`What's this?' Boamund asked. Toenail was getting sick of this.
`It's a helmet,' he replied.
Boamund stared at it. `Look,' he said, `I know I'm new to most of this, but don't try being funny with me. A helmet is heavy and shiny and made of the finest steel. This is made of that stuff... what did you say it was called?'
`Plastic,' Toenail replied, `or rather, fibre-glass. It's a crash helmet. They're different from the ones you know about.'
`But . . .'
Toenail decided to be firm, otherwise they'd never get anywhere. `Look,' he said, `in your day, you had jousting helms and fighting helms and parade helms, and they were all different, right? Well, this is a helm for riding on a motorbike. That's why it's different.'
Boamund started to sulk. He'd already sulked twice; once when Toenail had handed him a bike jacket and Boamund had tried to make out that only peasants and archers wore leather body armour, and once when he'd been told that he was going to be riding pillion. He'd started to say that the knight always rode the horse and the dwarf went on the pillion, but Toenail had managed to shut him up by dropping a toolkit on his foot. He anticipated big trouble very shortly.
`And here's your sword,' he said, `and your shield. Grab hold, while I just...'
`Here,' Boamund said, `why're they in a canvas bag? It's not honourable to go around with your sword cased.'
Toenail decided it wouldn't be sensible right now to try and explain why it would be injudicious for Boamund to wear his
sword. Terms like `arrested' and `offensive weapon' probably didn't form part of his vocabulary. Instead, he made out that the quest demanded that he travel incognito, to save having to fight lots of tiresome jousts on the way. Oddly enough, Boamund swallowed that without a murmur.
`Right,' Boamund said. `Where's the horse?'
`It's not a horse,' Toenail replied tentatively. `Not as such. Look, follow me.'
He led the way out the back. There, under the washingline, stood his treasured Triumph Bonneville, the only thing in the whole world that he really and unreservedly loved.
`What's that?' Boamund asked.
Toenail clenched his fists tightly and replied, `It's a motorcycle. It's like . . .' He closed his eyes and ransacked his mind, pulling out the drawers and throwing their contents on to the floor. `It's like a magic horse that doesn't need shoeing,' was the best he could come up with.
`Does it fly?' Boamund asked.
`No,' said Toenail, taken aback. `It goes along the ground. Downhill, with the wind behind her, she'll do a hundred and fifteen, no worries.'
`A hundred and fifteen what?'
`Miles.'
`Oh.' Boamund frowned. `And then what do you do?' he asked.
`How do you mean?'
'After you've gone a hundred and fifteen miles,' Boamund replied. `Do you get another one, or . . .?'
`No, no,' Toenail said, screwing up his eyes and resisting the temptation to take a chunk out of Boamund's kneecap. `A hundred and fifteen miles an hour.'
`Hang on,' Boamund said. `I thought you said it didn't fly.'
`She doesn't.'
But Boamund didn't seem convinced. `All the magic horses I ever heard about could fly,' he said. `There was Altamont, the winged steed of Sir Grevis de Bohun. She could do three hundred and forty-two, nought to a hundred and six in four point four three-'
`Yes, well,' Toenail said. `Now-'
`My uncle had a magic horse,' Boamund went on, `he did from Caerleon to Tintagel once in an hour and seven minutes. You could really give it some welly on that horse, he used to tell me.'
`Had all the gear, too,' Boamund continued dreamily. `Monoshock stirrups, power-assisted reins, three-into-one hydraulically damped underneck martingale, customised sharkskin girths with three-position auto-adjusted main buckles...'
Toenail stumped across to the bike and unscrewed the filler-cap. `Come on,' he said, `we haven't got all day, you know.'
Boamund shrugged. `All right,' he said. `Where do I sit?'
`Behind me,' Toenail said. `Up you get. Got the bag?'
Boamund nodded and pulled on his helmet. Muttering something or other under his breath, Toenail opened the choke, flicked down the kickstart, and stood on it and jumped.
Needless to say, the bloody thing wouldn't start.
Boamund tapped him on the shoulder. `What are you doing?' he said.
