The Complete Compleat Enchanter (43 page)

The armorer was a squat, brawny man with black hair clipped close and black eyes. Shea judged he might be a Basque like Echegaray, but he spoke in the manner of the Muslims: “Will the wonder of the centuries deign to stand? Ha, hum; I have a suit of mail that may fit the Light of the East, but how will you be weaponed: A target, ha, hum. No doubt your magnificence will wish a scimitar also?”

“If you have a small straight sword with a point, it will do me swell,” said Shea. Medoro appeared to have gone to sleep, with his mouth in a determined pout.

“O Sheikh Harr,” said the armorer, “there may be such a weapon among the booty of Canfrano, but it is not to be hidden that these Frankish blades fail to hold the edge.”

“Let’s see one anyway. If it won’t do, I’ll take the longest and straightest scimitar you can find. With a point, too.”

“May Allah strike me dead if you be not one of those who use the thrusting stroke! My father, who was smith before the Prince of Hind, has spoken of such in that land, but never have mine eyes been delighted by beholding such a one.”

Medoro opened his eyes, clapped his hands, and told his valet: “Another lute, and tell the cook to set forth meats for the evening meal of my guest.”

“Aren’t you going to eat too?” asked Shea.

“My breast is straightened. I will dine on the food of thought.” He took the new lute, struck it a couple of times, and gave vent to a long, howling note like that of a pin scratched across a windowpane.

The smith was still fussing and bowing. “It is revealed to me, O lord of the age,” he said, “that there will be need for mail of unusual strength both on the shoulder and the upper arm—”

Medoro set down the lute. “Begone!” he shouted. “Master of noise, whose mother was mistress to a pig! Make your vile armor if you must, and send it here, but in silence.”

As the smith scuttled out and the servitor began placing dishes before Shea, the young man relapsed into his playing and singing. It was not the ideal accompaniment to a meal. Shea managed as best he could the sticky mess before him without a fork; it was heavily spiced, but he was too ravenous to let that bother him. Coffee was brought, of the same appalling sweetness as that at the inn. Medoro laid aside his music to accept a cup. As he lifted it delicately to his lips, Shea said:

“What’s eating you so, anyway? You act as though you’d lost your last friend.”

“Nay,” said Medoro, “I have found one, but—” he put down the cup, picked up the lute again, and sang:

“Ah, bittered is the heart

Which with all love must part;

The sun declines, and as it sinks

The tears from out my eyeballs start.”

Although Shea was not overwhelmed by the pathos of the poetry, Medoro laid down the lute and began to sob.

“Pull yourself together, pal,” said Shea. “Is it about our friend Belphebe—Belphegor, I mean?”

“ ’Tis true. Spake you sooth when you said she was your wife? Or was that a ruse to balk my lord Dardinell?”

“Well,” said Shea, “that’s a long and complicated story . . .”

“Nay, fear not to open your soul to your comrade of bread and salt. True friendship is above the base weakness of jealousy, as says the philosopher Iflatun.”

Shea calculated his reply with the care of a sharpshooter. “I’ve known the girl for some time. But as for the rest of it, her status now is exactly what it was when you met her at Castle Carena. Doesn’t that make you feel better?” When Medoro only sighed gustily, Shea added: “I should think we could hire a lawyer or something—”

“Verily, Sheikh Harr,” interrupted Medoro, “your understanding is darkened. Know that the Kazi will surely decide that it is lawful for the Lord Dardinell to go in unto the damsel; for if you pronounce not the formula of divorce, he will cause her to do so himself. Ah, what have I done that a mere woman should bring this sorrow upon me? It was clear that with hair of gold-red she would be of ill-omen. Woe’s me! I have but delayed the inevitable hour for the three days of purification.”

Shea said: “Anyway, I can tell you that anybody who tried to make proof of our girlfriend without her consent has got his work cut out for him.”

But Medoro’s tears were flowing again. Shea sat back, thinking furiously. This twerp was about as much use as a third leg, though Shea tried to be fair, balancing his natural jealousy of Medoro’s libido towards Belphegor against the fact that the youth had, in a manner of speaking, saved Shea’s life at the inn. However, Medoro knew the rules, and there was one resource which he had not yet exploited: his own knowledge of magic.

