The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent

  "Actually," said Jim, "they don't seem to be very able to do any killing—being small as they are, small enough to ride on rats. Their spears were just very painful."

  "But the spears will kill, you know, m'lord, in a little while. That's what they're supposed to do. The goblins just like people to suffer before they die."

  "Ah!" said Jim. "I'm glad you told me that. But they're still no threat to a man wearing armor. The ones we saw were just too small."

  "They're shape-changers, m'lord. They just made themselves small when you were with the Bishop, so as to ride on the rats. Remember how some of them tried to make themselves like knights? But the fact is that really they're as big as me."

  "Are their spears bigger then, too?"

  "Yes, m'lord. That's another part of their magic. That shape-changing was part of the magic I told you they took away from us hobs when they drove us out of the Kingdom of Devils and Demons."

  "Where're Sir Brian and Sir Harimore now, do you know?" asked Jim.

  "Sir Brian's leading Blanchard up and down in the courtyard to see how he walks," said Hob. "Blanchard kicked the wall of his stall very hard, and Sir Brian was concerned he might have lamed himself some, m'lord. Sir Harimore is off riding with the Lady Countess, now, the two of them together."

  "He is!" said Jim, thinking that Dafydd's counseling must have been loaded with dynamite to cure Harimore's shyness so quickly and so effectively. "When did Harimore ask her to do that?"

  It was a rather foolish question to be addressed to anyone else in the castle since it assumed whoever was asked had been with the two of them at the moment of asking. But Hob, thanks to the network of chimneys he moved about in—every room in the castle necessarily had at least one—and a sort of preternatural hobgoblin sense of where something of importance was being discussed, seemed to know everything.

  "Oh, he didn't ask her, m'lord. She asked him."

  "Ah!" No sudden dynamite after all, yet. The fact that she had done the asking was much more in the order of their natures.

  "How did that happen?" Jim asked.

  The way it had happened, it turned out from Hob's information, had been that Joan had shown up to get her horse from the stables in the courtyard and go for a ride—a pleasure for most of the equarian class, plus a good practice for keeping a penned-up horse from becoming restive in this horse-dependent age.

  But then, already mounted, she had hesitated, telling Brian and Harimore that it was probably womanish of her, but she couldn't help feeling a little unsafe, going riding in strange woods without an escort. Sir Brian was obviously very occupied at the moment with his magnificent horse—Joan felt she could hardly ask him at this moment—

  "Good of you—devastated not to be of service—" Brian had replied in an absent-minded, irritated sort of tone, barely glancing up from his inspection of the walking Blanchard.

  "—But if the good Sir Harimore would be indulgent enough…" Joan had gone on, smiling at Harimore.

  "Honored! Happily!" Harimore had jerked out in his stiffest fashion. "Stable-master! My gray gelding!"

  So the two rode off together. Definitely no dynamite, but with Joan giving the matter her full attention, reflected Jim, much might yet be done.

  Anyway, for Jim the coast was now clear. He headed toward the door from the Great Hall to the courtyard. Brian, happily, was just seeing Blanchard back into his stable stall.

  "Better let me talk to Brian about this problem by myself," he told Hob, who was now back in his favorite place under Jim's shirt—how had he managed that while holding the sword? More take-for-granted by Hob's magic, no doubt.

  "Better leave us," Jim muttered sotto voce to the little fellow. "Brian wouldn't like anyone listening in."

  "No, m'lord."

  Hob made himself scarce.

  "Brian," said Jim, as his friend came back out of the stables, looking satisfied, "I need to talk to you—in some privy place."

  "No one in the Great Hall right now, I think," said Brian. "I could use a small cup of wine—Blanchard had me worried there for a bit…" He continued to explain until they were seated facing each other at the High Table with wine before them. "Well, James, what is it?"

  "It's about Hob—Hob and his sword."

  Brian winced. He took a swallow of his wine.

  "He told you what Harimore said, then?"

