"Never sneak up on a Northumbrian wolf that way!" he growled. "You could get yourself in trouble!"
Jim forbore to point out that if he had stayed in his dragon body it was more likely to be the Northumbrian wolf who would have gotten himself into trouble, if any physical dispute had evolved.
"I didn't sneak," he said. "I simply flew in, landed, quite openly, and changed back into my human form." He made an attempt to jolly Snorrl out of his bad mood. "You surely didn't think you'd be in any danger from a naked man?"
"You're not naked as long as that sword is hanging down your back," retorted Snorrl.
Jim was about to dispute this when it occurred to him that in a sense Snorrl was right. The phrase "naked man" in medieval times could refer to someone fully dressed, but wearing no weapons. It was at least one meaning for the words; and essentially Snorrl was simply working himself out of what had evidently been a rather serious fright on seeing a dragon land almost beside him.
"So you're a dragon?" said Snorrl, now, almost as if he had read Jim's thoughts.
"I'm not a dragon," said Jim. "I'm an ordinary human being. I'm Sir James. But I'm also a magician and I can change into dragon. Haven't you ever seen a dragon before?"
"There aren't any around up here that I know of," said Snorrl, "and I'd know if there were. It gets a little cold for them in winter time; and I understand they don't like cold, though they can take it if they have to. It's those big thick bodies. They must give off heat like a cow if they're in any closed-in place like a small cave. But, as I say, there don't seem to be any around here—though I knew what you were, right enough."
"Then you should have also known that dragons don't go around hunting wolves," said Jim. "They eat cattle and other herbivores like that; they don't prey on other predators."
"I don't know what you mean by all those long words," said Snorrl. "But a Northumbrian wolf takes no chances. A wolf who takes chances is a dead wolf, sooner or later."
He broke off.
"Anyway," he went on, "you're here. This is the first of the places I was telling you about. Does it suit your purpose?"
Jim felt that he was obligated to make some show of looking the place over. Accordingly, he stopped just long enough to put on his hose and gambeson and sling the sword about his belt. Then he patrolled the perimeter of the space, looking up at the cliffs, which were undeniably unclimbable, at the woods, which were certainly thick enough for people to hide in, and finally over the cliff edge at the nearly sheer fall to the stream below. Finally, he came back to Snorrl, who had been waiting for him at the spot where they had been speaking before.
"It's almost exactly what I want," Jim said. "But you see, I want the Hollow Men fenced in against cliffs with no escape and to be able to surround all open sides by whoever we can bring to attack them. That means I need all sides to slope away and be thickly treed. This cliff here—a Hollow Man who took off his armor to become invisible might be able to get down it somehow, and escape. Our whole plan is to have a situation where none of them escape. So they'll all be killed off at once and none of them ever rise again."
"I wish you luck," said Snorrl harshly. "The cliff won't do, is that it?"
"The place is a possibility," said Jim diplomatically, "but I'd like to look at your other two spots first and see if one of them isn't more suitable."
"Very well," said Snorrl, turning away from him. "All one to me."
He trotted off into the trees.
Jim hastily got back out of his clothes, bundled them up and fastened them to the sword belt, put everything back around his neck and changed back into a dragon. The minute he did so Greywings took off in a sudden explosion of flight and started upward herself, as if the change had alarmed her. Jim leaped into the air and followed.
However, from this point on, he did not so much follow Greywings as let Greywings follow him. He was able to find Snorrl moving among the trees in the woods and simply stay above, moving from thermal to thermal as they went slightly westward and downhill until Snorrl brought Jim at last to the second site, where Jim landed and turned himself back into a human.
After dressing—because even with the warming of the day, the air was chill in early spring—Jim explored this second place. It was almost perfect. Its dimensions were slightly greater than those of the first one he had seen—there was no doubt about there being room here for two thousand standing men even in armor, and even allowing for a few on horseback. The cliffs were unclimbable, rising up from the ground on two sides; and scaling down into boulders and rubble at their ends. There was no cliff falling from any side.
Instead the slightly raised, slightly green open space was surrounded by woods. It even had a stone ledge at the foot of the cliffs rising from it, that could act as a stage or platform from which the Scottish messenger and the leaders of the Hollow Men could speak to the rest of them. The only difficulties were that there was a stream coming in a sort of near waterfall down one face of the cliff, and this formed something of a small pool at the bottom before spilling out in a small creek that flowed across the open space and into the trees. The difficulty with that creek was that the ground for several yards on either side of it was boggy, and would make for bad fighting ground when the time came. It would be easy to slip and fall in the damp surface underfoot.
The other objection to the area was that the trees immediately surrounding it were rather more sparse than they had been at the first place. Obviously, any attacking force would have to wait farther back in them, to be hidden from those gathered in the open space, particularly in daylight.
"Well?" asked Snorrl, after Jim had made his circuit.
"It's very close to being exactly what I want," said Jim, allowing the enthusiasm to sound in his voice, though he doubted whether Snorrl paid much attention to the intonations of the human speaking to him. "I could use some more trees so that it would be more thickly grown, right up to the edge here; and I could do without that stream running across it; but outside of those things, it's fine."
