Song of the Gargoyle (11 page)

“I be called Char.”

So Tymmon made a great show of telling Troff that this was Char, and that he was not to be harmed. And Troff rolled right side up and also made a great show of listening intently, as might an obedient dog. And when their act was over the cowherd came out from behind the stump.

Still watching warily, he began to edge toward where Troff was lying, grinning his white-fanged gargoyle smile. After several minutes of gradually increasing confidence, the peasant boy crouched down and touched Troff’s head. He then smiled triumphantly at Tymmon, and went on touching, patting, and scratching with increasing enthusiasm. Troff’s response was enthusiastic also. Watching the two of them, Tymmon began to feel uneasy. He had asked the silly beast to be friendly, not to make himself ridiculous fawning over the first simple-minded country bumpkin he happened to meet.

“Well,” Tymmon said sharply, “we must be on our way. It is getting late and I had hoped to reach civilization before nightfall. Perhaps you could direct me to the nearest town or village.”

“Late,” the boy said suddenly, looking up toward the western sky. “Yes, it be late. I needs must hurry.” He snatched up a long staff and started toward the grazing livestock.

Tymmon hurried after him. “The nearest village? Could you direct me?”

Already starting to wave his staff at his four-legged charges, the cowherd paused, and with his staff still raised, knit his brows in thought. After a remarkable amount of careful thought-taking he said slowly, “The nearest village? There be no village nearer than Bondgard.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. Bondgard be the nearest.”

“And are you going to Bondgard?”

“Yes. I be.”

“Excellent.” Tymmon tried not to show his amusement. “Then it is to Bondgard that I would like to go. Would you permit my dog and me to accompany you?”

“You be wanting to go to Bondgard—with me?” the boy asked, and when Tymmon had made it clear that he was asking exactly that, he thought again and then said, “Well, come on then, for all of me. But I mustna tarry. If I be late my uncle will beat on me. He always beating on me when I be late.” He started off again, waving his shepherd’s staff, but within a moment he returned.

“That dog, there. Be he a stock harrier? My uncle says that all big dogs be harriers.”

“A stock harrier? Oh, you mean a chaser of livestock. No, of course not. He is trained to chase only wild game.” Tymmon’s answer was quickly made, but as the shepherd began to gather the strayed cattle, he thought again. Troff was watching the rounding up of the livestock with an alarmingly alert and eager expression on his ugly face. Tymmon shrugged out of his pack, pulled out a length of rope, and formed one end into a loop. Then he approached cautiously, fearing that what he had in mind would not be easily accepted by such a mighty and untamed beast.

“Troff,” he said uneasily, “this is a lead. Dogs are often kept on leads. Like this. See, this end goes around your neck and I hold the other. Thus dog and man cannot easily be separated. There. Is that not...

Suddenly realizing that Troff seemed to be accepting the lead quite readily, Tymmon stopped babbling. He tugged gently on the rope, Troff followed, and within a few moments they were under way. Tymmon, with the now leashed Troff in hand, walked beside the cowherd, while up ahead the herd trotted and lumbered, six oxen, five milk cows, two gaunt and bony mules, three even scrawnier donkeys, and a half dozen goats.

As they made their way across the open pastureland and then down a long tree-bordered lane, Tymmon began to feel more confident. Things were going quite well. The cowherd no longer seemed to harbor any suspicions concerning Troff’s true nature and Troff himself was behaving admirably. Not only had he been friendly to the peasant boy, but he also had accepted the lead, and had not, as Tymmon feared he might, mistaken the livestock for easy prey. And he now seemed to be content to trot along behind the herd at a discreet distance, as any well-trained farm dog might do. Gargoyles were, indeed, amazingly intelligent and adaptable creatures.

As they walked along, Tymmon decided to entertain his new friend as well as take his own mind off his painfully empty stomach. He would tell the boy the story of his life. The story, that is, of Hylas, who in the original tale, as told by Komus, was a young man of great beauty who lived in ancient Greece, but who Tymmon now reincarnated as the son of a brave huntsman who had been recently killed by brigands, forcing his son to go forth to seek his fortune.

“Where?” the cowherd asked.

