The Complete Compleat Enchanter (49 page)

Shea reached out and took it. “Okay, lady,” he said. “My story is that I need this guy in my business. A friend of mine is in Castle Carena and can’t get out, because Atlantès has built a wall of fire around it, and unless I deliver Roger there it’s no dice.”

“Ah, but—” said the lady warrior “—this is my more than friend and most dear love.” She waved a hand at Roger, who said, “Allah!” under his breath. “Surely, it is less than knightly to keep us one from the other.”

“Yet even more so,” said Belphegor, putting her arrow back and stepping forward in evident enjoyment of the prospect of a legal argument, “—were he to fail his duty to his vavasour and liege lord who is held prisoner.”

“Ah, but the greater wipes out the less,” said Bradamant. “In making deliverance of Lord Roger to this Saracen, Sir Harold would fail in duty to the Emperor Charles, who is liege lord to us all.”

“Not to me,” said Shea.

The three knights gasped, and Roland’s face went a trifle grim. “Sir knight,” he said, “a truce to profitless discourse. You know me for your friend; will you hear my judgment in this cause?”

She looked at the surrounding men-at-arms. Might as well put a good face on it, especially as Roland didn’t seem to be a bad guy. “Sure,” he said, “anything you say is all right with me.”

“And you, my lady Bradamant?”

“That will I.”

“Then hark.” Roland unslung his big sword from his belt and kissed the hilt. “This is my judgment, given in honor, as the holy St. Michael stands my aid: that Sir Harold de Shea release the Lord Roger to the Lady Bradamant. But since she has the ring that daunts all enchantments, she shall forthwith take oath to rescue Sir Harold’s lord from durance in Castle Carena. This deed I lay on her; and none other shall be accomplished till it be done.”

Belphegor clapped her hands. “Oh, well thought on!” she said. Bradamant’s face also expressed pleasure. She stepped to her horse, produced a sword almost as large as Roland’s and held it out to him. He lifted the hilt up before her; she kissed it and extended one hand: “I swear it,” she said, and turned to Shea. “Now handsell me your prisoner.”

“What do I do?” he asked.

“Place his hand in mine.”

“I can’t. He’s tied up.”

“Loose him, want-wit!” She stamped her foot.

Shea was not sure this was a good idea, but nobody else seemed to have any objections, so he stepped around behind the big man, and untied some of the knots, then as Roger gave an explosive sigh of relief, took one of his hands and laid it in Bradamant’s.

“Do you assign me all rights of war and ransom in this man?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“Then I receive him.” She dropped Roger’s hand, and with a round-house swing, hit him a terrific slap on the side of his face. “Come, varlet!” Roger slowly lifted a numbed arm, and then, instead of hitting her back, surprisingly began to titter. “You accompany us to Carena.”

Roger’s face straightened out. “O my lady, I pray you, take me not back thither, where mine uncle will coop me up like a chicken.”

“Tish! Have I not the ring, which is proof against all that he can do? Sir Harold, will you ride with us?”

“Sure,” said Shea. He looked around.

The wolf that was Vaclav Polacek was nowhere to be seen.

Sixteen

Shea thought rapidly. Bradamant could probably be trusted to keep her word, and even if she couldn’t, there was no particular immediate danger to Doc and Florimel. But the danger to Vaclav was both immediate and particular, if they captured him again, someone was almost certain to think of strangling or using a silver weapon instead of the fire that failed. Very likely they would get him, too. He turned to the others:

“I think you could operate better at Castle Carena without us,” he said. “There’s a friend of mine in trouble, and I’m afraid I’ve got to do something about it. Bel—Belphegor, it’s the sweetheart of that girl. Will you come along?”

She put two fingers to her lips. “ ’Tis not in our compact. But—aye, that will I. Whither go we?”

“My guess would be that he’d be looking for that girl. Maybe we ought to go back to about where we found her.”

“Think you he would return by the village where so late they’d have burned him?”

“You have something there, kid. Votsy is as nutty as a fruitcake, but I think he’d be bright enough to cut around the back way.”

“Come, then,” said the girl. “I know some little of woodland trails.” She turned to the paladins. “Gentles, I salute you farewell till a happier meeting.”

