind windows returned her scrutiny with the encyphered gaze of the hydra. Seeing nothing for it but to brave an entry, Bradamant looked for and found an open door. She peered in. Only darkness was visible within. She took a step.

  The moment her foot passed the threshold, she was overwhelmed with the certainty that Rashid was there, a certainty that struck with all the violence of a blow. She could smell him. He was right behind her! She whirled, her arms spread for his embrace—but there was no one there. The room was as empty as her arms. She felt only the briefest pang of disappointment. Well, she decided, I’ve only been a little overenthusiastic. My imagination just got the best of me for a moment. Rashid’s in the next room, of course. I know that now. She could feel her heart being tugged toward him like a lodestone seeking the boreal pole. With a glad cry she leaped through the portal, but her cry rebounded from bare walls, returned unanswered. How could I have been so mistaken? she thought, smiling at her impetuosity. I’m acting like a child at Christmas. Rashid’s waiting for me in the garden I see through that window. Why, I can almost hear his voice! the measured beat of his footstep! All this rushing about was unseemly; she decided to go to him with the dignity and comely restraint her rank and virginity demanded. Smoothing her touseled hair and straightening her armor, she threw her shoulders back, took a deep breath and stepped into the garden. It was filled with people.

  They were all of them knights and ladies, all elegantly dressed, immaculately armored, wandering about, peering into one another’s faces with the same puzzled, distracted, vaguely anxious expression usually reserved for amnesiacs or the seriously near-sighted. Bradamant had no interest in any of them. They might as well have been pictures in a mediocre art gallery. Rashid was there somewhere, she only had to find him. So she, too, went from face to face, vainly searching for those familiar features, the original of that face that floated mirage-like before her gaze.

  Bradamant searched every path and bower in the garden, every corridor, room and chamber in that labyrinthine castle, high and low, day and night, week in and week out, never resting, never stopping, never eating and never doubting that the very next moment would discover her love. Thus was the strength of Atalante’s spell.

  But Rashid was there, and Bradamant saw him every day—but Atalante, in his infinite cruelty, had arranged through his magic that neither Bradamant nor Rashid could recognize the other. Thus they met a hundred times, gazed into one another’s face, then passed on, eternally hopeful.

  CHAPTER SIX

  In which Astolph comes to the rescue, Rashid makes a solemn Promise and Pinabel’s debt to Bradamant is paid in full

  There had been a long and arduous struggle before Bradamant’s cousin Astolph had been able to return to Europe. Melissa’s defeat of Alcina had released him from his arboreal prison, but it had also left him stranded on the island. With all of its most pleasant features transformed into either the sorceress’ ex-lovers or into nothing at all, the island was revealed to be a bleak and uninviting place. He had only been enabled to leave because of the help of Logostilla—the only decent member of the sisterly triad whose less worthy members were Alcina and Morgan la Fay—by way of celebrating the return of the island to her rightful possession. The knight’s subsequent adventures were innumerable—indeed, fascinating—but unfortunately not relevant to this history; it is enough to say that he eventually found himself on a ship bound for Calais.

  He leaned against the railing, his handsome face wet with spray, longing for the first sight of the coast of Frankland and happily anticipating the pleasures of the emperor’s court—not the least of which were the plump Frankish women he so much preferred—and the company of his famous cousins. Would they ever be surprised to learn that his rescue had evidently been engineered by the famous Saracen paladin, Rashid. The breeze was fresh and carrying the ship directly toward its destination, though not nearly quickly enough to please the impatient knight.

  Almost as though his impatience had been transmitted to the air itself, the breeze became brisk and the peaks of the dancing waves were torn off in lacy plumes, like crowds of ladies waving their handkerchiefs to speed his passage. The wind, becoming overenthusiastic, blustered, came this way and that and caused the helmsman to curse as he tried to keep the ship on course. Still, the optimistic knight thought nothing of it. Instead, he went below deck and made certain that his horse, the fabulous Rabican, was well. The intelligent animal rolled its eyes at the sight of its beloved master and whickered affectionately. Astolph spent a pleasant hour or two feeding the horse carrots and recounting his adventures and expectations. The horse slobbered appreciatively.

  Toward evening the southern horizon underwent a sudden and violent change. The piled-up clouds seemed to collapse upon themselves like a failed soufflé and the air that rushed in to fill the void produced a wild and raging tempest. It thundered from every point of the compass; it roared, it shouted, it shreiked with demonic glee. The darkness became complete.

  The duke added his enormous strength to that of the helmsman, but even their combined effort failed to check the lurches which threatened every moment to throw the vessel disastrously broadside to the thundering waves. It was a difficult task, for the tiller turned in spite of all they could do, throwing them violently against the bulwarks. Just before midnight a gigantic wave broke against the stern and nearly unshipped the rudder. It was as though the ship had been struck by a huge fist. The men were thrown to the deck by the shock. Water poured down the companionway, threatening to swamp the tiny vessel.

