The Iron Tempest by Ron Miller

Author:Ron Miller [Miller, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2000-05-02T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

In which Bradamant meets a Queen

and has some difficulty in crossing a bridge

Bradamant crossed through the Quercy region, skirting the town of Cahors since she wanted to avoid any of the delays that might come of passing through towns and villages and, fording the Garonne, entered Languedoc—marking the halfway point of her journey. She had left the hamlet of Millau miles behind when she saw a woman accompanied by three knights approaching her on the road ahead. Behind them followed a long procession of decorative pages and damsels. She moved to the side of the highway to allow this parade to pass.

The woman, she saw, was elegantly dressed. She was very pale with eyes like chips of ice. Her straw-blonde hair hung in heavy waves like a meringue around her waist. She rode a saffron horse whose pelt was perfectly matched: one hair of gold for every three tawny ones. Bradamant did not recognize the device on the shield that hung from the woman’s saddle. Neither did she recognize the three knights, who were as pale and cold-eyed as their mistress and whose armor was of a strange and foreign design. After these four had passed—without so much as a glance toward the warrior-woman who courteously waited beside the road—Bradamant stopped one of the pages, a boy about fifteen or sixteen years old, and asked who the woman was.

“My Lady’s an emissary from the Queen of the Lost Island—that some call Iceland.” he explained. “She was sent here to meet with Karl the Great. That shining shield she carries is a gift from the queen herself. It’s made of real gold!”

“Iceland?” repeated Bradamant. “I’ve heard of neither it nor its queen.”

“She wouldn’t be happy to hear that,” said the page. “But I’m not surprised. It’s a land that lies beyond the Arctic pole, hundreds of leagues by sea from the farthest point of Europe. The queen considers herself the most beautiful woman in the world—indeed, she thinks her beauty is such a gift from God Almighty that it constitutes a miracle in itself. Not finding any man in her own country whom she considers worthy of basking in her effulgence, she’s sent that shield as a prize for Charlemagne to award to the knight he considers in his opinion to be the paragon of all the world. This knight, then, would be the one most deserving of being the queen’s paramour. Not finding such a man in any other country, she’s convinced that only at the court of the great Karl will there be the mightiest and most courageous knight of all.”

“No doubt. Well, I wish her luck,” said Bradamant. “And who, by the way, are those three knights with her?”

“They’re all kings in their own right, from Sweden, Gothenburg and Norway, and peerless warriors they are, too.”

“If that’s true, why doesn’t the queen simply choose one of them?”

“They are suitors for her hand, and each has been her lover at one time or another. Just to see her

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