The Dragon and the George (28 page)

"Why didn't you pull the pegs out yourself?" Jim asked Secoh. "It's not easy, stretched out like that, I know, but any dragon—"

"They had all those bows and swords and things," said Secoh. "I'm not as brave as you are, your magnanimity. I couldn't help being afraid; and I thought maybe if I did what they wanted, they'd let me go."

He stopped biting through the thongs and cowered.

"Of course, I understand how your worship would feel. I shouldn't have called you down to land here—"

"Forget it," said Jim gruffly.

Secoh took him at his word and went back to biting through leather.

Jim made a small tour around the fallen crossbowmen. But there was nothing to be done for any of them. Those who were down were either already dead or within minutes of dying; none of them yet retained enough consciousness to realize that someone was standing over them. Jim turned away just in time to see Secoh preparing to take off.

"Wait a minute!" he snapped.

"Wait? Oh, of course—wait. I understand, your highness!" Secoh yelped. "You thought I was about to fly away. But I was just stretching the cramp out of my wings—"

"You aren't going anywhere," Jim said, "so settle down and answer a few questions. Who told you to call me Jim Eckert?"

"I already said!" protested Secoh. "The george—the knight—told me; and the Dark Ones told him."

"Hmm. And how did they catch you in the first place?"

Secoh looked unhappy.

"They—they put out a fine piece of meat," he said. "Half a large boar… lovely, fat meat, too."

A tear trickled down from the eye on the side of his head nearest Jim.

"Such lovely, fat meat!" Secoh repeated. "And then they didn't even let me have a bit of it. Not a bite! They just aimed their crossbows at me and tied me up."

"Did they say why?" Jim asked. "Did they give any reason for guessing I'd be along, so you could call me down in the first place?"

"Oh, yes, your worship. They talked about it a lot. The knight said you'd come at just this time, and after they caught you the six men he named must take you without delay to the tower; and he with the rest would catch up with them on the way."

"Catch up?" Jim frowned.

"Yes, your importance." Secoh's eyes looked suddenly a good deal shrewder than Jim had ever seen them before. "This knight was going to stay behind to lay a trap for the other george—your friend. And that was something he wasn't supposed to do: the Dark Ones had sent him out just to get you, and come right back. But he really has a terrible anger against your friend, you know, the one who goes around chasing us mere-dragons all the time. So this knight was going to catch your friend in spite of what the Dark Ones wanted—"

Secoh stopped to shiver.

"That's what's so terrible about them, these georges," he went on. "Nobody can make them do what they're told, not even the Dark Ones. They don't care for anything, just as long as they can go riding around in their hard shells and sticking their sharp horns into poor mere-dragons like me, or anyone they want to. Imagine somebody else going ahead and doing just what he wanted after the Dark Ones had given him orders!"

"I wonder where they all went when they ran off from here though?" Jim wondered.

"The knight that was here and those crossbowmen?" Secoh nodded his head back toward the mainland end of the Great Causeway. "There's a swamp off to the left there where you'd drown in a minute if you couldn't fly, your highness. But the Dark Ones showed that knight a way through it. He and his men have gone out there, and they'll be circling around to get back on the causeway behind your friends who shot all the arrows in here, just now. I know, because that's the way this knight told his men they'd surprise and take your friends after you'd been dragged off to the tower."

"That means they've cut us off from the mainland—" Jim was beginning, when he became aware that he had been listening to the sound of approaching horses' hooves for some seconds; and a moment later Brian rode into the clearing.

"James!" cried the knight, joyously. "There you are! I've been feeling seven sorts of rascal for trying to talk you into that assault on Malencontri. After you disappeared yesterday, I got to pondering and it struck me that we'd probably been counseling you against your duty; and you'd determined to go it alone, after all. Said as much to Giles, Dafydd, and Danielle; and blind me if they hadn't all been thinking along the same lines themselves. First the wolf, then you, gone. Bad omens, those, for a group of Companions, eh? So we'd already turned toward the fens here, when the wolf caught up with us last night—Hullo! Is that one of our local dragons you've got here?"

"Secoh, your mightiness!" yelped the mere-dragon, hastily. "Just Secoh, that's all. I know you well, your georgeship, and admired you from afar, many times. Such speed, such dash—"

"Really?"

