The Fellowship of the Talisman (31 page)

“How many of your people do you have here?”

“A few hundred. Maybe a thousand.”

“I wouldn't have dreamed you could get together that many. You told us the Little Folk have small love of humans.”

“I also told you, if you recall, that we have less love of the Horde. Once the word got started that here was a small band of humans marching into the face of the Horde, the news ran on all sides like wildfire. Day after day our people came flocking in, singly and in little bands. I will not try to deceive you. My people will not fight to the death for you. Actually they have but little stomach for fighting. They've never been a warrior people. But they'll do what they can.”

“For which,” said Duncan, “they have our gratitude.”

“If you'd only pay attention to what we tell you,” said Snoopy, testily, “you would be better off. I told you, specifically, to stay away from the castle mound. Don't go near it, I told you. From what you've told me, it was only by incredible human luck that you won free of it.” He shook his head. “I do not understand this human capacity for luck. Our people never have that kind of luck.”

“We had but little choice,” Conrad pointed out. “If we'd not sought refuge in the castle, we'd have been massacred.”

“If you could have gotten across the river …”

“There was no possibility of that,” said Duncan. “The Horde contingent would have run us down. They were re-forming even as we ran.”

“From what we found on the field of battle,” Snoopy said, “you wreaked a deal of damage on them.”

“Only for a time,” said Conrad. “We could not have held. Even as it stood, Diane and the Huntsman saved us. The unexpected violence of their attack …”

Snoopy nodded his head emphatically. “Yes, I know. I know.”

“This time,” Duncan promised, “we'll pay a closer attention to you. We'll follow your counsel. What do you suggest?”

The goblin rocked back and sat upon his heels. “Not a thing,” he said. “I have no suggestions.”

“You mean nothing at all? No plan at all?”

“I've thought it over well,” said Snoopy. “So have the rest of us. We held a council on it. We spoke for long, we thought extremely hard. We have nothing to offer. We fear your goose is cooked.”

Duncan turned his head to look at Conrad.

“We'll find a way, m'lord,” said Conrad.

“Yes, of course,” said Duncan, wondering as he said it if this might be some ghastly joke the Little Folk were playing on them. A joke or just the brutal truth?

“In the meantime,” said Snoopy, “we'll do what we can for you. We've already found a blanket for the Lady Diane to shield her from the cold, for that flimsy gown she wore was no protection whatsoever. Without the blanket she would have frozen before the night was over.”

Duncan straightened up from the position he had assumed to study Snoopy's map. The fire was burning high. Daniel and Beauty were standing companionably together, heads hanging, across the fire from him. Tiny lay curled up, half asleep, not far from Conrad. Around the fire sat and crouched a number of the Little People—goblins, gnomes, elves, sprites and pixies—but the only one he recognized was Nan, the banshee. She sat huddled close to the fire, her wings wrapped neatly about her. Her eyes, so black they seemed to be polished gems shining in the firelight, peered out from beneath a shock of disordered, coal-black hair.

He tried to read the faces, but could not make them out. If there was friendliness, he failed to see it. Nor did he see hatred. They simply sat there, staring, waiting. More than likely watching, he told himself, to see what the humans were about to do.

“These lines that hem us in,” Conrad said to Snoopy. “Surely they cannot be made up of the entire Horde.”

“No,” said Snoopy. “The main Horde is across the fen, west of the fen, moving northward up its shore.”

“Closing us in from the west.”

“Perhaps not. Ghost has been keeping watch of them.”

“Ghost has been working with you? Where is he now?”

Snoopy waved a hand. “Out there somewhere, watching. He and Nan have been our eyes. They've kept us well informed. I had hoped that there might be other banshees. They would have been useful. But Nan is the only one who came. You can't count on them. They're an ugly lot.”

“You said that the main Horde may not be blocking us on the west. How is that?”

