The Incorporated Knight (12 page)

             
"Not so kind as all that. Be sure to debit the cost of the bitch to operating expenses.
"

             
"
At what value?"

             
"Klea should fetch at least fifty marks—
"

             
"
Fifty! Good my lord, that's absurd. I can pick upj-"

             
"Be not impertinent with me, puppy! Thou knowest nought of dogs
...
"

             
After an argument, Eudoric got Klea's value down to thirty marks, which he still thought much too high. A few days later, he set out with a cage, containing Klea, lashed to the back of the coach. In seven days the vehicle, with Eudoric's helper Jillo driving, rolled into Sogambrium.

             
Save once as an infant, Eudoric had never seen the imperial capital. By comparison, Kromnitch was but a small town and Zurgau, a village. The slated gables of the capital seemed to stretch away forever, like frozen waves of the sea.

             
The hordes who seethed through the flumelike streets gave Eudoric pause. They paraded fashions never seen in rural parts. Men flaunted shoes with long, pointed toes, attached by laces to the wearer's legs below the knee; women wore yard-high conical hats. Everyone seemed in a hurry. Eudoric had trouble understanding the metropolitan dialect. The Sogambrians slurred their words, dropped whole syllables, and seldom used the old-fashioned familiar "thou" and "thee."

             
Having taken quarters at an inn of middling grade, Eudoric left Jillo to care for the coach and team. Leading Klea, he made his way through a gray drizzle to the archducal palace. He tried on one hand to take in all the sights but, on the other, not conspicuously to stare, gape, and crane his neck like a bumpkin.

             
The palace, sheathed in stonework carved in fantastic curlicues, in the ornate modern style, rose adjacent to the Cathedral of the Divine Pair. Eudoric had had enough to do with the court of his own sovran, King Valdhelm III of Locania, to know what to expect at the palace: endless delays, to be shortened only by generous tipping of flunkeys. Thanks to this strategy, Eudoric got his audience with the Archduke on the second day.

             
"A bonny beast," said Rolgang, stroking Klea's head. Clad in gold-and-purple Serican silks, the Archduke was a fat man with beady, piercing eyes. "Tell me, Sir Eudoric, about this coach-wagon enterprise."

             
Eudoric told of encountering regular coach service, unknown in the Empire, on his journey to Pathenia. He recounted bringing the concept back to his home in Arduen, Barony of Zurgau, County of Treveria, Kingdom of Locania, and of having a coach of Pathenian style constructed by local wainwrights.

             
"This bears thinking on," said the Archduke. "I can foresee some effects adverse to good government. Miscreants could use your coach to flee from justice. Bankrupts could leave the site of their indebtedness and set up in business elsewhere. Subversive agitators could travel 'bout, spreading discontent and rousing the rabble 'gainst their betters."

             
"On the other hand, Your Highness," said Eudoric, "if the business prosper, you may be able to tax it some day."

             
The beady eyes lit up. "Aha, young sir! Ye've a shrewd instinct for the jugular vein! With that consideration in mind, I'm sure His Imperial Majesty will impose no obstacle to your enterprise. I
'
ll tell you. His Imperial Majesty holds a levee at ten tomorrow. Be there with this pass, and I'll present you to my 'perial brother."

             
Leaving the palace pleased by this unexpected stroke of fortune, Eudoric considered buying a fine new suit, although his thrifty nature winced at the idea of spending capital on another such garment
before his present best had begun to show wear. He cheered up at the thought that he might well make a better impression as an honest rustic, clean and decent if not stylish, than as an inept imitation of a metropolitan dandy.

-

             
Next morning Eudoric, in plain russet and black, stood in line with a hundred other gentry of the Empire. Emperor Thorar IX and his brother passed slowly down the line, while an official introduced each man:

             
"Your Imperial Majesty, let me present Baron Gutholf of Drin, who fought in the Imperial forces to put down the late rebellion in Aviona. Now he doth busy himself with the reconstruction of his holding, dyking and draining a new polder."

             
"Good, my lord of Drin!" said the Emperor. "We must needs show our deluded subjects, stirred to rebellion by base-born agitators, that we love 'em in spite of all." Thorar was tall, thin, and stooped, with a gray goatee, an obvious hair piece, and a creaky voice. He was clad all in black, against which blazed a couple of jeweled decorations.

             
"Your Imperial Majesty," said the usher, "this is Sir Eudoric Dambertson of Arduen. He hath instituted the coach line from Zurgau to Kromnitch."

             
" 'Tis he of whom I told you," said the Archduke.

             
"Ah, Sir Eudoric!" creaked the Emperor. "We know of your enterprise. We'll see you anon on this matter. But—are ye not that Eudoric who slew a dragon in Pathenia and later fought the monstrous spider in the forest of Dimshaw?"

             
Eudoric simpered with affected modesty. "Indeed, 'twas I, Your Imperial Majesty, albeit I came through more by good hap than by good management." He did not add that Jillo had killed the dragon, largely by accident; and that Eudoric, when he had the giant spider Fraka under his crossbow, had let her go on a sentimental whim.

