The Dragon Knight

  The wood was wider than it was deep; and he found this to his advantage. He went several hundred yards off the road, to be on the safe side, and was just looking for a convenient hollow in which he could curl up, when he all but ran into an upthrust of rock.

  It was not a large upthrust. It was rather like a large, rectangular chunk of rock that had been tipped up on one end, to that a little less than a hundred feet of it stuck up through the earth. The rock itself was naked of vegetation except around its base, where some weeds and small bushes garnered like a fringe of circular beard. Its sides were not the sort that his dragon body would find easy to climb. He backed off a small distance to find a spot that would give him wing space; then spread his wings and leaped into the air, flying upward toward the top of the rock.

  He came to it almost immediately. It was no more than a hundred feet high. But it did reach up above the treetops, and it did have a relatively flat top itself—in fact, not only was there a flat space there; but one that had been somewhat dished out by time and weather, so that it would make a natural curling-up place. He proceeded to settle himself down into it.

  Comfortable in spite of the rough stone underneath him, because of his tough dragon hide, Jim gazed drowsily across the trees, adjusting his telescopic dragon vision for a view of the city of Amboise, in which lights were now beginning to glimmer. A freak of the darkness and the lights made it seem closer than it was, almost as if it lay only a short distance from the foot of the spire of rock on which he nested. He was drowsily amusing himself with the thought of lying in a place from which he essentially overlooked the city walls at close quarters, when a voice spoke from just below him.

  "What are you here for?" asked the voice.

  It was the voice of a dragon.

  Jim woke up completely and looked down. Even through the darkness he was able to make out the winged shape clinging to the outswell of the rock spire some fifteen feet below him, almost in the manner of a bat clinging to the rough wall of a cave.

  "For that matter," he answered, "what are you doing here?"

  "I’ve got a right to be here," the shadowy dragon form retorted. "I'm a French dragon. And you're in my territory."

  Jim's dragon temper, as ready to respond to a challenge as the human tempers of Brian or Giles, went up a few degrees.

  "I'm a guest in your country," he said. "I've left a passport, which was accepted by two French dragons named Sorpil and Maigra—"

  "We know all about that," the other dragon began. Jim reinterrupted this interrupter.

  "And that gives me the freedom of your country. I don't have to tell you what I'm doing here. That's my affair. Who are you to question me anyway?"

  "Never mind who I am," said the other. His or her voice was definitely more highly pitched than Jim's; and from what Jim could make out of the other's shape, he or she was also a considerably smaller dragon. "It's only natural for a French dragon to want to know what you're doing in his area."

  "It may be natural," said Jim, "but I'm afraid any French dragon that wants to know anything like that is going to have to go on not knowing. As I said, my affair is my affair—and nobody else's. 'Nobody else' includes you."

  There was a long silence. Jim waited for the other to say or do something more, telling himself that all it needed was one more prying question, and he would launch himself off the top of this rock down upon his questioner.

  But, evidently, that was not to be.

  "You'll regret not being friendly and telling us. Wait and see!" said the other finally. With a sudden flapping of wings it disappeared from the rock spire into the night.

  It took Jim a few minutes to calm down again. His dragon emotions, once aroused, did not quieten as easily as his human ones. He turned his attention back to Amboise to get his mind off the late conversation; but a trickle of adrenalin in him prodded him in the wrong direction.

  He suddenly found himself thinking of himself as a dragon perched here, not so much for a place of rest and security but as a vantage point for attack. A point from which he could swoop down into the town and carry off a small plump morsel of a george which he could bring back to this spire to feast on at leisure.

  The shocking nature of the thought broke him out of it. He had never really considered georges as being eatable by dragons; certainly not by himself as a dragon. In fact, he was sure that he could not bring himself to eat a human being. However, as a dragon he had fed on a number of freshly slaughtered, completely raw animals, including everything but the hooves and bones, and had found them very tasty indeed. He was uncomfortably sure that a normal dragon might just find a human equally eatable. The only reason, he thought, that dragons did not go around eating georges nowadays was because of the trouble such activities would produce for them.

  Above all, dragons preferred to have life as easy as possible. While they enjoyed a good fight once they were into it, it was usually too much trouble to go looking for fights. Moreover, most of them over the centuries had developed a healthy respect for what georges could do, even before the days of armed knights on horseback with lances. For one thing there were so many georges.

  Jim was beginning to feel drowsy again. This also was natural dragon behavior. Dragons liked to drink, liked to eat, and liked to sleep. In the absence of food and drink, sleep came naturally. Even as he completed the thought, Jim's eyes closed and he fell sound asleep.

  The first brightening of the predawn woke him; which was not surprising, seeing that up on this piece of rock, he had a direct line of sight to the eastern horizon, beyond the city, where the coming day's illumination was beginning to brighten the sky. Again, like all healthy dragons, he woke up all at once, not feeling the least bit sleepy, nor the least bit stiff or heavy from having spent the whole night in a curled-up position.

  He was both hungry and thirsty, but a dragon could ignore these things, being used to doing without food and drink for fairly long periods, sometimes, until supplies of either one became available.

