“What?”
exploded the Prince, baffled. “Are you so enamored of these teachings that
you’ll leave your homes and defy the regulars?”
The toothless
mouth became, for a moment, firm and set. The grizzled chin came up, and the
man’s reply was slow and emphatic.
“I have lived
my whole life within a day’s walk of this town,” he began. “I’ve worked hard
every day that I can remember for my overlord. I go forth in the darkness each
morning to follow his oxen in the furrows, my lot scarcely better than theirs.
I have watched my wife grow old and crooked with endless toil, she who was once
so fair and gay. Two sons have I lost to plague, two to war, one daughter to
famine and another at her birth. There is small enough difference between me
and the beasts in harness, so constant is my labor and so seldom have I given
any thought to my own life and its meaning. I just tendered my tithes and
worried about the crop.
“Then there
came two who made me pause and wonder about the wherefores of life, who told me
about the world beyond my furrows. They quoted the words of learned men,
glorious thinkers and doers of whom we had never heard, and when they asked
what we thought of this and I spoke, they listened. All this, though I am only
an old man, stooped with the years.
“And it was as
if I had been shut up in darkness all my life and only now let out. So now, the
Queen at Earthfast has decided to put an end to the practice of teaching here,
to make of us again what we were. But when the cavalrymen came we fought them.
Fought them! Few of them left alive, and Van Duyn brought down many with his
weapon that reaches out to kill at distances.
“Do we love
this new learning, you ask? Well enough, I say, to leave this fief forever if
we must, rather than submit again to our overlord.”
Springbuck was
silent, calculating what their hard life had cost these old souls. Their
children gone, life must now be spent in constant labor, since the sons and
daughters who would have cared for them in the winter of their days would never
return. It was, perhaps, the end of the man’s name forever when he died, with
no one to keep his memory alive or light incense for him at the altar of his
gods.
In this light,
the war that Springbuck had contemplated against Fania and Strongblade was not
so brave or glittering a thing to entertain.
While he’d been
angry at such disrespect shown for a liege, he was fascinated with what
energies had been evoked in this aged breast. The peasants were yanking at the
donkey’s harness again. And critical choices can be made as quickly and as
simply as this: the Prince unsheathed Bar and, leaning down, struck the beast
loudly across its rump with the flat of his blade. It bucked to its feet,
kicking the cart behind it, and the couple tugged it into motion once more.
The heir to the
Ku-Mor-Mai
trailed behind.
The moat
outside the castle was long dry and choked with high weeds. One of the double
doors beyond the drawbridge had been left ajar, doubtless for such latecomers
as they. The gates, like the drawbridge, were of old wood but looked sound. The
keep’s walls were worn but substantial, though rather low by modern standards.
Springbuck
brought up the rear into a courtyard where plants had pushed up insistently
through defeated cobblestones. There was much debris in sight—broken tools, a
useless wagon wheel, forgotten benches—and after three nights in the open, he
was sourly willing to wager that the roof of the place leaked.
The little
courtyard was filled with villagers dashing to and fro. Standing atop a wagon
at the center of it all, giving commands to bring them to some semblance of
order, was the man known as Van Duyn, whom Springbuck recognized from his one
previous visit to Earthfast. He was a tall, lean man with gray-white hair and a
dour look about him that had made the Prince wonder if anything ever quite
satisfied him. His face was creased with worry, and a strange metal framework
secured a circle of glass before each of his eyes. Springbuck had once
reflected on a possible connection between this and Yardiff Bey’s single
ocular, but it was said that Van Duyn’s lenses simply helped him see more
clearly. A small part of the Prince wondered now if he might be able to acquire
such a device for himself.
Springbuck
began to understand the discomfort of his father, the Protector Suzerain, at
hearing the thoughts of Van Duyn; the man could well bring disaster and chaos
to Coramonde. What caused usually docile commoners to respond to him so
readily, to jump with a will to his every order and stand by him so staunchly?
“See that you
use the barbed arrows first,” the outlander was saying, just as the Prince
caught his eye. “Are you a Queen’s man, sir?” Van Duyn snapped curtly. “With
some new mandamus of arrest?”
