After a Few Words
By Randall Garrett
“We of Gascony fear no heathen Musselman,” Sir Gaeton growled. “It’s this Hellish heat that is driving me mad.” He pointed toward the eastern hills. “The sun is yet low, and already the heat is unbearable.”
Sir Robert heard his laugh echo hollowly within his helmet. “Perhaps ‘were better to be mad when the assault comes. Madmen fight better than men of cooler blood.” He knew that the others were baking inside their heavy armour, although he was not too uncomfortable.
Sir Gaeton looked at him with a smile that held both irony and respect. “In truth, sir knight, it is apparent that you fear neither men nor heat. Nor is your blood too cool. I ride with your Normans, your English, and your King Richard of the Lion’s Heart, but I am a Gascon and have sworn no loyalty to him. But to side with the Duke of Burgundy against King Richard—” He gave a short, barking laugh. “I fear no man,” he said, “but if I had to fear one, it would be Richard of England.”
Sir Robert’s voice came like a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. “My lord the King spoke in haste. He has reason to be bitter against Philip of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned to France in haste, leaving the rest of us to fight the Saracen for the Holy Land, leaving only the contingent of his vassal, the Duke of Burgundy, to remain with us.”
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Randall Garrett
Gordon Randall Phillip David Garrett (December 16, 1927 – December 31, 1987) was an American science fiction and fantasy author.
Biography.
He contributed to Astounding and other science fiction magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. He instructed Robert Silverberg in selling large quantities of action-adventure science fiction. He collaborated with him on two novels about men from Earth disrupting a peaceful agrarian civilization on an alien planet.
Writing career
Garrett is best known for the Lord Darcy books — the novel Too Many Magicians and two short story collections — set in an alternate world where a joint Anglo-French empire still led by a Plantagenet dynasty has survived into the twentieth century and where magic works and has been scientifically codified. The Darcy books are rich in jokes, puns, and references (particularly to works of detective and spy fiction: Lord Darcy is modelled on Sherlock Holmes), elements often appearing in the shorter works about the detective. Michael Kurland wrote two additional Lord Darcy novels after Garrett’s death.
Garrett wrote under a variety of pseudonyms, including: David Gordon; John Gordon; Darrel T. Langart (an anagram of his name); Alexander Blade; Richard Greer; Ivar Jorgensen; Clyde Mitchell; Leonard G. Spencer; S. M. Tenneshaw; and Gerald Vance. He was also a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) as “Randall of Hightower” (a pun on “garret”). The short novel Brain Twister, written by Garrett with author Laurence Janifer (using the joint pseudonym Mark Phillips), was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960.
An inveterate punster (defining a pun as “the odour given off by a decaying mind”), Garrett was a favourite guest at science fiction conventions and a friend to many fans, especially in Southern California. According to various anecdotes in a tribute volume, Garrett was cherished by his friends, who often repeated anecdotes of his behaviour but horrified many women, to whom he routinely introduced himself with obscene propositions. For example, he introduced himself to Marion Zimmer Bradley (MZB) with the Latin sentence “Cogito ergo sum” (sic), which she did not understand until it was explained to her sometime later as an obscenity, and at another time to a pregnant Anne McCaffrey with “sly innuendoes” that horrified her.
Randall Garrett
