Dragon - The Dragon And The Djinn Part 9

Jim felt Hob stir again in the knapsack on his back. The little hobgoblin had ducked down out of sight before Sir Mortimor had come back up to join them, at the time when they had been talking about Brian's childhood and his early knowledge of Hob. Now the hobgoblin stuck his head out of the knapsack, and his breath tickled the back of Jim's right ear as he looked about.

"Oh!" he said happily. "Fire and smoke. A fireplace. M'lord, is it all right if I take a look up that chimney?"

"Go right ahead, Hob," said Jim-and in a moment the gray figure of Hob had launched itself from his shoulder toward the fireplace and to all appearances simply disappeared. Jim turned his attention back to Brian. The last words that Brian had said had rung oddly false in his ears.

"Brian," he said, "forgive me-and you don't have to answer me, if you don't want to-but is something wrong? Is there something you're not telling me that's badly out of kilter? Will you really be ready to go on as soon as this is over?"

"I pledge myself to do so," said Brian. "And that pledge I am not going to fail upon. I give you my word I will do my best to go back to my search for Geronde's father, the minute I am away from Sir Mortimor and this castle."

"Then why don't we both leave?" said Jim. "Your obligations as a guest-"

"Are my obligations!" said Brian with a snap. "I have never failed on my word; and, before G.o.d, I never will."

"You're talking about your word to Sir Mortimor, now, aren't you?" said Jim. "What word exactly did you give him?"

"James-" began Brian on an almost angry note, and then stopped abruptly. He looked down at the table, looked at his mazer of wine, took a drink from it and looked back up at Jim. "James, I will continue in my search. There may be a slight delay, however. You are right. There is something I have not told you; and it concerns an error and a weakness on my part. It is-the fact is I have almost no money left to travel with."

"No-?" Jim broke off. "I don't mean to-" he continued, staring at his friend. Brian's square, lean-boned face with its blue eyes and aggressively hooked nose had something defiant about it. He checked the word "pry" that had been on the tip of his tongue and rephrased what he was going to say.

"-Ask any impolite questions of you," he went on, "but how does it happen you could be out of money so quickly? It seemed to me you had more than enough for a search here that could take you months, or even a year."

"So I had," said Brian. "The fault is my own, James. We are all sinners and have our weaknesses. One of mine, as you know, is the dice. I should have sworn off all such things for the period of this search, but I did not think of it."

"But what happened, then?" asked Jim.

"I came to Cyprus, as perhaps Geronde told you," he said, "because a certain Sir Francis Neville, a cousin twice removed, was a knight of the Hospitallers; and I hoped for advice from him. I knew that he was here on Cyprus on some business between the Hospitallers and certain well-placed and powerful gentlemen on the island. Perhaps Geronde told you all this."

Jim nodded.

"But when I got here," Brian said, "Sir Francis had already left again for the headquarters of his Brotherhood, which has long been elsewhere than the hospital they founded in Jerusalem, in the name of St. John of Jerusalem, whereby, of course, comes their name of Hospitallers. Their proper t.i.tle at present is the Order of the Knights of Rhodes. I had hoped to learn from him the best way to take myself to Palmyra, and also how I should conduct myself and what I should be wary of on the way there."

Brian paused. Jim, thinking he was done speaking, opened his own mouth.

"But surely," Jim said, "his being gone shouldn't have cost you most of your money-unless it was stolen from you."

"No," said Brian, "it would be a brave robber that tried to take what I had on my person. No, my cousin Sir Francis was no longer here; but he had many friends, of course, whom I discovered by mentioning his name to other gentlemen; and those friends welcomed me in a right neighborly manner. But you must understand, James, they pa.s.sed me from one to the other-since one would have some knowledge of Palmyra, but not of the best route toward it, where another might know of the route, but not the city, and yet another might know more about ships plying back and forth between here and Tripoli, that being the best port to come close to it. Palmyra, you must understand, is some distance inland from Tripoli and all other port cities to the south."

"Go on," said Jim.

"The trouble was, James," said Brian, "of course, each new gentleman I met must dine and drink and entertain me-and, of course, together with all this there was a certain amount of dicing."

"Oh," said Jim. "And it added up to your losing all your money?"

"Oh no," said Brian, "not all of it, by any means. A small portion, only. I was most careful. But then, in Episcopi, I was introduced to Sir Mortimor, who was up there from his castle for business of his own, and he joined us at the dice; and I won."

"You won?" Jim stared at him.

"Yes. I won a good deal," said Brian. "I ended up with more than I had when I first came to Cyprus.

