"But what was it that came to our rescue?" the knight asked.
Jim shook his head.
"I don't know," he said, hoarsely. "I can't guess what—"
He broke off.
Something had moved—a blacker black within the darkness of the still-deep shadows beyond the firelight. It moved again and came forward slowly, stepping into the light. A four-legged shape as large as a small pony, green-eyed, with long narrow muzzle, half-parted to show white, gleaming teeth and a tongue as red as the fire flames.
It was a wolf. A wolf double the size of the largest wolf Jim had ever seen in a zoo or on film. The green eyes went past the knight and the fire to burn savagely upon Jim.
"So it's you," a deep, harsh voice from the scimitar-armed jaws said. "Not that it makes all that difference. But I thought as much."
Chapter Nine
The mind can take only so much before reaction sets in. With all Jim had been through since he had ended up in this world, and particularly after the ordeal he had just gone through as the prey of the sandmirks, he should not have been struck numb by the fact that now it was a wolf who could talk like a man. But he was.
He sat down on his haunches with a thump. If he had been in his regular human body, he probably would have collapsed on the ground. But the effect was the same. He struggled to find his voice while the monster wolf walked forward to the fire.
"Who—who're you?" he managed at last.
"What's the matter, Gorbash?" snarled the wolf. "Sandmirks got your memory? I've only known you for twenty years! Besides, there's few living who'd mistake Aragh for any other English wolf!"
"You're who—Aragh?" croaked Brian.
The wolf glanced at him.
"I am. And who are you, man?"
"Sir Brian Neville-Smythe."
"Never heard of you," growled the wolf.
"My house," said Sir Brian stiffly, "is a cadet branch of the Nevilles. Our land runs beyond Wyven-stock to the Lea River on the north."
"None of my people up there," grated Aragh. "What're you doing down here in my forest?"
"Passing through on our way to Malvern, Sir wolf."
"Call me Aragh when you talk to me, man."
"Then address me as Sir Brian, Sir wolf!"
Aragh's upper lip began to curl back from his gleaming teeth.
"Wait—" said Jim, hastily.
Aragh turned to him, lip uncurling slightly.
"This Sir Brian is with you, is he, Gorbash?"
"We're Companions. And actually I'm not really Gorbash. You see…" Jim tried hastily, with his weary throat, to explain the situation that had ended up bringing Brian and him to this place.
"Hmpf!" Aragh growled, when Jim had finished. "Pure nonsense, all of it. You always did get yourself mixed up seven different ways every time you tried something. However, if this Sir Brian's committed himself to fight alongside you, I suppose I can put up with him."
He turned to Brian.
"And you," he said. "I'll hold you responsible for taking good care of Gorbash. Soft-headed he is, but he's been a friend of mine for years—"
A light went on in the back of Jim's mind. This Aragh must be the wolf friend of Gorbash's which Smrgol had talked disapprovingly about, the one Gorbash had associated with while he was growing up.
"—and I don't want him chewed up by sandmirks, or anything else. D'you hear me?"
"I assure you—" Brian was beginning stiffly.
"Don't assure me. Just do it!" snapped Aragh.
"About those sandmirks," Jim put in hastily, once more in an effort to turn the Brian-Aragh conversation from possible disagreement, "they almost had us. Didn't that sound of theirs bother you?"
"Why should it?" said Aragh. "I'm an English wolf. You don't catch me thinking of two things at once. Sandmirks belong on the seashore. They'll know next time what'll happen if I catch them here in my woods."
He snarled softly, as if to himself.
"You mean to say"—Brian took off his helmet and stared at the wolf in a sort of wonder—"you could hear that chittering and not be troubled by it?"
"How many times do I have to say it?" growled Aragh. "I'm an English wolf. I suppose if I sat around like some people and just listened, I might have noticed the noise they were making. But the second I heard them, I said to myself, "That lot's got to go!' And that's all I had on my mind until they went."
He licked his lips with his long tongue.
