The Dragon and the Gnarly King by Gordon R. Dickson

Hob's face dropped, and he shrank back to his usual height. Jim went on. "I'm not sure he knows how to take care of himself in a place like this, so I'd like you to take charge of him—for tonight, at least—and find him someplace to stay where you can keep an eye on him. He's a Natural, just like you, you know."

  "So's a troll," said Hob, "but a troll'd as soon eat me as look at me."

  "I don't think this fellow will eat you," Jim said.

  "Well, maybe not. I wouldn't let him, anyway," said Hob. "I don't want him in one of my chimneys, and what if he doesn't want to be there, anyway. Maybe I can put him just up under the roof with the bats, or something like that."

  "Bats?" said Jim. He looked at Angie. "We've got bats?"

  "Of course," said Angie. "Just about any castle or cathedral or any permanent structure has them."

  "They're nice, friendly bats," said Hob, earnestly.

  "Well, I'll take your word for it." Jim looked at the Little Man. His eyes were on Hob, now, but his expression was as unvarying as ever: open-mouthed fascination. "As long as he doesn't object."

  "No, he says that'll be all right," said Hob.

  "He does? How do you—are you telling me you can hear him talking, Hob? How do you do that?"

  "I don't know. I just do," said Hob.

  "I can't hear a thing," said Angie.

  "Me either," said Jim. "Hob, if you can get an answer out of him, ask him what his name is."

  "What's your name?" Hob said, turning to the small man. "Oh, is that so? Well, they're my Lord and Lady! and this is my Castle. You're just a strange varlet—what's your name, I said?"—pause—"He says his name's Hill," wound up Hob, looking back at Jim.

  "Hill?"

  "That's what he says," said Hob. "I don't think he's very wise. He's the most witless of—of us Folk you call Natural, m'Lord—I ever met. I think."

  "He can hear you when you talk to him out loud, then," said Jim, thinking he had been very smart to agree quickly with Angie when she said that the Little Man wasn't wanted within the Solar. "Ask him why he wanted to come with me, instead of staying with Rrrnlf?"

  "He says—that's no reason!" said Hob, addressing his last words once more to the Little Man. Then he turned back to Jim again. "All he'll say now is 'He's my Luck!' And now he won't talk at all."

  "Well," said Jim. "Take him up to the bats. If he wants to come along with me wherever I'm going, he's going to be in for a more exciting time than he probably thinks. You'll have him as a guest for tonight, anyway, and maybe a little longer than that. It depends on how soon Sir Brian is ready to ride with us."

  Hob stood on one leg, looking reluctant. "Yes, m'Lord," he said after a moment, and turned away. "Come on, Hill."

  "And, Hob!" Jim called after him. "He may not like being here any more than you like him. Be kind to him."

  Hob stopped. So did Hill. Hob turned back. So did Hill.

  "Kind, m'Lord?" Hob stared at Jim.

  "You know," said Jim. "Kind is what you are when you do things like taking the young children for rides on the smoke."

  "But he's not a young person," said Hob, who was about half the height of the Little Man. "He's big!"

  "So was I, and you took me."

  "Oh, you're different, m'Lord," said Hob. "I like you."

  "Well, let's say that's what being kind is; being kind is doing something nice for someone, but there's no reason why you have to like someone first before you do something kind for them. You could do something kind for them first, and then find out you like them—and they like you."

  "Oh?" said Hob. Shaking his head confusedly, he turned again and led Hill into the fireplace. A waft of smoke carried them both up the chimney, and they were gone.

  "Maybe I can leave Hill behind, accidentally," said Jim to Angie. "Particularly if Brian's ready to ride tomorrow, and we can get off in what looks like a hurry, so I've got an excuse to not take him."

  "Lots of luck," said Angie.

  "Luck is my middle name, according to Hill," said Jim. But the joke fell flat.

  In the middle of the night Jim woke up with a solution to a problem he had been mulling over. Even though Brian seemed to be healing, Jim knew his friend had suffered a severe loss of blood. Jim had been able to heal the wound that caused it, but Brian was still very much short of the blood he needed to be healthy. Jim did not really know how dangerous that could be.

