The Official Guide to Rescuing and Maintaining Damsels in Distress Page 4

  "You…" Crispin seemed to be struggling with the wording, "… you... was it a book of witchcraft you were reading??" She sounded livid.

  "Why would it be a book of witchcraft?" There was now a pronouncedly insulted air about Helena.

  "Because…" Crispin's voice started out silky, "that is the only book that will possibly advise you to cure a burn WITH POISON IVY!!"

  "Oh …" Helena's expressive green eyes widened in shock. "Poison Ivy? Are you sure?"

  The knight stood up and held her arms theatrically away from her body. Her stomach, which was moderately swollen and red yesterday, was now raised in blazing angry bumps. "I'm sure." Eyeing the princess with malevolence she sat back down, bathing her stinging skin in the icy water.

  Helena bit her lip in dread. "Will the… does the water help for it?"

  The knight seemed to bite back a few retorts before she finally replied, her voice barely audible and barely under control. "I don't know. At least the cold is numbing it."

  The princess sat on the rocks for a moment, completely lost for words, and then cleared her throat. "Crispin?" The knight merely glared at her darkly. "Crispin, I'm terribly sorry. I was only trying to help you because… "

  "Stop - trying - to - help - me."

  "But Crispin, I was just trying to…"

  "If you help me any more I am probably going to die." Crispin's words were clipped and abrupt. "So far, Helena, I have been helped towards a dragon, into a burst of fire, down a hill, into a pond, into a bunch of poison ivy, and right back into the water. You have just turned me into someone who is now completely and utterly terrified of having any assistance whatsoever perpetrated towards me!"

  Helena looked like a child who'd been reprimanded. "But that's not fair, Crispin. Just yesterday you told me that my impulse to help is not a bad thing... "

  "Yesterday I was only burnt and wet."

  "My intentions were good!"

  "Your intentions are taking my skin off in patches!" Crispin ground her teeth angrily. "Tomorrow you can go back to your tower. Crown and all."

  "What? Now you don't want me anymore?" The princess was a picture of righteous indignation. With a scowl she folded her arms and stuck her nose in the air. The knight sighed, spotting an unfair defeat approaching in the distance.

  "Don't want you? Excuse me? Yesterday you were begging to go back and today you're complaining about rejection?"

  "Crispin, do you know what your problem is?"

  "Still you?"

  "No." Helena stood up and dusted her dress off imperiously. "Your problem is that you have no good intentions. And that, Crispin, is why you do not appreciate it in other people." She turned her back on the wet knight, ignoring the open mouth. "I am going back to the camp. To pack my bag. Enjoy the water."

  The small blonde was stuffing the last dress into her bag with vehemence when there was a sudden sneeze behind her.

  "I do have good intentions. Isn't it a good intention to let you go back?"

  Ferociously Helena pounded the ample material into the small opening with her fists. "No. It is not. You do not want to do it for me; you want to do it for yourself. So that you can be rid of me."

  "Well, yes, I can't argue with that." Sneeze. "But I had good intentions when it came to the dragon - I followed you up there to make sure you would be safe."

  "You were protecting an acquisition. My highly lauded and oft discussed crown." The princess suddenly stopped pummelling the dress, yanking it out fiercely instead. Then she sank her arm into the leather bag and scrabbled around, completely surprising Crispin when she withdrew her hand and lobbed the weighty golden crown at the knight.

  "There. Have it." Her hands were clasping the blanket which was draped around her shoulders, and Crispin could not react quickly enough to catch the offending object. It struck her chest with a hollow thump and dropped onto the ground, landing on one of her feet. Both women stared at the crown for a moment before the knight nonchalantly pulled her throbbing foot from under it.

  "I do not want it. Not like this." Pulling the blanket closer about her freezing shoulders she stepped over the crown and looked earnestly into wide green eyes. "Helena. A lot of what you have said is completely correct. I more often than not do have my own best interests at heart. But when I followed you to the dragon it was not one of those times."

  "Fine." Helena blinked and looked away, slightly taken aback by the candid sentiment in the knight's bright blue eyes. "But I am still going back."

