Gordon Dickson - Dragon Knight 03 - The Dragon on the Border

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CHAPTER ONE

“Ah, spring,” said the good knight Sir Brian Neville-Smythe, “how could it be better, James?”

Sir James Eckert, Baron de Malencontri et Riveroak, riding beside Sir Brian, was caught slightly off

guard by the question.

True, the sun was shining beautifully, but it was still a little chilly by his own personal, twentieth-century

standards; and he was grateful for the padding underneath his armor. Brian, he was sure, was feeling if

anything a little on the warm side- certainly he seemed to find the day balmy-and Dafydd ap Hywel,

riding a little behind them, wearing nothing but ordinary archer’s clothes, including a leather jerkin

studded with metal plates, should by Jim’s standards also be feeling chilly. But Jim was ready to bet that

he was not, either.

There was, in fact, some reason for Brian’s reaction.

Last year it had been good weather for them all, both in France and in England all through the summer.

But the fall had made up for that. Autumn had been steady rain; and the winter had been steady snow.

But now the winter and the snow had passed; and spring was upon the land even as far north as here in

Northumberland, next to the Scottish border.

It was toward this border that Jim, along with Brian and Dafydd, was now riding.

Jim woke suddenly to the fact that he had not answered Brian. An answer would be needed. If he did

not echo the other’s cheerful sentiments about the weather, Brian would be sure that he was ailing. That

was one of the problems that Jim had learned to accustom himself to in this parallel fourteenth-century

world, in which he and his wife Angie had found themselves. To people like Sir Brian, either everything

couldn’t be better, or else you were ailing.

Ailing meant that you should dose yourself with all sorts of noxious concoctions, none of which could do

any good at all. It was true that the fourteenth century knew a few things about medicine-though these

were usually in the area of surgery. They could, and did, cut off a gangrenous limb-without the use of an

anesthetic of course-and they were sensible enough to cauterize any wound that seemed to have infected.

Jim lived in dread of getting wounded in some way when he was away from home and could not let

Angie (the Lady Angela de Malencontri et Riveroak, his wife) take care of his doctoring.

About the only way he would have of fending off the mistaken help of people like Brian and Dafydd

would be to claim that he could take care of the matter with magic. Jim, through no fault of his own, was

a magician... a very low-rated magician, to be sure, but one who commanded respect for his title among

non-magicians, nonetheless.

He still had not answered Brian, who was now looking at him curiously. The next thing Brian would be

asking was if Jim had a flux or felt a fever.

“You’re absolutely right!” Jim said, as heartily as he could, “marvelous weather. As you say, how could

it be better?”

They were riding across a section of flat, treeless, heather moor, thick with cotton grass; and expected

soon to be dropping down to sea level as they approached their destination, the Castle de Mer, home of

their former friend Sir Giles de Mer, who had been slain in France the year before while heroically

defending England’s Crown Prince Edward from a number of armed and armored assailants; and

who-being of silkie blood-turned into a live seal when his dead body was dropped in the English Channel

waters.

Their trip was a usual duty undertaken by knights or other friends under such conditions, to advise the

relatives of their former friend of the facts of his death; since news of such, in the fourteenth century, did

not always get carried back to those relatives, otherwise. Any more than it had in the fourteenth century

on Jim’s world-not that this reason had justified making the trip to Jim’s wife, Angie, any more than if he

had chosen to do so from a whim.

Jim could really not blame her. She had not been happy being left alone most of last summer; with not

only the castle and its inhabitants, which were normally her responsibility, but all of Jim’s lands with their

tenants, men-at-arms and others who lived on them to take care of as well.

As a result, she had been firmly against Jim’s going; and it had taken him a solid two weeks to talk her

around.

Jim had promised finally that their ride to Giles’s family castle would take no more than ten days, they

would spend no more than a week with the family, and then another ten-day ride back-so that the trip

could take in all no more than a month. She had not even been ready to agree to this; but, happily, their

close friend and Jim’s tutor in magic-S. Carolinus-had happened to show up about that time; and his

arguments in Jim’s favor had won the day for him. Angie had finally agreed to let him go; but not with

very good grace.

Their destination was on the seashore just below the town of Berwick, which anchored the eastern end

of the Scottish/English border-the end of the old Roman wall. The de Mer Castle was supposedly only a

few miles south of the town; and built right on the edge of the sea.

