Quicksilver's Knight

CHAPTER 8

You seem to have extricated yourself from another difficulty, Fess thought at Geoffrey.

Aye, though I think it may be my captive who has extricated me. How did they find us so quickly, Fess?

When you disappeared, they took a moment to recover from the shock, then Leander dispatched runners to the sentries. They do indeed have a network that surveys every route through this forest, though boasting of every foot is a bit of an exaggeration.

'Every route' includes the rivers, then?

It does. A sentry sent word of your arrival almost as soon as you appeared by the riverbank. Her attention was no doubt attracted by the explosion accompanying your appearance.

Quicksilver mistook his long silence. "Are you so angered by a mere challenge when it is not even a defeat?"

"It is irritating to be denied battle, when I have prepared myself for it," Geoffrey acknowledged.

"Aye." Quicksilver seemed to know exactly what he was talking about. "But I could not allow it, you see. I could not risk the lives of my warriors—and my brothers least of all."

Geoffrey swung about in his saddle, staring. "Could not allow it?"

Quicksilver stared, confused, then smiled as she understood his meaning. "Has a woman never denied you before?"

"Only in that which it was hers to deny." Geoffrey felt the hot blood mount into his face.

"And never before have you met a wench who could deny you a battle," Quicksilver said drily. "You forget that I am not your common wench, Sir Knight."

"Aye, neither my wench, nor any man's! You are a lady, and do not think I do not know it!"

"Then you know more than I do," she retorted. "I am the daughter of a country squire, nothing more!" Geoffrey tossed his head irritably, dismissing the objection. "You are certainly no man's wench, if you told me truly in your tale of your life."

"I did!"

"So I thought—but it occurs to me now that you may have had more motive to tell me that tale, and so fully, than merely the desire to satisfy my curiosity."

"That is all that I shall satisfy!"

"You are frank in that, but perhaps not in other matters. You kept me in converse so that your bandits might find us, did you not?"

Quicksilver smiled and tossed her head, her long hair swirling about her head and shoulders. "What if I did?"

"Nothing, save that I must always ask myself hence forth why you do what you do. This trail that we followwill it lead us out of the wood?"

"Aye."

"But will it lead us out if we follow it in the direction in which we are now riding? Or will it only lead us further in?"

Quicksilver smiled again, amused. "It will lead you further in."

Geoffrey nodded, vindicated. "I must ask you everything, must I not? And surely watch each word I say. Come, let us go out." He turned Fess's head.

Quicksilver turned her mare to follow him, eyes sparkling.

As she came up alongside him, Geoffrey asked, "Why do you ride a mare? I doubt not that you are skilled enough in the saddle to handle any stallion."

"You do not think I would trust myself to a male, do you?" Quicksilver countered. "My Belinda is the equal of any stallion in all but sheer strength—and their superior in endurance and intelligence."

Geoffrey nodded, and they rode in silence for a few minutes, Quicksilver casting mischievous glances at him out of the corners of her eyes. It occurred to Geoffrey that she was sure she could escape him whenever she wished, but found him amusing in the meantime.

He had to admit some truth to it. For himself, he found her company entrancing, though he was not all that sure that he could escape her, if she did not want him to. On the other hand, she would find him harder to throw off than she knew.

"So," he said, more to break the silence than to make things clear, "you are a witch."

"As you are a warlock."

"Why did you not tell me that straight out?"

"You did not ask," she countered. "Do not patronize me, knight. You know as well as I that knowledge held in reserve is advantage."

"A fundamental principle of tactics," Geoffrey admitted. "However, now I do ask you straight out: What are your powers?"

"Why... the powers of any witch," she said, surprised. "I can hear others' thoughts, and move objects with my mind." Her eyes took on their wicked glint again. "And shield my mind from presumptuous warlocks!"

She did not know she was a projective, then—and if she was not about to volunteer knowledge without being asked, neither was Geoffrey. After all, if she knew she had such a power, she might bend him to her will more thoroughly than she already had. Heaven knew she had done enough of that already! "Does your band know of your powers?"

Quicksilver shrugged, making Geoffrey glad he had been watching her. "Some may have guessed—I know not. I have been at pains to hide the fact from my earliest childhood, when my father saw me making my doll move, and cautioned me to let no one know but my mother and himself. I was not always as careful as I might have been, though, and I think my brothers have guessed."

"Well, if one knows, they all do," Geoffrey said, from knowledge of living with two brothers himself. He tore his eyes away from her and watched the curving trail ahead. "You hid it from me well enough—until that arrow bound for my heart swooped down. I must thank you for that, by the way."