  "Fine." Sneeze. "Your constant bickering is driving me to drink anyway." Turning around Crispin bent down and picked up the crown, hefting it in one hand pensively. "Heavy. And quite attractive, too." She handed it over to Helena, who promptly stuffed it back into her bag. "If your aim had been better you could have cracked my skull."

  "It will probably improve with practice." Helena picked up the dress which she had so unceremoniously dumped on the ground and tried to dust it off. At the sound of another sneeze she frowned and turned to study the knight, who was now sitting on a rock with the blanket wrapped around her. "Crispin, are you feeling poorly?"

  "If I say yes, will you drug me with nightshade?"

  "If you say yes I'll know you're feeling weak and be more optimistic about my ability to suffocate you when you're sleeping." Stuffing her dress back into her bag Helena muttered irritably under her breath. "Insufferable knights and their insufferable ..."

  "Excuse me, I …" sneeze, "missed the last part."

  "I wasn't. Addressing. You." The princess dropped the bag and composed herself. "Now look, Crispin. If you don't … Are you still wearing those wet things?" Striding over to the knight Helena pried the edges of the blanket from her cold fingers and opened it, her eyebrows almost touching her hairline. "No wonder you're not feeling … you dim-witted knight… take that off right now." When Crispin complied Helena draped her own warm dry blanket around the knight's shoulders and hung the damp one over a branch in the sun. Crispin kept a hand cupped over her mouth surreptitiously, as much to control her sneezing as to hide her silent laughter at the incessant and rather rude muttering coming from the sweet-faced young blonde.

  "If they just stop to consider, but noooo … son of a … I'd be better off with an inebriated Valkyrie suffering from a bout of … and then she behaves like a bloody bandy-legged badger with a propensity for … has the audacity to accuse me of… Crispin?"

  "Yes, Helena?"

  "How far is the closest town from us?"

  "About two days."

  "That settles it then." With a toss of her golden hair Helena started gathering their things. "We're going. I need to sleep in an actual bed. And you need to get some rest." She began to saddle Toby with the skill of a goatherd, and then looked at the bemused knight over her shoulder. "Up. Come now. You do this while I tie the bedrolls."

  "Is this the part where I start getting decent rest?"

  "Don't try to be clever with me."

  "I don't have to try."

  "Shut up!"

  Sneeze.

  All in all, Helena thought to herself, the next day could probably have been worse. How, she was not sure, not at all - but it helped to have a positive outlook on even the most miserable of miserable times. Or so those damned "Aid thyself" books said.

  "Perhaps if a griffin sat down on me by accident…"

  Sneeze. "Whad?"

  "Nothing. I was talking to myself."

  "Oh."

  The princess kneeled next to the fire, her brow furiously furrowed as she stirred the soup. Behind her the knight sat propped against a log, her cheeks a flaming red against the grey blankets which were wrapped around her. To Helena's extreme ire the dark woman had refused her offers of assistance graciously. It wasn't so much the refusal that irked her as the polite tone of voice in which it had been delivered - somehow Crispin could make the most courteous comment sound completely impolite. What she had said, exactly, was: Thank you for your concern, but I am actually not feeling too poorly. What sh
e had meant, exactly, was: Stay away, I'm too young to die.

