The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  “In that case, we will go directly to King Huon. If any of the Fey are involved, they have violated one of the basic laws of Faerie by using black magic. We will lodge a complaint in Court, and King Huon du Cor will find the culprit for us in a flash.”

  Frithkin looked thoughtful while he downed half a glass of wine, then his mouth spread in a grin until the corners were almost even with his earlobes. “It might work, at that, Master Magus! Back in the time of King Oberon, you might have had a rough time getting such a case before the Court, but King Huon du Cor has a tendency to be more lenient toward mortals, having been one himself once.”

  “Really?” said the Magus. “I didn’t know that. I’m not up on Faerie history as much as I should be. King Huon was once a mortal?”

  “That’s right. Used to be Duke of Bordeaux. King Oberon had been promised translation to Paradise, but he had to pick a successor and Huon was his choice. He’s made a pretty good King, too.”

  Magus MacCullen waved a huge hand. “Well, there you are, my good Frithkin! Luck is on our side! Here I have been griping because a Convention Year happened to fall during my lifetime. Once every century there is a Convention, and I had to get caught! But now we see that all is for the good. Without the Convention, I wouldn’t have but a small chance of catching the Empty Knight’s enchanter. Now, it is almost certain!”

  “I’m glad you said ‘almost’, Master,” said the goblin.

  The Magus scowled. “You’re a pessimist, Frithkin. Now let me get some sleep. We have a long way to go yet, and I want to start out fresh in the morning.”

  “Very good, Master. Have a good night.”

  “The same to you, good Frithkin. Wake me early, and we’ll go down and fetch His Emptiness and be on our way.”

  Ten minutes later, the red-bearded sorcerer was snoring away, while Frithkin, who slept but once in thirty days, sat silently in the darkness, thinking goblin thoughts.

  Magus MacCullen was dreaming peacefully about refurbishing his home with the money he would get from aiding the Empty Knight when someone shook his shoulder and startled him into sudden wakefulness.

  “Sssst! Master Magus!” It was Frithkin’s whisper. “Up and out! Wake up!”

  Instantly awake, the Magus swung his legs over the side of his bed. “What the Hell’s going on?” he whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Frithkin said, “but whatever it is, I don’t like it. A minute ago, four men came up the stairway, and they’re outside the door right now. Quiet as mice, they were, but they can’t fool a goblin’s nose.”

  “Robbers,” the Magus muttered. “Is there anyone outside the window?”

  Frithkin moved silently to the window and looked out. There was nothing moving in the courtyard fifteen feet below, no one about anywhere. Frithkin whispered that information to MacCullen.

  “All right,” said the magician, “you get down below, and I’ll drop the saddlebags to you. Then I’ll come down myself, and we’ll get out of here. Move.”

  The goblin went over the window-sill and down the side of the stone wall, his fingers and toes finding handholds that no mortal could have found so quickly – certainly not in the dark. MacCullen dropped one saddlebag and then another, and Frithkin caught them before they struck the flagstones of the pavement. The whole operation was almost as silent as the evening breeze.

  Then there was a gleam of light from behind MacCullen, and he spun away from the window. The door to the hall had opened, and there was a shaft of firelight from the flickering torch at the head of the stairs.

  There were men outside, armed and lightly armored in hauberk and steel cap.

  “Come out, Roderick!” shouted one. “Come out cowering like the dog you are!”

  “That’s not him,” said another.

  “Nah!” said a third. “That’s the red-haired swine who claims to be a magician.”

  “Might as well get him, too,” chimed in the fourth.

  They moved into the doorway.

  MacCullen knew he couldn’t get out the window in time. He’d break his neck trying to climb down fifteen feet before one of these thugs crossed the room. And he certainly couldn’t jump for it.

  Things looked bad, but there was one consoling fact. They had to come in through that door one at a time, with the light behind them.

  Using his quarterstaff like a lance, he charged forward, driving the end of it into the pit of the first man’s stomach. The chain-mail hauberk could stop a sword’s edge, but it wasn’t much good against a blow like the one MacCullen gave. The first man collapsed, retching.

