Gordon Dickson Dragon 09 The Dragon and the Fair Ma

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Jim sighed inside himself.
" my lord," the Bishop's chief man-at-arms was saying, "all is ready."
"Then we ride!" shouted the Bishop, and together, with the bishop leading,
Jim at his side, but half a horse's length behind him& and all of the rest
following after, they rode out of the light of the cressets, through the
unusually open great gates on to the briefly noisy drawbridge, and into the
darkness and different sounds of the late fall night.
Jim was not superstitious in the sense of fearing some evil beyond the norm
for these times that the darkness might confront them with. The Bishop
certainly was not superstitious (in Jim's modern sense of that word), and
possibly those in the service of the Church with him were not either. But
almost everyone else in the entourage, particularly those of the common sort
among the latter riders for they were all mounted, necessarily showed a
tendency to crowd together.
But still, as their eyes adjusted to the night and they were able to consider
the numbers and the strength of their party to say nothing of the fact they
had not only a Bishop with them, but a heroic Knight-Magickian as well, the
gloom ceased to be quite as fearful. They relaxed, spread out and began to
talk together in low voices, all but covered by the jingle of horse-harness.
Jim spoke to the Bishop, in case the other should be feeling like
conversation. But the Bishop's answers were short and showed no such need or
desire. His attention was clearly all on his own thoughts and what waited to
be done once he was at their destination.
Jim reined Gorp back a few feet from the prelate and lost himself in his own
thoughts.
Page 37
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
At the pace the Bishop was setting a sharp trot they would have to stop at
intervals to rest their horses. Still, they should reach Wells in about eight
hours. He could grab four hours sleep, get up, eat something and, hopefully,
be back at Malencontri in another eight hours.
With luck he could be home by late afternoon the next day. Out on his feet,
of course, but alert enough to do what he should have gotten done already:
starting the staff at the job of hunting down every rat and flea on the
premises, and setting up a quarantine on anyone wanting to enter the castle in
the future.
Also, they would need to set up some exterior shelter to quarantine anyone
arriving, once the plague became active here Angie's suggestion about fleas
and pennyroyal had been a good one, if there was any quantity on hand or in
the castle. Maybe Angie would already have set all these necessary projects to
work by the time he got back&
In any case he was stuck with his Bishop delivery first. Actually, they were
now too large a body to run into much in the way of trouble. It was true most
of their way was by narrow forest paths and sometimes no path at all but the
moon was now up, a full moon already on the wane, but bright enough in a night
sky with few clouds. Few outlaw bands would be foolish enough to attack.
There still remained the night-trolls, who could and would band together
swiftly for a sufficiently large prey.
But already they had left behind most of the thick, continuous forest of the
territory surrounding Malencontri and were passing through more open
land natural meadows interspersed with no more than brief patches of trees. In
the bright moonlight such terrain was much less favorable for trolls, who
liked the cover of darkness. Jim relaxed and his mind wandered off onto other
problems.
With an extermination policy on the fleas and rats in the castle, quarantine
on those from outside and a ward he could set up around the whole castle's
perimeter, to block any cracks or holes by which more fleas and rats were
getting in they should be about as safe from the plague as was possible in
this world.
He thought briefly about offering to set up a ward around the Bishop's seat
at Wells, and dismissed the idea. The Bishop undoubtedly would not could
not accept such unchurchly aid. In addition, such a warding, plus
Malencontri's, would almost certainly call for more magical energy than Jim's
account with the Auditing Department could supply.
In any case an offer like that would be better to come from Carolinus& an
image of the excruciatingly painful buboes that would swell on the naked
bodies of plague victims until they burst came to Jim's mind, making him
briefly sick inside, until he managed to forcibly jerk his thoughts to other
things.
First of these, and touchiest, was the matter of the Prince's request to use
Malencontri as a private place to discuss his plot concerning the King with
Sir Mortimer
Jim woke suddenly to the fact that the Bishop had held up an arm, signaling a
rest halt. Pushing their horses at this rate made such rests necessary, unless
they were going to ride the animals to death.
Page 38
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
But, Jim saw, the Bishop could not have chosen a better spot.
It was a small rise hardly more than a knoll with half a dozen tall elms on
it, the shade of which had evidently killed off anything much in the way of
underbrush between them. But its greatest recommendation was the fact that all
around it was a belt of grassy open ground, and only beyond this, at distances
of at least half a bowshot, were there trees thick enough to hide any
attackers who might want to creep up on them.
A hum of pleased conversation broke out among the retainers as they obeyed
the order of the Bishop's chief man-at-arms to dismount and lead their horses
in among the elms a routine precaution in case they were being followed by
outlaws with bowmen among them, waiting for a moment when they would relax
their vigilance. A man wounded by an arrow could always ride, even if he would
need to be tied on his steed. A horse in the same state had to be left
behind and they had no spare mounts.
But the hum broke off as the howl of a wolf rose from the wood they had just
ridden out of a moment past.
The Bishop opened his mouth to order them all back to courage.
"It's all right," said Jim quickly, keeping his own voice down, "I know that
wolf."
He raised his voice.
"Fear not!' he told the rigid members of their group. "You all know
Magickians can talk to animals."
That was not quite true, of course. Jim could talk to Aargh only because
Aargh could talk in human language to him. Carolinus seemed to manage the
skill all right, but so far Jim had had only limited success, and that only
with horses. The trouble seemed to be that most animal communication was in no
way verbal but in body language. "I'll go have a word with the wolf," he
added.
Surrounded and followed by a dead silence, he headed Gorp off toward where
the howl had come from. Gorp went without protest, being by this time almost
as familiar with that particular howl as Jim was though the other horses were
white-eyed and having to be reined in by their riders.
But as he had expected, he had hardly ridden deep enough into the trees to be
hidden from his watchers when he heard a harsh voice behind him.
"So, now it's half-grown dragons you send to say you need me! What is it this
time?"
Jim turned Gorp about and faced Aargh, the English Wolf, bulking larger than
ever in the moonlight penetrating between the two large elms on either side of
him.
"There's a sickness called the plague inEngland now "
"I've heard talk of it. It's no matter to those of us who go on four legs."
"No, you animals are immune. I'd forgotten I'd sent a message for you. What I
had in mind then was that you might be able to tell us if it'd reached this
far west and was maybe making people sick anywhere inSomerset . But now
something else has come up. The Bishop needs to get home as soon as possible "
Page 39
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Podstrony