One Good Knight (19 page)

He honestly did not care what the Mages outside Acadia could and could not do. He had never had much interest in moving outside the bounds of his own Kingdom.

The simple fact was, Solon was the most powerful Magician in Acadia, not counting the Wyrding Folk, but Acadia was a very small Kingdom. That might have irritated some Magicians with wider ambition than Solon had, but Solon was a man who carefully weighed and measured every action before he took it.

And to his mind, this was of no matter. It was better to be the King Frog in a small pond than just another green jumper in a larger venue. No one would move to take Acadia away from him
because
it was so small. Solon was, he flattered himself to think, no fool. He had a fine, luxurious life here, he
was the power behind the throne, and what more could he ask for? Untold riches? For what purpose? There were only so many fine meals one could eat, grand vintages one could savor, luxurious beds one could sleep in, and so forth. Now, before he had begun his work with Cassiopeia, the Acadian ruling family had not been nearly this wealthy, but between the wealth from the ships he was wrecking with his weather magic, and the taxes he and Cassiopeia were extracting, there was enough gold and silver flowing into the Royal Exchequer to give the two of them an admirable style of living.

Cassiopeia was very well aware of the source of her wealth. That was why she was unlikely ever to attempt to punish him. However much she might rage at him—and she had, in the past, said many harmful things to his face—she would never actually do anything to harm him, not physically, and not in regard to his position at Court. She might withhold her favors from him for a time, but that approach hurt her more than it harmed him. No, this was a good situation, comfortable in every way, and stable. He had everything he could want, and avoided a great deal of unpleasantness that came to Magicians with broader ambitions. Who wanted heroes riding up to your door every other week looking to slay you, younger Mages challenging you, or thieves trying to break in to steal some powerful object, the loss of which, would, Traditionally, be your ultimate downfall? Oh no. This was much bet
ter. Eventually he would claim the throne, but not now, and not for some time.

Move slowly, that was the key. Be careful how you use magic, so that you don't attract the attention of greater Mages, or of The Tradition. Do things as indirectly as possible—using weather-magic to wreck ships, for instance. Even if he was caught at it, he could plausibly say he was trying to use it to weaken the storms, not make them more powerful.

It was a great pity none of this had prevented the Princess from becoming suspicious about what he had done.

Because calling the dragon had been a stroke of genius.

He'd had the dragon-scale for a while; he had known it had come from a living dragon when he had investigated what it was, but he hadn't
particularly
had a purpose for it until complaints started coming about the increasing taxes, as well as a few other minor matters that concerned him, personally. Now, there were always options in handling widespread complaints. One was to ignore them. Another was to make plausible excuses. But the third was to distract attention from the cause of the complaints and make people focus on other issues.

The best way to distract attention was to start a war; unfortunately, Acadia was ill-situated to survive such a war. With only a minimal army and without the ability to pay for mercenary troops, a war, regrettably, was out of the question.
Regrettably, because a war could be used as an excuse for a great many things.

That was when it had occurred to him the next best distraction would be a—well, call it a “natural disaster.” All he had to do would be to use that dragon scale to summon and control the behavior of the original dragon—child's play, since the behavior he would be dictating was
very
Traditional for a dragon—and prevent any Champion from coming to the rescue. In fact, to be on the safe side, rather than merely specifying “Champions” he had worded the spell as “Any Godmother, Wizard or Sorceress, or man capable of and inclined to meet the dragon in mortal combat and defeat it” when setting the magic in place on the borders of Acadia. That way the Champions of Glass Mountain could not sneak one of their own inside by sending someone technically only a
candidate.
And it would (or so he had thought) eliminate any possibility of a wild card coming in from outside.

I wonder if this is really an Acadian Champion?
The more he considered the situation, the more certain he was that that was the answer. He cursed himself for not taking some other way to eliminate the Princess. He had probably set the whole thing in motion himself. It made perfect sense—a Princess in peril, an unlikely hero, who probably
was
some burly Acadian shepherd-boy with a bucket for a helm and his father's old sword. How could he not have seen that he was setting himself up for a Traditionally iconic rescue?

Well, he would have to be very careful how he handled things from now on. Anything he did, he would have to make certain he was not cueing up The Tradition for some other inconvenient solution.

But first, he would have to find out where the Princess and her rescuer were.

“Curse that fox,” he muttered, and went to his workshop to see what he could think of to do.

 

The Princess and her rescuer were staring at a dragon scale in the middle of the road.

“It can't be the same one?” she asked doubtfully. “Can it?”

He got down off his horse and walked all around it, carefully not touching it, then drew his sword and, with the tip, turned it over. “It's the same,” he said with some satisfaction. “There's a chip here, and a crack running from it that passes across these growth bars—” he used the sword-tip as a pointer “—that I made note of. So, we have a benefactor who is marking our way for us, or a villain who is leading us into a trap.”

She blinked. “How can you be so calm about this?” she asked, finally.

“Is it going to make any difference either way if I'm prepared for both possibilities?” he countered. “No. If it is a benefactor who intends to lead us to the beast so that we can dispatch it, I'll be prepared for a cautious approach. If it is a trap, I will be prepared for ambush once we are into territory where so large a
beast can ambush us.” He looked around at the dense trees and foliage. “This is not the place. So for now we can simply be ready for more ordinary perils.”

“As ordinary as they get in Wyrding Lands,” she muttered. He must have heard it, though, because he smiled.