The description they had of it was that it was actually a peel tower with a certain amount of extra

buildings attached to it, but not a great number. It was also about as far north as it was possible to get in

this district of Northumberland, which had once been the old Scottish land of Northumbria, without

entering Scotland itself.

“Better, it may hardly be,” commented Dafydd ap Hywel, “but not well will it shortly be, as the sun goes

down and the land cools for the night. If you’ll look, now, the sun is almost on the horizon; and already

skeins of mist are beginning to form ahead of us. Let us hope then that we reach de Mer Castle before

the daylight is full gone; else we will find ourselves camping out overnight once more.”

It was unusual for a mere bowman to speak up so freely in the presence of a couple of knights. But

Dafydd, with Jim and Brian, had been Companions in a couple of tussles with the creatures of the Dark

Powers, who were always at work in this medieval world to upset the balance between Chance and

History.

Because of Jim’s being originally from a technological civilization six hundred years in advance, and

because he had picked up a certain amount of magical energy in being transported along with Angie back

to this world, he seemed to have attracted the particular animosity of the Dark Powers, at work here.

Carolinus, who was one of this world’s three AAA+ rated magicians and lived by The Tinkling Water,

near Jim’s own castle of Malencontri, had warned Jim that the Dark Powers were out to get him,

particularly and simply, because he was more difficult to handle than someone native-born to this world

and time.

However, all that was beside the point now. The fact was that, almost as soon as Dafydd had spoken

up, Jim had begun to feel the bite of the air even more sharply through his armor and padding than he had

before. Also, for some reason-emotional, no doubt-the sun seemed closer to the horizon than it had been

even a couple of minutes earlier.

Moreover, the wisps of mists over the moorland were indeed thickening, lying like thick threads of

smoke here and there some two to six feet above the grass; and now beginning to join up with each

other, so that soon all the moor would be cloaked in mist; and it might well be perilous to try to continue

riding under those conditions-

“Hah!” said Brian suddenly, “here is something that comes with the night, that we had not counted on!”

Jim and Dafydd followed the line of his pointing finger. Some little distance ahead of them, the mist had

thinned to reveal movement beyond it. Movement which now emerged into full view to reveal itself as five

horsemen. As they got closer, for they were riding directly toward Jim and his two Companions,

something strange about them struck all three men.

“All Saints preserve us!” ejaculated Brian, crossing himself, “They ride either upon air or on invisible

horses!”

What he said was beyond dispute.

The five indeed appeared to be riding thin air. From the movement of their bodies and their height above

the ground, it was easy to see that they were on horseback and that their phantom steeds were moving;

but there was nothing visible between their legs and the ground.

“What unholy thing is this?” demanded Brian. Beneath the up-turned visor of his helmet his face had

paled. It was a square-boned, rather lean face with burning blue eyes above a hooked nose; and his chin

was square and pugnacious with a slight dent in the middle of it. “James, is it magic of some kind?”

The fact that it might be magic, rather than something unholy, plainly offered to take a great deal of the

superstitious awe out of the situation for Brian. But from Jim’s point of view it did nothing to render less

perilous the physical aspect of it. The three of them; he, Brian and Dafydd, with only two of them in

armor, were facing what appeared to be five full-armored knights, their visors down and all holding heavy

lances. It was a prospect that made his blood run cold; much more so than anything supernatural would

have done. Not so with Brian.

“I think it’s magic,” answered Jim, more to reassure the other than for any other reason.

There remained the faint hope in Jim that the approach of the five might not be unfriendly. But this was

firmly and forbiddingly enough dissipated. As those approaching got closer, a movement by each of them

clearly announced their intent.

“They set their lances,” commented Brian, the natural color in his face quite back and the tone of his

voice almost cheerful, “best we do likewise, James.”

This was exactly the kind of situation that Angie had feared for him, when she had objected to his going.

In the fourteenth century, as it had been once on their original world, life was uncertain. The wife of a

man who had left her with a cartful of produce for a nearby market town, never knew whether she would

see him alive again or not.

There were innumerable perils on the way. Not merely robbers and outlaws along the road to the town.

But the danger of fights; or even a reasonless arrest and execution of her husband once he was at the

town, for his violation of some local edict, or other. Both Angie and Jim had known this of medieval

conditions. They had known it intellectually as college instructors in their own twentieth century; and they

had known of it as a reality, during their first months here. But it had taken them a little while to know it in

their guts, as they did now. Now, Angie worried-and it was no weak worry at that.

But the fact of it was no help to the situation at the moment.

