Quicksilver's Knight

CHAPTER 9

In the stillness of false dawn, a bird called.

Geoffrey looked up, frowning. "Knows not that owl that he should be abed?"

"So should you, if you were a proper man," Quicksilver retorted.

"No, a proper man would be up and about at this hour. It is the unproper man who would still be abed."

"And not alone?" Quicksilver said scornfully. "I am sure you know whereof you speak."

"Trust the voice of experience," Geoffrey agreed. The owl hooted again.

"There is the voice I will trust," Quicksilver retorted. "She, at least, knows what she should be about, and when."

" 'She'?" Geoffrey raised an eyebrow. "How can you be so sure 'tis a hen?"

"Why, by its call," she said, with contempt.

"Indeed! And how is hers different from his?"

"By its tone, of course! Here, the cock owl sounds like this." Quicksilver cupped her hands and blew through her thumbs, producing a remarkably good imitation of an owl's cry. The bird in the bush instantly answered.

"Will she not come to seek you now?" Geoffrey asked. "No—belike she sought to scold a male who had been out of his bed all night."

"Indeed! And should he not chide her for her vigil?"

"Since it was to await him out of worry, I think not."

"'Twere best, then, that he not go home. Who could rest in a nest with a quarrelsome hen?"

"Indeed! Well, if she had a grain of sense about her, she would leave the nest ere he comes!"

"At last! We have agreed on something!"

Quicksilver stared at him, nonplussed, then reddened with irritation—but Geoffrey looked up at another birdcall. "That quail, at least, knows his proper hour."

"And his proper task," Quicksilver answered, "which is to greet the sun and find food for his mate and chicks."

"Before the nightcrawlers can ooze back to their beds." Geoffrey nodded. "I have seen them many a time."

"Oh? I thought you had been one."

"That, too," Geoffrey admitted. "Should we not stop to break our fast soon?"

"Why? Have you not brought wine enough?"

"When the dog bites me, I bite back," Geoffrey retorted. She replied that a man is what he eats, and so they rode on in good-natured verbal fencing as the sun rose, and the dawn elbowed its way past the night. After a while, though, both ran out of quips, and they rode side by side in a silence that Geoffrey realized had become companionable, and was surprised to find that he had no desire to break.

After a while, though, Quicksilver began to feel restless—she could not let this arrogant lordling presume too much, so she spoke. "I am surprised that you were so quick to say you would come to the aid of Aunriddy."

"Are you truly?" Geoffrey asked, with interest. "Would you turn away from the prospect of a fight in a good cause?"

Quicksilver stared at him, then slowly smiled. "No, I would not! And I suppose it would be too much to ask of you to forego it, either."

"Most certainly," Geoffrey agreed cheerfully. "However, that is only the true reason. I have a better."

"How now?" Quicksilver demanded. "You have already told me the true reason, and it is not so good as the false one?"

"Oh, the other is not false. It is simply that even without it, I would ride to the aid of a village beset by outlaws."

"Or a lord who was beset by outlaws," Quicksilver said, with irony.

"Or a damsel," Geoffrey reminded her. "Would I had known of your danger, when first you were accosted! But since I did not, I shall have to work out my anger on the outlaws who bedevil Aunriddy."

Quicksilver secretly thrilled to hear him say it, but made sure the thrill stayed secret. "What is this 'better' reason?"

"Why, 'tis simply that such a rescue is my duty. I am a knight-errant, after all, and am sworn to defend the weak."

"Very laudable," Quicksilver said drily, "since it gives you an excuse to go wandering and leave your wife and child at home."

Geoffrey frowned. "I have no wife or child." Quicksilver hid her savage delight behind sarcasm. "Aye, but when you have, you will be glad of such an excuse to go philandering."

Geoffrey laughed, but quickly sobered, gazing straight into her eyes. "I shall never marry unless I can find a woman who will be so desirable that she will drive thoughts of wandering clear out of my head, making me wish only to stay by her."