`I'm trying to get her to start,' Toenail replied.
`What, by pulling out its whatsit and jumping on it?' Boamund replied. `What good's that supposed to do? You'll just make it cross, and then it'll bite you or something.'
I could try and explain, Toenail thought, but why bother? He located the kickstart under the ball of his foot, lifted himself in the saddle and jumped again. As usually happened, the kickstart slipped from under his foot and came up sharply against his shin. Toenail swore.
`Told you so,' said Boamund. `Why don't you just say the magic word?'
`There isn't a magic word, you pig-brained idiot!'
Boamund sighed and said something incomprehensible. At once the engine fired, revved briefly and then fell back into a soft, dreamy purring. Of the usual wittering of maladjusted tappets there was no sign. Toenail sat, open-mouthed, listening. Even the camchain sounded good.
`Can we go now, please?' Boamund said. `It'll take us at least an hour, if all this thing does is-'
`How did you do that?' Toenail demanded. `She never starts first time. Never.' He felt betrayed, somehow.
`Simple,' Boamund replied, `I said the magic word. I'm not a complete ignoramus, you know.'
Right, Toenail thought, enough is enough. You've asked for it. He flipped up the sidestand, trod the gearlever into first and opened the throttle. The front wheel hoisted itself gratifyingly skyward and, with a squeal of maltreated rubber, the bike careered down the drive and out into Cairngorm Avenue. By the end of the road, Toenail was doing nearly fifty, and as they went round the corner he slewed the bike down so hard that the right-hand side footrest touched down with a shower of sparks.
Magic horses be buggered, he thought. I'll give him magic horses, the cocky little sod.
They were doing a cool seventy down Sunderland Crescent, weaving in and out round the parked cars like a demented bee, when Boamund leaned forward and tapped Toenail on the shoulder.
`All right?' he shouted back. `You want me to slow down?'
`Certainly not,' Boamund replied. `Can't you get this thing to go any faster?'
Toenail was about to say something very apposite when Boamund muttered another incomprehensible phrase and the road suddenly blurred in front of Toenail's eyes. He screamed, but the wind tore the sound away from him. There was this furniture van, right in front of them, and. . .
And then they were flying. It had been a near thing; the front tyre had skimmed the roof of the van, and quite probably he was going to have to go the round of the breakers' yards to get another rear mudguard (you try getting a rear mudguard for a '74 Bonneville and see how you like it), but they were still alive. And airborne.
`Put me down!' Toenail shrieked. `How dare you! This is a classic bike, I've spent hours getting it up to concourse standard. You crash it and I'll kill you!'
`But it's so slow,' Boamund replied. `You hang on tight, we'll soon be there.'
Toenail was beginning to feel sick. `Please,' he said.
The laws of chivalry, which areas comprehensible and practical as the VAT regulations, ordain that a true knight shall have pity on the weak and the feeble. Boamund sighed and mumbled the correct formula, and a moment later the bike touched down on the southbound carriageway of the M18, doing approximately two hundred and forty.
Jesus Christ, thought Toenail to himself, I could write to SuperBike about this, only they'd never believe me. He exerted the full strength of his right hand on the brake lever, and slowly the bike decelerated. He made his way across to the hard shoulder, cut the engine and sat there, quivering.
`Now what is it?'
said Boamund testily.
Toenail turned slowly round in the saddle and leant towards Boamund until their visors touched.
`Look,' he said, `I know you're a knight and I'm only a dwarf, and you've got a Destiny and know all about the old technology and your uncle had some sort of drag-racer that could do the ton in four seconds flat, but if you pull a stunt like that ever again, I'm going to take that sword of yours and shove it right up where the sun never shines, all right?'
Three foot seven of shattered dreams and injured pride can be very persuasive sometimes, and Boamund shrugged. `Please yourself,' he said. `I was just trying to help.'
`Then don't.' Toenail jumped on the kickstart, swore, tried again and eased the bike out into the slow lane.
In the course of the next fifty miles he was overtaken by
three lorries, two T -registration Mini Clubmen, a moped and a Long Vehicle with a police escort transporting what looked like a pre-fab bridge; but he didn't mind.
