Here There Be Dragonnes (110 page)

As to the ring I had slipped on my finger so thoughtlessly the night my mother died, it had been the most magical thing in my life. According to Growch, the first creature I had met after fleeing the village where I was born, it was a precious sliver of horn from the head of a fabulous Unicorn, and as such enabled me to communicate with other creatures and also, as I discovered later, warned of impending danger.

I wondered what sin my father had committed for it to leave his finger; my mother had not been able to fit it to hers either, whereas it had slipped onto mine like bear grease and stuck like glue.

I couldn't have managed without it. Nor, I thought with a wry smile, would I have once encumbered myself with not only a blind knight, but also a dog, Mistral the horse, Traveler the pigeon, Basher the tortoise, and my beloved little pig. . . . No, I mustn't think about the pig.

Be that as it may, the ring had completely changed my life. My mother had had ambitions for me. With the help of her "clients," I had been educated far beyond a village girl's station. I could read, write, figure, cook, sew, carpenter, cure, fish, hunt, brew, farm, spin and weave. She had plans for me to become the sort of woman who could choose her own husband and take a place in society, but the queer paradox had been that she couldn't bear to part with me, so had, knowingly or not, fed me with sweet cakes and honeyed fruits until I was the fattest, most unattractive girl in the province and no one would have me. I hadn't realized it until after she died, and it took a while to become reconciled to her duplicity, conscious or not.

But, as I said, the ring had changed all that. By the time I had learned to communicate properly with all the creatures I met and who needed my help, the original intent of seeking the first husband I could find had disappeared under other considerations.

Not that understanding the animals had been easy. Only one-tenth of animal speech is in sound—barks, neighs, bleats, etc.—and another three-tenths are in body movement, position of head, legs, ears, and feel of coat and fur. The other, and greater part, is thought-talk. This last was the most difficult for me, even with the help of the Unicorn's ring. Animals think in sorts of pictures, colored only by their own thoughts and seen from their own angles, so a bird didn't send back the same images as, say, a dog or a horse. Eventually, though, it became easier, and Growch and I spoke to each other almost entirely by thought.

Dear dog: all he had wanted in the beginning was a real home, a warm fire to curl up by in the winter, regular food and a pat or two, but he had left all that behind to follow me into an uncertain future. He had pretended that his real reason was to find more of those "fluffy bum" bitches he had fallen for in our earlier travels, pampered creatures from Cathay with legs as short as his and no morals whatsoever, but I knew better. He had decided that his real role in life was to keep an eye on me: he was convinced I couldn't manage on my own.

He trotted in now, one ear up, one down, as usual.

"Awake now, are we? 'Ow's about some food, then?"

We assembled in a small square behind our lodgings in shivering dawn. The sun would soon rise above the rearing mountains, but now the sky was a pale greenish-blue, and the mist lay knee-high in the streets. Breakfast was pancake bread and honey, and as the church bells called out six and a muezzin sang from his tower, the convoy got under way.

A string of heavily laden mules, two wagons, eight mounted guards and horses for Master Scipio, interpreter Justus, horse master Antonius and our guide, a skinny fellow called Ibrahim. Nothing for me: Master Scipio explained that I either walked or hitched a lift in one of the wagons.

"Do you good, boy," he said robustly. "Half day walk, half ride. And you can alternate the wagons. One driver doubles as the cook—you can give him a hand, he'll teach you what foods are best for travelling. T'other wagon is driven by the farrier: knows all there is to know about horses. Right?"

So we were off, all yawning, for we had none of us had much sleep at the lodgings. The guards had straggled back at all hours, full of the local wine and boasting of their winnings and/or conquests.

I reached up to pull at Master Scipio's sleeve.

"Where are we bound?"

"For the trading town of Küm."

"How long will it take?"

"Over the trails we follow, four or five days."

So long! Now that we were finally on our way proper I was eager to complete my journey east as fast as I could. It seemed I would have to be patient.

Our way lay to the northeast, and once we left the city behind the travelling was frustratingly slow. We twisted and turned along trails that followed the lowest contours of the land; the tracks had been there for time immemorial, the easiest for man and beast, and for the most part were within easy reach of water, but were also rutted and broken by the years of travel.