  When that had happened before to Dafydd, Carolinus had been able to use magic to effect a transfusion, once Jim had figured out a way to match blood types.

  Jim had fallen asleep thinking about how to go about the magic that Carolinus had once arranged; but in the middle of the night, he woke up from a dream in which he had found a way to do it. He lay there, half-awake, slowly realizing that what he had dreamed would work: his own heart acting as a miniature pump, regulated by heartbeats.

  Careful not to wake Angie, he slipped out of the bed, parting the curtains only enough to let himself out, dressed, and went downstairs quietly.

  A man-at-arms was on duty at Brian's door. A purely formal duty, but the guard was equipped with sword, spear, and helm—just as if it had been something like active duty.

  Jim rounded the curve of the corridor just in time to see the man yawning hugely. He caught sight of Jim at the same time and closed his jaws with a snap, straightening up and striving to look bright-eyed and alert as Jim approached.

  "Quiet this time of night, Bartholomew," said Jim.

  "It is, m'Lord," said the man-at-arms. "Sir Brian's been sleeping steady. I've heard no sound from him there, bar a snore or two."

  "Good," said Jim. "I'm going in just to take a look at him. Be quiet opening the door, and closing it after me. Is there light within?"

  "Fire still burning, m'Lord," said the guard.

  "Make sure it burns all night long," said Jim. "Now open the door."

  Jim went in, and the door closed softly behind him. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim illumination of the low-burning fire, but then he saw Brian sleeping peacefully on his side—not snoring at all.

  Jim stepped softly over to him. For a moment, he stood, just looking down at his friend. It might be an illusion caused by the ruddy light of the fire, but Brian looked more healthy now, relaxed and slumbering. Jim softly closed his fingertips on Brian's wrist. There was a chance he might wake if touched, but Brian had always been a very sound sleeper—unless there was some kind of alarm, like the sound of metal striking metal, shouting, or a gong or drum, no matter how distant.

  "Dammit to hell…" muttered Brian without opening his eyes. He snored once, and went back to sleeping quietly. Jim gently searched the wrist until his third finger found the pulse there, pressing only enough to be able to count the heartbeats.

  Jim, with no wristwatch here in this fourteenth century, had learned to run a clock in his own mind. He timed Brian out at fifty-two beats to the minute, now, averaging two readings.

  That was all right, then. His own heartbeat had always been slow, perhaps because of his genetic makeup, or maybe his years of sports—he paused to check his own pulse. Standing, as he was right now, his own heartbeat was about fifty-four. Sleeping, he probably would have dropped to about forty-eight or possibly a little lower.

  In any case, their heart-rates were close enough.

  Using the same technique by which he magically moved wine around, he took a drop of blood from Brian's body, putting it on the flat of the blade of his knife. Then he put a drop of his own blood near it. When he commanded that the two drops would refuse to mix if they were not of the same type, they flowed together silently. Jim could not be sure if he was a universal donor, or just the same type as Brian, but it made no difference: Brian could take Jim's blood.

  Jim paused to squint slightly at Brian and concentrate on the vision he was building in his mind. When his mind's image of Brian clicked firmly into mental lock, he imagined blood being propelled by the pump that was his heart, down his arm and through the end of the same fi
nger that touched Brian's pulse—and into the blood vessel it felt. Flowing slowly, a twentieth of an ounce with every heartbeat.

  That surely should not be too quick a dumping of extra blood into Brian's venous system; it should work effectively enough to transfuse at least a pint of his blood into Brian—putting him in stronger condition if he did insist on riding tomorrow. Jim counted his own pulse-beats until enough ounces had been transferred.

  He moved toward the door, but stopped as he caught the murmur of muted voices beyond it. One of the voices was that of the guard. He was speaking with another man-at-arms, using the common local dialect rather than the more formal language in which they spoke to Jim and Angie.

  "Thee broughten somat to wet my mouth, then, Nick?"

  "Aye. Here 'tis. Small-beer, Bart. All I could get thee."

  "For all that, it goes down grateful. I was sad parched, Nick." There was a pause, then the voice of the guard went on. "What's new downstairs?"

