Men came running to ask the Mayor if they should pursue to rescue the magician, but he shook his wet head, saying, "I hardly think it will be necessary. If our guest is the man he claims to be, he should be able to take care of himself quite well. And if he isn't — why then, an imposter taking advantage of our hospitality has no claim on us for assistance. No, no, never mind about him."
Creeks were running down his jowls to join the brooks of his neck and the river of his shirt front, but he turned his placid gaze toward the pasture where the magician's white mare glimmered in the darkness. She was trotting back and forth before the fence, making no sound. The Mayor said softly, "I think it might be well to take good care of our departed friend's mount, since he evidently prized her so highly." He sent two men to the pasture with instructions to rope the mare and put her in the strongest stall of his own stable.
But the men had not yet reached the pasture gate when the white mare jumped the fence and was gone into the night like a falling star. The two men stood where they were for a time, not heeding the Mayor's commands to come back; and neither ever said, even to the other, why he stared after the magician's mare so long. But now and then after that, they laughed with wonder in the middle of very serious events, and so came to be considered frivolous sorts.
V
All that Schmendrick remembered later of his wild ride with the outlaws was the wind, the saddle's edge, and the laughter of the jingling giant. He was too busy brooding over the ending of his hat trick to notice much else. Too much english, he suggested to himself. Overcompensation. But he shook his head, which was difficult in his position. The magic knows what it wants to do, he thought, bouncing as the horse dashed across a creek. But I never know what it knows. Not at the right time, anyway. I'd write it a letter, if I knew where it lived.
Brush and branches raked his face, and owls hooted in his ears. The horses had slowed to a trot, then to a walk. A high, trembling voice called out, "Halt and give the password!"
"Damme, here we go," Jack Jingly muttered. He scratched his head with a sound like sawing, raised his voice, and answered, "A short life and a merry one, here in the sweet greenwood; jolly comrades united, to victory plighted —"
"Liberty," the thin voice corrected. "To liberty plighted. The I sound makes all the difference."
"Thank 'ee. To liberty plighted. Comrades united — na, na, I said that. A short life and a merry one, jolly comrades — na, that's not it." Jack Jingly scratched his head again and groaned. "To liberty plighted — gi'me a little help, will ye?"
"All for one and one for all," the voice said obligingly. "Can you get the rest yourself?"
"All for one and one for all — I haven't!" the giant shouted. "All for one and one for all, united we stand, divided we fall." He kicked his horse and started on again.
An arrow squealed out of the dark, sliced a wedge from his ear, nicked the horse of the man riding behind him, and skittered away like a bat. The outlaws scattered to the safety of the trees, and Jack Jingly yelled with rage, "Damn your eyes, I gave the password ten times over! Let me only get my hands on 'ee —"
"We changed the password while you were gone, Jack," came the voice of the sentry. "It was too hard to remember."
"Ah, you changed the password, did ye?" Jack Jingly dabbed at his bleeding ear with a fold of Schmendrick's cloak. "And how was I to know that, ye brainless, tripeless, liverless get?"
"Don't get mad, Jack," the sentry answered soothingly. "You see, it doesn't really matter if you don't know the new password, because it's so simple. You just call like a giraffe. The captain thought of it himself."
"Call like a giraffe." The giant swore till even the horses fidgeted with embarrassment. "Ye ninny, a giraffe makes no sound at all. The captain might as well have us call like a fish or a butterfly."
"I know. That way, nobody can forget the password, even you. Isn't the captain clever?"
"There's no limit to the man," Jack Jingly said wonderingly. "But see here, what's to keep a ranger or one of the king's men from calling like a giraffe when ye hail him?"
"Aha," the sentry chuckled. "That's where the cleverness of it is. You have to give the call three times. Two long and one short."
Jack Jingly sat silent on his horse, rubbing his ear. "Two long and one short," he sighed presently. "Awell, 'tis no more foolish than the time he'd have no password at all, and shot any who answered the challenge. Two long and one short, right." He rode on through the trees, and his men trailed after him.
Voices murmured somewhere ahead, sullen as robbed bees. As they drew nearer Schmendrick thought he could make out a woman's tone among them. Then his cheek felt firelight, and he looked up. They had halted in a small clearing where another ten or twelve men sat around a campfire, fretting and grumbling. The air smelled of burned beans.
A freckled, red-haired man, dressed in somewhat richer rags than the rest, strode forward to greet them. "Well, Jack," he cried. "Who is't you bring us, comrade or captive?" Over his shoulder he called to someone, "Add some more water to the soup, love; there's company."
"I don't know what he is maself," Jack Jingly rumbled. He began to tell the story of the Mayor and the hat, but he had hardly reached the roaring descent upon the town when he was interrupted by a thin thorn of a woman who came pushing through the ring of men to shrill, "I'll not have it, Cully, the soup's no thicker than sweat as it is!" She had a pale, bony face with fierce, tawny eyes, and hair the color of dead grass.
"And who's this long lout?" she asked, inspecting Schmendrick as though he were something she had found sticking to the sole of her shoe. "He's no townsman. I don't like the look of him. Slit his wizard."
She had meant to say either «weasand» or "gizzard," and had said both, but the coincidence trailed down Schmendrick's spine like wet seaweed. He slid off Jack Jingly's horse and stood before the outlaw captain. "I am Schmendrick the Magician," he announced, swirling his cloak with both hands until it billowed feebly. "And are you truly the famous Captain Cully of the greenwood, boldest of the bold and freest of the free?"
A few of the outlaws snickered, and the woman groaned. "I knew it," she declared. "Gut him, Cully, from gills to guilt, before he does you the way the last one did." But the captain bowed proudly, showing an eddy of baldness on his crown, and answered, "That am I. He who hunts me for my head shall find a fearful foe, but he who seeks me as a friend may find me friend enow. How do you come here, sir?"
"On my stomach," said Schmendrick, "and unintentionally, but in friendship nonetheless. Though your leman doubts it," he added nodding at the thin woman. She spat on the ground.
Captain Cully grinned and laid his arm warily along the woman's sharp shoulders. "Ah, that's only Molly Grue's way," he explained. "She guards me better than I do myself. I am generous and easy; to the point of extravagance, perhaps — an open hand to all fugitives from tyranny, that's my motto. It is only natural that Molly should become suspicious, pinched, dour, prematurely old, even a touch tyrannical. The bright balloon needs the knot at one end, eh, Molly? But she's a good heart, a good heart." The woman shrugged herself away from him, but the captain did not turn his head. "You are welcome here, sir sorcerer," he told Schmendrick. "Come to the fire and tell us your tale. How do they speak of me in your country? What have you heard of dashing Captain Cully and his band of freemen? Have a taco."