A Wizard in War

12

The jailer hauled open a huge oaken slab, and the guards kicked them in. They fell, rolling, and the spy called after them, “Preach your sedition in there!” He burst into gloating laughter, cut short by the boom of the closing door.

Coll recoiled instinctively from the slimy chill beneath him, struggling to his knees, then his feet, gasping for breath. But breathing through his open mouth didn’t help much. He had never dreamed of such a stench! The smell of human waste competed with the stink of unwashed bodies for primacy of pong. The very air seemed thick with it, but that was probably because the whole big room was lighted only by one small barred window, far up on the wall across from the door. Manlike shapes sat listlessly in the shadows; others milled about aimlessly in the gloom. A few of these last turned in their direction and came shambling toward them, hunched and menacing.

Coll swallowed heavily and stepped a little closer to Dirk, who was just managing to climb to his feet. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know,” the knight answered. “What do we do, Gar?”

“Just what the spy said,” Gar answered. “Preach sedition.”

“I don’t think this is the most pious congregation in the world.” Dirk’s voice hardened with tension. “They don’t have the look of the kind who like sermons.”

“On the contrary.” Gar had risen to his feet. “They look like just the kind who would cheer the sort of things I have to say. You there!” He stepped out to meet the biggest of the advancing prisoners. “You look like a smart chap!”

“Smart enough to teach you your place,” the Neanderthal grunted. He was a head shorter than Gar, but much wider, seeming more like a door than a man-a prison door. “I’m the Gaffer, and in here, what I say goes!”

“Goes right out the window, from now on.” Gar glanced up at the source of dim light. “Yes, you do have a window. Better send your claim to give orders through it, because I’m going to be running things here.”

The gaffer didn’t growl, didn’t bellow—he just slammed a huge fist at Gar’s midriff, doubling over and following it with blow after jackhammer blow, very hard and very, very fast. But Gar saw the first one coming—how, Coll didn’t know, it had been so fast and dropped both forearms to block the Gaffer’s punches, then pulled one fist out. The Gaffer slammed in one last blow. Gar took it with a grunt, and the Gaffer leaped back, but Gar caught him on the ear with a quick right cross. The Gaffer’s head snapped to the side, and Gar was on him, hitting him in belly, chin, then belly again. The Gaffer folded, but brought his arms up to block, then slammed a fist at Gar’s face. The giant blocked and counterpunched; the Gaffer’s head snapped back, and he staggered away, still holding his arms up. Gar followed closely, keeping the series of blows going until, fast as a striking snake, the Gaffer ducked under his punches, hammered at his midriff, then came up to crack a fist into Gar’s jaw. Gar rolled with the punch, but the Gaffer leaped after him, swinging a haymaker that would have laid Gar out, but the giant stepped inside the swing, catching the Gaffer’s wrist and tunic, then turning, sticking out a hip, and throwing the prison king to the ground.

He pulled up on the man’s arm as he fell, so that he landed on his side. The Gaffer roared in anger and scrambled back to his feet—but Gar stepped in before he’d recovered his balance, knocked aside a futile punch, and slammed a fist into the man’s gut. The Gaffer doubled over, but Gar straightened him up again with an uppercut. The Gaffer’s eyes glazed; he teetered, then fell.

Gar turned to glare at the other prisoners, panting hard, bruises already beginning to darken on his face. He grinned, but his smile wasn’t pleasant. “I said I’m running things now. Anyone else think I shouldn’t?”

The prisoners muttered to one another in consternation.

“Well?” Gar snapped.

They turned back to him, faces going straight. “No, my lord,” one said, and another agreed, “You’re the Gaffer now.”

Gar nodded slowly, the grin subsiding, then gave his fallen opponent a push with his toe. “If I’m the Gaffer, who’s he?”

“Only Liam the Smith now, my lord,” another prisoner said, poker faced.

“No, he’s my sergeant.” Gar nodded at Dirk. “He’s my lieutenant, and if any of you give him any lip, he’ll take you down almost as fast as I could.”

