“They have, good woman—gone far and fast,” Alain assured her.
“How . . . how far?” asked one of the men.
Alain turned to Geoffrey. “How far would you say, Sir Geoffrey?”
The villagers’ eyes widened at the “sir.”
“Into the next county, at least,” Geoffrey answered, “perhaps even the next duchy.” He turned to the villagers. “Have they given you cause to fear them?”
“Great cause, Sir Knight!” the woman exclaimed.
One of the men added. “They ate Albin Plowman!”
“We must find his bones, that we may bury them.” The woman’s eyes filled with tears.
Alain’s voice dropped to a gentle tone. “Did you know him well?”
“We all did,” she sighed. “He was a good neighbor. Alas for his babes, for his wife and mother!”
“Alas indeed,” Alain commiserated. “Who else did they harm?”
“None, for they crowded around his body and fought over it,” another man said, hard-faced. “We fled while they quarreled.”
“Wisely done,” Alain said. “So he gave his life for you all, then.”
“Well, not quite,” the woman admitted. “ ‘We must make friends with them,’ quoth he, ‘so that they will be loath to hurt us.’ ”
“We called to him to come back to the safety of the house,” a third man said miserably, “but he went on forward, calling to them that we were their friends and would aid them in gaining whatever they wished.”
“ ‘We want meat,’ they cried, ‘red meat!’” said the old woman, voice thick with tears. “Then they all leaped upon him. One scream did he make, then was silent, and all we saw was the churning, thrashing heap of monsters, screaming and clawing at one another for pride of place at their grisly feast.”
“Then we fled.” The first man looked surly. “Could any blame us?”
“Not I,” Alain assured them.
“Nor I.” Geoffrey’s face was grim. “I could blame them, though, and wish them just as vile an end as they gave your friend Albin.”
“Alas! What could give them that?” the woman lamented.
“Will—will the hobyahs come back, think you?” a second woman asked.
“We cannot be sure,” Alain told her, “but our wizard here. . .” He glanced at Gregory and found him gone. “Where is Gregory?”
“Yon.” Geoffrey jerked his head toward a nearby woodlot.
Alain turned and saw the blue-robed young man standing with his hands lifted high, outspread toward the trees. The prince couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw several small gray mounds slithering out between the trunks and moving toward one another as they came.
Alain turned back to the villagers. “Our wizard has already set about making a guardian for you, a fierce-looking creature with a huge appetite for hobyahs.”
“A wizard!” The woman shied away, stepping backward toward her friends—who looked ready to turn and run themselves. “A wizard making a monster?”
“He is a witch-moss crafter,” Alain explained, “and will make sure the creature is quite gentle to people, but will turn into a ravening appetite on legs when it sees a hobyah.”
“I . . . I can only thank you, gentlemen and knights,” the woman said hesitantly, “but we dare not come back to our homes with such a thing prowling the parish.”
“The guardian will not hurt you.” Alain glanced over his shoulder and saw that the mound of witch-moss had grown larger than Gregory, and was beginning to take on the form of something with at least four legs and a head—a very wide head. “Mind you, it will look like a thing out of nightmare, but to you and your children it will be mild as a lamb.”
“But . . . but what will it do when it can find no hobyahs to eat?” the woman asked, staring at Gregory and the living sculpture whose shape was rapidly becoming more and more definite, and more and more horrible.
“It will fall asleep,” Alain answered, “like a squirrel in winter.”
“What . . . what will wake it?” asked one of the men, staring fearfully as the creature began to make a grating noise that gradually turned into a basso purring.
“Only the scent of more hobyahs,” Alain assured it. He turned to look himself, and smiled. “See! Yonder it comes, and its crafter with it.”
The tailor-made monster had the body of a giant leopard, but its head was twice as wide as its shoulders, shaped like two soup bowls set rim to rim—and where the rims met was a mouth that stretched all the way across. Its ears were each half the size of its head, round and cupped—but if they were the cups, its eyes were the saucers, with vertical pupils that could probably see very clearly by nothing more than starlight. Its nose was an egg half as wide as its mouth with huge nostrils.
The creature grinned, displaying a mouthful of sawteeth.
The villagers huddled away from it in terror—until Gregory reached up to scratch. The creature tilted its head upward so that his fingers could rub under its chin, and the purring became as loud as a cement mixer in love.
The people froze, staring in surprise.
Then the creature lay down and laid its chin on its paws, so that Gregory could scratch behind its ears. It closed its eyes in sheer pleasure.
“Perhaps it is nothing to fear after all,” said the woman.
“Kitty!” cried three treble voices, and small feet pounded past the villagers in a tattoo as rapid as a drumroll. The villagers cried out in alarm and made a frantic dive for the children, but they reached Gregory and his creature first, where one proceeded to clamber up astride its back, another began to stroke its furry sides, and the third began to scratch at the corner of its jaw.
“Behind its ears,” Gregory told the boy on its back. “It likes that almost as much as beneath its jaw.”
The creature tilted its head up so that the child on the ground could rub its chin, or what passed for one. The boy on its back began to rub behind its ears as though it were a washboard, and he doing the laundry.
Gregory stepped away, smiling at his handiwork, then turned to the villagers. “Here is your guardian—your very own hobyah-hunter.”
The adults stared, then crept forward step by step and, hesitantly, began to join the children in stroking their new pet.
“Are you sure it is safe for them?” Alain asked, frowning.
“Safer than a wall and a moat,” Gregory assured him, “but it will take them a while to believe that.”
They went on their way, the brothers eyeing the prince warily. Gregory’s thought sounded in Geoffrey’s mind: When did Alain become intelligent?
It must have been in him all along, Geoffrey answered,but never had occasion to show itself until now.
He has ever been a modest man—for a prince, Gregory admitted.
Self-effacing, almost, Geoffrey agreed. Now, though, when circumstances are desperate, he does not hesitate to offer his ideas.
Perhaps it is only that—knowing that his notions cannot make things worse, and may save us all. Gregory didn’t seem convinced, though.
Kill or cure, Geoffrey agreed, save or die—and he has always been a man of good judgment.
Now, it seems, judging when to speak and when to be silent. Gregory’s eyes widened in surprise. Why, it must have always been so! And the wisest course before, has been silence.
His judgment only errs in his opinion of himself. Geoffrey sighed. How shall we mend that, brother?
That, Gregory thought judiciously, I think we may leave to our sister.
Let us hope he does not surprise her as he does us. Geoffrey’s thought had a sardonic tinge. Then his eyes widened.You do not suppose she already knows, do you?