Three Hearts and Three Lions Page 10

  “No, no, no!” howled the giant, starting a minor landslide. He stalked about for a while before getting enough self-control to sit down again. “Time presses,” he said, “so I’ll yield on this one and ask for the answer. Why indeed does a chicken cross the road?”

  “Because it’s too far to walk around,” said Holger.

  The giant’s curses exploded over him for minutes. He was quite content with that; his whole object was to stall for time, if possible for so long that the first sunrays would fall on his enemy. When the titan finally made a coherent protest, Holger had marshalled enough arguments about the meaning of the terms “question” and “answer” to keep them shouting at each other for half an hour. Bless that college course he’d taken in semantics! He killed ten minutes just reconstructing Bertrand Russell’s theory of types.

  At last the giant shrugged. “Let it go,” he said ominously.

  “There’ll be another night, my friend. Though I think not you will win over me this next time. Go to!”

  Holger drew a breath. “What has four legs,” he asked, “yellow feathers, lives in a cage, sings and weighs eight hundred pounds?”

  The ogre’s fist smote the ground so that rocks jumped. “You ask about some unheard-of chimera! That’s no riddle, that’s a question on natural philosophy.”

  “If a riddle be a question resolvable by wit, then this is,” said Holger. He stole a glance eastward. Was the sky paling, ever so faintly?

  The giant cuffed at him, missed, and fell to gnawing his mustache. Obviously the behemoth wasn’t very intelligent, Holger decided. Given years in which to mull over a problem, the slowest brain must come up with the answer; but what a human child would have seen in minutes this brute might need hours to solve. He certainly had powers of concentration, though. He sat with eyes squeezed shut, rocking back and forth, mumbling to himself. The fire died low; he became another misshapen shadow.

  Hugi tugged at Holger’s pants. “Forget not the gold,” he whispered avariciously.

  “Nor the curse on ’t,” said Alianora. “For I fear if we win, ’twill no be by wholly honest means.”

  Holger was too pragmatic to worry about that aspect. Doubtless only a saint could fight evil without being to some extent corrupted by his own deeds. Nevertheless, the giant had come as an unprovoked, cannibalistic aggressor. Hoodwinking him to save Alianora could not be a very heavy sin.

  Even so... curses were not to be laughed off. Holger felt a chill in his guts. He didn’t know why, but an instinct muttered to him that victory over this foe might be as ruinous as defeat.

  “Done!” The hideous face opened. “I’ve found your answer, knight. Two four-hundred-pound canaries!”

  Holger sighed. He couldn’t expect to win every time. “Okay, Jumbo. Third riddle.”

  The giant stopped rubbing his hands together. “Don’t call me Jumbo!”

  “And why not?”

  “Because my name is Balamorg. A fearsome name, which many a widow, many an orphan, many a village kicked to flinders, has good cause to know. Call me truly.”

  “Oh, but you see, where I come from, Jumbo is a term of respect. For hark you—” Holger spun out an improbable story for ten or fifteen minutes. Balamorg interrupted him with a grated command: “The last riddle. Make haste, or I overfall you this instant.”

  “Heigh-ho. As you wish. Tell me then: what is green, has wheels, and grows around the house?”

  “Huh?” The ponderous jaw fell. Holger repeated. “What house?” asked the giant.

  “Any house,” said Holger.

  “Grows, did you say? I told you, questions about some fabulous tree on which wagons cluster like fruit are not true riddles.”

  Holger sat down and began cleaning his, nails with his sword point. It occurred to him that Alfric’s magnesium knife might have the same effect as sunlight, when kindled. Or maybe it wouldn’t. The total energy output would probably be too small. Still, if he had to fight, he could try the Dagger of Burning. He could now make out his enemy’s features, though the fire was burned down to embers.

  “The challenges I’ve given you are common among children in my homeland,” he said.

  True enough. But Balamorg’s wounded ego led to several more minutes of huffing and puffing. At last, with an angry grunt, he went into his trance of concentration.

  Holger sat very still. Alianora and Hugi lay like stones. Even Papillon grew motionless. But their eyes were turned eastward.

  And the sky lightened.

  After some fraction of eternity, the ogre smote the ground and looked at them. “I give up,” he snarled. “The sun pains me already. I must find shelter. What’s the answer?”