`If,' as he explained to Boamund when the latter implored him to try going a bit faster, `God had intended us to travel quickly and effortlessly from one place to another, He wouldn't have given us the internal combustion engine.'
As far as Boamund could see, there was no answer to that.
`Where are we going?' Boamund asked.
Toenail took his left hand off the bars and pointed.
`Yes,' Boamund said, `I can read. But what does it mean?'
This puzzled Toenail; to him, the words `Service Station' were self-explanatory. He made no effort to explain, and drove into the car park.
`I mean,' Boamund said, taking off his helmet and shaking his head, `service is what you owe to your liege lord, and a station is a military outpost. Is this where knights come to bow down before their lords and beg favours of them?'
Toenail thought of the palaver he'd been through the last time he tried to order sausage, fried bread, baked beans and toast without the fried egg, and replied, `Yes, sort of. You hungry?'
`Now you mention it,' Boamund replied, `yes. All I've had in the last fifteen hundred-odd years is a cup of poisoned milk and a biscuit.'
`Not poisoned,' Toenail pointed out, `drugged. If it'd been poisoned you wouldn't be here.'
`Must just have been wishful thinking, then.'
Toenail took great pains to explain the system. `You get your tray,' he said, `and you stand in line while they serve the people in front of you, and then you ask the girl behind the counter for what you want. Food-wise,' he added. `And then she puts it on your tray and you take it up to the cash desk. Got that?'
Boamund nodded. `And then what?' he asked.
`Then we sit down and eat,' Toenail said.
`Where?'
Toenail looked up at him. `You what?'
`Where do we sit?' Boamund repeated. `I mean, I don't want to make a fool of myself by sitting in a dishonourable seat.'
Jesus flaming Christ, thought Toenail to himself, why didn't I just bring sandwiches? `You sit wherever you like,' he said. `It's a service station, not the Lord Mayor's Banquet.'
`What's a-?'
`Shut up.'
To do him credit, Boamund waited very patiently in the queue. He didn't push or shove or challenge any of the lorry drivers to a duel if they trod on his foot. Toenail's stomach began to unclench slightly.
`Next,' said the woman on the Hot Specials counter. Toenail asked for steak and kidney pudding and was about to move on when he heard Boamund's voice saying:
`I'll have roast swan stuffed with quails, boar's chine in honey, venison black pudding, three partridges done rare and a quart of Rhenish. Please,' he added.
The girl looked at him.
`I said,' Boamund repeated, `I'll have roast swan stuffed with . . .'
One of the few advantages of being a dwarf is that you can walk away from situations like these without anybody noticing, if necessary by ducking down between people's legs. Very carefully, so as not to spill his gravy, Toenail started to walk...
`Toenail!'
He stopped and sighed. Behind Boamund, quite a few people were beginning to get impatient.
`Toenail,' Boamund was saying, `you told me to ask the girl behind the counter for what I wanted to eat, and she's saying all I can have is something called lassania.'
`You'll like it,' Toenail croaked. `They do a very good lasagna here.'
Boamund shook his head. `Listen,' he said to the girl, whose face was doing what concrete does, only quicker, `I don't want this yellow muck, right, I want roast swan stuffed with quails...'
The girl said something to Boamund, and the dwarf, whose genes were full of useful information about the habits of insulted knights, instinctively dropped his tray and curled up into a ball on the floor.
But Boamund just said, `Suit yourself then, I'll get it myself,' muttered something or other under his breath, and started to walk away. Against his better judgement, Toenail opened an eye and looked up.
Boamund was still holding his tray. It contained a roast swan, a boar's chine in honey, some peculiar-looking slices of black pudding, three small roast fowl and a large pewter jug.
`Here,' said the girl, `that's not allowed.'
Boamund stood very still for a moment. `Sorry?' he said.
`Eating your own food's not allowed,' said the girl.
Toenail felt a boot digging into his ribs. He tried ignoring it.
`Toenail, I don't understand this at all. First they don't have any proper food, only lassania, and now she says I'm not allowed to eat my food. Does that mean we all have to swap trays or something?'