Thankful that
his war mask hid his features, the son of Surehand responded, “I was unaware of
your predicament when I came to hear your new teachings.”
The outlander
laughed, scant humor in it. “My ‘predicament’ grows rapidly worse,” he shot
back. “Of these good people, one in three sees fit to offer his help. And you?
A week ago I would have welcomed you as a new student, but now you’ll have to
run or fight before you can learn.” He seemed to think his own words over for a
moment. “Perhaps you’ll prize the knowledge more for all of that. What do you
say?”
The Prince
considered this. He had nowhere else to go. But to stay here was to court
capture or death.
They were both the same for him,
he realized.
“I say,” he
replied at last, “that your people had better not use their barbed arrows. Use
the narrowest points first; they’ll punch through armor more readily. How will
so few resist troops of the Crown?”
“I’m at a loss
to tell you. But you seem familiar with this sort of thing. Come, hold
conference with us, and we’ll decide.”
Springbuck
dismounted and lead Fireheel toward the wagon as the locals gave way before
him. Van Duyn jumped down from his place and two others detached themselves
from the scurrying peasants to join him.
The first with
the scholar was a man far shorter and bulkier than he, and the Prince knew him
as Andre deCourteney. The famous wizard was squat and plump, with a promise of
underlying muscle, and dressed, as was Van Duyn, in commoner’s clothing, but
had his sleeves rolled up and tunic open to reveal thick-matted hair in dark
rings on arms and chest. Although he was clean-shaven, his chin and flopping
jowls retained deep blue shadows. His head, however, was mostly bald. In his
eyes the Prince could see only a friendly look to second the smile he wore.
The other one
was even more easily identified, if only from reputation. She was an intimidating
beauty of no certain age, with astoundingly red hair. Her brows were
high-arched over sea-green eyes, prominent cheekbones and a wide, sultry mouth,
contrary to the pouty vogue current at Court. Her skin held the whiteness of
milk and, unlike those around her, she dressed self-indulgently. Gracefully
wrapped in a long robe of glossy green-black silk that left much pale throat
and bosom exposed, she wore a girdle of red leather sewn with pearls caught
tightly around her waist, and her fingers blazed with rings. She met the
Prince’s gaze squarely, looking him up and down, smiling a cryptic smile, and
he knew that this could be no one but Andre’s sister, the celebrated sorceress
Gabrielle deCourteney, though she’d never been to his father’s Court.
Van Duyn
ahemmed,
and Springbuck realized that he’d been staring.
“You have no
doubt heard of my esteemed colleague, Andre deCourteney and, of course, his
sister, Gabrielle,” Van Duyn introduced them. But his hand reached out to
squeeze the woman’s gently and received answering pressure, eloquent that she
was far more to the scholar than merely his associate’s sister. He finished,
“And I am Van Duyn. You are—?”
“How far away
are the troops?” Springbuck asked, ignoring the invitation to introduce
himself. For now, he preferred the anonymity of his mask.
Andre
deCourteney shrugged. “We have the word of—informants—that they will be here
momentarily.”
“I would not
much care to defend this relic against regular soldiery,” said the Prince.
“Nor do we,”
Andre confessed, “but we hope that it will not come to that. The truth of the
matter is that we must come at bay for a little time; we have weightier
problems than a few soldiers.” His speech was cultured and well modulated, in
contrast to his unpolished appearance.
“Few!” snorted
the Prince, “What if they send more than a few? What if they use their heads
and send infantry, cavalry, knights and archers and siege artificers to pull
this stone artifact down around your ears? And if you’re really ill-fortuned
and they have magicians of their own with them, Yardiff Bey’s underlings?
They’d make very short work of you indeed, is what would happen.”
“That would
seem to be the promised scenario,” Andre conceded mildly.
A shout broke
their conversation. They went to the open gate and saw a long column of mounted
men wending their way from the edge of the forest into Erub. A smaller
contingent had broken off and was steering for the castle.
“Time to close
up shop,” said Van Duyn. Springbuck, standing near, put his shoulder to the
gate and heaved, but couldn’t budge it. Then portly Andre was next to him, and
the balky gate moved smartly at the wizard’s push. Springbuck noted to himself
that there must be muscle to spare under all that avoirdupois.
