Lord Cecil explained the adventure while all the thirty men sat very still and solemn, for they had never heard the like before. None feared a simple death, but this dissolution was something that made even the bravest wonder what the end would be. But when the time came and the command was given they one and all drained their crystal glasses, and even as the Lady drank her wine they drank with her to the last drop.
Then came a silence broken only by the shrill cry of a hoot owl, complaining to the moon, concerning the doings of the night folks in the dark forest. The little Homunculus hid his face in the shoulder of the Overlord, but Cecil and Prince Gustro looked ahead of them over the banquet table to see what was to be seen.
The thirty men seemed to shiver and then grew smaller in a mist that covered them; finally only empty places were left at the banquet table. None were left but the two men, the Lady Angelica and the shivering Homunculus. The lady laughed.
"It worked," she cried. "I look the same but feel different, for in me are the potential bodies of the thirty brave men who will overcome the Giant and bring peace and security to our land. And now I give you the kiss of hail and farewell and will adventure forth on my waiting horse." Kissing her father on the cheek, her lover on the mouth and the little one on the top of his curly-haired head she ran bravely out of the room. Through the stillness they could hear her horse's hooves, silver-shod, pounding on the stones of the courtyard.
"I am afraid," shivered the little one. "Because I have all wisdom I am afraid as to this adventure and its ending."
The Overlord tried to comfort him. "You are afraid because you are so very wise. Prince Gustro and I would like to fear, but we are too foolish to do so. Can I do anything to comfort you, little friend of mine?"
"I wish I were back in my bottle," sobbed the Homunculus, "but that cannot be, because the bottle was broken when I was taken from it, for the mouth of it was very narrow, and a bottle once broken cannot be made whole again." So all that night Cecil rocked him to sleep, singing to him lullabies while Gustro sat wakeful before the fire, biting his fingernails and wondering what the ending would be.
Late that night Lady Angelica arrived at the gate of the Giant's castle and blew her wreathed horn. The Giant.dropped the iron-studded drawbridge and peered curiously at the lady on the horse.
"I am the Lady Angelica," she said, "and I have come to be your bride if only you will free passage to our caravans so we can commerce with the great world outside. Then, when my father dies, you will be the Overlord of Walling, and perchance I will come to love you, for you are a line figure of a man and I have heard much of you."
The Giant towered over the head of her horse. Placing a hand around her waist he plucked her from the steed, carried her to his banquet hall and sat down at one end of the table. Laughing in a rather silly manner, he walked around the room lighting pine torches and tall candles till the whole room was illumined. He poured a large glass of wine for the Lady and a much larger glass himself. Seated at the other end of the table he cried: "It is all as I dreamed. But who would have thought that the noble Cecil and the brave Gustro would be so craven! Let's drink to our wedding, and then to the bridal chamber."
He drank his drink in one swallow. But Lady Angelica took from under her gown a golden flask and raising it, she cried, "I drink to you and future, whatever it is!" And she drained the golden flask and sat very still. A mist filled the room and swirled widdershams in thirty pillars around the long oak-plank table and when it cleared there were thirty men between the Giant and the Lady.
The Juggler threw his golden balls into the air; the man with the dazzling eyes looked hard at the Giant; the student opened a book and read backward the wise saying of dead gods; the young Singer of Songs plucked his harp and sang of wonderful deeds of brave men long since worm food. But the fighting men rushed forward and, on all sides, started the battle. The Giant jumped back, picked a mace from the wall and fought as never man had fought before. He had two objectives: to kill the men and then to reach the smiling Lady and strangle her with bare hands for the thing she had done to him. But ever between him and the Lady was a wall of men who, with steel, song and the magic of Hashing eyes, cascades of glittering balls and backward reading, formed a living wall that could be crushed and bent but never broken.
For years after, in the halls of Walling, the Singer of Songs told of that fight while the Hubelaires sat silent listening. No doubt, as the tale passed from one Singer, aged, to the next Singer, young, it became ornamented, embroidered and fabricated till it was somewhat different from what really happened that night. But even the bare truth-telling at first hand by the Lady Angelica was a great enough tale. For men fought, bled, and died in that hall. Finally the Giant, dying, broke through and almost reached the Lady, but the Song Man tripped him with his harp and the Wise Man threw his heavy tome in his face and the Juggler shattered his three golden balls against the Giant's forehead, and, at the lastward, the glittering eyes of the Sleep-Maker fastened on the dying ones of the Giant and sent him to his final slumber.
The Lady Angelica looked around her at the shattered hall and the thirty men who had done their part and she said softly. "These be brave men who have done what was necessary for the good of their country and the honor of the Hubelaires. I cannot forsake them or leave them hopeless," and she took the wine of synthesis and, drinking part, to every man she gave a drink, even to the dead men, whose lips she had to gently open and from whose gritted teeth she had to wipe the blood ere she could pour the wine into their breathless mouths. Then she went back to the table and, sitting there, she waited.
The mist again filled the room, covering the dead, the dying, and those who, though not fatally hurt, still panted from the fury of the battle. And when the mist cleared, only Lady Angelica was left there, for all the thirty had returned to her body through the magic of the synthetic wine
"I feel old and in many ways different," the Lady whispered "for my strength has gone from me and I am glad there is no mirror to show my whitened hair and bloodless cheeks; the men who have come back into me were dead or badly hurt, and I must get back to my horse before I fall into a faint and die."
She tried to walk out of the room but, stumbling, fell. On hands and knees she crawled to where her horse waited for her. She pulled herself into the saddle and with her girdle tied herself there, and then she told the horse to go home. But she lay across the saddle like a dead woman.
The horse took her safely back to the Overlord's castle. Ladies in waiting laid her on her bed, washed her withered limbs and covered her wasted body with coverlets of lamb's wool and wise physicians gave her healing quaffs. Finally she recovered sufficiently to tell her father and her lover the story of the battle of the thirty warriors and wise men against the Giant and how he was dead and their land safe.
"And now go to the old man and get the other elixir," she whispered, "and when it works have the dead buried with honor and the wounded gently and wisely cared for. Thus we will come to the end of the adventure and it will be one that the Singer of Songs will tell for many winter evenings to the Hubelaires of Walling."
"You stay with her, Gustro," commanded the Overlord, "and I will take the wise Homunculus in my arms and gallop to the cave and secure the elixir from the old savant. When I return we will have her drink it and once again she will be young and whole. Then I will have you two lovers marry, for I am not as young as I was and I want to live to see the throne secure and, the gods willing, grandchildren running around the castle."