  The second man tried to get by the first. MacCullen shifted his big hands, and the end of the quarterstaff swung and slammed against the side of his opponent’s head, just beneath the rim of the steel cap.

  MacCullen aimed another blow at the third man. The man ducked, and the staff hit the steel cap, which came off and spun into the air, landing with a ringing clang. The end of the staff came down on the top of the unprotected head.

  MacCullen was just about to congratulate himself on having disposed of three out of four when he heard more noise on the stair. A fifth and then a sixth man appeared. Reinforcements!

  With a roar of rage that seemed to shake the walls, Magus MacCullen leaped over the three fallen men and slammed his oaken staff into the middle of the fourth man so hard that he staggered backwards into the arms of the man at the head of the stairwell. The stairs were full of men. MacCullen didn’t stop to count, but it looked like a dozen or more. The ones at the top rocked back as their comrade collapsed into their arms.

  MacCullen heard a movement behind him and ducked to one side just in time. A fist with a club in it came down past his right ear. MacCullen dropped to a crouch and grabbed the wrist. Up and over! The flying mare sent the attacker in a somersaulting arc toward the head of the stair. MacCullen noticed in passing that the man had no helmet on. Considering the rap he had been given, he must have had a fairly tough skull.

  The arrival of a second body, with considerable momentum behind it, totally upset the already precarious balance of the men at the top of the stairway. They fell backwards.

  It was like watching an avalanche.

  Or, MacCullen thought, like watching a row of dominoes fall after the first one has been knocked over.

  The men on the lower steps could not support the weight of the men falling from above, so they, in their turn, fell, adding more weight to the burden of those below.

  Halfway down the steps, the avalanche began to slow as a few of the more quick-witted grabbed for the stair railing and held on.

  MacCullen turned and looked at the two fallen men by the door of his room. Neither one seemed inclined to move. He grabbed one by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his hauberk, lifted, turned, and tossed him down the stair. Without looking to see the result, he grabbed the second man and sent him after the first.

  The avalanche, prodded by two new arrivals, proceeded on its merry way.

  In the gloom at the bottom of the stairs, MacCullen saw that his own reinforcements had arrived. The Empty Knight, brandishing a gigantic mace in one steel gauntlet, was taking care of those who were tumbling to the bottom of the staircase, banging them on the head in order of their arrival. Frithkin was jabbing his quarterstaff between the uprights of the banister, tripping those who had not yet fallen, and rapping the fingers of those who sought to retain their balance by holding on to the rail.

  Regaining his own quarterstaff, which he had dropped when he was attacked from behind, Magus MacCullen charged down the staircase, tumbling men before him.

  It was all over before any of the three realized it. MacCullen and the Empty Knight were looking for more heads to knock when they suddenly became aware that all of the available heads had already been so treated.

  “One, two, three, four . . .” Frithkin began counting, pointing a long bony finger at one fallen man after another.

  “Are you all right, Magus?” asked the Empty Knight.
/>   “Fine. And yourself?”

  “Not one of them touched me,” the knight boomed hollowly. “Which is fortunate,” he added, “since I don’t like to be knocked down. How are you, my good Frithkin?”

  “. . . sixteen, seventeen! I make it seventeen,” said Frithkin. “How am I? Oh, fine, my lord. Just fine.”

  At that moment, the landlady, who had heard all the noise and waited quietly until it was over, flung open the door and said: “Did you get ’em?” Then, seeing only her three guests standing, she froze and turned pale as death.

  Frithkin was angry. Goblins do not like fighting; still less do they like to see their mortal masters attacked. He drew a long, wicked-looking knife from beneath his robe and advanced on the woman slowly. “Did who get whom, Madam?” he asked in his reverberating voice.

  The shattered harridan quivered and made strangling noises, but found herself unable to move from the path of the advancing, hooded figure.

  MacCullen opened his mouth to speak. He wanted no throats cut this night. But he was too late.

