The sword in the stone (21 page)

"Tone, ton, tavon, tontavon, tantontavon, tontantontavon," went the horn, and again, "Moot, trout, trourourout, trourourourout. Troot, troot. Tran, tran, tran, tran."

Robin was blowing his hunting music and now all the ambushed archers leaped up. They set forward their left feet in the same movement and let fly such a shower of arrows as it had been snow.

The Wart saw the nearest griffin stagger in his tracks, a clothyard shaft suddenly sprouting from between the shoulder blades. He saw his own arrow fly wide of the wyvern, and eagerly bent forward to snatch another from the ground. Each man of the waiting troops had stuck his twelve arrows point downwards in the ground before him, for convenience in loading. He saw the rank of his companion archers sway forward as if by a preconcerted signal, when each man stooped for a second shaft. He heard the bow-strings twang again, the purr of the feathers in the air. He saw the phalanx of arrows gleam like an eye-flick in the firelight. All his life up to then he had been shooting into straw targets which made a noise like Phutt! He had often longed to hear the noise that these gay, true, clean and deadly missiles of the air would make in solid flesh. He heard it. The rank of monsters was yelling, falling and running about. Some had erected their poisonous stings and were glaring wildly into the dark. Others, strangely transfixed, were tumbling with their wings pined to their bodies or their beaks to their chests. Some scuttled for safety. Others made their trumpeting noise and charged the dark. They ran madly upon their hind legs, but stumbled, coughed or barked, and fell on their faces or sat down backwards in a few yards. As they leaped out the arrows leaped to meet them. The wyverns, more swift in flight, bounded towards the sheltering darkness in skips of twenty or thirty feet. One of them was coming straight at the Wart. He could see the pointed ears, the wild eyes slit like a cat's, and the flying wings by whose action it skimmed. It squealed as it came, and let fly one of its poisoned stings at random. It saw the Wart and leaped into the air like a kangaroo.

The Wart was fitting an arrow to his bow. The cock feather would not go right. Everything was in slow motion once again.

He saw the huge body flying blackly through the glare, felt the feet take him in the chest. He felt himself turning somersaults slowly, and the cruel weight of the body turning somersaults on top of him. He saw Kay's face somewhere in the cartwheel of the universe, flushed with starlit excitement, and Maid Marian's on the other side with its mouth open, shouting something. He thought, before he slid into blackness, that it was shouting something nice.

They picked him out from under his wyvern, and found his arrow sticking through its chest. It had died in its leap. Wart was unconscious, and the battle was over.

Then there was a time which made him feel sick, while Robin set his broken collar bone and made him a sling out of the green cloth of his hood, and after that all lay down indiscriminately to sleep, dog-tired, among the slain. The Wart lay propped against a tree. It was too late to get back to Sir Ector's castle that night, or even to get back to the outlaw's camp by the lime tree. All that could be done was to make up the fires, post sentries, and sleep where they were.

Wart did not sleep much. He leaned against his tree, watching the red sentries pass to and fro in the firelight, hearing their quiet passwords and thinking about the excitements of the day. These went round and round in his head, sometimes losing their proper order and happening backwards or by bits. He saw the leaping wyvern, heard Marian shouting

"Good shot," listened to the humming of the bees muddled up with the stridulation of the grasshoppers, and shot and shot, hundreds and thousands of times, at popinjays which turned into griffins. Kay and the liberated Dog Boy slept twitching beside him, looking alien and incomprehensible as people do when they are asleep, and Cavall, lying at his good shoulder, occasionally licked his hot checks. The dawn came slowly, so slowly and pausingly that it was quite impossible to determine when it really had dawned, as is its habit during the summer months.

"Well," said Robin, when they had all wakened and eaten the breakfast of bread and cold venison which they had brought with them,

"you will have to love us and leave us, Kay. Otherwise I shall have Sir Ector fitting out an expedition against me, to fetch you back. Thank you both for your help. Can I give you any little present as a reward for it?"

"It has been lovely," said Kay. "Absolutely lovely. Can I have the griffin I shot?"

"He will be a bit heavy to carry. Why not just take his head? "

"That would do," said Kay, "if somebody wouldn't mind cutting it off. It was that griffin there."

"What are you going to do about old Wat?" asked the Wart.

"It depends on his preferences. Perhaps he will like to run off by himself and eat acorns, as he used to do, or if he likes to join our band we shall be glad of him. He ran away from your village in the first place, so I don't suppose he will care to go back there. What do you think?"

"If you are going to give me a present," said the Wart slowly, "I should like to have him. Do you think that would be all right?"

"As a matter of fact," said Robin, "I don't. I don't think you can very well give people as presents: they might not like it. What did you intend to do with him?"

"Oh, I don't want to keep him or anything like that. You see, we have a tutor who is a pretty good magician and I thought he might be able to restore Wat to his wits."

"Good boy," said Robin. "Have him by all means. I'm sorry I made a mistake. At least, we'll ask him if he would like to go." When somebody had gone off to fetch Wat, Robin said, "You had better talk to him, yourself."

They brought the poor old man, smiling, confused, hideous and very dirty, and stood him up before Robin.

"Go on," said Robin.

The Wart did not know quite how to put it, but he said,"I say, Wat, would you like to come home with me, please, just for a little?"

"AhnaNanaWarraBaaBaa," said Wat, pulling his forelock, smiling, bowing and gently waving his arms in various directions.

"Come with me?"

"WanaNanaWanawana."

"Dinner?" asked the Wart in desperation. "Yum, yum?"

"Yum, yum!" cried the poor creature affirmatively, and his eyes glowed with pleasure at the prospect of being given something to eat.

"That way," said the Wart, pointing in the direction which he knew by the sun to be that of his guardian's castle. "Dinner. Come with. I take."

