Matthew, having arranged his men in a peculiar pattern that made no sense at all to Ted, came up to him and smiled the smile of a parent who was about to take you in for a tetanus booster because you could not remember what you had stepped on.
“Hast been told of shape-shifters?” said Matthew.
They were always harder to understand when they got excited or worried. “I don’t think so,” said Ted.
“To kill them once sufficeth not; thou must kill each of their shapes.”
“How many do they have?” asked Ted, saw the face of the scholar begin to overtake Matthew’s soldierly mask, and added quickly, “Generally?”
“Seven or nine,” said Matthew.
“Great.”
“The spies say there are many.”
“Great,” said Ted, and was immediately sorry. This wasn’t Matthew’s fault.
Matthew looked down at him without anger. His fair skin was already red with the heat. “I wish for my books also,” he said softly.
Ted found it easy to smile at him. This was what Patrick would call a lovely irony. The last thing Ted wished for was his books. He was in one of his books, in the most exciting chapter of all, and wished earnestly to be—where? Not back at the Barretts’, being polite and watching television. Not even on the Pennsylvania farm, playing at war in the meadow. He was extremely frightened; but while he wished he was somewhere else, he could not think where.
“All may yet be very well,” said Matthew, as if he wished it were something better.
“My lord,” said one of his men, in the tone of somebody asking for the salt. “They come.”
The battle was not like a riot. Ted could not see what in the world he was doing, nor very much of what anyone else was trying to do to him.
Matthew’s carefully laid-out pattern disintegrated within ten minutes. In that time, three squat scaled things came at Ted, who swung at them all and missed, and were dispatched by Matthew.
“Aim lower!” shouted Matthew. He was two feet away and Ted could barely hear him. The din was unbelievable, worse than the tornado that had flattened the old barn three years ago. It had that huge rattling sound like a train, compounded with the sound of six hundred three-year-olds beating on pots with spoons, shrieks, growls, and hisses as of a record-breaking cat fight, and other screams that were like nothing Ted had ever heard and that obliterated instantly what little levity he had left in him.
He swiped the sword at another scaled creature, obediently aiming lower, and succeeded in changing it into an enormous snake. He managed to cut off this one’s head, but not with any of the moves so painstakingly taught him by Randolph. He used the good, solid motion his mother had shown him when he demanded to be allowed to chop wood.
The snake fell into two pieces and the churned sand around it darkened with green. Somebody else must have killed it several times already, or else the Dragon King was using cut-rate monsters.
“Edward!” yelled Matthew.
Ted stopped staring and backed up hastily while Matthew killed the wolf that had sprung at him. Matthew actually did use a fencing move, except that he had altered it by—The wolf disintegrated quietly into a shower of stones, Matthew shouted again, urgently, and Ted stopped thinking.
Once he had cleared his mind, the sword seemed to come to life; or more likely, that undercurrent of knowledge from Edward was able to work its way up and direct his arm. Every time he tried to analyze what he was doing, he missed his aim and had to be rescued by Matthew. After the third rescue, Ted stopped trying to analyze anything. The day grew hotter. What Ted remembered best of the morning was just the acute discomfort of sun and sweat and thirst and the irritating way his helmet-strap rubbed his ear.
Fence found him at noon, said six short words which disposed of the snaky thing he was fighting, and made him come back to camp and have something to eat. Laura brought it to him, staring at his sword and clothes.
“Who’s winning?” asked Ted through a mouthful of dust. It was the first thing he had said since, “Look!”
Fence shrugged, scattering sand and debris from his shoulders. Thin in the background against the vast silence of the desert the noise of the battle went on. Ted felt a reluctance to go back to it akin to the reluctance one has to go on hiking after a rest stop. He felt torpid. Fence got up and went away.
“Where’s Ellie?” Ted asked Laura.
“Washing bandages,” said Laura to the ground.
“You’ll stop her, won’t you, if she tries to go fight?”
“Agatha won’t let her,” said Laura, but this seemed to have been the right thing to say. At least she looked at him.
“She’s too quick for Agatha,” said Ted, and Laura smiled at him.
Fence came back with pen and paper and a writing-board. “The enemy’s sorcerers being for the moment discomposed,” he said, “and Conrad having the soldiers well in hand, ’tis time for thy challenge to the Dragon King.”
“What?”
“Who hath conducted thy education?” said Fence, despairingly.
“You can’t mean challenge the Dragon King to single combat?”
“Thou needst not fight thyself,” said Fence. “Thou hast a champion, my lord.”
“Well, who?”
“I for the arcane, Randolph for the mundane.”
“Great,” said Ted, but he took the materials. In the end Fence, having explained that the single combat was to spare any more slaughter than had already taken place, and having failed to explain why it was not issued before any slaughter had happened, had to dictate the letter to him. He wondered what Fence would think of the Roman alphabet, but Fence, scanning the paper when Ted had done, seemed not to think it strange. He went off to arrange for its delivery.
“Laurie,” said Ted, “do you remember anything about a challenge?”