  " 'Ee's growing, and 'ee's willing. Never fret, Bart. Thy silver's safe."

  "We'm bound to win on him. Agin natur otherwise. Mark my words, Nick…" The murmurs dropped to an unintelligible level. Jim felt a sudden uneasiness, triggered off by his recent worry over how the Castle's people really felt toward him.

  Ridiculously, at the same time, a slight feeling of guilt began to creep over him. Manners were different in this earlier century, but he had been brought up to think it was not right to eavesdrop. Somehow, he now felt almost trapped inside this room, like a thief in a house with the police outside. He did not really want to catch the two outside breaking all the rules of sentry duty. But this was no way for the Lord of a Castle to feel.

  He squared his shoulders, put his hand on the latch, and opened the door, slipping through and closing it gently behind him. But, soft as he went, it gave adequate warning: when he stepped through, he found only Bart, standing at his post. Glancing down the corridor as far as the curving stone-walled passage would let him, Jim saw nothing. When he turned back, he noticed a leathern jug, or "jack," hidden between Bartholomew's legs and the wall. He carefully ignored it and started off toward the stairs himself.

  "Good night, Bartholomew," he said.

  "Good night, m'Lord," he heard behind him.

  He went on up the stairs, pondering once more on the conflicting mores of different centuries. Strictly speaking, he should not have felt any hesitation about listening to what was being said on the other side of the door—no other Lord in this century would have. But even after some years here, these little conflicts-in-social-training rose to bother him. Someday, someday, he would find time to sit down and sort them all out.

  A fourteenth-century Knight and Lord of a Castle in his position would, he told himself now, have listened to the cryptic interchange between the guard and his friend for the reason that he wanted to know what they were up to—but he would never have listened, as Jim had, with what was essentially a personal interest in their lives.

  Who was the "he" they had been talking about. Could it have been himself?

  Nonsense. He was older than either one of them!

  But he was still growing and changing in the sense of fitting into their medieval ways.

  Forget it, he told himself.

  Now, Brian would be stronger tomorrow, and possibly well enough to ride, the day after that. That was the only thing of importance.

  He made his way quietly back into the Solar. Angie was still asleep. He crawled cautiously into the bed, pulling the curtains and sliding under the covers without waking her. The bed was warm and brought him a comfortable feeling of everything else being shut out. Angie was there. The worries of the day slipped away and sleep claimed him.

  He woke to hear her shouting. Lifting his head, he saw her leaning out one of the windows, calling commandingly to the courtyard just below the tower.

  "—And pull those two apart!" she was ordering at the top of her voice. "The rest of you get back to work! You've all got work to do, haven't you?"

  There was a pause, during which Jim went on with the job of coming awake.

  "That's better!" called Angie. She shut the window and came back toward the bed. Jim, now half-sitting up in it, watched her through the opened curtains on that side, as she came toward him.

  "Oh! Good. You're up," she said, reaching the bed. "I was just about to wake you."

  "You did," said Jim, still groggy, still not so far from sleep that he could not hear the siren call of covers and mattress.

  "Well, it's time you were dressed, anyway," Angie said.

  "What was all that, down in the courtyard?"

  "It's over now," said Angie. "It was May Heather and her friend Tom from the Kitchen. They were fighting again."

  "Again?"

  "I can't understand it—I've asked both the Kitchen-Mistress and the Serving Room-Mistress to find out why they keep doing it; they're supposed to be the best of friends. Inseparable. As twins. But five percent of the time it seems they're trying to kill each other over some minor point of argument. They're both thirteen, you know."

  "Is Tom thirteen?" asked Jim. "He's small for his age, then."

  "Not in this century. It's a matter of nourishment, remember," answered Angie. "Children just don't grow as big as in our time because of the lack of food in the winter, and a poorly balanced diet most of the rest of the year. Besides, right now May Heather's at the age where she's grown bigger than he is. Girls take a spurt, you know, just about this time of their lives."

  "Oh?" said Jim. "I guess that's right."