"I was glad to do it—the more so since your vengeance might have been more than I wished to see," she gibed. "Besides, my bandits doubtless thought it your doing."

"No doubt you made your brothers take the blame for you, too, while you grew. So your sister has not guessed?"

"Not so far as I know; she is seven years younger than I, and I was skilled at dissimulating ere she was old enough to study me. I think she has some witch power of her own, but I am not sure."

Geoffrey doubted that. He thought Quicksilver was probably very sure, one way or another. Studying the road ahead, he said, "This trail twists and turns among positive walls of leaves."

"It does," Quicksilver agreed.

"A score of men could easily be hidden, not three feet from the trackway."

"They could," she acknowledged. "I have sent them home, though."

But Geoffrey did not need to ask if they had obeyed. He was listening to the thoughts all about him, of forest creatures both four-legged and two-legged, and knew as well as Quicksilver that only half her force had gone back to the castle. The other half followed them as silently as a breeze among the leaves, a dozen yards from the roadway on either side, aching for Quicksilver's signal to strike.

Well, there wasn't much he could do about it, except to leave Fess on guard while he slept. Other than that, he decided to ignore them as best he could, until he had decided what to do about them.

He didn't think Quicksilver had decided, either.

Finally, they came out of the trees. Geoffrey tried to hide his sigh of relief—he would have welcomed a good fight, but not when he was so fiercely outnumbered that he might have had to injure a few of the outlaws, and perhaps even kill them because he couldn't take the time to be careful. If they had been thoroughgoing villains, he wouldn't have minded the chance, of course, but he found that he could no longer think of them that way. Besides, hurting some of Quicksilver's men might have made her hate him, and he was astonished to realize that he didn't want to risk that.

She must have read something of his relief, though, and misunderstood it, for she said, "Do not think that you are out of my domain, simply because you have come out of the greenwood. This land all about is filled with my people."

"Only the peasants, if you have bade your warriors go back to the castle." Geoffrey frowned. "You do not mean that even they would fight for you!"

"Every man," she said evenly, looking him straight in the eyes. "Every woman, too, if I asked it of them. I have been a good lord to these folk, Sir Geoffrey."

Geoffrey gazed back into her eyes, frowning. They were dark brown, so dark that they seemed to be deep pools into which he could plunge ... He shook himself angrily, turning away and forcing his mind back to the conversation. "It would be interesting to put your boasts to the test."

"Why, then, test them!" Quicksilver said merrily, and pointed ahead. "Yonder is a woman—two, though the one is very young. Shall I bid them fight you?"

Geoffrey looked up. Sure enough, a middle-aged woman and a girl had come into sight around a bend in the road—but it was Quicksilver and Geoffrey who had moved toward them, not the other way around, for the woman was bent over their cart, and the girl was holding the horse, which had been unshackled from the traces.

"No, do not," Geoffrey said. "Ask them instead if we may aid them."

Quicksilver gave him a quick, appraising glance, then followed it with a smile that made him feel he had been rewarded. "As you wish, then." She clucked to her horse and cantered ahead.

By the time Geoffrey caught up, she was bent over her saddle in conversation with the woman, who was curtsying to her, then pointing to the cart.

For a peasant woman, she was remarkably well dressed. Oh, she wore the usual dun-colored skirt and homespun blouse, with a muslin apron over both, and a kerchief to bind up her hair—but none of the garments was patched or ragged, and the cloth was a stronger weave than any he had seen on a serf's back. If this was how Quicksilver's peasants lived, no wonder they loved her.

Of course, the woman could have been the wife of a yeoman—but she was still well dressed for her station. Quicksilver looked up as Geoffrey reined in Fess. "They have lost a wheel."

"Have they really," Geoffrey said, with a bit of sarcasm. It really wasn't all that hard to see the wheel lying there in the roadway, and the cart leaning down on its axle with the baskets of vegetables higgledy-piggledy all over the roadway. Geoffrey frowned and dismounted to look more closely. "There is no damage that I can see. It is only that the peg that held the wheel has broken off."

"Damage enough," Quicksilver said, with a sarcasm of her own.

"Aye; the wheel is off. This, though, can be mended easily enough, and without a wheelwright or cartwright." He straightened up. "Good day, mistress. I am Sir Geoffrey Gallowglass."

"Oh! And I am only old Maud, sir!" The lady dropped a curtsy. "And this is my daughter Nan."

"Good day, sir." Nan curtsied prettily, with a saucy smile. She, too, wore better cloth than the average peasant lass. She had long brown hair that hung about her shoulders in a thick mass, burnished in the sunlight and held back by a simple band. She was pretty, with the hint of genuine beauty to come, and a figure that proclaimed she had just passed the cusp between childhood and womanhood—fourteen, Geoffrey guessed; old enough to marry, in medieval society, but far too young by any more modern standard. He hoped her mother would let her wait.