  He flew down to the base of the rock, changed back into his human form, dressed and headed for Amboise. Some twenty minutes later he was in position just inside the first rank of trees, a little ways off the road to the left, with his eye on the gates. The waiting crowd in front of it had grown to some thirty or forty people and at least half as many carts and draft animals.

  The sun rose. It climbed higher in the sky, and the gates remained closed. Jim told himself that this was only to be expected. The guards would open the gates at their own convenience, balanced against the fact that local merchants and certain influential city dwellers might object, if potential customers or suppliers were kept from them. At some point in time the impulse not to offend their superiors would balance their natural laziness, and the gates begin to open.

  They did, at last. By this time the sun was not only up, but could be seen beyond the walls above the city itself. It was a good half hour after actual sunrise.

  With the first outswinging of one of the twin gates, Jim started off at a fast walk from the trees to the road, and down the road toward the gate. He need not have hurried too much. Both wings of the gate were fully open and the first of the waiting crowd were beginning to be processed through by the guards, before he reached the outer edge of those still waiting their turn.

  Jim had been able to give his entrance some thought before he got to this point. The answer, he had decided, was to act as much like a typical knight as possible. How would Brian or Giles act in a similar position? Not that either one of them were exactly representative of their class. They were feisty enough, but they were not quite nasty enough. Jim had decided to add a touch of nastiness to his rendition of a footsore and unhorsed knight who had been out in the open since yesterday.

  The bodies were packed fairly thickly around the gate; and a medieval bunch like this was not a crowd which someone could shove through in a twentieth-century manner, with polite murmurs of "Excuse me" and "Could I get through please?" Accordingly, he took a
dvantage of his size and weight and hit the crowd where he thought it was thinnest, rather like a football fullback hitting a wall of opposing linemen.

  "Out of my way, clods!" he roared as he plunged into them, shoulder first. There were no men anywhere near as tall as himself in the crowd, but there were a few solidly built ones, some of whom undoubtedly outweighed him. And this was a case where weight could be a factor. "You there, fellow! Attend me!"

  Those he had crashed through turned swiftly to face him. But the terms of his address, naming them clods and addressing the gateman as "fellow," caused them to fall back and give him room. The guard, who had been about to accept either his tax or his bribe from a character in flour-whitened clothes and with a mule-drawn cart behind him, turned indignantly. But he changed his attitude at the sight of Jim's clothing, plus the sword and poignant depending from his sword belt.

  "Let me through at once!" snapped Jim, almost running down the guard, who stepped back to one side obsequiously. "Your damned roads and fields broke the leg of a damn good horse and I've been out in the damn woods all the damn night! Here—let me through!"

  With the word here, he thrust a coin at the gateman. It was a silver ecu, which was far too rich a tip to be handing out in a situation like this. But it was the smallest coin he had on him at the moment; and he hoped that the overrich bribe would be taken by the guard as evidence of the fact that this gentleman, whoever he might be, having lost a horse and spent a night in the woods, was thoroughly out of temper.

  "Thanks m'Lord, much thanks!" said the gate guard, hastily swallowing the coin with his closed fist, so that it disappeared immediately from sight. He could have no idea whether Jim was a Lord or not, but there was no harm in using the term; and there might be a great deal of harm in failing to give Jim sufficient rank. Jim shouldered past him and a second later was in the streets of the city.

  Half a minute later he had turned a corner and was out of sight of the gate completely.

  He had turned into a side street which was narrow enough that he would have been able to extend his arms on either side and touch some rather unappetizing walls. It was carpeted with ordure of all kinds, animal and human, and ran between either the high sides of buildings, or walls that were solid and almost as high. Jim went down the street as far as he had to before finding a cross-street. Cross-alley would actually, he thought, have been a better term. He turned left, following the route that he believed would take him deeper into the city.

  This alley, however, wandered about, so that when he took the next left turning, he found himself still with a long stretch of alley in front of him. It was some time before he blundered back into a street that was wide enough, and cared-for enough, so that it was obviously the main street from the gate. By this time, however, he was happily out of sight of the gate and everyone at it.

  He would need information to find Sir Giles. The best way to get it would be to find a shop of any kind, and see if the shopkeeper could lend him or hire him a guide that would take him to the various inns about the town. Simple directions from the shop to the inn, Jim had learned by hard experience in the streets of Worcester and every other medieval town he had been in since, would only result in his getting lost again within fifty steps.

  Jim therefore continued on until he found a shop that made boots. Here he struck a deal with the bootmaker to hire one of his assistants. Experience had taught him to hire one of the people working in the shop, rather than somebody they whistled off the streets for him. Very often the person brought in from the streets was someone the shopkeeper had signaled to lead Jim into some kind of a trap where he could be robbed, if not murdered. But an employee usually had some value to the shop owner, and was less likely to lead Jim to such an ambush.

  Again, it was a matter of carrying off the transaction with a high hand. Jim swore luridly, pounded the corner, was rude in every way he could think of, and felt that, all-in-all, he had given a pretty good presentation of someone of gentlemanly rank who was not at all in good humor.