"Measter," said Wat, suddenly remembering just one word, the word which he had always been accustomed to offer to the great people who made him a present of food, his only livelihood. It was concluded.

"Well," said Robin, "it has been a good adventure and I'm sorry you're going. I hope I shall see you again one day."

"Come any time," said Marian, "if you are feeling bored. You have only to follow those glades. And you, Wart, be careful of that collar bone for a few days."

"I will send some men with you to the edge of the chase," said Robin. "After that you must go by yourselves. I expect the Dog Boy can carry the griffin's head."

"Good-by," said Kay.

"Good-by," said Robin.

"Good-by," said the Wart.

"Good-by," said Marian, smiling, "and always shoot as you did last night."

"Good-by," cried all the outlaws, waving their bows. And Kay and the Wart and the Dog Boy and Wat and Cavall and their escort set off on the long track home.

They had an immense reception. The return on the previous day of all the hounds, except Cavall and the Dog Boy, and in the evening the failure to return of Kay and Wart, had set the household in an uproar. Their nurse had gone into hysterics, Hob had stayed out till midnight scouring the purlieus of the forest, the cooks had burnt the joint for dinner, and the sergeant-at-arms had polished all the armor twice and sharpened all the swords and axes to a razor blade in expectation of an immediate invasion. At last somebody had thought of consulting Merlyn, whom they had found in the middle of his third nap. The magician, for the sake of peace and quietness to go on with his nap in, had used his insight to tell Sir Ector exactly what the boys were doing, where they were, and when they might be expected to come back. He had prophesied their return to a minute.

So, when the small procession of returning warriors came within sight of the drawbridge, they were greeted by the entire household. Sir Ector was standing in the middle with a thick walking-stick with which he proposed to whack them for going out of bounds and causing so much trouble; the nurse had insisted on bringing out a banner which used to be put up when Sir Ector came home from the holidays, as a small boy, and this said WELCOME HOME; Hob had forgotten all about his beloved hawks and was standing on one side, shading his eagle eyes to get the first view; the cooks and all the kitchen staff were banging pots and pans and singing "Will Ye No Come Back Again?" out of tune; the kitchen cat was yowling; the hounds had escaped from the kennel because there was nobody to look after them, and were preparing to chase the kitchen cat; the sergeant-at-arms was blowing out his chest with pleasure so far that he looked as if he might burst at any moment, and was commanding everybody in a very important voice to get ready to cheer when he said,

"One, Two!"

"One, Two!" cried the sergeant.

"Huzza!" cried everybody obediently, including Sir Ector.

"Look what I've got," shouted Kay. "I've shot a griffin and the Wart has been wounded."

"Yow-yow-yow," barked all the hounds, and poured over the Dog Boy, licking his face, scratching his chest, sniffing him all over to see what he had been up to, and looking hopefully at the griffin's head which the Dog Boy held high in the air so that they could not eat it.

"Bless my soul," exclaimed Sir Ector.

"Alas, the poor Phillip Sparrow," cried the nurse, dropping her banner, "pity his poor arm all to-brast in a green sling. God bless him."

"It's all right," said the Wart. "Ah, don't catch hold of me. It hurts."

"May I have it stuffed?" asked Kay.

"Well, I be dommed," said Hob. "Be'nt thick wold chappie our Wat, that erst run lunatical?"

"My dear, dear boys," said Sir Ector. "I am so glad to see you back."

"Wold chuckle-head," exclaimed the nurse triumphantly. "Where be thy girt cudgel now?"

"Hem!" said Sir Ector. "How dare you go out of bounds and put us all to this anxiety?"

"It's a real griffin," said Kay, who knew there was nothing to be afraid of. "I shot dozens of them. Wart shot a wyvern and broke his collar bone. We rescued the Dog Boy and Wat."

"That comes of teaching the young Hidea 'ow to shoot," said the sergeant proudly.

Sir Ector kissed both boys and commanded the griffin to be displayed before him.

"Well!" he exclaimed. "What a monster! We'll have him stuffed in the dinin'-hall. What did you say his measurements were?"

"Eighty-two inches from ear to ear. Robin said it might be a record."

"We shall have to write to the Field."

"It is rather a good one, isn't it," remarked Kay with studied calm.

"I shall have it set up by Rowland Ward," Sir Ector went on in high delight, "with a little ivory card with KAY'S FIRST GRIFFIN on it in black letters, and the date."

"Arrah, leave thy childishness," exclaimed the nurse.

"Now Master Art, my innocent, be off with thee to thy bed upon the instant. And thou, Sir Ector, let thee think shame to be playing wi'

monster's heads like a godwit when the poor child stays upon the point of death. Now, sergeant, leave puffing of thy chest. Stir, man, and take horse to Cardoyle for the chirurgeon."

She waved her apron at the sergeant, who collapsed his chest and retreated like a shoo'd chicken.

"It's all right," said the Wart, "I tell you. It is only a broken collar bone, and Robin set it for me last night. It doesn't hurt a bit."

"Leave the boy, nurse," commanded Sir Ector, taking sides with the men against the women, and anxious to re-establish his superiority after the matter of the cudgel. "Merlyn will see to him if he needs it, no doubt. Who is this Robin?"

"Robin Wood," cried both the boys together.

"Never heard of him."

"You call him Robin Hood," explained Kay in superior tones. "But it's Wood really, like the Wood that he's the spirit of."

"Well, well, well, so you've been foragin' with that rascal! Come in to breakfast, boys, and tell me all about him."

"We've had breakfast," said the Wart, "hours ago. May I please take Wat with me to see Merlyn?"

"Why, it's the old man who went wild and started rootin' in the forest. Where ever did you get hold of him?"

"The Good People had captured him with the Dog Boy and Cavall."