The Dragon and the Gnarly King Read online

  "Good. I will," said Jim. "Thank you, Acka. Good-bye."

  "Under any circumstances," said Acka, earnestly. "No matter how dangerous it is, you can count on me. If you can just get me by magick—why don't you do that? It would save time all around."

  "I'll think about it," said Jim. "Now, farewell, Acka!"

  "Farewell, my Lord," said Acka, sideslipping away regretfully. "Honored to have talked to you…"

  Jim watched him go. Acka had dropped to a lower air current but one still running westward. The Cliffside Eyrie which was Acka's home was in the opposite direction. He was adventuring even farther than Malencontri—in the middle of the day when most mature dragons would be heading for the coolness of their tunnels and caves.

  Probably, he was showing off how fearless he was. Oh, well, Jim's own route was curving away from the youngster's, now; and he had no actual authority over Acka anyway. The other would soon get tired of whatever game he was playing, once Jim was out of sight, and go home.

  Now, back to the besieging peasants—a thought occurred that possibly he could use Acka somehow to give the idea he had gone to get other dragons as reinforcements. No—he had forgotten the archers. They had been too startled to get off any shots during his brief appearance in the clearing, but that would not be so again.

  A dead Acka looking like a pin cushion, with shafts sticking out all over him, was not something Jim wanted to explain to the young dragon's family at Cliffside—

  He noticed suddenly that the dot that was Acka was now once more growing larger. For some reason, he was headed back toward Jim. Ten to one he had thought of some reason or excuse for prolonging the conversation and was coming back to have a further try at it. That should be stopped before it had a chance to get started.

  Jim filled his capacious dragon lungs. Acka was still too far away for his youthful voice to reach Jim, but with Jim's mature dragon's voice and the younger dragon's acute hearing, Acka should be able to hear him—putting Jim in the happy situation of being able to send the youngster home without having to listen to his excuses not to.

  "Acka!" he bellowed. "Go home!"

  The dot that had just enlarged into a head-on dragon-shape hesitated, bob-bled uncertainly in mid-air, and shouted something back—that, just as Jim had expected, was unintelligible.

  "Go home!" repeated Jim.

  But Acka kept on coming.

  "M'Lord! M'Lord…" he was shouting.

  "What is it?" said Jim, angrily.

  "There are a lot of georges coming down the trail from Castle Smythe toward Malencontri!" Acka's relatively high-pitched voice called back. "A lot of georges, m'Lord!"

  The information made no sense at all. Georges were what dragons called humans, of course; but in his somewhat run-down home Sir Brian Neville-Smythe never entertained, and there was no one… he thought of Brian's recent interests in politics, and a coldness began to form inside him.

  "—And they're all on horses!" Acka's voice reached him again.

  "On horses?" This made the coldness increase. Only gentry, knights, or men of higher rank rode, except for the occasional courier or special servant.

  "I'll take care of it!" Jim shouted at Acka. "Now you go home. GO HOME!"

  Acka stopped shouting, bobbled for another second or two, and then began to dwindle again—this time in an easterly direction, toward the Cliffside caves. Jim angled himself to the wind, to head northwest by west, which was roughly how he had to go to overfly the forest trail that was occasionally dignified by—but didn't deserve—the name of "road" between Malencontri and Castle Smythe.

  He soared along, looking down at the treetops, and waiting for the break in them that would show him at least a portion of the trail. However, some little time went by, and he did not find it. Puzzled, he turned at last and headed back in the opposite direction. It seemed impossible that he could have missed it—or perhaps it wasn't all that impossible, after all.

  It was full summer now. The trail was very narrow, and the leafed-out treetops hid most of it from the air unless you were looking down at the right angle to the ground. Acka must have been doing just that to spot what he did.

  Jim's feeling of alarm began to subside. Probably, he thought, a couple of pack-pedlars with their donkeys had caught Acka's eaglelike vision. He had just exaggerated.

  In any case, whatever the young dragon had seen couldn't have been this far away.

  Jim worked back along the line of where the trail should be visible, now headed toward Malencontri. He knew the trail well, from traveling it on foot—or, more accurately, on horseback. Except for little twists and turns, to go around an unusually large tree or awkward clump of bushes, it made a fairly straight line toward the Castle, this close to Malencontri.

  He located it at last—just a glimpse of a narrow, greenish-brown thread between the trees, unused enough that grass was partially covering it. But no one was in it—he must now be beyond whoever was approaching Malencontri. He turned once more and began to soar outward again on a breeze that carried him only about a hundred feet above the treetops. This close to the ground, he could see the trail clearly; and eventually he did catch sight of some movement up ahead.

  He checked his momentum and angled his wings to put himself into a tight circle above the treetops, so that he could watch and wait for whoever was approaching. They should be putting in an appearance within minutes—within seconds, if they were on horseback.

  Even as he told himself this, there they were. A long line—clearly a knight, leading a very long double line of men on horseback, all wearing identical red surcoats with a badge on them, over their armor… Jim adjusted his dragon sight for distance, now seeing like a falcon… this shade of red was the royal color, and the badge on the breast of the surcoat was the head of a lion—leopard, it was termed.

