The Lioness and Her Knight (20 page)

"It was Rhience's idea," Ywain said.

"She reminded me of someone," Rhience said carelessly.

Luneta was pretty sure she knew who, but she decided not to press the point. "How did you come on her?"

"Well, it was only a day or two after we left the Count Alier," Rhience said. "We were riding through this unnaturally dark and spidery bit of forest, and we heard the sounds of a great battle—not between men, with swords and armor, but between beasts. There was roaring and screaming and thrashing about and all that. Ywain here didn't say a word but dived at once into the darkest part of the woods, leaving me by myself. I'm afraid of the dark, so I followed." Ywain rolled his eyes and shook his head, but he allowed Rhience to tell the tale as he chose. "In a moment we came on the fight, and there was Lass here, locked in mortal combat with a ... well, it was rather a large serpent-thing, I suppose."

"A dragon?"

"I suppose so," Rhience said.

"Yes, a dragon," interposed Ywain. "The beast had the lioness trapped in its coils and was about to strike a final blow. So we jumped in and stopped it."

"Both of you?" Luneta asked.

Ywain nodded. "I attacked the worm's head, and Rhience began cutting through its coils."

"You had a sword?" Luneta asked Rhience.

"I always have a sword. You've seen it on my horse."

"Yes, but—"

"Dear, my vow was not to bear arms against any
man,
" Rhience said. "Dragons are perfectly legal."

"Oh, of course. And you killed the dragon."

"After a bit, yes," Rhience said.

"It wasn't easy," Ywain said. "And had we not fought together, it would have killed us both. Rhience would have you believe that he is a coward who has no skill with a sword, but the truth is—"

"Ywain killed the dragon," Rhience said. "I may have helped a bit, but your cousin's a wizard with that weapon. Anyway, when it was over we had a dragon, now in three separate pieces, and a very irritated and wounded lady lion." At this point Rhience glanced at Ywain. "May I?"

Ywain nodded slowly. "You may tell what you like."

"Tell me what?"

"Well, it's a bit odd here. Ywain put down all his weapons and took off his armor and then ... ah, I don't know exactly how to say it."

"I let the lioness know that we wouldn't hurt her."

"How?" Luneta asked.

"By my actions. I don't know exactly how I knew what to do," Ywain replied frankly. "I suppose it has to do with having been something of a wild beast myself until recently."

"All I can say," Rhience said, "was that they growled and sniffed about for a while, and in no time they were rubbing their heads together, and Lass was as tame as a fat kitchen tabby. Ywain and I bound up her wounds and gave her something to eat."

Luneta looked curiously behind her at the lioness and saw that she was awake and watching Luneta. A soft rumbling sound came from the lioness's chest, something between a growl and a purr, and Luneta instinctively shrank away.

"Do you want all your ham?" Ywain asked. "She'd like a bite if you don't mind."

"Of course," Luneta said. Ywain chose a thick slab from Luneta's plate and gave it to Lass, rumpling her ears gently as he did so.

Rhience grinned. "And so she adopted us. When we packed up to leave, Lass just came along. She was useful today, too. For that matter, we could have used her in Norison, but that was before we met her."

"Where is Norison?"

"That's the village we went to right after we left you," Rhience explained. "It's about a day's ride from here, and we happened into it just in time to help a noble lady there. You see, she was the daughter of the lord of that district, and when he died a few months back, he left everything to her. The Lady Norison is quite attractive, and so it happened that a gentleman by the name of Count Alier thought that he would be happy to marry her, even though marrying her would mean that he'd have to take possession of all her inheritance."

"I see," Luneta said dryly.

"Have you ever known a fellow who took longer to tell a simple story?" Ywain commented.

"No. So the Count Alier was wooing this Lady Norison?"

"Wooing," Rhience repeated thoughtfully. "Well, yes, I suppose you could say—"

"He had besieged her castle," Ywain explained. "He was going to start killing villagers every day until she consented to marry him."

"I didn't say it was a very
romantic
sort of wooing," Rhience said. "So, Ywain here told him to go away and stop bothering her, and after disagreeing at first, he finally agreed that he'd been very bad and promised to stop."