"All except for four of them," he said. "They're no good for eating, of course. But they do scream well when you break their necks. I heard those noises they made, never fear!"
He sat down on his haunches in turn and sniffed at the fire.
"World's going to pot," he muttered. "Few of us left with any sense at all. Magicians, Dark Powers, all that nonsense. Break a few necks, tear a few throats out in the good old-fashioned way, and see how long these sandmirks and their sort'll go on acting up! See how much trouble the Dark Powers would be able to stir up after a few doses like that to their creatures!"
"Actually, how long have you known Sir James?" inquired Brian.
"Sir James? Sir James? He's Gorbash, far as I'm concerned," Aragh growled. "Gorbash he's always been. Gorbash he'll always be, in spite of any spell-and-body nonsense. I don't believe in people being one person one day, then somebody else the next. You do what you want. As far as I'm concerned, he's Gorbash. Twenty years, to answer you. And didn't I say twenty years? Why?"
"Because, my good fellow—"
"I'm not your good fellow. I'm nobody's good fellow. I'm an English wolf; and you'll be wise not to forget it."
"Very well. Sir wolf—"
"That's a bit better."
"Since you've very little sympathy with the quest that Sir James and I are on, and since I see dawn is now breaking, it only remains to thank you for your assistance against the sandmirks—"
"Assistance!"
"Call it what you will. As I was saying"—Brian put his helmet back on, picked up his saddle and went to his horse—"it only remains to thank you, say adieu and resume our travel to Castle Malvern. Come, Sir James—"
"Wait a minute!" snarled Aragh. "Gorbash, what do you think you can do against those Dark Powers, anyway?"
"Well… whatever I have to," Jim answered.
"To be sure," growled the wolf. "And what if they send sandmirks against you again?"
"Well…"
"I thought so," said Aragh with bitter satisfaction. "Up to me, as usual. Give it up, Gorbash. Stop this madness of thinking you've a human mind in you and go back to being a plain, straightforward dragon again."
"I can't do that," said Jim. "I've got to rescue Angie—"
"Who?"
"His lady," put in Brian, stiffly. "He's explained how that other dragon, Bryagh, stole her off to the Loathly Tower."
"His lady? His LADY? What's the times coming to, a dragon mooning about over some female human and calling her his 'lady'? Gorbash, give up this nonsense and go home!"
"Sorry," said Jim through his teeth. "No."
Aragh snarled.
"Damned idiot!" He got to all four feet. "All right, I'll come along and make sure the sandmirks don't get you. But—only sandmirks, mind! I'm not going to be a party to the rest of this ridiculousness of yours!"
"Damme if I remember your being invited," said Brian.
"Don't need to be invited." Aragh's upper lip began to curl again as his head turned toward the knight. "I go where I wish, Sir knight, and I'd like to see any try to stop me. I'm an English—"
"Of course you are!" Jim broke in, "and there's no one we'd rather have with us than an English wolf. Is there, Brian?"
"Speak for yourself, Sir James."
"Well, there's no one I'd rather have with me, besides Sir James here," said Jim. "Sir Brian, you have to admit those sandmirks were more than we could handle ourselves."
"Hmph!" Brian looked as if he was being asked to agree to having a tooth pulled without as much as a dri
nk by way of anesthetic. "Suppose so."
He suddenly swayed where he stood and the saddle dropped out of his hands to thump on the ground. He walked heavy-footedly over to the nearest tree and sat down with a clatter of metal, his back to the trunk.
"Sir James," he said hoarsely, "I must rest."
He leaned his head back against the tree trunk and closed his eyes. In a moment he was breathing heavily, with deep inhalations of air, just on the edge of snoring.
"Yes," said Jim, looking at him. "We both had a night with no rest. Maybe I should catch some sleep, too."
"Don't let me stop you," said Aragh. "I'm not the sort to need a nap every time I turn around; but come to think of it, I might just trail those sandmirks and make sure they kept going once they left here."
He glanced at the rising sun.
"I'll be back about midday."