“Where?” Tymmon asked. “Oh, you mean where did we live? Oh, a great way from here. Far away to the south. In a kingdom called... Casting around in the remains of old geography lessons he could find nothing suitable—far away, but not so far as to be unbelievable. “Nordencor,” he said at last, falling back on the distant kingdom of his birth.

“Nor—den—cor!” Char pronounced the word with some difficulty.

“Yes. Nordencor. My father served the lord of the castle, the lord Cyllo. My father was huntsman to Lord Cyllo. He was a great hunter and a favorite with all the nobility. But one day, only a few months since, when he was out hawking with a small party, they were attacked by a large band of brigands. My father fought with great bravery and killed at least a dozen of the cutthroats single-handedly, but at last he himself fell. And in gratitude the lord Cyllo presented me with his favorite hunting dog—Troff, here—and I set out to see the world.”

As the story grew into an accounting of the hair-raising adventures that Tymmon had experienced since leaving home—some loosely based on fact and others purely fictional—Tymmon became caught up in the telling. So much so that for a time he almost forgot his empty stomach and the uncertainty of his situation. And as for Char, he listened wide-eyed, so intent on Tymmon’s story that he often missed his footing and stumbled on the rutted road. Even Troff, trotting alongside, seemed fascinated. They were well into an especially thrilling account of an attack by harpies when they reached the first outlying cottages of the village of Bondgard, and Char was forced to tear himself away to deliver a milk cow to its owner.

The cottager, a thin, pale man in rough peasant garb, stared at Tymmon and Troff curiously, but asked no questions and raised no outcry. The lead was helping, Tymmon thought, and thanked heaven for letting him think of it. A leashed animal, he told himself, is much more apt to be considered a dog, no matter what its size and appearance.

And it was indeed well that Troff was leashed, for as they made their way through the village, it became obvious that no Bondgard dog had ever borne even a slight resemblance to Troff. There seemed, in fact, to be very few dogs of any kind in the village. Tymmon had expected that Troff’s presence would set off a riot of barking, but as they passed among the cottages only one dog appeared. One small, sharp-ribbed, scruffy animal who could easily have run beneath Troff’s belly without so much as ducking its mangy head. Barking shrilly, he trotted out from behind a cottage, took one look at Troff, and scurried away, yelping in terror.

They met no other dogs, but farther on, as they crossed the churchyard square, some villagers came into view, two women at the well, another sweeping her doorstep, and two old men sitting on the church steps. They all stared at Troff, and the two women quickly moved to the far side of the well. But no one ran or shrieked, and one of the old men called out, “Hiya, boy. What’s that creature you be leading there?” And Tymmon called back quickly and loudly, “A dog, sir. Only a big dog, bred for hunting.”

Unlike the prosperous, thriving villages of Austerneve, this hamlet seemed to be a poor place. A number of cob and wattle cottages spread out in a patternless scatter from an unpaved market square occupied by a well, a muddy pond, and a small stone church with a broken-backed roof. As Char stopped at various dooryards to leave off his charges, Tymmon fell silent, wondering how he could find work or even charity in such a poverty-stricken community. When all the animals except for one cow had been delivered, Char, hurrying now, bade Tymmon good-bye.

“I be going to my uncle’s now,” he said. “ ‘Tis almost sunset. I be beaten if I be late.”

“Wait, friend,” Tymmon pleaded. “Before you go, could you tell me where I might find a place to spend the night? A place where I might be allowed to pay for my bed and a bite to eat by working. I am willing to do anything.”

The boy stared at Tymmon for some time before he said, “Work. You want to work for food? I doan know about that. There be work in Bondgard town, but not much food, I think.”

But Tymmon was too hungry to give up easily. “Your uncle?” he asked. “Would your uncle perhaps need another helper, even if only for a day or two? Could I at least ask him? He could do no more than say no.”

At that Char shook his head doubtfully, but he made no further protest, and Tymmon followed him as he made his way on past the outskirts of the village to a slightly larger cob house that sat in the midst of several sheds and shacks in a cluttered and dirty farmyard. Char disappeared with the cow into one of the sheds, and left alone, Tymmon hesitated, trying to decide whether to approach the house. He was still standing near the cottage when a stoop-shouldered man with a sharp, anger-twisted face appeared in the doorway.

“Char,” the man shouted and then noticing Tymmon, came toward him with long, swift strides. Then, as his gaze fastened on Troff, his pace slowed, and a few yards away he came to a stop.

