A Wizard and a Warlord

3

Somehow Gar was standing with his back to a horse whose saddle was empty because its rider was struggling with Gar’s arm around his neck, holding him as a shield.

“Yes, I thought it might be something like that,” the leader said conversationally. “Good moves, fellow, but you don’t really think you can take all six of us, do you?”

“I could have a lot of fun trying,” Gar said with a grin.

The leader leaned back, looking down his nose at Gar with a weighing gaze. Then he nodded slowly. “A fighter like that, with a size like yours, would be just what the general wants. Gawn, take his pack.”

One of the riders leaned down as his mount stepped forward and yanked at the pack. His eyes widened at the weight but he managed to swing it up in front of him anyway.

“There now,” said the leader, “all this because you wouldn’t give us your pack, and here we have it anyway.”

“Only for the moment,” Gar said.

“A bit more than that, I think,” the leader returned, “but I’m not here for a few trinkets, I’m here recruiting. We’ll let General Malachi bargain with you. Off up that track, big man, or we’ll leave you here looking like one of your pincushions.”

For a moment, Alea was afraid Gar was going to defy the man again—but he grinned and let the rider loose. “All right, I’ll meet your general. He sounds as though he might be more of a match than this pollywog.”

“Pollywog, am l?” the man husked, and coughed. “Don’t worry, your throat will be good as new within the hour,” Gar assured him.

“You won’t be, if I have anything to say about it! This pollywog has teeth!”

“Not until you’ve grown a bit.”

The man mounted his horse, snarling, “This big enough for you?”

“Not really,” Gar said. “Besides, I’ll keep your tooth.” He held up the spear.

The rider yanked a hatchet from his belt and swung it up.

“None of that!” the sergeant barked. “He’s for the general! ”

The rider froze, blood in his eye, then lowered his spear with a muttered obscenity.

“You shouldn’t say such things about yourself,” Gar admonished. He turned to the leader. “You take good care of your men.”

“Meaning that even if we’d done for you, he wouldn’t have seen the end of the fight?” The leader grinned. “We’ll see how your boasts work in battle. What’s your name, anyway?”

“Gar.”

The leader didn’t seem to notice the lack of a last name. “Well, Gar, I’m Sergeant Router, and you don’t have your pack to guard your back anymore—so what say we all go to see General Malachi nice and friendly-like, eh?”

“Yes, I’d be very interested.” Gar stepped forward into the middle of the group.

Most of the riders seemed a little taken aback at his sudden compliance, but Alea wasn’t. She was sure that Gar was indeed very interested—interested in any hint of this planet’s government, and a general would certainly be a good beginning for that. But why, in the name of Loki, had he baited them and earned their bad will if he was going to go with them anyway?

“Who gets his pack, Sergeant?” one of the riders asked.

“Drop it,” Router said. “He’ll be a soldier now, not a draft animal.” He grinned down at Gar. “Of course, if you get away from us, you can always come back for it.”

“Why should I want to get away?” Gar asked mildly. “You’ll learn the reason if the general lets you join up,” Router said. “You’ll be a soldier, my lad—that’s what the general calls his men; he says it’s an old word he’s freshened up to use again. Yes, you’ll be a soldier, and soldiers have to be trained.”

One of the men gave a harsh laugh.

“General Malachi’s idea of training can be kinda rough,” another rider confided.

“I doubt I’ll notice,” Gar said. “Yes, by all means leave the pack, if you’ve no need of ribbons.”

The riders all brayed laughter as though he’d made a hilarious joke and, still laughing, led him off down the road.

When they were well out of sight, Alea came out of the brush, hauled Gar’s pack back in, and covered it with brambles and leaves, swearing at her companion’s recklessness. She had no doubt he fully intended to come back for that pack—she would be very surprised if he decided to stay with this army. What there was of the army, anyway. None of those riders had looked terribly professional. She certainly wouldn’t have dignified any of them with the title of “soldier.” Perhaps “bandits” or simply “outlaws,” but they scarcely had the discipline she’d seen in the armies of her own people in Midgard, and certainly nowhere nearly as much as that of the dwarves.

She’d have to follow him, of course. If he had to fight his way free of an army, he’d need all the help he could get. She’d have to stay under cover, though—she wouldn’t do him much good if she were caught before he made his break.

The patrol led Gar a mile down the road, then off to follow a deer trail that climbed higher and higher through the woods until it came out onto a sort of plateau that had been barricaded around with a fence made of brush. Looking more closely, Gar saw that the brush had long, sharp thorns. There was a sort of gateway blocked by two men holding long-handled axes. Gar frowned; there was something very amateurish about this army. They hadn’t even invented proper halberds yet! Which meant their ancestors hadn’t brought the knowledge from Terra and, in fact, had probably been careful to lose it.

“What’s this, Router?” asked one of the guards with a nod toward Gar.

“A new recruit, boys, and one who’s already proved he can fight a little,” Sergeant Router said. “Let him in; we’ll make sure he minds his manners.”