"Good day, miss," he said, with a small bow.

"Oh!" Nan gasped, bright-eyed. Geoffrey smiled; a knight bowing to her thrilled the peasant lass. "Should you not be gathering up your mother's produce, pretty miss?"

She blushed at the compliment, but retorted, "Nay, sir, for the horse might eat the vegetables."

Geoffrey nodded judiciously, and forebore mentioning that the girl might tie the horse to a branch. He turned back to Maud. "Well, we must unload the wagon if we are to hoist it up enough to repair."

"Repair!" Her eyes went wide. "Oh! How good of you, sir! But you are a knight!"

"And am therefore sworn to aid those in distress." Geoffrey unbuttoned his doublet.

"Is not such work beneath you?"

Geoffrey smiled as he tossed his doublet over his saddle. "Well, if you see a cartwright passing by, I will gladly leave the task to him—but if you do not, I shall have to manage." He turned to Nan. "Tie that horse, if you would, lass, and seek out a stick of hard wood, an inch or two thick and a foot and a half long."

She was staring at him with very wide eyes, rooted to the spot.

"Nan," her mother called.

Nan shook herself and forced a smile. "Aye, sir, if you wish it." She turned away, leading the horse, but glanced back over her shoulder.

Geoffrey shook his head and sighed; was it so unheard—of for a knight to do manual labor, that she should stare so? He went around to the back of the cart and began to lift out the baskets.

"How shall we raise the cart to put the wheel back?" Maud asked.

"By lifting." Geoffrey looked up at Quicksilver, and found her staring, too. "I shall have to ask you to step down, lady, and put the wheel on."

She shook herself, coming out of her daze, and snapped, "I am not a lady!" But she dismounted.

"It is for you to say what you are, I suppose," Geoffrey sighed. He hefted a fifty-pound basket of turnips. "How am I to call you, then? 'Mistress?' 'Chieftain?' "

"I am sure you can think of a word," she said dryly then, as she saw the slow grin widen on his face, she snapped, "Though you had better not!"

Geoffrey set the last basket down and flexed his arms, rolling his shoulders to ease the ache—and to revel in the touch of the breeze as it flowed over his bare skin. "To the wagon, then." He turned to Quicksilver. "Will you take up the wheel?"

She was staring at him again, and swallowed thickly before she answered. "Aye." She turned away, but her eyes were the last to leave.

It burst on Geoffrey that her staring had something to do with the huge muscles rolling under the skin of his bare chest and shoulders. He grinned, savoring a moment's revenge, then bent to the fallen axle.

"Will this do?"

He looked up to see Nan holding out a long, thick stick—and staring at him as hard as Quicksilver had. He smiled, enjoying her regard, and took the stick, trying its heft, thumping it into his palm. "Aye, that will do nicely. Hold it till I ask for it, there's a good lass."

"Surely, sir," she said breathily as he handed it back to her.

"How shall you lift the cart?" Maud asked. "I have no rope, and there is no..."

Geoffrey shrugged. "It is best to bend the knees, not the back, mistress, and to keep the legs together." He crouched down and took hold of the axle, then stood up, keeping his back straight. "Now, then! The stick, if you will, lass!" Holding onto the axle with his left hand, he held out his right. Huge-eyed, Nan put one end of the stick in his palm. "My thanks," Geoffrey grunted, for the cart was beginning to weigh heavily on his arm. He hefted the stick of wood like a mallet and drove it against the small end of the huge peg that went through the hub of the wheel—luckily, it was the large end that had broken off, or knocking the old peg out would have been much more difficult. As it was, two blows loosened it, and a third knocked it out into the dust. He tossed the stick aside and took the hub in both hands, grunting, "Now, then, the wheel!"

Maud nudged Quicksilver. She gave herself a shake and lifted the wheel, fitting it over the axle. Geoffrey grasped the outside of the hub with his right hand and lowered the cart back down with a thankful sigh. "My thanks. I do not think I could have held it up much longer."

But all three women were staring, and Quicksilver swallowed before she said, "That cart must weigh half a ton."

"Oh, surely only a quarter!" Geoffrey rolled his shoulders and flexed his arms again; the ache was strong, this time. "And I only had to lift a half of that; the other wheel took its share of the weight."

"Did it really," Quicksilver said, with a great deal of breath.

