The Dragon, the Earl, and

by Gordon R. Dickson

"Oh," said Jim hastily. "I couldn't use magic in an encounter with another knight. That simply wouldn't do. No, no—impossible. But then, as I just said, I didn't have any intention of—er—debating with you."

  The steeliness faded, but Sir Harimore's gaze remained fixed on Jim. Although now it seemed almost a little puzzled.

  "No magic?" said Harimore. "In that case, Sir James, I am brought to wonder why you would think to challenge one such as myself."

  "Well, I wasn't challenging you," said Jim, but with a bit of edge in his own voice. Sir Harimore's insistence on the fact that Jim may have been prodding the other into a fight was beginning to get a little bit on Jim's nerves. "If it's something you want, though, I'll gladly face you, any time, anywhere. Here, or any place else—yes, and I guarantee no magic."

  Seeing the other still staring at him, he snapped out again.

  "I've told you several times that I wasn't intending anything like that. Now do you believe me, or don't you?"

  "Truthfully, Sir James," said Sir Harimore, "I find myself a-wonder at it. You do not lack for courage—but by public repute, I already knew that. Nonetheless, to consider a debate with me—you must be aware that it would be no fair match."

  "No fair match?" echoed Jim, suddenly and completely at a loss.

  "Hardly," said Sir Harimore. "I should be looked on as one who debated with a twelve-year-old boy. I mean no particular offense, Sir James," said the other knight. "But surely you must be aware that you could not hope to stand before me more than a moment or two. Honor must indeed always be served; but it is plain to me that you are hardly schooled to debate with one such as I—or even your friend Sir Brian—and anyone who knows me would know that I would recognize this at first glance on seeing you."

  "And just how do you recognize that?"

  "Come, Sir James," said Sir Harimore. "A hundred things. The way you sit your saddle, the way you walk. A certain clumsiness about you—"

  Jim's temper, already heated, came dangerously close to a boil again. He knew for a fact that his physical reflexes were markedly faster than most people's; and since his high school days the smoothness and quickness of his movements on the volleyball court had been repeatedly noticed and mentioned by sports reporters. It was true that, even with Brian's teaching, he had only begun to absorb a small part of what the average knight learned, starting in the days when he was old enough to toddle around by himself and see his elders practicing with their weapons.

  "Why," said Sir Harimore, "even now you have the sword at your belt slung back further than it should be on your hip, for comfort while riding, instead of forward to where it would be quickest to grasp in case of need."

  Jim's temper deflated like a pricked balloon. He could not deny that what Sir Harimore had said was the exact truth. He had gotten in the habit of riding with his sword pushed back that way, to the point where he hitched the belt around a little before he mounted, almost without thinking. He could feel it hanging there now, like a badge of shame before the experienced fighter on the horse beside him.

  "Nonetheless—" he began feebly.

  "Say no more, Sir James," said Sir Harimore. "I honor your readiness to debate on behalf of your friend even though you knew your attempt would be hopeless. I should have expected no less from you. For I now see legend is indeed true in this case. But—lo! I see your Lady and the others we are seeking just ahead!"

  Jim looked, and it was true. Only a dozen yards ahead of them, in a small open space, four men and one woman were off their horses and examining something on the ground. Another woman sat on her horse at a little distance from the three and whatever they were looking at.

  The woman on the horse was Angie.

  "It is!" said Jim. "I am beholden to you, Sir Harimore!"

  He put his horse to a trot, and Sir Harimore's horse, without evidently needing any signal from its rider, broke into a trot to keep level with Jim's mount. All those in the clearing looked up as the two knights rode in. Sir Harimore stopped his horse about ten feet short of the three standing together; but Jim rode directly to Angie. As he got close, he saw that her face was white.

  "Jim!" she said, reaching out to grasp him as best she might with their two horses side by side and head to tail of each. She leaned forward toward him, in as close an embrace as was possible, and murmured between clenched teeth.

  "Get me out of here! I can't take any more of this!" She clung to him, prolonging the awkward hug, and continued, "Such a tiny little fox! Practically torn to pieces—and they act as if they'd killed a lion!"