             
"Stuff, my boy!" said the Emperor. "Good luck comes to those prepared to make the most of it. Since ye've shown such adroitness with strange beasts, we have a task for you." The Emperor turned to the Archduke. "Have ye a half-hour to spare after this, Rolgang?"

             
"Aye, sire."

             
"Well, bring the lad to the Chamber of Privy Audience, pray. And tell Heinmar to dig Sir Eudoric's dossier out of the file."

             
The Emperor passed on.

             
In the Chamber of Privy Audience, Eudoric found the Emperor, the Archduke, the Minister of Public Works, the Emperor's secretary, and two bodyguards in silver cuirasses and crested helms. The Emperor was turning the pages of a slender folder.

             
"Sit down, Sir Eudoric," said Thorar. "This bids fair to take time, and we'd not needlessly inflict sore knees 'pon loyal subjects. Ye are unwed, we see, albeit nearing thirty. Why is this?"

             
Eudoric thought, the old boy might give the appearance of doddering, but there was nothing wrong with his wits. He said: "I have been betrothed, Your Imperial Majesty, but chance has each time snatched away my promised bride. That I am single is not from lack of inclination towards the other sex."

             
"Hm. We must needs 'mend this condition. Rolgang, is that youngest daughter of yours promised yet?"

             
"Nay, sire."

             
The Emperor turned back. "Sir Eudoric, the gist is this. Next month, the Grand Cham of the Pantorozians comes on a visit of state, bringing a young dragon to add to the 'perial menagerie. As ye may've heard, our zoological collection is, after the welfare of the Empire, our greatest passion. But, for the
honor of the Empire, we can't let this heathen Easterling outdo us in generosity.

             
"Dragons are extinct in the Empire, unless a few still lurk in the wilder wastes. We're told, howsomever, that west of Hessel, in your region, lies the wilderness of Bricken, where dwell many curious beasts. Amongst these is a unicorn."

             
Eudoric raised his eyebrows. "Your Imperial Majesty wants a unicorn to give to this Pantorozian?"

             
"Aye, sir; ye've put the bolt in the gold. How 'bout it?"

             
"Why—ah—sensible though I be of the honor, Your Imperial Majesty, I know not whether I could manage it. As I told you, my previous escapes were more by luck than by skill or might. Besides, my coach line, requiring constant attention to detail, takes all my time—"

             
"Oh, stuff, my boy! Ye crave a just wage for your labor, as do we all, however we bluebloods affect to be above base thoughts of material gain. Eh, Rolgang?"

             
The Emperor winked. Eudoric found this ruler's genial cynicism refreshing after the elaborate pretence of the country gentry among whom he lived to care nothing for vulgar money. Thorar continued:

             
"Well, at the moment we have no vacant baronies or counties to bestow, but my brother hath a nubile daughter. She's not the fairest of the fair—"

             
"Petrilla's a
good
girl!" the Archduke broke in.

             
"None denies it, none denies it. Neither doth anyone propose her for the Crown of Beauty at tournaments. Well, Sir Eudoric, how about it? One unicorn for the hand of Petrilla Rolgangsdaughter?"

             
Eudoric took his time about answering. "The young lady would have to give her free consent. May I have the honor of meeting her?"

             
"Certes. Rolgang, arrange it, if you please."

             
While Eudoric had been in love several times, the outcomes of these passions had given him a cynical, practical view of the battle of the sexes. He had never found fat girls attractive, and Petrilla was fat— not grossly so yet, but give her a few years. She was dark, dumpy, blunt of feature, and given to giggles.

             
Sighing, Eudoric totted up the advantages and disadvantages of being joined with this unglamorous if supremely well-connected young woman. For a career of courtier and magnate, the virtues of being the Archduke's son-in-law overbore all else. After all, Petrilla seemed healthy and good-natured. If she proved too intolerable a bore, he could doubtless find consolation elsewhere.

-

             
Back in Arduen, Eudoric sought out Doctor Baldonius, who again got out his huge encyclopedia, unlocked its iron clasps, and turned page after page of crackling parchment.

             
"Unicorn," he said. "Ah, here we are. 'The unicorn,
Dinohyus helicornus,
is the last surviving member of the family Entelodontidae. The spirally twisted horn, rising from the animal's forehead, is actually not one horn. This would be impossible because of the frontal suture, along the mid-line of the forehead. It is, instead, a pair of horns twisted into a single spike. The legend that the beast can be rendered mild and tractable by a human virgin appears to have a basis in fact. According to the story
...
' But ye know the tale, Eudoric."

             
"Aye," said Eudoric. "You get a virgin—if you can find one—and have her sit under a tree in a wood frequented by unicorns. The beast will come up and lay its head in her lap, and the hunters can rush out and spear the quarry with inpunity. How could that be?"

             
Baldonius: "My colleague Doctor Firmin hath published a monograph—let me look—ah, here tis." Baldonius pulled a dusty scroll from his cabinet of pigeonholes. "His theory, whereon he hath worked since we were students at Saalingen together, is that the unicorn is unwontedly sensitive to odors. With that great snout, it could well be. Firmin deduces that a virgin hath a smell different from that of a non-vigin human female, and that this effluvium nullifies the brute's ferocious instincts.
Fieri potest."