King Kobold Revived

Chapter 1

The heavy clinging fog lay dense, nearly opaque, over the heaving sea. The rolling, endless crash of breakers against the headlands at the harbor’s mouth came muted and distant.

High above, circling unseen, a bird called plaintive sentry cries.

The dragon shouldered out of the swirling mist, its beaked, arrogant head held high.

Four more like it loomed out of the fog at its back.

Round, bright-painted shields hung on their sides.

Oars speared out from the shields, lifting in unison and falling feathered to the waves.

The dragon’s single wing was tightly furled around the crossbar lashed to the tall, single mast that thrust upward out of its back.

Squat, hulking, helmeted shapes prowled silently about the mast.

The dragon had an eagle’s beak, and a tall, ribbed fin for a crest. Two long, straight horns probed out from its forehead.

The surf moaned on the shore as the dragon led its mates past the headland.

The child screamed, howling for his mother, thrashing himself into a tangle with the thick fur blanket.

Then the oil lamp was there, just a rag in a dish, but warm and safe, throwing its yellow glow upward on the mother’s weary, gentle face.

She gathered the quivering, sobbing little body into her arms, murmuring, “There now, love, there. Mama’s here. She won’t let him hurt you.”

She held the child tightly, rubbing his back until the sobbing ceased. “There now, Artur, there. What was it, darling?”

The child sniffled and lifted his head from her shoulder. “Bogeyman, Mama. Chasing me, and—he had a great big knife!”

Ethel’s mouth firmed. She hugged the child and glared at the lamp-flame. “The bogeymen are far across the sea, darling. They can’t come here.”

“But Carl says…”

“I know, I know. Carl’s mama tells him the bogeyman will get him if he’s bad. But that’s just a silly story, darling, to frighten silly children. You’re not silly, are you?”

Artur was silent a while; then he murmured into the folds of his mother’s gown, “Uh… no, Mama…”

“Of course you’re not.” She patted his back, laid him down in the bed, and tucked the fur robe under his chin. “That’s my brave boy. We both know the bogeyman can’t hurt us, don’t we?”

“Yes, Mama,” the child said uncertainly.

“Sleep sweetly, darling,” the mother said, and closed the door softly behind her.

The oil lamp set the shadows dancing softly on the walls. The child lay awake awhile, watching the slow ballet of light and dark.

He sighed, rolled over on his side. His eyes were closing as they strayed to the window.

A huge misshapen face peered in, the eyes small and gleaming, the nose a glob of flesh, the mouth a gash framing great square, yellowed teeth. Shaggy brown hair splayed out from a gleaming, winged helmet.

He grinned at the child, pig eyes dancing.

“Mama! Mamamamamamamama! Bogeyman!”

The bogeyman snarled and broke through the stout wooden wall with three blows of a great ironbound club.

The child screamed and ran, yanking and straining at the heavy bedroom door.

The bogeyman clambered through the broken wall.

The door was flung wide; the mother stared in horror, clutching her child to her and screaming for her husband. She wheeled about and fled.

The bogeyman gave a deep, liquid chuckle, and followed.

In another cottage, a bogeyman seized a child by the ankles and swung his head against the wall. He lifted his huge club to fend off the father’s sword, then whirled the club into the father’s belly, swung it up to strike the father’s temple. Bone splintered; blood flowed.

The mother backed away, screaming, as the beastman caught up the father’s fallen sword. He turned to the mother, knocked her aside with a careless, backhand swipe of the club, and stove in the family strong-chest with one blow.

In the first cottage, the oil lamp, knocked aside in the beast-man’s passage, licked at the oil spilled on walls and floor.

Other cottages were already ablaze.

Women and children ran screaming, with chuckling beast-men loping after them.

The men of the village caught up harpoons and axes, rallying to defend their wives and children.

The beastmen shattered their heads with ironbound cudgels, clove chests with great, razor-edged battle axes, and passed on, leaving dismembered bodies behind them.

Then drumming hooves and a troop of cavalry burst into the village; the fires had alerted the local baron. He sat now at the head of a score of horsemen drawn up in the beastmen’s path.

“Fix lances!” he roared. “Charge!”

The beastmen chuckled.

Lances snapped down, heels kicked horsehide; the cavalry charged… and faltered, stumbled, halted, soldiers and horses alike staring at the beastmen for long, silent minutes.

Each beastman flicked his glance from one soldier to another, on to a third, then back to the first, holding each one’s eyes for a fraction of a second.

Jaws gaped, eyes glazed all along the cavalry line. Lances slipped from nerveless fingers.

Slowly, the horses stepped forward, stumbled, and stepped again, their riders immobile, shoulders sagging, arms dangling.

The beastmen’s little pig eyes glittered. Their grins widened, heads nodded in eager encouragement.

Step-stumble-step, the horses moved forward.

The beastmen shrieked victory as their clubs swung, caving in the horses’ heads. Axes swung high and fell, biting deep into the riders. Blood fountained as men fell. Heads flew, bones crunched under great splayfeet, as the beastmen, chuckling, waded through the butchered cavalry to break in the door of the village storehouse.

The Count of Baicci, vassal to the Duke of Loguire, lay headless in the dirt, his blood pumping out to mingle with that of his cavalry before the thirsty soil claimed it.

And the women and children of the village, huddled together on the slopes above, stared slack-jawed at their burning houses, while the dragon ships, wallowing low in the waves with the weight of their booty, swung out past the bar.

And, as the long ships passed the headland, the wind blew the villagers an echo of bellowing laughter.

The word was brought to King Tuan Loguire at his capital in Runnymede; and the King waxed wroth.

The Queen waxed into a fury.

“Nay, then!” she stormed. “These devil’s spawn, they lay waste a village with fire and sword, slay the men and dishonor the women, and bear off the children for bondsmen, belike—and what wilt thou do, thou? Assuredly, thou wilt not revenge!”

She was barely out of her teens, and the King was scarce older; but he sat straight as a staff, his face grave and calm.

“What is the count of the dead?” he demanded.

“All the men of the village, Majesty,” answered the messenger, grief and horror just beneath the skin of his face. “A hundred and fifty. Fourteen of the women, and six babes. And twenty good horsemen, and the Count of Baicci.”

The Queen stared, horrified. “A hundred and fifty,” she murmured, “a hundred and fifty.”

Then, louder, “A hundred and fifty widowed in this one night! And babes, six babes slain!”

“God have mercy on their souls.” The King bowed his head.

“Aye, pray, man, pray!” the Queen snapped. “Whilst thy people lie broke and bleeding, thou dost pray!” She whirled on the messenger. “And rapine?”

“None,” said the messenger, bowing his head. “Praise the Lord, none.”