  "Right," murmured Jim. His not to reason why. "Can you hang on another moment or two? I'll have to set something up."

  "Yes. But be quick!"

  Jim disengaged himself from her and turned his horse to ride over to where the others stood. Nearest him were Sir John Chandos, the Bishop and Brian, and beyond them he saw Geronde and a man he did not know. Brian was looking levelly at Sir Harimore, who was looking levelly back at him. Each of them had no expression on his face at all.

  "Give us joy of the day, Sir James!" said the Bishop heartily. "My peregrine has killed a fox. True, it was not in mid-air, where she should be looking for her prey, but she attacked and killed it, nonetheless. However, I fear me she has suffered the loss of more than a few of her flight feathers. The fox turned with her talons already in him and caught them in his teeth, just before he was killed. She will not hunt again for some while. But it was a brave deed!"

  "I do give you joy, your Grace," said Jim, though he was more of Angie's opinion about the fox than the Bishop's. "However, I've a matter of import on which to talk privily to your Grace and you, Sir John. But my Lady is overtired. She should not have come out today. She must get back to the castle and rest as soon as possible—"

  "It will be my honor to escort her!" rang the voice of Sir Harimore, behind Jim.

  "I"—Brian came down very hard indeed on his utterance of the personal pronoun—"am presently escorting my Lady Angela."

  "Perhaps they both could escort her," said Sir John Chandos.

  Jim winced inside. Brian and Harimore might be able to keep from open conflict on the way back to the castle; but they would almost certainly find some excuse to leave it again and settle their private differences bloodily out in the woods here if they made the trip back together. At all costs, the two must be kept separated. But, at the same time, Angie really did need to be taken back to the castle. He opened his mouth without knowing what to say; but Geronde was before him.

  "But what is all this?" she cried, leaving the fox and literally springing into the saddle of her own horse. "I shall accompany Angela. The two gentlemen may come with us, but I will want Sir Brian to remain handy until I see her safely cared for in her own quarters. Come, Brian!"

  Jim sighed internally with relief. Quickly, he swung his own horse about and urged it back to Angie, as Brian swung himself into his own saddle and Chandos and the Bishop followed suit.

  "Faint!" he whispered as he got close enough to her.

  "A-aaah…" sighed Angie without wasting time; and collapsed upon him.

  Jim caught her in his arms—ordinarily a reasonably easy thing to do; but in this particular case he had forgotten the precariousness of being in a slippery leather saddle on top of a horse.

  He found the only thing that was keeping him and Angie from plunging between the two horses to the snowy ground below was the pressure of his left knee, against the opposite side of his horse from that on which Angie's horse stood. Angie was slim for her height, but she was tall to begin with, and several years back here in the Middle Ages had turned her solidly into bone and muscle. The angle at which Jim's arms had to support her threatened to put too much force on his left knee for that alone to hold them for more than a moment, even if the horse would not protest that much pressure at one point on his ribs.

  But luckily, here came Geronde to the rescue.

  "You can wake up now!" hissed Jim, just as his knee began to slip.

&nb
sp; "Where am I?" asked Angie, opening her eyes wide and pulling herself back upright in her saddle.

  "You're with us, sweeting," said Geronde. "Never mind. We'll have you back in your rooms in no time at all—it's all right, James! I'm with her, now. You can go about your affairs— whatever they are. Brian!"

  "I'm right behind you, my Lady," said Brian.

  "Come along, then. You must ride on the other side of Angela. Sir Harimore!"

  "I am with you also, my Lady," said Sir Harimore, joining them. They went off.

  Jim watched them go for a moment with a sigh of relief. Angie had looked badly wrung out. There must be more strain to her taking care of Robert than he had thought, even with the help of the wet nurse and the serving woman they had brought from Malencontri. Plus the double life she essentially had to live by showing up now and then at the yuletide festivities and entertainments.

  He was about to turn back to Chandos and the Bishop, when Carolinus's voice spoke inside his head.

