The Dragon and the George (11 page)

Jim stared.

"I still don't follow you," he said, at last. "Permission for what?"

But Brian was already walking his horse away from the ocean. Jim hurried to catch up with him.

"Permission for what?" he repeated.

"Sir James," said Brian, severely, turning his head to look Jim squarely in the eyes—on horseback, his head was just about level with Jim's as Jim walked on all fours. "If this continued questioning is a jest of some sort, it is in sorry taste. What else could I seek my lady's permission for, than to accompany you on your quest and make one of the Companions you told me you were seeking?"

They went along silently, side by side. Brian stared straight ahead as he rode, looking somewhat stiff-faced and offended. Jim was busy adjusting to the idea of the knight as a Companion.

He had not really paid that much attention when Carolinus had echoed the watchbeetle in saying that Jim would gather Companions to aid him in rescuing Angie and facing up to the Dark Powers. But as far as he had thought about it, he had assumed he would be selecting those who would join him. He had not really envisioned them thrusting themselves upon him.

Obviously, Brian was not likely to be a liability as a Companion. Plainly, he had no lack of courage and his appearance testified to some experience in combat. But beyond these things, what did Jim really know about the man? Nothing, in fact, except for the meager facts of his name, arms, and the identity of his lady.

On the other hand, was it wise to look a gift horse in the mouth? Carolinus had spoken of forces at work and given the impression that inhabitants of this world were about to be divided by them into two camps—that of the Dark Powers and that of those who, like Jim, were in opposition to them. If that was the case, then it ought to be possible to identify the camp to which any particular individual belonged by watching to see who and what he lined up with.

Brian had lined up with Jim. Therefore, he ought to be in the camp of those opposing the Dark Powers, by definition…

Jim came up out of his thoughts to realize that the knight was still riding alongside him stiffly, with a very obvious, if invisible, chip on his shoulder. A small apology might be in order.

"Sir Brian," said Jim, a little awkwardly. "Excuse me for not understanding that you were offering yourself as a Companion. The truth of the matter is, things are different where I come from."

"Doubtless," said Brian, unsmilingly.

"Believe me," said Jim, "there was no jest of any kind involved. It was just my own lack of—er—wit, that kept me from understanding what you were talking about."

"Ah," said Brian.

"Naturally, I couldn't ask for a better Companion than a gentleman like yourself."

"Quite."

"And I'm overjoyed to have you with me."

"Indeed."

Jim felt like someone knocking on the door of a house in which the owner was home but obstinately refusing to answer. A touch of annoyance tweaked at him; and on the heels of this came an idea at which he nearly smiled visibly. Ignorance of other people's customs could work both ways.

"Of course, if only I'd known your Social Security number right from the start," he said. "It would have been different."

Brian's eyes flickered. They continued to travel on side by side in silence for perhaps another full minute before the knight spoke again.

"Number, Sir James?"

"Why, yes," said Jim, raising his eyebrows. "Your Social Security number."

"What bloody number is that supposed to be?"

"Don't tell me," said Jim, "you don't have Social Security numbers here?"

"Blind me if I ever heard of any such thing!" Jim clicked his tongue sympathetically. "No wonder you thought it odd of me, not understanding the offer of your Companionship," he said. "Why, where I come from nothing can happen unless a gentleman's Social Security number is known. Naturally, I thought you were withholding yours for good reasons of your own. That's why it didn't dawn on me that you were offering me Companionship."

"But I haven't got one to withhold, dammit!" protested Sir Brian.

"Haven't got one?"

"By St. Giles, no!"

Jim clicked his tongue again.

"That's the trouble with living out in the provinces, here," Sir Brian said in an aggrieved tone. "They've probably been using these what-do-you-call-it numbers for a twelvemonth now at Court; and none of us out here have ever heard of them."

They went on a little farther in silence.

"
You've
got one, I suppose?" Brian said.

"Why—yes," Jim answered. Hastily, he delved into his memory. "469-69-9921."

"Damned fine figure."