Dirk stepped up beside him, letting his grin grow. “Anybody doubt it?” Gar’s voice cracked like a whip. “N-n-no, my lord,” another man stammered, backing up.

Gar nodded slowly, then lashed out another question. “How did you know I was a lord?”

“Why … your manner of speech, your bearing, your whole manner!” the man stammered, and the other men nodded and muttered agreement.

“But you must know I’m not a real lord,” Gar pressed, “or there wouldn’t have been any nonsense about a challenge from your leader. You would have all leaped upon me and struck and struck until I moved no more.”

The men exchanged startled glances. Apparently they hadn’t thought of that.

“What, do you mean to say you wouldn’t dare?” Gar scoffed.

“Uh, Gar…” Dirk sidled up to him. “Maybe we ought to leave well enough alone.”

“But it isn’t ‘well enough,’ ” Gar insisted, and to the prisoners, “Stop and think. If you strike down a lord, who’s going to punish you for it?”

“Why, the soldiers,” said one of the men, as though not believing that someone could even ask about something so obvious.

“And what will the soldiers do?”

“Throw you into prison until they’re ready to hang you!”

“But you’re already in prison,” Gar pointed out.

The prisoners all looked startled, then exchanged thoughtful glances. One or two turned to look Gar up and down. Coll could almost hear their thoughts.

So could Gar. “Of course, not very many lords are as big as I am, nor always with friends who are such expert fighters.”

Now the appraising glanced turned to Dirk. Still grinning, he stepped forward—and suddenly whirled, catching one of the appraisers by the arm and shirtfront, then whirling on to throw him howling into a handful of others. They went down with enough shouting to fill the whole room. Dirk stepped back, eyes glinting with satisfaction, and watched them disentangle themselves, then rise again. When the noise quieted, he admitted, “Lords do know more about fighting than serfs.”

Coll was glad they’d been giving him lessons.

“The question is,” Gar told them, “what do you have left to lose?”

“Why, our lives!” said another of the men, as though he were talking to an idiot.

“Really! You expect to get out of here someday, then.” They stared at him, amazed; then the anger began to grow.

Gar nodded with satisfaction. “When you have nothing left to lose, why not strike back? All they can do is kill you!”

“Aye, and send us to Hell,” one man said bitterly. “Will you go to Hell for killing a lord who grinds his people under his foot, and uses them for his own cruel pleasures? ” Gar countered. “Or will you go to Heaven for trying to save his serfs from their misery?”

Again, they all looked startled.

“You’re hitting them with too many new ideas, too fast,” Dirk said to him in an undertone. “You’re going to lose them.”

Gar nodded. “Then I’d better jump to the summary.” He raised his voice again. “You can fight for your freedom, and the freedom of all your kin! If I’m your Gaffer now, that’s my rule: that I’ll teach you how to fight, and when!” They stared, too dazed to argue.

The former Gaffer stirred and groaned.

Gar knelt by him, put an arm under his shoulders, and helped him sit up. “I know it hurts, but it’ll go away in time. You there! Get him water!” He looked down at Liam the smith. “You hit hard, friend.”

The man looked up, startled by the word, and the tone.

“You’re no slouch yourself,” he said slowly. “Know a few tricks, don’t you?”

“Yes, and I’ll teach them to you.”

Liam’s eyes narrowed. “Why? Then I could beat you!”

“No, you couldn’t.” Gar’s grin wasn’t nice. “I’d still know more. In fact, I could teach you fifty, and I’d still know more.”

“Better believe him,” Dirk said, in a tone that implied he himself had found out the hard way.

Liam stared up at Gar, then nodded. “I’ll learn them, then.” He broke off as another man thrust a dipperful of water at him. He drank it at a draft, then gave the bearer a long, measuring look before he handed the dipper back and turned to Gar again. “So you’re the Gaffer now, eh?”

Gar stared at him for a moment, wooden-faced, and Coll realized he was surprised at the quickness of the Gaffer’s intelligence. Then Gar said, “I am, and Dirk here is my lieutenant—but you’re my sergeant.”

