Part 75 (1/2)
His voice wailed away and was lost in the distance. Jim and Nevile-Smythe looked at each other.
”Now, that's one of our local dragons for you!” said the knight disgustedly. ”How can a gentleman of coat armor gain honor by slaying a beast like that? The worst of it is when someone from the Midlands compliments you on being a dragon-slayer and you have to explain-”
At that moment either they both stepped over the line, or the line moved past them-Jim was never sure which; and they both stopped, as by one common, instinctive impulse. Looking at Sir Reginald, Jim could see under the visor how the knight's face had gone pale.
”In ma.n.u.s tuas Domine,” said Nevile-Smythe, crossing himself.
About and around them, the serest gray of winter light lay on the fens. The waters of the meres lay thick and oily, still between the sh.o.r.es of dull green gra.s.s. A small, cold breeze wandered through the tops of the reeds and they rattled together with a dry and distant sound like old bones cast out into a forgotten courtyard for the wind to play with. The trees stood helpless and still, their new, small leaves now pinched and faded like children aged before their time while all about and over all the heaviness of dead hope and bleak despair lay on all living things.
”Sir James,” said the knight, in an odd tone and accents such as Jim had not heard him use before, ”wot well that we have this day set our hands to no small task. Wherefore I pray thee that we should push forward, come what may for my heart faileth and I think me that it may well hap that I return not, ne no man know mine end.”
Having said this, he immediately reverted to his usual cheerful self and swung down out of his saddle.
”Clarivaux won't go another inch, dash it!” he said. ”I shall have to lead him-by the bye, did you know that mere-dragon?”
Jim fell into step beside him and they went on again, but a little more slowly, for everything seemed an extra effort under this darkening sky.
”I talked to him yesterday,” said Jim. ”He's not a bad sort of dragon.”
”Oh, I've nothing against the beasts, myself. But one slays them when one finds them, you know.”
”An old dragon-in fact he's the granduncle of this body I'm in,” said Jim, ”thinks that dragons and humans really ought to get together. Be friends, you know.”
”Extraordinary thought!” said Nevile-Smythe, staring at Jim in astonishment.
”Well, actually,” said Jim, ”why not?”
”Well, I don't know. It just seems like it wouldn't do.”
”He says men and dragons might find common foes to fight together.”
”Oh, that's where he's wrong, though. You couldn't trust dragons to stick by you in a bicker. And what if your enemy had dragons of his own? They wouldn't fight each other. No. No.” They fell silent. They had moved away from the gra.s.s onto flat sandy soil. There was a sterile, flinty hardness to it. It crunched under the hooves of Clarivaux, at once unyielding and treacherous.
”Getting darker, isn't it?” said Jim, finally.
The light was, in fact, now down to a grayish twilight through which it was impossible to see more than a dozen feet. And it was dwindling as they watched. They had halted and stood facing each other. The light fled steadily, and faster. The dimness became blacker, and blacker-until finally the last vestige of illumination was lost and blackness, total and complete, overwhelmed them. Jim felt a gauntleted hand touch one of his forelimbs.
”Let's hold together,” said the voice of the knight. ”Then whatever comes upon us, must come upon us all at once.”
”Right,” said Jim. But the word sounded cold and dead in his throat.
They stood, in silence and in lightlessness, waiting for they did not know what. And the blankness about them pressed further in on them, now that it had isolated them, nibbling at the very edges of their minds.
Out of the nothingness came nothing material, but from within them crept up one by one, like blind white slugs from some bottomless pit, all their inner doubts and fears and unknown weaknesses, all the things of which they had been ashamed and which they had tucked away to forget, all the maggots of their souls.
Jim found himself slowly, stealthily beginning to withdraw his forelimb from under the knight's touch. He no longer trusted Nevile-Smythe-for the evil that must be in the man because of the evil he knew to be in himself. He would move away . . . off into the darkness alone . . .
”Look!” Nevile-Smythe's voice cried suddenly to him, distant and eerie, as if from someone already a long way off. ”Look back the way we came.”