"Well…" Jim decided he might as well pick up some credit while the opportunity existed. "I
am
Baron of Riveroak, after all."

"Oh, of course."

They rode on a little farther.

"I say," said Brian.

"Yes, Sir Brian?"

Brian cleared his throat.

"If I was to have a something-number of my own, what would you venture to say it might be?"

"Well, I don't know…"

"Well, well, I shouldn't ask it, I suppose. Puts me at a disadvantage, though." Brian turned a troubled face to Jim. "Here you tell me your number and I can't reciprocate."

"Think nothing of it," said Jim.

"I
do
think something of it, though."

"You shouldn't," Jim insisted. He was beginning to feel a little guilty in spite of himself. "I'm sure your number, if you had one, would be a very good one."

"No, no. Probably quite an ordinary figure. After all, what am I? Just an outlying knight bachelor, no chansons about me for the minstrels to sing, or anything like that."

"You underestimate yourself," said Jim, uneasily. The ploy was getting out of hand. "Of course, I wouldn't know what the official number would be; but in my country I'd guess you'd be at least a"—he had to think rapidly to count the digits in his own Social Security number—"387-22-777."

The eyes Sir Brian turned on him were as round as dinner plates.

"Really? You think so, do you? All that?"

"At least that."

"Well, well. What was it again?"

Jim slowly repeated the number he had given Brian several times over until the knight had it by heart; and they went on cheerfully together, chatting like old friends. Like Companions, in fact, thought Jim.

Brian, having gotten over his stiffness of manner, turned out to be eager to talk. Specifically, his topic of conversation was the Lady Geronde, who was apparently not only the most beautiful of women, but a collection of all the other talents and virtues as well. Over and above Geronde, however, the knight was a repository of local gossip, both bloody and salacious. Jim had never considered himself to be someone easily shocked, but what he was now hearing was startling.

He was, in fact, learning fast. His mind had been translating the language and actions of Sir Brian into the fuzzy, quasi-Victorian image of a stage Englishman that most Americans carried around in that part of their mind reserved for stock characters. Now, a closer acquaintance with the knight was destroying that particular image rather thoroughly.

To begin with, Brian was entirely physical, pragmatic and human. "Earthy" might have been a better word. The taboo areas in his cosmos were restricted to those of religion and a handful of ideals and principles. Curiously, he seemed perfectly capable of highly idealizing something as an abstract idea, and at the same time ruthlessly being honest about it as a specific reality—all without seeing any particular conflict between these attitudes. For example, Jim learned, to Brian his King was at once a majestic figure anointed by God, a ruler by divine right for whom Brian would die without question if the need arose, and at the same time a half-senile old man who was drunk half the time and could not be trusted with the more important decisions of his kingdom. The lady Geronde was somehow both a goddess on a pedestal, above and beyond the touch of gross males, and a thoroughly physical human female with whom Brian's hands were quite familiar.

Jim was still trying to fit this double view of the knight into a pattern with the other things, like intelligent dragons, talking watchbeetles and the existence of Dark Powers, which he had so far discovered in this world, when the daylight began to wane and Brian suggested they look about for a place to camp overnight.

They had left the fens well behind by this time, and had spent several hours striking at an angle northeast through the rather unpleasant wood Jim had flown over the day before and congratulated himself on not having to traverse at ground level. Happily, now, they had left it behind for a much less forbidding forest, still mainly populated by oaks and elms, but in the shape of larger specimens of these, which had killed off the more tangled undergrowth underneath them, so that the going was easier. They came at last to a small clearing by a brook, which in the last rays of the afternoon sun, filtering through the high branches of the trees, looked almost as inviting as Carolinus's property by the Tinkling Water.

"Should do us quite well, I'd think," Brian observed, cheerfully.