  “Why should I tell you?” Holger rose.

  “Because I say so!” The colossus got up too, crouched, lips drawn back from fangs. “Or I’ll stamp your wench flat!” Holger hefted his sword. “Very well,” he said. “Grass.” “What?”

  “Grass is the answer.”

  “But grass has no wheels!”

  “Oh, I lied about the wheels,” said Holger.

  Rage ripped from Balamorg in one thunderous bellow. He hurled himself against the knight. Holger skipped back, away from Alianora. Could he keep this monster berserk and witless for another five minutes, and stay alive himself, then— “Nyah, nyah, nyah, can’t catch me!” Balamorg’s paw snatched at him. He swung his sword with all his force and hewed off a fingertip. Then it was leap and duck, cut and wriggle, taunt to enrage and gasp to breathe.

  Until the sun’s rim cleared the eastern darkness.

  As the first beams touched him, Balamorg screamed. Holger had never heard such agony before. Even while he ran from the toppling mass, he was haunted by the horror of it. The giant hit the ground hard enough to shake boulders loose. He writhed and changed, gruesomely. Then he was silent. The sun fell on a long slab of granite, whose human shape was hardly recognizable but which was still wrapped in skins.

  Holger fell to earth also, a roaring in his ears.

  He recovered with his head on Alianora’s bosom. Her hair and her tears fell on his face like the new sunlight. Hugi capered around the great stone. “Gold, gold, gold!” he cackled. “Ever they giants carry a purseful o’ gold. Hurry, man, slit yon sack and make us wealthier nor kings!”

  Holger climbed to his feet and approached. “I like this no,” said Alianora. “Yet if ye deem it best we take his riches—for sure ’tis we can use some pennies on our faring—then I’ll help carry the load, and ask the curse fall on me alone. Oh, my dear!”

  Holger waved hugi aside and stooped by the wallet, a crude drawstring affair. Some coins had already spilled out. They gleamed under his gaze, miniature suns in their own right. Surely, he thought if he put some of this treasure to worthy use, such as building a chapel to good St. George, he could keep the rest unharmed.

  What was that smell? Not the stink of the hides, but another, a faint skiff as of rainstorms, under this clear dawn sky... Ozone? Yes. But how come?

  “God!” Holger exclaimed. He sprang up, snatched Alianora in his arms and bounded back toward camp. “Hugi! Get away from there! Get away from this whole place! Don’t touch a thing if you want to live!”

  They were mounted and plunging down the western slope in minutes. Not till they had come miles did Holger feel safe enough to stop. And then he must fob off his companions’ demands for an explanation with some weak excuse about the saints vouchsafing him a vision of dire peril. Fortunately his stock stood too high with them for anyone to argue.

  But how could he have gotten the truth across? He himself had no real grasp of atomic theory. He’d only learned in college about experiments in transmutation by such men as Rutherford and Lawrence, and about radium burns.

  Those tales of a curse on the plunderer of a sun-stricken giant were absolutely correct. When carbon was changed to silicon, you were bound to get a radioactive isotope; and tons of material were involved.

  13

  AFTERNOON FOUND THEM still
descending, but at a gentler pace and in milder air than before lunch. The woodland, oak and beech and scattered firs, revealed signs of man: stumps, second growth, underbrush grazed off, razorback shoats, at last a road of sorts twisting toward the village Alianora expected they could reach today. Exhausted by his encounter with Balamorg, Holger drowsed in the saddle. Birdsong lulled him so that hours went by before he noticed that that was the only noise.

  They passed a farmstead. The thatched log house and sheep-folds bespoke a well-to-do owner. But no smoke rose; nothing stirred save a crow that hopped in the empty pens and jeered at them. Hugi pointed to the trail. “As I read the marks, he drave his flocks toonward some days agone,” said the dwarf. “Why?”

  The sunlight that poured through leafy arches felt less warm to Holger than it had.