“None,” the Queen repeated, almost mechanically.

“None?” She spun on her husband. “What insult is this, that they scorn our women!”

“They feared the coming of more soldiers, mayhap…” the messenger muttered.

The Queen gave him all the scorn she could jam into one quick glance. “And ‘twere so, they would be lesser men than our breed; and ours are, Heaven knows, slight enough.”

The messenger stiffened. The King’s face turned wooden.

He leaned back slowly, gaze fixed on the messenger. “Tell me, good fellow—how was it a whole troop of cavalry could not withstand these pirates?”

The Queen’s lip curled. “How else could it chance?”

The King sat immobile, waiting for the messenger’s answer.

“Sorcery, Majesty.” The messenger’s voice quavered. “Black, foul sorcery. The horsemen rode doomed, for their foes cast the Evil Eye upon them.”

Silence held the room. Even the Queen was speechless, for, on this remote planet, superstition had a disquieting tendency to become fact.

The King was the first to speak. He stirred in his throne, turned to the Lord Privy Councillor.

This meant he had to look down; for, though Brom O’Berin’s shoulders were as broad as the King’s, he stood scarcely two feet high.

“Brom,” said the King, “send forth five companies of the King’s Foot, one to each of the great lords whose holdings border the sea.”

“But one company to each!” the Queen fairly exploded. “Art thou so easily done, good mine husband? Canst thou spare but thus much of thy force?”

The King rose and turned to Sir Maris the Seneschal. “Sir Maris, do you bring forth three companies of the King’s Guard. The fourth shall bide here, for the guarding of Her Majesty Queen Catharine. Let the three companies assemble in the courtyard below within the hour, provisioned for long and hard riding.”

“My liege, I will,” said Sir Maris, bowing.

“And see that mine armor is readied.”

“Armor!” the Queen gasped. “Nay, nay, O mine husband. What wouldst thou do?”

“Why, what I must.” The King turned to her, catching her hands between his own. “I am King, and my people are threatened. I must ride to the wreck of this village and seek out the trail of these beastmen. Then must I build ships and follow them, if I may, to their homeland.”

“Oh, nay, good my lord!” Catharine cried, clinging to him. “Have we not men-at-arms enough in our armies but you also must ride forth to die? Oh, my lord, nay! What would I do if thou shouldst be—if thou shouldst take hurt?”

The King held her close for one moment, then held her away, tilted her chin, and kissed her lips gently. “Thou art Queen,” he said softly. “The brunt of this sorrow must thou bear; such is the office of Queens. Here in the place of power must thou bide, to care for our people while I ride. Thou must hazard thine husband for the good of thy people, as I must hazard my life—for such is the office of Kings.”

He held her close for a long, timeless while, then kissed her lingeringly. He straightened, her hands clasped between his, then turned to go.

An embarrassed cough stopped him.

He turned, frowning. “Art still in this place, Brom? I had thought…”

“My liege,” the dwarf interrupted, “what thou shalt command, I shall do—but wilt thou command nothing more?”

The King’s face darkened.

Brom’s voice was tight with determination. “If there is the Evil Eye in this, Majesty, ‘tis matter for witches.”

The King turned away, glowering, his lips pressed thin.

“Thou hast the right of it, Brom,” he admitted grudgingly. “Well enough, then, we must. Send to the witches in the North Tower, Brom, directing them to summon”—his face twisted with dislike—“the High Warlock.”

The High Warlock was currently leaning his back against a tree trunk with his fundament firmly founded on terra firma, watching the sunrise with one eye and his wife with the other. Both were eminently worth watching.

The sun was splendor itself as it rose orange-gold out of the oiled green of the pine-tops into a rose-and-blue sky; but his flame-headed wife was all that was grace and loveliness, singing lightly as she sank her hands into the tub of dishwater beside the cooking-fire in the dry warmth of their cave home.

It wasn’t just the domesticity that made her lovely, of course. Her long, loose red hair seemed to float about her, framing a round face with large, sea-green, long-lashed eyes, a snub nose, a wide mouth with full, tempting lips. Her figure was spectacular under the white peasant blouse and tight bodice and long, full, bright-colored skirt.

Of course, her figure was, at the moment, more a matter of inference than observation; but the Warlock had a good memory.

The memory was a little too good; his wife’s beauty occasionally reminded him of his own—well, shall we say, plainness?

No, we should say ugliness—or, rather, homeliness; for there was something attractive about his face. He had the appeal that is common to overstuffed armchairs, old fireplaces, and potbellied stoves. Hounds and small children loved him on sight.

And by this quality he had won her (it would be, perhaps, more accurate to say that she had won him, after an extended battle with his inferiority complex); for if a beautiful woman is betrayed often enough, she will begin to value trustworthiness, warmth, and affection more than romance.

At least, she will if she is the kind of woman to whom love is the goal, and romance just the luxury; such a woman was Gwen.

Such a woman will eventually be capable of loving a man with a good heart, even though his face be a bargain assortment of inclined planes, hollows, and knobs in Expressionist juxtaposition; and such a man was Rod Gallowglass.

He had a receding hairline; a flat, sloping forehead; prominent bushy eyebrows; deep eye-sockets with a matched set of gray eyes; a blade of a nose; high, flat cheekbones; and a wide, thin-lipped mouth. The mouth kept a precarious perch on top of a square, jutting chin.

Nevertheless, she loved him, which fact was to Rod a miracle, a flagrant violation of all known laws of nature.

Not that he was about to object, of course.

He slid down onto the base of his spine, let his eyelids droop, and let the peace of the summer morning seep into him, lulling him into a doze.

Something struck his belly, knocking the wind out of him and jolting him wide awake. He jerked upright, knife in hand.

“Da-dee!” cooed the baby, looking enormously pleased with himself.

Rod stared at the kid. Little Magnus was holding tight to the bars of his playpen; he hadn’t quite learned to stand by himself yet.

Rod managed a feeble grin and levered the corner of the oak playpen off his belly. “Very good, Magnus!” He patted the baby’s head. “Good boy, good boy!”

The baby grinned, fairly hopping with delight.

The playpen rose six inches from the ground.

Rod made a frantic grab and forced it back down, hands on the lid.

Ordinarily, playpens do not have lids. But this playpen did; otherwise, the baby might have floated out.

“Yes, yes, that’s a wonderful baby! Smart little fella, there! Very good baby—Gwen!”

“What dost thou wish, my lord?” Gwen came up to the mouth of the cave, drying her hands on her apron.

Then she saw the playpen.

“Oh, Magnus!” she mourned in that tone of hurt disappointment only mothers can master.

