Her Majesty's Wizard #1 (43 page)

   Then the ground swung upward into his field of view, and he saw a great cut through the peaks in front of him. The sides were long, sloping mounds of loose rock, with a sheer basalt face here and there, and clean-cut cliffs towering up above them.

   It brought him out of his daze. "Uh, Sir Guy-where are we?"

   The Black Knight turned in his saddle to grin back at Matt. "Do you wake, then? Nay, we ride through the peaks, to the Plain of Grellig. 'Tis a high valley, a bowl amidst the peaks, a day's ride off."

   "And this is the pass that leads to it." Matt looked around him at the sheer cliff faces and the long, clean angles of the talus slopes. There was a trail here, but a very faint one; apparently the route wasn't traveled too often. There were patches of grass, and low bushes here and there, but nothing more. Nonetheless, the place had a stark majesty to it-one of the most beautiful places he'd seen. "Sir Guy, something occurs to me."

   ..Aye?..

   "This is an excellent passageway through these mountains. Why is it so poorly traveled?"

   Suddenly a figure roared down on them like an avalanche, eight feet tall, pop-eyed, hairy as a bear, with huge eyeteeth jutting like tusks from its lower jaw. It wore breastplate, greaves, and a helmet that looked faintly Greek; it bore two great broadswords, which it whirled about like daggers.

   Matt shrank back in his armor. "What the hell is that?"

   "An ogre." Sir Guy's sword hissed out. "Defend yourself !"

   A surge of courage came up from some unidentified place, and Matt whipped out his blade.

   The ogre bounded down on them with a bellow. Stegoman answered with a blast that sent flame gouting out a dozen feet, but the ogre leaped aside, then jumped in with a savage sword cut at Matt's head.

   He swung up his shield. Then a bomb seemed to explode against it, and he was somersaulting off Stegoman's back to crash into the talus slope. Through the ringing of his head, he heard Sir Guy shout and the ogre answer with a roar.

   Matt staggered to his feet and turned toward the battle. He saw the ogre whacking at Sir Guy from both sides, while the knight tried to riposte and the war horse lashed out with its hooves. Stegoman hovered before them, neck weaving and head bobbing, trying to get a clear shot at the monster. But the monster pressed so closely on Sir Guy that the dragon couldn't burn the ogre without destroying the knight.

   Matt gathered himself and charged in.

   The ogre turned on him with a roar, swinging one sword toward him. Matt met it with the monofilament edge of his blade. His arm throbbed with the blow, but the ogre was left with only half a sword as the severed point struck the ground. Then the half blade swung back in a vicious swipe, and Matt rolled desperately with the blow. It rocked him, but he managed to stay on his feet, turning and slicing at the huge thigh nearest him. The ogre jerked back, but the blade sliced a sliver from the skin.

   The monster howled, slammed a blow at Sir Guy's shield, then turned with a series of cuts at Matt, who retreated until his back was pressed against something hard. The cliff face was behind him, thrusting up twelve feet to a slope of loose talus.

   Matt ducked his head and swung up his shield just in time to catch another clanging blow. He saw that Sir Guy's horse was also backed against the cliff face, a few feet to his left.

   "Curses upon all cowards in shells!" the ogre roared. He bent down to scoop up a boulder the size of a basketball.

   "'Ware!" Sir Guy shouted, snapping his shield up to guard his head as the monster swung the boulder in a long, overhand pitch that sent it hurtling at bullet speed. Matt flinched under his shield, but he heard the rock strike far above. A rumble began overhead.

   He took one step forward, shouting, "Sir Guy! Out, fast!"

   Then rubble and pebbles were raining down and glancing off his armor. He managed to get his shield up. Pain shot through his shoulders, but he held it while the avalanche seemed to go on forever. Finally, a few last bits of rock struck; then all was quiet.

   Matt looked about quickly. All around Sir Guy and himself, a long slope of rubble trailed down to the earth, spreading out on all sides. The talus slope had come down, burying them almost to their chins. Sir Guy's horse barely held his head above it.