  At evening they emerged in cleared land. Ripening grainfields stretched ahead, doubtless cultivated by the villagers. The sun had gone down behind the forest, which stood black to the west against a few lingering red gleams. Eastward over the mountains, the first stars blinked forth. There was just enough light for Holger to see a dustcloud a mile or so down the road. He clucked at Papillon and the stallion broke into a weary trot. Alianora, who had amused herself buzzing the bats that emerged with sunset, landed behind the man and resumed her own species. “No sense in alarming yon folk,” she said. “Whate’er’s their trouble, ’twill ha’ made them shy enough.”

  Hugi’s big nose snuffed the air. “They’re driving sheep and cattle within the walls,” he said. “Eigh, how rank wi’ sic smell! And yet’s a whiff underneath... sweat smells sharper when a man’s afeared... an’ a ghost o’ summat else, spooky.” He huddled back on the saddlebow, against Holger’s mailed breast.

  The flocks were considerable. They spilled off the road and across the grain. The boys and dogs who ran about rounding up strays trampled swathes of their own. Some emergency must have forced this, Holger decided. He drew rein as several spearmen challenged him. Squinting through the dusk, he saw the peasants were a sturdy, fair-complexioned folk, bearded and long-haired, clad in rough wadmal coats and cross-gaitered pants. They were too stolid to be made hysterical, but the voices which asked his name were harsh with unease.

  “Sir Holger du Danemark and two friends,” he said. No use explaining the long-winded truth. “We come in peace, and would like to stay the night.”

  “’Olger?” A burly middle-aged man who seemed a leader let his spear down and scratched his head. “Have I not heard that name somewhere before, or its like?”

  A murmur went among the men, but no one had an immediate answer and the livestock gave no time for reflection. Holger said quickly, “Whoever bears any such name is not me. I’m a stranger from afar, only passing through.”

  “Well, sir, welcome to Lourville,” said the chief peasant. “I fear you come at an ill time, but Sir Yve will be glad to see you... You, there, head off that bloody-be-damned-to-hell heifer before she ends up in the next duchy!... My name’s Raoul, Sir ’Olger. Begging your pardon for this hurly-burly.”

  “What’s the trouble?” asked Alianora. “I see ye’re housing your beasts within the toon this nicht, which ’twas scarce meant for.”

  Holger overheard an older man mumble something about these foreign tourists and their scandalously unclad doxies. Someone else hushed him up: “I’ve heard of her, granther, a swan-may living a bit north and west of Lourville territory. They say she’s a kindly one.” Holger paid more attention to Raoul:

  “Yes, m’lady, we’ve been grazing everybody’s stock in one herd, these last several days, and shutting them in the town after dark. This night, even the people must crowd within the walls; none dare be alone any more, on the outlying garths, when night’s fallen. A werewolf goes abroad.”

  “Hoy, say ye so?” barked Hugi. “A skin-turner?”

  “Aye. Much has gone wrong these past years, misfortune after misfortune in every household. My own ax slipped and laid my leg open this spring, and then did the same to my oldest son. We were three weeks abed, right in sowing time. Not a family but has some such tale. They—do say ’tis because of the marshalling in the Middle World beyond the mountains, sorcery grown so strong that its power reaches this far and turns everything awry. So they say.” Raoul crossed himself. “I don’t know, me. The loup-garou is the worst thing thus far. Christ guard us.”

  “Could it not be a natural wolf that raided your folds?” Alianora asked. “Full oft I’ve heard folk say someone must be shape-strong, when in fact ’twas but a beast larger and more cunning than most.”

  “That might have been,” said Raoul dourly, “though ’twas hard to see how a natural animal could have broken so many gates or lifted so many latches. Nor do true wolves slay a dozen sheep at a time, for mere sport, like a weasel. But last night the matter was settled. Pier Bigfoot and Bette his wife were in their cottage, three miles within the forest, when the gray one burst through the window and snatched their baby from the cradle. Pier struck with his billhook, and swears the iron passed through the wolf’s ribs without doing harm. Then Berte got wild and foolish, and hit the beast with an old silver spoon she had from her grandmother. He dropped the baby—not too badly hurt, by God’s grace—and fled out the window. I ask you, is that a natural animal?”

  “No,” said Alianora, low and frightened.

