"Send for Enna," said Angie coldly. "She will know what to pack."
"See to it," said Sir Brian, nodding at a man-at-arms, who immediately turned and left, through a side-passage doorway.
"There," said Sir Simon, "you see how smoothly things go when we are all agreed?"
He helped himself to more wine.
"Damme if I'd sit at table with you, if I had not been here before you," said Brian.
"I believe Sir Brian is not yet fully understanding of the situation. Perhaps we should put the shackles on them all now, to save time."
"Shackles!" Brian surged to his feet. Evidently he had been struggling with the thongs about his wrist and either broken them, or wetted them with his own blood to the point where the rawhide stretched. At any rate, his hands came around free in front of him, with cord still dangling from one torn wrist, and he went with hands alone for the throat of Sir Simon. It took five of the men-at-arms to stop him before he could reach the other knight.
"Lack-a-dayl" said Sir Simon, shaking his head. He had not moved an inch.
"I am afraid the grief of being arrested has addled Sir Brian's wits. Shackle him first, and well; but then the rest must be also fitted with irons—even the Lady when we are a-horseback, and whoever is traveling with her as maid. We must not waste much more time here. There is still a full day before us. Move!"
The last word came out like the crack of a whip. Two men ran up the length of the Hall and out the double doors into the courtyard.
Jim realized that for himself, Angie, Dafydd, and Brian, there was no more time at all. Neither Hob nor Carolinus could help. He wondered what Sir Simon had done with his Malencontri men-at-arms—and the other servants. Not that a dozen men-at-arms could take on this troop. Even with some sent on errands, there were still almost thirty of them in the Great Hall, all weaponed and wearing the light armor of ordinary medieval foot-soldiers.
Jim was beginning to feel desperate. Usually, in a tight spot, his mind came up with some idea or solution to the situation. He had never missed his magic before the way he was missing it at this moment, in the Hall of his own Castle.
Like him, Brian and Dafydd were tied up and helpless. No one could offer even a hope of rescue—
Or—wait a minute!
There was still himself. A blessing took magic away only from humans; it did not affect the limited, in-born magic of Naturals.
Only yesterday, down in the Throne-cave of the Gnarly King, he had been able to use the power that let him change himself into a dragon, despite the fact that he no longer had the magic power controlled by the Accounting Office. It was more than possible, it seemed to him now, that that same power—akin to the in-born powers of such as Naturals—might still be available to him.
But, he was thinking when he ought to be acting. If he changed into his dragon form now, these bonds they had him tied with would snap like threads—he had lost whole suits of clothes in the early days when he had changed into a dragon, before he got control of the change process magically. But in any case, once free as a Dragon…
No—it was an attractive thought, but not practical. He might scare the liver and lights out of the men-at-arms, though less possibly out of the knight; but if that many-armed men really set about him in this small Hall where he had no room to take to the air, they would be bound to win.
He wouldn't be able to rescue Angie and the rest immediately on changing. The best he could hope for would be to get away, and then come back with enough strength to handle them. What he needed was a plan that would take advantage of his becoming a dragon—after he had supposedly been stripped of his ability to make magic.
He could certainly recruit the young dragons from Cliffside to come back with him, once the men with their prisoners were out of the Castle and in the open where they were approachable from all sides. Something might be done under those conditions. The trouble was that the young dragons would go through the motions of attack, but not actually fight for him—and he dreaded to think of what the parental dragons would say, if they heard that he had deliberately taken their children into battle with georges—which even the strongest of adult dragons avoided nowadays.
He thought hard, but nothing else came to mind. Well, at least he could probably make his escape, follow them from the air, and maybe find some other help.
There were other possible sources of help—for instance, in Brian's rather tottery set of servants and few men-at-arms. Geronde had a solid group at Malvern Castle, and there were also Giles o' the Wold and his men, off in their forested lands. The problem would lie in finding them all and getting them here in time to be of any use—he himself could not afford to be gone long enough that Sir Simon and his party could get away.