“No, no!” Rod said quickly. “He’s a good boy, Gwen—isn’t he? I’ve just been telling him what a good boy he is. Good boy, good baby!‘’

The baby stared, tiny brow wrinkling in utter confusion.

His mother had much the same look.

But her eyes widened as she realized the only way the playpen could’ve moved out of the cave while her back was turned. “Oh, Rod!”

“Yeah.” Rod grinned with more than a touch of pride. “Precocious, isn’t he?”

“But—but, my lord!” Gwen shook her head, looking dazed. “Only witches can move things other than themselves. Warlocks cannot!”

Rod pried open the playpen and took his son in his arms. “Well, he couldn’t have done it by levi—uh, flying, could he?”

“Nay, he hath not strength enough to lift the playpen along with him—that he would have to do by his own bone and sinew. But warlocks cannot…”

“Well, this one can.” He grinned down at the baby and chucked it under the chin. “How about that? I’ve fathered a genius!”

The baby cooed and bounced out of Rod’s arms.

“Whup! Come back here!” Rod jumped and snagged a fat little ankle before the baby could float off in the morning breeze.

“Oh, Magnus!” Gwen was on them in a rush, cradling the baby in her arms. “Oh, my bold babe! Thou shalt most surely be a most puissant warlock when thou art grown!”

The baby smiled back at her. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d done that was right, but he wasn’t going to argue.

Rod beamed with fatherly pride as he hefted the oaken playpen back into the cave. He was amazed at his son; that playpen was heavy

He got a hank of rope and started tying the pen down. “That kid!” he said, shaking his head. “Scarcely a year old—he can’t even walk yet, and… Gwen, what’s the age when they start levitating?”

“ ‘Levi—’ Oh, you mean flying, my lord!” Gwen came back into the cave, the baby straddling one hip. “Thirteen years, or thereabouts, my lord, is the age for young warlocks to fly.”

“And this kid started at nine months.” Rod’s chest swelled a trifle—his head, too. “What age do little witches start making their broomsticks fly?”

“Eleven, my lord, or mayhap twelve.”

“Well, he’s a little ahead of schedule for that, too—except that warlocks aren’t supposed to make broomsticks fly at all. What a kid!” He didn’t mention that Magnus was obviously a major mutation.

He patted the baby’s head. The child wrapped a chubby hand around his father’s finger.

Rod turned shining eyes to Gwen. “He’ll make a great agent when he’s grown.”

“My lord!” Gwen’s brow knit in concern. “Thou wilt not take him from Gramarye?”

“Perish the thought!” Rod took Magnus and tossed him up in the air. “He’ll have his work cut out for him right here.”

Magnus squealed with delight and floated on up toward the roof.

Rod executed a high jump that would have done credit to a pole-vaulter and snagged his errant son. “Besides, he may not even want to join SCENT—who knows?”

Rod was an agent of the Society for the Conversion of Extraterrestrial Nascent Totalitarianisms, the subversive wing of the multi-planet Decentralized Democratic Tribunal, the first and only human interstellar government in history not to be based on Terra. The Senate met by electronic communications; the Executive resided on a starship which was usually to be found between planets. Nonetheless, it was the most efficient democratic government yet established.

SCENT was the organization responsible for bringing the Lost Colonies of earlier Terrestrial empires back into the fold. Rod was on permanent assignment to Gramarye, a planet that had been colonized by mystics, romantics, and escapists. The culture was medieval, the people superstitious—and a small percentage of the population had “witch-powers.”

Consequently, the DDT in general, and SCENT in particular, were immensely interested in Gramarye; for the “witches” and “warlocks” were espers. Some had one set of psi powers and some had another—but all were telepaths to some degree. And, since the efficiency (and, consequently, the viability) of a democracy varies directly with the speed of its communications, and since telepathic communication was instantaneous, the DDT treasured its only colony of espers very highly.

So Rod had been assigned to guard the planet, and to carefully nudge its political system onto the road that would eventually lead to democracy and full membership in the DDT.

“Hey, Fess,” Rod called.

The great black horse grazing in the meadow outside the cave lifted its head to look at its master. Its voice sounded through a small earphone buried in Rod’s mastoid bone. “Yes, Rod?”

Rod snorted. “What’re you cropping grass for? Who ever heard of a robot burning hydrocarbons?”

“One must keep up appearances, Rod,” Fess reproved him.

“Next thing I know, you’ll be keeping up with the Joneses! Listen, bolt-head—it’s an occasion! The kid pulled his first telekinesis stunt today!”

“Telekinesis? I had thought that was a sex-linked female trait, Rod.”

“Well, all of a sudden it ain’t.” He put the baby in the playpen and clamped the cover down before Magnus had a chance to drift out. “How about that, Fess? This kid’s gonna be a champion!”

“It will be my great pleasure to serve him,” the robot murmured, “as I have served his forebears for five hundred years, since the days of the first D’Armand, who founded…”

“Uh, skip the family history, Fess.”

“But, Rod, it is a vital portion of the child’s heritage; he should…”

“Well, save it until he learns to talk, then.”

“As you wish.” The mechanical voice somehow managed a sigh. “In that case, it is my duty to inform you that you will shortly be receiving company, Rod.”

Rod stilled, cocking an eyebrow at his horse. “What do you see?”

“Nothing, Rod; but I detect the sounds characteristic of bipedal locomotion of a small being conveying itself through long grass.”

“Oh.” Rod relaxed. “An elf coming through the meadow. Well, they’re always welcome.”

An eighteen-inch body burst out of the grass at the cave-mouth.

Rod grinned. “Welcome, merry wanderer of the night.”

“Puck!” Gwen squealed. She turned to their guest. “Assuredly, thou art most…”

She stopped, seeing the look on the elf’s face.

Rod had sobered too. “What’s right, Puck?”

“Naught,” said the elf grimly. “Rod Gallowglass, thou must needs come, and right quickly, to the King!”

“Oh, I must, must I? What’s so urgent all of a sudden? What’s all the panic about?”

“Beastmen!” The elf gasped for breath. “They have raided the seacoast at the Duchy of Loguire!”

The Royal Guard rode south, with the King at their head.

A lone rider sat his grazing horse at the side of the road, playing a pipe with a low and mournful sound.

Tuan frowned, and said to the knight beside him, “What ails yon fellow? Is he so bemused by his own music that he doth not see armed horsemen approaching?”

“And can he not see thy crown?” the knight responded, dutifully putting into words what his sovereign was thinking. “I shall waken him, Majesty.” He kicked his horse’s sides and cantered ahead.

“Ho, fellow! Dost thou not see His Majesty approacheth?”

The rider looked up. “Why, so he does! Say, isn’t that a handy coincidence? I was just thinking about him.”