  Suddenly, when he was less than four feet from the woman, Frithkin swept back the hood from his head. He bugged out his great, glowing goblin eyes. He opened his huge mouth wide, showing formidable rows of grinding teeth. He stuck out a tongue whose tip came even with the tip of his nose. Then he roared horrendously.

  “Arrraghh!”

  The landlady rolled up her eyes and collapsed in a heap on the floor.

  Grinning, Frithkin put away his dagger and replaced his hood. “I suggest we get out of here, Master, before others come.”

  “I agree,” said the Magus. He tossed a silver piece on the floor near the fainted landlady. “That will take care of everything, though I don’t know as she deserves it. Come along, Sir Knight; we have riding to do.”

  III

  By the time another six weeks had passed, the Empty Knight was firmly convinced that he had “always” been traveling with the Magus MacCullen and his goblin familiar. His memory of events began to fade after a few weeks, and anything more than a month in the past – unless he was reminded of it regularly – was almost gone completely. This lack of memory never disturbed his placid equilibrium nor his ever-present good humor. The only thing he never forgot was the reason for his quest: the discovery of the magician who had enchanted him.

  Other than that one thought, nothing disturbed him. Not even the seeming disaster that occurred in the third week. The three travelers had spent their nights in various odd places – sometimes in barns of well-to-do peasants, sometimes on the grass of open meadows, sometimes beneath spreading trees. Two or three times, when one was handy, they stayed overnight in an inn – without further trouble. Once, they had spent three days in a castle, fed and lodged well by its genial baron.

  On the twentieth day, they were riding through a pleasant wood, shaded from the summer sun by the leaves and branches overhead. There was no road as such; it was easy to go in a fairly straight path between the widely spaced trees. At noontime; they stopped and, while Magus MacCullen spread out a linen tablecloth, Frithkin unpacked dishes, goblets, wine, and food. The Empty Knight tethered the mules and his great warhorse Roderick to a nearby tree to cool off before they were led to the nearby brook to be watered.

  “Nothing like a bottle and a cold bird,” said the knight, seating himself on the grass near the tablecloth. “I’m sure I must have enjoyed a repast such as this many times,” he added sadly. “I wish I could remember it.”

  “You’ll enjoy it again, Sir Knight,” the Magus promised as he tore a leg off a cold chicken. “Pour me some of that wine, Frithkin.”

  When the meal was finished, Frithkin got out his pipes and began to tootle a goblin tune.

  “My good Frithkin,” said the Empty Knight when the tune was finished, “do you know ‘I Sing of One so Fair and Bright’?”

  “Certainly, my lord,” said the goblin. “Like this?” He began to play.

  “That’s it! Begin again, and I’ll sing.”

  Frithkin complied, and the knight sang:

  I sing of one so fair and bright,

  Velud maris stella,

  Brighter than the noonday light,

  Parens et puella;

  I cry to thee, thou care for me,

  Lady, pray thy Son for me,

  Tam pia,

  That I might come unto thee,

  Maria!

  Magus MacCullen sipped a final goblet of wine while the pleasant baritone of the Empty Knight mingled with the eerie notes of the goblin pipes. When the fifth verse was finished, he clapped his big hands in appreciation. “Well sung, Sir Knight! Well played, Frithkin! And now, let’s finish up and be on our way.”

  By this time, they had worked out a routine for themselves. The Magus tidied up the place and packed things in the saddlebags, while Frithkin went to the shallow stream nearby to wash the goblets and plates, and the Empty Knight took the mules and Roderick upstream to water them.

  MacCullen heard the drumming of hoofbeats a minute or so later and paused to listen. Then he saw the cavalcade of brightly caparisoned horses and knights in surcoats and armor moving at a fast canter through the trees in the distance. Obviously heading for a ford in the stream ahead, the Magus decided. Then they were out of sight.

  A minute or so later, he heard Frithkin’s screech. He dropped everything, grabbed his quarterstaff, and went running.

  Frithkin had gone to the edge of the stream, and kneeling down, had began to scrub the greasy plates with the clean, wet sand from the bottom of the stream. He, too, heard the thunder of hooves and lifted his head to look.

