Jim knew only too well why Chandos had said nothing to him about the tactics and strategies of medieval war-while speaking at length with Brian.

It was because Chandos, as an experienced leader of men under fighting conditions, had seen within seconds of meeting Jim that he was no potential leader in that area, and never would be. Brian, on the other hand, was exactly the opposite.

Jim not only did not have the aptitude for combat leadership-he had no real wish to have it. When fighting was unavoidable, he could do it-once he got into it. But he had no great love for using spear, sword, battle-ax, or any other weapon on his fellow human beings; and nothing was likely to make him develop it.

Brian, on the other hand, in spite of his romanticism about the whole realm of knighthood-he was almost a sort of “display” knight in that regard-was fourteenth-century born and bred; and owned the hardheaded pragmatism of those times. He, not Jim, was ready to see the advantages in knowing as much as possible about warfare as it was then practiced.

In contrast to Jim, he not did not dislike fighting-Brian lived for it. A strange mixture of the best of friends if he was on your side of the barricade, and the most devastating of enemies on the other side.

Curiously, this was not because he enjoyed the wounding or killing of other men, but because he lived to test himself to his utmost; and a full-scale battle was the best stage on which that test could be made. One in which he could attempt to display what he considered the best of knightly conduct-preferably to win, but with winning or losing being a matter of secondary consideration, in the end being beside the point.

There could be even one more thorn in the unconsidered explanation for Chandos’s preference Jim had been about to make to Brian; and which, if he was not careful, could wound his friend deeply. Brian had worked hard, through all their available time together, to turn Jim into a competent-hopefully, a potent-fighter with sword, spear, and all other knightly weapons.

For Brian to learn after all this time that his efforts with Jim had been wasted on inferior metal would disappoint him greatly. But it would strike him much harder that John Chandos-who would certainly know correctly about such things-had understood this at a glance. It would be heartbreaking to Brian after all his patient work.

For Brian, there were only his inferiors, whom he treated with an instinctive kindness-though somewhat roughly, in the manner of the times in which he lived-and his peers, who he would someday meet and beat-or be beaten by- and, finally, his undeniable superiors.

The short list of those last included those like John Chandos, and Jim himself- whom Brian held in a sort of awe in one area, as a superior untouchable even by Chandos himself. That area was magic; and in that Jim was beyond understanding, a possessor of vast strange knowledge from someplace unknown; but nonetheless, a fellow-spirit in that he clearly felt about the essence of knighthood as Brian himself did.

But-Jim caught his thoughts up sharply-this was not finding an answer to the question that had clearly been in Brian’s mind the moment Jim let slip the information Chandos had chosen not to talk to him, though he had talked to Brian. Jim’s mind scrambled. So far, in the weapon practice sessions, the excuse that he was from someplace else and had not had the upbringing Brian considered automatic and normal for anyone who was considered good birth and breeding, had served to explain his ineptness. Maybe it would serve again, now.

“Well, you know,” he said to Brian, in a lowered voice, “I’m not an Englishman.”

Brian responded immediately; and with great sympathy.

“Never mind it, James!” he said stoutly. “Not your fault, dammit. Put it from your thoughts. Would you like me to tell you now what other matters would concern me if our Knights were not of Arthur’s table?”

“Very much,” said Jim.

Brian looked ahead toward the black-and-white horizon. Once more he said nothing, but this time for a much shorter moment; and when he did speak, it was in a decided tone of voice.

“If our knights were not the Knights they are,” he said, “I must say I would mislike much about this battle that is coming now. For example, were we all of us no more than ordinary gentlemen, our enemies could be thought of as dangerously outnumbering us.”

“Hmm?” said Jim. “You do think, then, that for the Knights winning won’t be easy?”

“I think that much and more, James. Moreover, a good number of those facing us may also have war experience; at least a good number, or they would not have chosen to win their livelihood by the sword, in coils such as this. They must know as well as we do the quality of those they oppose here, small in numbers as we are. Remains, though, that it bodes ill for any one of them who finds himself face-to-face with one of ours, who has fought in Arthur’s name.”

“But our Originals are old.”

“Bah!” Brian’s dragon head turned to stare Jim in the eye. “A few gray hairs or a bald pate do not take away the skill of one born to his weapons and still in exercise, James! Still less do they take the heart with which that one fights. Perhaps a little swiftness of arm and hand may be lost-but that is with ordinary men; and those of whom we talk are not ordinary. Did not even Modred, when Arthur thrust him through with a spear, push his body up the shaft piercing him, so that he might reach and strike his father? You cannot think of such only in the same terms as ordinary rievers and hedge-knights!”

“For example-I mean, what are they?”

“Well, there is the matter of the equipment of Cumberland’s men. All of it. Just as you have your Gorp and I have this glorious Blanchard, most of those we fight must be better horsed than our valiant Knights. You perhaps remarked, the last time we journeyed through Lyonesse and I had a spear-running with the Descendant of Sir Dinedan-and likewise when we both crossed spears with the Bright Knight-that not only were our horses heavier and our leather stouter, but our lances were stiffer and stronger.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” said Jim, half honestly.

“You must mind such things, James, as I have told you. Watch everything about the man you fight-however, I except that tall white steed of Pellinore’s from the mass of such among our Originals. But from what I have seen so far he is the only one of such qualities. I think, also, the steel we strike with may not blunt so quickly on enemy armor, nor our own armor, reinforced with steel plates, yield as does a simple chain mail shirt to a sword edge. But more than anything else I concern myself with the matter of Pellinore being chosen leader.”

