The Incorporated Knight Read Free

in the path brought them into full view of the dragon, a thirty-footer facing them on the trail.
     
                  "Ha!" said Eudoric. "Meseems 'tis a mere cockadrill, albeit longer of neck and of limb than those that dwell in the rivers of Agisymba—if the pictures in Doctor Baldonius' books deceive me not. Have at thee, vile worm!"
     
                  Eudoric couched his lance and put spurs to Morgrim. The destrier bounded ponderously forward.
     
                  The dragon raised its head and peered this wsy and that, as if it could not see very well. As the hoofbeats drew nearer, the dragon opened its jaws and uttered a loud, hoarse, groaning bellow.
     
                  At that, Morgrim checked his rush with stiffened forelegs, spun cumbrously on his haunches, and veered off the trail into the woods. Jillo's palfrey bolted likewise, but in another direction. The dragon set out after Eudoric at a shambling trot.
     
                  Eudoric had not gone fifty yards when Morgrim passed close by a massive old oak, a thick-girthed limb of which jutted into their path. The horse ducked beneath the bough. The branch caught Eudoric across the breastplate, flipped him backwards over the can-tie of his saddle, and swept him to earth with a clatter.
     
                  Half stunned, he saw the dragon trot closer and closer—and then lumber past him, almost within touching distance, to disappear on the trail of the fleeing horse. The next that Eudoric knew, Jillo was bending over him, crying:
     
                  "Wellaway, my poor heroic master! Be any bones broken, sir?"
     
                  "All of them, methinks," groaned Eudoric. "What's befallen Morgrim?"
     
                  "That I know not. And look at this dreadful dent in your beauteous cuirass!"
     
                  "Help me out of the thing. The dent pokes most sorely into my ribs. The misadventures I suffer for my dear Lusina!"
     
                  "We must get your breastplate to a smith, to have it hammered out and filed smooth."
     
                  "Fiends take the smiths! They'd charge half the cost of a new one. I 'll fix it myself, if I can find a flat rock to set it on and a big stone wherewith to pound it."
     
                  "Well, sir," said Jillo, "ye were always a good man ui" your hands. But the mar will show, and that were not suitable for one of your quality."
     
                  "Thou mayst take my quality and stuff it!" cried Eudoric. "Canst speak of nought else? Help me up, pray." He got slowly to his feet, wincing, and limped a few steps.
     
                  "At least," he said, "nought seems fractured. But I misdoubt I can walk back to Liptai."
     
                  "Oh, sir, that were not to be thought of! Me, allow you to wend afoot whilst I ride? Fiends take the thought!" Jillo unhitched the palfrey from the tree to which he had tethered it and led it to Eudoric, who said:
     
                  "I accept your courtesy, good Jillo, only because I must. To plod the distance afoot were but a condign punishment for bungling my charge. Give me a boost, will you?" Eudoric grunted as Jillo helped him into the saddle.
     
                  "Tell me, sir," said Jillo, "why did the beast ramp on past you without stopping to devour you as ye lay helpless? Was't that Morgrim promised a more bounteous repast? Or that the monster feared your plate would give him a disorder of the bowels?"
     
                  "Meseems 'twas neither. Marked you how gray and milky appeared its eyes? According to Doctor Baldonius' book, dragons shed their skins betimes, like serpents. This one neared the time of its change of skin, wherefore the skin that covers its eyeballs had become opaque and thickened, like glass of inferior quality. Therefore it could not