There was that in his look and his tone that made Quicksilver quiver inside, but she spoke all the more hotly for that. "There is no such woman, sir, for any man will grow bored with the favors of even the most beautiful female."

"Her remedy, then, is to be a woman of infinite variety," Geoffrey retorted, "so that she is many women in one." Quicksilver laughed bitterly. "Do you not ask the impossible of her, sir?"

"Why not?" Geoffrey said airily. "She is sure to ask the impossible of me."

Quicksilver frowned, and was about to ask—when Geoffrey turned from her, his eyes kindling. "Ah! Is that Aunriddy, then?"

Quicksilver turned to look, then nodded. "Aye."

Below them, the forest opened into a hillside of scrub growth, sloping down into a bowl between itself and other hills. In the hollow lay a village, plumes of smoke rising from its chimneys. Men were trudging out to the fields with hoes over their shoulders, and women moved about the cottages in their morning chores.

"I did not know that we were so close," Geoffrey said. "I thought it better to come upon them by morning," Quicksilver replied.

"Wisely done, for who knows what may lurk in the night? And from what Maud said of these bandits, I think they are not the sort to wake early." But Geoffrey was frowning down at the village. "There is something wrong about it."

"Oh, naught but starvation and despair," Quicksilver answered.

"Both can be remedied." Geoffrey shook the reins, and Fess moved on down the trail. "Let us hope it is nothing more lasting," he called back to Quicksilver.

They rode into the village side by side, looking about them with sharp eyes. A goodwife saw them and dropped her bucket, hurrying away and shooing her children before her, stopping their complaints with whacks across the bottoms.

"Strangers are not a sign of hope," Geoffrey said.

"I doubt not that too many strangers have shown themselves to be causes of despair." Quicksilver looked up keenly. "Do you know now what seemed wrong to you, from above?"

"Aye." Geoffrey nodded at a tyke who sat playing listlessly in the dust. "It is the children. They do not run and shout at their play, as little ones should."

Quicksilver turned to look, her face darkening. "Aye. They are too weak for such eager sport. They have eaten too little."

The child's mother came running to scoop him up and hurry away with an awkward, limping gait. The tot squalled a feeble protest, then was silent.

"All lack spirit here," Geoffrey said, eyeing the slump shouldered form of the mother. "Even from the hillside above, we should have been able to hear the men sing as they went out to the fields."

"What had they to sing about?" Quicksilver was looking more and more stormy as they went along.

"Ho! What is this?" Geoffrey reined in and looked up, frowning.

They had come to the village green, if you could call it that—a larger-than-average space between houses, more or less circular, with a few patch-legged stools sitting in the dust. On one of them sat a pretty young woman, tears streaming down her cheeks as older women fluttered around her, making soothing sounds and dressing her hair with flowers and ribbons.

"They deck her like a bride," Geoffrey said, "but why would a bride be weeping?"

"Because she is being constrained to marry a man she does not love," Quicksilver told him, "but I do not think this one goes to a wedding." She clucked to her horse, and it moved up close to the weeping girl.

The women looked up with alarm.

"Why do you weep, maiden?" Quicksilver demanded. The girl looked up, startled, then gasped in alarm. A woman seated astride a horse with bare legs and bare arms was shocking, even if the scabbard across her back was empty.

"She has cause enough." One of the older women wrapped her arms protectively around the girl. "Let the poor child be."

"Why, so I shall, if others do. Who seeks to torment her?"

"She must go to warm the bed of Maul, the chief of the bandits who beset us, if you must know! He is a crude man, and rough, and takes pleasure in cruelty."

The girl burst into tears, wailing hopelessly.

"You must be a stranger, or you would know of this," a granny said. "Ride warily, mistress, or Maul shall come for you, too."

"I hope that he does!" Quicksilver hissed.

"Do not think your man shall save you from him." Another beldame scowled from Geoffrey to Quicksilver and back. "He is twice your size, young man, and has fifty like him at his back."

Geoffrey nodded judiciously. "The odds are not too uneven, then."