The man gave a grudging nod, then asked Dirk, “Could you beat me?” His answer was a slow grin, but Gar said, “Even if he couldn’t; I would. Be satisfied with sergeant, friend.”

“Good advice,” the man admitted. “I’m Liam.”

“Well met, Liam.” Gar clasped his hand, then pushed himself to his feet, dragging Liam along with him.

The new sergeant stood, grinning up at his new gaffer. “You’ll do. What’s your first order?”

“A question. Do you have any poles in here?”

“What, something to strike at the guards with? They’d never! ”

Gar nodded as though he’d expected that. “Go form your men into two lines, then. Dirk, would you take Coll and start these men on their training?”

“Why, sure.” Dirk beckoned to Coll and went to the double line that was forming in response to Liam’s barks.

“That one there.” Dirk pointed to a big bruiser a head taller than Coll. “Show him how to do a hip throw.”

Coll looked the man up and down and quailed inside—the brute outweighed him by a good stone or two. But he couldn’t shame himself in front of Dirk, so he strolled up to the grinning ape, then shot out hands, whirled, and laid the man on the floor just as Gar had done to Liam. The sergeant chuckled at the victim’s yelp of surprise.

Dirk nodded. “Okay, back in line. Let’s take that a little slower now. Face me, Coll.” He began the movements in slow motion, describing what he was doing every step of the way.

Gar watched them, nodding approval now and then. While they practiced, he strolled around the huge cell, inspecting the conditions. When the men finished practice, cursing and sweating, he let them rest and drink a little water, then put them to work with broken crockery, shoveling the malodorous straw off into one corner, which he thenceforth dubbed the “privy,” and sternly forbade the men to answer a call of nature in any other part of the room. Then he set them to work scrubbing the floor with rags. There was plenty of water, at least, fed by a pipe through the wall, probably from the moat. There was a huge heap of more or less fresh straw that Liam had been using for his private bed; Gar divided it up so that every man had at least enough to lay between himself and the cold stones of the floor when he slept. By the time the jailers shoved dinner through the flap in the door, the huge stone chamber seemed surprisingly neat, and almost clean.

Liam looked about, nodding as he chewed. “You’ve done wonders already … Gaffer.” He said the word as though it had a bad taste, but he said it. “I hadn’t thought it was possible.”

“Thank you,” Gar said. “At least we can practice without tripping on offal. When will they bring fresh straw?”

Liam shrugged. “When it pleases them. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next year.”

“Then we’ll have to be careful about throws. In fact, we had better avoid them as long as possible.”

Liam blinked. “You didn’t hesitate to throw me—or to have your man Coll throw Boam!”

“Yes, but we knew how to make sure you wouldn’t land full force. All of you will learn that, but I’d rather not have broken bones while you’re learning.”

“What’s a ‘gaffer’?” Dirk asked Coll.

Coll jolted out of a daydream about Ciare—her glowing eyes, her tempting lips. “A gaffer?” he asked in surprise. “It’s what you call an old man.”

“A village elder, for example?” Coll frowned. “Any old man.”

“So it’s short for ‘grandfather,’ ” Dirk mused. “Nice to know your culture still respects the wisdom of age.”

Coll stared, thrown yet again by an alien concept. “What people would not?” Then as an afterthought, “What is a ‘culture?’ ”

“The ideas a group of people live by, and the way they express those ideas in their daily lives and the things they make,” Dirk explained. “I can see a lot that’s good in your culture, Coll.”

“But some that’s bad, too?” The serf frowned.

Dirk nodded. “Authoritarianism. Your commoners are so used to taking orders that it never occurs to them to think for themselves. What do the forest outlaws do when they’re on their own? What do these prisoners do? Look for somebody to give them orders! It’s not just Liam’s fault that he became Gaffer—they wanted him to!”

“No, wait!” Boam frowned. “We don’t like being bossed.”

“You don’t like it,” Dirk agreed, “but you don’t know how to live without it.” And he launched into an explanation of social structure.

