protest and accepted it.
“‘One sighting shot, sire?” he asked, and drew the heavy bow. Nothing whatever could have forced him to put an
arrow nearer the gold than the farthest of the king’s; to avoid doing so-without transparently missing the target
completely-would take skill, since one golden arrow stood a bare three inches from the edge of the target.
His first arrow grazed the edge of the butt and was an inch low; his second plunged into the padding exactly half
way between the king’s wildest arrow and the target’s rim. Then, so rapidly that it seemed as though there must be at
least two arrows in the air at once, arrow crashed on arrow; wood snapping as iron bead struck feathered shaft. At
end, the rent in the fabric through which all those arrows had torn their way could have been covered by half of one
of Rhoann’s hands.
“I lose, sire,” Tedric said, stiffly” returning bow and empty quiver. “My score is zero.”
Phagon, knowing himself in the wrong but unable to bring himself to apologize, did what he considered the
next-best thing. “I used to shoot like that,” he complained. “Knowst how lost I my skill” Tedric? ‘Tis not my age,
surely?”
“‘Tis not my place to say, sire.” Then, with more loyalty than sense= “And I split to the teeth any who dare so insult
the Throne.”
“What!” the monarch roared. “By my. . . .”
“Hold, father!” Rhoann snapped. “A king you-act itl” Hard blue eyes glared steadily into unyielding eyes of green.
Neither the thoroughly angry king nor the equally angry princess would give an inch. She broke the short” bitter
silence.
“Say naught, Tedric-he is much too fain to boil in oil or flay alive any who tell him unpleasantnesses, however true.
But me, father, you boil not, nor flay, nor seek to punish otherwise, or I split this kingdom asunder like a melon.
‘Tis time-yea, long past time-that someone told you the unadorned truth. Hence, my rascally but well-loved parent,
here ’tis. Hast lolled too long on too many too soft cushions, hast emptied too many pots and tankards and flagons,
has bedded too many wenches, to be of much use in armor or with any style of weapon in the passes of the High
Umpasseurs.”
The flabbergasted and rapidly-deflating king tried to think of some answer to this devastating blast, but couldn’t. He
appealed to Tedric. “Wouldst have said such? Surely not!”
“Not I, sire!” Tedric assured him, quite truthfully. “And even if true, ’tis a thing to remedy itself. Before we reach
the Marches wilt regain arm and eye.”
“Perhaps,” the girl put in, her tone still distinctly on the acid side. “If he matches you, Tedric, in lolling and wining
and wenching, yes. Otherwise, no. How much wine do you drink, each day?”
“One cup, usually-sometimes-at supper.” “On the march? Think carefully, friend.”
“Nay-I meant in town. In the field, none, of course.” – “Seest, father?”
“What thinkst me, vixen, a spineless cuddlepet? From this minute ’til return here I match your paragon young blade
loll for loll, cup for cup, wench for wench. Ist what you’ve been niggling at me to say?”
“Aye, father and king, exactly-for as you say, you do.” She hugged him so fervently as almost to lift him off the
ground, kissing him twice, and hurried away.
“A thing I would like to talk to you about, sire,” Tedric said quickly, before the king could bring up any of the
matters just past. “Armor. There was enough of the godmetal to equip three men fully, and headnecks for their
horses. You, sire, and me, and Sciro of your Guard. Break precedent, sire, I beg, and wear me this armor of proof
instead of the gold; for what we face promises to be worse than anything you or I have yet seen.”
“I fear me ’tis true, but ’tis impossible, nonetheless. Lomarr’s king wears gold. He fights in gold; at need he dies in
gold.”
And that was, Tedric knew, very definitely that. It was senseless, it was idiotic, but it was absolutely true. No king
of Lomarr could possibly break that particular precedent. To appear in that spectacularly conspicuous fashion, one
-flashing golden figure in a sea of dull iron-grey, was part of the king’s job. The fact that his father and his
grandfather and so on for six generations back had died in golden armor could not sway him, any more Than it
could have swayed Tedric himself in similar case. But there might be a way out.