   The ogre brayed huge, harsh laughter. "Eh, may that serve ye! Fools, to enter my mountains!" He hefted a sword and stepped forward, an ugly gleam in his eye. "To let others know to fear for their lives and turn back, mayhap I should hang a sign at the mouth of this pass-your heads!" He leaped, swinging a side-hand chop that would have bisected a rhino quite neatly.

   A sheet of flame filled the hillside, hiding the ogre; Matt heard him bawl in anger and pain. The firestorm snapped out as suddenly as it had come, showing the monster a good twenty feet further away, rubbing burns amid a flood of curses.

   "Aye, you mistook," Stegoman rumbled, behind Matt and out of sight. "Be mindful of me, foul ogre; come not near my knights."

   The ogre answered with another spate of curses, but he didn't step closer.

   Matt heaved a huge sigh of relief. "Thanks, Stegoman."

   "'Tis your due, Wizard. Would I could aid you more in this."

   "You can't?" Matt looked down at the apron of rock before him and frowned. "I see what you mean. A lot of those rocks are going to have to be lifted out, aren't they?"

   "Aye," Stegoman rumbled, "and my claws are suited to digging, but never to lifting."

   "Definitely a problem." Matt chewed at his lower lip. "We do have to get out of here, somehow."

   "Nay, ye do not." The ogre stepped forward, just outside of flame-range, and sat down with the air of a man who has come to stay. "I canna come near ye whilst the dragon is near; but ye canna come out. 'Twill take ye some while to die of hunger and thirst, but die ye shall. Then shall I have your heads."

   "'Ware, foul parody of man!" Stegoman bellowed, and his head thrust forward into Matt's vision. .

   The ogre hiked himself back a few feet and leered up at the dragon. "Nay, ye dare come no further away from them-for if ye do, I'll dodge past ye, to strike off their heads."

   Stegoman roared out angry flame, but it was just punctuation, and when his fire died, the ogre still sat there, laughing.

   Matt frowned, trying to figure it out. "You're one hell of a fighter-and you seem to have a pretty good brain. Why are you hiding out here, waylaying travelers?"

   "Do not make mock of me!" the ogre bellowed, surging to his feet. "Is it not enough to be cursed with this form? Must ye now sneer at me for it?"

   "He does not sneer," Sir Guy said, thin-lipped.

   The ogre swung around toward him, staring in surprise.

   The knight softened his voice. "My companion is a strange man-he seems to see only the abilities underlying the form. His question was honestly meant."

   "Do ye think ye talk to a child?" the ogre growled. "Nay, I'll not be cozened!"

   "Think what you want," Matt said, "but Sir Guy's giving it to you straight. Sure, you're ugly as sin-but the way you fight, I'd think any baron would be glad to have you in his army. Have you tried to enlist?"

   "What need to ask?" the ogre grated. "Since men cast me out, they'd not wish me back."

   "`Cast you out?"' Matt raised an eyebrow. "For real? Or did they just make you feel unwanted?"

   "'Twas a full outcasting." The ogre frowned, puzzled. "What manner o' man are ye, that ye ken not the rite?"

   "Rite?" Matt frowned, turning toward Sir Guy. "This is an actual ritual?"

   The knight nodded. "With bell, Book, and candle."

   "The priest it was who led it." The ogre clamped his jaws shut, his face hardening. "I was a child like any other, though somewhat longer of leg and arm. Yet when I came thirteen, and hair began to grow all o'er my body and my eyeteeth to lengthen, they cried I was possessed. Aye, they swore I was a thing from Hell, and even my own dad did beg me to quit his house. Yet I did fear, what would his neighbors do to him, for fathering such a monster as I'd grown to be?

   "So I stayed. Therefore did they all, goodfolk, beseech the priest to cast me out. He came, with armored soldiers at his back, with a reed of holy water and a candle lit, intoning verses from his Book. I knew that where one soldier's beaten, twenty more do come; soon or late, they'd bear me down. So I turned and walked out from that village.

