Chalmers growled, "The insane always insist they're sane."
Quixote nodded solemnly. "On that point, good sir, we are agreed. Now, you will please excuse me. I must attend to my morning devotions and ask God's grace in finding your lady." He walked past Chalmers and out to the edge of the camp. There he drew his sword and planted it point down on the ground. He knelt beside it, and became still.
"Right now, his case is stronger than yours," Shea said from behind Chalmers.
His boss jumped and turned. "I do wish you would refrain from making jokes at times like those." The senior psychologist tried to jam his hands into nonexistent pockets, and ended up crossing his arms. "Why don't you go talk to him, Harold? Present him with reality—don't coddle his delusions."
"Ah—" Shea grinned. "Not right now, thanks." He jerked a thumb in the direction of the kneeling knight. I don't really want to tell him he isn't a knight while he has his sword out. Besides, those giants yesterday might actually have been windmills all the time—" He looked at his partner and sighed. "But they didn't fight like windmills."
Once the sun came up, the weather, to Shea's regret, was a repeat of the previous day's. The scenery, however, was briefly more interesting when the two Spaniards and their quaintly garbed followers paraded through a tiny village. The village sported the usual chickens scurrying in and out of doorways; barefoot, dirty urchins running wild; and run-down whitewashed houses with red-tile roofs sagging precariously in places. Its smell was the usual smell of dirt and dust and poor sanitation. But the people, black-clad peasant men in wide-brimmed hats and black-skirted, broad-hipped peasant women with their babies in tow, were not at all what Harold Shea had expected. When the knight rode into town, they raced out of their houses, shouting, "Don Quixote! Señor Sir Knight!" They lined the streets, beaming at their armor-clad hero, nudging each other and saying, "Look, Rosa, is he not the handsomest knight in the world?" and "Ah, Miguel, are we not fortunate that Don Quixote is our protector?" Men and women pressed gifts and food on the knight and his squire—and when Quixote and Sancho Panza were unable to accept anymore, the peasants forced their largess on Chalmers and Shea.
Harold found himself in the possession of a massive loaf of bread still hot from the oven and a live, trussed chicken who eyed him with deep suspicion and clucked its fowl obscenities at him. Chalmers carried a smoked rump of something, several bunches of grapes, and a basket that proved to be filled to the top with fresh panecillos.
"That was not what it seemed to be at all," Chalmers noted as they left the village behind. "In reality, the villagers mocked Quixote, heaping scorn and trash on him. I dread to think what these foods they've shoved at us must truly be. Hog-slops, no doubt." His expression darkened. "Or worse."
"It looks good and smells good to me." Shea admired the loaf of bread he held, which was a deep golden brown, rolled in the shape of a sheaf of wheat, and still hot and aromatic. He could not feel so charitable toward the chicken.
"You've been pulled in by the mad knight's delusion." Chalmers scrutinized the things he carried with distaste, "None of this is edible."
Shea sighed. "Then what are we supposed to eat, Doc? I'm sure most of what Quixote is carrying he got from villages just like that last one."
The plump psychologist thought. "I'll develop a spell that will turn all this food into what it appears to be. Then we'll know what we're eating is safe."
Ahead of them, Don Quixote turned off the road, and began winding his way along a narrow track that led into the dusty hills. Chalmers put his arm out to stop Shea from following and watched the knight and his squire riding away. "I don't like the idea of wandering around in those hills," Reed Chalmers said under his breath. He looked at Shea, and raised one bushy, greying eyebrow. "In this time period, I suspect the hills of Spain harbor as many bandits as they do shepherds."
"I would think travelling with the greatest knight in the world should be some protection," Shea noted.
Sancho Panza looked back and realized Chalmers and Shea were stopped. Shea saw the fat squire rap on Quixote's armor until the knight reined in Rosinante and turned him around. Knight and squire conferred; then Panza trotted back to the main road.
"Good sirs, you must follow us now," the squire said. He sat straight in his saddle, face gleaming with sweat, fat palms gripped around the reins. He looked down at the two men standing on the dusty road, then glanced nervously toward the hills. "My master says your lady is ahead, held prisoner by your enemy, the evil enchanter. He says we must hurry, though, to catch the wizard unaware."
Shea nodded and started onto the side path, but Chalmers stopped him. "Nonsense, Harold—Quixote has no way of knowing where Florimel is. And I won't follow some delusional old man into bandit-infested hills on a wild goose chase."
Shea gritted his teeth. Chalmers could have chosen a better time to get stubborn. On the path, the knight waited as a boulder would wait—silent and impassive ... and immovable. Sancho Panza threw anxious glances behind him, and wrung his hands. Shadows lengthened across the parched, desolate land.
Silence stretched like the shadows, until Shea blurted out, "How does your master know Malambroso has Florimel there?"
Sancho looked flummoxed. "Why—by his oath, of course!" He stared as Shea, his expression suggesting Shea had lost his mind.
Harold shrugged and spread his arms in front of him, palms up.
"His oath," Sancho repeated, and when neither of the two men made any response, he sighed and said, "He swore he would help you find your lady, Señor Chalmero. He cannot do otherwise. That was his oath."
Chalmers opened his mouth to protest, but Shea cut him off. "Doc," he whispered urgently, "think of this as an opportunity to prove him wrong. If Florimel isn't there, this will give you a perfect opening to help him differentiate between his delusions and reality."
Chalmers' mouth snapped shut, and he eyed his colleague doubtfully. "I believe you're rationalizing, Harold," he said finally. "I believe you have fallen under the spell of Quixote's delusions, and vou are only saving that to manipulate me. However—" he took a deep breath and fixed Shea with a fishy stare, "it also happens that your suggestion is basically sound. Therefore, we shall follow the knight." He took off at a brisk pace, leaving Shea and Panza staring after him.
The squire turned to Harold Shea, and shook his head slowly. "Geraldo de Shea," he said, "please do not take offense-- but your master is very crazy."
Shea's mouth twitched into a grin he couldn't suppress. "Occupational hazard of psychologists," he agreed. "It happens to the best of them, sooner or later."
They rode until well after dark and set up a wretched, fireless campsite. Quixote insisted that a fire so near Malambroso's lair would alert the enchanter, who would then rain down curses upon them. Shea satisfied his hunger with some of the wonderful loaf of bread and a slab of the smoked meat Chalmers had carried all day, ignoring his partner's expressions of disgust and comments about the actual provenance of the food. He gladly handed over the chicken to Chalmers when his partner took a sudden interest in it. And then he went to sleep.
A searing flash of light, the crack of thunder, a sudden sub-bass "cluck" and screaming wind woke Shea from uncomfortable sleep. Dust scoured his face; clogged in his nose and mouth; gritted in his eyes. Another flash of lightning briefly silhouetted both a slight human form and a huge, twisted shape of feathered ghastliness against the craggy outline of the hill— then shuddered away into whale-belly blackness. The crash of thunder almost, but not quite, obliterated an other gargantuan "cluck." The earth bucked like a goaded horse and threw Shea from his bedroll, down the rock-strewn hill.