Asking any of those people to take armed action against the King's men, would be unfair—and bloody. It would be better if he could find some way to scare the men-at-arms into abandoning their prisoners.
Sir Simon would be a separate problem. Jim had been in the fourteenth century long enough now to know that the other man—whatever his other defects of character—would not be one to panic or run from a fight.
But that was enough thinking for now. He turned to look at Angie, only a couple of feet from him, and moved his eyebrows up and down, slowly and deliberately, several times. She nodded slightly and he knew she understood. He looked back at the doorway, and judged its distance. Two long leaps, if his wings helped him to be air-borne a little on each one, should see him to the doorway. He was just about to make his dragon-change, when a roar stopped him.
It was a sound from many human throats at the same moment. On the instant, the two big doors of the entrance slammed inward; and from the courtyard outside and all the other entrances into the Hall, poured a mass of people.
He knew every one of them, but it took him a moment to realize they actually were what he was seeing. They were the Castle's servants, led by the full dozen of Malencontri's men-at-arms, now very dirty—they must have been taken prisoner and thrown into Malencontri's dungeons, which were simply pits in the earth, he thought dazedly—but all with their swords; and all the servants were armed with something capable of doing damage.
They could not have looked more savage if they had erupted out of the Stone Age. There was the Blacksmith, with a heavy hammer in each large fist and what was left of his teeth bared in his unshaven face. There was May Heather, carrying on her shoulder a clumsy battle-axe, her favorite weapon. She had first carried one against Jim himself, not knowing him in his dragon body; this one she carried with less difficulty, now that she was several years older.
All the rest had something. Mistress Plyseth was waving a long toasting-fork with two very nasty-looking tines on the end, that perhaps could slip right through links of chain mail into the body of its wearer.
For a split second, Jim stared at them. His heart had leaped with hope at the first sight; now it sank in horror. What they were doing was suicidal. This was a wilder thing than he had ever imagined, an impossible attempt. For all that there were twice as many of them as of Sir Simon's men-at-arms, they did not stand a chance of winning against properly armed and experienced soldiers, men used to fighting as a unit. Perhaps they had been carried away by all the stories and ballads about Jim's adventures and heroic deeds, to the point where they thought they could be heroes, too.
"STOP!" shouted Jim, striving to make his voice sound above the noise they were making. "Stop immediately! Stop this, now! Do you hear me? I SAID STOP!"
Their roar faded, like the tail-end of a long thunder-roll, and finally died. They came to a stop and ended up standing, glaring across perhaps five to ten feet of space at Sir Simon's men-at-arms, who glared back, not at all averse to chopping up this civilian crowd and knowing just how they would go about it.
In this interesting moment of silence, the two halves of the large front door of the Hall banged open once more, and in walked Secoh, the mere-dragon.
Secoh had been a Companion of Jim and
the rest at the fight against the Dark Powers at the Loathly Tower. Since then he visited now and again, when not acting as a sort of combination storyteller-leader-and-idol of the younger dragons at Cliffside.
Now, he waddled down the aisle between the two long, lower tables of the room—walking being an awkward, if perfectly practicable, way of traveling for dragons. Sir Simon's troop stared at him in astonishment.
A dragon walking was something that they undoubtedly never imagined. An heraldic dragon rampant, possibly, on someone's shield, or a picture of a dragon dying at the point of St. George's sword; possibly even a dragon seen flying ominously overhead—but never a dragon stumping toward them like this.
They got out of his way. Mere-dragons were no more than three-quarters the size of normal dragons, such as those of Cliffside, but in the ceilinged Hall Secoh loomed large enough to make anyone cautious. The servants had already made way for him, and now the men-at-arms drew aside also, without a word, parting before him like the Red Sea before the Israelites.