“Only once or twice,” said Laura. “We had to stop having the single combat after you stuck Patrick in the shoulder with the branch, because the Dragon King got to choose the weapon, and Patrick wouldn’t choose anything smaller. And then for a while we said that Edward gave the challenge, but the Dragon King didn’t care about honor so he refused it. And then it seemed dumb to give it if we couldn’t have the fight, so we just stopped.”
“But nothing about a king’s champion?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Oh, well,” said Ted, “I should give up expecting things.”
“That’s easy,” said Laura. “It’s the unexpected things that are the trouble.”
“Have you been seeing things again?”
“No. But there was one I forgot to tell you.” And she told him about the dragon burning the Secret House, and about the man with the book, reading about the dragon burning the Secret House, that she had seen on the steps leading to the enchanted armory below Fence’s tower.
“Belaparthalion,” said Ted. “I’ve heard that before.”
“They did a song about it the other night. And Fence said Belaparthalion was the King of the Dragons.”
“No, before that. I’ve got it. At the council after Fence came back. Andrew said he couldn’t accuse Fence of treachery because anybody could have told somebody something, I forget who or what. And Fence said not just anybody could, and he asked Andrew if Belaparthalion had honored us with his presence.”
“Huh,” said Laura.
“And that’s not all. Randolph and Belaparthalion had to be raised or consulted or something before the coronation. But we had the coronation all right, and there certainly wasn’t a dragon there. I think that’s what he said.” Ted scowled. “Yes, that’s right. He said that we had to wait for Chryse and raise Belaparthalion.”
“Chryse?” said Laura.
“What’s the matter?”
“I know Chryse; it’s a unicorn; I talked to it the day of the Hunt.”
“You what?”
“That’s why I started telling you all these things I see; Chryse said to.”
“If I’d known that I wouldn’t
have waited so long to tell Fence about them,” said Ted. “We’d better do that right away.”
Lord Randolph, looking as if someone had emptied a flour sack over his head, came back to them and sat down heavily upon a stump. “Thy challenge hath been delivered,” he said. “Stay yet a while for the answer.”
“Where’s Fence?” said Ted.
Randolph’s mouth twisted. “Battling some kitchen-wizard. Better he left such work to his apprentices.”
Ted and Laura looked at one another. Ted shrugged, and Laura shook her head.
“What do you know about visions?” Ted asked Randolph.
“More than I care to,” said Randolph.
“Well, Laurie’s been having them.”
Randolph looked at Laura, who looked at his foot.
“Of what nature?”
“If I look at a light or a fire, or something reflecting off something, then I see things.”
“What manner of things?”
Laura, sounding as if she were reciting a list of the principal exports of Brazil, reeled off the things she had seen. Ted noticed that she did not mention the sight of him covered with blood on a field of battle.
“All the stars in heaven,” said Randolph, staring. “First that, and now the flute. Child, what art thou?”
“What do they mean?” said Laura, her voice quavering.
“Thou hast seen naught bearing on this present battle?”
“No,” said Laura, firmly. Ted opened his mouth and closed it again. Maybe she had a good reason.
“We must tell Fence of this, when all is done,” said Randolph, “and he can tell thee, better than I, what these things purport.” He looked thoughtfully at Laura, who appeared ready to cry. “Thou art safer having them than not,” he said, and pushed a loosening ribbon back up on one of her braids. Ted, who had heard Agatha scolding Laura for doing that very thing instead of retying the bow, grinned.
A page came up calling Randolph’s name, and he excused himself to them and went off.
“Why didn’t you—” began Ted.
“Because we can’t tell him we know you’ll be okay, and he’d just worry, or not let you go back.”
“Which might not be such a bad thing,” said Ted.
“Don’t you want to finish the story?”
“Good God!” said Ted. “Doesn’t anybody but me take any of this seriously? Why should I want to get killed and go to the land of the dead?”
Laura looked at him soberly. Her braids, as well as losing their ribbons, were coming undone, and her face was dirty. “Is it really awful?” she asked him.
“How should I know. I’ve never been there.”
“No, I mean the battle.”
“I don’t know,” said Ted, slowly, “there isn’t time to think about whether it’s awful.”
“Because the people we’re taking care of, some of them are hurt, and it is awful; but most of them act more like they’re crazy. They sound like we did in that grass, yelling about things that aren’t there.”
“I guess the mundane part is doing better than the arcane.”
“What?”
“The unmagic part of our army is doing better than the magical part.”
“So Fence will have to fight the challenge?”
“I don’t know.”
They sat in silence until Randolph came back with a message from the Dragon King. Ted could not read it, but it was clear from what Randolph said that the challenge had been refused, and not politely.
“Well,” said Ted, handing his cup to Laura and standing up, “I guess I should get back.” You sound like an office worker, he told himself.
Randolph looked at him thoughtfully and came with him without a word. From a distance, the battle looked different. The army of the Secret Country appeared to have driven the Dragon King’s some way back into the desert and seemed to be herding the Dragon King’s soldiers in the direction of a great outcropping of rock that stood up above the sand like a spoon in a bowl of cornmeal mush. For somebody who had been able to choose his ground, the Dragon King was not doing very well. But no; he had not been able to choose his ground, because Fence had gotten here first.
