The Dragon and the Djinn Page 8

  "Just suppose we had to do that—put the boat in to shore and run," said Jim. "What if they came in after us or sent another small boat in after us and caught me, for example?"

  In Europe, he knew that normally a person dressed as expensively as he was would be held to ransom.

  The ship owner shrugged.

  "Take all you had that was worth anything, and then do the same with you as they'd do with us," he answered.

  "If we stayed together," said Jim, "maybe if there was just a small boatload coming to shore after us, we could fight them off."

  The ship owner nodded his head vigorously. Jim's heart lifted, before he remembered what the motion meant. He was still getting used to the fact that in some of these near-eastern areas, a nod meant "no" and a shake of the head meant "yes."

  Once the proper message got through, however, he felt a touch of relief. If the others would not stand and fight with him, then he could feel a little easier about taking care of himself and Hob first; and all that was necessary for the two of them was to duck out of sight someplace. Then he could turn into a dragon and fly himself and Hob out of the reach of any corsairs in a hurry.

  In the event, however, they met no corsairs, and Jim did not go all the way into actual seasickness. But he was very glad to step out on the stony beach in front of the castle of Sir Mortimor; in spite of the fact that waiting for them were a half-dozen very fierce-looking, armed men with steel or leather upper body-armor and cap, over-robes. As far as their faces went, they might have been distant cousins of the boat owner, only lacking the boatman's cheerfulness. Jim had hardly set foot ashore before the sword-point of one of them was at his throat.

  "Take that away or I'll have you whipped for it!" snapped Jim, falling back on the proper knightly response. "Send to the castle immediately! I am Sir James Eckert de Malencontri, the Dragon Knight, here to see Sir Brian who is guesting in this place. Carry that message to Sir Mortimor or Sir Brian immediately. I command it!"

  He had been in this world long enough to pick up some understanding of how a situation like this should be handled. The two key points were to be as richly dressed as he was, and to act as if he was the infinite superior of any of those around him.

  It worked. The man who had presented the swordpoint at his throat did not lower his weapon, but he backed away a couple of steps and snapped an order at one of the others to run ahead to tell them in the castle what Jim had said.

  "Come, Sir Dragon, then," said the man with the naked sword. "Come with us!"

  They escorted him up the steeply sloping beach, through the jumble of small buildings that were evidently half homes, half warehouses; with nets draped on posts to dry, and fish also drying on racks. Just beyond the village the going abruptly became very steep indeed; and a sort of switchback path or road led up to the castle itself, giving way at last to a flight of steps cut through the groundcover into the rock underneath it; so that the last bit of distance was like climbing a staircase.

  The castle was really nothing but the tower, with a few precariously attached wooden outbuildings; a simple-looking fortress. At the same time, Jim noticed that it was not as vulnerable as it might appear at first glance. It was built of bluish-gray stone blocks, with a stout entrance door that was closed until the leader of Jim's escort pounded on it and shouted to those within—after which it was opened and they were let into a short and narrow passage with stone walls all around them leading to another door, equally stout.

  Jim looked up as they moved toward this second door and saw a ceiling above with holes in it through which uncomfortable things like boiling oil could be poured down on anyone who broke through the first door and was battering at the second; then, hopefully, it would be set aught by burning brands pushed through those same holes—so that the space between the two doors would become a death trap.

  In Jim's case, however, he was led on peacefully through the second door into a very gloomy interior. There seemed to be only a single, further light source—and indeed this turned out to be a fact.

  They went forward until he came to what was essentially an open well, ascending through the middle of the castle right up to an opening in the top floor of the tower. A patch of blue sky and a glimpse of battlements could be seen. Undoubtedly this roof opening would be closed in bad weather with one or more covers. For now, however, it was open; and the sunlight struck strongly down through it, its gleams bouncing off the stony walls to give what little light this could to the rest of the castle. In the lower areas of even the central part of this well, itself, torches burned on the walls to reinforce the lighting.