  "Yes. But you know how brave, almost fearless, Hob can be at times. You didn't say anything yourself after Harimore came out with that?"

  "What could I say?" Brian drank again. "I know—what you say about Hob is true. Fearless, yes. I know that, of course."

  "Then why didn't you speak up?"

  "Mainly, James, because I thought Harry was right." Brian pushed the wine cup aside. "Hearken to me, James. Hob is too small and light to wear armor and stand up to any of our kind, afoot or on horseback. But in a melee with others no bigger than he is—or better even an armed brawl with creatures more his own size—"

  "The goblins are just the size of hobs. They're the same, after all."

  "Then," said Brian, "he could be dangerous indeed. But he never will be—"

  He took another swallow from his wine cup.

  "—Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you, James?"

  "No," said Jim.

  "Never will be dangerous. It takes more than skill at arms to make a fighter who can even hope to survive. He must be ready to finish off an enemy who is trying to kill him. You and I do not have to be taught that, James. When the knife is at our throat, we do not hesitate to thrust back. Most who go on two legs or four have it naturally. But Hob—he would have such an enemy at his feet and put his own sword away, saying, 'Oh, I'm sorry. Did I hurt you? Let me help you up'—and as he was helping him up, the enemy would put a knife in him and kill him!"

  Brian stared at Jim.

  "You will do him no favor by sending him out to be killed."

  "But he's willing to be killed!" said Jim. "That's the point. He expects to be killed—but only by deep-earth goblins—and only after he's taken as many of them as possible with him. He wanted a sword so he could die with a ring of his dead around him."

  Brian still stared at Jim, but now with a different expression.

  "This is in the nature of a feud then—betwixt him and them? He did not tell us this."

  "He probably doesn't even know the word 'feud.' But it's that, only maybe greater. Hobgoblins are the same people as the deep-earth goblins—they were the least of the Lesser Devils in the Kingdom of Devils and Demons where Ahriman comes from—you remember Ahriman from the time we found and brought home Geronde's father."

  "I remember," growled Brian.

  "Trouble started in that kingdom when humans began to block them out by faith and signs of faith: the Greatest and Greater Devils all blamed the Least among them—the goblins—who couldn't even enter human houses now without being invited. And they in response turned on the freaks among them like Hob, who didn't like hurting anything, and laid all the blame on them. They drove out those like Hob and stripped them of all the magic they had as goblins. But thrown into the world, magicless, defenseless, hobs learned new magics of their own. Being harmless, they could enter houses, sit happily in a hearth fire, ride on smoke. But they never forgot what the other goblins had done to them."

  "Damned if I would either!" said Brian. "Like being betrayed by your own family!"

  "Meanwhile, the Greater Demons were still not appeased. They drove out all the Lesser Devils and the goblins, and those goblins found their own kingdom deep, deep in the earth, and they never forgot to hate humans and hobs for everything that had happened to them."

  Jim stopped. For a long moment neither he nor Brian said anything. Brian slowly drank his wine, looking at nothing in particular.

  "Still," he said at last, "no telling if Hob—our Hob—will really face up to these other goblins when the time comes."

  "Well, you've seen him stand up to situations like that champion the Witch Queen of
Northgales sent out to kill me, and he would have, too—but Hob spoke up and sent the Queen's champion back into her castle."

  "Hah! But Hob knew he had you and I, James, with him!"

  "Do you think he was counting that, at that moment? I don't! And maybe you'll remember other times—"

  "Well, maybe. But it's no use your trying those arguments on Harry. He's turned his back on Hob, once and for all. Harry thought Hob was afraid to strike at me while we both held swords, and Harry does not change his mind easily."

  "I can believe that," said Jim. "But Brian, it doesn't need Sir Harimore. Couldn't you teach Hob just one thing—how to fight poison-pointed spears with that sword of his?"

  "You just cut off the spear point first. Nothing to that."

  "But what if the spear-carrier knows what he's doing," said Jim, "and is guarding against the sharp point of his weapon being cut off?"