The prisoners listened, wide-eyed and fascinated. They interrupted with loud exclamations of denial now and then, but Dirk explained, and convinced them that what he had said was true.

When the last ray of light was gone, and they had sought their meager piles of straw, Gar said quietly, “You would have made a good professor.”

“Why, thanks,” Dirk said, surprised. “But I don’t think any college would want to include this subject in the curriculum.”

The next day, Gar started them off’ with calisthenics, then turned them over to Dirk, who gave them basic lessons in falling—but only from their knees; he was wary of the stone floor. After the first few shouts of pain and anger, he let them get back on their feet and showed them the basic guard position, then some elementary kicks and punches. When they were sweaty and panting, he called a halt and asked, “When do they serve breakfast in this dump?”

“It’s right over there.” Liam pointed to the water trough. “As to food, they’ll feed us in the middle of the day, then again when the cooks throw out the garbage, if there is any.”

“Yesterday’s twilight meal, huh?” Dirk nodded grimly. “Well, exercise is supposed to hold down the appetite for a while. Take a break, guys, then report to Gar.”

Gar gave them his standard lecture on the cell system, then led them through another drill in unarmed combat. Coll was astonished that the guards didn’t stop them, but apparently they were used to shouting and scuffling in the big cell, and never thought to look. Either that, or they didn’t care.

Dirk, though, saw a man sitting in the shadows, head bowed, staying in his own corner. He went over to talk to the prisoner. Curious, Coll drifted up beside him.

“You’re missing all the fun,” Dirk said.

“Nothing in life can be fun,” the man growled. “Go away and let me die!”

“Die?” Dirk knelt down beside him. “They don’t even allow sticks in here, let alone knives! How’re you going to kill yourself?”

“Starvation,” the man snapped. “There’s no one here who will stop me—and they’ll all help me, too, by keeping the food to themselves!”

“And when you finally get hungry enough that you can’t help yourself, and try to fight for a bite, you’ll be so weak they’ll be able to swat you like a fly,” Dirk said, with distaste. “Anybody else ever try this?”

The man shrugged. “Every month or so. It always works.”

“I can believe it,” Dirk said bitterly. “What’s so bad about life, though?”

“The lords!” the man burst out. “They take our food, they take our women, they make us wear ourselves out digging in the dirt! Who would want to live?” Finally he looked up, glaring at Dirk with hot, hate-filled eyes. “And you’re one of them!”

“Yes, but I’m fighting them,” Dirk pointed out. “That’s why they kicked me in here as a traitor. Look, though—if you really want to die, why waste your life?”

The man frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Why not take a lord with you?” Dirk asked. “Or at least a knight? With the skills we’ll teach you, you might even take two or three before they kill you.”

The man stared. “Do you really think so?”

“I’ve seen it done,” Dirk said.

The man surged to his feet—and almost fell; he was already weak with hunger. Dirk caught him, and he hung on, panting, “Show me! It’s better this way.”

They had to feed him before he was strong enough to get in on the martial arts classes, of course, but he listened avidly to Gar’s teachings—and gave Dirk an idea. He began to chat with the others one by one, ferreting out those who were so consumed with burning hatred, and had lost so much in life, as to be suicidal. He persuaded them not to care how they died as long as they could take a few knights with them, then taught them to sing, to juggle, and turn handsprings. “You’ll wander the back roads from village to village,” he told them, “and carry nonsense rhymes from cell to cell. They won’t make sense to you, but the cells will understand the messages they hide. I’ll send new songs by other minstrels, with messages hidden in them.”

“But when will we kill lords!” one would-be entertainer hissed.

“When the egg hatches,” Dirk said cryptically.

“I never thought of training minstrels,” Gar admitted when Dirk told him, “or of sending encoded messages in ballads. Stroke of genius, Dirk.”

“Well, thanks,” Dirk said, pleased. “It will be slow communication, but better than nothing.”

“Much better,” Gar agreed. “In fact, I think we’ll find that the ballads will travel faster than any one person. When it’s time to rise, we can have Herkimer hop us from one location to another, releasing ballads—or even dropping them to minstrels.”