  He was led to stone stairs attached to the stone wall, the steps spiraling up against the outer wall of the tower. On the third floor he found Brian, with a tall, somewhat elderly-looking, thin man with a long, mournful face and a mustache that drooped down at the ends of his thin lips. A man who looked less like a warlord than a retired scholar.

  "James!" cried Brian, starting up from the table at which he and the elderly man were sitting. The elderly man rose too, but more slowly.

  But as he got up, Jim rapidly changed his first impression that the slow rise was due to age. Instead, plainly, it was the result of a casualness, a sort of studied laziness. When the man at last stood at his full height, he towered not only over Brian, but Jim; and if his mustache and hair signaled age, the rest of his body signaled some twenty or more years younger. He was at least six and a half feet tall and of that peculiar rangy, hard-muscled build that would probably mean he would be both strong and fast in action.

  However, Jim did not have a chance to see more than this, because Brian had darted forward from the table to embrace him and kiss first his left cheek, then his right—a common fourteenth-century greeting among friends that Jim had learned to accept with some show of grace.

  "You are here, James!" cried Brian, letting him go. "More welcome than I can tell you! And just in time as well! Allow me to make you acquainted with Sir Mortimor Breugel."

  Jim knew the proper manners for this type of situation. He inclined his head in a near bow to the tall man standing behind the table, who returned it.

  "Honored to make your acquaintance, Sir Mortimor," said Jim.

  "Honored to make yours—" said Sir Mortimor in a remarkable bass voice, and paused meaningfully.

  "Crave pardon!" said Brian happily. "Sir Mortimor, this is the right worshipful Baron, Sir James Eckert, the Dragon Knight, of whom you have heard me speak."

  "You and others," said Sir Mortimor warmly. "It is a special pleasure to see you, Sir James. As Sir Brian says, you come at a good hour. Pray seat yourself with us and may I offer you some wine and meat?"

  Jim was still a little bit queasy from the boat ride, but what Sir Mortimor was offering was ritual hospitality, which it would be insulting to refuse; and in any case Jim was glad to find himself welcomed so warmly. He joined the other two and they all sat down around one end of the table. It, like all the other furnishings Jim had seen so far in the castle, was of the barest, most utilitarian variety. Altogether Sir Mortimor's home reminded him of Malencontri, when he and Angie had first moved in. The previous owner of that castle had camped out in it, rather than actually living there; using it as a base for any number of outside activities.

  Now he touched his lips to the mazer—the large square drinking utensil brimming with wine that was placed before him—and took a bite of the gristly meat—mutton, he decided from the taste of it—that a servant or one of the men-at-arms placed in front of him.

  "May I ask," he said, as soon as he had managed to chew the piece of meat apart enough so that he could swallow it, "why you two gentlemen talk about my coming in good time?"

  "Why, James, it could not be better," said Brian. "The chance of a lifetime. Have you never longed to cross swords with a Sallee Rover?"

  Jim's mind went into one of its scrambles to make the proper connection with the term for a moment; then he remembered that a Sallee Rover was one name for a S
allee (or Moroccan) who was of a piratical nature. In fact, Morocco was generally considered to be nothing but a nest of pirates—at least by Sir William Brutnor and his friends, the gentlemen he had met on Cyprus.

  "I have, I can tell you!" Brian was going on eagerly. "But never did I think I would have the chance. But here I was, guesting up this way; and word came that some were expected at the shore below this castle at any moment. Our good Sir Mortimor has on occasion picked up some of the eastern merchant ships; and it seems the owners of the goods carried in those ships have hired a couple of the fiercest of the Sallee Rovers to come hither and put an end to him and this castle."

  Jim felt a pang of instinctive sympathy for the owners of the merchant ships. Translated, what Brian had just said meant that Sir Mortimor had been robbing some vessels to the point where their owners and shippers decided the larceny had to be stopped; and they had hired some of the more notorious Moroccans to do the job for them.