  This behavior signaled two things to those he was talking to, he knew. One, that at the slightest provocation he would use that sword that hung at his side. Two, that he might well have influential friends within the town, who could make things even more uncomfortable for those who had to deal with Jim than Jim himself could.

  The charade worked. Apparently the town was well aware of there being Englishmen within it who had arrived just recently; and that among these was one short Englishman with a luxuriant handlebar mustache. This upper lip adornment—in a time when nearly all knights were cleanshaven—was in itself an outstanding piece of identification.

  Sir Giles and a number of other Englishmen seemed to have come into town just lately. They were at the bigger inn in town, and overflowing that, since they had brought along a number of what the bootmaker considered to be fierce-looking servitors. So many, in fact, that most had needed to be fanned out among various barns, and even houses, to find them quarters. The bootmaker did not know any of their names; but he knew that one of the Englishmen had a very large and savage dog with him, which he had evidently brought along to guard his room and possessions.

  Not that such guarding was necessary in Amboise, the bootmaker insisted. In fact it was almost an insult to the town for the Englishman to have such a beast. On the other hand, what could you do with some great lords? Particularly great lords from—well—

  At this point, the bootmaker suddenly seemed to recollect that it was another such Englishman that he was talking to, and not a fellow Frenchman. He left the sentence hanging in the air and cursed at the apprentice for standing around, delaying the gentleman instead of taking him directly to the inn as fast as possible.

  The apprentice hastily led Jim off. He followed the youngster, still bemused by the thought that the bootmaker could seriously think that he, Jim, could seriously believe that there was no danger of robbery, even at the best inn in any town. On land as on sea, in this age, two laws overrode everything else. One was the law of personal survival. The second was the law of greatest possible gain—though the various classes wanted the gain for different reasons.

  The peasantry, the poorest of the poor, wanted gain in order to keep themselves alive. People like the bootmaker wanted gain to climb in status among their fellows. People of the gentlemanly class, from Brian and Giles clear on up to the royal heads of kingdoms themselves, wanted gain in order that they could not merely indulge their whims, but make royal gestures from a large source of funds.

  In fact the upper class, as far as Jim had been able to figure out, was to a certain extent always on stage when in public. Kings down through simple knights acted out the role that they believed God had assigned them; and, while satisfying personal desires ran a close second, the first was to appear on the world's stage as the best possible representation of what they were supposed to be.

  In effect, knights were supposed to act knightly, kings were supposed to act royally, in exactly the manner in which an actor of a later date would portray a knight or a king for the benefit of an audience which had paid to see him.

  But here they were, already at the inn, the entrance to which looked no different from any of the other holes-in-the-wall they had passed on the way, in which shops only betrayed their presence by having their doors ajar, as a signal that they were open for business.

  The door was also ajar at the inn; and Jim pushed it open and went in, without tipping the apprentice and turning him loose until he was sure he was at the right place. But this was confirmed by the innkeeper who came forward immediately to greet him—this time a man as tall as Jim, but very thin and with a mustache. It was not a proud and up-twisted mustache like Sir Giles's, but one which hung, long, thin, black, and down-pointed on each side of his wide mouth. The innkeeper established the fact that not only was Sir Giles here but so was the other knight.

  "And this other knight," demanded Jim, "what might his name and rank be?"

  "Sir Brian Neville-Sm
ythe, Your Lordship," said the innkeeper. He pronounced the title in a surprising bass voice. "They're friends it seems; and are expecting yet another friend. Would Your Lordship be the Baron James de Bois de Malencontri?"

  "I am," said Jim, and almost forgot to scowl properly as he said it, so happy he was to discover that it was Brian who was here—obviously with the men he was supposed to bring—and that both he and Giles were expecting Jim himself. "Take me to them at once."

  "Certainly," answered the innkeeper, turning toward the stairs, that in this, as in the previous inns of Jim's experience, led directly to the first floor above ground level.

  "Oh, and tip this lad for me," snapped Jim. "Add it to my bill."

  Having neatly got around the matter of having no small change with which to tip the bootmaker's assistant, Jim followed the innkeeper up the stairs, once the latter had slipped a small coin to the bootmaker's assistant and turned once more to lead Jim to his friends.

  The reunion was boisterous. Giles and Brian both welcomed Jim as if he had been a long lost brother.

  Jim had originally been a little puzzled by the tendency of people of this world to make such a large matter out of greeting someone they might not have seen for merely a day or two. He finally came to understand that under the conditions of this time and place, any two people who were parted stood a fairly reasonable chance of never seeing each other again.

  Death was a lot closer and a lot more possible here than it was in the twentieth century. Even a simple visit to a nearby town could mean encountering either accidental or willful destruction, so that the person going might never come back, at least alive.

  Jim had finally adjusted to the practice; both in the greeting, and the inevitable celebration which such occasions seem to call for. He was consequently so occupied, in the first few minutes of the welcomings of Brian and Giles, that it was not for some moments that he noticed a very large, dark-furred, four-legged body lying comfortably on its side upon the baggage that Brian had brought with him.