  "Ah, yes. I take your point, James. Perhaps there are some things I could teach Hob."

  "Then you'll do it?"

  "Well, yes," said Brian. "So it's an honorable death he wants. One couldn't in decency refuse to help anyone to that, man or hob."

  "I'll tell him," said Jim, relieved. "Wait, on second thought, no. Could I ask your kindness in telling him that yourself? I don't want to make it seem as if I—"

  "Certainly. I understand," said Brian promptly. "Mustn't let these retainers get the idea you're playing favorites. Geronde always says—well, you know the sort of thing Geronde always says. No doubt there's some sense to it, but by Heaven, if I favor one man over another, I'll say so. If the others don't understand it's because that man's better than they are, they'll come to know—or if they don't they can go elsewhere. But I understand—don't want Hob thanking you, do you? No reason why you should have to put up with it. Where are you going?"

  "The pavilion—for the quarantine quarters outside the gates," said Jim, stepping off the dais. "I've been trying to get to that for two days now."

  "Looks like any other pavilion to me," said Brian, but Jim was already halfway down the aisle between the two long lower tables, and pretended not to hear him.

  Across the courtyard, over the drawbridge, down into the cleared space around the castle. At first glance Jim could tell it would never do where it was, beside the moat, and the immediate question became how was he going to break this news to the Master Carpenter.

  Master Carpenter—no one in the castle remembered his name apart from that—was, as everyone knew, cranky. Age and authority had made him almost immune to rank. He would give anyone an outspoken argument.

  The Master Carpenter had long since forgotten what his age was: certainly mid-sixties, and possibly he was actually in his eighties or even older. But he was as loyal as the day was long, knew his business like no one else, and would work until he dropped, rebuilding something half a dozen times if necessary to make exactly what was wanted.

  Jim found him in the pavilion. It was light and airy within, and would be too light and airy as the temperature of the late fall nights got colder. Right at the moment, the old man was supervising the stretching of a cloth partition down the middle of the large tent, to divide it into male and female quarters.

  "Oh, Master Carpenter," said Jim, approaching him, "there you are!" The carpenter slowly revolved to see who was speaking to him. "I've got some news for you."

  "Hah!" said the Master Carpenter, recognizing Jim. The common people did not ordinarily use the ejaculation that was in common practice among the gentry—but in the case of the carpenter, it meant "Good news? I don't think!"

  "… m'lord," he added, in his usual growl.

  Jim had decided from his first glance at the pavilion, as he crossed the drawbridge, that there were times when flat-out lying was completely permissible.

  "Yes, I'm sorry to do this to you, Master, but I've just magically received word from the Collegiate of Magickians that any structure like this being built right now must be set up inside the curtain walls of its castle. The order cannot be disobeyed, of course."

  "Of course."

  "Yes."

  "Take it all down here. Set it all up again in the courtyard—if there's enough space for it there."

  "Oh, you'll manage. I know you."

  "I suppose. What must be, must be."

  "Quite right, Master," said Jim, cheerfully.

  "Well, we'll get on it right away… m'lord."

  The trouble with the Master Carpenter, Jim told himself as he went back to the castle, was that you were continually left with the feeling you owed him an apology.

  I'm pretty good at talking in most instances, I think, Jim told himself, but uttering repeated apologies seemed to make them only more and more inadequate. If he could only take Brian's attitude: tell the truth and if they can't adjust to it they can go someplace else. But he wasn't Brian.

  Everyone born in this primitive century would consider him slightly insane to worry about what he might have said to even an upper servant. The rain fell, luck went against you, you were hung or starved to death—those were matters beyond your control. Everybody had to live with what was.

  Angie was not in the Nursing Room, nor in any other parts of the lower castle when he looked. He could simply send servants scurrying around to locate her and tell her to come to him—but he didn't want to do that most of the time—and now was an example. He climbed the tower stairs and found her where he should have looked first—of course—in the Solar, humming to herself, once more laying out travel clothes—women's clothes this time, thank Heaven—on the bed.

