Doctor Mirabilis by James Blish Page B

the afternoon sleep,
     not daring to hurry while he was still anywhere in the valley, but thereafter driving the horse at a merciless gallop until
     it began to sob and heave.
    In a small, forest-bordered meadow, which did not look tended enough to belong to any farm, he dismounted and tethered the
     horse after watering it from a tiny stream, little more than a runnel. Here he risked a fitful nap, standing with his back
     against a tree and with his hand on his sword. He had intended no more than an hour, but somehow he fell asleep even in this
     position and dreamed that a ring of bowmen with the heads of foxes had tied him there and were stuffing eleven pounds three
     and a half shillings Fleming into his mouth one red-hot penny at a time.
    He awoke with a start which nearly toppled him – for his knees, which had bent somewhat, ached horribly, and he was stiff
     throughout his body with cold – to find the sun almost touching the hills to the south-west, and someone on horseback sitting
     above him hardly more than ten paces away.
    He had the sword only half out, with a creakingly ugly motion which would not have been fast enough to discourage a boy with
     a quarter-staff, when the fox-head dissolved back into the nullity of dream and he saw that, in fact, the rider was a girl.
     Furthermore she was smirking at him with an infuriating disrespect.
    ‘Well then,’ she said, ‘tha be well overtook, by Goddes bones. Art going to run a poor maid clean through the butter-milk?
     Tha’ll first needs be friendlier with thy girt feet, boy.’
    Roger ground his teeth in exasperation and forced his aching muscles to pull him into a more human stance. He looked about
     for John Blund and found him, munching brittle grass with his eyes half closed, which made him look at once maidenly and vacuous
     – an expression which, for some reason, infuriated Roger all the more. ‘
    ‘And who beest thou, lip-kin?’ he said, glaring up at the girl. She was, he saw now, probably about fifteen: a good, bouncing
     year for a peasant girl, though she did not talk quite like a serf’s daughter, despite her West Midlands dialect. The horse,
     a small sturdy cob, was not any serf’s draft animal either. Her hair was cut short – which was good sense for peasant girls
     looking to provide as few handholds for rapists as possible – but the stray curls of it that came out from under her black
     woollen wimple were little flames of dull gold. He felt his glare dimming a little, entirely against his intention.
    ‘Tha can call me Tibb, an I let thee,’ she said. ‘Tha’lt better clamber on thy bulgy-eyed dray there, afore some coney kicks
     tha in thy ribs. An tha’rt faring somewheres, at least I know the roads.’
    This sounded like the best advice, unpalatably thoughthe spoon was being proffered. He picked his way cautiously to John Blund and untied him from his stump.
    ‘Whither farest thou, then?’
    ‘Nowheres that that’d know, by the looks of the,’ she said, swinging her own horse around. ‘I’m to my uncle’s inn, with whey
     and buttermilk – didst think I was jesting? Well, certes I was then – from Northover parish. An tha past money, tha canst
     find lodging there; otherwise, tha’lt find it a cold night outside our very door.’
    ‘Thou dost not sound so cold in the heart,’ Roger said.
    ‘Softly there, boy. I’ve a needle in my girdle, shouldst tha need stitching.’ She looked back at him, still smiling. ‘The
     mast not draw before me; that tha’s shown every owlet in Rowan Wood already.’
    ‘I molest no one,’ Roger said stiffly, ‘tie childer nor animals.’
    ‘There’s a light oath,’ Tibb said. ‘Naytheless, ride closer then, and work the cement out of thy sword-elbow. I was fond to
     stop for thee, this is a bad hour; canst tha strike if we be beset?’
    ‘Fast enough,’ Roger said. ‘No man becomes a master by his wits alone.’
    This outrageous lie passed between his teeth before he was