A Knyght Ther Was

by Robert F. Young

V

This time when he reached the crest of the ridge that separated the two valleys, Mallory took an azimuth on the towers of Carbonek, encephalo-fed the direction to Easy Money, and programmed the "animal" to proceed in as straight a course as possible.

In the east, the moon was just beginning to rise; in the west, traces of the sunset lingered blood-red just above the horizon. On the highway below, a knight sitting astride a brown rohorse and bearing a white shield with a red cross in the center was riding toward Carbonek to challenge a twenty-second century "felon paynim" in imitation Age-of-Chivalry armor. In the valley Mallory had just left behind him there were two castles named Yore, and soon, a third would pop into existence and yet another Mallory come riding out. Mallory grinned. It was a little bit like playing chess.

The forest which Easy Money presently entered was parklike in places, and sometimes the trees thinned out into wide, moonlit meadows. Crossing one of the meadows, Mallory saw the first star, and when at length Easy Money emerged on the highway, the heavens were decked out in typical midsummer panoply. The rohorse had followed its programming almost perfectly and had emerged at a point just south of the lane leading to the castle of Carbonek. All Mallory had to do was to encephalo-guide it farther down the highway to a point beyond the site of the forthcoming joust. While doing so, he kept well within the concealing shadows of the bordering oaks and beeches where the ground was soft and could give forth no telltale clip-clop of hoofbeats. His circumspection proved wise—as in one sense, of course, it already had—and when the false Sir Launcelot came riding by on his way to the castle and the chamber of the Sangraal, he was no more aware of Mallory III's presence by the roadside than he would presently be aware of Mallory II's presence in the shadows of the trees that bordered the lane.

Mallory III grinned again and brought Easy Money to a halt just beyond the next bend. "Wit ye well, Sir Jason, that thy hours be numbered," he said.

He remained seated in the saddle, feeling pretty good about the world. In no time at all, if his one-man ambuscade came off, he would be on his way back to the Yore, and thence to the twenty-second century and a haircut. Selling the Sangraal without the aid of a professional time-fence like Perfidion would be difficult, of course, but it could be done, and once it was done, he, Mallory, could take his place on Get-Rich-Quick Street with the best of them, and no questions would be asked. There was, to be sure, the problem of what to do about a certain damosel that hight Rowena, but he would face that when he came to it. Maybe he could drop her off a dozen years in the future in a region far enough removed from Carbonek to ensure her safety. He would see.

At this point in his reflections he was jolted into alertness by the sound of approaching hoofbeats. A moment later he heard a second set of hoofbeats and knew that Mallory II had made his presence known. Presently both sets crescendoed into staccato thunder as the two "knights" came pounding toward each other, and not long afterward there was a clank and a clatter as Mallory II went tumbling out of his saddle and into the roadside weeds. Finally the single set of hoofbeats took over again, and Mallory III saw a horse and rider coming around the bend in the highway. He braced himself.

Before making his play, he waited till horse and rider were directly opposite him; then he encephalopathed Easy Money to charge. "Sir Launcelot" managed to get his shield up in time, but the maneuver did him no good. Mallory's spearhead struck the shield dead center, and "Sir Launcelot" went sailing out of his saddle to land with an awesome clatter flat on his back on the highway. He did not get up.

Dismounting, Mallory removed the man's helmet. It was Perfidion all right. There was a large bruise on the side of his head and he was out cold, but he was still breathing. Next, Mallory looked for the Sangraal. Perfidion had concealed it somewhere, and apparently he had done the job well. Since the armor could not have accommodated an object of that size, the hiding place had to be somewhere on the body of his horse. The horse was standing quietly beside Easy Money in the middle of the highway. It was jet-black and its fetlock-length trappings were blue, threaded with silver; otherwise, the two steeds were identical. Mallory tumbled to the truth then, went over to where the black "horse" was standing, raised its trappings, found the tiny activator button, and depressed it. The croup-hood rose up, and there in the secret compartment, wrapped in red samite, lay the cause of the mounting absentee-rate in King Arthur's court.