“But need it be solid gold” sire? Wouldst not an overlay of gold suffice?”
“Yea, Lord Tedric, and ‘wwould be a welcome thing indeed. I yearn not, nor did my father nor his father, to pit gold
‘gainst hard-swung axe; e’en less to hide behind ten ranks of iron while others fight. But simply ’tis not possible. If
the gold be thick enough for the rivers to hold, ’tis too heavy to lift. If thin enough to be possible of wearing” the
gold flies off in sheets at first blow and the fraud is revealed. Hast ideas? I listen.”
“I know not, sire. . . .” Tedric thought for minutes. “I have seen gold hammered into thin sheets . . . but not thin
enough . . . but it might be possible to hammer it thin enough to be overlaid on the god-metal with pitch or gum.
Wouldst wear it so, sire?”
“Aye, my Tedric, and gladly: just so the overlay comes not off by hands breadths under blow of sword or axe.”
“Handsbreaths? Nay. Scratches and mars” of course, easily to be overlaid again ere next day’s dawn. But hands
breadths? Nay” sire.”
“In that case, try; and may Great Llosir guide your hand.”
Tedric went forthwith to the castle and got a chunk of raw, massy gold. He took it to his shop and tried to work it
into the thin” smooth film he could visualize so clearly.
And tried-and tried-and tried. And failed-and failed-and failed.
He was still trying-and still failing-three weeks later. Time was running short; the hours that bad formerly dragged
like days now flew like minutes. His crew had done their futile best to help; Bendon, his foreman, was still standing
by. The king was looking on and offering advice. So were Rhoann and Trycie. Sciro and Schillan and other more or
less notable persons were also trying to be of use.
Tedric, strained and tense, was pounding carefully at a sheet of his latest production. It was a pitiful thing lumpy in
spots, ragged and rough, with holes where hammer had met anvil through its substance. The smith’s left hand
twitched at precisely the wrong instant, just as the hammer struck. The flimsy sheet fell into three ragged pieces.
Completely frustrated, Tedric leaped backward, swore fulminantly, and hurled the hammer with all his strength
toward the nearest wall. And in that instant there appeared, in the now familiar cage-like structure of shimmering,
interlaced bars, the form of flesh that was Llosir the god. High in the air directly over the forge the apparition
hung, motionless and silent, and stared.
Everyone except Tedric gave homage to the god, but he merely switched from the viciously corrosive Devossian
words he had been using to more parliamentary Lomarrian.
“Ist possible, Lord Sir, for any human being to do anything with this foul, slimy, salvy, perverse, treacherous” and
generally-be-damned stuff?”
“It is. Definitely. Not only possible” but fairly easy and fairly simple, if the proper tools, apparatus, and techniques
are employed.” Llosir’s bell-toned-organ pseudo voice replied. “Ordinarily, in your lifetime, you would come to
know nothing of gold leaf-although really thin gold leaf is not required here-nor of gold beater’s skins and
membranes and how to use them” nor of the adhesives to be employed and the techniques of employing them. The
necessary tools and materials are, or can very shortly be made, available to you; you can now absorb quite readily
the required information and knowledge.
“For this business of beating out gold leaf, your hammer and anvil are both completely wrong. Listen carefully and
remember. For the first, preliminary thinning down, you take. . . .
Lomarr’s army set out at dawn. First the wide-ranging scouts: lean, hard, fine-trained runners, stripped to clouts and
moccasins and carrying only a light bow and a few arrows apiece. Then the hunters. They, too, scattered widely and
went practically naked: but bore the hundred pound bows and the savagely-tearing arrows of their trade.
Then the Heavy Horse, comparatively few in number” but of the old blood all, led by Tedric and Sciro and
surrounding glittering Phagon and his standard-bearers. It took a lot of horse to carry a full-armored knight of the
Old Blood, but the horse-farmers of the Middle Marches bred for size and strength and stamina.
Next came century after century of light horse mounted swordsmen and spearmen and javelineers-followed by