The Dragon and the George (10 page)

Jim rolled on the grass—he had just finished swimming one of the stretches of water too wide to jump—and flopped, belly-down, in the sun. A tree nearby kept the sun out of his eyes, the heat of the daystar's rays were soothing to his stiff muscles and the grass was soft. He had walked and swum away most of the morning and the midday hush was relaxing. He felt comfortable. Dropping his head on his foreclaws, he dozed a bit…

He was awakened by the sound of someone singing. Lifting his head, he looked about. Someone was coming out along the causeway. Jim could now hear the dry clopping of a horse's hooves on the firm earth, the jingle of metal, the creak of leather, and over all this a fine, baritone voice caroling cheerfully to itself. Whatever the earlier verses of the song had been, Jim had no idea. But the chorus he heard now came clearly to his ear.

"…
A right good spear,
a constant mind—
A trusty sword and true!
The dragons of the mere shall find
What Neville-Smythe can do!"

The tune was one of the sort that Jim may have heard somewhere before. He was still trying to decide if he really knew it or not, when there was a crackling of branches. A screen of bushes some twenty feet away parted to disgorge a man in full plate armor, with his visor up and a single strip of scarlet pennon afloat just below the head of his upright lance; he was seated on a large, somewhat clumsy-looking white horse.

Jim, interested, sat up for a better look.

It was, as things turned out, not the best possible move. Immediately, the man on horseback saw him and the visor came down with a clang, the long lance seemed to leap into one steel-gauntleted hand, there came a flash of golden spurs, and the white horse broke into a heavy-hooved gallop, directly for Jim.

"A Neville-Smythe! A Neville-Smythe!" roared the man, muffledly, within his helmet.

Jim's reflexes took over. He went straight up into the air, stiff wing muscles forgotten, and was just about to hurl himself forward and down on the approaching figure when a cold finger of sanity touched his mind for a fraction of a second and he flung himself instead into the upper branches of the tree that had shaded his eyes.

The knight—as Jim took him to be—pulled his horse to a skidding stop on its haunches directly under the tree; and looked up through the branches at Jim. Jim looked back down. The tree had seemed fairly good-sized when he was under it. Now that he was up in it, with all his dragon-weight, its branches creaked alarmingly under him and he was not as far above his attacker's head as he would have preferred to be.

The knight tilted back his visor and canted his head back in order to see upward. In the shadow of the helm Jim made out a square-boned, rather lean face with burning blue eyes over a large, hooked nose. The chin was jutting and generous.

"Come down," said the knight.

"No thanks," replied Jim, holding firmly to the tree trunk with tail and claws.

A slight pause followed in the conversation as they both digested the situation.

"Damned catiff mere-dragon!" said the knight, finally.

"I'm not a mere-dragon."

"Don't talk bloody nonsense!"

"I'm not."

"Course you are."

"I tell you, I'm not!" said Jim, feeling a preliminary stirring of his dragonly temper. He got it back under control, and spoke reasonably. "In fact, I'll bet you can't guess who I really am."

The knight did not seem interested in guessing who Jim really was. He stood upright in his stirrups and probed upward with his lance through the branches, but the point came a good four feet short of Jim.

"Damn!" said the knight, disappointedly. He lowered the lance and appeared to think for a moment. "If I take off my armor," he said, apparently to himself, "I can climb that goddam tree. But then what if he flies down and I have to fight him on the bloody turf, after all?"

"Look," called Jim, "I'm willing to come down"—the knight looked up eagerly—"provided you're willing to listen with an open mind to what I have to say, first."

The knight thought it over.

"All right," he said, at last. He shook the lance at Jim, warningly. "No pleas for mercy, though!"

"Of course not."

"Because I shan't grant them, dammit! It's not in my vows. Widows and orphans, men and women of the Church and honorable enemies surrendering on the field of combat. But not dragons!"

"No," said Jim, "nothing like that. I just want to convince you of who I really am."

"I don't care who you really are."

"You will," Jim said. "Because I'm not really a dragon at all. I've been put under an… ensorcellment to make me look like a dragon."

"A likely story."

"Really!" Jim was digging his claws into the tree trunk, but the bark was flaking away under his grasp. "I'm as human as you are. Do you know S. Carolinus, the magician?"