“Where have they got her?” he asked.

“Nowhere but in the harem-tent of Lord Dardinell.”

Said Shea: “Do you know whether Roger—you know, the one from Carena—has joined the army?”

The Saracen’s woebegone expression changed to one of fine contempt. “It has reached me that the misbegotten son of a whore is indeed among us.”

“You don’t like him, then?”

“By Allah, if a cup of water would save him from Hell, I would give him fire to drink. At Castle Carena but lately, when I was reciting my stanzas in lament of Ferragus, which is the best and longest poem I have composed, he snatched the lute from my hands.”

For the first time Shea felt a certain sympathy with Atlantès’ bull-like nephew. However, he said: “Okay, then, I need Roger in my business. Specifically, I want to kidnap him and get him back to Carena. You help me do it, and I think I can show you how to get Belphegor out of hock.”

The handsome face distorted into lines of fear. “O Harr, Roger is so potent that no ten could stand against him. In Allah alone is protection, but we two would be to him as mice before an eagle.”

“Take it or leave it,” said Shea coolly. What he really wanted was to get Belphegor out of there and never mind the small change, but the chances of restoring his wife’s Belphebe memory were not too good unless he could get her to Chalmers, with the latter’s superior knowledge both of psychiatry and of magic. If Medoro just wouldn’t play, however, he could back down at the last moment.

Someone howled at the door of the tent. The servant scampered through, and returned presently with a package that proved to contain the arms. Shea examined them while Medoro remained sunk in gloomy thought. The sword, while still a curved saber with most of the weight toward the point, was straighter than most, and the smith had ground a fine needle point to it. There was also a spiked steel cap with a little skirt of chainmail to protect the neck, a dagger, a small round shield of brass hammered thin, and a mail-shirt.

Shea laid them down and turned to Medoro. “Well?”

The young Saracen looked at him craftily. “O Lord Harr, how lies it in your power to perform things for which half this army were not enough?”

“You just leave that to me.” Shea grinned. “I’ll give you a hint, though; I know something about magic.”

Medoro touched both sets of fingertips to his temples, and said: “There is no god but God, and it is written that none shall die before the appointed hour. Speak, and I will obey as though I were your Mammeluke.”

“Will Roger come here if you ask him?”

“Nay, he would rather whip my slave from his door.”

“Then we’ll have to go to him. Do you know where he hangs out?”

“It is even so.”

“Okay. But we won’t do it just yet. I’m merely laying out the program. How much authority do you have around here?”

“O Sheikh, under Lord Dardinell I am captain of fourscore men.”

Shea though it would go hard with a Saracen army if it had to rely on captains like this languishing ladykiller to lead it, but just now he was too busy to pursue that question. “Can you bring them here, three or four at a time?”

“Hearing and obedience,” said Medoro, who salaamed and began to get up.

Shea, who did not altogether like the scared look that persisted in Medoro’s eyes, said: “Hold it; let’s have just one to start with. We can try out the magic on him to make sure it works.”

Medoro reseated himself and clapped his hands. “Bid Tarico al-Malik enter and stay not, on the value of his head,” he told the servant. Picking up the lute, he began to strum chords, the jewels in his bracelets flashing in the light of the Greek lamp that had been brought in with dinner.

“Lend me one of those bracelets, will you?” asked Shea. When the guardsman came in, Shea had Medoro order him to sit down and relax, then placed the lamp before the soldier. As the young Saracen continued to pick the lute, Shea dangled the bracelet before the soldier’s eyes, twirling it this way and that, meanwhile repeating in a low voice as much as he could remember of the sleeping-spell Astolph had used on him.

Either as magic or as hypnotism the method was a little unorthodox; it seemed to work nevertheless. The man’s eyes went blank, and he would have tumbled over if he had not been leaning against the wall of the tent.

Presently Shea said: “Can you hear me?”

“Aye.”

“You will obey my commands.”

“As the commands of a father.”

“The Amir wants to surprise the camp. Discipline needs tightening up. Do you understand?”

“It is as my lord says.”

“As soon as the evening prayer is over, you will draw your sword and run through the camp, cutting tent ropes.”

“To hear is to obey.”

“You will cut all the tent ropes you can, no matter what anyone says to you.”

“To hear is to obey,” repeated the soldier.

