Off to Be the Wizard - 2 - Spell or High Water (31 page)

Martin was still keeping pace with Nilo, albeit from many yards behind.

“Stop him! Thief,” Martin yelled. “Somebody, call the police!”

Ampyx had given up on keeping up with Martin, and was somewhere behind, presumably gasping for air. In the
distance
, beyond Nilo, Martin could see that the narrow
footpath
between buildings widened out into some sort of large public space, like a plaza or a market.
Oh no,
Martin thought.
I’m going to lose him.

Nilo emerged from the tight confines of the footpath into the open space beyond, and as predicted, the crowd filled in behind him, completely blocking him from view. Martin
continued
to run, but his heart was no longer in it. He was certain that he would reach the opening, spend several seconds frantically searching the square, and not find Nilo or his staff.

Martin emerged from the narrow path into a public square with shops and market stalls around the edges and a fountain in the center. Three sides of the square were lined with
buildings;
the fourth was open to the great bowl that formed the city of Atlantis. It wasn’t so much a public plaza as it was a public
balcony
. He could tell all of this at a glance because the people who had been filling the stall were crowding out toward the edges like a flock of birds instinctively avoiding a hawk. In the center of the square, directly in front of the fountain where he had plenty of room to maneuver, Nilo stood facing Martin, wielding Martin’s own staff menacingly.

Martin stopped running. He took a second to catch his breath, then walked casually out into the now empty space in the center of the square until he stood close enough to count the teeth in the smug smile on Nilo’s face.

Martin said, “I’ve got you now.”

Nilo said, “You have nothing. Look at you. You think you’re so smart. You and your girlfriend, and all the sorceresses and those other ridiculous men in their stupid-looking clothes.”

Martin said, “You’re wearing a shirt made out of a net.”

Nilo ignored him. “You all think you’re so smart. You don’t even know what smart is! I’ve shown you who’s smart.”

Martin continued, “I mean, a shirt has three jobs. Cover you up, protect you from the sun, and keep you warm. Your shirt fails on all three counts.”

“No, a shirt’s main function is to make the wearer look good. I’m sure covering your torso makes you more attractive, but showing mine off works for me.”

“You’ve got me there,” Martin admitted.

“Listen to you,” Nilo said, still smirking. “You still think you’re smarter than me! Well, I’ve been one step ahead of you from the beginning.”

“Well, of course you were one step ahead. You started first.”

“Yes,” Nilo said. “That was my first great move.”

“What?” Martin asked. “Trying to kill Brit before we decided to try to stop you?”

“Yes. You never saw it coming.”

Martin said, “Well, I suppose you’ve got me there, too.”

Nilo laughed. “For someone who thinks he’s so smart, you seem to lose a lot of arguments. You ever wonder why? It’s because you think all there is to being smart is being clever and knowing things. There’s more to it than that.”

“No,” Martin said. “I’m pretty sure being clever and knowing things is pretty much all there is to being smart.”

“You’re missing the most important part. Winning!”

“What?” Martin shook his head. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!”

“Or you’re the dumbest man who’s ever heard it.”

“Winning makes you smart?” Martin asked.

“Yes,” Nilo replied. “Of course it does. It’s smarter to win than to lose, so whoever wins must be the smartest. Isn’t that just logic?”

Martin said, “An interesting idea. We’ll discuss it again after you’ve lost.”

Nilo said, “I’m not going to lose. I’ve got the staff.”

Now it was Martin’s turn to laugh. “Nilo, you know you can’t use my staff, right?”

Nilo arched one eyebrow. “Can’t I?”

Nilo swung the staff with all of his strength, hitting Martin in the ribs. Martin cried out in pain and surprise. Physical blows could not injure him, but they did hurt, and all animals,
wizards
included, instinctively dislike and avoid pain. Martin used his arms to protect his head, neck, and face, so Nilo
continued
to pound on his ribs and midsection like a crazed toddler who doesn’t understand the rules of T-ball. After several savage blows to the breadbasket, Martin lowered his hands and attempted to catch the head of the staff mid-swing. Nilo expected this, and altered his swing to catch Martin in the ear. The crowd of
Atlanteans
who were still gathered around the square groaned in unison as the dull, hollow
thunk
of the blow reverberated off of the buildings, like someone had dropped a coconut from a great height.