And I won it all from Sir Mortimor, who seemed then to live only for dicing and drinking. I have a fair capacity for wine, you know that, James. But Sir Mortimor's is heroic!"

"I can believe it," said Jim.

"So, I did not refuse," Brian went on, "when Sir Mortimor invited me up here for a short stay. We were to enjoy the fishing, actually. He had promised me that there was almost as much pleasure in trying to boat a fish as large as a man, on a single line, as there was besting one in single combat; and you know that we do not usually have fish that large, to be taken by only an angle, in England. Indeed, he was quite right. He did take me fishing at first, and I had the experience; and it is something to remember, James!"

"I can believe that too," said Jim. "But the last I heard you still had money. In fact, more than you had started out with."

"Not more than I had started out with, James," said Brian reproachfully. "More than I had by the time I had gotten here to Cyprus."

"I stand corrected," said Jim.

"But, of course, in the evenings we would be dicing; and-I know not how it is, James-but what I had experienced in Episcopi could only have been the most unusual run of luck; for here at the castle it has been just the opposite. I have lost steadily; until now I have lost almost every coin I possess. I cannot leave without trying to get it back; and even if I could, my sense of honor would insist that I stay here to help Sir Mortimor in his hour of trial."

"I'm not sure he regards it as that much of an hour of trial," said Jim. "So you won gaming against him in Episcopi? Won steadily. But back here at the castle you have lost steadily? Were you always using his dice?"

"Why, yes," said Brian. "I never carry dice, James, you know that, for that I might be tempted to lose what little I own. I have this abiding fear that one day I might forget myself and even wager Blanchard of Tours, when the fever is on me-and lose him."

Jim nodded soberly. Brian had given all his patrimony, except the rundown Castle Smythe itself, in order to buy Blanchard, the great white stallion that was his war horse, and who had the intelligence and the fighting spirit that made such horses worth a prince's purse. And indeed, without Blanchard, Brian would be hard put to win the tournaments in which he essentially made his living; and in which a horse of such weight, power and speed was a vital necessity.

"But you cannot be suggesting that Sir Mortimor has been less than honest in our bouts," said Brian, staring at Jim. "A knight would not- oh, I know there have been cases, hedge knights and pitiful fellows not fit for a gentleman's table. But for someone like Sir Mortimor who owns this castle and property here... He could not survive without the help of his neighbors; and he would not dare cheat his neighbors for fear that sooner or later it would be discovered; and then all would turn against him."

"You may be right, Brian," said Jim. "But I think you forget something."

"What is that?" Brian was very close to bristling.

"This is a part of the world where taking all you can get from anyone else is the normal way of life. In fact, you know as well as I do it's not the only part of the world where this can happen to a visitor. And I might point out that you're a visitor here, a stranger. That could make you fair game."

"He dare not!" said Brian.

"From what I've seen of him," Jim said, "Sir Mortimor is not slow when it comes to daring things."

Brian sat, slowly adjusting to the idea of Sir Mortimor as someone who would cheat a fellow knight.

Gradually his face became more and more grim until the bones of it seemed to push against the skin.

"By G.o.d!" he said. "If he has-"

He broke off; and gradually the anger seemed to leak out of him, to be replaced by despair.

"However," he said at last with a sigh, "there is nothing to be done about it. It would be all the more impolite if I were to question his honesty without proof certain-now that I am a heavy loser to him. But game with him I must, if I am to have any hope of regaining my funds. In any case, there is no way to tell whether he plays honestly, or not."

"Maybe not for you," said Jim. He had his magic. But at the moment he could not think how he could use it to check on the honesty of Sir Mortimor's dice playing. There must, however, be a way. "But if he won't object to my sitting and watching while you play... if he doesn't suspect that I'm watching to see if I can tell that in some way or other he's less than honest..."

"He would not suspect the honor of a fellow knight-" Brian broke off. ' 'By St. Giles, James, it just may be that if you are right, he would indeed be suspicious. How to avoid that, I know not."

But Jim's mind was working now.

"What about this, Brian?" he asked. "Would you say that Sir Mortimor was the sort of knight who could be counted on to take up a challenge?"

Brian stared at him.

"Of an absolute certainty!" said Brian. "Courage, he does not lack."

"Then maybe we could get him into a dice match, where his attention would be more on the match itself with you than on any reason I might have for watching. If you challenged him to it, for example, at a moment when things were at risk and two gentlemen would normally not sit down to wine and dice. You could do that?"