  The cavalcade rode into sight and splashed across the stream almost where Frithkin was sitting. He sprang to his feet, but just a little too late. One of the horsemen practically ran him over.

  Frithkin stepped backwards, slipped on a wet rock, and fell splashingly into the water. The dozen or so knights roared with laughter and kept on riding as Frithkin came up out of the shallow water with a scream of rage. He still held a brass goblet in one hand. Without really taking aim, he flung it at the head of the man who had almost ridden him down. It missed, went sailing by, and hit with a loud clang on the coroneted helm of the man who was obviously the leader of the troop.

  The laughter stopped suddenly. So did the horses as the man reined up.

  The knight with the ducal coronet turned slowly in his saddle and looked at Frithkin. Then he said, in a snarling baritone: “Sir Griffith, kill me that base-born peasant! Teach him that a commoner does not throw things at the Duke of Duquayne! The rest of you come along. Let Sir Griffith have his sport.”

  Sir Griffith happened to be the man who had almost run Frithkin down. He evidently enjoyed such witty pranks. As he turned his horse about, Frithkin took off for the woods as fast as his goblin legs would carry him. With a coarse laugh, Sir Griffith set his bay gelding in an easy trot after the scampering Frithkin.

  The goblin knew that his only chance was to get up a tree, so he headed for the nearest one. But the bay gelding was too fast. One glance behind him told the goblin that he’d never make it high enough to be out of reach of that lance, not in the seconds he had left. He dodged around the tree and headed for another one. The horse had to make almost a right-angle turn around the tree, and Frithkin gained a few yards – but not for long. Again he dodged around a tree, but this time Sir Griffith was ready for him and had the horse ready to make that turn. But Frithkin changed tactics, too. He made a complete circle around the tree, crouched, ran under the belly of the horse, and shot off in the opposite direction.

  Sir Griffith got his steed turned around, and, with a curse, charged off after the running goblin. The time for sport was over; Sir Griffith was mad now.

  Frithkin thought he could make it this time. But he was only eight feet up the trunk of the tree when the lance point got him in the back and went straight through his chest.

  Sir Griffith flipped the lance up straight and Frithkin’s body flew off in a hig
h arc and crashed down among some bushes.

  “Ho!” bellowed a booming, hollow voice. “Base knight! Stand to and fight! Lower your lance against an armored man if you dare, coward!”

  The Empty Knight, astride the mighty Roderick, his black shield held at the ready, his lance aimed at the heart of Sir Griffith, charged across the clearing toward his enemy.

  Sir Griffith had no choice. He lowered his own lance again, spurred his bay gelding, and charged toward the oncoming figure in black armor.

  Magus MacCullen came running up a few seconds before the two met. In one glance, he saw that the Empty Knight should have the better of the encounter. His lance was steady and his aim was true, while the other knight was having trouble holding his aim. The Empty Knight sat a horse better and held his position better. There should have been no doubt of the outcome.

  Part of MacCullen’s prediction was true. Sir Griffith’s lance point slid off the Empty Knight’s shield, missing the fesse point by six inches, while the Empty Knight’s lance struck solidly, full on.

  To the amazement of both Sir Griffith and the Magus, the Empty Knight, still clinging firmly to his lance, came to almost a dead halt. Roderick, who could not stop so quickly, charged on. As a result, the Empty Knight was catapulted backward out of his saddle and came crashing to earth with a clash of steel.

  Sir Griffith, still firmly seated, much to his own amazement, charged on by and then wheeled his horse to attack the fallen knight. But he reckoned without the great black stallion.

  Roderick reared his mighty bulk into the air and struck with his forefeet. His heavy hooves struck. One hit the armored Sir Griffith, jarring him to his teeth. The other hit the bay gelding.

  That was enough for the gelding. He took one look at that huge stallion, turned, and took off at a gallop. Sir Griffith had dropped the reins and could do nothing to control his horse. It was all he could do to hang on.

  Great Roderick thundered along behind and would have caught the bay if he hadn’t heard the Empty Knight’s voice bellowing behind him.