Hoofs thudded behind. Turning his head, Holger saw the mounted knights bear down on him. Their animals were even faster than his. He had dropped his captured weapons and Alianora had perforce abandoned his lance. Reaching down, he got sword and shield where they hung. There was scarcely time to put on the armor bundled behind his saddle.
The swan winged white beside him. Suddenly she swerved. An eagle struck where she had been. Holger looked up and saw more great birds descending from the sky. Oh, my God, they’re turning themselves into eagles, they’ll get her now—
Alianora hissed, beat a way with wings and beak past two of them, and streaked for the forest. Turned human again, she could find shelter from the ornithomorphs in the dense brake. But how then could she go fast enough to escape ground pursuit?
A horse drew alongside Papillon. Alfric himself bestrode it, a sword in one hand. His long silvery hair streamed from a face that still smiled. Loud through hoofbeats, cloven air, and the hunting horns blowing in the ear came his shout: “So let us try if indeed you are invincible, Sir ’Olger du Danemark!”
“Gladly!” snarled the Dane. Alfric was on his unshielded right side, but he was past caring. His sword hammered down, meeting the lighter Faerie blade in mid-air. Alfric’s weapon darted aside, in past Holger’s guard. With skill he had not known was his, Holger got his edge under the crescent-shaped hilt of the enemy and threw the strength of his shoulders against Alfric’s hand. The Duke’s weapon was torn from his grasp. He snarled and pulled his horse closer, so his knee touched Holger’s as they galloped. His left hand shot out, snake-swift, closing on the Dane’s sword wrist. He couldn’t hold his bigger opponent long; but he needed little time to draw the knife at his belt.
Holger twisted in his own seat. He couldn’t quite interpose his shield, but he brought its edge down on Alfric’s dagger hand. The Duke screamed. Smoke spurted from his skin. Holger caught the smell of singed flesh. The white horse stampeded. By Heaven, it was true what they said! The Faerie metabolism could not endure the touch of iron.
Holger reined in Papillon so clods jumped underfoot. Turning, he reared the stallion, waved his sword and howled at the riders: “All right, come and get it! Step right up and lay right down!”
They stopped as swiftly as he had done, milling aside. But through the twilight, Holger saw warriors who ran toward him on foot, carrying bows. That wasn’t so good. They could stand afar and fill him with arrows. Recklessly, he plunged toward them with some idea of breaking up the formation. “Rah, rah, rah!” he shouted. “Ti-i-iger!”
The knights scattered before his charge. The bowmen stood their ground. He heard a shaft buzz nastily by his ear. “Jesu Kriste Eli Mariae—”
The Pharisees shrieked! They spurred their horses, threw away their weapons, ran and galloped from him like an explosion. So it was also true they couldn’t stand to hear a holy name, thought Holger exultantly. He should have remembered that. Only... why had his unthinking appeal been in Latin?
He was tempted to throw the whole hierarchy after them, but decided not to abuse his privilege. An honest prayer was one thing; taking the Great Names in vain for mere advantage was something else again, and could bring no luck. (How did he know that? Well, he did.) He settled for steering Papillon back westward and shouting, “Hi-yo, Silver!”
After all, the story was that the Faerie folk didn’t like silver either.
Something gleamed in the trampled grass. He stopped his horse, leaned far over, and picked up the knife Duke Alfric had dropped. It didn’t seem formidable, not very sharp, feather-light in his hand; yet the blade was inscribed The Dagger of Burning. Puzzled, vaguely hopeful that it might be a useful talisman, he thrust the weapon in his belt.
Now, Alianora. He trotted along the fringe of the woods, calling her name, but there was no answer, His exuberance died within him. If she had been killed—hell’s fire, he thought with stinging eyes, it wasn’t that he would be alone in this world of enemies, it was that she was a grand kid and had saved his life. And how had he repaid her? he asked himself glumly. What sort of a friend was he, guzzling and swilling and making up to alien women while she lay in the cold dew and—
“Alianora!”
No answer. No sound whatsoever. The wind had laid itself to rest, the castle was hidden in swiftly rising mists, the forest was a wall of night. Nothing save the fog moved, nothing spoke, he was the only thing alive in all this dimness. He thought uneasily that he couldn’t linger here. The Pharisees would soon figure out some way to get at him. They could summon allies who were not bothered by iron or God. Morgan le Fay, for instance. If he meant to escape, he’d better do so at once.
He rode westward along the forest calling for Alianora. Still the fog deepened, lifting from the ground in white banks and streamers, muffling the sound of Papillion’s hoofs, seeming almost to smother his own breath. Drops glistened in the horse’s mane; his shield glimmered wet. The world closed in till he could hardly see two yards—
A Faerie stunt , he thought with a gulp of fear. They could blind him this way; thereafter he should be easy to overcome. He urged Papillon into a canter. Despite the dank chill, his mouth was dry.
Something loomed ahead, vague and pale in the curling grayness. “Hallo!” he yelled “Who’s there? Stand or I’ll have at you!’’
Laughter answered, not the wicked snack of Faerie but clear and young. “’Tis only me, Holger. I had to mount myself. We could scarce ride double the long way we must gang, and my wings would grow weary.”
She came into sight, a brown slim figure in white feather-tunic. Dewdrops twinkled in her hair. She was riding a unicorn bareback, doubtless the same one he had spied earlier. It regarded him with wary onyx eyes and wouldn’t come near. Mounted before the girl was the hunched form of Hugi.
“I doubled back to fetch this lad,” she explained, “and then we went into the woods again and I whistled up my steed. But ye’ll have to take him now, for ’twas all I could do to make Einhorn carry anyone but me even so small a way.
Holger felt thoroughly ashamed. He had quite forgotten Hugi. And a peeved Duke Alfric would probably have made short work of the dwarf. He took the little man from Alinora’s arms and set him on his own saddlebow.
“Now what should we do?” he asked.
“Noo we maun galumph quick’s may be oot o’ this ill realm,” grunted Hug “Sooner we’re in honest lands, better oor chances be o’ living to brag about this dunce’s trip.”
“Hm, yes. Though I’m afraid we’ll get lost in the fog.”
“I’ll fly above from time to tine to get bearings,” Alianora said. “Thus we’ll outtrick them who conjured it up.”
They trotted on through the wet soundless murk. Holger began to feel the reaction to battle. It took the shape of a conviction of his own worthlessness. What was he good for, except to drag fine resourceful people like Alianora into peril of their lives? What had he done, even, to earn the food he’d eaten so far? He was the merest pensioner, a bumbling idiot kept alive by charity.
He remembered a question that had touched his mind. “Hugi,” he asked, “why was it dangerous for me to go into that hill?”
“Know ye na this?” The dwarf raised his thick brows. “So yon’s why they lured me from ye! So I couldna give warning... Well, then, know that time is strange inside Elf Hill. They’d ha’ held ye there wi’ one nicht o’ merrymaking, and when ye came oot again, a hundred years would ha’ passed here. In the meanwhile the Middle Worlders would ha’ been able to do whate’er ’tis ye noo stand in the way o’.”