  These were the English King's men-at-arms, and their line stretched back out of sight among the trees. Acka had not exaggerated after all.

  These were indeed a remarkable sight to be seen coming along the track from Castle Smythe. There must be thirty or more of them—an unreasonable number, ordinarily, for quiet, peaceful Somerset on a bright summer day; and the King's costly men-at-arms would not be out here just to pursue renegade peasants… The man who rode at their head would be their commander, a knight wearing his own coat of arms on his shield.

  The thought occurred that this might be Sir John Chandos, who had visited before—though not with such an escort. Jim's angled view did not let him make out the coat of arms the knight was wearing. He made a turn in the air and angled toward the front of the column to get a better view.

  Abruptly, he had it.

  The knight's coat of arms showed two heraldic hounds attacking a boar.

  It was not Chandos, but some other King's officer—in force; and if he and his men were coming from Castle Smythe—from which Jim had received no message on any such matter—then anything could be in the wind, and that wind might bode ill for his and Angie's closest friend in this world, Sir Brian Neville-Smythe.

  Jim spiraled upward from the trees—not pumping his wings but riding an updraft, because he did not want to be heard below, but gaining as much altitude as he could before heading directly for Malencontri again, as fast as he could fly.

  Chapter Two

  The Lady Angela Eckert, erstwhile twentieth-century graduate student and wife of Jim, Baron of Malencontri, and in her own right Chatelaine of its Castle, had been moving around that Castle and its grounds most of the morning, taking care of things automatically as she came upon them—as good Chatelaines will. She had been correcting a mistake being made here, chiding a daydreaming servant who should have been working there, and settling a dispute between two workers someplace else.

  She had dreamed once of herself as working away, turning a large crank whose shaft entered one of the Castle walls. All around her had been people belonging to the Castle; and as long as she kept cranking, they went busily about their proper duties. But when sh
e stopped to catch her breath for a moment, they all instantly stopped, too, and stood like clothing dummies until she began to turn the crank again—at which moment they all began to move once more.

  The image of everything and everyone brought to a halt had come back to her mind just minutes before, as she had passed the Serving Room just off the Great Hall and heard voices raised in argument there. She had made a mental note to check up on it, but not right at this moment.

  The Castle's work could not be let to be interrupted by a little thing like an attack by a band of marauding outlaws. The thunder of Jim's wings as he dived at the peasants had drawn her to one of the windows. She had recognized him in his dragon-shape, and watched with relief as he sensibly flew off before the attackers could recover.

  Still watching, she had seen, a few minutes later, another dragon flying overhead. The attackers, already turned somewhat irresolute, had spotted it. Then it had returned, coming back in the other direction. It was clearly a younger, smaller dragon than the first that had attacked them, but the idea of more than one such beast above them had clearly been upsetting for the former peasants.

  Then a few of their party came running out of the mouth of the road to Castle Smythe, pointing back the way they had come. At this the archers and some of what were probably the more experienced hands in the group disgustedly shouldered their bows and trudged off toward the south. The rest hurried to follow; and it was all over. There were not even any bodies to clear away.

  The attackers were probably no longer a danger, but she ought to send a warning to their friends, anyway.

  She had been planning to get together with Geronde, in any case. The Lady Geronde Isabel de Chaney—Chatelaine, and in all but name, ruler of Malvern Castle—who was Brian's bride-to-be, was someone much more experienced with fees, bribes, and other practicalities, than Angie herself. Climbing the tower stairs toward the pigeon-loft and dispatching one of the homing pigeons to tell her of the attacking party on the loose, and invite her to Malencontri, was the first step. The Serving Room problem could be looked into on Angie's way back downstairs.

  A present to the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who had been so helpful in badgering the King into giving the wardship of little Robert Falon to her and Jim, was overdue. What Angie had in mind was some real Chinese silk, something Carolinus ought to be able to get for her through his connections with other magicians in the Far East. But paying for such a present would be a large extra expense—particularly right now, when the King was driving everybody up the wall by increasing taxes on everything conceivable.

  She had never realized that back here in the fourteenth century, one of the things she would have to worry about would be income tax. It was not called by that name here and now, but that was what it was. She and Jim had to pay his Royal Majesty, Edward the Third, ten to fifteen percent of everything they gained during the year, from rents, anything sold, earned, or derived from any other means of income.

  They had already bribed the King—more or less directly—with over thirty pounds for the wardship itself, and there would be further necessary payments to the Court functionaries who would be handling the legal paperwork—not merely the Court of Chancery, but the Chief Clerks there, and even some of the subsidiary Clerks.

  Finding money—or some equivalent—to pay for a bolt of white Chinese silk—even though a bolt of cloth in this time was nowhere near as wide as the ones she had been used to in the twentieth century—was going to be a problem, the way money had drained out lately.

  As she finished thinking this, she had finally reached the floor where the pigeon-loft was, two stories down from the tower-top—in fact, right below the Solar, that was her bedroom and Jim's, and where there was a smaller room that had been partitioned off for Robert.

