"What… ? Oh, yes. You're right," said Jim. "Nothing like it, as you say."
It had not occurred to Jim that body vermin might be as universal a problem on this medieval world as it had been in medieval times back on his own world. He took a second to be grateful for the fact that, evidently, his dragon hide was far too thick and tough to be bothered by the pesky creatures; then he glanced at the sun and saw that it was standing directly overhead.
"Aragh back yet?" he asked.
"He's not here," said Brian.
"Not here?" growled the voice of Aragh. He slid into sight from behind a tree that should have been too small to hide him. "I got back some time ago. Who says I'm not here?"
"No one, Sir wolf," Brian said, cheerfully, rising from the stream. Stripping the water off his body and limbs with his hands, he walked over to his clothes and began putting them on, without bothering with further self-drying. "We'll be ready to travel in a wink!"
It was slightly more than single wink's worth of time, but not too much more, before Brian had himself dressed and armored and his horse saddled. He swung himself up into the saddle.
"Shall we go?" he asked.
"Fine," said Jim.
Aragh melted into the woods and disappeared. Jim and Brian, side by side, followed after the wolf.
They found him sitting down, waiting for them two clearings farther on.
"I see," he growled. "One of these poke-along, take-forever-to-get-there trips. Is that what it's going to be? All right. I can dawdle along at a walk as well as the rest of you."
He fell in level with them and they paced forward together.
"I don't intend to trot my horse in the heat of the day, just to please you," said Brian.
"Why not? Trot's the only pace to move at," muttered Aragh. "All right. Suit yourself. Oh, not that way, Sir knight. This way."
"I know the route to Malvern Castle," Brian said, stiffly.
"You know a route," said Aragh. "I know the shortest one. You'll be a day and a half, heading in that direction. I can bring you there before sunset. Follow me—or not. Makes no difference to me."
He headed off to their right, tail swinging low behind him. Jim and Brian halted, looking at each other.
"But that way leads to the lower reaches of the Lyn River," Brian protested. "The closest ford's fifteen miles upstream."
"It's his woods, though," said Jim. "Maybe we ought to trust him."
"Sir James—" Brian began. "Oh, very well!"
He turned his horse's head in the direction Aragh had taken and together they moved after the wolf, catching up with him a little farther on.
They rode through the warm hours of the afternoon. The forest opened out even more, but never quite ceased being a forest. To begin with they did very little talking, Aragh and Brian growling "Sir knight" and "Sir wolf" at each other whenever Jim tried to draw them into any kind of conversation. But gradually the atmosphere thawed on the pleasant discovery by the two that they had at least one thing in common: a detestation of someone named Sir Hugh de Bois de Malencontri.
"He sent his beaters through my woods!" snapped Aragh. "My woods! As if it was his private preserve. I broke up his hunting for him. Hamstrung half a dozen horses and—"
"I say, not the horses!"
"Why not?" Aragh said. "You humans in armor make yourselves safe by riding on somebody else's four legs. Catch an English wolf letting anybody laze about on his back!"
"A gentleman has a use for a good steed. Not necessary for game, though. Always dismount, myself, to go after a boar with a boarspear." "Ah? Twenty or thirty of you at once, no doubt!"
"No such thing. I've gone into a thicket by myself, alone, several times!"
"Well, that's something," said Aragh, grudgingly. "No boar's a picnic. No brains, but no picnic either. Will charge anything. The only way to handle one is step aside and cut him up. Break a leg or two for him, if you can."
"Thanks, I prefer the boarspear. I take his charge. Crosspiece keeps him from getting at you. Then it's hang on until you can let go for a moment to get a falchion into his throat."
"Suit yourself," Aragh growled. "Anyway, de Bois' fine gentlemen didn't like being on their feet. I killed two, crippled eight, before the main party came up with crossbowmen."
"Well done!"
"Eh? All in the day's work. I missed de Bois himself, though. He knocked somebody else out of the saddle, took his horse and ran before I could follow. No matter," Aragh snarled lightly to himself. "I'll catch him one of these days."