The armored men raised their hands, the bugle blew again and the group broke up. A horse had been brought for Roger; Shea noticed that as he and Bradamant rode off in the direction of Castle Carena they were holding hands and not giving any particular attention to their route. In their condition, he wondered how good they would be at the business of getting Doc out of Castle Carena.

Behind the shrine the ground dipped sharply, then rose up a bank set with low bushes to the veritable forest beyond. Belphegor’s eyes swept it from side to side: “Thither lies his slot,” she said, pointing.

Shea could see nothing that looked like a trail, but when he plunged across the declivity at the girl’s heels and up the other side, there was a broken branch on one of the bushes, and beyond, where she waved a hand, the mark of a wolf’s pad, deeply impressed on the soft ground.

“Hey,” he said, “wouldn’t we save time by short-cutting along the road?”

She turned a laughing face. “Nay, who’d go roadwise when they could walk the free way of the forest? And more—it is the nature of the wolfish kind to be somewhat scatterwit in purpose. Trust me, we shall come on him the sooner by following direct. See, there turned he to the left.”

She went more rapidly than Shea would have believed possible. The sun slanted down through the leaves in speckled patterns and occasionally a bird chirped or dipped and swooped away before him. His Saracen costume was not exactly what he would have chosen for the occasion, but he found himself suddenly happy.

Belphegor hummed a little air to herself as she examined some markings at the side of another little clump of bushes. “Here he turned aside to strike at some small game,” she announced. “A rabbit, belike. And here he lay to rest after the pursuit. We gain; press on.”

She was tireless; it was he who had to ask for the first halt, and later, for another. Toward what he judged to be noon they made the third pause by the side of a little stream from which they drank and shared half one of the birds left from the previous night’s supper. The girl frowned suddenly.

“Sir Harold,” she said, “it is passing strange, but meseems there is in this something familiar and not unsweet, as though all this were a twice-told tale. Yet sure am I that we have never wandered the wildwood together before.”

“Oh, yes we—” began Shea and then stopped. No use giving her a jar that might set up a resistance to her redeveloping memory. “Do you think we’ll find him?” he said instead, changing the subject rapidly.

“Oh, aye, and that soon. Come, let us be afoot again.”

She was on her feet in a single graceful motion and they were off. The wolf had certainly done a good deal of circling, either because he couldn’t make up his own mind, or perhaps because he had lost his way. Twice more they found places where he had rested, and then, as they passed another brook, the girl pointed suddenly. Shea saw a footprint into which the water was just oozing. He stopped, filling his lungs, and shouting: “Vaclav!”

There was a sound in the underbrush, and the wolf came trotting from behind a tree with his tongue out, shaking his head and bouncing in delight.

Shea said: “What was the matter? Get lost?”

“Arf!” said the wolf.

“Okay, now you’re found. Listen here, you prize idiot. You’ve nearly gummed the works for all of us. Now you stick by us and don’t get out of sight. I can handle some magic all right, but I don’t understand the higher sorcery well enough to disenchant you, so we’ll have to wait till we find Doc. As it is, it’s damned lucky Atlantès fireproofed you before you turned into a werewolf again.”

The wolf put its tail between its legs and emitted a moan of contrition. Shea turned his back and said to Belphegor: “Can you get us on the road to Castle Carena again?”

“Assuredly. It lies that way.” She pointed. “But do you find the woods that are my joy so comfortless?”

“It’s not that, kid. We got business. Afterward, we can come back here, if you like, and—oh, what the hell, let’s go.”

The approach of dusk found them still among trees.

While Shea made a fire, the wolf, under strict instructions, went to help Belphegor with her hunting, flushing game for her arrow and retrieving it afterward. She came back with five rabbits, two quail and a larger bird of some kind, remarking: “If we keep this adventure, I must even find some means of gaining new arrows. Two were lost on that bout, and though I have some skill as a fletcher, both tools and seasoned wood are wanting.”

The evening’s bag looked like a lot for three people, but the wolf ate everything they left and looked hungrily for more. Shea was glad that they didn’t have much farther to go at this rate. It would wear both of them out to feed the confounded animal.

The sun was already high in the morning when they came out on the track, a few hundred yards short of the fork where he had separated from Polacek on the outward journey. Now they were on the last lap. The wolf, which had been alternately trotting on ahead and dropping back as though it found their pace unbearably slow, suddenly came tearing up, whining and emitting little sharp howls.