"I've heard of him," grunted the knight. "Who hasn't? I suppose you'll claim he's the one who ensorceled you?"

"Not at all. He's the one who's going to change me back as soon as I can find the lady I—to whom I'm affianced. A real dragon ran off with her. That's what I'm doing so far from home. Look at me. Do I look like one of your ordinary mere-dragons?"

The knight considered him.

"Hmm," he said, rubbing his hooked nose thoughtfully. "Come to think of it, you are a size and half on what I usually run into."

"Carolinus found my lady had been taken to the Loathly Tower. He sent me out to find some Companions, so I could go and rescue her."

The knight stared.

"The Loathly Tower?" he echoed.

"That's right."

"Never heard of a dragon—or anyone else in his right mind, for that matter—wanting to go to the Loathly Tower. Shouldn't care to go there myself. By heaven, if you
are
a dragon, you've got nerve!"

"But I'm not," said Jim. "That's why I've got—er—nerve. I'm a gentleman like yourself, bent on the rescue of the lady I love."

"Love?" The knight reached into a saddlebag, produced a piece of white cloth and blew his nose. "I say, that's touching. You love this demoiselle of yours?"

"Doesn't every knight love his lady?"

"Well…" The other put his handkerchief away again. "Some do, some don't, politics being what it is these days. But it is a coincidence. You see, I love my lady also."

"Well, then," said Jim, "that's all the more reason you shouldn't interfere with me in my efforts to rescue mine."

The knight went into one of his moments of obvious thought.

"How do I know you're telling the truth?" he said, at last. "Bloody dragons could say anything!"

Jim had a sudden inspiration.

"I'll tell you what," he said. "Hold your sword up, point down. I'll swear on the cross of the hilt that what I say is true."

"But if you're a dragon what good will that do? Dragons don't have souls, dammit!"

"Of course not," retorted Jim. "But a Christian gentleman does; and as a Christian gentleman, I wouldn't dare forswear myself, now would I?"

Jim could see the knight visibly struggling with the inverted logic of this for several moments. Finally he gave up.

"Oh, well," he said, held up his sword by the blade and let Jim swear on it.

He put the sword back in its sheath. Jim let go the trees and half jumped, half flapped down to ground.

"It might be…" said the knight, moodily, staring at Jim as Jim stood up on his hind legs to dust the bark and twigs from his foreclaws. "There was a palmer in gray friar's-cloth came to the castle last Michaelmas and spoke a rhyme to me before he left:

"Betyde thee weale yn any fyght When'ere thou kenst thy cause ys right."

"But I don't see how it applies."

"Don't you?" said Jim, thinking rapidly. "I'd say it was obvious. Because I'm bent on rescuing my lady, if you tried to kill me, your cause would be wrong. Therefore weale wouldn't have betyded you."

"By St. John!" said the knight, admiringly. "Of course! And here I thought I was just out after some mere mere-dragon today! What luck! You're sure this cause of yours is right? No doubt about that, I suppose?"

"Of course not," said Jim, frostily.

"Well, then, I
am
in luck. Naturally, I'll have to demand permission of my lady, since there's another demoiselle involved. But I can't see her objecting to an opportunity like this. I suppose we'd better introduce ourselves, since there's no one around to do it for us. I take it you know my arms?"

He swung his shield around for Jim's inspection. It showed, on a red background, a wide X of silver, like a cross lying over sideways, above a rather fanciful-looking animal in black, which Jim made out to be lying down in the triangular space under the lower legs of the X.

"The gules, a saltire silver, of course," went on the knight, "are the Neville of Raby arms. My greatgrandfather, as a cadet of the house, differenced with a hart lodged sable—and, of course, I'm in the direct line of descent."

"Neville-Smythe," said Jim, remembering the name in the song he had just heard and any memories he could dig up on the subject of heraldry. "I bear—in my proper body, that is—"

"Assuredly, sir," Neville-Smythe agreed.

"An—gules, typewriter silver on a desk sable. Sir James Eckert, Knight Bachelor." Jim suddenly remembered something Carolinus had mentioned in explaining him to Smrgol and took a chance on gaining a little authority. "Baron of Riveroak. Honored to make your acquaintance, Sir Brian."