Jim turned about. Far off in the darkness, there was a distant glimmer of light. It rolled toward them, growing as it came. They felt its power against the power of lightlessness that threatened to overwhelm them; and the horse Clarivaux stirred unseen beside them, stamped his hooves on the hard sand, and whinnied.
”This way!” called Jim.
”This way!” shouted Nevile-Smythe The light shot up suddenly in height. Like a great rod it advanced toward them and the darkness was rolling back, graying, disappearing. They heard a sound of feet close, and a sound of breathing, and then- It was daylight again.
And S. Carolinus stood before them in tall hat and robes figured with strange images and signs. In his hand upright before him-as if it was blade and buckler, spear and armor all in one-he held a tall carven staff of wood.
”By the Power!” he said. ”I was in time. Look there!” He lifted the staff and drove it point down into the soil. It went in and stood erect like some denuded tree. His long arm pointed past them and they turned around.
The darkness was gone. The fens lay revealed far and wide, stretching back a long way, and up ahead, meeting the thin dark line of the sea. The Causeway had risen until they now stood twenty feet above the mere-waters. Ahead to the west, the sky was ablaze with sunset. It lighted up all the fens and the end of the Causeway leading onto a long and b.l.o.o.d.y-looking hill, whereon-touched by that same dying light-there loomed above and over all, amongst great tumbled boulders, the ruined, dark and shattered sh.e.l.l of a Tower as black as jet.
III.
”-why didn't you wake us earlier, then?” asked Jim.
It was the morning after. They had slept the night within the small circle of protection afforded by Carolinus' staff. They were sitting up now and rubbing their eyes in the light of a sun that had certainly been above the horizon a good two hours.
”Because,” said Carolinus. He was sipping at some more milk and he stopped to make a face of distaste. ”Because we had to wait for them to catch up with us.”
”Who? Catch up?” asked Jim.
”If I knewwho ,” snapped Carolinus, handing his empty milk tankard back to the emptier air, ”I would have saidwho . All I know is that the present pattern of Chance and History implies that two more will join our party. The same pattern implied the presence of this knight and-oh, so that's who they are.”
Jim turned around to follow the magician's gaze. To his surprise, two dragon shapes were emerging from a clump of brush behind them.
”Secoh!” cried Jim. ”And-Smrgol! Why-” His voice wavered and died. The old dragon, he suddenly noticed, was limping and one wing hung a little loosely, half-drooping from its shoulder. Also, the eyelid on the same side as the loose wing and stiff leg was sagging more or less at half-mast. ”Why, what happened?”
”Oh, a bit stiff from yesterday,” huffed Smrgol, bluffly. ”Probably pa.s.s off in a day or two.”
”Stiff nothing!” said Jim, touched in spite of himself. ”You've had a stroke.”
”Stroke of bad luck,I'd say,” replied Smrgol, cheerfully, trying to wink his bad eye and not succeeding very well. ”No, boy, it's nothing. Look who I've brought along.”
”I-I wasn't too keen on coming,” said Secoh, shyly, to Jim. ”But your granduncle can be prettypersuasive, your wo- you know.”
”That's right!” boomed Smrgol. ”Don't you go calling anybody your wors.h.i.+p. Never heard of such stuff!”
He turned to Jim. ”And letting a george go in where he didn't dare go himself! Boy, I said to him, don't give me thisonly a mere-dragon andjust a mere-dragon . Mere's got nothing to do with what kind of dragon you are. What kind of a world would it be if we were all like that?” Smrgol mimicked (as well as his dragon-ba.s.so would let him) someone talking in a high, simpering voice. ”Oh, I'm just a plowland-and-pasture dragon-you'll have to excuse me I'm only a halfway-up-the-hill dragon-Boy!”
bellowed Smrgol, ”I said you're adragon! Remember that. And a dragon acts like a dragon or he doesn't act at all!”
”Hear! Hear!” said Nevile-Smythe, carried away by enthusiasm.
”Hear that, boy? Even the george here knows that. Don't believe I've met you, george,” he added, turning to the knight.
”Nevile-Smythe, Sir Reginald. Knight bachelor.”