"You fought him?" Luneta asked Ywain.

"Yes, while Rhience set fire to his men's tents and drove off their horses and led the villagers out with their shovels and picks and pitchforks. Count Alier wasn't much without an army behind him, so I made him yield to Lady Norison and then, with her approval, let him go."

They sat in silence for a moment. It occurred to Luneta that the adventure at Norison had been just the sort of thing that the young Ywain had dreamed about doing less than a year ago. It was a very different Ywain who now spoke so indifferently about such a victory. Not the same Rhience she thought she knew, either. Luneta glanced curiously, but with a new respect, at the fool.

Rhience spoke suddenly. "Ywain's not going to tell you, but I suspect you should know one more thing. After he sent Count Alier off with a burr in his breeches, Lady Norison offered our Ywain her hand in marriage, by way of saying thank you, I suppose." Luneta looked at Ywain. His face was still, and his eyes were focused on nothing at all. Rhience said, "He turned her down."

Luneta thought about this for a moment, then changed the subject. "Ywain, why didn't you want Laudine to know who you were?"

"I don't want her to feel obligated to me."

"But you saved her from an enemy. This might be just the thing you need to make her forgive you for forgetting your appointment," Luneta said. Part of her mind was already weaving plans.

"No!" Ywain said sharply. "If Laudine should forgive me, it should be because she chooses to, not because she feels obligated to me."

"But Ywain," Luneta said, "couldn't I at least talk to her? Maybe she wants to forgive you anyway."

"I said no. People who feel they are in debt may do all sorts of things that they wouldn't do otherwise."

"Like Lady Norison offering to marry you?" Rhience asked.

"Yes, and Baron Montanus, too."

"Baron Montanus wanted to marry you?" Rhience demanded. "I hope you said no. He's far too old for you."

"He offered me his daughter."

Rhience grinned and nodded. "Of course he did. I should have expected it."

"Wait," Luneta said, confused by mention of this newest character. "Who's this baron?"

"That's why I was a little late to your rescue," Ywain explained. "After we left you last night, we rode to the nearest village and asked at the tavern there where you were to be burned. They told us, and we rode back up the road a couple of hours. We didn't want Malvolus to hear about two knights staying in the village.

"Anyway, we took a twisty forest path that didn't look as if it went anywhere in particular, but we ended up in a pretty little town with a manor house and everything in it, and the lord of the manor was named Baron Montanus."

"And he offered you his daughter?" Luneta asked.

"Not at first, no," Ywain said.

"He had other plans for Ywain," Rhience said. "You see, he was in a bind there. A band of outlaws had made their home on the mountain nearby, and the leader of the band was a huge fellow named Harpin. Harpin had been raiding all the country round about, but Montanus didn't have enough men to fight them, just him and his three sons. Well, the day before we arrived, this Harpin had taken a fancy to the baron's daughter, a pretty little thing, and had tried to capture her when she was out riding with her brothers. The brothers did well by their sister. They held off the outlaws long enough for her to escape, but they got captured themselves."

"What did this Harpin want with the brothers?" Luneta asked.

"A trade, of course. Just hours before we showed up, Harpin sent word to the baron that he'd swap even up, three sons for one daughter, but if the baron didn't trade, he'd bring the sons down the next morning and slit their throats in front of him."

"What a horrible choice!" Luneta said with a gasp.

"You see why I stayed late, don't you?" Ywain asked. "The baron was no fighter, and he had no one else."

Luneta nodded. "Of course. You couldn't just leave him."

"The only thing is," Rhience said, "we didn't know when Harpin was coming in the morning, and we were at least an hour and a half of hard riding from here. So we waited until just before ten, and then I mounted up to come back alone. Ywain was to come as soon as he had defeated Harpin. I didn't really think he'd make it in time, so I planned a rescue instead of a fight. I sneaked into the castle and managed to talk to Laudine privately and get her ring. You know the rest."

"Except what happened with this Harpin," Luneta said.

"I killed him, along with a couple of the other outlaws," Ywain said with a shrug. "Lass helped a lot. Then we came here as fast as we could."

