The Incorporated Knight by L. Sprague de Camp, Catherine Crook de Camp Page B

the capture of unicorns in Bricken."
     
                  "I mought, if ye made it worth me while."
     
                  "How much?"
     
                  After a haggle, Eudoric and Svanhalla agreed on a fee of sixty marks, half down and the rest when the unicorn was secured. Eudoric paid.
     
                  "First," said the witch of Hesselbourn, "ye must needs find a virgin, of above fifteen years. If the tales I hear be true, that may take some doing in Arduen, what with you and your lecherous brethren."
     
                  "Madam! I have not carnally known any local lass for nigh a year—"
     
                  "Aye, aye, I ken. When the lust becomes too great to endure, ye fare to the whores of Kromnitch. Ye should be respectably wived by now, but the girls all think you a cold-blooded opportunist. Therein, they're not altogether wrong; for, whilst ye love women, ye love your gold even more, heh!"
     
                  "You needn't rub it in," said Eudoric . "Besides, I seek advice on hunting, not on love."
     
                  "Strange, when your brother Olf doth cut a veritable swath amid the maids of Arduen. Not that I blame the lad overmuch. He's good-looking, and too many peasant maids think to catch a lordling with their coyntes for bait. They hope, if not for lawful wedlock, at least for affluent concubinage. So they all but shout: 'Come, take me, fair sir!' 'Tis a rotten, degenerate age we live in."
     
                  "Since you know so much about affairs in Arduen, who, then, is still a virgin?"
     
                  "For that, I must needs consult my familiar." She issued further instructions on the mechanics of capture, ending: "Come back on the morrow. Meanwhile go to Frotz the rope-maker to order your net and Karlvag the wainwright for your wheeled cage. Be sure they be big and strong enough, else ye may have less luck than ye had with the dragon, heh!"
     
    -
     
                  When Eudoric returned to Svanhalla's house, he found her talking to a bat the size of an eagle. This creature hung upside down from her rafters, along with smoked hams, bags of onions, and other edibles. When Eudoric jumped back, the witch cackled.
     
                  "Fear not Nigmalkin, brave and mighty hero! She's as sweetly loving a little demon as ye shall find in the kingdom, heh. Moreover, she tells me what ye be fain to know."
     
                  "And that is?"
     
                  "Know that in all of Arduen there be but one wench to fill your bill. True, there be other virgins in fact, but none suitable. Cresseta Almundsdaughter is ill and like to die; Greda Paersdaughter's father is a religious fanatic who won't let her out of his sight; and so on."
     
                  "Then who is available?"
     
                  "Bertrud, daughter of Ulfred the Unwashed."
     
                  "Oh, gods! She takes after her sire; one can detect her down-wind at half a mile. Is that the best you can do, Svanhalla?"
     
                  "So it is. Take it or leave it. After all, a proud, fierce adventurer like yourself shouldn't mind a few small stinks, now should he?"
     
                  Eudoric sighed. "Well, I shall imagine myself back in that prison cell in Pathenia. It stank even worse. I'll get word to Ulfred and his lass."
     
    -
     
                  Dawn, a fortnight later, saw Eudoric riding with Jillo's younger brother, a simple farm hand named Theovic Godmarson, to the home of Ulfred the Unwashed. Since Ulfred had been told by a fortuneteller that he would die of a tisic caught while bathing, the goodman had forsworn all external contact with water. His only child had adopted the paternal habit.
     
                  Yet Bertrud Ulfredsdaughter would, if cleaned up, have been a handsome girl. As