Jim reached for the heavy lance resting butt down and upright in the saddle socket in which it was

normally carried; and laid it horizontal, pointing forward across the pommel, or raised forepart, of his

saddle, ready to meet the charge. He was also about to lower the visor of his helmet when Dafydd

trotted his horse a little ahead of them, stopped it, and swung down from its saddle.

“I would advise the two of you to stand clear,” said Dafydd, reaching for his longbow, uncasing it and

taking down his capped quiver, “to see first what a clothyard shaft can do to these, whoever they may

be. There is no point in closing with them, look you, unless you have to.”

Jim did not share Dafydd’s coolness. Armored men on invisible horses could well be invulnerable to

arrows even from Dafydd’s tall bow. But Dafydd showed no sign of fearing this.

Calmly, completely indifferent to the thunder of the invisible, pounding hooves coming rapidly nearer and

nearer to them at a canter about to break into a gallop, and to the five brilliant steel points of the spears,

each with half a ton in weight of striking power behind it, Dafydd draped the leather strap of his quiver

over his right shoulder so that the quiver itself hung comfortably at his left hip, upper-end forward. Tall,

athletically slim and handsome, as usual every move of his body could have been a demonstration of how

such action should be performed.

Now, he flipped back the weather cover from the quiver, chose an arrow from among those within it,

examined its three-foot length and broad metal tip critically, then put it to the bow and pulled the string of

the weapon back.

The longbow stave bent, the feathered end of the arrow continued to come back until it was level with

Dafydd’s ear- and then suddenly the arrow was away, leaping up as it left the bow. Jim was barely able

to follow its flight with his eye, before it struck the foremost mounted figure squarely on the breastplate

and buried itself in him right to the feathers.

The knight-if that was what he was-fell from the horse; but the rest came on. Almost immediately, there

were arrows sprouting from three more of them. All but the one who had fallen turned to run, the three

with the arrows in them somehow clinging to their invisible steeds so that they were carried away into the

mist and out of sight.

Dafydd recased his bow. Calmly, he put it with his recapped quiver back in their places on his saddle,

then remounted his own horse. Together they approached the place where the armored figure first hit had

fallen.

He was strangely hard to see; and when they came up to where he should be, they saw why. Brian

crossed himself again.

“Would you care to be the one to look more closely at it?” Brian asked Jim hesitantly. “-Seeing it may

be magic?”

Jim nodded. Now that his first fear was over, unlike the two with him he was more intrigued than awed

by what he had just seen. He swung down from his horse and approached what lay upon the ground, to

squat down beside it. It was a combination of chain and steel plate, with padding beneath.

Dafydd’s arrow was buried in the chest plate, up to the feathers, and the point stuck out through the

back armor. It was much like the armor Jim wore himself; but somewhat old-fashioned. His eye for

armor was developing, and he was able to notice that not all of the armor parts matched with each other

the way they should. Dafydd pulled his arrow on through the backplate to recover it, and shook his head

over the damage this had done to the shaft’s feathers. Jim stood up.

“Two things are certain,” he said. “One is that the arrow stopped him-it looks, permanently. Secondly,

whoever or whatever was in the armor isn’t there now.”

“Could it be some damned souls from hell,” asked Brian, crossing himself again, “sent against us?”

“I doubt it,” answered Jim. He came to a sudden decision. “We’ll take the armor with us.”

He had got into the habit of carrying a coil of light rope, along with the other gear on his horse. It had

turned out to be useful a number of times. He used it now to tie together the loose pieces of armor and

clothing; and made a bundle which he fastened behind his saddle with the other goods his horse carried

there.

Dafydd said nothing.

“Now the mists have thickened,” said Brian, looking around them. “Soon it will be thick fog and we’ll

not see which way to go. What do we now?”

“Let’s go on a little farther,” said Jim.

They remounted and went on a little way, while the fog-for it was really fog now-thickened. But after a

bit, they could feel a damp breeze, cold on the right side of their faces; and they noticed that the ground

was beginning to slope in that direction, rather steeply.

They turned their horses to the slope and rode down. After about five minutes they rode out from under

the fog, which now became a low-lying cloud bank above their heads, and found themselves on the

shingle of a pebble and rock-strewn seashore. The cloud had lifted. Perhaps five hundred yards to their

left, up the bank, was a dark peel tower-a common form of fortress to be found on the Scottish border.

It rose from the shingle like a single black finger, upright, with some outbuildings attached to its base.

