The Incorporated Knight Read Free Page B

thereafter."
     
                  Jillo sighed. "Not the knightly attitude, sir, if ye'll pardon my saying so."
     
                  "Say what you please, but I'll follow the course of what meseems were common sense. What we need is a brace of those heavy steel crossbows for sieges. At close range, they'll punch a hole in a breastplate as if it were a sheet of parchment."
     
                  "Such arbalests take too long to crank up," said Jillo. "By the time ye've readied your second shot, the battle's over."
     
                  "Oh, it would behoove us to shoot straight the first time; but better one shot that pierces the monster's scales than a score that bounce away. Howsomever, we lack these little hand catapults fell, and they make them not in this barbarous land."
     
    -
     
                  A few days later, while Eudoric still fretted over the lack of means to his goal, he heard a sudden sound, like a single thunderclap, from close at hand. Hastening out from Kasmar's Inn, Eudoric and Jillo found a crowd of Pathenians around the border guard's barracks.
     
                  In the drill yard, the guard was drawn up to watch a man demonstrate a weapon. Eudoric, whose few phrases of Pathenian were not up to conversation, asked among the crowd for someone who could speak Helladic. When he found one, he learned that the demonstrator was a Pantorozian. The man was a stocky, dish-faced, snub-nosed fellow in a bulbous fur hat, a jacket of coarse undyed wool, and baggy trousers tucked into soft boots.
     
                  "He says the device was invented by the Sericans," said the villager. "They live half a world away, beyond the Pantorozian deserts. He puts some powder into that thing, touches a flame to it, and boom! It spits a ball of lead through the target as neatly as ye please."
     
                  The Pantorozian demonstrated again, pouring black powder from the small end of a horn down his brass barrel. He placed a wad of rag over the mouth of the tube, then a leaden ball, and pushed both ball and wad down the tube with a rod. He poured a pinch of powder into a hole in the upper side of the tube near its rear or closed end.
     
                  Then the Pantorozian set a forked rest in the ground before him, rested the barrel in the fork, and took a small torch that a guardsman handed him. He pressed the wooden stock of the device against his shoulder, sighted along the tube, and with his free hand touched the torch to the touch hole. Ffft, bang! A cloud of smoke, and another hole appeared in the target.
     
                  The Pantorozian spoke with the captain of the guard, but they were too far for Eudoric to hear, even if he could have understood. After a while, the Pantorozian picked up his tube and rest, slung his bag of powder over his shoulder, and walked with downcast air to a cart that was hitched to a shade tree.
     
                  Eudoric approached the man as he was climbing into his cart. "God den, fair sir!" began Eudoric, but the Pantorozian spread his hands with a smile of incomprehension.
     
                  "Kasmar!" cried Eudoric, sighting the innkeeper in the crowd. "Wilt have the goodness to interpret for me and this fellow?"
     
                  "He says," said Kasmar, "that he started out with a wainload of these devices and hath sold all but one. He hoped to dispose of his last one in Liptai, but our gallant Captain Boriswaf will have nought to do therewith."
     
                  "Why?" said Eudoric. "Meseems 'twere a fell weapon in practiced hands."
     
                  "That is the trouble, quoth Vlek. Boriswaf says that, should so fiendish a weapon come into use, 'twill utterly extinguish the noble art of war, for all men will cast away their weapons and refuse to fight, in lieu of facing this devilish device. Then what