By the time the sun had dropped an hour closer to the horizon, the gargantuan ballista was ready. From their vantage point in the tent, Commodore Brigg and Navigator Snork could see the professor scurrying about in its shadow, shouting last-minute orders. Someone lit the stone with a torch, setting fire to the tar covering every inch of its surface. As the flames blazed up, gnomes scattered in all directions, leaving the professor alone by the catapult’s release. In the light of the westering sun, they saw an axe rise up, then flash down. A report like the cracking of a whip echoed against the cliffs. There followed a tremendous bone-shaking thud, and a wave of sand spread like ripples in a pond away from Big Bertrem. The throwing arm rose slowly, bending under the weight of the massive flaming stone, but then counterweights swung into place, and a gout of steam escaped from what appeared to be a smokestack. Two giant flywheels, attached to the fulcrum post, began to whirl faster and faster. The throwing arm of the catapult hesitated for a moment, like a diver taking a deep breath before leaping, and then the entire contraption flipped over backwards, pivoting around a point in space centered on the house-sized stone. The spinning fly wheels dug in, throwing up a huge fountain of sand that instantly buried three dozen members of the Mishaps Guild who were rushing in to record and measure the event as it was happening. Meanwhile, the flywheels found purchase in the sand and the thing began to move. Its steam whistle screaming, the monstrous catapult tore across the beach and up into the hills beyond, where it sailed over the crest of a ridge and disappeared in a cloud of dust, rocks, and uprooted trees.
Within moments, Professor Hap-Troggensbottle appeared from the wreckage down the beach, a bit battered but alive. His eyes beamed with delight. He approached the tent, slapping sand and dust from his beard and eyebrows. A pencil, snapped cleanly in two, dangled behind his ear.
“I’m tempted to think you did that on purpose,” Sir Wolhelm accused as he emerged from the tent.
“I assure you, I could not produce that result again unless I tried,” the professor answered as he approached Commodore Brigg. “Now, what is the status of your ship? Are we prepared to disembark?”
“Yes,” the commodore harrumphed, “except we are still looking for the security officer. We were hoping to get a Knight-a real Knight and not some blasted sorcerer. The name we have is Sir Grumdish. Do you know him?”
“Grumdish?” Sir Wolhelm snorted as he approached. “Never heard of him.”
His aide-de-camp, the young Thorn Knight, leaned over and whispered something into his commander’s ear. Sir Wolhelm’s eyes narrowed. “Him!”
He turned to Commodore Brigg, smiling wolfishly. “Yes, of course. Take him with you. By all means. Sir Jarnett will show you to him. He isn’t far.” He strode away, calling for the squires to saddle Sir Jarnett’s horse.
Within moments, a seemingly reluctant Sir Jarnett was mounted and leading the three gnomes and their kender companion up into the hills, taking a path not far from the one trailblazed moments before by Big Bertrem. When they had gone, a squire approached and reported that Sir Wolhelm’s warhorse was missing. The Knight eyed the hills suspiciously, considering whether to send a patrol to arrest the kender, but then he shook his head in disbelief, silently reprimanding himself. “Not even a kender,” he muttered.
Chapter
2
The stream was no wider than an oxcart and shallow enough for a gnome to ford with his pants rolled up, if he didn’t mind cold piggies. The clear, icy water sprang in a noisy gush from the hillside at the edge of the meadow, then galloped and purled through a copse of oak, elm, and walnut trees. A few squirrels scampered and leaped in the evening shadows beneath the eaves of the trees.
Where the stream emerged from the trees, someone had built a small wooden bridge. A little-used path, leading from the beach to Mount Nevermind in the distance, crossed the stream at this bridge. It was at this place that Sir Grumdish had taken his stand.
As they entered the meadow valley, Commodore Brigg and his companions, including Sir Jarnett, found the Knight sitting his massive charger beside the bridge, as still and solid as a carving of weathered stone. He wore the armor and livery of a Knight of the Rose, but his armor was oddly antique even by generous standards. Though polished to a glassy sheen, his armor appeared dented in several places, while unaccountable bulges showed in others. The roses, kingfishers, and crowns on his breastplate looked worn and tired. At his side hung an enormous two-handed sword in a battered scabbard. In his left hand, he held a great kite shield painted with a golden cog at the fess point. Propped on his right stirrup and steadied by his right hand was an long, white jousting lance with a red pennant near its silver tip rippling in the evening breeze.
Of his features, little could be discerned, except for a bit of white moustache hair dangling from beneath the bucket helm that completely covered his head. A thin, V-shaped slit in the front of the helm allowed for vision and a modicum of air. Like the rest of his antique armor, the helm exhibited signs of both carelessness and loving care. It was as battered as it was outdated, but otherwise shone like a mirror in the westering sun.
His horse was a massive beast, but even an untrained eye could see, upon closer inspection, that this was no warhorse. With its big heavy withers, dangling lips and dull eyes, it looked more a beer-wagon horse than the fearless steed of a renowned and fearless Knight of the Rose.
Sir Jarnett walked his horse across the meadow, the gnomes and the kender spreading in his wake, their eyes wide with curiosity. Surely these two sworn enemies-a Knight of Solamnia and a Knight of Neraka-could not meet but that blows would soon begin to rain. But as they drew closer, Sir Grumdish did not move or speak. Razmous began to suspect that he had fallen asleep, what with the buzzing of the flies and the purling of the stream and the warm sun shining through his visor. The kender was just stooping for a stone to plink off the Knight’s helm and wake him when a voice rang out, high and challenging, muffled but echoing, like a bee in a pipe.
“Halt! Fare thee nary closer, lest ye care to tilt with me for the road, sirrah,” Sir Grumdish cried in some semblance of the ancient language of chivalry.
Sir Jarnett stopped his horse and waited for the others to catch up. They gathered round him, their attention focused on the Knight.
“Well, there he is,” Sir Jarnett said with a bored yawn. “He’s all yours.” So saying, he turned his horse and rode away.
“Halt, miscreant Knight!” Sir Grumdish cried as he bounced angrily in the saddle. His horse took a ponderous step onto the bridge. It creaked ominously under its massive weight.
“Halt, coward Knight! Stand to and fewter thy lance!” Sir Grumdish continued as his mount crossed the bridge in a slow rumble of hooves and cracking wood. “Onward! Run hard, run free, my brave heart, my bonnie steed!” He rocked in the saddle, trying to urge his mount into something resembling a gallop.
Slowly, ponderous and unstoppable as a glacier, the great beast did manage to lift its head and come into the bit. Its broad back became like the rolling deck of a ship, and its rider a cargo broken free of its moorings. Sir Grumdish slipped backwards onto the horse’s withers and began to bounce, his feet in the stirrups and his elbows sticking straight out at the apex of each soaring bound, as though about to take flight. As he scrabbled clumsily at the reins, trying to maintain his seat, his shield sailed free like a pie plate in the wind, then his lance came loose and performed three cartwheels across the meadow before its point stabbed into the sandy soil and it jerked to a quivering stop, upright, like a flagpole. Sir Grumdish rode past it, shouting, “Whoa… Bright…Dancer!”