He dismounted, unsaddled his horse, rubbed it down with some handfuls of grass he pulled up, and left it tied on a long tether to crop its dinner from the clearing. For himself, Brian produced from his saddlebags something dark which was evidently smoked meat. For Jim, there was nothing; and, although his stomach twinged reproachfully at him, Jim could not really blame the knight for not offering to share the food. What had made a rather adequate meal for the man would have made a single, unsatisfyingly small gulp for the dragon. Tomorrow, Jim promised himself, he would find some excuse to leave Brian for a while and find a cow… or something.

He became aware that Brian was lighting a fire, something he viewed with only academic interest at first, out of his own newly discovered indifference to external temperatures. But, as the sun went lower behind the trees, its light reddened to the color of bright blood and deep shadows started forming between the surrounding tree trunks; and the fire, now blazing away heartily on the dry, fallen branches that Brian had accumulated, began to take on the appearance of the only mark of cheerfulness in the growing darkness.

"Getting chilly," observed Brian, hunching his shoulders and standing close above the fire.

He had divested himself of helmet, gloves and the plate armor from his legs, leaving only his upper body metal-covered. His hair, recovered from the pressure of the helmet, had expanded to show itself as quite a mane. It gleamed with ruddy highlights from the fire, as he stood facing the flames.

Jim drew close on the fire's other side. It would not have occurred to him to think of the night as growing chilly, but he was conscious of a sort of depression of the spirit which had come on him with the disappearance of the sun. The forest about them, which had seemed so friendly in the daylight, now began to acquire an ominous and threatening appearance as night closed in. Looking around, Jim could almost swear that the surrounding darkness was a physical entity trying to push inward upon them, only held back by the dancing light of the fire.

"Where are we?" he asked Brian.

"Lynham Woods," said Brian. He, too, looked about at the wall of night surrounding the circle of firelight. "Not such a bad place, ordinarily. But there's a difference about this night, wouldn't you say, Sir James? One gets the feeling there's something afoot out there in the dark, somewhere."

"Yes," Jim agreed, feeling a small, involuntary shudder inside him.

To his dragon-senses Brian's description was unpleasantly accurate—it did indeed feel exactly as if something was prowling out there in the woods, somewhere beyond the firelight, circling their camp and waiting for an opportunity to pounce.

"Stars," Brian commented, pointing upward.

Jim looked up between the treetops. Now that the sun was completely down, some stars were visible. No moon, but some stars. However, even as he watched, they began to disappear one by one, as if an invisible curtain was being drawn across the sky.

"Clouds," said Brian. "Well, there's one comfort. With a cloudy sky, it shouldn't get as cold here before morning as it might if the sky were clear. A clear sky and I'd have ventured to guess at a touch of frost before dawn. It's cool for this time of year."

The clouds to which Brian had referred had by this time covered all portions of the sky visible beyond the treetops. The clearing now seemed englobed in unrelenting lightlessness.

Slowly, the knight sat down by the fire and began to replace the cuisses and greaves he had earlier removed from his legs.

"What is it?" asked Jim. "What're you doing that for?"

"I don't like it," Brian said shortly. "There's something amiss this night. Whatever it is, it'll find me armed and ready for it."

He finished getting his body armor back on and went to get his helmet and lance from where he had placed them with his saddle and other gear. He drove the butt of the lance into the ground beside the fire, so that it stood point upward by his right hand, and put the helmet on, leaving the visor up.

"Let us keep facing each other with the fire between us, Sir James," he said. "That way we can watch all about us, as far as the firelight shows."

"Right," Jim replied.

They stood facing each other. After a little while a sound began, very faint and faraway at first.

"A wind," Brian remarked.

It was indeed the sound of a wind. They could hear it far off, almost as if it was hunting among the bushes and the limbs of the trees. The sound of it rose, fell, and moved from quarter to quarter, but always off in the distance. Then, gradually, it began to come closer, as if it had been quartering the forest for them and was now closing in.

Still, in the clearing, not a breath of air stirred, except that drawn in by the updraft from the dancing flames of the fire. Brian threw more of the dried branches upon the blaze.

"My special thanks to St. Giles, whose day this is," muttered the knight, "and who moved me to gather wood enough to last until dawn."