The Chick Is In The Mail

'Henry. Henry Carver.'

'An' I'm Flora McTavish. I think you an' me could be guid friends.' She turned and leaned her body forward away from me. 'For a start, would you grab my cuirass?'

'I beg your pardon?'

She pointed to a sort of leather breastplate sitting on the ground a few feet in front of her. 'My cuirass. I canna quite reach it from here. Aye, and my greaves and cuish sitting next to it, if you wouldn't mind. It's time I got my things together and went over to the competitors' area.'

The bits and pieces she asked for weighed a ton, and I wished that the designers of Vesta's local gravity control had cut a few corners. Flora took the armor from me one-handed and with no sign of effort. 'Will ye be seeing Helga an' your friend, then?'

'I'm on my way there now.'

'Then mebbe ye can give her this, as my tribute to a great competitor.' She reached into her generous cleavage and pulled out a silver flask. 'Pure malt whiskey, thirty-five years old an' wi' a taste to make a dead man dance.'

I was more than happy to have a reason to escape. The flask went into my pocket and I was away. Flora called something about getting together later, but I paid little attention. I was looking ahead, seeking Helga's colors in among hundreds of others.

I didn't see them. What I did see was Waldo, sitting simpering outside one of the tents.

'Where's Helga?' I said as I came up to him.

He nodded toward the flap. 'Inside. She's putting her armor on-and she promised that after the jousting I can help her to take it off.'

'This is from one of her friends.' I held out the flask of whiskey. 'I'll just give it to her.'

Waldo was having none of that. 'I'll give it to her. You wait here.'

He tapped on the cloth flap of the tent, waited about five milliseconds, and disappeared inside. I heard an exclamation, a giggle, and some whispering. About a minute later Waldo emerged.

'She says she'll have a drop now, and share any that's left with us after the jousting. She asked us to go now and make sure her horse is saddled and ready.'

I couldn't tell if a horse saddle was put on backwards or perhaps even upside down, while Waldo makes me appear as an equestrian expert. But apparently Helga's word was law. We headed off together toward the stables.

'She asked who gave you the whiskey,' Waldo said when we were halfway there. 'But I couldn't tell her.'

'I should have gone into the tent. I could have told her who it came from.'

'Well, you never told me.'

'You never asked.'

'You still could have mentioned it.'

'I didn't see any reason to.' Rather than bickering indefinitely, I added, 'The whiskey came from a woman called Flora.'

'Never heard of her.' Waldo was sulking.

'She doesn't use that name as a competitor. She fights as the Iron Maiden.'

Waldo stopped in midstep. 'Are you sure it came from the Iron Maiden?'

'Positive. She handed the flask to me herself.'

'But the Iron Maiden is in second place to Helga. Didn't you see the scoreboard? They're very close, and that means they'll meet as opponents in the jousting.'

We stared at each other for a fraction of a second, then set off for Helga's tent at a run.

I arrived four steps ahead of Waldo, barged in without asking, and was relieved to see the giant figure of Helga sitting over by the far wall. She leaned against a tent pole, and her armor was spread on the floor in front of her.

'It's all right,' I said to Waldo as he rushed in. 'She's-'

Her eyes were closed. She had not moved.

Waldo howled. 'She's dead!'

'No.' I could see she was breathing. 'She's drugged.' I picked up the flask and shook it. Half empty. 'Come on, we have to wake her up.'

Waldo had subsided to the floor in his relief. 'No need for that. She can sleep it off.'

Sometimes I wonder which universe Waldo lives in. I glanced at my watch. 'In half an hour, Helga has to take part in the jousting. We have all our money on her to win.'

'What about the sword fight winnings?'

'Article Twelve: Should a competitor fail to appear at the allocated time, blah-blah-blah-unless Helga fights the Iron Maiden, we lose a fortune.'

'She can't fight. Look at her.'

Helga was snoring peacefully, her mouth open to reveal pearly and perfect teeth.

'She has to,' I said grimly. 'Come on.'