He turned about and effectively disappeared. Jim had a glimpse of him slipping between two tree trunks and suddenly there was no sound or sign that the wolf had ever been there. Jim lay down on the grass himself, tucked his head under a wing, and closed his eyes…
But, unlike Brian, he did not find himself falling asleep.
He persisted in keeping his eyes closed and his head wing-tucked for perhaps twenty minutes before he gave up and sat up once more to look around him. Much to his own surprise, he was feeling quite well indeed.
He remembered now that the hoarseness of his own voice had disappeared while he was standing around engaged in the three-cornered conversation with Aragh and Brian. Evidently his fatigue had vanished at the same time. These things were remarkable; but apparently dragons simply had better recuperative powers than humans. He looked at Brian, who was now frankly snoring the snores of utter exhaustion and had slid down the tree trunk until he was very near to lying flat on the grass. The knight ought to be out of things at least until noon. Which left Jim with that much time to kill. He thought once more about something to eat.
He got to his feet. Now might be the very time to look around and see if anything was available. About to wander off, he checked himself. What if he lost his way in the wood and could not find the route back here? Perhaps he should mark the trees as he went—
He broke off his thoughts, mentally kicking himself for an idiot. Of course, on foot he could easily get lost. But who said he had to go on foot? Experimentally, he stretched his wings and found that all the stiffness and soreness was gone out of them. With an explosion of air, he leaped from the clearing and headed skyward. Behind him, Brian slid all the way down on to the grass and snored ever more loudly.
But within seconds the knight was forgotten below him. It was a sheer pleasure to be on the wing again. A few vigorous flaps took him above treetop level. He banked in a circle to take a look back down at the clearing and set up a memory of its appearance from the air, then mounted higher to relate it to its immediate surroundings. High up, he was happy to see that both it and the stream running through it were quite distinguishable from a distance.
Leaving Brian and the clearing to take care of themselves, he banked again and began to quarter above the wood, examining it.
From the air it looked more parklike than it had on the ground. The large trees were spaced evenly enough so that he could get a fair to good view of the earth between them. Unfortunately for his stomach, nothing was in sight that looked like food. He looked about for Aragh, but found no sight of the wolf, either.
There seemed to be little point to his soaring above the forest, except for the pleasure of doing so and the fact that he had time to spend. A finger of guilt touched his mind. He had hardly thought of Angie since he had met the knight. Was she really all right? Perhaps he should make some effort to go and find out for himself?
With these thoughts, he let himself go with the thermals, an uneasiness in him like the memory of the chittering the sandmirks had made that could make the skin on the back of his neck crawl in recollection. The only way to settle this uneasiness, he told himself now, was to go and make sure that Angie was all right. Carolinus' directions to stay away from the Loathly Tower until he had gathered the Companions who would aid him to overthrow the Dark Powers really did not make sense. He should decide, for himself, what to do—
He woke suddenly to the discovery that he was already at an altitude of at least several thousand feet and just rising into a tailwind blowing directly for the fens and the seashore—back the way he and Brian had come. Already, in fact, he was riding that air current in a long, soaring glide which would bring him eventually to ground at the point where the Great Causeway met the ocean. As he realized this, he heard echoing in his mind the memory of the chittering sandmirks. Overriding this was a knife-thin whisper calling him to the Loathly Tower.
"Now…" the whisper was saying. "Go now… don't delay… go alone, now…"
He checked himself with a chill of horror, and fell off sharply in a long, turning bank that would bring him down and back toward the woods where he had left Brian sleeping. Almost as soon as he had turned, the echoing memory and the whisper were gone, like Aragh a short while back, as if they had never been.
Had he actually heard them? Or had he merely imagined them?
He shook the questions from him with an effort of will. He had certainly not imagined that he had unconsciously lifted to an altitude and a wind that would have carried him directly to the Loathly Tower. It gave him an uneasy feeling to find himself so vulnerable to a call from that direction. He had not been so, yesterday, even when he was headed on foot toward the tower. Somehow, the sandmirks' chittering had opened up a channel through which the Dark Powers could call him to them. And if this were so, even though the ugly, small creatures had been driven off, the Dark Powers had won something by their attack.