"I could, of course," said Brian. "But when? And James-I have only a few pieces of gold left. It may be that I would have to give the appearance of having more. It is a great deal to ask of you, but is it possible-"

"Certainly," Jim interrupted him. "I can give you enough extra money to make him interested. That's no problem."

For that matter, he thought, he could make any amount of money that might be needed, magically. Of course it would turn back into whatever he had made it out of, twenty-four hours later-and also to use such false money to cheat someone would be against the laws of Magickdom-as Carolinus would spell that word. But to use it to catch a cheat ought to be allowable.

"We'll wait until the attack against this castle heats up," he said.

CHAPTER TEN.

Sir Mortimor turned out to be a true prophet, however incorrect might be his play with the dice.

Jim woke in the middle of the night under the impression that the castle was falling apart, and came fully awake only in time to hear the last tremendous thunder of something or other against the wall not six feet from his left ear. The fire had died down in the room's fireplace; there were only a few embers glowing with a dull redness that left everything else in complete darkness.

"It is the pirates, only, trying to drop stones on the castle from the cliff overhead," came Brian's voice out of that darkness, as soon as the thunder had ceased. ' 'As Sir Mortimor said, James, the cliff overhangs enough so that they can do no real damage. You heard the rocks scarcely hitting the forward side of the castle, just grazing it, so that they will only leave scars, which you may see tomorrow by looking down from the battlements."

"Oh," said Jim. He went back to sleep.

The invaders evidently agreed with Brian, for after the first fall of stones, no more came to wake them; and the following day, Brian, pointing down from the battlements, directed Jim's gaze to the whitish scars on the rounded side of the tower where the falling rocks had sc.r.a.ped it. It was hard to believe in scars that slight, considering the thunder Jim had remembered hearing in the middle of the night.

The next attempt at the castle came several hours later, well past mid-morning, when an unknown number of the Moroccans crept up the steps, carrying a heavy wooden shield over their heads, so that they were able to advance to the very foot of the tower and move around it to a point where they apparently leaned it against the building as a permanent protection, and went to work beneath it.

"They will be attempting to dig down either under the wall, or far enough so that they can loosen and break out a part of the wall, so that the castle itself may sag, or that they can build an entrance through which they can fight their way in," said Sir Mortimor. "But they will be disappointed. This castle is bedded solidly on and in the living rock of the cliff itself, in a circular trench that was cut in that rock when the tower was commenced."

"Still..." said Brian. They were all three, Sir Mortimor, Brian and Jim, looking down over the battlements and listening to the sc.r.a.pe of tools against the building and the other noises of work beneath the shield.

None of the castle's fighting men had been ordered to take any action against the diggers. "If they stay with it," Brian went on, "sooner or later they should be able to gnaw through whatever is there to the interior of the castle."

He looked at the tall knight.

"Though I would venture," he added, "to guess it would take more than a few days."

"They will not," said Sir Mortimor. "Such patience you speak of is not theirs. A quick battle, a quick victory is more their way. Now, if this castle were somewhere north of the Mediterranean, far inland, you might have cause to expect such a thing. But not here."

"You have been in the wars on the continent, sir?" asked Brian.

"Some," said Sir Mortimor, briefly; and, turning, he left them to go downstairs into the castle.

But again, it fell out as he had said. As the shadows of the day lengthened, the sounds of labor under the shield became less and less and finally ceased. Finally the shield crept back down the stairs, with stones from the tower-top slingers seeking to find the s.p.a.ce between it and the ground; and at least hit the legs of those who carried it. But it made its way back down the stairs and out of range without leaving any wounded or dead behind.

The next night was ominously quiet, except for some singing and noise of voices down in the abandoned village at the foot of the castle.

"I expected them to burn those buildings right away," said Jim, half to himself and half to Brian, looking down at night. The only lights visible around the village were some torches being carried by individuals going from one part of the village to another and a torch or so down by the two ships.

"I believe they have waited because the buildings give them a place of shelter to sleep and eat in," said Brian, beside him, "from what little I understand of such things. How I envy Sir Mortimor with his experience in wars on the continent. I wonder if he was in the low countries, or in France-or maybe he was farther east, possibly fighting against the heathens in the Far East."

Jim turned to look at his friend's face in the meager light of the stars and a half-full moon.

"You sound almost as if you admire him, Brian," he said.

"He is a warrior," said Brian. "More so than I, who have never seen- well, have never really taken part in, outside of some small actions in France-pitched battles, sieges, or the real meat of warfare. I may be clever with the lance and possibly with other weapons as well; but I cannot say I have really fought in any true sense of the word."

