The Iron Tempest Read Online Free PDF Page A

granite sculpture—with eyes behind the tears that looked as cold and dispassionate as damp marbles—but she failed to place it. Since the man said nothing, Bradamant felt compelled to initiate the conversation. Not because she especially cared, but because it was her duty.
    “Good day, sir knight,” she said.
    “If it’s that for you, than I commend you for your luck,” he replied.
    “Thank you.”
    “It must have been hell for you out in the sun in that armor.”
    “It’s cool enough here, though.”
    “The dampness will play hell with your rheumatism, if you happen to be cursed by that disease, and it’ll be no good at all for your armor.”
    “It was nice to find the spring, I think.”
    “Oh?”
    The conversation seemed to be going nowhere.
    “Is there something troubling you, sir?” Bradamant asked, finally surrendering to the irresistable human compulsion to inquire into another’s misfortune.
    The knight looked at her for a long moment without replying. She thought that perhaps he had relapsed into his brown study and was prepared to gladly abandon him to his depression which, after all, was no real concern of hers. However, the knight must have found the tall, white figure with the gentle voice reassuring, for he finally answered her question.
    “I am, young sir,” he said—voicing a misconception about Bradamant’s sex he was neither the first nor the last to commit—, “Count Pinabel.” Bradamant listened quietly, the knight’s name meaning nothing to her. Neither did she correct his misconception—she was long used to being mistaken for a lad and had long since ceased to be annoyed. That there might be any humor inherent in such an error had always escaped her; perhaps Bradamant’s one great failing was that she did not possess a sense of humor—or, perhaps more fairly, whatever sense of humor she had been equipped with at birth had been as effectively and efficiently buried as a heretic in his lightless dungeon. She never understood the point of jokes, to the infinite annoyance of those who appreciated that life was not entirely—nor even desirably—a serious matter.
    “I was leading a troop of infantry,” the count continued, “and calvary to join Karl the Great, who was waiting for my help to bar Emir Marsilius’ descent from the mountains. With me was the love of my life, the light of my soul, the incomparable Gravelotte. To spare her the discomfort and ignominy of traveling in the company of my army we kept apart from the main force, keeping to a parallel path some miles distant. A trusted lieutenant easily oversaw the discipline of my men. We did this thoughtlessly; I can see that now. All we had in mind was privacy and simply never noticed how bad the countryside was that we had gotten into. We were among rugged crags and boulder-strewn tracks barely wide enough to allow us to ride in tandem. Eventually, I had to take the lead, allowing Gravelotte to fall behind. We were approaching Rodonna when we came upon the most terrible thing I have ever seen.” The man shuddered so prodigiously that his armor rattled like a tambourine.
    “What was it?”
    “It was a horse of astounding proportions, black as molten pitch, but winged like a condor—huge pinions, beating the air like sails luffing in a roaring gale. And if all that weren’t bad enough, it had the head and talons of an eagle. Reining in this monster was a knight clad in armor no less black than his hellish steed. As soon as he caught sight of us, he wheeled the creature around and dropped down upon us like a falcon plummeting onto a rabbit. I was thrown from my mount by a blow from one of the wings. Meanwhile, the knight swept my beloved Gravelotte from her palfrey and, before I was aware of what was happening, he and his fair prisoner were a hundred feet above my head. I could hear her piteous screaming, but what could I do? She was as helpless as a chick in the grasp of a hawk.”
    “Did you try to follow