For the next five minutes we tried shouting, pinching, pouring cold water on her head, burning cloth under her nose. Not a twitch. After we tried and failed to lift her to her feet, so that we could walk her up and down the tent, I realized that Waldo was right. Helga couldn't fight.

We were doomed.

I paced up and down the tent myself. We had twenty minutes. Helga had to fight.

But Helga didn't have to win. All she had to do was appear. If she fought and lost, we would still have twenty percent of our winnings, the amount they refused to let us roll over into the next bet.

I turned to Waldo. 'Come on. We have to do this quickly.'

'Do what?'

'Get you into Helga's armor. You have to fight in her place.'

'What?!'

'You heard.' I handed him the helmet. 'You don't have to fight well. It's enough just to show up.'

'I can't pretend I'm Helga. I look nothing like her. For heaven's sake, Henry, I have a mustache.'

'You'll be inside her suit of armor, with a visor covering your face. There won't be an inch of you showing.'

'Then why don't you do it?'

'I'm not half her size. I'd rattle around inside her armor like a pea in a can. For you, though, it won't be a bad fit.'

'Henry, you've gone mad. I can't do it.' He folded his arms. 'I won't do it.'

Twenty minutes. Fortunes have been made in twenty minutes, empires lost, cities destroyed, whole nations doomed or saved.

I sat down opposite Waldo. After five years in law school and four times that as a practicing attorney, it was time to see how much I had learned of the gentle arts of persuasion.

I began, 'Think how grateful Helga will be…'

* * *

He didn't look bad, not bad at all.

Admittedly-I squinted into the sun-Waldo was close to two hundred meters away at the other end of the straightway, so that the finer details of the way he sat on the horse were probably lost to me. I hoped he had paid attention to my last cautionary words. 'Don't say a word to anyone, no matter who they are. After the jousting is done, ride this way. I'll take care of the horse, you go back inside the tent and take off the armor. If anyone comes in after that, you tell them Helga needed to sleep after a hard day.'

It might work. It could work. Waldo just had to ride the length of the field without falling off, then he would be back at the exhibit area where he had started. The competitors' tents were close by, and Helga's was near the front. He could ride the horse right up to it.

I hoped that he could see. Helga's armor had been made for her, half a head taller. Stretching up as high as he could, Waldo had been able to get one of his eyes level with a nose hole. He had complained about that quite a bit. On the other hand, what did he need to see? The horses had been trained well, and I knew from watching previous contestants that a straight path was the easiest one for the animal.

The Iron Maiden would start from close to where I stood. I wished I could see the expression on the face behind the visor. There had been no more of the 'fine sweet prince' talk, and my bet was that she was scowling and wondering where her plan to nobble Helga had failed.

The blue flag was slowly being raised. When it fluttered down, the two contestants would begin to ride toward each other, first at a canter and then at a full gallop.

There was one other detail that I preferred not to think about. Each rider was armed with a lance about twenty-five feet long. Even after watching some of the other jousters, I didn't know how the cumbersome thing was supposed to be supported. I finally lashed Waldo's weapon to the saddle in one place and tucked the rounded haft between his arm and breastplate. The chance that he would hit anything with it was negligible, but at least the point could not drop too far and convert the event to the pole vault.

The chance that the Iron Maiden would damage Waldo was another matter. I had downplayed the risk, telling him that no one in the jousting had been killed. I did not mention that there had been a couple of very violent dismounts. It would only send him off on another tirade of protest.

The blue flag was starting down. That made little difference, because Waldo's horse had decided to use its own best judgment on the matter and started to canter forward a few seconds earlier.

I heard a loud curse from inside the helmet of the Iron Maiden. She dug her heels into her own horse and it whinnied and jerked forward.

The crowd became silent, the only sound the thundering hooves. It did not take a connoisseur to detect a certain difference of styles between the two contestants. The Iron Maiden sat rock-steady on her horse and the tip of her lance moved as though it was fixed to a straight line parallel to the ground.