“Pellinore?” said Jim. “He must be the strongest man in Lyonesse!”

“I doubt it not. But more is required of a war-leader than strength alone. Chandos spoke strongly on this, and gave me a number of shrewd examples of how the lack of this or that other necessary part had caused the defeat and death of good men- not only gentlemen but good men of the common sort. Lacking it, they fell into disaster. On the other hand, said he, a great leader, having those parts, can so enflame and inspire those with him that they who have such talents not, may find them.”

“I can believe it,” said Jim; and, allowing for a certain amount of natural exaggeration on Brian’s part-for after all, there were human limits-he meant what he said. “But Pellinore is the best we have. Unless you’re thinking of someone like Gawain, who was one of the Knights Arthur took special pride in-“

“Not Sir Gawain. Noble Knight that he may be, I felt when we met with him none of the fire Sir John spoke of. No, we must make do with what we have; and be thankful for Pellinore, if nothing less. But I have a more immediate cause for misliking the situation.”

“Did you not remark, when we were flying over them, how our enemy had arranged his forces?”

“I saw they were in two groups-battles, I mean-one behind the other.”

“And did you notice the difference between the first battle and the second?”

“Brian,” said Jim, “I’m afraid I didn’t look at them that closely.”

“It surprises me, too,” said Jim. “But why, outside the number of them, is it important?”

“Why, James!” Brian’s voice escaped from caution and boomed out at full dragon volume-luckily there was nothing now but forest on any side of them as far as they could see. “-it is customary to put the footmen with their heavy spears in front of all, to stop the horses, if not the mounted knights riding them, and so to break the charge of the enemy horsemen! Not content with that, something else you may well have observed, however, is that he has doubled his strength of mounted men at the ends of his two wings.”

Jim hadn’t.

“Better keep your voice down, Brian,” he said. “I don’t imagine there’s anyone below to hear us; but we’re pretty close to the ground, now.”

“But it is all so simple! No, it is I who must pray forgiveness. You told me you had not had the advantage of having talked with Sir John-and I am full of his wisdom on such things. It is a trap, built to deal with paladins such as those of Arthur’s Table. Our Knights will attack-for the Originals will surely insist on being the van of our forces. They will encounter the middle of Cumberland’s line; and their charge will become a melee in which our Knights do mightily, but are no longer together, moving forward.”

“What else could happen?” Jim asked.

“Nothing else, given the gentlemen they are. But, see you, their charge will be broken and dispersed. Where they might have broken through to the spearmen all together-lesser men might have done that-when they clear all mounted men from their path, they will find themselves facing the ranked spears singly, or in small groups. The spearmen, therefore, bid fair to hold all together and delay them, while the two wings, heavy with more horsemen, fold about them, enclosing them finally in a circle of iron-and each of them will find himself fighting not only the enemy before him, but the enemy attacking his back at the same time!”

Jim sailed along over the treetops, now understanding very clearly what Brian had been trying to tell him.

“You’re right, Brian,” he said at last. “It’s not good.” His words sounded uncomfortably weak in his own ears. “But I don’t know what we can do about it. As you said, the Originals will be determined to do things their own way.”

“Pellinore must be told, however!” said Brian. “If he can understand the danger, he may know of or find some way around that.”

“You don’t really believe that, though, Brian?”

The dragon head beside him shook in what was the first purely human gesture of negation it had shown so far.

“No, James,” said Brian. “I do not. That was why I was counting on you to be the one to tell him what you had seen with your own eyes and how it matched with what Sir John had taught you. You are a Baron and a powerful magickian. I am only a country knight from the land above who accompanies you, one he had never heard up until he met us both. But you-“

“Hell!” said Jim. “Let me think about that!”

But they were once more almost to that end of the Empty Plain occupied by the Lyonesse forces. Jim’s mind raced as they angled down for a landing.

He could talk to the QB beforehand and get an opinion, perhaps, on how to approach Pellinore with what Brian had seen forecast in the arrangement of their enemies’ battle array. Or would the QB, as a very old friend of Pellinore, feel it was disloyal to suggest ways to manipulate the King?

There ought to be some way to approach the massive King. Jim, and Brian beside him, landed with heavy thumps on the grass some distance from the groups of Lyonesse fighters. Jim changed them immediately back into their human forms, as the QB, with Dafydd and King David, approached somewhat hastily. Also along were a few of the Drowned Land men who had been acting as scouts.

The latter two dismissed the scouts and greeted Jim and Brian.

“What news?” asked David eagerly.

“We have seen those who come against us, Sire,” said Brian. “They are drawn up in battle array; but are making no move to attack, though the day is moving on.”

“They wait for the sun to be more at their backs and in the eyes of those of us who meet them; our woodsmen have overheard them say it. It seems the sun, like all else, is strange here. It may lower toward setting, then sit only a little above the horizon for some time before deciding to leave entirely. Dafydd is sure-are you not, Dafydd-that they will not risk entering the woods in the dark, so they will either attack soon, or wait for attack where they are.”

“They will not wait longer,” said Dafydd.

“Indeed, it would be foolish of them to do so,” said the QB.

“How about our Knights and other fighters?” asked Jim. “Have all of them come, and gotten ready?”

“No,” said Dafydd, with what for him was unusual dryness. “Talking.”

“Anyway,” he said, “where’s King Pellinore now? Brian and I need to find him.”

“I do not know,” said Dafydd. “That is one of our problems if we have something to inform him of-we lack knowing of his whereabouts.”