In the Suicide Mountains

Chapter Five

Like an angel of vengeance the knight came galloping, he and his horse leaning far, far over as they boomed around the curve, and then righting again as they came plunging down the straightaway, the horse with his head down, ears laid back, the front hooves slamming down from level with his nose. Chudu the Goat’s Son was too terrified to run, too terrified to think, though he was usually calm in emergencies. It was guilt, perhaps: clinging to Armida’s lovely wrist, he was in the wrong, no doubt of it, though his motives were pure; but whatever the cause was, the dwarf stood rooted there, knees knocking, hair straight up, his eyes enormous, and his instinct for self-preservation somehow jammed, or momentarily went crazy, so that without being actually aware of it he was shape-shifting wildly, twelve creatures per second, now an owl, now a lion, now a woodcock, now a yellow Jersey cow, now a sheep, now a mouse. The lance came straight at him, and the horse and the knight; and the desperate shape-shifting had no effect whatever except that the knight jerked his head once, as if trying to fix his eyesight or shake a pod from his ear. When they were practically on top of him, the lance aiming straight at his adamsapple, his whole life hurriedly passing in re-run (and strange to say, he found himself paying close attention in spite of himself, fascinated: “My goodness! There’s Aunt Urtha!” he thought, transported, for he’d been fond of her, and, “There’s Uncle Ah-ba-ak the Camel!” so that Chudu the Goat’s Son might not even have noticed if, that instant, he’d been killed) — Armida cried out, with the powerful voice of a boxing official, “No, wait!” The horse put the brakes on, and horse and knight, with a terrible noise, came skidding at Chudu sideways.

Armida gave his arm a jerk, snatching him clear, and the horse slammed past him into a tree. The knight went rolling, over and over and over, like an armadillo, and though he’d parted from the horse he apparently didn’t know it, for he was still bellowing, in a tragic, hopeless-sounding voice, “Whoa Boy! Whoa!” Finally he came to rest and, after a moment, sat up and shook his head to clear it and tipped up his visor and looked around.

Chudu was still trembling, though not in his dwarf’s shape; he was in the shape of a small pink-eyed pig, which Armida held gently, firmly, under her arm. Limp and princesslike as she appeared, and comfortable as it was between her arm and breast, she stood like a hundred-year-old elm.

Now the knight got unsteadily to his feet and, after testing his legs, walked, staggering a little, to where his horse lay. It was unconscious. He got down on his knees and listened to the horse’s heart, then opened a sort of saddlebag-like thing and got out a waterskin, which he opened and emptied onto his horse’s face. The horse shook its head and came to. Then, glancing up at Armida and the pig, the knight remembered himself and said, in an official voice that seemed studied and somehow unnatural for him, “What seems to be the trouble here?”

Armida pointed to the horse’s foot. “That horse of yours has got a shoe loose,” she said.

“Hmm,” the knight said, and bent over to look. Then alarm came over his face, and he went to the saddlebag-like thing again and dived his iron-gloved hand into it and brought out, to the surprise of Armida and the pig, a violin.

“Christ!” he said, and it sounded much more like a prayer than like swearing, “I thought for sure I’d broken it.”

“You,” the pig said, tipping its head, “—you are a violin player?”

But the knight said nothing. He was looking for something and couldn’t find it. “It must’ve fallen out,” he said. “Darn!” He began walking down the road he’d come galloping up before, retracing his horse’s steps.

“What are you looking for?” Armida said. “Can I help you?”

“The bow,” he said. “It’s a wooden thing, with horsetail on it. It’s about this long”—he held his gauntlets apart in front of him, separated by about two and a half feet.

“I know what a violin bow is,” said Armida.

“Sorry,” the knight said.

“What’s-your-name,” she said to the pig, “find the man his bow.”

Chudu the Goat’s Son came to his senses now, blushing at his foolish wish to stay there between her arm and her breast all year. He changed back into a dwarf and then, on second thought, into an eagle and flew off to find the bow. He found it nearly three miles back, picked it up — carefully not touching the strings with his beak — and returned it to its owner.

By now the horse was standing up, and Armida was holding his right back leg up, bracing it professionally, hammering in the shoe-nails with a rock.

“Be careful,” the knight said, “he’s a kicker.”

“He won’t kick me,” Armida said.

The horse laid back his ears and looked at her and decided he better not.

The knight watched her with respect. So did Chudu the Goat’s Son. The horse was as big as a house, and Chudu the Goat’s Son, for one, wouldn’t have touched that hoof for a hundred million zloti.

“You’re damn good at that,” the knight said when Armida put the horse’s foot down.

Armida merely smiled and looked shy and silly in the elegant way she’d learned from her step-sister. The knight blushed, suddenly shy himself. “Perhaps we should introduce ourselves,” he mumbled. “My name’s—” He paused, for his eyes had accidentally met Armida’s and it seemed he was about to have a heart attack. He looked at the violin bow in his right-hand gauntlet and said, addressing the ground, “My name’s Christopher the Sullen.”

Instantly — quicker than an ax could fall — both Armida and Chudu the Goat’s Son dropped to their knees, for Christopher the Sullen was the kingdom’s crown prince.

“Don’t do that,” yelled Christopher the Sullen. “Please! I hate that.”

Instantly they got up.

But the day was ruined. His personality had changed completely, and even a chicken could have understood how it was that he’d gotten his name.