The knight stared, then backed his horse away. “Thou’rt the High Warlock!”

“ ‘High’?” Rod frowned. “Not a word of truth in it. Totally sober, good knight—haven’t even thought about intoxicants since last Friday!”

The knight frowned, irritation overcoming awe. “Eh, thou’rt as unmannerly as a churl! Know that the King hath created thee High Warlock!‘’

“ ‘‘Tis even so,” the King confirmed, drawing rein beside them. Then, rather unwillingly, “Well met, Lord High Warlock—for this poor Isle of Gramarye doth lie in need of thine art, and thy wisdom.”

Rod inclined his head. “I am ever obedient to my adoptive homeland’s call. But why do I get a high title out of it? I’d come just as quickly without it.”

“ ‘Tis thy due, is it not?” Tuan’s lips pressed thin. “And it describes thy place aptly. Folk fight better when they know from whom to take orders, and to whom to give them.”

“An understatement,” Rod admitted. “You’ve gotta have a clear flow chart if you want to get anything done. Very true, Your Majesty; I should’ve known better than to question you.”

Tuan’s eyebrows lifted. “Pleasantly said; I would not have expected it of you.”

“Oh, you should have.” Rod grinned. “I always give respect where it’s due.”

“And withhold it where ‘tis not?” Tuan frowned. “Am I, then, so rarely worthy of respect?”

Rod’s grin widened. “Only when you try to use authority you don’t have—which doesn’t happen very often, now that you’re a king. And, of course, when you back someone who’s in the wrong.”

Tuan’s frown darkened. “When have I done such?”

“Just before you got my knee in your groin. But I must admit that the Queen isn’t trying to play God anymore.”

Tuan flushed, turning away from Rod.

“And, of course, you were trying to be her champion, and laying down the law.” Rod ignored the danger signals. “Which you had no right to do—at the time. Still don’t, really.”

“Have I not?” Tuan snapped, whirling to face Rod. “I am now King!”

“Which means that you’re supposed to be foremost among your peers. It doesn’t make you a superior breed—and doesn’t give you the right to make laws if your barons are against them.”

“You cannot truly believe that I would do so.”

“Well, no, not you,” Rod admitted. “Catharine, however…”

“Rarely is the Queen not swayed by my counsel,” Tuan grated. “What we do, we do in concert.”

“Then you both agree on marching south to fight the beastmen?”

Tuan managed to stay with the change of topic. “We have discussed it; and, aye, we are agreed. I do not say we take joy in the prospect.”

“Well, say it,” Rod invited. “Or are you really going to tell me you don’t like being out in the field again?”

Tuan stared, taken aback. Then he grinned sheepishly. “In truth, my heart doth lift as I gaze upon open fields and feel harness on my back. I will own, ‘tis good to be out from chambers and councils.’‘

Rod nodded. “That’s what I expected; you’re a born general. Still can’t understand how you manage to be a good king, too.”

Tuan shrugged impatiently. “ ‘Tis like to the order of battle, save that the ’troops’ one doth command are reeves and bailiffs.”

“But it does require a totally different library of knowledge.”

“That, Catharine hath,” Tuan said very honestly. “I need only to steady her judgment, and issue her commands in such wise that they shall not arouse rebellion.”

Which was true, Rod reflected; half of the offense Catharine gave was due to the way she said things, rather than what she said. “Well, you’ve just earned my respect again.”

Tuan frowned. “For what? For kingship?”

“No, for candor. But now the burden of monarchy moves back into your field of knowledge, Majesty. What do you propose to do about these raiders?”

“Go to where they have been, expecting that they will strike again, and not far from where they struck first,” Tuan answered. “When the bee findeth a flower filled with nectar, doth he not return to that place to find other flowers nearby?”

“Yes, and usually with more bees. I notice you brought a few stingers of your own.”

Tuan glanced back at the army behind him. “The beastmen should be hard put to best these stout hearts.”

“From the report I had, it’s not their hearts that’re in danger.” Rod turned Fess, falling in alongside Tuan. The King kicked his heels into his horse’s ribs, and the column began to move south again. Tuan nodded. “Thou dost speak of the Evil Eye.”

“I doth,” Rod agreed. “How much faith do you put in that part of the report?”

Tuan shrugged. “ ‘Tis wisest to believe it true, and guard against it as best we may.” He pinned Rod with a stare. “What charm is there against it?”

Rod shrugged. “Beats me; I’ve never run into it before. Haven’t the slightest idea how it works. For all I know, they might just be so ugly that you freeze in horror when you look at ‘em.”

Tuan shook his head firmly. “Nay. If the report is true, ‘tis magic, not simple fear.”

“Well, ‘disgust’ was more of what I had in mind. And, of course, the report itself might not be too accurate. Who’d it come from, anyway?”

“Mothers and grand-folk who were fleeing as they saw. And three of the footmen still live, though with grievous wounds; they have not spoken much, but what little they have said confirms the report, that ‘twas the Eye that froze them.”

“Not exactly ideal spying conditions, in either case,” Rod mused, “and not enough information to work up anything to counter it. Still, it does seem that they have to look you in the eye to freeze you; so pass the word to look at their hands, their hats, their teeth—anything but their eyes.”

“Well, ‘tis better than naught,” Tuan sighed. “But I would thou couldst find a better remedy, Lord Warlock. A soldier is hard put to avoid his enemy’s eyes, in the melee.”

“Well, it’s the best I can do, for the moment,” Rod grumped. “I’ll try to get some firsthand experience if they attack again. Then maybe I…”

“Nay.” Tuan drew up sharply and looked Rod in the eye. “Thou must learn this to thy sorrow, Lord Gallowglass, as I have had to: thou art now of too great worth to be risked in the melee. Thou must needs stand apart, with me, on high ground, to aid in the directing of the battle.”

With a sinking heart, Rod knew Tuan was right; an army did fight better when it had overall direction. “Your Majesty is of course always right. I’ll stay out of it as long as you do.”

Tuan eyed him skeptically. “Do not think that will aid thee. I have gained in patience.‘’

He wasn’t doing so badly in perceptiveness, either; three years ago, he would’ve missed the sarcasm. “All of this assumes, however, that we have time to pick our ground before the fighting starts.”

“Ah.” Tuan turned back to the south and began riding again. “That is thy part.”

“Oh?” Rod eyed him warily. “Am I supposed to magically transport this whole army to the ground you choose?”

“Nay. Thou’rt to secure us warning that raiders come, far enough in advance that we may ride to the place they will attack, and be there before them.”

“Oh.” Rod’s lips held the shape of the letter after it was gone. “That’s all I’ve got to do, huh? Mind telling me how? Am I supposed to set sentries pacing a mile offshore?”