Since Brian's life had consisted of almost continual fighting, according to Jim's ordinary meaning of the word, from the time of Brian's father's death when he had taken over Castle Smythe at the age of fifteen, Jim found this exaggerated respect for someone who had been in recognized war a little surprising. But he did not think his friend would appreciate his mentioning that fact; so he said nothing aloud.

That night, however, there was an alarm of a different nature. Jim woke to the sound of voices and rushing feet in the castle. The fire in their fireplace blazed up suddenly; and Jim saw Brian turning away from it after throwing extra fuel onto the still-burning embers. His friend was pulling on his hose and shoes and buckling his belt and sword around his waist. In the light from the newly leaping flames in the fireplace, the scars on his naked upper body looked black, as if they had been painted there.

"They are trying to force the door under cover of darkness," Brian said to him briefly. "Best we were up and armed, James. It is past compline."

After midnight-Jim scrambled to his feet and began to dress, with that sinking feeling he always had when his being in actual combat was in prospect. If anything, he was at his best in a melee, where his greater than average weight and size could give him a sheer muscle advantage. But it was in moments like this he was very much aware of how inexpert he was with the sword he was now buckling about his waist.

He and Brian, finally dressed and as fully armed as they could be, left their room and went down toward the source of the most noise, which was on the ground floor.

Sir Mortimor's voice could be heard riding over the tumult by the time they reached the floor just above ground level. It came echoing up the stairwell with force and command.

"No more than thirty men here!" the knight was ordering, one floor down. "Do nothing unless they actually break through the front door. Then, if they do, open this door only long enough for the slingers and bowmen to have at them for a moment, then lock and bar here again. They should not gain through this time. So. Be orderly, be on watch, be ready. The rest of you, beyond the thirty who will stay, fill your arms with straw and up the stairs with you and pile it by battlements above those attacking. The oil in the kettle should already be heating. As soon as I come, we will throw down the straw from the tower-top on those trying to get in, pour oil on top, and throw down lighted torches. Beaupre!"

"Yes, Sir Mortimor." The pockmarked face of Sir Mortimor's second in command came toward the knight from among others in the crowd before the knight.

"Leave just enough slingers here to be effective in the pa.s.sage when the door is opened for a moment.

All other slingers up to the roof with us. Extra bowmen also. Make sure the torches are ready!"

"The torches are already there and lit, Sir Mortimor," said Beaupre, "and most of the other slingers and bowmen also. There are enough here to take care of any attack through the pa.s.sage. I will take care of all."

Sir Mortimor turned toward the stairs, saw Brian and Jim starting down them and shook his head.

"If you please, messires," he said, "come with me to the roof."

He was up the stairs and past them, crowding them against the stone wall to his left on the stairway, within seconds of having finished speaking. He vanished upward, taking the stairs two steps at a time and leaving them far behind as they turned to follow.

Jim, his legs still stiff from the previous day's stair-climbing in the castle, gazed thoughtfully at the empty steps before him. It did not seem possible that any human being could run up the five stories worth of levels inside the castle, taking two of the eight-to-ten-inch steps of the staircase at each stride; but having seen Sir Mortimor in action, he was now ready to believe that the knight would continue his pace all the way to the roof. Possibly, even now as Jim and Brian were climbing after him, Sir Mortimor was emerging into the open night at the tower's top.

They joined him eventually; and Jim saw, by the light of torches held by men standing well back from the forward facing battlements, where the lights they held could not make them marks for archers from below, a respectable stack of straw already built, ready to be thrown down.

Sir Mortimor stood, legs spread a little bit apart, watching other men bring still more armfuls up and add to the stack. The fire was alight, in fact blazing brightly, underneath the kettle of oil, which had now been rolled on the metal wheels attached to its firebox to the aperture over the pa.s.sageway ceiling. The kettle itself was held pivoted on a couple of extended metal arms, so that merely by tilting it forward on those pivots it would pour its contents out of a lip in its rim, to fall through the holes overhead in the pa.s.sageway far below. The heat from the firebox could be felt a dozen feet from it. Jim was astonished to see Sir Mortimor suddenly walk toward the kettle and casually stick his forefinger deep into the liquid it held.

"Warm enough," he said, stepping back. Jim stared at the finger, but there was no sign that it had been in any way cooked, or otherwise marked by heat. A little late, he realized that such a fire would have to burn for some time to get the oil, itself, to an actual boiling point. There was a lot of liquid there to be heated up.