"Unless I get to him first," said Brian. "By St. Giles! He had the affrontery to pay his court to the Demoiselle Geronde. Hah!"
"The de Chaney… ?"
"Exactly! My lady. I drew him aside at my lord the Duke's Christmas feast, nine months since. 'Lord Baron,' I said, 'a word in your ear. Keep your bastard's breath out of my lady's face or I may be forced to hang you by your own guts.' "
"He said?" growled Aragh.
"Oh, some nonsense about having his verderers skin me alive if he ever caught me near his lands. I laughed."
"And then?" put in Jim, fascinated.
"Oh, he laughed, too. It was my lord Duke's Christmas feast—peace on Earth, good will and all that—neither one of us wanted to make a public fuss. And that was how matters stood when we parted. I've been too busy with mere-dragons and now this quest of yours, Sir James, to get around to keeping my promise to him. But I really must, one of these days." And so on… in the same vein. About midafternoon, they came out abruptly through a screen of trees and bushes onto the banks of the River Lyn. Without pausing, Aragh stepped off into the water and proceeded to head across the stream, immersed almost to his backbone. Jim and Brian stopped.
"But there's no ford here, dammit!" said Brian.
"With weather the way it's been for the past month and this time of year," said Aragh over his shoulder, "there is—for this week and the next. But suit yourself."
In fact, the wolf was nearly to midstream now and his neck and head were still well above the surface of the water. Brian grunted and urged his horse down the bank. He began to ride across.
"I think I'll fly," Jim announced, looking at the river with disfavor.
He had not forgotten his swimming sessions in the fens. He leaped into the air, and with a few wingbeats passed over the heads of the others to land on the far bank and watch Aragh climb dripping back onto dry land. They waited together for Brian.
"Must say you knew what you were talking about," said the knight, grudgingly, to Aragh as he came ashore. "If this is Malvern Wood on this side, which it should be—"
"It is," said Aragh as they moved off together into the forest.
"—we should indeed see the walls of the castle there before nightfall," concluded Brian. "I must say, being on my lady's land is almost like a homecoming to me. If you'll notice, Sir James, how peaceful and pleasant things are here—"
A thwock resounded, and a three-foot arrow stood suddenly in the ground a few paces in front of them.
"Hold!" cried a high-pitched voice, the voice either of a woman or a young boy.
"What the hell?" demanded Brian, reining up and turning in the direction from which, judging by its angle in the turf, the arrow had come. "I'm going to crop myself some archer's ears—"
Thwack! sounded another arrow, materializing in the trunk of a tree a foot behind and an inch or two to the right of Brian's helmet.
"I'll take care of this," Aragh granted, on a low note, and vanished.
"Hold where you are, Sir knight!" cried the voice again. "Unless you want me to put an arrow through that open visor of yours—or into one of your eyes, dragon! Don't move a muscle until I come to you."
Jim froze where he was. Brian, also, he saw, was prudently not moving.
They waited.
Chapter Ten
It was a golden afternoon. In the Malvern Wood birds sang and a little breeze blew past Jim and Brian. Time went by and nothing else happened.
A deer wal
ked across the open space between two trees about twenty yards from them, paused to look interestedly at the two unmoving figures and continued on, out of sight. A badger galumphed past, ignoring them completely in the tough, deliberate manner of its species.
Jim's feet were beginning to go to sleep, when he heard a droning sound in the air. A bumblebee buzzed into their vicinity, circled twice and then flew into the opening in the knight's visor. Jim waited interestedly, sleeping feet forgotten, for the explosion he was sure would come; but he had underestimated the self-control of Sir Brian. Neither sound nor movement emanated from the knight; although with his acute dragon hearing, Jim could now hear the bee buzzing hollowly around in the helmet and falling silent intermittently, which meant it must be landing on lip, nose or ear momentarily to assess the situation.
Eventually the bee flew out again.
"Sir Brian?" said Jim, questioningly, for he had actually begun to Wonder if the knight was still conscious within his armor.
"Yes, Sir James?"
"Something's wrong. Whoever shot at us must have run off, right afterwards. Or something. We've been standing here twenty minutes. Why don't we go look?"