"Such kindness, such gentleness, such—"

"Oh, not all that, actually—"

"I said to myself, a knight like that'd never hurt a poor mere-dragon like me."

"Well, of course," said Brian, "I would have, you know. Chopped your head off if I could have caught you, just as I would any other dragon. But I take it you're on our side now, from seeing you here with James."

"Your… ? Oh, yes sir, yes. I'm on
your
side."

"Thought so. Struck me you had the look of a fighter about you the moment I noticed you there. Lean, hard-muscled, deadly—not like most of the other local dragons I've seen."

"Oh yes, your knighthood. Lean—"

Secoh, who had half spread his wings as if he was about to try leaving once more, broke off, checking himself in midmotion to stare at the knight. Brian, however, had turned back to speak to Jim.

"Others'll be here in a minute—" he had begun.

"Wrong," said a sour voice. "I've been here since before you rode in. But I was busy tracking our enemies. They went off into a swamp by the causeway. I could have tracked them there, too, but decided to come back and see how Gorbash was. Are you all right, Gorbash?"

"Fine, Aragh," said Jim, for the wolf had stepped into the clearing as he was talking.

Aragh looked at Secoh and grinned evilly.

" 'Hard-muscled' and 'deadly'?" he said.

"Never mind all that now, Sir wolf," said Brian. "Important thing is we're all together again, and the next step calls for a bit of planning. As soon as—Ah, here they are, now."

Dafydd, Giles and Danielle, together with the rest of the outlaws, had in fact been coming into the clearing from the moment Aragh had appeared. The outlaws were already moving around the fallen forms of the crossbowmen, retrieving their arrows. Dafydd paused in the center of the clearing and looked about.

"Carried my shaft off, he must have," the bowman said to Jim. "Was he wounded, then?"

"That was your arrow that hit Hugh de Bois? I should have known it," said Jim. "It went through part of his armor but not through the rest."

"It was a blind loose," said Dafydd, "with a dropping shaft because of the trees between us. Yet I am not happy hearing that I put point in him but did him no harm."

"Peace!" Danielle said to him. "With the intercession of Saint Sebastian, you couldn't have done more from that distance on such a shot. Why do you keep pretending you can do the impossible?"

"I am not pretending, whatever. As for 'impossible,' there is no such a thing as an impossible, but only a thing the doing of which has not yet been learned."

"Never mind that now, I say," Brian interrupted. "We're back together with Sir James and there's a decision to be made. Sir Hugh and his crossbowmen, having escaped us here, have taken refuge in a swamp. Should we follow them, post a force to hold them from returning, or press on to the tower, leaving them behind us? For myself, I would not willingly leave enemies free to follow upon my rear guard."

"And they aren't just in the swamp," said Secoh loudly and unexpectedly. "By this time they're back on the causeway."

Everyone turned to look at the mere-dragon; who wavered and seemed on the verge of cringing under so much attention, but ended by straightening his spine and staring back at them.

"What's this?" said Giles.

"Hugh de Bois and his men are righting under the orders of the Dark Powers in the tower," said Jim. "Secoh here tells me the Dark Ones told Hugh how to get through the swamp safely and back on the causeway. That means they're on firm ground somewhere between us and the mainland."

"No argument, then," said Brian. "The Tower before and those crossbowmen behind are no situation to wish for. Let's turn and go back to meet them."

"I don't know…" said Jim. There was an uneasiness in the pit of his stomach. "The rest of you go meet them, if you think that's best. I've got to get on to the Loathly Tower. Somehow, I've got the feeling time's running out."

"Ha?" said Brian, and became suddenly thoughtful. "That was the feeling that came on me when I found you gone yesterday. In some sort, I've got it with me even now. Perhaps best you and I together go on toward the tower, James, and to whatever awaits us there. The rest can hold here and deal with Sir Hugh and his men if they try to pass."

"I'm going with Gorbash," said Aragh.

"And I, too," said Dafydd, unexpectedly. He met the eyes of Danielle. "Do not look at me so. I said the taking of castles was not my work—nor was it, at all. But when, in Castle Malvern, the flames all bent and there was no wind, a coldness came into me. That coldness is still there, and my mind is that it will never leave me until I seek out and help to slay its source."