Martin slewed sideways sickeningly, pushed off balance by the force of the blow. Nilo wound up for another swing, but
Martin
took off running. Nilo pursued him, still striking him with the staff whenever an opportunity presented itself.
Unfortunately
, by that time, all exits from the square were blocked by gawkers, and Martin had nowhere to go, so he ran in a large circle, completing a full lap of the square with Nilo close on his heels, striking him in the hips, thighs, and buttocks with his own staff.

On his third lap of the square, Martin saw Ampyx finally make his way to the front of the crowd. He had caught his breath, and was eating an apricot he’d clearly bought from one of the fruit stands.

As he ran past, Martin cried, “Ampyx! Help me out!”

Martin and Nilo completed another lap. As they came close again, Ampyx said, “I’m not really much of a fighter!”

Again, Martin ran out of conversation range, taking
several
more painful blows as he orbited away from and then back toward Ampyx.

“But you’re a guard!” Martin shouted as he ran past again.

Ampyx waited for Martin to come close again and yelled, “We never get into any real fights.”

As they ran around to the far side of the square again, Nilo bellowed, “Maybe
you
don’t,” and cracked Martin in the right hip.

Ampyx knew he had to act. He waited for Martin and Nilo to come around again, and when they did, Ampyx lost his nerve. He watched them for another orbit, psyched himself up, then, when they came close he gave chase.

“Hey!” Ampyx yelled. “Hey, stop that!”

They ran two more laps that way, Martin fleeing, Nilo striking him, Ampyx yelling at him to stop. Ampyx realized that
yelling
wasn’t doing the trick, so he threw his half-eaten apricot,
hitting Nilo
on the back of the head. Nilo stopped, felt the sticky mess dribbling down his neck, and started chasing Ampyx.
Martin
barely had time for a few deep breaths before he had to chase Nilo. The three men were back to running laps of the square, but in the opposite direction.

Ampyx was setting a faster pace than Martin had.
Great,
Martin
thought, now
you can run!
He knew that Ampyx’s newfound speed was probably inspired by the fact that Ampyx could get injured, and that Nilo would probably be happy to do it.
Martin
had been running to avoid pain. Ampyx was running to avoid death. Ampyx had risked his life to help Martin, and Martin felt a duty to make sure that he came out of this in one piece. That said, he was not going to be able to outrun Nilo any time soon.

For some crazy reason, Martin’s brain flashed on the film
Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan
. Specifically, Martin clearly heard Spock saying, “His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking.”

Martin cut across the square, sprinted hard, and dove head first, intercepting Nilo, and catching his neck in the crook of his elbow.

Nilo staggered, but remained on his feet. Martin clung to his back, hanging on with his right arm and repeatedly but ineffectually punching him in the side of the head with his left. Nilo retaliated by swinging the staff backward, as if he were an overweight Russian man in a sauna, whacking himself on the back with
eucalyptus
branches. While Nilo was thus distracted, Ampyx attacked by darting in, kicking him in the shins
repeatedly
, then darting out of staff-range to wait for his next opportunity to strike.

Vikram the fakir pushed his way to the front of the crowd. He didn’t know what was going on, but he figured that if that many people were watching it, it was most likely something he wanted to see. His reasoning, it turned out, was sound.

He watched the three men floundering in their pathetic
stalemate
for a moment, then scanned the crowd for familiar faces. The first ones he found were Gilbert and Sid, who were also at the front of the crowd, and seemed in the verge of
bursting
with delight.

Vikram shouted to them, “The wizard from Camelot is in trouble!”

Gilbert shouted back, “Yes!”

They watched the struggle for a moment. The sounds of grunts, curses, and smacking noises echoed around them.

