Igraine the Brave (10 page)

But as she was riding the great stallion past them, one of them roughly seized her reins.

“Stop!” cried the man. “What have we here? And where do you think you’re taking that fine horse, girl?”

Igraine clutched the bundle containing her armor and looked at him as fearlessly as possible. “To the water hole, where do you think? He won’t drink anywhere else.”

“Is that so?” The guard patted the stallion’s neck admiringly, and turned to the other men. “Ever seen this horse before? Rather too handsome to be in the care of a little girl, wouldn’t you say?”

“It’s that old devil Lancelot,” one of the guards called back. “Jost looks after him. Better send for Jost.”

Jost … Igraine tore the reins out of the guard’s hand and dug her heels into Lancelot’s sides. The stallion put back his ears, reared so violently that she almost slid off his back, and galloped away. Some farmers with carts full of fruit were coming over the drawbridge toward them. The horses pulling the carts shied as Lancelot raced on. A farmer jumped into the moat as one of the carts tipped over. Mountains of fruit rolled over the bridge, but with one great leap Lancelot jumped over them and was galloping on. Igraine ducked low over his outstretched neck. His hooves thundering, the stallion stormed off the bridge and past the watchtowers that rose to the sky on both sides of it. The guards on the towers were aiming their catapults, ready to fire, but Lancelot charged on through the dealers and farmers bringing their livestock down the road to the castle, through the crowd of jugglers and beggars and soldiers. They all scattered, screaming, and made way for the snorting stallion.

“Turn west, Lancelot!” cried Igraine, swinging him around. “We have to go west!” But when she looked back she saw two horsemen in pursuit of them. One was clearing himself a path through the screaming crowd with his sword, the other was drawing his crossbow.
Drat it!
she thought.
Today of all days I have to be wearing skirts!

But just as the first arrow flew past Igraine’s shoulder, Lancelot swerved off the road and galloped over the bleak, treeless plain surrounding the castle. None of their pursuers’ horses could match his speed, and Lancelot carried Igraine off, far, far away from the towers of Darkrock and toward the dark hills where the giant lived.

12

I
graine rode until night fell and stars came out in the sky above the hilltops. Only once did she stop for a short rest, to let Lancelot drink and graze and to get into her armor. They met no one on their way, and the only sounds they heard were the voices of animals in the dark. Two little dragons barely half Lancelot’s size crossed Igraine’s path, and once she saw a herd of unicorns drinking at a river. When the moon rose, and the world was all blue and black, Igraine finally reached the hills where the giant Garleff lived.

“Just look for his footprints,” her father had said. “You can’t miss them.” And to make doubly sure, Albert had given her a small bag of silver dust. If Igraine let just a little of it fall to the ground as she rode, all the tracks there began to shine — every print left by a paw, a hoof, or a foot — and the fresher the tracks were, the brighter they shone.

Before long Igraine came upon some gigantic footprints. It had been raining in the hills, and water had collected in the deep hollows left by Garleff’s toes and the soles of his feet. Whenever Igraine saw some of these curiously shaped puddles, she sprinkled a pinch of Albert’s silver dust into it. And the farther she rode, the brighter the trails shone. The bushes covering the slopes were prickly, but giants have thick skin, and Igraine’s parents had told her that Garleff liked to stretch out among the thorns by night to look at the stars. When he did that, you couldn’t see him at all. His huge body disappeared into the thickets of thorns as if the earth had swallowed him up.

In a particularly dark valley, where the starry sky was like a tent spread over the earth, Igraine found giant’s tracks that shone brighter than all the rest. She reined Lancelot in and looked around her. No sound met her ears but the song of the night birds and the rushing of water far away.

“Garleff?” she called into the darkness.

Lancelot lowered his head to the grass, which was wet with dew. His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air for scents.

“It’s me, Garleff!” called Igraine. “The daughter of Sir Lamorak and the Fair Melisande. It’s Igraine! My father’s magic cured you of a nasty rash long ago, do you remember? Now we need your help!”

Nothing stirred. The hills lay silent in the darkness of the night.

Igraine patted Lancelot’s neck. “He doesn’t seem to be here,” she said softly. “Come on, let’s try the next valley.”