“Aye, if thou canst derive a spell that will prevent them from sinking.”

“Oh, nothing easier! It’s called ‘rowboats.’ ” Rod frowned. “Hold on, now. That almost sounds sensible.”

“Aye, it doth.” Tuan turned to him. “A line of sentries in small craft just beyond the horizon, to watch for a mast. But how will they sound the alarm?”

“They could row.”

“The beastmen will row more quickly; there do be more of them, and they will be aided by wind. Would they not overtake thy sentry and slay him?”

“True.” Rod frowned. “Well, how about if the sentry was a warlock? Then he could telep… uh, conjure himself ashore, and leave them an empty rowboat.”

“A likely thought.” Tuan nodded. “But thy warlocks hear thoughts. Could not he raise the alarm more quickly if there were another of the witch-folk ashore, listening for his thoughts?”

“True. That would be quicker, and… wait a minute!” Rod struck his forehead with the heel of his hand. “What’s the matter with me? Sorry, Your Majesty; I’m slow today. Why bother putting the warlock in the boat? Why not just have him stay ashore and listen for approaching beastman thoughts?”

“Nay, certes!” Tuan squeezed his eyes shut. “Did I truly need a High Warlock to tell me this? Where are my wits?”

There was a good chance he’d left them back at the royal castle in Runnymede, but Rod didn’t think it was politic to say so. Besides, Tuan could’ve replied that Rod’s brains currently had long red hair and a figure worth killing for.

Then the King opened his eyes, with doubt in them. “Yet art thou certain they do think?”

“That is a distinct possibility. Maybe if I go to the western coast and shout, ‘Cogito, ergo sum,’ they’ll all disappear.”

“Is that a mighty spell?”

“No, just wishful thinking; I’m putting Descartes before the horse.” There was a short, nasty buzzing in Rod’s ear; Fess didn’t think much of his sense of humor. “Seriously, though, Your Majesty, that shouldn’t be a problem. Anything alive and moving under its own power has some sort of neurological activity. I’ve got one young witch who can read an earthworm’s thoughts, and they don’t even have any.”

“But can they hear thoughts far enough away to give us time to set our battle line where they mean to land?”

“Don’t worry about that one, either. I had another young lady listen to the thoughts of one of the dino… uh, ‘terrible lizard’ giants over on the mainland, once. She wasn’t herself again for three days…”

“Then thou hast thy sentry-force made.”

Rod frowned. “Yeah, but I just had another nasty thought. How come none of the witches ever heard beastman thoughts before?”

That stopped Tuan, too. He frowned and thought it over for a few seconds. Then he looked up with a bright smile. “Mayhap because they were not there?”

Rod sat still for a moment. Then he sighed and shrugged. “Why not? On Gramarye, anyway.” There was a local variety of fungus that was very sensitive. Not that its feelings could be hurt or anything; but if a projective telepath thought at it hard enough, it would turn into whatever the projective was thinking about. Yes, it was very possible that the beastmen hadn’t been there before. All it would take was an old granny, one who didn’t know her own strength, telling horror stories to amuse the children…

He didn’t think he wanted to meet that granny. “Say, uh, Your Majesty… what happens when our sentries do find them?”

“Why, then we ride against them with steel and fire,” Tuan said grimly.

“Yes, but—Gramarye is a moderately big island. What if they strike someplace where our army isn’t?”

“As they have indeed done.” Tuan nodded. “Well, I have commanded each of the seacoast lords to muster a force of worthy size, and keep it ever ready. E’en so, the best of barons’ forces can only hold them till my armies come; if it can do more, I have more than beastmen to worry me.”

It was a good point; a baron who could defeat a party of raiders was bound to think of taking on the royal army. “But it could take a while for your army to get there—say, a few days.”

“Indeed.” Tuan turned to him, frowning. “Canst thou not discover a spell to move mine army to the battlefield ere the beastmen come to it, High Warlock?”

“ ‘Fraid that’s beyond even my powers.” Rod had a brief, dizzying vision of Tuan’s knights and men-at-arms clustered onto huge antigravity plates, skimming over the countryside; but he manfully thrust it from him, remembering that technology comes in whole chunks, not just bits and pieces. If he taught them how to make antigrav plates, they’d figure out very quickly how to make automatic cannon and television chains—and how much chance would democracy have in a land whose king had the technology for totalitarianism, and whose people still thought loyalty was the supreme virtue? Right—about as much as a camel in a glacier. “But you don’t need magic to do it—just a complete force of horsemen.”

“Why, how is that?” Tuan looked worried; to him, “horseman” meant “knight.”

“Well, I know it sounds like heresy—but you don’t have to have just the captains mounted. Common soldiers can learn to ride too.”

Tuan stared, scandalized.

“Not on full-scale war-horses, of course,” Rod said quickly. “The rankers can ride ponies. They can go just as fast as the destriers on the long haul, where they keep it down to a canter, if they don’t wear much armor. And you can keep the whole force right there, in Runnymede, since it’s pretty close to being the center of the island. Then, when my witch-sentries send word, you can just yell, ‘Horse and hattock! Ho, and away!’ and they can be mounted up and gone in ten minutes. Then, if you keep alternating canter and trot and give each soldier a spare mount, they can be anywhere within Gramarye in two days.”

“And the beastmen could land within one.” Tuan scowled, chewing at his lip. “E’en so, the idea has merit. A thousand men would suffice; certes these beastmen will not bring more. Then I could keep five such forces, placed so that any one of them could be at the seacoast in either of two provinces in less than a day.” He turned a beaming smile on Rod. “I’ truth, ’twill succeed! And if the footmen must ride, what of it? When they come to the field, they can dismount and fight as they always have!”

And, Rod realized with a sinking heart, the King would have discovered an excellent means of enforcing his will on the barons, whether they liked him or not. But what else could he do? Let bogeymen gobble up the taxpayers? “I think it’ll work, Your Majesty.”

“But a name! It must have a name!” Tuan’s eyes glowed with excitement. “They will fight better, these soldiers, if their force doth bear a name that may ring down the ages!”

Tuan was good at that—these little bits of nonsense that ultimately made a great deal of difference: honor, chivalry, things like that. Men fought harder for these intangibles than for cold cash, frequently. If Tuan said his men would fight harder if their regiment had a famous name, Rod wasn’t going to argue. “How about the Flying Legion?”

“Will this truly be an army, my lord?” Gwen stood beside him on the hillside, looking out over the little valley that had sprouted tents and horses.

“Only the vanguard,” Rod assured her. “Tuan’s still got his standing army of five thousand—and most of them are standing because they don’t know how to ride. Here we’re gathering a thousand good riders from all over the island, ones who already have some experience in war. Tuan’s going to recruit another five thousand pedestrians for the main force, though.”