It sat right above the edge of a cliff face falling vertically to the creamy surf that beat on the shore, but

some fifty to eighty feet above it; by virtue of being built on a little promontory that grew higher toward

the end where the tower was built.

“Castle de Mer, do you think, Brian?” asked Jim.

“I have no doubt of it!” answered Sir Brian merrily, setting his horse into a canter.

The rest did the same; and a few moments later they were riding over the wooden drawbridge that lay

down over a deep but dry ditch, to a large, open doorway with two cresset lamps, made of baskets of

iron bars forged together to hold fuel, burning on either side of the doorway some ten feet off the ground,

to hold back the darkness of the night and the mist.

CHAPTER TWO

“James! Brian-and Dafydd!”

With that shout, a short, luxuriantly mustached figure was running across the hard-packed damp earth

surface of the courtyard toward them; a squarely built young man, with a very large hooked nose. He

wore only a mail shirt above his hose and his hair, flaxen in color like his mustache, was tousled.

“In God’s name!” said Brian, reining up abruptly. “First horses of air; and now dead friends rise again!”

But in a fraction of a second his attitude had changed. He was down off his horse

and-fourteenth-century style- kissing and embracing the smaller man in a crushing hug of his metal-clad

arms.

“Hah!” he half-shouted. “But it is well to see you, Giles! You were near a week dead, with the best

speed we could make when we put your body into the English Channel waters. True, we saw you

change to a seal as you entered the water. But after that-no word. Nothing.”

More cresset lamps were spaced around the interior of the courtyard, but they were too distant, and not

bright enough because of that, to show whether Giles was blushing or not. But on the basis of past

evidence; Jim, who was now also dismounting along with Dafydd, was willing to believe he was.

“A silkie cannot die on land,” said Giles, “but I own it was a sad time after that. I came back here and

my family recognized me, of course, but there was nothing they could do to get me back into man-shape

again. Not until a godly abbot came to Berwick and they invited him down here for a few days. In the

end, my father talked him into blessing me, so that I became a man again. But my father also warned me

then that I will have no second escape from death if I again die as a human on land. After that blessing, I

may turn into a silkie in the water, but I cannot escape my fate ashore!-James!”

Now Giles was hugging and kissing Jim. The links of the smaller man’s chain mail shirt scratched loudly

on Jim’s own armor but no more noticeably than the bristles of Giles’s beard seemed to rasp and spear

into Jim’s cheeks.

The kiss was the ordinary handshake-equivalent of the period-everybody kissed everybody. You would

conclude a purchase or a deal of some kind with a perfect stranger by kissing him or her-and most

people at this time had very bad teeth and therefore rather unsweet breath. You kissed the landlady on

leaving an inn after spending the night there.

But Jim had generally managed to avoid this custom, so far. Now, with Giles, it would seem cold of him

not to accept it whole-heartedly. Jim wondered how women stood the beard bristles.

He made a mental note-which at the same time he guiltily knew he would have forgotten by the time he

was home again- to make sure he was as clean-shaven as possible, next time, before kissing Angie. Jim

also winced to think of what it must have been like for Giles, himself, with the solid-metal-clad sleeves of

Brian’s arms enclosing him, in spite of the chain shirt.

However, Giles had made no protest, and shown no discomfort. Then Giles was hugging Dafydd, who

likewise seemed to take it in no other way but with complete happiness, though in this case Giles’s chain

mail must have bit noticeably even into Dafydd’s leather jacket.

“But come inside!” said Giles. He half turned and shouted. “Ho, from the stables! Take the horses of

these good gentlemen!”

Half a dozen servants appeared with the same suspicious quickness with which Jim’s servants at

Malencontri had a tendency to appear, whenever something interesting was going on.

They led off the horses and several of them, two of them wearing kilts of differing colors and patterns,

carried the saddles and personal gear inside.

Giles led them forward, and flung open the door of a long wooden building which was obviously the

Great Hall; leading to the tower. As a Great Hall, it was noticeably smaller than that of Jim’s castle; but it

was arranged the same way, with a long table on a lower level stretching the length of the hall; and a

shorter one-the “high table”-crosswise on a platform at the far end.

Giles led them eagerly to the table on the platform, which was obviously, by the smells, just in front of

the kitchen; which here would be on the ground floor of the tower itself. Not only the doors through

which they had entered the hall, but those beyond leading into the kitchen, now propped ajar, were tall

and wide enough to ride horses through.

It was plain that this castle, like so many other border castles, was designed with defense first in mind. It

had been built for a situation in which everyone could, need came, retreat within the stout, flame-resistant

stone walls of the peel tower itself.