But just as she took up the horse’s reins again, there was a rustling on the hill to her left, and out of the undergrowth rose a figure so large that its moonlit shadow fell over the whole valley.

Lancelot whinnied and stepped back, his legs trembling.

“Take it easy!” Igraine told him. “Take it easy, there’s nothing to fear.” But she herself felt her stomach twist with alarm. She had heard hundreds and hundreds of stories about giants, but she’d never before seen one in front of her in flesh and blood. When she dared to look up, she saw Garleff’s right shoulder cover the moon.

“Oho, oho! So it’s the daughter of Lamorak the Wily!” he said. His voice was deep and full, like a warm wind blowing down on Igraine. The giant took one leg out of the thorny undergrowth, and with a mighty tread he climbed down the slope of the hill, until he was so close to her that when she glanced up at him she was looking straight into his nostrils.

“Help?” boomed Garleff. “What do you need my help for, little human?”

Igraine put a hand on Lancelot’s trembling flank.

“I need some of your hairs!” she called up to the giant. “Four or five would be enough, that’s what my parents said.”

“Giant’s hairs?” Garleff crouched down. He gently picked Igraine off Lancelot’s back and put her on his knee. “Have those two gone and bewitched themselves?”

Igraine looked into Garleff’s brown giant’s eyes and nodded. “They’ve turned themselves into pigs,” she said. “It doesn’t bother me and my brother too much, so long as it’s not forever, but now that they’re pigs they can’t cast spells, and just at this moment someone’s come along trying to steal our Books of Magic. Are you with me so far?”

“Hmm,” said the giant, nodding his head back and forth. “I’m not entirely sure, but go on.”

“His name is Osmund, and he’s our new neighbor,” Igraine went on. “He and his castellan are mustering a huge army to attack Pimpernel. That’s why I’m in such a terrible hurry. I have to bring my parents some giant’s hairs so that they can turn themselves back into their real shapes and cast a spell to change Osmund into a cockroach or a wood louse. Which would serve him right, believe you me!”

The giant looked up at the sky. He went on gazing at it for quite a time, so long that Igraine was beginning to think he’d forgotten all about her. But finally the giant looked back at her.

“I don’t often help human beings,” he said, scratching his ear. Igraine could have taken a seat in it quite comfortably. “I don’t really understand them, if you see what I mean. All that chasing about, all that fuss and bother — and your squeaky little voices. They make me all nervous and edgy. Luckily humans don’t often venture here. But your father did cure me of my rash. It itched horribly — it even spoiled my pleasure in the stars — and giants never forget a good deed, or a bad one, either. So you shall have my hairs.” Gently, he picked Igraine up between his thumb and forefinger and put her on his head. “Help yourself, Igraine, Lamorak’s daughter.”

Each of Garleff’s hairs was as thick as the quill of a goose’s feather, and Igraine sank up to her chin in them. Taking out her sword, she cut off a bunch as long as her arm, rolled it up, and carefully put it in the bag she wore at her belt.

“Ready!” she called, and the giant picked her out of his hair and put her on the palm of his hand.

He looked thoughtfully at her, as if she were a butterfly who had fluttered down to settle on him. “That story you told me,” he growled, rubbing his mighty nose, “I don’t like the sound of it. And I don’t like to think of you riding through these hills all on your own. You’re rather small, you know, not much larger than my big toe. And there are some really bad people between the hills and the Whispering Woods. I can’t come with you myself. I never leave these hills. It’s only too easy for us giants to tread on the people we want to help and squash them flat. But I know someone who could go with you and perhaps even help you against this man — what was his name again?”

“Osmund,” replied Igraine.

“Exactly.” Garleff nodded thoughtfully and lapsed into silence.

“Yes,” he murmured much later. “I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea to ask him.”

“Ask who?” inquired Igraine.

“You’ll soon see,” replied Garleff. He took Igraine in one hand and Lancelot (who didn’t like it at all) in the other, and stood up. Then he marched away with mighty strides over the hills into the dark night, going east.

13

G
arleff carried Igraine to the foot of a mountain that rose bleak and rocky into the starry sky. Even Garleff looked small beside it. A long, long flight of steps carved in the rock led up to a tower that clung to the gray side of the mountain like a swallow’s nest.