“What about the
portcullis and drawbridge?” the Prince asked as two men lifted a thick beam of
wood braced with iron across the gates.
“Rusted into
place,” replied Van Duyn, “but for now I suggest that we repair to the rampart.
Heralds are due, I think.”
Springbuck
followed the outlander and the deCourteneys up the stone steps, arriving just
as a truce-flag bearer and a herald rode up before the castle to parley.
Another group sat their horses in the meadow out of bowshot.
“Fetch me my
rifle,” Van Duyn instructed a youngster who had been on watch there, and
Springbuck puzzled over just what thing that might be.
The two
soldiers wore long mail hauberks and steel caps and had triangular shields
slung beside them. The truce flag was a white rectangle of cloth on a lance
decked with heron feathers.
“Now heed us,
the castle,” roared the herald. “For crimes both treasonous and seditious, all
who are within merit the death penalty. Clemency will be shown only to those
who quit these premises and surrender to the duly authorized representatives of
His Grace, Strongblade, by right of ascension imminent the Protector Suzerain
of this place.”
“Strongblade,”
the Prince repeated to himself, hand hard and resolute on Bar. Bey hadn’t lost
any time having his puppet proclaimed rightful Heir.
Now Gabrielle
had passed her brother a scabbarded sword of ancient design and Van Duyn held
the exotic implement he’d sent for, a “rifle.” It was a curious club-like
affair of wood and metal, longer than a man’s arm.
The scholar
leaned out over the merlin’s lip and spoke back. His teeth were showing, but it
was no smile. “Tell your commander and your counterfeit
Ku-Mor-Mai
that
we don’t surrender ourselves to usurpers or their ass-kissing messengers.”
“I wonder
what’s happened in Earthfast?” Andre was saying, one cogitative finger at his
thick lips.
“—and if you’ve
seen what I did to your friends in Erub,” Van Duyn continued, apparently with
huge enjoyment, “you’ll know enough to stay well away from our walls. Or would
you like a taste of this?”
He brought his
rifle to his shoulder, sighting down it, Springbuck thought, rather as one
would squint down an arrow to gauge its trueness. There came an explosion.
A spit of flame
and smoke shot from the armament’s end and a clot of dirt leaped between the
feet of the herald’s horse. The air was filled with the same smell that the
Prince had noticed lingering in the air in Erub, and the horses threatened to
go mad, eyes rolling white and ears flattening to their skulls in terror as
they screamed in fear.
Springbuck
staggered back with a yell of alarm at this, ears ringing from the blast. The
outlander was calmly lowering his weapon, watching herald and standard-bearer
withdraw in disarray.
A small capsule
of metal had been flung from some hidden opening in the rifle and now lay
smoking at his feet. Springbuck picked it up, juggling it to keep from burning
his fingers, and found that it exuded that peculiar odor. He thought about the
tongue of flame and about the curious wound-holes in the dead cavalrymen in
Erub.
“Who were the
two who remained at a distance with the other troops, those in bright
clothing?” Van Duyn was asking.
The sorceress
answered, perfect brow wrinkled for an instant in thought. “Creatures of
Yardiff Bey. He in the golden full-helmet is Ibn-al-Yed, Bey’s right arm. The
other, I believe, is Neezolo Peeno, known as a premier druid. It would seem
that, while he cannot do us the honor of attending our demise in person, Bey
sends his closest vassals to do so.” Amazingly, she chuckled. Seeing Andre’s
face afflicted with doubt and concern, she stopped her low laugh and asked,
“Why so glum, brother dear?”
“What about the
soldiers?” Springbuck interrupted.
She turned her
mocking gaze to him. “What about them? Here you are, dressed and plumed for war
and wearing a sword. Have
you
no suggestions?”
She slipped her
arm possessively through Van Duyn’s and waited.
Springbuck’s
ire rose. Spotting the youngster who’d fetched Van Duyn’s rifle, he said, “Find
yourself four more men and begin making forked poles to push scaling ladders
away from the walls. Make them at least fifteen feet long.”