"Perhaps you're right."
The knight reached up, snapped his visor down and reined his horse behind the tree the arrow was stuck in. No further shots came in their direction. Jim followed him; and keeping some trees always as a screen between themselves and the point from which the arrow had probably been launched, they circled around to investigate.
The woods appeared as quiet and untenanted as they had been all day, for perhaps a hundred yards' distance. Slightly beyond, however, the two came upon a slim figure in brown hose and doublet, with a peaked hat over shoulder-length red hair, kneeling on the grass with a longbow and quiver of arrows laid to one side, massaging the furry neck of a large black shape.
The large black shape was Aragh's. He was lying on his stomach in the grass, his long muzzle stretched out on his forepaws and his eyes half-closed, growling softly to himself as the slim hands worked on his neck and scratched under his ears.
"What devil's spell is this?" roared Brian, pulling his horse to a halt as he and Jim came up.
"You," said the figure kneeling on the grass, glancing up at him, "guard your tongue, Sir knight! Do I look like the devil?"
Clearly she—for obviously the figure in the doublet and hose was no boy—did not look like any devil. The word "angel" might have fitted better, if it had not been for her rather steely gray eyes and the deep, practical tan of the skin on her face and uncovered hands and forearms. Aside from those two ordinary aspects, however, she appeared almost too good to have been cast from the ordinary human mold.
Even kneeling in the grass as she was, she was obviously almost as tall as Jim or Brian. Her legs were long, her waist tiny, her shoulders delicate but wide, and the curves of her body such as an artist of Jim's world might come up with for the illustration of some advertiser's commercial daydream. Her hair, a few shades darker than Brian's in the sunlight, was touched with highlights of honey-colored gold. She had a delicate curving jawline, a perfect mouth, a perfect nose and those same eyes which—except for the steeliness Jim had already remarked—had also to be considered perfect.
"No," admitted Brian. "But what're you doing to the wolf to make him growl like that?"
"He's not growling," she said fondly, stroking his neck. "He's purring."
Aragh opened his left eye and rolled it up to look at Brian and Jim.
"Mind your own business, Sir knight," he grated. "Up under the ears there, again, Danielle… Ah!"
He went back to his growling.
"I thought you were going to take care of things, Sir wolf!" said Brian, gruffly. "Do you know we stood there for—"
"The knight's a Neville-Smythe," snarled Aragh to the girl, lifting his head from his paws. "The dragon's an old friend of mine named Gorbash—thinks he's a knight, too, right at the moment. Sir James of something. Can't remember the Christian name of the Neville-Smythe."
"Sir Brian," said Brian, taking off his helm. "And the good knight with me, who's been ensorceled into a dragon's body, is Sir James, Baron of Riveroak, from a land across the sea."
The girl's face lit up with interest. She scrambled to her feet.
"Enchanted?" she asked, approaching Jim and looking closely into his muzzle. "Are you sure? I don't see human eyes within the beast eyes, as they say you should. Can you tell people what you were, Sir James? What was it like being enchanted? Did it hurt?"
"No," said Jim. "Just, all of a sudden, I was a dragon."
"And before that you were a baron?"
"Well…" Jim hesitated.
"I thought so!" she said, triumphantly. "Part of the spell keeps you from telling who you really were. I mean, undoubtedly you were the Baron of Riveroak, but you were probably a lot more than that. A hero of some kind, probably."
"Well, no," said Jim.
"How would you know? This is exciting. Oh, my name's Danielle. I'm the daughter of Giles o' the Wold; except that I'm on my own, now."
"Giles o' the Wold?" Brian echoed. "He's that outlaw, isn't he?"
"He is now!" she flashed, turning on him. "He was a gentleman of rank once, though his true name I will tell to none."
Aragh growled.
"No offense," said Brian with surprising mildness. "I thought Giles o' the Wold, though, was of the King's Forest, up beyond Brantley Moor?"
"So he is," she said. "And there he and his men are, still. But, as I say, I now live apart from him."
"Ah," said Brian.