At first the surrounding countryside was relatively well wooded and we were hemmed by low hills, but the farther we travelled the wilder became the terrain. The hills grew higher and crowded closer, the trees gave way to low scrub and the sun burned us in the breezeless valleys. It was cooler at night, but we always built a fire, both to cook the evening meal and to deter any wild animal; every evening we heard mountain dogs howling at the moon, sometimes near, sometimes far.

We had brought our own provisions with us, to avoid paying high prices in the small villages we passed through, and this proved our undoing.

On the third night the cook prepared a stew, and in order to disguise the (by now) high smell and taste of the meat, threw some very pungent herbs and spices into the pot. I watched him take various packets from his pockets, but after asking the names of a few, all unknown to me, I lost interest; besides, he said my watching him made him feel nervous. He was a taciturn man at best, and poor company if I rode in his wagon. He wasn't a very good cook, either.

I took a portion of the stew over to Growch and sat down beside him to eat mine, but two very disconcerting things happened. One, my precious ring gave a little warning stab, and two, Growch took one sniff and flatly refused to eat any.

Now, my dog doesn't refuse food. Ever. He can devour stuff that turns my stomach even to look at.

"What's the matter? It smells all right. A little spicy, perhaps, but you've eaten worse." I lifted my spoon to my mouth but his tail got in the way, and at the same time my ring prickled again.

"Don' touch it! S'not good to eat. Don' know why, but somethin' in there ain't right."

"Are you suggesting it's poisoned?" I tried to laugh it off. I was hungry.

"Not poison. Told you, don' know what's wrong; all I know is, I'm not havin' any, and you shouldn' neither."

The ring stabbed again. "All right," I said crossly, as much to it as to Growch. "Cheese and dates."

"Skip the dates. . . ."

As I went to return our untouched food to the stew pot, I noticed others doing the same. Not all, by any means. About half the men were eating heartily, others were just picking. If I had needed any confirmation that it wasn't entirely palatable, I would have had it in the fact that the cook himself wasn't eating his own food: he had just handed the guide Ibrahim a plate of dried fruit and cut himself a heel of cheese, although he scowled when I asked for the same.

It wasn't until we had been on the road for a couple of hours the next day that the wisdom of avoiding the stew became apparent. One by one men groaned, clutched their stomachs and disappeared into the brush to be violently ill. By noon about half were incapacitated, unable to ride, and had to be hauled up onto the wagons, their horses tied behind.

Master Scipio called me over, his face gray and sweating.

"Here, boy: take my horse. I'm going to rest for a while," and off he disappeared into the bushes, to reemerge some moments later to help me up on the horse and then climb himself onto the nearest wagon.

At first it was just fine to be riding up so high, feeling well and fit while all around were groaning and moaning, but Growch was grumbling that he was wearing his legs down to their stumps trying to keep up with me as I rode from one end of the line to the other, as Master Scipio did, and after a while the high wooden saddle began to chafe and the bottom of my spine felt bruised. I checked up and down once more: half the mule drivers and half the guards were riding the wagons and the guide, Ibrahim, was driving the farrier's cart.

I brought the horse to an amble beside Master Scipio.

"Like to ride again? Or shall we halt and have a rest, water the horses?"

He looked better, but not much.

"Not yet. We won't stop, because if we do we'll never get going again. Keep riding; there's a good camping place a few miles further on. We'll stop there overnight."

The trouble was, we had had to travel so slowly with the overladen wagons that we had made very little progress by the time the sun slid behind the hills and the valley we travelled became gloomy and full of shadows. Once again I implored Master Scipio to take to his horse but once again he refused.

"A mile or so more, that's all, then we can rest, I promise. Ride up to the head of the line and see if you can hurry up those mules. . . ."

I was so sorry for myself and my saddle sores as I rode to the front, noting the weariness of the animals as they plodded on, heads hanging, puffing and blowing, that it wasn't for a moment or two that the growing noise behind me made any sense. It seemed that the hubbub and the prickling of my ring coincided, which meant danger, so I wheeled the horse as quickly as I could (not easy because the track had narrowed to a defile) and pushed him back towards the wagons and Master Scipio.