"Aye," Quicksilver snapped, "if you give me back my sword!"

"Here it is, and gladly." Geoffrey took her sword from its lashings and handed it back to her, hilt first. "Now the odds are uneven again."

"Beware, cocksure youth." The granny frowned. "Pride goeth before the fall."

"That it does, and Maul shall surely fall." Geoffrey turned to Quicksilver. "Shall we hunt him, or bait him?"

"Bait him?" Quicksilver looked up in delight. "Why, what an excellent idea!" She dismounted and tossed him the reins. "Let us go inside your hut, Grandmother! Maul shall come for his tidbit today, shall he not?"

"Aye." The granny stared at her, taken aback. "Well, he shall find her, but not this poor lass!"

Hope sprang in the girl's eyes, but the beldame wailed, "He shall see 'tis not Phoebe at a glance! He shall wreak his vengeance on our whole village!"

"When he has seen my face, do you truly think he' will cavil?" Quicksilver shooed them toward the doorway, completely unaware of how conceited she had sounded. "Come, let us prepare him a nuptial surprise!" She turned back in the doorway and told Geoffrey, "You might see to feeding those poor starving babes whiles I dress."

Geoffrey started a scathing retort, but she disappeared into the hut. He shrugged and looked about him. She was right, after all—the children should be fed. A few more hours would make no great difference, but he could not abide to see suffering when he could prevent it.

As he rode around the village green, though, the mothers snatched their babes indoors, leaving only the old and the infirm to sit out in the sun. And infirm they were—a dozen of all ages sat listlessly, spooning thin gruel with hands covered with sores. A nasty suspicion began, and Geoffrey drew up beside one rail-thin middle-aged man whose skin hung on him like a garment suddenly become too large. "Have you no food other than grain, goodman?"

The man looked up, too weary for surprise. "Nay, sir, and no great store of that."

That explained the sores, then, and the lethargy. "Surely you could make your porridge strong enough to eat, not drink!"

"Mayhap," the man said, "though we must make it last till the harvest. Still, I would I dared chew."

"'Dared'? Why do you not?"

"For fear my teeth might fall out, sir. They seem loose in my head."

"Belike they are," Geoffrey said, and turned away brusquely, hiding his distress at what he saw. It was clearly vitamin deficiency, and apparently the outlaws had taken all food but a small stock of grain for six months or more—long enough for the symptoms to show. Aunriddy was not yet starving, but it was nonetheless dying of malnutrition.

Still, what could he do? Teleport in some tomatoes and dried meat and vegetables and fruit, yes, but how could he tend the illnesses they had now, while he waited for them to heal? He seemed to remember Fess saying something about that in the biology class he had so steadfastly ignored—he had only paid attention to the business about beriberi and scurvy when Fess had pointed out that they were apt to weaken an army besieging a castle. Of healing he knew nothing, except for the rough meatball surgery that might prove necessary on the battlefield—and this did not look like a case of need for cauterizing wounds.

Well, if he knew nothing about healing, he knew one who did. He called up a mental image of his sister and concentrated on her while he thought, long and hard in the family encoded mode, Cordelia! Your aid, I pray!

Cordelia's answer was instant. What ails you, brother? Not I myself, Geoffrey answered, but a whole village that is suffering from vitamin deficiencies. Babes and aged alike have running sores and live in lethargy.

There was a pause; this was not what Cordelia expected when one of her brothers called for help. I shall finish this potion that I brew, then, and bring what medicines I may. What is the cause? Know they no better than to eat naught but grain?

They do, Geoffrey assured her, but they are beset by bandits, who take all other food they grow.

Why, the lice and poltroons! Cordelia answered, seething. Know you no cure for a plague of wolves, brother? I do, he assured her, and we set a wolf-trap even now. 'We'? Cordelia demanded. Who is 'we'?

Geoffrey almost answered her, then remembered that any picture of Quicksilver he thought of was bound to have his feelings attached—and he wasn't quite ready for his sister to know about those, just yet. The bandit chieftain whom I was sent to hobble, he told Cordelia. I shall speak of her when you come.