“Shouldn’t we help him?” Vikram asked.

Sid said, “No!”

Vikram stared at him. Sid looked shamed, then said, “Oh, of course we’re going to help him, just not yet. Let us have just a little more of this, will you?”

Nilo staggered toward the middle of the square. Martin’s arm was clamped over the larger man’s eyes, and Martin was
pulling
on his ear, causing him to spin involuntarily to the left. Nilo swung the staff blindly in a wide arc, trying to find Ampyx, who was well out of range, throwing small rocks at him from a safe distance.

Nilo stopped spinning, despite Martin’s continued ear-
pulling
. He also stopped swinging the staff in his futile effort to hit Ampyx. He knew that he needed to get his vision back if he was going to end the fight. He stood still for a moment, then leapt into the air and flopped to the ground directly on his back. All of his considerable weight came down on Martin’s diaphragm, a move that loosened Martin’s grip on Nilo’s head.

Nilo jerked his head forward, free of Martin’s grasp, then spun at the waist, driving his left elbow into Martin’s ribs. Nilo quickly located Ampyx, and hurled the heavy staff as hard as he could. It pinwheeled through the air until the heavy plaster bust of Santo connected with the side of Ampyx’s knee. The guard’s leg bent at an unnatural angle. He cried out in pain, dropping his handful of throwing pebbles to clutch at his injured knee.

Nilo rose, grabbed Martin by the throat, lifted him to his feet, then slammed him back to the ground. Nilo repeated this process several times, laughing as he did so.

Vikram gave Sid a look that said,
I’m going to do something, even if you’re not
. Sid rolled his eyes, but bellowed, “All right, bub, that’s quite enough!”

Nilo had Martin back on his feet, but stopped short of
slamming
him to the ground again when he heard the magician. Martin took advantage of this lull in the action to savagely swipe at Nilo’s face, but since Nilo had him by the throat, and Martin’s arms were substantially shorter than Nilo’s, he connected with nothing but empty air.

Nilo turned to face the voice that had dared interrupt his fun. He saw Sid and Gilbert, resplendent in their Victorian formal attire, wielding their white-tipped canes at him, and Vikram in his orange robe, holding what appeared to be a flute.

Nilo faced the three of them smiling. “Do what you will,” he shouted. He shook Martin by the throat, and said, “But choose your next move carefully. I doubt you want to hurt your friend.”

A blindingly fast bolt of sparkling-green energy sizzled from the end of Gilbert’s cane and struck Martin directly in the chest, violently tearing him free of Nilo’s grip and sending him skidding to a stop several yards back.

Nilo stared at his stinging hand in disbelief, then looked at his three attackers in anger. He swiped at the air with the index fingers of both hands. Arrows materialized in midair. Nilo looked surprised when they fell straight to the ground, but immediately
realized
that since he’d eliminated Brit, the arrows had nobody to be attracted to. He quickly adjusted, summoning two more arrows, catching them in midair, and throwing them overhand at Sid.

He quickly found a rhythm, and was soon producing and flinging arrows at an impressive rate of speed. Vikram had just as quickly played a few notes in his flute, which had thrown up a force field. Once it was in place, he didn’t need to keep
playing
, so he and the magicians were free to talk while the arrows bounced impotently off of the shield.

Gilbert said, “Good work with that . . . what is that, part of an old bagpipe?”

“It’s called a pungi,” Vikram answered. “It’s played with
circular
breathing, like a didgeridoo.”

Sid said, “Thank you, Wikipedia. Anyway, when do you think he’ll stop throwing arrows at us?”

Vikram said, “Dunno. When he gets tired, I guess. He
certainly
doesn’t seem to be letting their lack of effectiveness stop him.”

“Yeah, about that,” Sid said, “Those arrows look familiar. I think this little display answers the question of who was trying to kill young Brit.”

Gilbert watched several more arrows bounce lamely off of the force field and add to the pile that was forming on the ground. “Indeed. I think it also explains why you’ve never heard anyone described as the world’s deadliest arrow-thrower.”