"Ah, yourself!" she said. "Why should I spend my days with a bunch of men either old enough to be my father, and women just as old, or clod-pated young bumpkins who turn red and stammer when they speak to me? My father's daughter deserves better than that!"
"Well, well," said Brian.
"And again, well!" She looked from Brian to Jim and her voice softened. "I feel no need to crave pardon, Sir James, but it's only fair to say I'd not have shot at you if I'd known you and this knight to be friends of Aragh."
"That's all right," said Jim.
"Quite all right," echoed Brian. "However, if you're through tickling the wolf, my lady o' the Wold, perhaps we three should be moving on. We want to get to Malvern Castle before the gate's locked for the night."
He reined his horse about in the direction they had all been heading originally and began to ride off. Jim, after a moment's hesitation, moved after him. A second later they were joined not only by Aragh, but by Danielle, her bow and quiver slung upon her shoulder.
"You're going to Malvern Castle?" she asked. "Why?"
"I must ask permission of my lady Geronde de Chaney to companion Sir James here in the rescue of his lady."
"His lady?" She turned on Jim. "You've got a lady? Who is she?"
"Angela… uh… de Farrel, of Trailercourt."
"Odd names you have overseas," commented Brian.
"What does she look like?" demanded Danielle.
Jim hesitated.
"She is fair," Brian put in, "according to Sir James."
"I'm fair," said Danielle. "Is she as fair as I am?"
"Well…" Jim stumbled. "Yes and no. I mean, you're different types…"
"Different types? What does that mean?"
"It's a little hard to explain," said Jim. "Let me think about it. I'll think of a better way to explain it after I've had a chance to mull it over."
"All right. You mull," said Danielle. "But I want to know. Meanwhile, I think I'll come along with the rest of you to Malvern Castle."
Brian opened his mouth. For a second he looked as if he would say something. But then he closed his mouth again.
They moved along together, Danielle refusing an offer from Brian to mount her behind him on his horse. She could, she stated, outrun the heavy white charger any day in the week. Certainly she could outwalk him.
Jim was more than a little baffled by Danielle. He had been prepared t
o take on in the way of Companions any who could be useful to him. When Brian had cropped up, he had wrestled a bit with the idea of the knight simply declaring himself in. Once he had accepted that idea, however, Aragh's joining them had seemed almost natural. But this girl—to be one of his Companions, to face the Loathly Tower and the Dark Powers and rescue Angie? In no way could he envision her being useful. Granted, she was good with a bow and arrow…
He lost himself in the mental puzzle of trying to reconcile all the unbelievable elements of this place he and Angie had fallen into. The dragons, the magician, the sandmirks (if he had seen them on film in a late, late movie he would have sneered at them), Aragh, and now this russet-haired goddess with a bow and arrow who talked like—he did not know what she talked like. Except that he was becoming more and more wary of finding himself in a conversation with her. She had a directness which literally scared him silly. What gave her the idea that she could ask any question she felt like?
Of course, he did not have to answer. But not answering simply made him look as if he were dodging something. The nub of the problem was that Jim had been very strictly trained not to ask embarrassing questions; and apparently Danielle had no inhibitions at all in that area.
The next time she asks me something I don't want to answer, he told himself, I'll simply tell her it's none of her business—
"Ridiculous!" he heard Brian saying to Aragh, "I tell you. From this angle we have to come in behind the castle, at the Little Lyn Stream, where the curtain wall is up on a rock and there's no way in, even if someone on the wall recognizes me."
"We come in facing the gate, I tell you!" snarled Aragh.
"Back!"
"Gate—"
"Look," said Jim hastily, waking once more to his role as peacemaker between these two. "Let me ask somebody local. All right?"
Peace at any price.
He turned aside from their line of march through the apparently unending wood, and searched about for a source of directions. It certainly could not be too hard to find someone. Granted, there seemed to be no other humans about. But in this world, everything seemed capable of speech—dragons, watchbeetles, wolves… An exception might be the flora. So far he had seen no evidence that trees, flowers or bushes could speak. But if he could only find an animal or insect…