The other guard guffawed and the first grinned. “I’m sure you will that! He’s a big one, though, isn’t he? Well, all the easier for the general to see. Take him in.”

They rode through the gate and down a lane between brush huts, and other “soldiers” came out to gawk at the huge man striding between the horses; they called out some rude speculations about his ancestry. Since Gar didn’t recognize most of the creatures involved, he declined comment.

In the center of the camp, they came to a larger but that actually had wattle walls and a thatched roof. Three men were plastering the withes, but it still looked very temporary. In front of it stood a bull of a man a bit taller than the others, his leather tunic decorated with fringes and some brass ornaments. His hair was a black thatch, his eyes small but alert, his jaw square, and his nose crooked with a break that had healed wrong some years in the past. Near him, at various distances, stood men as big as himself, leaning on their spears with watchful eyes—a bodyguard, at a guess.

The bull-man’s eyes glinted as he saw Gar in the midst of the patrol.

As they rode up to him, Router and his men held their hands to their brows, then away—very sloppy salutes.

The big man returned them, though, his gaze still on Gar. “What’s this, Sergeant? A new recruit?”

“That he is, sir.” Then to Gar, “Take your hat off when you’re talking to your new general, man!” Gar doffed his broad-brimmed hat, wondering when the general was going to feel rich enough to issue his men caps so they could take them off to show him respect. Until he did, he’d have to settle for the pantomime that constituted the salute. “Found him strolling down the road, easy as you please, carrying a peddler’s pack. Thought we’d find him a better task for a man.”

“A man?” General Malachi curled his lip. “Any reason to think that’s what he is, instead of one of these village sheep?”

“Well, he didn’t want to take orders.” Router grinned. “Thought he could take on all six of us. Had a bit of a dustup with one of my men. Handled himself pretty well, too.”

“Might be worth his copper, then.” Malachi turned to Gar. “What do you think of the army, man?”

“Soldiering is an ancient and honorable profession, sir.”

“Honorable, is it?” Malachi grinned. “The folk of the three villages we’ve taken wouldn’t say so. Still, it has a nice sound. So you came willingly, did you?”

“Yes, sir—once I had made it clear that coming to see you was my choice.”

The riders muttered, exchanging uneasy looks. Malachi nodded shrewdly. “Pulled one of ‘em off his horse, did you? And warned the others you’d give him back in pieces if they tried to jump you, like enough.” He transferred his gaze back to Router. “So you talked sweet reason to him, did you, Sergeant?”

“That I did, sir, and I do have to say he kept a civil tongue in his head when he answered me.”

It was both a veiled boast and a statement that Router hadn’t been overawed for a second, simply recognized talent when he saw it.

Malachi nodded. “Well, that’s good enough to warrant a word or two. Bid your men take their ease for an hour, Sergeant, before you take them back on patrol.”

Router hesitated, casting a wary glance at Gar. “Leave him to us,” one of the bodyguards said with a savage grin. “He won’t touch the general, be sure of it.”

“Nice to know you’re thinking of my safety.” General Malachi said with dry sarcasm, “but there’s no need to worry, Sergeant. These men have stopped three assassins before now. No need to fear for me.”

Really! The man had been more successful than Gar had realized, to have aroused such hatred. Gar wondered how the assassins had come even this close to him.

“Aye, sir.” Router made his clumsy salute again and his men followed suit, then turned and followed him into the camp, muttering to one another. They seemed relieved, somehow.

General Malachi’s voice turned to a bark. “Stand stiff, soldier! Know that you don’t have any choice in this—you’re one of my men now, like it or not, and your training sergeant will kick that into you till you don’t dare talk back and do anything you’re told instantly! It’s going to be hell, learning to be a soldier, plowboy, and don’t you think it won’t be! ”

“I’ll make it through, sir,” Gar said, “because I know when it’s done, I’ll be a soldier like—”

“Who asked you?” General Malachi’s hand whipped out, slapping Gar backhanded. Pain slashed through his mouth and teeth and anger fought to erupt. He stood stiff as a board, keeping his hands at his side, throttling the anger.

Malachi stood watching him, fists on his hips, and his bodyguards stood taut and ready. When Gar stood firm, Malachi nodded, and the bodyguards relaxed ever so slightly. “Well,” said the general, “you’ve learned the first rule of soldiering, and it came hard enough—but you learned it quick, I’ll say that.”

Gar, who had been a soldier and an officer in half a dozen armies, kept the contempt from showing in his face. The man was a rank amateur, but Gar wouldn’t learn anything by saying so—and he had been suckered in neatly to that first “lesson.”

“All right, then, you’ve learned,” General Malachi said easily. “Anything you’d like to know? Don’t worry, I’m giving you permission to speak now.”

“Well, I was wondering, sir, how you became a general.”

