Everard and his gang should have been able to stun a couple of guards and rescue Marlow without causing any damage except to property but how would the author have given this story a dramatic climax? Marlow's fellow Templar, Fulk de Buchy, who is also both his captor and his lover has stayed overnight in the house and has recalled the household staff so that a regular battle ensues in which Fulk is accidentally killed. A tragedy:
"But all men die." (p. 765)
There is a lengthy Andersonian fight scene which I will not summarize here! We recall combat in many other works by Poul Anderson. For some reason, I think of Dominic Flandry on Brae where another man dies tragically. He had fought for the Empire to learn how to fight against it but instead dies for it. Everard in Paris and Flandry on Brae are universes and time periods apart - but the Andersonian multiverse is multi-dimensioned.
Sorry, folks. Today has been a long meeting in the Gregson Centre, followed immediately by a large social gathering in a private house, so Andersonianism has become very much the third order of the day. We seem to be close to exhausting the short story, "Death And The Knight," for the time being although you never know, do you? I had not expected it to yield as much as it has done this time. Where next? We will stay with the Time Patrol timeline for a while.
Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I don't understand the fourth sentence of your second full paragraph.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think it's just that Anderson's imagination encompasses a vast range of times and places. Thus, something in Paris in 1307 reminded me of something on an extrasolar planet in the Terran Empire period.
Paul.
They have to make it look like a 'natural' event, with no supernatural overtones.
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