  But of course, he reflected, there was no such thing anyway as justice upon the Mediterranean, any more than there was anywhere else upon the oceans of the world. The strong took anything weak enough to be taken, and fled from anything stronger enough to take them.

  More than that, he had already heard that it was Sir Mortimor's way of making a living. He himself, he thought, had no interest whatsoever in getting into a fight with Moroccan pirates; but it was exactly like Brian to think of this as the greatest entertainment in the world. To say nothing of the fact that it would produce—if he lived through it—a story that he could tell back in England to the envy and admiration of all.

  To be honest, Jim knew Brian well enough to believe that it was the excitement of the actual life-and-death encounter that sent Brian eagerly into these battles, rather than the wish to tell about them afterwards. But the tale of this fight later on would not be something without social value.

  However, mentioning any of these thoughts aloud to his present two companions would not be the most politic choice of conversation. Jim smiled and made an effort to look not only interested, but happily so.

  "Indeed!" he said. "And you say these pirates are expected at any moment?"

  "We have a lookout on duty night and day at the top of my tower," said Sir Mortimor in that surprising bass of his.

  Jim was ready to swear that the man was not speaking above his normal conversational tone; but the words seemed to bounce off the stone walls behind Jim and echo throughout the whole castle, Sir Mortimor had the kind of voice which could be perfectly understood by someone twenty feet away, even with an intervening crowd of other people talking at the top of their own voices in between.

  "So far," went on Sir Mortimor, "none of them have reported what we expect, although sails are often seen. Of course, they are most likely to come in galleys, possibly with their sails down and on oars only. But still, in this clear weather we will see them coming and have time to arm. Meanwhile, perhaps, you would care to join Sir Brian and me in a bout with the dice?"

  "I must beg your forgiveness, Sir Mortimor," said Jim. "As Sir Brian may have told you, I am a magician, and under certain circumstances, my control and use of magic depends upon my abstaining from all pleasures involved with chance. Also, Sir Brian, I have news and word to you from the Lady Geronde, and from my own dear wife, the Lady Angela, which I must not forget to tell you at some other time. If you and Sir Mortimor care to dice, I shall enjoy simply sitting and watching."

  "Sad, that; but I understand, of course," said Sir Mortimor, with something in his voice that seemed to Jim a little too much like the regret of a card sharp seeing a plump but innocent victim escape.

  "Howbeit," he went on, "possibly better we acquaint you with what Sir Brian and I were just discussing; which is our matter of defense of this castle of mine when the marauders do land."

  "I shall be happy to hear," said Jim.

  "Come!" said Sir Mortimor, uncurling to his full height again and leading them away from the table, up the staircase and on to the very roof of the tower; a level circle of stone with its surrounding battlements like jagged teeth, and the opening of the light-and-air shaft in its center. There was another opening by the battlements facing seaward, which must be above the entrance passage with holes in its ceiling.

  There were as well five chimneys better than six feet tall; and a huge, soot-blackened metal kettle on wheels, with a sandbox-firebed underneath, undoubtedly to heat boiling oil for pouring on attackers.

  Beside the kettle stood a framework in which was vertically suspended a circular round of what looked like bronze, some four feet across. It was not until Jim saw something like a sledgehammer leaning against one side of the framework that he recognized the apparatus as a large gong.

  This gong stood midway between two men—plainly guards on lookout here, both of them gazing out at the waters of the Mediterranean. Jim, looking out himself, saw the white flecks of several sails at varying distances; but since the watchmen took no interest in them, they could hardly be the galleys of the enemy coming in.

  Both these men looked about as Sir Mortimor led Brian and Jim upon the roof, Sir Mortimor flicked a pointing finger downward at the steps from which he had just emerged, and the two ran to them, disappearing from sight.