“Ghost thinks that tomorrow or the next day they'll move farther north, leaving the west bank, directly across from us, free. But why are you so interested? You could not hope to cross the fen. No one in his right mind would try to cross the fen. It is mud and swamp and water and shifting sands. There are places where there is no bottom to it, and you can't know, until you come upon them, where those pits may be. One spot may be solid footing, but the next one is muck that seizes you and holds you. Once he sets foot into the fen, one has no chance of coming out alive.”

“We'll see,” said Conrad. “If that's the only hope, we'll try it.”

“If Hubert is still around,” said Duncan, “Diane could go out on patrol with Ghost and Nan. That would give us one more set of eyes.”

“Hubert?”

“Diane's griffin. He was not around after the castle fell.”

“We'll look for him tomorrow,” Snoopy said.

“I'm afraid,” said Diane, “that he'll not be found.”

“Nevertheless, we'll look,” Snoopy promised. “We'll try to make up as well for all you lost.”

“We lost everything,” said Conrad. “Blankets, cooking utensils, food.”

“It will be no problem,” said the goblin. “Some of our people right now are working on a set of buckskins for milady. The gown she wears is useless for this sort of life.”

“It's kind of you,” said Diane. “One thing else I beg of you. A weapon.”

“A weapon?”

“I lost my battle axe.”

“I don't know about a battle axe,” said Snoopy. “But perhaps something else—a blade, perhaps.”

“A sword?”

“Yes, a sword. I think I know of one I can lay my hands upon.”

“It would be gracious of you.”

Snoopy grumbled. “I don't know what's the use of all of this. You're caught within a trap. To my way of thinking, there is no way to get out of it. When the Horde decides to move in, they'll squeeze you like a bunch of grapes.”

Duncan looked around the campfire circle. All the Little People crouched there were bobbing their heads in agreement with Snoopy.

“I never saw such a bunch of quitters in all my life,” said Conrad scornfully. “Hell, you're ready to give up without even trying. Why don't you all take off? We'll get along without you.”

He turned and walked out into the darkness.

“You must excuse my friend,” Duncan told those huddled at the fire. “He is not one to accept defeat with any grace.”

Just beyond the fire a figure moved furtively out of the trees, stood there for a moment, then scuttled back again. Duncan hurried in his direction and stopped at the edge of the grove from which the figure had emerged.

He called softly. “Andrew, where are you? What is wrong with you?”

“What do you want with me?” asked Andrew in a pettish voice.

“I want to talk with you. You've been acting like a spoiled child. We have to get to the bottom of it.”

Duncan walked a few steps into the grove. Andrew moved out from behind a tree. Duncan came up to him, stood facing him.

“Out with it,” he said. “What is chewing on you?”

“You know what's chewing on me.”

“Yes, I think I may. Let us talk about it.”

The firelight did not reach the spot where they stood, and all that Duncan could see of the hermit was the white blob of his face, but in the faintness of the light he could read no expression.

“You remember that night we talked in my cell,” said Andrew. “I told you how I had tried hard to be a hermit. About how I tried to read the early fathers of the Church. About how for hours on end I sat staring at a candle flame, and how none of it seemed to be of any use at all. I think I told you I was a failure as a hermit, that my early hope to be at least a slightly holy man had come to nothing. I probably told you that I was poor timber for a hermit, that I was not cut out to be a holy man. I am sure I told you all of this and perhaps a great deal more. For I was sore of heart and had been for some time. It is no easy matter for a man to spend the greater part of his life at his profession and in the end to know that he has failed, that all his time and effort have gone for naught, that all his hopes and dreams have vanished with the wind.”

“Yes, I remember some of it,” said Duncan. “I think, in telling it now, you have embellished it a bit. I think that having felt yourself a failure as a hermit, you then jumped at the slightest chance to become a soldier of the Lord. And if that is what you really are, although I'm not too sure of the proper definition, you have done rather well at it. You have no occasion to be out here now sulking in the brambles.”

“But you do not understand.”

“Please enlighten me,” said Duncan drily.