"Now! For the peg." Geoffrey drew his sword, chopped into the end of the hammer-stick, then twisted, and the stick split. He turned it sideways, laying it in the roadway, and chopped again, cutting off a foot-long half cylinder. Then he sheathed his sword, slipped out his dagger, and began whittling.

"Should you not don your doublet?" Maud asked, all motherly concern. "You will catch a chill."

"I am loathe to put on cloth till the sweat has dried," Geoffrey explained. He fitted the peg into the hole in the axle, drew it out, shaved a little more, then fitted it back in. Satisfied, he lifted what was left of the hammer-stick and pounded. A dozen blows, and the peg was in and tight.

"Well!" Geoffrey tossed the stick aside, took down his doublet, and slipped it on. "'Tis not so fine a piece of work as a cartwright might do, mistress, but I think it will hold till you can come to a village, and have it mended by one who truly knows what he is doing."

"Oh, this is most excellent!" Maud said quickly. "I thank you, Sir Knight! How can I repay you?"

"By aiding another traveller in need of aid, when you come across one." Geoffrey turned back to Quicksilver, who was staring at him, transfixed. So was Nan, who stood right beside her; seeing them next to one another, Geoffrey could only remark on the resemblance, and decided that it boded well for Nan. "You will surely be a beauty," he told her.

That shocked her out of her trance; she blushed. "Oh! Thank you, sir! But why do you say so?"

"Because you looked so much like my lady now," he said, with a nod toward Quicksilver.

That brought her to her senses. "I have told you I am not a lady, and certainly not yours!"

"Then what am I to call you?" Geoffrey asked, turning to her. " 'Damsel?' 'Tis too modest for a leader of warriors. 'Captain?' Surely your rank should be higher! 'Chieftain,' perhaps?"

"Why not 'Quicksilver?' " she said tartly. "Quicksilver! Oh!" Maud clapped her hands. "Are you the bandit chieftain, then?"

"I am." Quicksilver frowned at her. "Or was. Why do you ask?"

"Because if you are, it is you whom I have come to seek!"

There was no movement or gesture you could pin it on, but somehow an invisible mantle of authority seemed to settle over Quicksilver's shoulders. The transformation was certainly there in her voice as she asked, "Wherefore?"

"The village of Aunriddy, mistress! They are beset by bandits!"

"What? Some of my men?" There was instant fury in Quicksilver's face. "If they have harmed a soul, I shall have their entrails out!"

"Nay, nay, not of your band," Maud soothed. "They are a motley crew, and a most ungracious one. They have held sway over the village like tyrants, beating the men and importuning the women, and eating everything in sight, then slipping back into the fastness of their hills until their appetites have grown again. They demand tribute in grain and women; they have already taken what little silver the villagers owned. They hold them in such close durance that it has been half a year before one dared escape to bring word."

"Why, what a pack of mongrels!" Quicksilver raged, but Geoffrey had caught another implication. " 'They?' This is not your village, then?"

"It is not," Maud confirmed. "We met the messenger on the roadway, and he was nearly done in. We left him some food and water, and told him we would bear word to the bandit Quicksilver."

"You have borne it," Quicksilver snapped. "But Aunriddy! That is not even in my county!"

"Nay, 'tis in County Frith, a day's ride away."

"Why do they not appeal to Count Frith, then?"

"Why," said Maud, "they have. He will not come."

"He fears the bandits," Nan said.

"Not so greatly as they should fear me!" Quicksilver seethed. "Oh, would that I were free again! I should chop those bandits to mincemeat, then chastise that count most shrewdly, for not defending his own!"

"'Tis for that they have called upon you," Maud said softly.

Quicksilver looked at her, stricken.

"'Tis for the King to chastise Count Frith," Geoffrey said, "but as to these bandits—why, I daresay I might join you in mincing them."

Quicksilver turned to him, surprised—until she saw the wolfish grin on his face. Then her surprise turned to disgust. "You do not care who you battle, do you? So long as you have a fight."

"You wrong me," Geoffrey protested. "I will not fight the innocent or the good!"

"You have fought me."

Geoffrey should have looked abashed, but the vision of that battle kindled warmth within him. "Aye, that I have," he breathed, "and I shall have the memory of that bout to warm my heart, when all else about it grows cold." Quicksilver stared at him, shocked, then blushed and turned away. "I thought you had sworn to take me to the King and Queen!"

"Why, so I have," Geoffrey said, "but County Frith is on the way to them."

"Aye, if west is on the path toward the north!"

"Well, it is closer than the south," Geoffrey said with a shrug. "Come, are you so loathe to fight by my side?" Quicksilver turned back to him, and if his grin was that of a wolf, hers was that of a fox. "I would rather fight you than by you," she said, "but I will take what I may." She turned back to Maud. "Find that messenger and relieve his mind. Quicksilver shall ride to the rescue of Aunriddy."