“Believe me, I have often been in places with a high population of creatures that weren't human. They're either evil, or they're not. If they're not, they either dislike or avoid humans, or like them. It's just a matter of watching for signs and being ready to act on what you learn.” He mounted his horse and touched it with his heels. It moved off, Andromeda's mule following. “Really, this is just another aspect of learning to fight. You have to be prepared for every move that your adversary could make, and have a counter ready in advance for it. A fight is not like—like a dance. A dance follows a pattern. A fight creates a pattern that you can see only after it is over. In a fight, or in planning strategy in advance, it doesn't help to get agitated. You have to be calm enough to anticipate most moves, and you have to be trained enough to be able to make counters without having to think about them first.”

That just made her dizzy to think about, and certainly didn't match what she had always
thought
warriors did. They just hit things, and tried not to get hit. Oh, there was training involved, of course, but it had all seemed quite random to her.

Then again, she had never actually watched train
ing in progress. All of that was kept quite out of the way of a Princess, even one known to escape from her confinement from time to time.

Actually—she'd never seen a real fight until she saw the Champion fighting the dragon.

“How long does it take to learn to become a warrior?” she asked, thinking now how naive her own ideas about escaping from the dragon had been.

George laughed. “How long does it take to become a dancer?” he asked. “Or a musician? It takes as long as it takes. Some people are naturally suited to it and are competent in a matter of months. Others are not, and it can take them years. Champions tend to be in the first category, and in, say, the highest ten percent of that category. We are very good, naturally. Then we train intensively. Kings and Princes and Warlords have offered untold wealth for our services but—” He shrugged. “What would be the point of being a Champion if our services were for sale? There are plenty of mercenaries for that, many of them good.”

Unspoken, the words
not as good as we are,
finished that sentence. And yet it didn't feel boastful. If felt more like a simple statement of fact.

Well, she had no way to judge, really. Except by reputation, which was that Champions were who you turned to when all was lost. Champions were the rescuers of the hopeless, the protectors of the innocent and, above all, the warriors no amount of money could buy.

She wondered what The Tradition would do to one that did sell his services to the highest bidder.

Probably something nasty.

“Do you factor The Tradition into your strategy?” she finally asked, tiring of looking at his back.

“It's one of the first things we learn to allow for or use,” he replied without looking back. “There is a Fairy Godmother associated with our Chapter-House who is always happy to advise us on these matters. A good thing, too. Working with The Tradition behind you is a powerful factor for success and trying to work against it is going to be an uphill battle.”

“And what if
both
you and your foe have The Tradition working for you?” she asked.

Now he turned and looked at her. “That,” he said slowly, “is one of my worst nightmares.”

 

Dinner tonight had the addition of some fresh meat, courtesy of George's bow. He had scouted ahead and discovered there was no good camping spot that they could reach by sunset, so they had stopped earlier than usual, and he had gone out hunting. In her turn, she had done her best to make their camp a little more comfortable than usual; she had gathered thick beds of bracken, had found a few things like watercress to add to their food, and had added stones to the fire that they could put at their feet later as a source of all-night heat.

There was a curious dreamlike sense to this journey. Yes, they had begun it in fear and some pain.
Yes, eventually they would find the dragon, and then the real difficulties would start. But for right now, they rode through a mountainous landscape of stony peaks and heavily wooded valleys, one of which was full of life but seemed curiously uninhabited. “Curiously” because it was unusual in Acadia for neighbors to be unable to see the next farm or shepherds' cot over. The landscape itself did not vary a great deal. They followed the road, a mere trace, over rocky mountainsides, down into the cool of the wooded valleys and back out on the other side. If it were not that some distinctive landmarks arose, were passed and receded into the distance, Andie would have had the uneasy feeling that they were on a circular, never-ending path, doomed to wander the Wyrding Lands until they died and became sad, restless ghosts.

Or perhaps they were already dead and on that journey.

But reassuringly odd things—boulders, ancient trees—came and passed with enough variation to make her feel certain that they were not caught in a dreamscape.

There was a stream nearby, and she decided it was more than time for a bath. And to wash all the spare clothing she had. She'd have washed George's, too, except that he never got out of that armor.

She wondered what he looked like in ordinary clothing. She knew what he looked like in it, but with the helm off—beardless, androgynous, chiseled
and altogether like some idealized statue of the Young Warrior.

As they settled down for the evening and shared out the rabbit he had killed, he waited until her mouth was full before saying in a quiet voice, “I believe I have seen our benefactor.”

She paused, mouth open, rabbit leg poised just under her chin. She recovered quickly.

“Who?” she asked.

“More like a ‘what'—it is a small, furred animal. I saw it running off with the dragon scale. My guess is that it is a fox.”

A fox! Foxes often played roles in Traditional paths. She nodded. “The question would be, who is using it, or is it doing this on its own?” she whispered back.

“I don't know, but since I started watching for it, I have seen signs of it several times. The end of a tail, eyes in the bushes, a pair of ears—when you know to watch for it, you can catch it without a lot of difficulty.”

Well, maybe
he
could. Spotting hidden foxes in the undergrowth was not the sort of thing a scholarly Princess had ever trained for.

“It is definitely watching us,” George continued, “but I do not think it is overlooking us at the moment. It knows that once we camp for the night we aren't going to do anything interesting, so I expect it goes hunting then.”

She nodded. “I suppose we should pretend we don't see it—”

“Exactly so. Because at some point we might want to try to catch it.”

And that would hopefully signal the end of the Quest.

 

She woke with a start. They were not alone in the camp.

Somehow the interloper had managed to get close enough to stand between them, staring down at them. It was hard to read his expression—

It was always hard to read the expressions of non-humans. But his body language, so far as she could tell, showed a combination of tension and exhilaration.

And if she was going to put a name to the expression in his eyes, it would be “rapture.”