"M'Lord!" called Secoh in his deep dragon-voice, halting before Jim at the High Table. With Jim seated on the dais and Secoh sitting on his haunches on the Hall floor below, their heads were more or less on a level. With dragonish single-mindedness, he ignored everybody else who was present. "Word just came to Cliffside you were back, so I came right away. M'Lord, can you tell me—have you seen a youngster from the Cliffside Caverns by the name of Garnacka, recently? He calls himself just Acka, mostly."
"Yes," said Jim. "He came up to me when I was flying a few days back. I told him to go back to Cliffside."
Secoh let out a huge puff of relief.
"Thank you, m'Lord!" he said. "I feel so much better. Was he a bother to you? I told them all very strictly they were never to bother you. But he's a very active young dragon, and Caraga—his mother—wanted me to find out if he'd bothered you. Of course, they all want to."
"He wasn't really a bother," said Jim.
There was something ridiculous about sitting here with his hands tied behind him, carrying on this conversation with Secoh. He was saying the first thing that came into his mind, while his wits scrambled for some way he could turn this unexpected development to his own benefit.
Right now, Secoh was not so much a potential help as an impediment. He was blocking the way Jim had planned to take out of the Hall in a couple of leaps. Clearly Secoh, who was so used to Jim's being in control of things here, could not imagine for a moment Jim might not be so now.
"No, not what you'd call a bother," said Jim. "In fact, in a way he was even useful."
"Useful?" There was something very like a tinge of jealousy in Secoh's voice, and his head came forward on his neck as he peered narrowly at Jim.
"Well, you know, as much as someone that young could be," said Jim. "You'd have been much more useful, for example, if it had been you there."
"Why didn't you call me?"
"I'm sorry," said Jim, "but it was just that he saw something on the ground and told me about it, and I needed to get back to the Castle right away. There wasn't time, and it wasn't worthwhile calling you just then."
"Oh," said Secoh. "Well… I quite understand, m'Lord. I understand. You know, if you ever want me, a word will bring me to you—though you may have to use your magick if you want me there immediately."
"I know that, Secoh. In this case it just happened that Acka was there, and mentioned seeing these people to me. But as I say, in any real need I'd have called you instead."
"Well, thank you, m'Lord," said Secoh, looking down modestly. "It's good of you to tell me that."
Jim was running out of small talk to keep Secoh in play, though his audience, both local and visiting, seemed to be fascinated. Happily, it appeared Secoh was ready to go on carrying the conversation himself, if necessary.
"While I'm here, m'Lord," he said, "would it be all right for me to see Carolinus? The word that reached us at Cliffside was that he had been through a very hard time because of being the prisoner of some gnomes—"
"Not gnomes," said Jim rapidly, seizing on the first opportunity to interrupt him. "Gnarlies—"
"Well, I just thought I'd look in for a moment and pass on the sympathy of the Cliffside dragons, as well as my own. We all love Carolinus. Besides, he's our own Mage, so to speak, living at the Tinkling Water real close here. I'd just say 'hello,' wouldn't wear him out or anything. He's just upstairs, isn't he? I could go out and fly up to the top of the Tower and walk down to him."
"No, no," said Jim. "No, he's not up there—and besides, now wouldn't be a good time anyway. I'll pass the word along—"
But it was too late. Sir Simon was already talking to some of his men-at-arms.
"You six," he said pointing, "up in the tower with you. Search it from top to bottom. Father"—he turned to the priest—"you go with them. If there's a Mage up there, I want him blessed immediately, even if he's unconscious. We don't want to take any chances with a Magickian of that rank."
The priest and the six men-at-arms, clearly glad to be given an excuse to leave the vicinity of this walking dragon, literally ran out.
"Hell's bells!" said Jim; and was just about to turn himself into a dragon in a desperate attempt to reach Carolinus before the men-at-arms and the priest did—even if he had to knock Secoh over in the process—when he felt his bonds drop away from his wrists. He saw from the change in Brian's face and Angie's that theirs had also gone. Dafydd had preserved an unchanged countenance, but Jim was pretty sure that his hands were now free.