  The pigeon-loft was a long narrow room, curved because it was fitted to the curve of the tower itself, with a companionably curving shelf running at waist height its full length. On the shelf were cages, most with a homing pigeon in them.

  A quiet cooing became somewhat more clamorous as she appeared, just in case it might be feeding time—even though the pigeons knew very well it wasn't. She looked at them with approval. Yes, there were plenty of Malvern pigeons, ready to take off for their home loft the minute they were set free with a message, their destination firmly fixed in their small pigeon heads.

  Angie frowned. The Pigeon-Keeper, who was new on the job, was nowhere in sight, nor had she encountered him anywhere on her way here.

  Still frowning, she followed the curve of the room around toward its far end, and there discovered him on the floor, huddled in a corner and not moving.

  Her first thought was that something had happened to him, but her frown came back like a thundercloud as she stood over him and smelled the strong reek of beer. A closer examination confirmed the fact: the fourteen-year-old Keeper was dead drunk, passed out.

  Angie repressed a strong desire to kick him in the ribs. She did not; for one thing, she was still not that much of a medieval person, even after living in this world for almost three years now. Also, she remembered, she was wearing the shoes of the period, which were more like heelless slippers than anything else—kicking would have hurt her toes and probably not even awakened him.

  Following up these thoughts was the sudden worry that the boy might be a confirmed drinker, rather than someone who had just happened to fall off the wagon on this particular occasion. It was not impossible, given the fact that everybody—regardless of age—drank at least the local home-brewed beer or ale. It could be that the lad was already addicted to alcohol.

  If that was the case, he could not be kept on at the Castle. Dismissing him would be hard on his family, and doubly hard on him when his family learned about it. They had undoubtedly celebrated his being given the chance to take care of the pigeons here, telling each other that once on the Castle staff, his ambition need know no limit. The boy could end up as anything—Master of Hounds, possibly. Maybe even… wild dream that it was… he might someday even become the Castle Steward.

  There was little doubt that his nearest and dearest would handle him very roughly if they discovered he had lost his chance at rank and riches simply because he did not have the wit to know when it was safe to get drunk.

  But she could not risk having an undependable servant. Nor did she have time to try and wean a young alcoholic from his addiction, even if the servants around the Castle would back her up in her efforts—which she doubted. In fact, they would probably sneak drinks to him—if not out of mere sympathy, then out of a coarse sense of fun at getting him in trouble.

  This was the kind of thing Angie hated. Neither she nor Jim had been able to bring themselves to order the beatings, floggings, and such that medieval people in authority used to control those under them… of course, she could have the boy thrown into the Castle dungeon, which like the dungeons in most castles was simply a dirt pit on the basement level.

  She had had the dungeon at Malencontri cleaned of filth—there were no facilities available for those thrown into such places in this era—in fact, prisoners were lucky if food were also thrown at them occasionally—but it was still lightless, unfurnished, and within the foundation walls, the thickest stone walls of the Castle. These walls never really warmed up, even at the end of summer. As a result, dungeons were always miserably cold.

  A night in one might bring the boy to his senses as far as his duty was concerned. The usual lot of those imprisoned in this fashion was never to come out alive, or else to be taken out only to receive such severe punishment that they died. Such a prospect might scare the boy into sobriety. Or maybe it would scare him only until he was released, after which he might well slip back into his old ways.

  Angie's mind was still wrestling with the problem when she heard the tinkle of a bell that announced the arrival of one of their own pigeons at the cote. She turned to it immediately, but it had no message banded to a leg. It was certainly a Malencontri pigeon, lent to Brian or Geronde
to send her or Jim a message; perhaps it had managed to escape its keeper and come home on its own.

  To Angie's surprise, however, it was almost immediately joined by another pigeon that Angie had not noticed loose among the cages until now, and which was wandering about, helping itself to grain spilled or kicked out of the other cages. This bird did have a message band—bulging with a message that should have been delivered to her or Jim by the boy now unconscious in the corner.

  From its calm and peaceful air this second bird had not arrived within the last few minutes. It might have come before the boy got drunk enough to pass out. Another black mark against him.

  Angie went to the bird, picked it up, and removed the message, before putting both loose pigeons into an empty cage. The newcomer protested, but she tossed them some extra corn, to sweeten the situation, and they immediately gave this all their attention.

  Angie unrolled the message.

  It was a strip of the thinnest paper then to be found; and the message itself read simply "B ANT G CUM," printed in Geronde's personal version of fourteenth-century spelling. Since it was also in English, rather than the Latin written by Malvern Castle's resident priest, it was meant to be a personal note, signaling a personal visit.

  Brian and Geronde, then, were coming to pay a visit. But when had the message been sent? From the state of the pigeon-boy, it could have been yesterday.

  But even more disturbing was the personal element hinted at in the note. Ten to one they had some kind of problem and would be looking for help or advice. That would almost certainly mean a serious matter.

  In the Middle Ages, there were no two meanings to the word "friendship." If a friend called on you for help, it was not a time to explain that you were busy right at the moment, or had a previous engagement. Your duty was to drop everything else and pay attention. To lend a hand or possessions, wield a weapon or even risk your life, to aid him or her. Else you were no true friend.