“Don't you see that all the staring at the candles paid off in the end? The candle business, and perhaps some of the other things I did. Perhaps the fact that I willingly took the road as a soldier of the Lord. I'm not sure that I am a holy man—I would not be so brash as to claim I am. It might be sacrilegeous to even hint I am. But I do have powers I did not have before, powers that I had no suspicion that I had. My staff …”

“So that is it,” said Duncan. “Your staff broke the demon's chain. Broke it after a full blow of my sword did nothing but strike a shower of sparks from it.”

“You know, if you'll but admit it,” Andrew said, “that the staff itself could not have fazed the chain. You know that the answer must be either that the staff itself suddenly has acquired a magic, or that the man who wielded it …”

“Yes, I do agree,” said Duncan. “You must have certain holy powers for the staff to accomplish what it did. But, for God's sake, man, you should be glad you have.”

“But don't you see?” wailed Andrew. “Don't you truly see my predicament?”

“I'm afraid this entire thing escapes me.”

“The first manifestation of my power resulted in the freeing of a demon. Can't you understand how that tears me up inside? That I, a holy man, if a holy man I am, should use this power, for the first time, mind you, to free a mortal enemy of Holy Mother Church?”

“I don't know about that,” said Duncan. “Scratch does not appear to be a bad sort. A demon, sure, but a most unsuccessful demon, unable to perform even the simple tasks of an apprentice imp. Because of that he ran away from Hell. And to demonstrate how little he was missed, what a poor stick of a demon he had turned out to be, the Devil and his minions did not turn a hand to haul him back to his tasks in Hell.”

“You have tried to put a good face on it, my lord,” said Andrew, “and I thank you for your consideration. You're an uncommon kindly man. But the fact remains that a black mark has been inscribed against me.”

“There are no black marks,” said Duncan with some irritation. “This is about as silly an idea as I have ever heard. There's no one sitting somewhere, inscribing black marks against you or anyone else.”

“Upon my soul,” said Andrew, “there is such a mark. No one else may know, but I know. There is no way for me to wipe it out. There is no eraser that will obliterate it. I'll carry it to my death and, mayhaps, beyond my death.”

“Tell me one thing,” said Duncan. “It has puzzled me. Why, seeing that the sword had failed, did you wield the staff? Did you have some sort of premonition, some sort of inner light …”

“No, I did not,” said Andrew. “I was carried away, is all. Somehow or other, I don't know why, I wanted to get into the act. You and Conrad were doing what you could and I felt, I suppose, although at the time I was not aware of it, that I should do what I could.”

“You mean that when you dealt such a mighty blow with that staff of yours that you were trying to help the demon?”

“I don't know,” said Andrew. “I never thought of it in that way. But I suppose I was trying to help him. And, realizing that, my soul is wrung the harder. Why should I try to help a demon? Why should I lift a finger for him?”

Duncan put out a hand and grasped the hermit's scrawny shoulder, squeezed it hard. “You are a good man, Andrew. Better than you know.”

“How is that?” asked Andrew. “How does helping a demon make me a good man? I would have thought it made me worse. That's the entire trouble. I gave aid to a minion out of Hell, with the reek of sulphur still upon him.”

“One,” said Duncan, “that had forsaken Hell. That turned his back upon it, renouncing it. Perhaps for the wrong reasons, but still renouncing it. Even as you and I renounce it. He is on our side. Don't you understand that? He stands now with us. One with the mark of evil still upon him, but now he stands with us.”

“I don't know,” said Andrew doubtfully. “I'd have to think on that. I'd have to work it out.”

“Come back to the fire with me,” said Duncan. “Sit by the fire and be comfortable while you work at it. Get some warmth into those shivering bones of yours, some food into your belly.”

“Come to think of it,” said Andrew, “I am hungry. Meg was cooking up a mess of sauerkraut and pig's knuckles. I could taste them; just thinking of them. It has been years since I have eaten kraut and knuckles.”

“The Little Folk can't offer you kraut and knuckles, but there is a venison stew that is monstrous good. There's enough of it left, I'm sure, to more than fill your gut.”

“If you think it would be all right,” said Andrew. “If they'd make room for me.”