Or—was it that simple? Aragh had certainly put in an appearance in the nick of time. Wasn't the coincidence of the sandmirks' arrival just a little too good to be true? What if the Dark Powers had never intended that the sandmirks should destroy him? What if, for their own purposes, what they wanted was not the death of Jim Eckert, but his coming to their tower?
That was another chill thought.
Jim found himself wishing he had Carolinus nearby to question. But something told Jim that if he should turn and fly to the Tinkling Water now—even assuming he could get there, find Carolinus in and manage to return to Brian by noon—the magician would not be pleased to see him. Carolinus had made quite a point of Jim's following the path that would lead to his gaining of Companions, before he did anything else.
Well, Jim thought, soaring low once more over the Lynham Woods back toward the clearing where Brian was sleeping, he had acquired two of the Companions so far, at least. Brian and Aragh. Now that he was turned resolutely away from the Loathly Tower once more, he found his momentary suspicion of Aragh had evaporated. Hadn't Aragh been a close friend of Gorbash for years? Not but what the wolf wasn't a grim enough character in his own right; but there was nothing secret, dark or hidden about that grimness. What he was, was all on the surface for anyone to see.
Jim checked himself as he soared over a small, dark object on the ground below. Turning back, he swept in and came down to land heavily beside it.
It was a dead sandmirk. Clearly one of the four Aragh had killed the night before.
Jim examined it. Here, after a fashion, was food; but he found that Gorbash's stomach recoiled from the thought. Why was not clear; but the reaction was undeniable. A tentative parting of Jim's jaws above the corpse brought a definite wave of nausea to the dragon-stomach. Apparently, Aragh had known what he was talking about earlier when he mentioned that sandmirks were no good for eating.
Jim left the carcass to some beetles and a few flies which were beginning to circle it, took to the air again and began his search for the clearing. It did not take him long to find, but the interval was enough for him to come to some conclusions about fueling this oversize body of his.
The touch of nausea had effectively cured h
is earlier appetite. Which made it pretty clear that it was only appetite, and not hunger, that he had been feeling. He and Secoh had divided the cow between them—in hindsight, Jim admitted that he had taken the lion's share of the meat—and even that large meal had not exactly filled up the stomach of Gorbash. In spite of this, he had really not been suffering for food, since. To be sure, he was ready to eat again at first opportunity, but he felt none of the interior hollowness and discomfort of real hunger. Apparently dragons were able to go for some time between meals, really stoking up only when fuel was available. The pattern of dragon feeding was obviously something like an enormous meal once a week or thereabouts. If so, he could probably go at least a few more days before really needing to eat. However, when he did, he had better do a good job of it…
By this time he had relocated the clearing and was gliding in to a landing on its grass. Brian, he saw, was still there, and still snoring.
A glance at the sun told Jim there were still at least three hours to go until noon, if not more than that. He walked to the stream, drank deeply, and flopped down on the grass. His outing had relaxed him. He felt limp and at peace with the world. He tucked his head under his wing once more without hardly thinking about it, and fell instantly asleep.
He woke to the voice of Brian, once more heartily rendering his musical promise of what the mere-dragons might expect from a Neville-Smythe.
Sitting up, Jim saw the knight sitting naked in the stream, happily splashing himself with what must be some fairly cold water and singing. His armor was laid about on the grass and his clothing was spread out and draped on sticks rammed into the turf, so that the various garments were spread to the sunlight. Jim got to his feet and walked over to examine the clothing. He assumed that Brian had washed it and that it was spread out like this to dry. But he found it already dry.
"Fleas, Sir James," called Brian cheerfully. "Fleas! Damme if they don't seem to love a gambeson under armor for breeding in more than any other cloth a gentleman might wear. Nothing like a good hot sun, or a good hot fire, to drive them out of the seams, eh?"