  Raoul spat. “So we’ll sleep within the town walls while this danger lasts, and let the wolf prowl untenanted woods. Mayhap we can discover who’s turning shape, and burn him.” In a gentler tone: “A great pity for Sir Yve, this, just when his daughter Raimberge was readying to travel west and wed the Marchgrave’s third son in Vienne. Pray God for a speedy end of our grief.”

  “Our lord will not be able to entertain you as well as you deserve, Sir ’Olger,” added a boy. “He means to walk on the walls this whole night, lest the wolf overleap them. And his lady Blancheflor lies sick abed. But his son and daughter will do what they can.”

  Holger supposed he should volunteer to help on sentry-go, but he didn’t think that after today he could stay awake. As she rode slowly on ahead of the flock, he asked Alianora to explain the menace.

  “There be two ways that men take animal shape,” she answered. “One is by magic on a common human, as my own feather garb does for me whene’er I make the wish. The other is more darksome. Certain folk be born with twin natures. They need no spell to change form, and each nicht the desire to turn bear, or wild boar, or wolf, or whate’er the animal may be for the person... each nicht that desire overwhelms them. And then they run mad. Kind and sensible folk they may be when walking as humans, but as animals they canna cease wreaking harm till thee blood thirst is slaked, or till fear o’ discovery makes them go back into our form. Whilst beasts, they’re nigh impossible to kill, sith wounds knit upon the instant. Only silver pains them, and a silver weapon would slay. But from such they can run swifter nor any true flesh and blood.”

  “If the, uh, werewolf can’t help it, then this local one must be a stranger, not so? A native would have been plaguing the district for years.”

  “Nay. Methinks as yon crofter said, belike the creature is one o’ theirs. For a thin taint o’ warg blood micht go unnoticed, unknown, through a lifetime, not being strong enough to reveal itself. ’Tis only o’ late, when the witchcraft forces ha’ grown so, that the sleeping demon was wakened. I make no doubt the werewolf himself is horror-struck. God help him if e’er the folk learn who he be.”

  “God help any un you fear-haggard yokels may decide on for the warg,” grunted Hugi.

  Holger scowled as he rode on to the gate. It made sense, of the weird sort that prevailed in this universe. Werewolfery... what was the word?... oh, yes, lycanthropy was probably inherited as a set of recessive genes. If you had the entire set, you were a lycanthrope always and everywhere—and would most likely be killed the first time your father found a wolf cub in his baby’s cradle. With an incomplete inheritance, the tendency to change was weaker. It must hav
e been entirely latent and unsuspected in the poor devil of a peasant who bore the curse hereabouts: until the redoubled sorcery in the Middle World blew over the mountains and reinforced whatever body chemistry was involved.

  He peered through the gloaming. The village was surrounded by a heavy stockade, with a walkway on which Sir Yve would make his rounds tonight. Inside were jammed narrow wooden houses of two or three stories. The streets that wound among there were mere lanes, stinking from the muck of animals packed in each night. The one on which he entered was a little broader and straighter, but not much. A number of women in long dresses and wimples, shock-haired children, and aproned artisans gaped at him as he passed the gate. Most carried torches that flared and sputtered under the deep-purple sky. Their voices chattered respectfully low as they trailed him.

  He stopped near a street leading to one side, a tunnel of blackness walled by the surrounding houses and roofed by their overhanging galleries. Silhouetted above the ridge poles, he could just see the top of a square tower which doubtless belonged to Sir Yve’s hall. He leaned toward a husky man, who tugged his forelock and said, “Odo the blacksmith, sir, at your service.”

  Holger pointed down the alley. “Is this the way to your lord’s house?”

  “Aye, sir. You, Frodoart, is master at home yet?”

  A young man in faded scarlet hose, wearing a sword, nodded. “I did but now leave him, armed cap-a-pie, having a stoup of ale ere he mounts the walls. I am his esquire, Sir Knight. I’ll guide you thither. This place is indeed a maze.”

  Holger removed his helmet, for his hair was dank with sweat after being iron-clad the whole day and the dusk breeze was cool if smelly. He couldn’t expect anything lavish at the hall, he realized. Sir Yve de Lourville was obviously not rich—a boondocks knight with a handful of retainers, guarding these environs against bandits and administering a rough justice. Raoul had been filled with civic pride at the daughter’s betrothal to a younger son of a minor noble, west in the Empire.