Far below, a lieutenant shouted, and his squadron leaped into a gallop, charging down on another hapless unit with wicker swords.

Gwen watched and shuddered. “They are not terribly deft, my lord.”

“I said they were experienced, not talented.” Rod turned away and strolled along the flank of the hill, holding her hand. “Give ‘em a little training and practice, though, and you’ll never see a better troop of cavalry—I hope. Who’s this?” He stopped, scowling at a brown-robed figure with a neat round bald spot who sat cross-legged about fifty yards ahead of them, a huge book open in his lap. He had an inkhorn in his left hand, and a quill in his right.

“A good friar, it would seem,” Gwen answered. “Why art thou concerned, mine husband?”

“Because I don’t remember ordering any.” Rod strode up to the monk. “Good morning, Father.”

“Good morning to thee, goodman.” The priest turned a sunny, beaming countenance up to Rod. Then his jaw dropped and he scrambled to his feet. “Why, ‘tis the High Warlock!”

“Careful, there; don’t spill your ink.” Rod reached out a hand to steady the inkhorn. “It’s nice to be recognized, but I’m not worth jumping up for—not unless you’re in uniform, anyway.”

“Nay; I know thee for one of the greatest men ever to walk the soil of Gramarye.” Everything about the monk was round—his stomach, his face, his eyes. “Who else could have rescued Catharine the Queen from the peasant mob who sought her life and the band of barons who sought her throne?”

“Well, her husband did a pretty good job; he was in on that, too, if you remember. In fact, that battle had a lot to do with his becoming her husband.”

“Yet, not so much as thyself,” the monk chirped.

Rod cleared his throat; the friar was coming unpleasantly close to the truth. Time for a change of subject. “What’re you doing here, Father?”

“Oh!” The monk looked down at his book. “Only amusing an idle moment, Lord Warlock. A wise man will ever be doing; so, when there is naught else afoot, I fill the time with the writing of a chronicle of the events that occur whiles I live.”

“A Chronicle? Hey! History in the making!” Rod couldn’t resist. “Am I in it?”

“Indeed, Lord Warlock! What Historie of Gramarye could be complete without full accounting of thee?”

“I had rather account for him at home,” Gwen said dourly, coming up beside Rod. “Yet I do not think thou didst quite catch mine husband’s meaning, good Father.”

“Yeah? Oh! Yeah!” Rod looked up, and cleared his throat. “That’s right, Father. When I said, ‘What’re you doing here?’ I meant, here with the army, not just at this particular moment. What’s your business?”

“Why, the saving of souls,” answered the priest in round-eyed innocence. “Our good Abbot hath appointed me chaplain to the King’s Foot—but His Majesty did say to me that he had a surfeit of chaplains, and sent me to thee.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” Rod could see Tuan doing it, too. The young King loved all his subjects, but the average medieval monk tended to be continually exhorting, which could try even Tuan’s patience. “I can see I’ll have to have a word with His Majesty. Well, at least he sent me an amateur historian.”

“Milord!” A squire came galloping up and reined in near Rod. “Lord O’Berin’s greetings, milord. He doth send to tell thee the folk from Loguire have come!”

“Oh, really!” Rod grabbed the priest’s hand and gave it a quick shake, quill-pen and all. “Well, it was a real pleasure to meet you, Father, but I’ve gotta run now… Uh, what was your name again?”

“Brother Chillde, I am called. But do not stay to speak with a foolish friar, Lord Warlock, when matters of state await thee.”

“Well, military matters, really. Gwen, come listen.” He caught her hand as he turned away, pacing down the hill. “These’re a few of the survivors from the beastman attack.”

“Ah! I will listen, and gladly.” A frown puckered Gwen’s brow. “I misdoubt me that there may have been something of magic about these beastmen.”

“If there is, and they mention it, you’ll find it.” As they paced over the valley floor, Rod remembered his son. “Where’s Magnus?”

Gwen’s eyes flashed, and her chin came up. “Rather, ask why I have come here.”

“I did wonder, but not too much—I was just glad to have you. Why? What did Brom do?”

“He came to our home and told me that I could no longer sit idly by, playing at housewifery. As though ‘twere play!”

Rod winced, remembering how the dust flew at home—he couldn’t even be a little messy anymore—and the rotten (for her) mood Gwen was in by the end of each day. “Well, he can say that—he’s got a troop of elves to keep his quarters tidy. But he is right, dear—we need your talents in the field just now. The cave’ll have to gather dust.”

Gwen shuddered. “Well, mayhap; ‘tis after all folks’ lives we speak of, and we will not be home for some time, I think. Magnus, however, cannot wait; I must needs spend at least the half of my waking time with him, unless ’tis a day of battle.”

“Yeah, I know.” Rod winced at a twinge of conscience. “But where is the boy?”

“Brom found a half-dozen elfin beldams to watch over him. I took him to their grotto, and I could see they knew something of children, so I left him with them.”

“Not altogether willingly, I gather.”

“Oh, I will never feel easy with my babe out of my sight!” Gwen cried. “Yet it must be, and I know I am foolish to worry.”

“Yes, you probably are.” Rod squeezed her hand. “I’m sure any nursemaids Brom finds for you will be very capable.” Gwen couldn’t know just how sure—Brom had made Rod swear never to tell her that Brom was her father. He felt a little shy about it, being a dwarf. But he did care for Magnus like one of his own—which the child was, of course. No, any baby-sitter Brom picked would be extremely reliable. “Even if they are elves.”

“Especially if they are elves.” Gwen skewered him with a glance. “Who else could keep thy son bound, Warlock?”

“Only another warlock, or witch.” Rod grinned into her glare. “Witch.”

“Well, that is true.” Her gaze softened. “Though the most of them are too young; and the ones who are aged enough are sour old spinsters and hermits, living midst the wild mountains. No, I do trust Brom’s elves.”

“After all, who else would he get?” Rod spread his hands. “He is the King of the Elves, after all.”

“Aye.” Gwen smiled, amused. “If Their Majesties only knew their Privy Councillor’s true nature—and office!”

“They’d kick him out of the household and try to sign a treaty with him. No, I think the current setup’s much more efficient.”

“Aye, with Brom ever at Tuan’s elbow.”

“And Magnus with the elves, and you with me.” Rod sighed. “My son, the changeling! Besides, you can keep checking on him, can’t you?”

“Oh, I do at all odd moments, I assure you!” Gwen stopped and stood stock-still, her eyes losing focus. Then she relaxed and began walking again, with a nod. “Aye, he is well.”