  "They can learn about my plans," said Sir Mortimor to Brian and Jim, softening his voice as he led them to the battlements, well away from the ventilation shaft and to where no chimneys obstructed their view to seaward, "when I'm ready to tell them. Take a look, gentlemen. You see the situation."

  Jim, with Brian, looked over the battlement and down at the beachfront below. The tower, in effect the castle itself, was no more than four or five stories high; but its slenderness, and its position perched on the spire of rock with the cliff behind and overhanging it, gave an impression of dizzying altitude; so that they seemed much farther up than they actually were. Added to this, the steep steps down to the almost as steep switchback path below it, then farther on down to the beach below, increased the feeling of height; so that it felt to Jim as if he was looking out from a precipice half a mile high.

  That illusion, however, was at odds with the fact that he knew he was not actually that far above the sloping beach; and so the wooden buildings upon it gave the impression of being closer than they should be. It was as if he looked at these through a telescope at the same time as he examined everything else from the illusory height of the tower.

  The stony, pebbled water's edge, at which the waves lapped, was at the greatest indentation of a small bay. The cliff behind the castle curved forward on either hand, like horns, reaching out to form two headlands.

  The tops of these headlands were little higher than the castle roof, itself. As far as their tops could be seen, they were almost bare, except for some vegetation and a few sheep wandering about.

  Out to sea, the Mediterranean was as peaceful as it had been since Jim had arrived here in Cyprus, its blue surface stretching to the curving horizon, with the sails Jim had noticed earlier apparently passing each other and the shore on coastal business.

  "I expect no less than two large galleys, each carrying a load of up to two hundred armed landsmen," said Sir Mortimor's voice in Jim's right ear. "These, together with the crew of the galleys, will bring to face us some five hundred fighting men. They will land, burn the village and kill any they catch, then attempt to come at the castle from above. But they will find that the overhang of the cliff behind it prevents them dropping anything heavy enough to do damage from there. Also, the grass is slippery up there and the slope is steep toward the edge of the cliff. They will lose a few men over the edge of the cliff merely by trying this."

  "Will they have Greek fire?" Brian asked their host.

  "Greek fire is a close-held secret still, in Constantinople," said Sir Mortimor. "They will not. No more will they have bombards of any kind, although they may have some gunpowder; and they may try to place that around the base of the tower and do some damage with it. But my lower walls are now
here less than six feet thick and up to ten feet in places. Gunpowder has been tried before and done no real damage. They will burn the village below, as I say, and of course they will make a try up the steps and through the door of the main entrance."

  "They will be at a sore disadvantage while they are at that," said Brian.

  Sir Mortimor nodded.

  "It will cost them heavily; but if they keep trying long enough, they may get through both doors. If that is the case, they will then overrun the castle and we shall die. Therefore, a decision will have to be made at the last moment—in fact I shall make it, myself, gentlemen. With all due deference to your own skill in warfare and with weapons, this is my castle and I will fight it the way I know best to do. If it seems they have survived breaking through the outer door and the boiling oil in the passage, and done enough damage to the inner door so they will shortly be through, then we must sally."

  "Hah!" said Brian.

  "There is a secret way out of this castle that emerges some little way down the beach," went on Sir Mortimor. "Counting those of the village able to fight to any purpose, we will have inside with us here over a hundred and forty men. With a hundred of these, we can attack those who come against us from behind, or unexpectedly in the night, when they have withdrawn to rest, feeling that we who are penned in the castle can nowise escape from them; and therefore they can finish matters at their leisure. If we have the good luck to catch most of them asleep, or unexpecting—and, since they will be boat people, with legs not used to running up and down steep paths to attack or escape—we may do enough damage to convince them that we are a rescue party come from Episcopi, or somewhere else close. A reinforcement. So that they will break and run for their galleys."

  "Pray," said Brian to the tall knight, "to which side of the castle does this secret way emerge?"

  Sir Mortimor looked down at him with a wintry smile.

  "There is no harm in telling you that much," he answered. "Though all else about that escape route is a family secret."