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I'd almost gotten to the doorway when a bent, misshapen figure moved into it, a black, featureless body outlined by the dim light from inside.
"Come on in, laddie," shrilled the bent-over creature.
"Don't stand gawping there. There is naught to harm you. Nor milady, either."
"Milady has sprained her ankle," I said. "We had hoped…"
"Of course," the creature cried. "You've come to the most likely place to have a job of healing. Old Meg will stir up a posset for it."
I could see her somewhat more clearly now and there could be no doubt that she was the witch of which the man-at-arms had told us. Her hair hung in wispy, ragged strands about her face and her nose was long and hooked, reaching for an up curved chin and almost reaching it She leaned heavily upon a wooden staff.
She stepped back and I moved through the door. A fire that blazed smokily upon the hearth did little to relieve the darkness of the room. The smell of wood smoke mingled with and sharpened the other undefinable odors that lay like a fog upon the place.
"Over there," said Meg, the witch, pointing with her staff. "The chair over by the fire. It is of good construction, made of honest oak and shaped to fit the body, with a wood sack for "a seat. Milady will be comfortable."
I carried Kathy over to the chair and lowered her into it.
"All right?" I asked.
She looked up at me and her eyes were shining softly in the firelight.
"All right," she said, and her words were happy. "We're halfway home," I told her.
The witch went hobbling past us, thumping her staff upon the floor and muttering to herself. She crouched beside the fire and began stirring a pan of steaming liquid set upon the coals. The firelight, flaring up, showed the ugliness of her, the incredible nose and chin, the enormous wart upon one cheek, sprouting hairs that looked like spider legs.
Now that my eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness, I began to make out some of the details of the room. Three rough plank tables stood along the front wall and unlighted candles, set in candlesticks upon the tables, leaned askew like pale and drunken ghosts. A large hutch cabinet at one end of the room held mugs and bottles that glinted faintly in the stuttering firelight nickering in the room.
"Now," said the witch, "just a bit of powdered toad and a pinch of graveyard dust and the posset will be finished. And once we fix the damsel's ankle, then there will be food. Aye, yes, there will be food."
She cackled shrilly at a joke I could only guess at— something about the food, perhaps.
From some distance off came the sound of voices. Other travelers, I wondered, heading for the i
The voices grew louder and I stepped to the door to look in the direction from which they came. Coming up the track, climbing the hill, were a number of people and some of them were carrying flaring torches.
Behind the crowd came two men riding horses, but as I watched the procession, I saw after a little time that the one who rode behind the other rode a donkey, not a horse, with his feet almost dragging on the ground. But it was the man who rode in front who attracted my attention and very well he might. He loomed tall and gaunt and was dressed in armor, with a shield upon one arm and a long «. lance carried on one shoulder. The horse was as gaunt as he was and it walked with a stumbling gait and with its head held low. As the procession approached closer I saw, in the light cast by the torches, that the horse was little better than a bag of bones.
The procession halted and the people parted as the " horse carrying the tall scarecrow in armor stumbled through the crowd and to the front. Having walked clear of the crowd, it halted and stood with hanging head and I would not have been surprised if, at any moment, it had fallen in a heap.
Man and horse held motionless and the crowd as well and watching them warily, I wondered rather vaguely what might happen next. In a place like this, I knew, it could be anything. The whole thing was ridiculous, of course—but that was no consolation, for it was a judgment based On the ma
The horse slowly raised his head. The crowd shuffled expectantly, with the torches bobbing. And the knight; with what seemed a conscious effort, straightened and stiffened himself in the saddle and brought down the lance. I stood there, in the i
Suddenly the knight was shouting and, although his voice rang out loud and clear in the silence of the night, it took an instant for me to sort out what he said. The lance, braced against his thigh had leveled, and the horse had launched itself into a gallop before I realized the intent of his words.
"Catiff," he had shouted, "wretch, dirty infidel, make ready to defend thyself!"
And it must have been me he meant, I gathered, because the horse was thundering toward me and the lance was pointed at me and, God knows, I had no time at all to prepare for my defense.
If there had been time, I'd have taken to my heels, for I knew I was outclassed. But I didn't have the time to do anything at all and I was, in fact, half frozen by the craziness of it and in the few intervening seconds that somehow seemed like hours I stood and watched in fascination as the glittering lance point came bearing down upon me. The horse was no great shakes, but he was good for a sudden burst of speed and he was thundering along like an asthmatic locomotive.
The lance point was only a few feet away and about to spit me when I came alive enough to move. I jumped backward. The point went past me, but as it did the knight seemed to lose control of it, or the horse might have shied or stumbled—I don't know which it was—but, in any case, the lance swung sharply toward me and, reaching out my hands, I batted at it blindly to shove it away from me.
I hit it and deflected it downward and the point plunged into the ground. Suddenly the lance, its point plunged into the ground. Suddenly the lance, its point deeply buried, became a catapult so that its butt, catching in the armpit of the knight, hoisted him off the saddle and high into the air. The horse dug in its feet and skidded to a halt, with the stirrups swinging wildly, while the bowed lance straightened and hurled the hapless knight like a rock fired from a slingshot. He arched through the air and landed, face downward and spread-eagled, at the far end of the yard and when he hit the ground there was a clangor such as one might make if he hit an empty steel drum a resounding lick with a heavy hammer.
Up the road the people who had formed the procession for the knight were convulsed with glee. Some of them were doubled over, laughing, with their arms wrapped about their middles, while others of them were rolling on the ground, helpless with their guffaws.
Shambling down the road came the lop-eared little donkey, still carrying the tattered man whose feet almost dragged upon the ground—poor, patient Sancho Panza coming once again to the relief of his master, Don Quixote de la Mancha.
And those others rolling in the road, I knew, had merely come along for the fun of it, willingly bearing torches to light the way for this scarecrow knight, knowing very well that one of his never-ending misadventures would sometime in the not-too-distant future provide amusement for them.
I turned away, back toward the i
"Kathy!" I shouted. "Kathy!"
There was no answer. Up the road the amusement-seeking company still was howling out its laughter. At the far end of what had been the i