  The mainmast had been carried away so no trysail could be set to give the ship some steerage. The foremast still held, but the shrouds were stretched like elastic, thrumming deafeningly in the wind, an enormous aeolian harp. The forestaysail had been torn to ribbons and kept up a constant cracking, like gunfire. Only the bulging foresail, like a soap bubble about to burst, kept the ship precariously before the wind.

  At one o’clock a rending crash was heard above the roaring of the storm.

  “There went the foremast!” cried the captain.

  “No!” said the helmsman. “That was the foresail blown clean away!”

  “It’s fouled! Get it cleared!”

  Astolph, not caring for whom the order was intended, leaped forward. Though no sailor. he could see that the foresail had to be cut loose. It had caught and was bellying out in such a way that it threatened to capsize the ship. If that happened she’d go to the bottom like a stone.

  Barely able to see in the stinging spray and darkness, h
e started to cut away the ballooning canvas.

  “Hold on!” shouted a voice at his ear. It was one of the crew. “Slack off on those halliards and we’ll get the sail down to four or five feet of the deck! We want to have a little canvas so we can keep some steerage!”

  Astolph, not really understanding, shrugged and helped the sailor lower the sail and cut away the torn strips. They secured the lower corners. Even under that small spread of canvas, the ship could still be kept on course. The faster she went, the better. Her safety depended on outracing the waves.

  An hour later, the remains of the foresail disintegrated, the rags fluttering into the darkness like huge seagulls.

  “That was the last of our sail!” the duke heard the helmsman shout to the captain.

  “So?” the captain replied. “We’ll just go a little more slowly, that’s all.”

  “What kind of answer is that?” said Astolph.

  “Look out astern!” cried the helmsman. “Lash yourselves, boys, or you’ll be swept—”

  Tons of water broke over the taffrail. Astolph and the captain were hurled across the deck. The water swept the ship from stern to bow, carrying away all the débris in one blow. It would have carried away the captain as well if the duke’s grip on his collar hadn’t kept him from flying into the darkness. Fortunately, the sea ran off the before it had a chance to swamp the ship.

  There was little to do now but cling to whatever one could and hope for the best. Sunrise would be in about three hours, the knight knew. With daybreak, the storm might abate. Astolph tried to see if the horizon was lightening, but he couldn’t find it. The ship might as well have been imbedded in a block of obsidian. He went below to check on Rabican, who appeared relieved to see his master.

  About half past four the sky began to grow grey, but the air was too misty to tell if the ship was near any land. Only a hundred yards from the ship the raging sea merged into a cloud of spray. The ragged clouds swept by at a terrible speed. The little ship was atop a mountainous wave crest at one moment, plunged into a black trough the next.

  Astolph looked gloomily at the wilderness of chaotic water; he was certain that if a calm were much longer in coming he and the ship would be lost. It surely could not remain afloat another day.

  Suddenly one of the sailors gave a glad cry: “Land! Land on the port side!”

  Through a rift in the mist, the knight thought he could make out the silhouette of a coast. Was he mistaken? Was it only a bank of clouds?

  “Is it Frankland?” he asked the captain.

  “It’s land!” the captain replied, pointing to what was now only an impenetrable mass of vapor.

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes, yes. Of course. Didn’t you see it yourself? There, just a little to the right of the foremast. Look!”

  The mist began to open like a torn curtain. Astolph could see several miles across the turbulent surface of the sea.

  “Yes!” he agreed. “It is land!”

  It was a low shore, perhaps five or six miles away, in the same direction the ship was being inexorably driven. In less than an hour it would be smashed among the breakers. Landfall suddenly seemed less appealing.

  Though the clouds had lifted, the wind was blowing stronger than ever and the ship, driven before it like a feather, was hurled at the coast. The duke could see a greyish beach and the dark mass of a forest beyond. Frankland! he thought.

  “Every man on deck!” cried the captain, preparing for the worst. Astolph went below to join the faithful Rabican, whose great eyes were rolling with consternation. He put his arm around the powerful neck, patting and stroking the soft nose while both of them hoped for the best.

  It was a little before six in the morning when the ship reached the first line of breakers.

  “Hold on!” someone shouted.

  There was a sudden shock. The stern of the ship had struck bottom. A second wave lifted her fifty feet further in, just skimming the jagged rocks that protruded everywhere, then she heeled over, spun halfway around and slammed onto the shingle with a jarring, squashing crash, like an egg dropped onto a tabletop.

  No sooner had the ship settled onto the shore than Astolph saddled Rabican, donned his armor and strapped on his sword. Leading the horse onto the deck, which was a turmoil of tangled débris and men, both whole and injured, he demanded that the gangway be run onto the shingle. The captain replied with curses. Astolph reinforced his argument by drawing his sword and holding it to the throat of the captain, who, though still cursing, nevertheless found breath to order the gangway lowered. The duke thanked the captain kindly, making generous allowance for the latter’s ungraciousness, sheathed his weapon, took Rabican’s reins and led the animal down the ramp and onto the shore.