'Her'? Cordelia thought. A bandit chieftain, and a woman? This I must see! Where are you, brother?

In a village called Aunriddy, Geoffrey answered, and visualized a map of Gramarye that zoomed in on the Duchy of Loguire, with Aunriddy marked by a large red "X."

I shall fly to you, Cordelia assured him. Expect me within the hour. Her thought-stream ended.

Geoffrey frowned. Within the hour? From Runnymede to Loguire, in no more time than that? It was two days' hard riding! Even flying, it should have taken her the better part of a day. How could she manage an hour?

Time enough to ask when she came. In the meantime, there were hungry children to feed. Geoffrey rode to the center of the common, frowning. He murmured softly, sure no one would overhear. "'Tis a pretty problem, Fess. I must conjure up food enough to heal them, but not so much that the bandits will see it and seize it—and thrash each man and woman till they are sure hidden stocks have been yielded up."

"Then bring only as much as they can hide," Fess answered.

Geoffrey nodded. "Sound advice. Let us turn to it, then."

He dismounted and reached inside his tunic to the inner pocket that served him as a purse. He tossed a heap of pennies onto the ground, then stared at them and thought about oranges. It took quite a bit of concentration, of course—he wasn't really turning the pennies into oranges. Rather, he was teleporting the fruit from places where it was, to a place where it wasn't—here—then teleporting a penny back to the source of the oranges, one penny for five, which had been a little more than the going rate the last time he had noticed. He did not want any merchant or farmer to go bankrupt due to his errand of mercy. More to the point, he was a knight, and determined not to rob the commoners. The rich were another matter, but only if they had obtained their wealth by stealing from the poor.

He had to know where the fruit was coming from, of course. He began with those he knew best—the stalls in the market in Runnymede—then moved on to the orchards on the southern coast of Gramarye. He had only seen one or two such, but they were more than enough for the current purpose. He wanted a dozen oranges for each person in Aunriddy, and he got them.

Each orange appeared with a gunshot crack of displaced air; each penny disappeared with a pop. It sounded as though he had lit a string of firecrackers—a very long string, and it brought the village children running out to watch with eyes that grew rounder and rounder as the fruit began to pile up. Their mothers came running after to protect their babes from the strangers, and froze, staring at the warlock and the pile of fruit that seemed to boil up from the ground before him.

At last he nodded, satisfied, and turned to them. "Take a dozen oranges for each person in your family—mother, father, children, and old folk. Each person eat one a day, no more."

The women clutched their children to them and stared out of eyes that had become a little wild.

"Do not fear—'tis real fruit, not made of air or brimstone," Geoffrey said impatiently. "I have not conjured it up, really, but brought it to you from the farms where it grows."

Still they did not move, and Geoffrey suddenly realized that most of them had probably never seen an orange. Tomatoes, yes—though it never occurred to him that neither fruit had been known in medieval Northern Europe, or that his ancestors had performed one of their many improvements on history by bringing citrus fruit to Gramarye. He only knew that these were inland people, whereas oranges grew on the southern coast. If Aunriddy had seen the fruit at all, it would have been as rare treats provided by the lord on festival days—and from the little he knew of their lord, he doubted the Count would have given his peasants anything he could avoid.

He took an orange from the pile, slit the rind with his thumbnail, then peeled it back and tossed it away. He broke off a section, tossed it into his mouth, and chewed it with every evidence of enjoyment. Then he stepped over to a young woman with three very skinny toddlers and held out a section. Her face creased with the tension between longing and fear, but longing won out; she took the slice, put it in her mouth, and chewed.

Her eyes went round with the wonder of it.

Carefully and slowly, Geoffrey sat down on his heels, separating three more sections and holding them out on his palm. The toddlers snatched them up. Their mother gave a little cry of alarm, reaching to knock the fruit out of their hands, then caught herself and watched, trembling, as they ate.