Close up things were the same as ever, except that it was hotter now and everything seemed to move much more slowly.
Ted had been dimly aware, in the morning, that Matthew was saving him from any number of unpleasant fates. But now he could examine every stroke. Randolph was much faster than either he or Matthew was, and, obviously, much faster than most of the enemy, too. Ted felt a sudden acute fear for Patrick, with no one to protect him and less reason to fight well. But someone came at him, and there was no more time for thought.
The monsters had dwindled. It was mostly men now. The sword was more use against them, and Edward’s knowledge in the back of Ted’s mind grew stronger. Ted put the sword through the face of the third person who attacked him, and stared horror-struck at the result.
“Young fool!” said Randolph, pulling him behind a rock. “An he were but a little quicker, such a stroke had left thee open to be gutted.”
Ted, the image of the man he had killed still before his eyes, looked away from Randolph’s wrathful, dusty face to what he had thought another rock, saw that it was someone who had in fact been gutted, and threw up.
“I know,” said Randolph, offering him a filthy rag with which to wipe his mouth, “but ’twill do thee no good neither to make thyself weak and dizzy.” He hauled Ted to his feet. “This is no time to stand chattering. Guard thyself better in future.”
They came out from behind the rock again and found themselves in the midst of a mixed group of Mallows and Peonies. The men themselves were filthy, their helmets scratched and dented and covered with sand, their sashes slashed and thick with a mud composed of dust and blood rather than water. But on each helmet and each sash the little embroidered flower shone clear and clean. The badges must be magical. Ted thought of all those women, warriors and counselors in their own right, and probably sorcerers too, sitting in High Castle sewing because the ruler was a man. It seemed a very odd way to run a country.
He shook his head sharply and tried to attend to what was going on. They were in a little pocket of quiet, but the sound of the battle was still immense. One of the Peonies wore a yellow feather and was talking so fast to Randolph that Ted could not understand him. He plucked the nearest Mallow by the sash.
“Please, what is it?”
“Conrad,” said the young man. His look at Ted was compounded of curiosity, reluctance, sympathy, and speculation. “He’s sore hurt.”
“Oh, God,” said Ted. He stood very still and did not try to remember whom the game had killed. Then he took three steps and stood as close to Randolph as he could get.
“I will serve better where I am,” said Randolph to the messenger. “Do you find Jerome—and you, Stephen, go as quickly as you may to the camp and bring Agatha. I weary of this waste.”
“Aye, my lord,” said the messenger, a little dubiously, and made off into the desert.
Stephen, the young man whom Ted had asked what was going on, frowned, looked at Ted, looked back at Randolph, and followed the messenger.
“Randolph,” said Ted, in a tone of voice he had not known he possessed. “Go where you’re needed.”
The hovering Mallows and Peonies melted away from around them as cats leave the room when people began to quarrel. Randolph’s green eyes regarded Ted calmly from out of his sweat- and dust-striped face.
“I am there now,” said Randolph. “Use me while yet you may.” And he caught Ted by the wrist and pulled him toward the retreating Peonies. A yelling crowd of little pale men in red rose up suddenly out of the rocks, and it was not possible to argue. Ted gave his mind back to Edward’s impulses and let the sword do what it would.
Laura watched Ted and Randolph walk away, and put the cup down on the ground. She thought of the coronation, of Claudia and the cellar, of Ted in the land of the dead, where he did not want
to go after all, and of Ellen grumbling and fingering her sword-belt as she washed the bloody bandages. She drew the stolen sword from its scabbard. It blazed like a lightning bolt even in the bright air before the desert. The prickling previously absent shot up her arm and shoulder, and suddenly she felt that she knew all about fighting.
“I’ll show you,” she said to all of them, and went after Ted and Randolph.
The shrieking cacophony of the battle would have frightened her into going back, had it not seemed to have an almost magnetic effect on the sword. Laura had to run to keep it from pulling her arm out of joint; it was like being run away with by a very large, energetic, and invisible dog whose leash you held. The sword did not seem to care whether there was a path for Laura, as long as the space it had to go through was clear; but she managed to keep her feet until it zipped over a rock almost as tall as she was, which caught her painfully in the chest and left her breathless.
“Wait!” croaked Laura. The sword, more obedient than such a dog, promptly stopped pulling, although it quivered in her hand.
“What are you after?” said Laura; she could hardly hear herself in the din, nor see more than a few yards for the dust.
But in those few yards she saw more than enough. Ted and Randolph were battling five or six very tall men with braided yellow hair, and bare chests, leather trousers, and high boots. For a moment Laura thought everything would be all right, seeing Randolph deal three of them wounds that certainly looked as if they ought to be mortal.
But as each man went down he blurred and wavered and became a small dark woman in leather armor; and as those were injured they turned into large fox-like creatures; and when they crumpled up bloodily they became inky shadows with red eyes, hugging the ground. Ted’s and Randolph’s swords went into them and came out smoking, but the shadows seemed none the worse for that.