  Muttering another inventive oath under her breath Helena gave a floating chunk of meat a stab that would have severely damaged it if it hadn't already been dead. Before glancing at the knight she took a moment to compose a positively horrific scowl, but the effort (as usual) was wasted on the woman - Crispin had fallen into a light sleep and was snoring delicately. Curling her top lip into a rather inelegant snarl Helena gave a frustrated growl and turned back to the soup, poking around for another victim to molest. It wouldn't have been so bad, she mused, if she had actually been looking forward to reaching the next town in a day or two just so that she could discard the knight and return to her tower with her crown intact. The truth was - and this most definitely needed to stay between her and the flickering flames she was staring into - that imagining herself back in her tower with her books did not exactly provide the thrill she had imagined it would. The knight was an infuriating character, refusing with a certain amused inattention to yield to any of her wiles, and yet… And yet what? Biting her bottom lip thoughtfully she stirred the soup. And yet… even without the excitement of dragons and fire and all kinds of potentially hazardous situations, Crispin had shown her a way of life which was so much more stimulating than the royal domestic lassitude she had imagined to be her goal all of this time. Helena grimaced slightly and glanced back at the sleeping knight. Aye. There lies the rub, making a sound like a purring feline. This woman had almost been toasted alive, had rusted into her suit of armor, had been plastered with poisonous leaves, and had picked up an illness - all due to one sweet little blonde princess. Convincing her that it would be a passable idea to take that same sweet little blonde princess with her on her travels would take more than natural charm - it would take outright begging. And that was one skill Helena did not possess. She did, however, possess a fiery imagination, and by the time she had finished her soup her mind had already offered up and worked through a suited argument, leaving her outraged at the imaginary Crispin's lack of reason and downright discourtesy.

  Of the two women sitting around the fire that night, only one understood what had just transpired to make her so fractious. The other could only utter a groggily confused "huh" as a soup spoon was unceremoniously stuffed into her mouth.

  It was with immense joy that Crispin spotted the outer walls of the little town close to dusk on the following day. Helena had been strangely belligerent the whole day, and it was all the knight could do not to motion Toby into a gallop and simply leave the argumentative girl behind on her own. The forest had thinned out and their surroundings were now more even and open, but even in this area bandits and villains roamed freely; men who had been forcibly removed from society, and preyed on vulnerable parties at the edges of it. Sniffing peevishly the knight eyed the young blonde who was now having a complete conversation with an appreciative Toby, and then scratched a spot of rust off her armor with one fingernail. Once she was ensconced in a comfortable bed at a respectable inn, Helena would be most welcome to wander right back into the wild and offer herself up to any number of dangerous situations on her way to her tower, and Crispin wouldn't worry one little bit.

  Well. Maybe just one little bit. All right. I'll just take a tiny detour when I'm feeling a bit more able… to see whether she's doing all right. Hah. And she says I don't have any good intentions.

  The sound of a rapidly flowing river had been growing systematically clearer, and now they stood at the banks of the water. A narrow drawbridge stretched across the swirls and eddies, providing an entrance to the town which was both secure for the traveller and safe for the townsfolk. In times of unrest Crispin knew that a series of gears would lift the drawbridge, not only blocking the entrance to the town, but also leaving the expanse of strongly flowing water to be reckoned with. A guard stood at the entrance of the town, leaning lackadaisically against his long spear. Having already sized up the knight and the princess, he had clearly dismissed them as inconsequential and was now chewing something earnestly. Not having seen anything she would classify as civilised in more than six days, the princess enthusiastically launched herself at him and began to chatter enthusiastically. For a moment he stopped chewing completely, his mouth half open, and stared at Helena with undisguised bewilderment. Almost bursting into hysterical laughter at his expression, Crispin managed to hide her empathetic reaction in a fortunate spell of coughing. Suspiciously Helena spun around and studied the knight with narrowed eyes, seemingly appeased when all that greeted her vision was a coughing woman swiftly thumping her own chest. Drawing a breath to continue her conversation (for so she thought of it) with the guard, her relatively good mood soured instead when she turned back and found an empty space where the guard had stood. He had taken his chance and fled into his small wooden guard hut, peering at her from the slats with apprehension. From this range Crispin could only see the whites of his big staring eyes. It brought to mind a wolf being cornered by a small white rabbit, and the image immediately brought on another coughing spell.

  "How rude!"

  Not sure whether the indignant woman was referring to the guard or to her, Crispin surreptitiously wiped a tear from one eye and gave a nonchalant sniffle, not even slightly surprised when Toby meekly followed the silently raging princess into the town streets.