Toenail stood up. `Come on,' he said, `we're leaving. Quick.'
`But . . .'
`Come on!'
Toenail grabbed Boamund by the sleeve and started to drag him doorwards. Behind them somebody shouted, `Hey! Those two haven't paid!'
Boamund stopped dead, and try as he might Toenail couldn't induce him to move. `What did you say?' Boamund enquired.
`You haven't paid for that.'
`But I didn't get it from you,' Boamund was saying, very patiently, very reasonably. `Your people didn't have anything I wanted so I got something for myself.'
Toenail betted himself that he knew what was coming next. `You're not allowed,' said the voice, `to eat your own food in here.' Oh good, said Toenail to his feet, I won.
`Look.'
`No,' said the voice, `you look.'
Honour, its cultivation and preservation, are at the very root of chivalry. It is thus highly unwise to say something like, `No, you look,' to a knight, especially if he's hungry and confused. Although Toenail had deliberately averted his head, on the slightly irrational grounds that anything he didn't see he couldn't be blamed for, he didn't need eyes to work out what happened next. The sound of an assistant cafeteria manager being hit with a trayful of roast swan is eloquently self-explanatory.
From under his table, Toenail had a very good view of one section of the fight - roughly from the feet of the participants as far as their knees - and as far as he was concerned that was quite enough for him, thank you very much. You had to say this for the lad, fifteen hundred years asleep on a mountain, you'd think he'd be out of practice, but not a bit of it.
After a while, Toenail could only see one pair of feet, and they were wearing the pair of motorcycle boots he'd bought specially, after measuring the sleeping knight's feet about a week ago. How long ago that seemed!
`Toenail!'
`Yes?' said the dwarf.
`You're not particularly hungry, are you?'
Toenail put his head out. `Not really,' he said. `Let's have something when we get there, shall we?'
`Good idea,' Boamund replied. He wiped gravy off his face and grinned sheepishly.
They got to the bike and got it started about four seconds before the police arrived. Fortunately, the police had omitted to bring helicopters with them, so when the bike suddenly lifted off the ground and roared away in the direction of Birmingham there wasn't very much
they could do about it, except take its number and arrest a couple of students on a Honda 125 for having a defective brake light.
Chapter 2
'Yes,' Toenail replied.
`Are you sure?' Boamund said. `Give me that street map a second.'
Toenail did so, and Boamund studied it for a while. `Looks like you're right,' he said. `It just doesn't look like any castle I've ever seen before, that's all.'
Toenail was with him there a hundred per cent. It looked far more like a small, rather unsavoury travel agent's office. Closed, too.
`Maybe it's round the back,' he suggested.
Boamund looked at him, `I think you're missing the point rather,' he said. `The thing about castles is . . .' He paused, trying to choose the right words. `Well,' he said, `you just don't get castles round the backs of things. It's not the way things are.'
`Maybe it is in Brownhills,' replied the dwarf. `Have you ever been here before?'
'I don't know,' Boamund confessed. `Things have changed a bit since my day.'
`Well,' said the dwarf, `there you are, then. Maybe the fashions in castle architecture have changed too. The unobtrusive look, you know?'
Boamund frowned and got off the bike. It occurred to Toenail that this was probably one of the best opportunities he was going to get for quite some time to jump on the bike, gun the engine and get the hell out of here before something really horrible happened to him; but he didn't, somehow. What he told himself was that the bike wouldn't start, and that knights took a dim view of attempted desertion. The truth of the matter was that his dwarfish genes wouldn't let him. Stand By Your Knight, the old dwarf song goes.
Boamund was knocking on the door. `Anybody home?' he called.
Silence. Boamund tried again, with the air of a man who knows that the proper way to do this would be to sound a slug-horn, if only he had such a thing about his person. Still nothing.
`It must be the wrong place,' Toenail said. `Look, let's just go away somewhere and think it over, shall we?'
Boamund shook his head. `No,' he said. `I think this is the right place after all. Look.'
Grailblazers Tom Holt Page 3