“You well forget all about this order till the time for action comes.”

“To hear is to obey.”

“And you will forget who gave you this order.”

“To hear is to obey.”

“Wake up!”

The man blinked and came out of it, wiggling as though his foot had gone to sleep. As he stood up, Shea asked; “What were your orders?”

“To watch well the door of Lord Dardinell’s tent tonight. But as my head lives, Lord Medoro has given me none others.”

“He forgot. You were to send in four more men. Isn’t that right, Medoro?”

“It is as has been spoken,” said Medoro languidly.

The man shifted his feet. “There was—”

“Nothing else,” said Shea firmly. He looked at Medoro, who laid down his lute and stared back.

“Verily, Sheikh Harr,” said the latter, “this is as though the prophets were again on earth. Will he assuredly cut the tent ropes as you commanded?”

“If he doesn’t, I’ll put a spell on him to make him eat his own head,” said Shea, who had decided that he could count on all the cooperation the twerp was capable of giving. “Listen, when those others come in, keep it up with that Oriental swing, will you? I think it has something to do with putting them under.”

Twelve

When the last of the fourscore guards had been given his orders, Shea felt tired. Medoro, placing a delicately formed hand over his mouth, said: “Surely we have now done so much that the darkness of Eblis must fall on the camp, and we can easily seize the damsel and make off with her. I am wearied, though somewhat comforted by the excellence of your plan. Let us sleep and await the deliverance of Allah.”

“Nothing doing,” said Shea. “In my country we have a proverb about Allah’s helping those who help themselves, and there’s one thing we’ve got to help ourselves to right now. That’s Roger. Remember, you promised.” He stood up, put on the steel cap, buckled on the sword and stuck the sheath of the dagger through the sword belt. The mail shirt, he decided, would have to stay behind, since for the kind of work he envisaged it was important to keep down weight. Medoro sulkily imitated him.

Outside the shadows were already stretching across the valley below the slope that held the encampment. Although Shea did not know when the hour of evening prayer was, he guessed it would be soon. That meant they must hurry if they wanted to catch Roger as part of the combined operation. Once the bruiser got loose with an uproar going on there would be no finding him.

But Medoro only sauntered along, possessed of a perfect demon of slowness. Every now and then he stopped to give or acknowledge a greeting, and those to whom he spoke seemed all to want to start an interminable discussion of nothing.

Shea thought these must be the most garrulous people on earth. “Listen,” he said finally, “if you don’t come along, I’ll put a spell on you that will make you challenge Roger to a duel.”

Shea had heard of people’s teeth chattering, but this was the first time he had actually heard it. Medoro mended his pace.

Roger, it appeared, lived in a tent of Spartan simplicity as to outline, but as big as Medoro’s. Two fierce-looking bearded men were pacing back and forth in front of it with naked scimitars.

“We want to see Roger of Carena,” said Shea to the nearest. The other paused and joined his companion, who was examining the callers.

The first guard said: “There are many tents in the camp. Let the lords seek another, since all are friends under Allah.” He held his sword about waist-high, just in case.

Shea glanced over his shoulders to see the sun sinking fast. “But we’ve got to see him before the evening prayer,” he insisted, shaking off the fingers Medoro was plucking at his sleeve with. “He’s a friend of ours. We knew him in Carena.”

“O Lord, the Prince Roger’s withers will be wrung. Yet it is written that it is better than one man should have an unhappiness, which endures only the appointed hour of God, than that two should lose their lives. Learn that if Lord Roger should be roused before the hour of evening prayer, we two should lose nothing less than our heads, for so he has sworn it by the hair of his beard.”

“He hasn’t got one,” said Shea. Medoro, however, plucked insistently and whispered: “Now there is no help for it but we must leave this project for the other, since we are evidently not to be admitted by these two good men. Would you try steel against them and so provoke the shame of Islam?”

“No, but there’s something else I’d try,” said Shea, whipping round on his heel. Medoro followed him dubiously until they reached the side of the tent next door. With his dagger Shea cut eight long slivers of wood from one of the tentpegs. Two of these he stuck under the brim of his helmet, so that they projected like horns, and two more he inserted under his upper lip, hanging down like tusks. Then he decorated Medoro’s wondering face likewise with the remaining four.