Malachi bellowed a laugh and his bodyguards snickered. “How I come to be a general? Why, I told the world I was, man, and defied it to tell me otherwise! Mind you, I started out as an outlaw like any, but I fought my way up to be captain of my band—and when I bludgeoned out another captain in fair fight and won his men, I decided I’d have to be more than a captain, so I thought through those old stories that only outlaws tell and remembered the ranks in the ancient armies. I called myself a major and dared any who thought otherwise to prove it on me. One captain dared, and after that I had three bands under me. Some others joined of their own choice, the rest I conquered, and when I bossed all the bands in this forest, I called myself colonel. Now that I’ve captured three towns, I think I rate the rank of general.”

The bodyguards were nodding and grinning; Gar allowed himself a single thoughtful nod of his own. “Thank you.”

“What about you?” Malachi’s voice was a whip crack. “Think I don’t deserve the title?”

“You have won it on your own terms,” Gar said. He didn’t add that by any real army’s standards, Malachi wouldn’t amount to more than a sergeant major, a lieutenant at the most.

“Well said.” Malachi seemed to expand, preening. “Anything more you want to know before I hand you to a training sergeant who’ll shove your face in the dirt?”

“Only wondering what you’ll call yourself next.”

“Why, king, of course,” Malachi said with a grin that showed several broken teeth. “I aim to boss around everybody between the mountains to the east and the big river to the west, from the northern desert to the southern sea.”

Ambitious, Gar thought, but had to put the idea in Malachi’s idiom. “You don’t think small, do you?”

“Well, we’ll see.” Malachi’s grin widened. “Maybe when I’ve got the whole land, I’ll think of something more.”

The greed in his tone chilled Gar, but he only frowned as though puzzled and said, “It seems so plain when you say it that you make me wonder why nobody ever tried it before.”

Malachi guffawed; his bodyguards joined in. Gar stood against their laughter with a look of polite inquiry.

“Ignorant enough, ain’t he?” Malachi jeered, and the bodyguards chorused agreement. The biggest one said, “He’s gotta be from so far out in the woods they still talk Bear!”

“I do come from far away,” Gar acknowledged, “very far. I take it you’re not the first to think of ruling the whole land, then?”

“Oh, there’s plenty have,” Malachi said. “No one knows how many—but none ever came anywhere near being king.”

“Really?” Gar was extremely interested now. “These villagers don’t look all that tough. What could stop a determined man?”

“Why, the Scarlet Company, of course!” Malachi said with scorn. “They’ve stopped every other man who wanted to be a king, but they won’t stop me!”

The bodyguards gave a raucous cheer.

“Three of ‘em have tried already,” Malachi said, “and my bodyguards got ‘em, every one!” He clapped the nearest man on the shoulder. “Ten of ‘em there be, and every one as tough as oak! That right, Teak?”

“Right as reins, Gen’ral,” Teak said with a gaptoothed grin. “Too bad they died so quick, though.”

“Yeah, no chance to make ‘em talk about the Company,” Malachi grunted.

“Scarlet Company killers either die quick or talk quick,” Teak complained. “Don’t do no good either way.”

“Maybe,” Malachi growled, “but it does show that even the Scarlet Company can’t stop me, not with you bravos watching.”

“Be no loot and no women if you died, Gen’ral,” Teak said. “I know it’s best for you when my job’s dull, but when it gets exciting, it gets really good.” He pushed one fist into the other palm, squeezing and chuckling.

Gar gave the man a quick measuring look. Teak was the biggest of them, but he was still a head shorter than Gar. He made up for it in breadth, though—one solid block of muscle, under a layer of self-indulgent fat. Gar felt excitement stir—he hadn’t had a good fight in a long time, too long, and Teak looked big enough to give him a challenge.

The bodyguard recognized the glint in his eye; his grin hardened. “Anytime, Longshanks. Any time.”

“Why not now?” Gar asked.

Teak chuckled and stepped forward, but Malachi snapped, “None of that! When I’m in the mood to watch a fight, I’ll let you know—but Teak’s on duty and my bodyguards don’t have any room to slack off!”

“Wouldn’t call it slacking, Gen’ral,” Teak said. “What do we know about him, eh? He could be a Company man, he could.”

Malachi stared at Gar, startled by the thought. Then his eyes narrowed. “Yeah, I see what you mean. There’s something about him, something wrong.”

“The Gen’ral has the Second Sight sometimes,” Teak explained to Gar. “It’s one of the reasons he never loses, it is.”

The other reason, Gar was sure, was because Malachi was always careful to attack antagonists who were weaker than he—victims, not foes.

“Yeah, there’s something about him that could be my downfall,” Malachi said with total certainty. “Don’t know what it is, but it’s there. Better not take chances.”

Gar stared incredulously. His skin prickled as he realized that three of the bodyguards had drifted around behind him. He forced a laugh. “How’s this? You don’t fear the whole of the Scarlet Company, but one lone peddler is a danger?”

The general dismissed the objection with a chopping gesture. “You could be Company, like Teak says. I haven’t conquered a forest and three villages by taking chances. Top him, Teak.”

Teak stepped in with a gloating chuckle and a jabbing spear.