All the prisoners listened avidly as Gar taught them oral codes. “If you meet a man who you think might be of another cell, say, ‘John the miller grinds small, small.’ That’s the sign. Then if he says, ‘The king’s son of Heaven will pay for all,’ you’ll know he is one of us, and you can pass your message. But if he isn’t…”

“He’ll look at you like you’re crazy,” Liam interrupted. Gar nodded. “Another sign is: ‘The mills of the gods grind slowly,’ and the countersign is, ‘But they grind exceedingly small.’ Now, let’s say you want to tell another cell that there are thirteen cells already formed, but…”

“Are there really?” Roam asked, eyes huge.

“Sixteen.” Dirk nodded toward Gar. “He doesn’t bother keeping count—that’s my job.”

A respectful murmur passed through the prisoners, and they all straightened a little, gaining heart.

Gar went on. “But there’s always the chance that a spy might happen by and overhear. You don’t want him to understand, of course, so you say it in code, like this: ‘Mother Goose is sitting on sixteen eggs.’ ”

“So each cell is an ‘egg’?” Liam asked.

“Yes, and ‘Mother Goose’ is our uprising. If someone tells you, ‘The eggs will hatch next Fiveday at fourteen hundred,’ that will mean that all the cells will rise against whatever targets they’ve been assigned next Thursday—Sunday is ‘Oneday,’ and you count from there—and ‘fourteen hundred’ is two o’clock.”

“Two hours past noon, yes!” Boam nodded eagerly. “So eight o’clock in the morning would be eight hundred, and noon would be twelve hundred.”

Gar nodded, but a third prisoner asked, “Will that happen soon? The eggs hatching, I mean?”

“Not so soon as I would like,” Gar told him, “but sooner than you think. Back to practice, now.”

Late in the afternoon, the guards shoveled in a load of straw that was only slightly used, fresh out of the great hall. Gar set Coll to binding some of it into imitation quarterstaves, and he set to teaching the prisoners how to use them. They stayed two weeks. Then Gar told Liam, “It’s time to leave.”

Liam snorted. “How are you going to do that?”

Very easily, as it turned out. Gar produced a heavy knife that he had hidden in the folds of his cloak. Liam stared. “How did you get that past the guards?”

“They were much more interested in my sword and dagger,” Gar explained. “When it’s dark, boost me up to that window.”

Before dark, he and Dirk went quietly among the men, giving them the names of their cells—there were tawny owls and banded owls, chimney swifts and barn swifts, gray squirrels and red squirrels, on and on through the animal kingdom. Coll wondered how Dirk could ever remember so many and be sure he had it right.

Then darkness fell, and five men stood against the wall with four men on their shoulders and Gar on top, picking at the mortar between the stones around the window. Liam was just beginning to growl about wasted effort when a shower of mortar silenced him. It took an hour and four changes of men, but at last Gar handed down the barred window, followed by blocks of stone two feet long and a foot thick. They came and came, six, twelve, eighteen. Then finally Gar climbed down, and the last pyramid of men groaned and rubbed their bruises.

Liam could only stare at the empty hole above him. “Who would ever have thought that mortar would have weakened so?”

“No one,” Gar told him, “so no one ever checked it.”

“You could have had us out of here the night you came in!”

“I could have,” Gar agreed, “but you would all have been killed or caught again. Now there’s a chance most of you will make it to freedom.” He turned around, his voice stern. “When you get out, creep to the back of the castle and swim the moat. I’ve been watching the moon, and it’s new—there won’t be any moonlight tonight. Those who can swim will pull those who can’t. When you reach the far side, sneak down the hill from bush to rock to bush. No noise, understand? Absolutely no noise! And no taking revenge on the lords or their soldiers—save that till the eggs hatch! When you’re five miles away from here, go where your cell’s been ordered to go—some to the greenwood, some to the towns, and your cell leader has been told the name. There, start new cells. If you’re caught and go to another prison, start cells there! Everyone understand? … Good. Time to go.”