"Why, you
are
a knight," said Danielle.

"Mock me not," said the Welshman.

"Mock? I'm not mocking you. In fact, I'm going with you."

"No!" Dafydd looked over her head at Giles. "Make her stay."

Giles grunted.

"You make her stay," said the older man.

Danielle put her hand on the knife at her belt.

"No one makes me stay—or go—or anything else," she said. "In this hap, I'm going."

"Giles," Brian put in, ignoring her, "can you hold Sir Hugh and his men, alone?"

"I'm not quite alone…" Giles said, dryly. "I have my lads here. And the Malvern Castle stalwarts! Sir Hugh and his troop will pass into Heaven before they pass us by."

"Then let's go on, in God's name!"

Brian remounted his horse and started down the causeway. Jim fell in beside the large white charger.

"…Any more objections?" Danielle was challenging Dafydd.

"No," the bowman answered, sadly. "Indeed, a part of the cold feeling was that you would be with me when the final time came. As the shadows point, the day will wend. Let us go, then."

The two of them fell in behind Jim and Brian, and their voices dropped to confidential tones, not so low but that Jim could not have used his dragon-ears to overhear what they were telling each other, but low enough so that he could give them the privacy of ignoring them. Aragh came trotting up on the other side of him from Blanchard.

"Why so glum, Sir knight, and Gorbash?" he said. "It's a fine day for slaying."

"In the matter of this tower and those within it," said Brian, shortly, "we go against something that touches our souls."

"The more fool you, for having such useless, clogging things," Aragh growled.

"Sir wolf," said Brian, grimly, "you understand nothing of this, and I'm in no mind to instruct you."

They continued to travel in silence. The air stayed windless and the day seemed hardly to alter with the ordinary movement of time. Gradually the horizon, where land met sea, began to be visible as a gray-blue line ahead of them, still some miles distant. Jim looked up at the sky, puzzled.

"What time is it, do you think?" he asked the knight.

"Shortly before prime, I should say," responded Brian. "Why?"

"Prime…?" Jim had to pause to remember that prime was noon. "Look how dark it's getting!"

Brian glanced around and also raised his gaze skyward before looking back down to Jim. To the west, above them, although the sun still floated in an apparently cloudless sky, a sort of darkness of the air itself seemed to dull the colors of heavens and landscape. Brian looked sharply to his front.

"Hullo!" he said. "See ahead, there!"

He pointed. Jim looked. Before them the causeway now held only an occasional tree or clump of bushes intermixed with the tall fenland grass. Somewhere up there—it was impossible for the eye to measure exactly how distant—the grass was being pressed down along what seemed to be a sharp line extending across the causeway and out into the fen on either side. Beyond that line everything looked coldly gray, as if seen under a chill and winter sky.

"It's moving this way," said Aragh.

It was.

It took a moment or two of watching for Jim to make it out, but by watching the grass bend and rise again it was possible to discover that the line, whatever it might be, was creeping slowly forward. It was as if some heavy, invisible fluid slowly and heavily flooded outward along the causeway, overwhelming the meres and islands of the fens. Jim felt a slow chill mounting his spine as he watched.

Instinctively, Jim and the knight came to a halt as they watched; and Aragh, seeing them stop, also halted. He sat down now and grinned at them.

"Look up, and west," he said.

They looked. For a second Jim's hopes bounded upward at seeing what he thought was a dragon shape about four hundred feet above the causeway, soaring in their direction. But then a difference gradually registered upon him. This was no dragon, or anything near the size of a dragon, although it was too large to be any soaring bird. It looked to be half again the wing-spread of an eagle, but it had an odd, heavy-headed silhouette that gave it a vulturous look. Jim squinted hard into the sky, but the strange darkness of the air baffled him in his efforts to make out the flying shape's detail.

It was coming straight for them, gliding. All at once, as the flying shape grew closer, Jim began to resolve the features of that odd, bulky head. He soon saw it clearly—and his vision blurred, refusing to accept what his mind recorded. It was a huge, dun bird—all but the head. Its head was the head of a woman, her pale face staring forward and down at Brian and himself, her lips parted, showing pointed white teeth.