  Fully awake now, he could see it was full daylight, judging by the sunlight coming through the windows. Ordinarily, he would have been awake at dawn, following the medieval sleeping habits to which they had become adjusted.

  "Well, I'm up now," he said, scrambling out of the bed. "Could you order breakfast?"

  "I already have," said Angie. "—In fact, here it is."

  The door had swung open, without even the courtesy of a scratch to ask admission, and three of the women from the Serving Room came in, carrying food and catching Jim with no clothes on—he and Angie having come to follow the other medieval custom of sleeping naked, at least at home. Completely unperturbed by his undress, they set the table, curtsied, and went out again.

  "I wish they'd learn to knock!" said Jim.

  "Give up," said Angie, "and eat your breakfast. You ought to be used to things by this time. Put something on now, sit down, and eat."

  "They run us," grumbled Jim, hastily dressing. "We don't run them."

  "Well," said Angie, already busy with some of the hard-boiled eggs and bacon, "they're the way they are, and we're not going to change them. Hurry up before the food gets cold."

  Jim joined her, and the breakfast brought new life into him. It also started his mind to working on some thoughts that had been spinning around in the back of it ever since his private talk with Carolinus. The food tasted very good indeed, and by the time he finished, his mind was made up

  "I'm going to try something," he told Angie, pushing his chair back. "Stay where you are. I'm going to call up the Accounting Office and check on my balance."

  "Oh?" said Angie. "You're always doing that when I'm not around. You don't mean I can watch, this time?"

  "Listen, is more like it," said Jim. He took a step away from the table, stared into the air before him, and spoke very loudly.

  "ACCOUNTING OFFICE!"

  "Yes, James Eckert?" instantly answered the bass voice of the always invisible, possibly bodiless, and always prompt functionary, some four feet above the ground and directly in front of him.

  "I'd like three times the magical energy I earned at the Loathly Tower added to my account, if you don't mind," said Jim, as strongly and authoritatively as he could.

  "I regret, James Eckert," said the Accounting Office. "No further overdrafts are permitted to your account."

  So, Carolinus had been right.

  "Well, this is a fine thing!" said Jim. "At
least, then, you can tell me how much I have left at the moment."

  "I regret, James Eckert."

  "Don't tell me you can't do that either?"

  "It cannot be done for anyone still within the Apprentice Ranks."

  Jim sighed internally. Carolinus had told him it would do no good to ask. But it was always worth trying.

  "Here I am, just about to start off on a trip, and I can't find out how much magic I'll have with me. Even if I'm only a C+ class Magician," said Jim, "it seems to me you owe it to me to let me know, roughly at least, how much magic I can have the energy for."

  There was a slight pause. If it had been anything else but the Accounting Office, Jim would have been sure the other was hesitating. It spoke, however, a moment later.

  "Approximately," said the Accounting Office, "you have the equivalent of a full drawing-account of a B+ Magickian still available to you. But no more can be added once that is gone."

  "Thank you," said Jim. There was no answer from the Accounting Office. Apparently, it had already left, in its usual abrupt manner.

  Seated at the table, Angie was looking distressed.

  "Is that going to be enough?" she asked.

  "I don't know, that's the trouble," said Jim. "There's no way of telling. I don't even know what the full account of a B+ Class magician adds up to. It ought to be plenty of magic for ordinary uses. But if I'm going to be taking Brian and Dafydd along with me—with horses for all of us and a sumpter-horse for our baggage, moving all that by magic—it could get eaten up in a hurry."

  "Do you have to take that much?" said Angie. "I mean, horses and such?" She got up from the table and came around it, toward him.

  "If I do suddenly run out of magic, then what are we going to do for transportation—to say nothing of the heavy armor and weapons and other stuff we may need?" Jim said.

  "Oh," said Angie, stopping. But then she smiled down at him. "It'll be all right, though. I just have a feeling it'll all be all right."

  "I hope," said Jim, slowly getting to his feet. But then he, too, brightened. "But anyway, thank God for you!"

  They wrapped themselves up in each other.

  "Now," said Jim, as they both let go, "let's go find out whether there's a chance Brian can ride tomorrow."