"Do you want to look at any more, then?" asked Snorrl.
"Yes. You said you had one more, didn't you?" answered Jim.
"That's right," said Snorrl, "and it's only a little distance off. You could walk it."
"Thanks. I'll fly," said Jim. He took up his clothes-bundle, fixed it in carrying position, and turned back into a dragon. Then he sprang into the air. Snorrl had already disappeared into the trees, but Jim located him without difficulty. Jim was also pleased to see, proceeding along with them and almost a speck in the sky, so high up she was, Greywings in attendance.
Snorrl had been right about the other location being close. It must have been less than a mile. Jim sat down in his dragon body with a thump, in the middle of what was almost a perfect circle of level earth that would be thick with groundcover in another month, but already had a few sparse ends of greenery poking out of the dark earth.
Looking around himself, he was amazed. This place was so ideal that it might have been constructed solely for his purposes.
He changed back into his human body, dressed and went to look it over. The cliffs were there with no stream and circling not merely perhaps half the open area but more like two-thirds of it. On the open sides the trees marched up small slopes right to the open ground; and they were close and thick.
He made the tour of the area feeling more pleased every minute.
"You like this one," Snorrl announced.
Now how had the wolf known? Jim asked himself. That a creature who was essentially indifferent to such obvious things as the intonation of his voice should be so perceptive was magic of another fashion.
He stared at Snorrl; but refrained from asking directly how the other had sensed his reaction. When he got back to his own castle and had a chance to talk to Aargh, he would tell Aargh what the situation had been like and perhaps Aargh would tell him how Snorrl had known. Or, knowing Aargh, perhaps not.
"I don't know how it could be better," said Jim.
"The forest is thick about it, there's no stream dividing it with soft ground on either side. In fact there's nothing wrong with it at all. Except—
It had suddenly struck him that the circle of open ground was far too small a space into which to crowd two thousand human bodies; let alone allowing for an equal number to attack them. He was almost ready to laugh at the irony of it. It was like the case of Cinderella's step-sisters in the fairy story, who could not cram their large feet into Cinderella's glass slipper, try as they might. He was faced with the same problem.
"It's too small, I'm afraid," he said to Snorrl. "There isn't room enough for all the Hollow Men here, let alone space for us to move in and kill them."
"I didn't think you'd be easy to please," growled Snorrl. "I was right. What do you expect me to do, go hunting for some more places for you to look at?"
"These were the best three, I thought you said?" Jim asked.
"That's right," said Snorrl.
"Then it's settled," said Jim. "We'll use the second place, the one you just showed me with the stream and the rather thin woods next to it. I should have known that no place would be just what I wanted."
"I could have told you that," said Snorrl. "It's a failing among you people that go on two legs, with rare exceptions like that of Liseth. Nothing really ever satisfies you."
"No," said Jim, "I am satisfied. I like and want the second place."
"Well enough," said Snorrl. He sat down for a moment to scratch with vigor with his left rear leg high on his left side, then got to his feet again and shook out his fur.
"Maybe you'll tell me now," he said. "How do you plan all this? What's to happen?"
"A good deal," said Jim. "A great deal, even before we start. First we have to capture a man who's coming from Scotland. Would you like to be a part of all this?"
Snorrl looked at him both cautiously and curiously.
"Why should I stir myself for your sake?" he said.
"Because you'd enjoy it," said Jim, who had not known Aargh for almost two years and fought alongside that oversized English wolf without learning something about wolvish nature.
"Ah, that," Snorrl answered after a moment of silence. "Perhaps, if it was something I'd like to do."
"It all depends," said Jim. "Tell me something. We humans smell, don't we?"
"All creatures smell," said Snorrl, "humans often a bit more than others. They even have some interesting smells, though they don't seem to appreciate those particular smells much themselves. The smell of rotting flesh never seemed to please any human I know."
"Well, yes," said Jim, rather wishing he was back in his dragon body, which had never seemed to notice or object to rotting flesh when finishing off the carcass of a cow found dead in a field. Dragons, he had discovered to his surprise at a time when he had been one, could be scavengers like vultures, when it came to certain types of foods like meat.
"All right, then," he said, "humans smell. Do Hollow Men smell?"
"Of course they do!" snapped Snorrl. "In fact that may be one reason they're afraid of me, since I know that they're there even when they haven't got clothes on."
"And I take it," said Jim, "that, like humans, they all smell differently."
"So I can tell one from the other?" said Snorrl. "Certainly. You don't look alike, do you? Neither do they, nor would they, if you could see them. So they don't smell alike, either."
"Good!" said Jim. "Then you're just what we're going to need. You see, we plan to intercept this man coming from Scotland with gold for the Hollow Men, so that the Hollow Men will lead an attack into English territory."
"Gold! Silver!" said Snorrl. "What two-legs can see in those cold pieces of stone I don't know."