Geoffrey stood and stepped back, gesturing toward the fruit. The women ran to gather it up. He watched them, seething with anger at the bandits who had made them so fearful, then turned away to another part of the common, flung down more coppers, and began to think of vegetables.

He had just finished conjuring up a heap of string beans when one woman cried, "A witch!"

"No, a warlock!" Geoffrey said impatiently, turning to her. "Can you not tell the difference between..."

But she was pointing up into the sky, and the mothers and children were already running for the shelter of their huts.

Geoffrey looked, then looked again. He had expected the broomstick, but had not anticipated seeing two people astride it.

The broom curved in for a landing, and Cordelia hopped off to run to him, leaving her passenger to pick up the stick. "How now, brother! Have you turned grocer?"

"Nay, only merchant!" Geoffrey grinned with pleasure at seeing her. "And I offer these folk quite a bargain—in truth, 'tis a steal!"

"What, do you not pay for what you take?" asked the tall, broad-shouldered blond young man who came up behind Cordelia.

"Of course I do, but I doubt I'll have luck even giving it away." Geoffrey clasped his future brother-in-law by the hand and forearm with a broad smile. "How good it is to see you, Alain, and how good of you to come to our aid! But we must not put the Crown Prince in jeopardy."

"'Tis you who showed me the folly of that notion, Geoffrey," Alain said, returning the clasp. "When I am king, I shall have to lead armies; I must accustom myself to the trick of surviving battles ere that time comes." Then, to Cordelia, "You did not tell me there would be fighting here."

"I did not know it." She set her fists on her hips, glaring up at Geoffrey. "Though I should have guessed it, since you were here! Do you mean to fight these bandits, then?"

"Aye," said a voice behind her, "and to beat them into the ground!"

They all turned, to see Quicksilver striding toward them—and Geoffrey caught his breath, for she was dressed as a bride, in village finery and with a wreath in her hair. For a moment, he stood stunned, feeling the eldritch prickling of precognition enveloping his skin; was he looking at his own future? He felt a kind of desire he had never known before, a covetousness to have and to hold the woman entire.

Then he noticed the flash of her calves through the slits she had made in the sides of the skirt, saw the broadsword in her hand, and jolted back to the present; she had made sure the bridal gown did not restrict her ability to fight. Still, she cut a magnificent figure, Geoffrey thought, with her split skirt whipping about her, her long legs showing through, her auburn hair swirling about her shoulders, glinting here and there with gold where the sunlight touched it.

Then he realized there was tension in the air, a growing rivalry, emanating from the two women as each saw a potential rival. He moved quickly to resolve it. "Quicksilver, this is my sister Cordelia, and her fiance Alain." Somehow, it seemed politic to drop the word "prince."

Geoffrey realized that Quicksilver's gaze was lingering on Alain's handsome, open face and broad shoulders, and was astounded to feel a stab of jealousy. To hide it, he hurried to finish the introductions. "Cordelia, Alain—this is Quicksilver, chieftain of the bandits of County Laeg."

"And his prisoner, though he seems to be too gallant to tell you that." Quicksilver did not hold out a hand; in fact, the chip on her shoulder seemed to grow. "It is good of you to come, milady, but we are like to see battle here, and I would advise you not to stay."

"Why, I have seen battle before." Cordelia smiled, amused. "I shall take a hand, if I see a need." Quicksilver turned on Geoffrey with a frown. "I cannot direct a battle when a woman may upset my plans with her own notions of what will aid!"

"Do you think I know nothing of warfare?" Cordelia countered. "Nay, I will stay aloft, watching for your men who may become too sorely beset, and lend a hand only when I see they are about to be overcome."

"Well, that would aid," Quicksilver admitted, though with great reluctance—and it came to Geoffrey that she did not expect any of her men to be in any such danger.

But Alain picked up on something the others missed. "What men are these whom you will command, Chieftain Quicksilver?"

"Why, the bandits of County Laeg," Geoffrey said slowly, "or half of them."

Quicksilver turned to him in surprise and anger. "You knew!"