Luneta nodded thoughtfully. "So in the past two weeks you've rescued two villages, killed a dragon, tamed a lion, saved my life, and turned down two offers of marriage."

Ywain nodded soberly. "Something like that. Pity I couldn't have done any of this stuff a year ago. It might have mattered to me then."

Luneta had let the matter drop when she saw how strongly Ywain felt, but she had not given up on bringing Ywain and Laudine together again. It was obvious that Ywain still loved Laudine, and Luneta suspected that Laudine still loved him. No, Luneta told herself, she couldn't just sit on her hands. One has to help a friend in distress, after all. She was pleasantly weaving plans for reconciliation the next morning when Rhience tapped on her door and entered.

"Good morning, Rhience," Luneta said, smiling.

"Good morning, Luneta. Did you sleep well?"

"Very well," Luneta replied. "And you and Ywain?"

"I don't know if Ywain slept at all," Rhience said calmly. "He and Lass left the castle about an hour after you went to bed last night."

"Left the castle?" Luneta repeated blankly.

Rhience nodded. "He asked me to stay and make his apologies to you."

"But why? Why did he leave?"

Rhience pursed his lips, then drew a long breath and said, "He said he didn't want to hang about while you plotted to get him back together with Laudine."

Luneta's mouth dropped open. "Because ... but that's ridiculous!"

Rhience raised one eyebrow. "Do you mean to say that he was wrong? That you haven't been making such plans?"

Luneta turned red, but she met Rhience's eyes. "No, I mean it's ridiculous that he should leave for such a reason.

"Why do you do that, Luneta?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Why do you try to arrange other people's lives?"

"I don't think of it that way," she replied.

"I'm sure you don't, but it's what you do all the same."

"Well, if I do, it's only because they do such a wretched job of arranging their own lives! Look at Ywain and Laudine. He loves her, but he feels too guilty about breaking that six-month promise to go tell her so and ask her forgiveness. As for Laudine, she loves him too, but because he's never begged for her forgiveness she thinks he doesn't love her, so she's just sitting around the castle feeling miserable. If someone could just bring them together for ten minutes, everything would be fine!"

"And you're the someone?"

"It doesn't
have
to be me, but I'm a good choice—after all, I may be the only one who sees what both of them want."

Rhience's face was solemn. "And what about you? What do you want? Do you see that as clearly?"

"What?"

"What do you want from life?" Luneta stared blankly at Rhience, but she could think of no reply. Rhience shook his head slowly. "You don't know. So why should Ywain and Laudine, or anyone else for that matter, let you plan their futures?"

Luneta's mouth opened, then shut again. Angry as she was, she could think of no suitable reply. She contented herself with giving Rhience a withering glare.

"Nay, lass, don't hurt me," Rhience said, dropping his unaccustomed seriousness. "To say the truth, you're probably right about Ywain and Laudine. Proper chuckleheads, both of them. But they won't get out this mess they're in unless they do it themselves."

"But no one can help them now that Ywain's gone and left," Luneta pointed out disgustedly.

Luneta may not have been able to help Laudine with her love affair, but over the next two weeks she and Rhience had ample opportunity to help their hostess in other ways. For the first time in her life, Laudine actually had to be concerned with the business of running a castle and a home. It appeared to Luneta that Laudine had never borne the slightest responsibility, having gone directly from the protective control of her father to that of Sir Esclados, and from there to the influence of Malvolus. Now she had a whole castle full of servants and guards waiting for her instructions, but there was no domineering man to tell her what to do. To Laudine's credit, she didn't try to shirk her new duties, and she even had some of her own ideas as to what should be done—mostly concerning the dismissal of servants who had been cronies of Malvolus—but the truth was that she was hopelessly inept as an administrator. Rhience and Luneta, being the two people Laudine most trusted, were called on to help their hostess with decisions ranging from whom to place in charge of the castle accounts to what sort of sauce she liked with roast lamb. And, when either of them turned the question back on Laudine—asking "What do
you
prefer?"—it only became clear again that Laudine wasn't used to having any preferences at all. Luneta found her hostess's eagerness to agree with anyone else's ideas to be infuriating, and it was fortunate for all of them that after a week Rhience was able to find just the right man to replace Malvolus.