"It's somewhat hard to explain," said Jim. "Anyway, the point is he'll be coming and he'll have gold. So, we plan to capture him. Then I'll take his place and go down there. There, I'll hand out gold to at least some of the Hollow Men. Eventually I'll hand out gold to each one of them. What we want to do is make sure that no Hollow Man comes up twice to get paid. If you're by my side, you'll be able to tell me if someone coming up is someone who's been up there before. Won't you?"
"I don't see why not," said Snorrl. "If nothing else they'll have handled the gold by that time and I can tell they've been up before that way."
Jim looked at him in surprise.
"Gold doesn't smell," he said.
"No," Snorrl grinned evilly, "but gold that's been handled by smelly people-hands does. You'll have handled it in passing it to them, then they'll have handled it, so some of your smell will be on them."
"You mean you can smell something that faint with your nose?" said Jim, astonished.
"I can if it's fresh," said Snorrl. "Give it three hours and I won't be able to tell what's what. But if you've handled gold and then they handled it, a little of your scent will have picked up—that I can smell for perhaps the next hour or so—up close, of course. Besides, I'll probably recognize the smell of most of them and remember the ones who've been up before."
"Fine," said Jim, "you can lie there beside me as I hand it out and look at them. You'll like that, won't you?"
"They'll walk around me as much as they can," said Snorrl, his yellow eyes gleaming, "but I'll know. Yes, I'll like it."
"Would you like it a little more if I use my magic to make you about double your size in appearance?"
Snorrl looked sharply at him.
"You can do that?"
"I can," said Jim.
Snorrl opened his jaws in what Jim had learned, from watching Aargh, was a wolf-equivalent of a laugh; although it was entirely silent.
"Then there's no doubt about it!" said Snorrl. "You can count on me being beside you, then—and anywhere else you need me."
Chapter Fifteen
Back at the castle, Jim went in search of Liseth, mindful of the fact that enough time had gone by so that they would have to change that first bandage on Brian's wound.
He found her at last, however, with her sleeves rolled up in the kitchen; supervising what looked suspiciously like a normally unheard-of general washing. She insisted on feeding him first before rebandaging Brian, pointing out that it was now full noon.
"Noon, already?" he said. "Why, it seems I just left here an hour or so ago and it was dawn then."
"Yes," said Liseth, "and don't think I'll quickly forget the fact that you didn't take me with you. I know I would've been a help."
"You would, indeed," said Jim, as soothingly as possible. "However, there was a certain matter of magic concerning myself and Snorrl which needed to be discussed privily between us. You'll learn of it eventually. I have to beg your forgiveness for not letting you know about it now."
"Oh, well," said Liseth. She rolled down her sleeves and turned away from the huge vat of water in which what looked like about a half-ton of assorted clothes and other laundry were floating, "if it's that, of course… but I shall remember that you promised to tell me. You must tell me first, before anyone else, if you wish to make up for leaving me behind!"
"I can only promise," said Jim, in his most courtly manner, "to do my best to tell you first."
"Well, a gentleman's—nonetheless, I shall expect it," said Liseth. "You say you need my help now to change the bandage on Sir Brian?"
"Yes, indeed," said Jim. "Particularly I want you to make sure that the cloths we use are absolutely boiled clean, and that they have been handled by clean hands only."
"I had them carried after boiling only by the four who attended Sir Brian, and that only after they had satisfied me that they had used water and soap to make their hands as clean as if they had just been born. They put the cloths to dry on a screen before the fire over there. Shall we take them up with us?"
"I'm afraid I'd better wash my hands first before handling them," said Jim.
"I can carry them," said Liseth. "Would m'Lord care to examine my hands?"
She held them up for his inspection, first palms up and then turned over. They
were indeed clean, and there was no hint of dirt under the nails.
"Never have I seen hands—" began Jim, frantically searching his mind for a compliment, and finding one just in time that would be in terms of this world, "since I first took up the practice of magic, that were so clean!"
"Oh, well," said Liseth lightly, but there were suddenly small pink spots on the skin above her cheek bones, "I'm my father's and mother's daughter, after all. I should do all things properly. Do you want to go up, then?"
"Why yes," said Jim, "and then I can eat lunch afterwards, after all."
"Oh! M'Lord, I forgot!" said Liseth. "Certainly not. Sir Brian is not in such dire straits that he cannot wait for you to break your fast, since I suspect you've eaten nothing so far today. Sit you down at the high table and it will be brought to you."
She whisked off to the kitchen; and Jim let her go, seeing no real benefit in mentioning he had eaten before leaving. He sat down at the high table, discovering he did have an appetite, anyway, after all. In the process of examining the three locations with Snorrl he had forgotten all about the food and drink he had carried with him.
He decided he must find someplace to either hide the package or get rid of it. Possibly the easiest thing sometime this afternoon would be to eat the bread and meat he had brought and empty the bottle—not necessarily down his throat, however, since wine was too plentiful in his diet in any case.
The food arrived. The same bread but different meat, and, of course, more wine. Jim polished off the food, but drank as sparingly as possible of the wine.
Still, he found when he was ready to get up from the table he had drunk quite a bit more than he would have done a year ago, on a lunch occasion like this.