  "Follow Aargh, Jim," Carolinus said. "He and I have already picked out the best place near the castle for the negotiation you mention. Show it to the Bishop and John Chandos. I may be able to join you; but if not. you set it up the way you want it set up, and don't let the other two talk you out of anything. Look out for the Bishop; he's used to getting things the way he wants them. Stand up to him!"

  Carolinus's voice ceased. And Jim was just reining his horse around when the Bishop's voice spoke behind him.

  "A demon!" the Bishop was saying as Jim caught sight of him again, with Sir John beside him. Their attention was fixed on Aargh, who was standing facing them at a distance of about twenty feet. "Church rules enjoin me against the shedding of Christian blood. But that law cannot be considered to apply to demons; and yonder is one such, or I don't recognize such when I see it! So if you will just lend me your sword, Sir John, I as a churchman will protect us all against it!"

  Just then he noticed that Jim had joined them.

  "Fear not, Sir James," he added. "The strong arm of the Church protects you!"

  "There's no need for protection, my Lord Bishop," said Jim hastily. "May I make you acquainted with Aargh, an English wolf, without a drop of demon or Fiendish blood in him. He's an old friend of mine, and was one of my Companions when we fought the Dark Powers at the Loathly Tower—so you could say that he was on the side of the Church, even then—"

  "I—" Aargh began harshly.

  "Still!" said Jim, forgetting that the command could not work against the wolf. But Aargh paused, and Jim discreetly waved a hand at him, in hopes that the wolf would interpret it as the request it was. Jim went on. "And Sir John has met him, haven't you, Sir John? You remember, when we at Malencontri were besieged by the sea serpents last summer."

  "Indeed, your Grace," came the smooth tones of Chandos. "A brave and helpful, true English wolf. I commend him highly to your good wishes."

  "Not demon?" said the Bishop, slumping a little in his saddle. "Ah, well." Aargh's eyes seemed to blaze up in his face.

  "No, my Lord," said Jim. "Further, he is here to escort us to a place I want the two of you to see. The reason for my wishing that is what I wanted to discuss with you privily; and we can do it on our way there. Aargh is already aware of the situation I would talk about; and has been most helpful. No one knows the country hereabout as he does!"

  "I see I've got myself into another of these human nonsense matters, when I should have minded my own business!" snarled Aargh. "However, enough for now. If you're coming with me, follow!"

  With that, he turned and trotted off through the trees.

  "We must go with him, my Lord—and Sir John," said Jim. "Bear with me, please. I promise I'll explain as we go."

  "This explanation of yours, Sir James—Hocking," the Bishop added to the fourth man of their original party, a lean individual well dressed, but with a subservient attitude, "fetch the falcon back to the castle."

  "Yes, my Lord."

  The three of them put their horses into motion to follow Aargh.

  "As I was saying, Sir James," the Bishop went on, "it had better prove worthy of the situation. I will accept your word and Sir John's; but he still looks more demon than English wolf to me, a usual wolf being little more than half his size."

  "Indeed, your Grace," said Sir John, "the wolf does deserve your acceptance of him."

  "As to that," said the Bishop, "we shall see. Meanwhile, I await your explanation, Sir James. But what's to do, here? The wolf is taking us back again toward my Lord Earl's castle!"

  Chapter 18

  "I don't think he's taking us all the way back to the castle, your Grace," said Jim. "As I say, he knows the country around here better than anyone else; and he's been searching out a particularly good place for me to hold a negotiation between my Lord Earl and the troll of the castle."

  "Negotiation?" said the Bishop. "Traffic between a human soul and a Fiend—or, what was that name you called the creature?"

  "A Natural, your Grace," said Jim. "Naturals aren't really Fiendish at all. They can't help being what they are, any more than—"

  He had been about to say, "—than we can help being human" when he realized that the word "human" might trigger off an unhappy reaction in the Bishop.

  "—than Aargh yonder can help being a wolf," Jim wound up. "They are not quite human—"

  "They have no immortal soul!" said the Bishop. His thick brows gathered together over his eyes like thunderclouds.