This was a wise and standard practice if attackers were too numerous or too strong to fight off in the

courtyard; or beyond the front curtain wall that held the main gate, with its two cresset torches.

The high table was deserted; and the air, although heavy with the same smells Jim had encountered from

all Great Halls that Jim had had anything to do with, was pleasantly warm after the growing chill of the

outside night.

Giles sat them at benches at the table and shouted for wine and cups, which came with the same

suspicious quickness that the servants had shown with regard to the horses and the gear outside in the

courtyard.

Almost on their heels came an individual from the kitchen doors who dwarfed all of them.

“Father, these are the two noble knights I told you about who were my Companions in France, and the

archer of renown who was also with us!” Giles said, beaming. “James-Brian- Dafydd, this is my father

Sir Herrac de Mer.”

He had not sat down himself; and, next to his father, he looked like a midget.

Herrac de Mer was at least six feet six and muscled in proportion. His face was square and

heavy-boned, with close cropped black hair tinged with gray. His shoulders were a good hand span on

either side wider than those of Dafydd, which were by no means narrow shoulders.

His face had borne a frown at first, seeing strangers already seated at the top table. But the frown

evaporated at the words of Giles’s introduction.

“Sit! Sit!” he said waving them back down, for they had all gotten automatically to their feet at his

entrance. “-Yes, you too, Giles, if they are friends of yours-“

“Thank you, Father!” Giles slipped eagerly onto a bench several seats away from the rest of them. It

was clear that while a seat at the high table might be his by right, not only as a knight but as a member of

the family, he could not sit in his father’s presence without his father’s permission.

The rest sat down as well.

“Father,” said Giles, “the gentleman closest to you is Sir James Eckert, Baron de Malencontri et

Riveroak, and just beyond him is Sir Brian Neville-Smythe. After Sir Brian, is Master Dafydd ap

Hywel-the like of whom, I swear, there is none-as far as men of the longbow are concerned.”

“Thank you,” murmured Dafydd, “but indeed it is also that no crossbowman has ever outshot me, either,

as to distance or target.”

Herrac’s black eyebrows, which had been shadowed slightly in a frown above his deep-set seal-black

eyes, on seeing a seated man in a leather jerkin, abruptly smiled. He was naturally not used to entertaining

an archer at his high table. But, of course, this archer was different.

“I had heard of you all before Giles told me about you,” he said. He had a resonant bass voice that came

rumbling softly out from deep within him. “The Ballad of the Loathly Tower has been sung even in this

hall, good sirs-and you, Master archer. You are all welcome. My hospitality is yours for as long as you

wish. What brings you?”

And he sat down himself at the table with them.

He was not only tall; but he was one of those men who, like Dafydd, kept his back as straight as an

arrow. So, if anything, he seemed to tower even more over them at the table than he had standing up.

Dafydd and Brian waited. It was obviously Jim’s position as the ranking member of the three to be first

in answering the question.

“We came to bring your family the story of Giles’s death,” said Jim. “Both Sir Brian and I saw him take

to the water-“

This was a delicate way of putting it. He was not sure whether Sir Herrac would have approved of his

son letting others know about his silkie blood. But certainly the other could read between the words on a

statement like that. Jim went on.

“-but it never occurred to us that he might be back here. Least of all that we should see him as we see

him now, in his full strength, well and happy!”

“For that, we give blessings to Holy Church,” rumbled Herrac, “but Giles has told us little, beyond the

fact that he died at a large battle in France. My other sons will be here soon; and meantime we can set in

process a dinner worthy of your company.”

He lifted a powerful open hand from the table, slightly, in apology.

“It will take an hour or so. Can I suggest you all have a pitcher or so of wine, and then let Giles show

you to your room? So that you can then prepare yourselves as you see fit, to eat and drink properly, if

sobeit you think any preparation be needed. That way, when you come down, you can tell all the family

at once. Alas”-his face for a moment was shadowed as if by the remembrance of agony-“that my wife is

not here to hear it as well; but she died of a great and sudden pain in the chest six years past on the third

day before Christmas. It was a sad Christmas in this household that year.”

“I can well believe so, Sir Herrac,” said Brian, his quick and generous sympathy leaping immediately into

response to the word. “How many other children have you?”

“I have five sons,” said Herrac, “two older than Giles here, and two younger. The youngest is but

Gordon Dickson - Dragon Knight 03 - The Dragon on the Border

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