  Two inns were rejected offhand by the ill-humoured blonde; one on account of the grime which coated the windows, and the other on account of a large oafish ruffian whose over-sociable suggestions to the princess were met with rather icy disapproval - and then a spirited retort, naturally. The third seemed clean enough, reputable enough, and all-round civilised enough even for a princess, and it was here (though in the stables) that Helena discarded Crispin and wandered off into the downstairs room in search of ale. With a sigh at her taxing companion and a wince at her painful muscles the knight slid down from Toby's back and gave the stable-boy a coin to tend to the placid animal and clean her armor, then slung the saddlebags around her like a pack-horse and went to pay for a room. She paused for a moment at the foot of the stairs, hearing Helena already loudly knee-deep into an exaggerated version of their adventures. It sounded as if she was going to be the villain of this story, so with a shake of the head the tired knight wandered upstairs. The rooms were small but clean, with two soft beds placed on either side of a window that looked down into a courtyard at the back of the inn. Dumping Helena's bags in one corner unceremoniously she placed hers carefully under her bed and then collapsed face-down on the mattress, her feet hanging off the edge of the bed. It didn't take long for sleep to claim her ailing exhausted body.

  Helena had finally found a place where she was in her element. Even though the truthfulness of most of the story she had told had been dubious, her audience had enjoyed her animated nature and been sufficiently charmed by her youthful innocence. They had even plied her with drinks to keep her from stopping. Truth be told, now that she stood rather unsteadily at the foot of Crispin's bed watching the knight sleep fitfully, she felt just a tad guilty that the most enjoyed segment of her story was the bit where the pig-stubborn mule-headed knight fell clumsily over her own sword and rolled down a hill.

  Stumbling closer she tried to put a strangely uncooperative hand on the knight's forehead, managing only to poke one finger into her ear rather insistently. The dark woman groaned in her sleep and turned her face in the opposite direction, dislodging the slender finger. Making another attempt, Helena leaned over Crispin, immediately losing her footing and landing directly on top of the warm knight. Groggily Crispin opened one eye, then the other, as she came face to face with a sheepish princess who smelled like a brewery and could not seem to move off her.

  "Helena?"

  The princess blushed a beet red which would under any other circumstances have been perfectly charming.

  "H'loa Crispy, owayou feeling?"

  "You have your hands all over me, princess. You tell me."

  With an inane grin the blonde woman shifted h
er hands, managing to knock her forehead into Crispin's nose. When she looked up and saw the dark woman's eyes full of involuntary tears, she started patting her chest earnestly. "You're not feeling well, you should relly go backta sleep, you know."

  "I could, if you got off me?"

  Unperturbed by the solemn comment Helena climbed off the knight's body shakily, staying upright beyond expectation. With an inward sigh Crispin eyed her unfocused pupils.

  "Helena?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Were you drinking tonight?"

  "Oyah."

  "Drink some water before you go to sleep."

  "Not thirsty, Crispy." Giggle.

  "Crispin."

  "No. I'm Helena."

  Sigh. "Just drink some water, all right? You'll feel better for it in the morning."

  "Nuh uh."

  Crispin scratched her ear irritably. "Fine. Then don't drink any water."

  "Don't you tell me whada do!"

  "I'm not telling you what to do. I'm telling you what not to do. Don't drink any water."

  "I can drink water if I want." Picking up the jug that stood on the little table, the beleaguered princess drank most of it, spilling some down her chest. Then, giving a little hiccup, she turned to the knight and stuck out her tongue. With a small smile the dark woman rolled over and went back to sleep.

  The blonde girl woke the next day with annoyingly fuzzy memories, but not much the worse for wear. Blinking the sleep from her eyes she sat on the edge of her bed and peered out the window, estimating it to be somewhere just after dawn. The dark woman in the bed opposite her had had a fitful night of sleep, as evident by the twisted linens under her. With a small frown Helena studied the flushed face. Why did she keep having flashes of herself lying stretched out on top of this woman? With a shrug she discarded the image. Probably something perverse concocted by her over-active imagination. Stretching her spine contently she mused on the joy of a soft bed as opposed to the hard ground, then stood and bathed her face with what remained of the water in the jug. She was just tying the laces of one of her nicer dresses when Crispin's rough coughing attracted her attention. Wandering over she placed a hand on the doubled up woman's forehead and bit her lip at the resulting heat. It didn't take her long to summon the innkeeper and send for a healer.