“Helps to be a mind reader, doesn’t it?” Rod grinned. “Which is, of course, one of the reasons why I like having you along on this trip.” He stopped at Brom’s tent, nodded to the sentries, and lifted the tent flap. “After you, dear.”

Inside, two servants stood near a long table, holding trays laden with food. A handful of peasants sat at the board, chewing huge mouthfuls and washing them down with ale. A dusty man sat at one end of the table, eating with equal gusto but in smaller bites—a knight out of armor, to judge by his clothes. At the other end of the table sat a man less than three feet high, with shoulders almost as wide as he was tall, arms and legs thicker with muscle than Rod’s, and a huge head with shaggy black hair and beard. His head snapped up as Rod entered; then he leaped down and strode over to the witch-pair, booming, “Well, ‘tis time thou hast come! Here these goodfolk are near to surfeited with food and ale—and I sent for thee as soon as they did arrive.”

“Well, we’re never easy to find.” Rod stepped over to the table. “Who is this gentleman?”

“Sir Reginald De La Place, vassal to the Duke Loguire,” Brom explained. “He it is hath brought these peasants to us. Sir Reginald, this titled lout is Rod Gallowglass, Lord High Warlock.”

“Lord Warlock!” The knight jumped to his feet. “I am honored!”

“Glad to hear it,” Rod said, inclining his head. “My wife, the Lady Gwendylon.”

The knight bowed, and Gwen beamed.

“And these poor folk be victims.” Brom clapped the nearest peasant on the shoulder. “But a week agone, they had houses. What hast thou now, goodman?”

The peasant gulped his current mouthful. “Eh, we ha’ cottages again, milord—or the half of us do, then. ‘Tis not so long, to build a wall of wattle.”

“And daub,” Brom amplified. “I ha’ seen our folk at work, Lord Warlock. They build a house in but a day. Yet there were a score of cottages in their village.”

Rod noticed the apprehensive way the peasants were eyeing him. “It’s all just a rumor, folks. I’m not really a warlock—just a bad scholar who’s learned a few tricks.”

If anything, their apprehension deepened.

“Well, I tried,” Rod sighed. “Tell me, goodman—what did these beastmen look like?”

“Ah, terrible things they was, milord! Tall as houses, and horned like the moon!”

“And hairy,” the woman across from him added. “All over covered with hair, they was.”

“But not on their faces,” another woman chimed in. “Beardless, they was.”

“And they rode on a dragon,” the man said firmly. “A dragon it was—and it swam away with ‘em on its back!”

“Nay, ‘tweren’t a beast!” the first woman scoffed. “What would ye know about it? Ye was half dead with a cracked skull when they sailed away!” She turned to Rod. “We were blessed, milord. Seven of our menfolk dead, but he wasn’t one of ‘em.”

“All of ‘em hurted, though,” the woman next to her muttered , “and six bairns killed.”

Rod’s face darkened. “What were the dragons he was talking about, then?”

“Ships, milord! Only their ship! But the front of it was carved into a dragon’s head, and the stern was carved into a tail!”

“Dragon ships? Were they long and narrow?”

“The very thing!” the woman chortled. “Hast seen ‘em, then, milord?”

“Only in a history book—and those raiders did have beards. And not much body hair…”

“And horns, milord?”

“Helmets,” Rod explained, “helmets with horns on ‘em. At least, that’s what people thought they wore—but they didn’t really. Not in battle.”

“Can’t be the same ones, then,” the man said firmly.

“No,” Rod agreed, “I don’t think the originals could have sailed this far from their home ports. They were mighty sailors, but they did need water.”

“Then, why would these beastmen be dressed like to them, my lord?” Gwen wondered.

“Because somebody’s been telling ‘em stories. Speaking of which, do grannies tell folk tales about horned raiders in dragon ships?”

The peasants shook their heads, wide-eyed.

“Well, it was a chance,” Rod sighed. “But if the grannies haven’t been telling tales, who has?”

“Didn’t look like just a ship in the moonlight, with them devils yellin’ and swingin’ their clubs,” the big peasant muttered, fingering his bandage gently.

“Of course not,” Rod agreed. “That’s why they carved it that way—to scare the…” His eyes lost focus. “Wait a minute! Of course! That’s why whoever told ‘em about dragon ships and horned helmets… did tell ‘em! To help them scare poor people like you! After all, if it worked for the Vikings…”

“What are ‘vikings,’ milord?” one of the women asked timidly.

“The horned raiders I was telling you about.”

“Could they freeze people with a look?”

Rod shook his head. “No, of course not—though I suppose they wanted to. You mean these gorillas could?”

“Froze us near to stone,” the man growled. “One of ‘em looked me in the eye, and all of a sudden, his eyes seemed to pierce right through to the back of me head. I tried to move, but I couldn’t.”

“Ye was scared,” the second woman scoffed, “frighted stiff, like a babe with a snake.”

The man’s face reddened. “Was ye there on the green with us, woman? Did ye look into their eyes? Oh, aye, those glittering eyes frighted me—but I’ve been frighted in battle afore, when our young Lord Anselm fought the Queen… and… um…” He eyed Brom furtively.

“And his younger brother, who is now our King,” Brom growled. “None will fault thee for that, goodman. What choice hadst thou? When thy lord summons thee to fight, thou must needs fight. Yet, in that battle, did fear freeze thee?”

“Nay, good my lord!” The peasant shook his head. “I swung my pike the harder for it. Yet when that grisly monster’s eyes pierced my brain, I sought to strike in wild anger—but mine arm would not answer! I strained, I tugged at it with all my will, but it would not…” He broke off with a shudder. “Lord in Heaven save me! May I never live through such a moment again! To not be able to budge, yet see that huge club swinging down at me…” He squeezed his eyes shut and turned away, shaking his head.

“Softly, now.” Rod clapped him on the shoulder. “You did bravely, goodman. You did all that a man could do.”

“ ‘Twas the Evil Eye,” the man muttered. “ ‘Twas witch-craft.”

Rod turned to Gwen with a questioning gaze.

“There are tales of it,” she answered slowly, “of witches and warlocks who could freeze folk with a glance. Yet I never have met one with such a power.”

“And you know most of the witches in Gramarye.” Rod turned back to the peasant, nodding. “So our enemy is something new, in more ways than one. But if it had not been for yourself, goodman, we would not have known that. My deepest thanks.”

“At your lordship’s service.” The big peasant recovered a bit, and managed to smile up at Rod. “ ‘Twas… ’twas real, then?”

“Is the lump on your head real?” Rod retorted. “Then, the club that made it certainly was, and so was the beastman who swung it. As to the Evil Eye—well, when a battle-tried veteran freezes, it couldn’t very well be anything else.” Not on this world, anyway, he thought.