Neville-Smythe lifted off his helm, hung it on the pommel of his saddle and scratched his head puzzledly. He had light brown hair, rather compressed by the helm; and now that his face was out in the sunlight, it could be seen that he was no older than Jim. What had given the impression of a greater maturity in the shadow of the visor was a very deep tan and little sun wrinkles around the outer corners of Neville-Smythe's blue eyes. Also, a white scar seamed his lower right cheek down to the jawline, adding a veteran-like touch to his appearance.

"Typewriter…" Sir Brian was muttering to himself. "Typewriter…"

"A—local beast, rather like a griffin," said Jim, hurriedly. "We have a lot of them in Riveroak—That's in America, a land over the sea to the west. You may not have heard of it."

"Damme if I have," replied Sir Brian, candidly. "Was it there that you were ensorceled?"

"Well, yes and no," said Jim, cautiously. "I was transported to this land of yours by magic, as was the lady—Angela. Then when I woke, I found myself bedragoned."

"Were you, now?" Sir Brian had bright-blue eyes, amazingly innocent-looking in comparison to his tanned and scarred face. "Angela, eh? Fair name, that."

"As she herself is fair," answered Jim, gravely.

"You don't say, Sir James! Perhaps we ought to have a bit of a go on behalf of our respective ladies while we've got the chance, before we get to know each other too well for it."

Jim swallowed.

"On the other hand," he said, quickly, "you were telling me about your lady. What was her name?"

"The Lady Geronde." Sir Brian began to fumble about his saddlebags. "I've got her favor here, someplace. Wear it on my arm when I expect to run into someone, of course, but when one's out hunting dragons—Half a moment. It must be right here under my hand…"

"Why don't you just tell me what it's like?" Jim suggested.

"Oh, well." Sir Brian gave up his search. "It's a kerchief, you know. Monogrammed. 'G.d'C The Lady Geronde Isabel de Chaney, presently chatelaine of the Castle Malvern. Her father, Sir Orrin, went off to the wars against the Eastern heathen three years ago Whitsuntide, less five days; and there's been no word of him since. If it weren't for that and the fact that I have to do all this scurrying around the countryside, winning worship and so forth, we'd have been married by this time."

"Why do you do it, then? Go riding around the countryside, I mean?" Jim asked, curiously.

"Good Lord, Geronde insists on it! Once we're married, she wants me to come home safe, you know."

Jim did not follow this argumental development in the conversation. He said so.

"Why, how do you people manage things, overseas?" demanded Sir Brian. "Once I'm married, with my own lands, I've got to produce my own levy of men if my lord or the King calls on me for service in war. If I don't have a name, I'll be forced to march out with a raggedy-breeched bunch of bumpkins and clodpoles out of my own fields, who'll like as not take to their heels at the first sight of trained men-at-arms, and probably leave me no choice but to die on the spot for honor's sake, if not for other reasons. On the other hand, if I'm known about as a warrior of some worth, I'll have good, experienced men coming and wanting to serve under my banner, because they know, do you see, that I'll take good care of them. And, by the same token, they'll take good care of me."

"Oh," said Jim.

"And besides," went on Sir Brian, ruminatively, "this chasing about does keep one in shape. Though I must say the mere-dragons we have around here don't give you much of a workout. That's why I had high hopes of you there for a moment. Doesn't do to practice with the neighbors, you know. Too much chance of a lost temper and a feud resulting."

"I see," said Jim.

"However," said Sir Brian, brightening, "all's well that ends well. And this quest of yours to rescue your lady can certainly be worth a dozen mere-dragons to my reputation. Though, as I say, I'll have to get permission from Geronde, first. Happily, Castle Malvern's only a day and a half's ride from here.
Long
days, though; so hadn't we better be moving?"

"Moving?"

"Traveling. Covering distance, Sir James!" Brian squinted up at the sun. "We've only about a half-day's light left to us now, and that means noon or better of the second day before we can see the gates of Castle Malvern. So, shall we?"

"Hold on a minute," said Jim. "You're talking about both of us going to this Castle Malvern. Why?"

"My good sir, I explained why," said Sir Brian with a touch of impatience, reining his horse about so that it faced to the east. "The Lady Geronde must give her permission, first. After all, my first duty's to her."