Our whole caravan stretched back now over a quarter-mile or thereabouts, because of the growing dusk, general weariness, lack of Scipio's incisive leadership and, most of all, the narrowness of the trail. As I kicked my reluctant jade to a faster pace, Growch panting at our heels, the noise—shouts, yells, neighing of horses, clash of swords—made no sense, until I rounded a curve and saw the horde of ragged men armed with spears, swords, clubs, and knives that were creeping out of the bush and attacking the wagons.

Ambush!

My heart gave a
thump
of terror, and the hand that fumbled at my belt for the dagger I kept there was slick with the sweat of fear. My horse had caught the scent of blood and reared suddenly, so that I lost the reins and had to hang on to his mane with both hands as he turned away from the battle. I tried my damnedest to pull his head round, find the reins again, but all of a sudden a figure leapt from the undergrowth, a knife between his teeth, a spear in his hand.

The ring was burning on my finger but I could do nothing but freeze in horror as the spear was lifted in my direction and the man's mouth opened in a howl of exultation. Death stared at me, and I couldn't even pray—

There was a growl, a yelp, a cry of pain, and the spear missed me by a fraction and struck my horse's rump. It reared with a scream of pain, its flailing hooves downed my would-be attacker, luckily missing Growch, then it plunged off again down the track and away from the fighting.

Once more it was all I could do to hang on as I was bounced and jounced like a sack of meal on that horrid hard saddle. I bumped both nose and chin on the high pommel, banged my leg on a rock as the horse swerved at the last moment, and scratched my arm on some branch or scrub that scraped our sides.

Tears of pain squeezed past my closed eyelids: would this never stop? We must have galloped at least—

The animal came to an abrupt halt, forelegs quivering, and the sudden lack of motion did what the flight couldn't. I fell off onto the ground and lay there with my head spinning and everything else hurting, while the wretched animal cropped the grass next to my ear with a sound like tearing linen.

I'm dead, I thought. I must be. No one could have survived that headlong gallop. I'll just lie here and wait for the golden trumpets. . . . Washed in the blood of the Lamb—

Nothing so sacred. I was being washed, but by a sloppy, anxious dog. I sat up gingerly.

"Go away, Growch! I'm all right. . . ."

"Then get up and tell 'em! 'Bout the ambush!"

I opened my eyes. We were in a clearing full of people running towards us. Over to one side a huge fire was flickering. For a desperate moment I thought I had stumbled into the ambushers' camp, but a closer look showed these were respectable travellers. In a moment I was surrounded and a babel of tongues was flinging questions at me till my head hurt worse than ever. I explained in my own tongue, market Latin, a little Italian and a couple of words of Arabic I had picked up (I think these last were profanities, remembering where I had heard them, but no one seemed to mind) and a moment or two later armed men were clattering away back the way I had come.

Someone led me over to the fire and smeared an evil-smelling grease on the more obvious bumps and bruises, and gave me a mug of spiced wine which I downed gratefully. I accepted another and a bowl of rice and chicken. Something nudged my arm, and half the contents of the bowl were on the ground.

"Ta!" said Growch pleasantly, licking up the last grains. "That was fun, wasn' it? That fella din' 'alf yell when I nipped 'im! Quite a battle . . ."

Of course! I remembered now. He had doubtless saved my life when he bit my attacker's ankle, though I didn't know whether he realized it. I tipped the rest of the rice out.

"Here: I'm not hungry. . . . Thanks."

"Nothing to it. 'Ere: why don't you ask for another bowlful?"

It appeared the ambush had been well planned. The stew had been dosed with a powerful emetic, and both the guide Ibrahim and the cook had made good their escape. We had lost two guards and a mule driver and there were several wounded, including Master Scipio, who finally rode in with his arm in a sling. But I was hailed as a hero for riding to seek help and feted with choice titbits and a handful of hastily gathered coin, a whip-round from the survivors.

I felt a trifle guilty as I accepted the coins and blushed when they called me a hero, but as Growch remarked, now was not the time to tell them my horse had bolted from a superficial spear wound and heroism had nothing to do with it.