“What’s the matter, old man?” asked Shea.

The wolf bounded, stiff-legged, nuzzling Shea’s legs and running a few steps back in the direction of Pau.

“Wants us to go back and find that girl, I guess,” said Shea. The wolf howled some more, then nipped Shea by the bagginess of his trousers and tried to lead him in the desired direction.

“Listen, I’m not—” began Shea, and then saw what the wolf had been trying to tell him. A column of dust was rising along the track, with heads moving beneath it. Belphegor shaded her eyes, then gave a little squeal. “The Saracens! By the foul fiend, how slipped they past Count Roland? And see—Medoro among them.”

“He must have gone over the pass and picked up a party looking for us—or else that damned smith put him on our track,” said Shea.

The heads jerked forward in more rapid movement. “They have spied us!” cried Belphegor. “Up yon hill shoulder! They cannot reach us mounted there, and mayhap we shall gain the shelter of the trees.”

The horsemen were coming on fast, about twenty of them. High-pitched yells announced that they had seen their quarry.

Shea and his companions reached the round of the shoulder and pelted through a clump of scrubby oaks. Beyond, a slope of crumbled shale towered over them. They sank in the loose stuff halfway to their knees, every effort to go higher loosening a minor landslide that carried them staggering back. It was like a treadmill.

Below, a couple of horsemen were picking their way through the rocks at the base of the shoulder; others were spreading left and right. An arrow zipped into the shale above Shea’s head. He wished he knew some kind of magic that would work quickly.

“No use,” he said bitterly. “We’ll have to stand and try to fight it out.” He gripped the girl’s hand and ran the few steps back down toward the trees.

The Saracens were skirmishing around the base of the shoulder, stopping now and then to yell. A few of them had double-curved bows and were letting off arrows.

Belphegor crouched behind a rock and let off one of her own shafts at a dodging shape. The shot missed, splintering on a stone behind. The next hit a horse, which reared and threw its rider. Belphegor dodged as half a dozen arrows clattered around her in return.

Medoro was on a fine white horse, well out of range. His voice floated up thinly. “Cease from shooting lest you do her a harm! She shall be taken alive, but I will give five thousand dirhams for the head of the man!”

A man threw up one arm and rolled out of his saddle, an arrow right through his body and tipped with a spurt of blood. The rest drew back, dismounted, and leaving one or two to hold horses, ran at the base of the shoulder with swords and spears.

Out from behind a rock slipped a big gray hairy shape which lit on the back of a Saracen with a long bound. Good old Vaclav! The man went down, screaming, in a voice that was suddenly choked, and Belphegor’s bowstring snapped like a harp.

Thump!
Down went one of the attackers, clutching his stomach and chewing at the grass. An arrow glanced up and away from the helmet of another.
Thump!
The leader of the rush was down, with an arrow right through the eye.

“Allahu Akhbar!” screamed Medoro from below. “Ten thousand dirhams!”

A Saracen stopped with an arrow through his forearm. The others set up a discordant yell and came rushing and stumbling up from all sides, clambering over those who had taken the girl’s arrows. The wolf got the hindmost by the leg, wolf and man rolling down the hill, the latter squealing with terror as his weapon foiled to bite. Belphegor nailed the man with the helmet neatly through the throat.

“My last shaft, Harold,” she cried.

Smart girl, he thought, to plant it where it did the most good, and drove his arm forward in a long lunge. The scimitarlike blade was unhandy, but it went right through the open mouth of the man before him. Shea parried a cut with his dagger and swung, but the man had a helmet, which took the blow with a clang, and Shea’s blade snapped off at the hilt. However, the blow had force enough to knock the man over backward, and he carried the legs from under a couple of others.

Someone hurled a barb-headed javelin just as Shea recovered from the stroke. The weapon missed and hung quivering in a tree. Shea and Belphegor grabbed for it together. He reached it first, jerked it loose, snapped it over his knee, and gripped the pointed end like a rapier. “Get into a tree,” he called to the girl. The Saracens were closing in fast; Shea had just time to turn around, feint at the nearest, dodge his swinging cut, and lunge. The point got him right below the chin.