   "Then, two nights later, hiding in the wood, I heard some villagers speak of how they had burned my father's house and driven him to the Church for sanctuary. I came back then and burned their roofs about them. Thereafter I foreswore all folk and did come here."

   "So." Matt pursed his lips.

   "I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time Into this -breathing world scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them... Since I cannot prove a lover, I am determined to prove a villain, And hate the idle pleasures of these days!"

   The ogre's eyes kindled. "Aye, that is the way of it! That is myself! What words are these?"

   "Shakespeare's, from Richard III." Matt had thought the quote might go over.

   "His name was Richard? Mine is Breaorgh; it matters not! We are the self-same person!"

   It was useful to know the ogre's name-but more useful for him to identify himself with Richard, Shakespeare's most evil king.

   Richard hadn't always been the epitome of evil, though, even in Shakespeare's plays-he'd come by it gradually. Reverse the trend of the Bard's verses, and Matt might reverse Breaorgh's temperament.

   "I cannot weep, for all my body's moisture Scarce serves to quench my furnace-burning heart; Nor can my tongue unload my heart's great burden; For self-same wind that I should speak withal Is kindling coals, that fire all my breast, And burn me up with flames, that tears would quench. To weep is to make less the depth of grief; Tears, then, for babes; blows and revenge for me!"

   Breaorgh nodded vigorously. "Aye, aye, 'tis me! For grief I've known, that should loose a flood of tears! Yet I'll withhold them, so revenge may burn!" And he took his unharmed broadsword by the point and drew it back, like a dagger ready to throw.

   Matt put his next choice of verse in, fast.

   "Oft have I seen a hot, o'er-weaning cur Ran back and bite, because he was withheld, Who, being suffered with the bear's full paw, Hath clapped his tail between his legs, and cried. And such a piece of service will they do, Who do oppose themselves to ogres grown."

   Breaorgh's lip curled. "Aye. Thus are they all, the small men. They term me monster; but when 'tis time to show their courage, they show their backs instead."

   "Do I mistake?" Sir Guy breathed, round-eyed. "Or have his fangs grown shorter?"

   "They have." Matt felt relief starting to weaken his knees. "Look closely, there-he's shedding. And his eyes are receding. See, once he identified himself with Richard, whatever I did to Richard would be done to him-and I've been taking Richard backward- He may have been a monster in Richard III, but he was warm and human when he started off as a teenager in Henry VI, Part H."

   He turned back to Breaorgh, feeling a chill grow within him. Now came the dangerous part-Prince Hal. Would the identity with Richard hold? It should-Hal and Richard were just opposite ends of one Shakespearean continuum. A case could be made that they were almost the same character, at two extremes-the character called King.

   Well, nothing ventured ...

   "Yet herein will I imitate the sun, Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That, when he please again to be himself, Being wanted, he may be more wondered at By breaking through the foul and ugly mists Of vapours that did seem to strangle him."

   "Nay, ye canna mean that I am such!" Breaorgh bleated. "How could there be some beauty under my fell carcass?"

   But he wanted to believe it. His eyes were almost normal, his hair cascaded down, and his fangs were just two white dots above his lower lip.

   Matt grinned and went on.

   "And, like bright metal on a sullen ground, My reformation, glittering o'er my fault, Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes Than that which hath no foil to set it off. I'll so offend, to make offence a skill, Redeeming time when men think least I will."

   Breaorgh had a very thoughtful look when Matt finished. The only sound was the soft rustle of falling hair.

   "'Tis a lie!" But Breaorgh didn't sound too sure. "There is nothing of the good or honorable that I do hide. I am what I have always been-an ugly monster, and of monstrous temper! Am I not?"

   "Look at your feet," Matt suggested.

   Breaorgh stared, startled. Then, in spite of himself, he looked down-and stared again. Slowly, he lifted his eyes to the rest of his body.

   "I yet would not call him clean-limbed," Sir Guy said judiciously, "but I've seen more hair on a country squire. And his fangs have quite vanished."