  "There you are," she said, as he dropped into a chair. "Did you get everyone notified?"

  "I'm sorry," he said. "No, I forgot all about it."

  She looked at him penetratingly.

  "Well, put it out of your mind, then. I've been doing it too, anyway, after all. I told Joan, who had already heard it from the Prince. And it seemed that every time I turned around, I ran into one of those you were going to speak to. So I told them, just to make sure. They all want to go, just as I said they would."

  "Good," he said, feeling again the unexpected weariness he had been bothered with lately. He was in no mood to pursue the subject. "Angie, I told Carpenter to move the pavilion quarantine station inside, to the courtyard."

  "Jim!" she said, dropping loose on the bed the riding cloak she was holding. "That'll make two centers of contagion inside the castle—I thought the idea was to keep potentially infective people outside! And how'll the servants get back and forth from the kitchen and the stables and everything else out there? They'll all catch it before the rest of us!"

  "I've thought of that," he said. "I'll set up a ward around the pavilion no flea can get through. Servants, food and other needs will be able to get through the ward, but nothing living—including anything infective. Also, something like porta-potties for both the men and women's side. Some of them there will also have to train to be nurses to the rest—and some other things. But magic will take care of the details—Carolinus will lend me some more magic if I need it."

  "But—"

  "I know, I know. But I think it can be handled, and when I looked at that tent outside, not even magic would make it safe for them—or anyone we had to send out to them with food or supplies. They'd starve to death inside the ward, if I put one up for them out there and we couldn't feed and help them regularly. If I didn't, night marauders would kill or even eat them—and some may be neighbors or friends. We've got to have them inside the castle where we can defend them."

  Angie shook her head and went back to the riding cloak.

  "I suppose you're right," she said, after a moment.

  "I hoped you'd think so," said Jim.

  "But I'm glad you feel that way," she said. "Because I've got a comparable surprise to hand you. As I told you, everyone wants to go—including Harimore. But we leave tomorrow morning, not the day after."

  Chapter Sixteen

  "Tomorrow!"

  Jim sat straight up.
>
  "Yes," said Angie gently, dropping the riding cloak to turn and talk to him. "I'm sorry, honey. But Geronde won't give up a day we could use before the wedding."

  "And the others—they know about this, and they're going to be ready to go in the morning?"

  "Every one of them. The Prince and Joan can't wait to get there, anyway—and the rest, Brian, Harimore, Dafydd and Danielle, are all used to traveling without much baggage on the spur of the moment. Also Dafydd and Danielle's three children will stay here. They're wild about the idea, think of it as a holiday without their father and mother. They're in for a surprise, though—Danielle and I left them in the care of May Heather."

  "You don't suppose she'll be too hard on them?" said Jim, remembering what it had been like to be a boy, himself.

  "No harder than their father and mother."

  "Well…"

  "Don't worry, Jim. It's just that she's the kind of person who, if she says 'no,' the child she said it to doesn't come back with 'aw… please!' "

  "That's true," said Jim. May was one of those rare natural commanders who can step in anywhere and take charge, because everything about her signaled the fact that what she said, she meant, with every atom of her mind and body.

  I wish I was like that, Jim said to himself wistfully. Chandos was that rare sort of human item… and Brian. He woke up suddenly to the fact that Angie was still talking to him.

  "… and I want you to take this chance to really get to know her—"

  "May? How can she be going—"

  "No, no! Joan—of Kent—of Salisbury. The Prince may be King one of these days, and she might just end up being Queen. This ride to Tiverton's the ideal chance. You've been her host here. You're a Baron, after all, and none of the others going have titles. It's natural you should ride together."

  "How about the Prince, himself?"

  "He's going to go ahead fifteen to thirty minutes in advance of the rest of us, so he can swear on a Bible he just came to bring the news the rest of us are coming, but not so far in advance that you won't be inside Tiverton by the time he's delivering that message to his father."