"Sit still, James!" snapped a familiar, if feeble, voice; and Jim turned his gaze to see Carolinus, sagging rather than standing at the far end of the dais—supported on one side by the Earl of Cumberland and on the other by another familiar figure, wearing black monastic robes with a large jeweled cross hanging from his neck and a sizable amethyst ring on a powerful finger.
"I must sit down," said Carolinus feebly, and the two big men helped him into one of the padded and backed chairs at the High Table. He sank into it with a sigh of relief. "Simon, bring that priest back here right away!"
Simon Lockyear stared at him blankly.
"You heard him, damn your liver and eyeballs!" roared Cumberland. "Get that priest back!"
"Yes, m'Lord," said Sir Simon, starting like someone coming out of a trance. "Forgive me, m'Lord, but I don't—I don't understand—"
"Nobody needs you to!" growled Cumberland. "Have I ever been in the habit of having my orders questioned, sirrah?"
"Of course not, m'Lord," said Sir Simon, quickly. "Hebert, you and your two fastest men, chase after them. Find the priest and bring him back as fast as you can drag him down here. Never mind if he gets bumped around a bit in the process!"
The big man with the pectoral cross cleared his throat in an ominous manner.
"On second thought," said Sir Simon rapidly, "treat him tenderly, don't let him hurt himself—but get him here as quick as possible! My Lord needs him!"
The three men broke away from the semicircle of men-at-arms about the dais and ran at top speed through the entrance to the Serving Room.
Everybody waited. The pause in affairs caused something like a relaxation of the tension in the Hall. The Royal men-at-arms had to keep their formation and stay ready for battle, and the Malencontri men-at-arms clearly felt a professional obligation to do the same; but no such constraint was on the Malencontri servants. Imperceptibly they began to edge forward; and the various items they were carrying as weapons began to drop into inoffensive positions, although still kept in their hands.
A low murmur of conversation was coming to life between the two groups. The Royal men-at-arms, with their backs to the dais, wanted to know what was going on there; and the Malencontri people—though ready still to stab, smash, or stick basting forks into them, were obligingly telling them.
Jim had dropped his idea of turning into a dragon right away. He could always do that; and Secoh was still in his path. Moreover, he had recognized the big m
an with the pectoral cross. He was Richard de Bisby, Bishop of Bath and Wells, whose acquaintance Jim and Angie had made at the Earl of Somerset's last Christmas Party. Richard de Bisby was clearly on Carolinus' side—which meant he would be on Jim's, most probably. And Richard de Bisby feared neither man, beast, nor Natural—to which catalog the good Bishop added Devils, Demons, and anything else Magickal or Supernatural—in his vocation as a Prince of the Church.
The good Bishop's was a martial spirit, which longed for earlier days, such as those of Bishop Odo, who, three centuries before, had fought in William's invasion of England and ended his life on a Crusade to the Holy Land.
Odo had found his holy occupation no barrier at all to his own zeal—though he had thoughtfully carried a mace as his weapon, so as to not be guilty of the shedding of human blood. That sort of fighting Bishop was unthinkable here and now in this fourteenth century, but in this world there were still Devils, Demons, Fiends, and such, and Richard de Bisby had hopes of running some to earth one day and dealing with them personally.
It was the Bishop who had made sure Jim and Angie had gotten the wardship of Robert Falon. He had done this by going to the Court at London and, effectively, telling the King repeatedly that any other disposal of Robert was unthinkable. The King, whose blood was just as Norman as that of the good Bishop, would at one time have been just as likely as the cleric to argue.
That would have been true, perhaps, twenty or thirty years before. But while de Bisby was in the prime of life—which in his case meant his middle forties—time had laid its heavy hand upon the crowned head, and the King wanted nothing so much as to be left in peace to follow his whims.
The King could not evade the Bishop, he could not out-shout him, the easiest thing was simply to give in. Besides, Sir James Eckert was a popular name, particularly after the fight at the Loathly Tower, which was still being sung in England.