"But where is your army?" Nan protested.

Geoffrey could have told her that they were only a dozen yards away, but Quicksilver said instead, "I ride with Sir Geoffrey Gallowglass by my side, and it is his boast that he is the equal of an army. What more should I need?"

Nan glanced at Geoffrey with misgiving, but Maud said, quite complacently, "Even so—what more should you need? God speed you, then, with the thanks of a poor old widow woman to lighten your burdens—and my blessings upon you."

"Why, thank you, good woman," Quicksilver said softly.

"You are welcome, and well come indeed—and may you go as well as you came." Then Maud gathered up Nan and turned away to the cart. "Come, daughter. We must away."

"Oh, must we?" Nan protested, and Geoffrey had to smother a laugh as he mounted and turned Fess's head back up the trail. "So, then, we ride to County Frith."

"Aye," said Quicksilver, "by your leave."

"No," Geoffrey said, "by yours."

A commotion broke out behind them, dimmed by distance. Turning back, Geoffrey saw the cart rolling away down the road, with Nan chattering breathlessly to her mother. They were thirty yards away, but Geoffrey could still hear a few of her words: "He is gorgeous, Mother! If she does not grab tight to him, she is a very fool!" Maud murmured something he couldn't hear, to which Nan answered, "Oh, stuff and nonsense! He will, or she is not the man-leader she thinks she is!"

Geoffrey smiled, and turned back to Quicksilver with a raised eyebrow—but she rode with her face set dead ahead, an imperturbable mask. She was blushing, though.

When they bedded down for the night, Geoffrey thought, as he rolled up in his blanket, Keep the watch for me, will you not Fess?

Of course, Fess thought back, though why I should bother when a hundred outlaws are doing so, I cannot think.

In case they should decide to free their leader, Geoffrey thought drily, by ridding her of me. He tried to ignore the blanket-shrouded, curving form beside him in the dark and, to distract himself, thought, A most fortunate meeting with the mother and daughter, was it not?

How so? Fess's thoughts were guarded.

Why, thought Geoffrey, an hour later, and they would have missed us quite.

Yes, a most fortuitous coincidence, Fess agreed somewhat drily, Geoffrey thought.

Once again, he could see Nan, side by side with Quicksilver, in his mind's eye. A vision of Quicksilver was not what he needed to put him to sleep, so he concentrated on Nan. The daughter bears a most striking resemblance to Quicksilver.

She does indeed.

There was something in the way the robot said it, in the careful noncommittal tone he used, that awoke Geoffrey's suspicions. What was Fess seeing that he was not...? He visualized the two faces again, then the mother's next to Nan's...

And his eyes flew wide open. Fess! Picture the mother Maud's face for me, and transform it backwards twenty years! Show her to me as she was before she married!

He closed his eyes again, and Maud's face appeared behind his eyelids, then a younger version of the same face next to it, but without the kerchief, brown hair unbound, floating freely about her face and shoulders...

She is almost the spit and image of Quicksilver!

No, Fess thought back at him. It is Quicksilver who is the spit and image of Maud.

Fess rarely used slang of any sort, and it didn't take Geoffrey more than a moment to realize why the robot had done so this time. Maud is her mother!

That would be my conjecture, yes. Then Nan must be her sister!

That would account for the resemblance, Fess agreed. Then I have met all the family—save the father, who is dead. Geoffrey relaxed a little, opening his eyes to fix a brooding gaze on the shapely shadowed form beside him. He found he could not think clearly that way, so he rolled over onto his back to gaze up at the scrap of sky visible between the leaves overhead. Why would they have brought word of Aunriddy's troubles themselves, instead of sending the messenger?

Fess ignored the rhetorical nature of the question and answered, Presumably, because they wished to meet you. Yes, that would seem clear. Geoffrey frowned up at the sky. Now, why would they have wanted to do that?

Why, indeed? Fess said, with the burst of static that served him for a sigh. He reflected that his young master was a positive genius at anything military, but could be singularly dense about anything else—and apparently, he did not yet see that a campaign was forming. Too intent on his own, no doubt. Good night, Geoffrey.

But there was no answer; puzzling over a question whose solution was too obvious to see had given Geoffrey the distraction and relaxation he had needed to lapse into sleep. Fess stood by, content to watch—and it was well that he did, for though Geoffrey may have found sleep, Quicksilver had not.

On the other hand, she had no mischief in mind—or none that Geoffrey would have objected to, at least.