  "No, they don't," said Jim. He found himself in a quandary. This was a world full of talking dragons, talking wolves, magicians, sorcerers, fairies, dryads and evidently every other possible thing imagined. It would be unwise to suggest to the Bishop that there had perhaps been some divine reason for them being here.

  On the other hand, he could think of no other reasonable explanation for their being here. "Possibly their existence is beyond our understanding."

  "Perhaps," growled the Bishop. "No doubt the Lord will deal with them in His own time."

  "Yes," said Jim. "But what I wanted to talk to you and Sir John about, your Grace, was the negotiation. You see, I haven't spoken about it either to my Lord Earl, or to the troll. But for all that there was a feud between them, the ancestors of my Lord Earl dwelt relatively in peace with the troll for more than a thousand years; and only recently has he started to shake the castle. And since that, my master Carolinus pointed out to me, is doing certain damage to the castle in divers ways, the most immediate solution seems to be to remove the reason for his doing it. Now, you know about him claiming there's another troll in disguise among the guests—"

  The Bishop and Chandos both nodded.

  "So you know," said Jim, "how it is this that seems to be what is driving the castle troll near to madness; since the castle is part of his territory in trolldom, and no other troll has a right here. But he cannot get at the disguised troll, because he dare not come upstairs to smell that troll out. Apparently, trolls have a smell, which other trolls and animals can scent."

  "I suggested that he could come up under my protection; but you told me he would not trust the word of a Churchman like myself!" said the Bishop. "In that case, why not let his misfortune be upon his own head?"

  "It is the castle that will be upon the Earl's head, if he does not find this other troll, your Grace," put in Chandos diplomatically.

  "True, true," muttered the Bishop. He glared at Jim. "What then?"

  "Well," said Jim, "it occurred to me that there must be some other way of arranging for the troll, in secret, to scent out the disguised troll upstairs. I'm sure the Church would agree that we, ourselves, at this particular period of Holy Feasts would be more comfortable if no troll disguised as a man or woman was amongst us."

  "That is true!" exploded the Bishop, lighting up. "It is our duty first of all to root out the troll among us, just as it is to root out the Satan within ourselves—within most of us, that is. This, regardless of whether the troll below the castle is satisfied or no
t. Perhaps we can take our own way to discover who it is."

  "My Lord," said Jim, "don't you think my Lord Earl would very much rather the rest of the guests not know there's ever been a disguised troll among us, than know that one could join his Christmastide gathering? His guests in the future would be uneasy—"

  "I suppose so," said the Bishop grimly. "Well, what else have you to suggest, Sir James?"

  "This negotiation of which I made mention," said Jim. He held up a hand, for the Bishop was about to start speaking again. "I assure your Grace there'll be no trafficking with anything unChristian, in the process. It'd merely be a matter of the two regular inhabitants of the castle deciding how best to get rid of an impostor neither of them wants there. All they have to agree on is how to go about it. It is merely a matter of sitting them down to talk to each other until they see that this is a point of agreement they can work on together. Once they accept that, we can proceed expeditiously and quietly."

  "An excellent idea, I should think, Sir James," put in Chandos.

  The Bishop glanced quickly at Chandos, glanced back at Jim and then turned his gaze on Chandos again. "You really think this would work, Sir John?" he asked. "I trust more to your age and judgment than to that of Sir James. You think Sir James has something of worth here to suggest?"

  "I do, your Grace," said Chandos. "Indeed, he may offer us the best hope we have for bringing all matters to a conclusion in this hap."

  "Say you so?" said the Bishop. He looked back at Jim, now. "Very well, Sir James. I am listening."

  Jim fervently hoped that he not only was but would continue to do so.

  "You will understand, my Lord, and Sir John—" he began, as they left the close company of the trees for a little open space before they entered some trees beyond. Above the farther trees could now be seen the upper battlements, with some pennants and banners also visible flying from the higher points. The Earl's banner floated above all, a large standard of gold and green. Jim felt a budding uneasiness in him. Aargh was indeed taking them very close to the castle, if not to it. Jim himself had conceived of some well-sheltered and hidden space fairly deep into the trees of the surrounding forest. But Aargh should know what he was doing.