“Who be you, and what be you doing in my dooryard?” he shouted. Tymmon had hardly begun to explain when he interrupted, bellowing, “Go! Begone with you. We have naught here for beggars and vagrants. Begone. And take that stock-killing beast with you.”

Troff tugged on his leash, growling an angry threat, but when Tymmon pulled him away, he came. But he continued to look back over his shoulder and repeat the warning from time to time.

The sun was almost down when Tymmon and Troff returned to the center of the village. The square was deserted. Except for smoke that rose from a few chimney holes, the whole of Bondgard seemed as cold and lifeless as a deserted city. Perhaps a city of the dead, such as those that often figured in Mistress Mim’s stories. Cities stripped of human life by the terrible sickness called the Black Death, or by the evil breath of dreadful creatures of the night. Lifting the collar of his cloak to cover his mouth and nose, Tymmon hurried across the square.

At the well he stopped long enough to drink briefly and then refill the dipper for Troff. But as the gargoyle drank, lapping up the water in great noisy gulps, Tymmon was suddenly overwhelmed by exhaustion and despair. Collapsing with his back against the well curbing, he buried his head in his arms. He was cold and exhausted and so terribly hungry that his stomach throbbed and burned with pain.

“What will we do?” he whispered. “What will we do?” He could feel Troff beside him, nosing and snuffling at his arms, but he kept his head down until he suddenly became aware of a new sound. “Hrrumphh,” it went, as if someone was preparing his throat for speech. Then the sound repeated itself, Troff growled softly, and Tymmon quickly raised his head.

A few feet away a man was standing. An old man, and as Tymmon stared at him he saw that it was the old villager who had called to him from the church steps. Seen now at closer range it seemed he was very old indeed, his face deeply lined and his back bent and narrow. He stood leaning slightly forward, his gnarled and twisted hands resting on the top of a crooked walking stick.

“Boy,” the man said, “what seek you here in Bondgard?”

Tymmon sniffled, caught his breath, and answered, “Work, sir. I seek work that I might feed myself and my dog. We are very hungry.”

“You got no home to go to, boy?”

Tymmon began to tell the story of Hylas, son of the huntsman of Nordencor, but he had not gotten far when his voice failed him and he could only shake his head and say, “No, sir. I no longer have a home to go to.”

The old man shook his head and, leaning heavily on his crooked staff, said, “There be many like you in these hard times. Bondgard be not a good place for the likes of you, boy. Nowadays the people here be too hungry theyselves to feel pain that others be starving. They be good people, mind you, but now they be too hungry to be kind. And even they that might feed a homeless child would not likely choose a boy like you. A lad who speaks with the accent of castle folk and owns a great, fine beast like yours, there. Bondgard dogs were scrawny creatures even in the good times, and now even most of them be long gone. Most of the Bondgard dogs be gone to the stewpot a long time since.”

“Eaten,” Tymmon said in horror. “The people of Bondgard ate their dogs?”

“The Bondgard folks eat whatever be left to them when all else be taken.”

“Oh,” Tymmon said, thinking that he now understood. “The brigands. Bondgard has been raided by the brigand companies?”

The old man shrugged and then shook his head. “No, not the brigand companies. Oh, they sneak a few goats or a cow now and then. But it be the lord of our castle and his knights who take our chickens and pigs and the grain from our harvests.”

Tymmon stared at the old man. “The knights from your own castle. But knights are pledged to protect all who are weak and harmless, particularly those who live and work on their own lands.”

“Oh, yes, they protect us, I suppose, from the lords and knights from other fiefdoms. And now and then they go into the forests a-chasing the brigands. But every year they raise up the taxes we be paying them for their protection, and then they come back again with more taxes to feed their guests for some great ceremony. Such like as the knighting of their sons, or the weddings of their daughters. I hear they be grand and glorious, the ceremonies of our noble lord, with folk from other castles coming from miles and miles around. But they be a great burden to us here in Bondgard.”

The old man sighed deeply and then fell silent, and Tymmon was silent, too, thinking that the old man’s story was much like the one Komus told about the noble knights who went forth to slay the dragon. And thinking, too, that there was no hope for him and for Troff in such a poor and starving village. At last he picked up his pack and turned to bid the old man good-bye.