It took me a while to get to sleep.
I woke in the false dawn, to hear a sound like a chain saw eating its way through a stack of garbage cans. I sat bolt upright to see Gilbert standing guard, hand on his sword, casting nervous glances at a huge, gently heaving hulk. I realized it was my pet troll come home, snoring like a railroad car full of scrap steel, swaying on loose tracks. Next to him lay a collection of bones and hide, all of them sizable.
I stared. So the bear hadn't won. I repressed a surge of guilt-better it than me. Or Gilbert.
Then I relaxed - the fact that Gruesome had done as I told him was very reassuring. So was the fact that he could handily defeat a fullgrown bear, muscles like that might come in useful for a stranger in a mighty strange land. I decided I'd keep him for a while. All things considered, I might be safer with him than without him. Unless some enemy sorcerer decided to remove the restraint spell, anyway.
That thought, combined with the dawn's early light, pretty much guaranteed that I wasn't going to get any more sleep. I got up, waved Gilbert to silence, and started rousting up breakfast. If there was one thing I didn't need, it was an ornery, fresh-wakened troll. I took a chance on nudging him with my boot an hour later and told him we were taking off. He rolled up to his feet right away, eager as a puppy dog.
So we set off south, heading into what I hoped was Switzerland, with a squire looking for enough trouble to win him a knighthood, and a half-tame troll eager to find something to protect me from. Understandably, I was nervous. Chapter Seven
Late that day I looked around, frowning and footsore. "Notice anyhing strange?"
"Aye," Gilbert said. "We have come into a barren waste."
"Yeah, but there used to be a lot of trees here-at least, little ones." I pointed at the expanse of four-inch stumps, lopped off so cleanly that you could see the rings. "What was it, a lumber crisis?"
"I ken not." Gilbert looked around nervously. " 'Tis uncanny, though. I would we did not have to stay the night here."
"Yeah," I said, "but it's getting dark. Think we ought to pitch camp pretty soon?"
"It would seem likely," Gilbert said grudgingly. A distant, bloodthirsty moan stopped us in our tracks.
"But not right here," I qualified.
"Mayhap not." Gilbert nudged his horse ahead and drew his sword.
"Hold on!" I protested. "Where do you think you're going?"
"To discover what made that sound," he said, in a tone that brooked no argument. "If 'tis our enemy, 'tis better that we come upon it, than that it come upon us."
"Now, hold on!" I protested. "If it's going to be that dangerous, you can't go in there alone!"
"I am a squire," he said simply, "a man of arms."
"That's what I mean." I stumbled on ahead. "Whatever it is, it's a long ways off yet."
"We must be silent," he protested. "You should stay here."
"Of course," I said, "not."
"Yuh, not." Gruesome flexed his huge hands, grinning, and padded forward. For all his bulk, he moved more quietly than I did-but then, he wasn't wearing boots.
"See?" I said. "We're coming along, Gilbert. Gilbert?"
"Up here," a voice whispered ahead of me. "For Heaven's sake, be still!"
"Still. Yuh." Gruesome turned to hiss at me. "Still!" Then he turned back without waiting for an answer.
I followed along, wondering what had happened to my usual common sense.
But it was my party - these two were here because of me. I rushed the pace a little, passed Gruesome, and came up level with Gilbert as his horse groped its way along a stony path in the gathering darkness. Gilbert started to protest, but just then the moan burst out again, and I saw a glowing shape drifting toward us through the gloom, its mouth an impossibly wide circle of slavering emptiness, eyes staring and covetous, and its fingers hooked like talons, poised to grab.
Then some stranger jumped out of the dimness, dove past me, and cowered behind a boulder, trembling.
That seemed to be okay with the ghost. It shifted its attentions to me, zooming toward me with a gloating howl.
The fugitive leapt to his feet, turned, ran - and slammed right into the only tree on an otherwise barren hillside. He slumped down, beneath a huge spiderweb with a very large spider in it. The ghost, shifting back to its original quarry, fluttered after its victim, then hesitated, apparently repelled by the spider. I could sympathize, but I knew the specter wouldn't be halted long.
"Hold it right there!" I shouted. I jumped in front of a big boulder, yanking my belt out of the loops and swinging the buckle.
"Cold iron, remember?"
The ghost yelled something that sounded suspiciously like "Yum! " and threw itself on the buckle. I dropped the belt and yanked my hand out of the way just in time, and the ghost bored on into the rock, sinking out of sight. Of my belt, there was no trace. There was also a large hole in the boulder.
Then the ghost veered out of the rock face, swooped out in a circle, and headed back toward me, smacking its lips and drooling. Whatever kind of spook this was, it was a virtual flying appetite. it reminded me of a shark-but it also reminded me of my Kipling. I shouted,
The ghost jolted to a halt with a look of startled shock as its mouth snapped shut and sealed itself. Its checks bulged, and its body ballooned with a huge flapping sound.
"Wizard Saul!" Gilbert pounded up to me, panting. "Beware! 'Tis a hunger ghost!"
"Yuh," Gruesome grunted, scrabbling up behind the squire. "Get 'way! Ghost eat all!"
"It will indeed," Gilbert corroborated. "It will eat anything it encounters - and it is never full!"
"Then I think I've created a first," I said, picking up a stone, "but get ready with some rocks anyway, will you? If it opens its mouth, pitch for the breadbasket."
Gilbert turned to the ghost, then stared. "Opens? But a hunger ghost's mouth is never shut!"
"This one's is," I said. "It's full." Full, and getting fuller - its belly was still stretching, turning it into a perfect globe with stubby limbs sticking out and a bulge of head on top.
"It doth depart," a wondering voice breathed somewhere around my kneecap. I looked down and saw a patched hat with a gaunt face beneath it, all eyes and pointed nose and jawbone, with hollows for cheeks, and more hollows at the back of which eyes glittered.
Well, at least whatever I'd saved was human.
I looked up again just in time to see the ghost drift high enough to catch an updraft and shoot away to the west, shrinking until it was lost in the twilight.
"It must have sped most quickly indeed," Gilbert said, "for 'twas still swelling with thy spell, Wizard Saul."
"Spell?" the man I had saved cried. He looked up at me with a feverish hunger of his own. "Are you a wizard, then?"
"Well, I wouldn't say that," I demurred - but I saw the scandalized look on Gilbert's face and said quickly, "but everybody else here seems to. Why do you ask?"
"If you are a wizard, you can cure me."
Gruesome looked away, humming. That made me uneasy. I stalled.
"How do you know I'm a good guy? Just because I worked, urn, a-" I swallowed heavily and forced it out "-a spell, doesn't say which side I'm on. I could have been an evil sorcerer."
Gilbert stared, appalled, but the famine case shook his head firmly and said, "If you had been a sorcerer, you would have let the ghost have me, and welcome."
"Good thinking," I approved, but I frowned up into the sky. "Do you suppose that thing will burst when it's had too much?"