"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."
"Very well," said Eudoric. "Assuming I can find me a virgin willing to take a part in this experiment, what next? It's one thing to rush upon the comatose beast and plunge a spear into its vitals and quite another to catch it alive and unharmed and get it to Sogambrium."
"Alas! I fear I have no experience in such things. As a vegetarian, I have avoided all matters of chase and venery. I use the latter word in its hunting sense; albeit the other meaning were also apt for an abstemious widower like myself*."
"Then who could advise me in this matter?"
Baldonius pondered, then smiled through his silvery waterfall of beard. "There's an unlikely expert dwelling nigh unto Baron Rainmar's demesne, namely and to wit: my cousin Svanhalla."
"The witch of Hesselbourn?"
"The same, but don't let her hear you call her that. A witch, she insists, is a practitioner, of either sex, of black, illegal goetics, whereas she's a respectable she-wizard or enchantress, whose magics are all benificent and lawful. Mine encyclopedia traces the derivation of these words—"
"Never mind," said Eudoric hastily, as Baldonius began to turn the pages. "I've not met her, but I've heard. She's a cranky old puzzel, they say. What would she know of the techniques of hunting?"
"She knows surprising things. 'Twas always said in the fraternity, if ye wish some utterly useless bit of odd information, which nobody on earth could rightly be expected to have—say, for ensample, what Count Holmer the pretender had for breakfast the day they cut off his head—go ask Svanhalla. I'll give you a letter to her. I haven't seen her for years, for fear of her raspy tongue."
"So now ye be a knight?" said Svanhalla, sitting with Eudoric in the gloom of her hut. "Not by any feats of chivalry, ta-rah! ta-rah! But by shrewdly taking advantage of what luck hath brought you, heh? I know the tale of how ye slew that Pathenian dragon— how ye missed clean with the Serican thunder tube and ran for your life, and how Jillo by chance touched off the sack of fire-powder just as the beast waddled over it."
Silently cursing Jillo's loose tongue, Eudoric kept his temper. "Had I been twice as brave and thrice as adept with the thunder weapon, Madam, 'twould have availed us nought had luck been against us. We should have made but toothsome morsels for the reptile. But let's to business. Baldonius says that you can advise me on the capture of unicorns in Bricken."
"I mought, if ye made it worth me while."
"How much?"
After a haggle, Eudoric and Svanhalla agreed on a fee of sixty marks, half down and the rest when the unicorn was secured. Eudoric paid.
"First," said the witch of Hesselbourn, "ye must needs find a virgin, of above fifteen years. If the tales I hear be true, that may take some doing in Arduen, what with you and your lecherous brethren."
"Madam! I have not carnally known any local lass for nigh a year—"
"Aye, aye, I ken. When the lust becomes too great to endure, ye fare to the whores of Kromnitch. Ye should be respectably wived by now, but the girls all think you a cold-blooded opportunist. Therein, they're not altogether wrong; for, whilst ye love women, ye love your gold even more, heh!"
"You needn't rub it in," said Eudoric. "Besides, I seek advice on hunting, not on love."
"Strange, when your brother Olf doth cut a veritable swath amid the maids of Arduen. Not that I blame the lad overmuch. He's good-looking, and too many peasant maids think to catch a lordling with their coyntes for bait. They hope, if not for lawful wedlock, at least for affluent concubinage. So they all but shout: 'Come, take me, fair sir!' 'Tis a rotten, degenerate age we live in."
"Since you know so much about affairs in Arduen, who, then, is still a virgin?"
"For that, I must needs consult my familiar." She issued further instructions on the mechanics of capture, ending: "Come back on the morrow. Meanwhile go to Frotz the rope-maker to order your net and Karlvag the wainwright for your wheeled cage. Be sure they be big and strong enough, else ye may have less luck than ye had with the dragon, heh!"
When Eudoric returned to Svanhalla's house, he found her talking to a bat the size of an eagle. This creature hung upside down from her rafters, along with smoked hams, bags of onions, and other edibles. When Eudoric jumped back, the witch cackled.
"Fear not Nigmalkin, brave and mighty hero! She's as sweetly loving a little demon as ye shall find in the kingdom, heh. Moreover, she tells me what ye be fain to know."
"And that is?"
"Know that in all of Arduen there be but one wench to fill your bill. True, there be other virgins in fact, but none suitable. Cresseta Almundsdaughter is ill and like to die; Greda Paersdaughter's father is a religious fanatic who won't let her out of his sight; and so on."
"Then who is available?"
"Bertrud, daughter of Ulfred the Unwashed."
"Oh, gods! She takes after her sire; one can detect her down-wind at half a mile. Is that the best you can do, Svanhalla?"