  Without a backward glance, he set off into the forest that grew down to the sea. He had paid for his passage and here he was. The fate of the ship and its crew was of no further concern.

  He rode for days, blithely confident that he would eventually run across a road that would take him to Paris. More than a year had passed since Bradamant had first seen Rashid on that distant battlefield, and it was near the end of yet another sultry summer. The duke was not the stoic that his cousin thought herself, rightly or wrongly, to be and saw no reason to suffer for no other purpose than to pretend he wasn’t suffering—a pretense he found tiresome, though he had never told Bradamant this. He stopped whenever the heat became too much or even when it really wasn’t too much, or whenever he discovered a likely spring or pool of water, a shady grove or cool stream, or perhaps just a burgeoning apple tree. Then he would doff his armor and stretch out on the moss or plunge to his neck in the refreshing water. Even more ideal were the times he found an accomodating inn or farmhouse with an equally accomodating innkeeper’s or farmer’s daughter.

  He had been traveling in this haphazard and not at all unpleasant manner for some time when, near the end of a particularly overheated day, after he had been traveling since dawn without finding either a place to rest or get a drink, he was overjoyed to discover a spring bubbling from amidst a tumbled heap of rocks. He dismounted Rabican, tied him to a nearby tree, and, using his helmet as a convenient bucket, went to the rippling pool to fetch the animal some water. He had just knelt by the muddy rim when a serf, who had evidently been hiding in the thicket, casually walked up to the horse, mounted it and rode off. Just like that.

  Astolph, almost too astonished to react, at first merely gaped openmouthed at such effrontery. By the time he realized the truth and seriousness of what he had just witnessed, the thief had been absorbed by the woods.

  He dropped his helmet, his thirst unslaked, and set off in pursuit on foot, cursing the serf with surprisingly unchristian inventiveness, promising him a vividly-described bloody fate he had every intention of implementing.

  For his part, the horsethief seemed more intent on fanning the flame of the knight’s wrath than on escape. Had he chosen, he could have dug his heels into Rabican’s flanks and disappeared like the wind, Rabican being after all the swiftest animal on earth, a hair-covered lightning bolt, who left his pursuers simply nowhere. On the contrary, mysteriously, the thief expended only just enough effort to keep beyond the knight’s reach. He would first give the horse free rein, then draw in to a brisk canter, always remaining well within sight of the animal’s rightful owner, whose ineffectual curses were as perfectly audible as they were ineffective.

  This cat-and-mouse pursuit was kept up all the rest of the day, with poor Astolph—who still wore his heavy armor—gasping like a steam engine and leaking perspiration from every interstice, but too angry and too stubborn to abandon the chase. Eventually, wheezing and purple-faced, he found himself on the verge of an open meadow in the midst of which was a remarkable château, like the painted fantasy in an illuminated manuscript. He saw the thieving peasant disappear into one of its viney arcades. Puffing and panting, Astolph arrived where he had last seen his horse and its abductor, but there was no sign of eithe
r. Every trace had vanished. The duke stamped his feet and cursed like a petulant child. This was beyond intolerable. He would find Rabican if he had to reduce this miserable pile to its primordial gravel.

  With demonic energy, he searched every room, gallery, chamber, hall and nook. The château, which was not all that big, seemed to be completely deserted. All the remainder of that day he searched, without finding so much as a hair of the faithful Rabican, though he could have sworn he heard its familiar whinny around every corner. Finally, he sank, exhausted, onto a bench in the interior courtyard and buried his face in his hands. He was too tired and hungry to be angry—or to be very curious about this strange situation, for that matter. And as soon as he had thought about it he felt his weariness slough away like a snake’s skin, and his stomach now felt full, his veins filled again with thick, rich blood, his thirst slaked as though he had emptied that distant spring in a single gulp. He rubbed his face in consternation and discovered that even the coarse beard he had allowed to grow since the shipwreck was gone and his skin was clean-shaven and smooth.

  This, he told himself, bore every hallmark of the magical. And that thought was followed, by not a little effort, with another: if I’ve indeed been magicked, then this place must be enchanted. If it’s enchanted, then I’m powerless, for all I have is my strength and my sword. Both are prodigious, of course, but of no avail against the purely supernatural.

  He wrung his poor brains, trying to wrest from them what little he knew of countermagic. Finally, a single drop exuded from that otherwise barren sponge. A sorcerer’s power, Logostilla had told him, did not come from any natural ability to command the elements, but rather from an ability to impress his or her will on those spirits who do have that talent. Somewhere about this castle, therefore, was an imprisoned spirit whose release would dissolve the bonds that the mysterious magician had inexpicably placed upon Astolph. Now the only problem was to remember where the best place was to hide such a thing as an evil spirit. Logostilla had told him once, he was sure, but she was such a charming girl—there were many more interesting things about her than the lectures on necromantic minutiae about which she seemed inclined to endlessly prattle. Now he wished that he’d paid a little more attention to her words and just a little less to her décolletage. Where would he hide an evil spirit, if he had one?