The courtiers bellowed with mirth.
Livid, the Count tried to scramble to his feet once more, giving Sola the posterior vista. She howled the louder. "I should… not…"
"Nay, do!" Gwen encouraged. "Thou dost owe him far more!"
Sola's eye gleamed.
The Count struggled to get his knees under him.
Sola stepped forward, her dainty foot swinging hard in an arc.
The Count slammed down on his face again, and the Great Hall rocked with hilarity.
"Husband, this is humor of the lowest," Gwen said, trying to contain her laughter.
"Not quite." Rod turned to Magnus. "Aren't there always dogs under the tables, at these feasts?"
And the dogs were there, sniffing at the Count and wrinkling their noses in disgust. One fastened its teeth in his pants, then let go with surprising haste, hacking and coughing as it backed away. The rest of the curs gave a snort, turned their backs, and scratched dust into his face. He was roaring, of course, but nobody could hear him any more.
"Nay, let me join this mirth," Gwen said, and, suddenly, a duplicate of the Count appeared, advancing toward Sola, but with his rum-blossom nose a bit more swollen, the malice in his face somehow become foolish. "Behold, milord!" Gwen called, and the Count turned about, on hands and knees, and looked up to see—himself.
Himself, as others saw him, waddling toward a pretty girl with a swollen paw outstretched, burbling, "Nay, my pretty, dost thou wish advancement?"
"Why, aye, my lord," the ghost-girl responded, and stepped aside. The doppelganger blundered on by, groping about, finally managing to stop, while Sola watched it, giggling. There was nothing threatening about it now—it turned back, still groping and loosely grinning, merely an old, ugly, coarse, and foolishly leering dotard.
But Count Foxcourt laughed, too. "Why, what old fool is that?"
"Who?" Cordelia cried indignantly. "Art thou so blind? Nay, then, here's thy mirror!"
And a full-length cheval glass appeared in front of Foxcourt, right next to his doppelganger. He could not help but see, and blanched, turning to stare at the co-walker, then back to stare at the mirror, glancing from one to the other as his visage slackened.
Then rage contorted his features. "Nay, thou shalt not mock me! All men of mine attack! Or wouldst thou yet be banished?"
The laughter died as though it had been cut off, and the ghosts stared, horrified. They all knew what awaited them.
"Now!" the Count howled, and they started forward, faces grim.
"Remember, all they can do is scare you," Rod said quickly to his children. "Everybody take a dozen or so, and keep them from being scary."
"Like this, dost thou mean?" Gregory chirped, and Sir Boreas's ghost slipped, skidded, and flopped floundering down.
"Yeah, that's the idea! Keep it up!"
Sir Dillindag hauled out his sword, and found it was a daisy. A man-at-arms chopped with his halberd, and it kept on going, spinning him around and around in a circle while he howled.
"Good idea," Rod grunted, and another halberdier went spinning, but this time rose up slowly, his halberd acting as a helicopter rotor, until he dropped it, screaming with fright.
Then Fess reared, his whinny a scream of fury as he whirled and struck out with his forehooves at advancing knights.
It was a mistake; this, they could understand. The knights descended on Fess shouting, englobing him in seconds, a melee of flailing swords and ghostly battle axes.
"Get away from that horse!" Rod shouted, humor forgotten in the threat to his old friend, and he waded through the knights, struggling to reach his companion.
He got there just in time to see Fess go rigid, knees locking; then his head dropped to swing between his fetlocks.
"A seizure," Rod groaned. "Too many enemies, too fast."
"Who is elf-shot?" cried a treble voice.
" 'Tis the horse!" answered a crackling baritone. "Yet who did fling the shot?"
" 'Twas none of us," answered a countertenor, and Rod drew back, staring in disbelief—for miniature ghosts were climbing out of chinks in the walls and coalescing out of thin air, translucent and colorful, and none more than a foot high.
"Mama," Cordelia gasped, "they are ghosts of elves!"
"Yet how can that be?" Gwen marveled. "Elves have no souls!"
" 'Tis he hath done it, mistress!" An elfin dame pointed at Magnus. "He doth call up memories of such of us as once did dwell here."
"Yet what can have slain thee?" Gregory wailed. "Elves are immortal!"
"Not when we're pierced by Cold Iron—and so cruel were this Count and his men that they did hunt us out to slay us!"
" 'Twas good sport," said Foxcourt, with a feral grin. "And it shall be again, if thou dost not take thee hence!"
"Indeed it shall," chuckled a pretty elfin damsel, "yet 'tis we who shall make sport of thee! Gossips, what use is a count?"
"Why, for numbering," answered a dozen voices. "Shall we tally all his bones?"
And a skeleton grinned in the dark, a foolish thing that busily ticked off each of its own pieces—and somehow bore Count Foxcourt's face.
"How dost thou dare!" the Count cried, livid with rage.
"Why, for that thou canst not slay us now, foul count," said a larger elf, grinning with malice, "for we are dead. Now ward thee from the wee folk!"
People were laughing again, and in the gloom, a ring of merry elfin faces was appearing—faces crowned with caps and bells, forms bedecked in motley. The fools and jesters had come to take their turns in the audience.
Foxcourt couldn't stay on his feet; the floor kept sliding out from under him. At one point, he was actually bouncing about on his head, while Sola laughed and laughed, one hand pressed to her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Behind him, his court were chopping frantically with swords that sprouted wings and chicken's heads and fluttered, squawking indignantly. Knights kept grabbing at armored pants that kept slipping down, and men-at-arms kept skidding on squashed fruit, as overripe pears and plums flew from the jesters and clowns all about them, and the manic laughter made the whole hall shake.
"What ails thee, milord?" a voice called. "Hast thou a bout of gout?"
"Good night, bad knight!" another cried. "When thou canst not prevail, thou must needs take to thy bed!"
"Yet he'll not prevail there, either," a third voice answered.
A fourth called, "In what cause hast thou fallen, Sir Borcas? Art thou down for the Count?"
"Why, he doth flounder!"
" 'Nay, a flounder's a fish!"
"And so is he—he's found his fin!"
"Hast thou downed the Count?" a new voice cried; and another answered,
"The Count is down!"
"Nay, Count up!"
"He doth not count at all!"
"Then he is of no importance?"
Pale with humiliation and rage, the Count was inching back within the ranks of his courtiers. But, "Nay," Gwen said, "how unseemly of thee, to depart ere the festival is done!" And the audience of fools seemed to curve around as the howling, cursing mob of courtiers faded, leaving the Count encircled by jeering grotesques, pointing and laughing.
"Be damned to you all!" he shouted, despairing, but the audience only laughed the louder and cried, "Brother, will he seek to step?"
"Nay, he'll step to stoop!"
"An he doth stoop, he'll never stand up straight again!"
"Why, gossip, he hath not been upstanding since he came to manhood!"
"Aye, nor hath been upright since his birth!"
"What, was he born?"
"Aye, borne in triumph! See his noble stance!"
Which, of course, was the cue for the floor to slip out from under him again.