"Their steps are, silent," Geoffrey told her, "but their thoughts are noisy. Then, too, when I hear an owl hoot after dawn, I discover suspicions—but the more so when you answer it, and it answers you."

Quicksilver's eyes narrowed. "You are perhaps too quick-witted for my own good."

"Oh, I would not be overly concerned about that," Cordelia said with a smile.

Quicksilver turned to her in surprise, and some secret, silent communication seemed to pass between them, for Quicksilver smiled a little, too. "Perhaps, but I am not his sister."

"Praise Heaven for that," Geoffrey breathed, and Cordelia glanced at him in irritation. "No, she is your prisoner."

"'Tis a rare prisoner who bears a broadsword," Alain noted.

"He has just now given it back to me," Quicksilver retorted, "which he must, if he wishes my aid against these bandits."

"And when the fight is done?" Alain demanded. "Will you give it back to him, then?"

"Will he demand it?" Quicksilver countered.

"Let us win the battle before we deal with the peace," Geoffrey said quickly. "Cordelia has come to heal these villagers, Quicksilver."

The bandit chief frowned. "How are they ill?"

"From poor food," Cordelia told her. "My brother has given them enough to remedy that—if we can persuade the wives to take in that heap of string beans before the crows come for it."

"There is no trouble in that," Quicksilver snapped, and turned toward the huts. "Ho! Wives of the village! Come to Quicksilver! At once!"

The women emerged, wavered for a second, then came hurrying to the chieftain.

"She is not tremendously tactful," Cordelia pointed out in a low voice.

"No," Geoffrey agreed, "but she achieves results." Cordelia glanced at him keenly. "Brother, do not seek results that you should not!"

"No fear," Geoffrey said softly. "This one is different."

"I had not noticed," Cordelia said drily.

"Had you not? She is magnetic, she is a very dynamo, she is..."

"Geoffrey," Alain said softly, "your sister is being sarcastic again."

Geoffrey looked at Cordelia in surprise, then gave her a sheepish grin. "I ride my hobbyhorse, do I not?"

"You do not," Cordelia snapped, "and you had best not!"

The women were hurrying back to their huts, each with an apronful of string beans, and Quicksilver strode back to them. "I have made them swear not to cook them until the bandits have come and gone." She glared at Geoffrey. "How did you bring it here, warlock?"

"Why," he answered, "you should know, witch."

"Is she really?" Cordelia seemed very interested. "But one untutored, no doubt."

"Aye," Quicksilver said reluctantly, "if by that you mean I have had to learn the usage of my powers by myself."

"I did. Know, then, proud lady, that warlocks can move things from one place to another in an instant, merely by thinking of it; we call that 'teleportation.' "

Quicksilver stared in indignation. "Men can, but we cannot? 'Tis quite unfair!"

"Aye," Cordelia said in a soothing tone, "but they cannot make objects fly just by thinking at them—save themselves."

"Your brother can."

"All my brothers can," Cordelia answered. "They alone among all the warlocks of Gramarye, and 'tis even as you have said—it is quite unfair."

Alain suddenly lifted his head. "I hear the clash of harness."

Everyone fell silent for a few seconds. Then Quicksilver said, "You have good ears—I cannot hear a shred of it. But I hear their thoughts. You have the right of it—the bandits come." She turned to Geoffrey. "Do you take the eastern side of this common, and your sister's betrothed with you, to guard your back."

Geoffrey almost retorted that he did not need anyone to guard his back, then realized that it was a way for him to protect Alain without the Prince being aware of it. He wondered if Quicksilver had been thinking of that, then was quite sure she had.

"Aloft, damsel!" Quicksilver commanded. "I must go sit as bait." And she turned away, to stride to a low stool that stood in the middle of the little common.

Cordelia watched her go with a small smile, then turned away to her broomstick. Alain and Geoffrey were on their way to hide among the huts, and Quicksilver was hiding her sword in the grass at her side. The bandits were in for quite a surprise.