“Thank ye, milord.” The peasant smiled up at him.

“Don’t worry. I would’ve frozen too.” Rod clapped him on the shoulder again, and turned to Gwen. “Know any counter-spells?”

Her lips parted to answer as she spread her hands—and suddenly there was a baby in them, kicking and crowing, “Mama! Found you, Mama! Found you!”

Gwen stared, startled. Then a delighted grin curved her lips, and she hugged the child close to her. “Hast thou indeed, thou naughty babe! Come, didst thou seek thy mother through thy mind only?”

“Huh!” The baby nodded, very pleased with himself.

“A telepathic tracker?” Rod was staring too. “My son’s a headhunter?”

“ ‘Tis a head I’ll be having, though not his,” Brom growled. “Whose charge was this bairn? Hobgoblin!”

Something small popped through the door and scurried over to Brom. “Pardon, King of Shadows!” It was a miniature man about a foot and a half tall, heavy in the shoulders and deep in the voice. “The elf-wives’ powers have waned; the babe lost interest in their games, and their spells could not hold him.”

“Then, they must con new charms, and hold him by delight alone,” Brom growled. “Though ‘tis true, I know of nothing that could hold this bairn when he doth not wish it.”

“Naughty babe!” Gwen reproved Magnus. He gurgled happily in reply.

“At least, when he had ‘scaped I found him in the half of a minute,” the elf pointed out.

“ ‘Tis true, and any who would wish to harm him would fare ill against thee,” Brom admitted. “Yet bid them hold him better, Robin.”

“Naughty child!” Gwen scolded. “Though glad I am to see thee, yet must thou know thy mother hath a task which must be done. I cannot be with thee now, my sweet, much though I wish to. Come, hie thee back to thy nurse, and bide until I call thee.”

“Uh-uh!” The baby scowled, and shook his head.

“Magnus,” Gwen began, in a tone that implied a nuclear bomb (or, at least, a tactical warhead) was about to explode.

But Brom interrupted. “Nay then, manikin! Hast never heard of bogeymen?”

The child stared down at him in blue-eyed wonder.

“Never?” Brom rumbled. “Ah, woefully dost thou neglect this child’s education if he ha’ not yet heard of childhood’s horror!”

“Well, that’s kinda the point,” Rod answered, nettled. “I see absolutely no point in scaring kids half to death and giving them dread of perfectly ordinary things. If I tell him to be good, he’s got to do it simply because he believes in me.”

“Pray he doth; if this bairn ceased to believe in me, I might cease to be!” Brom growled. “Yet what robbery is this, to take from him one of childhood’s most delicious thrills—the dread of the horrible monster that he knows, at heart’s bottom, doth not truly live? The bogeymen, child, are huge, shambling things, all covered with hair, with tiny glowing eyes, and long, sharply pointed teeth!”

Magnus cuddled back against Gwen with a delighted squall.

“ ‘Tis true!” Brom held up a forefinger. “Vile things are they, that do seek to harm both children and parents! And thy mother and father must needs sally forth against them, to drive them from this land for good and all—yet they cannot go if they are not sure that thou art safe.”

Magnus stared at Brom wide-eyed, beginning to understand.

“So hie thee back to thy nurses!” Brom clapped his hands.

“Hie thee hence, and bide with them till thy mother doth summon thee! Bide thee with thy nurses in safety, that thy mother and father may chase the bogeymen from this land!”

Magnus looked up at Gwen out of the corner of his eyes. “Baby come too?”

“I fear not,” Gwen said firmly, holding him up under the arms so that she could look directly into his eyes. “Thou must needs do as thine Uncle Brom…”

Rod was the only one who noticed the shadow pass over Brom’s face.

“… as thine Uncle Brom doth say, and flit back to Elfland, to thy nurses, there to bide whiles thy father and I do chase these monsters. Yet I’ll summon thee whene’er I may, to play awhile. Now, wilt thou go?”

The baby glowered at her, then nodded reluctantly.

“Good babe!” Gwen kissed him. “Now, hie thee hence!”

Magnus looked up at Rod. He reached out to squeeze a chubby hand—then found himself holding empty air. Magnus had disappeared.

“Bairns do understand more than we think,” Brom rumbled, “if we are but open with them.” He frowned at the peasants. “And what dost thou gape at, village fools? Hast never seen a babe afore?”

The men gave a start and glanced at Rod guiltily; but the women sighed, and one of them said to Gwen, “Now, bless thee, lady! Praise Heaven mine were only common babes!”

“Certes, they tried thee as sorely as ever mine try me,” Gwen answered, amused. “I have, after all, some powers to use in dealing with him. Yet bless thee for thy wishes, good-wife.”

One of the guardsmen stepped into the tent. “Milords, His Majesty doth ask that thou attend upon him.”

Brom looked up, frowning. “What coil’s this?”

“Word hath flown from witch to witch, milord. A dragon ship doth sail toward Bourbon.”

Half an hour later, while the main army was still striking its tents and packing up, the Flying Legion cantered up out of the valley and struck off toward the east. Rod rode at their head, with Toby the teenage warlock beside him. “I didn’t have time for the full report, Toby. Who spotted the beastmen?”

“Matilda, milord. She and Marion, her sister, flew to the east to dwell within a cottage on a cliff-top that Lord Hapsburg built for them—all as His Majesty commanded.”

Rod nodded. “And they take turns just sitting and listening for strange thoughts, right?”

Toby nodded. “Even as His Majesty did command—an hour listening, then an hour doing other things, then an hour listening again.” He glanced at Rod out of the corner of his eye. “ ‘Twas thou who didst bid His Majesty so instruct us, was it not?”

Rod frowned and shook his head. “What would I know about hearing thoughts, Toby? It was Gwen’s idea. So, who heard the beastman-thoughts—the one who was on duty, or both of them?”

“The one who was ‘off-duty,’ Lord Warlock. She slept, and waked screaming.”

“The one who slept?” Rod stared. Then he nodded slowly. “Well, I suppose it makes sense. Maybe her telepathic sensitivity gets a boost when she’s asleep.”

“We do seem to have dreams that are not our own,” Toby admitted.

“Really! Hm! Wish I’d known that—might’ve come in handy.”

“Cannot Gwendylon hear thy thoughts when she doth sleep?” Toby asked carefully.

Rod shook his head. “Neither asleep nor awake. I seem to be telepathically invisible.” His tone was carefully neutral, hiding his feelings nicely. He tried not to think about it; it made him feel inferior to Gwen. “What did Matilda dream?”

“She dreamt that she pulled an oar aboard a dragon ship, and heard the chieftains speaking of old gods which they used to worship, and a new god which they worship now. Yet all of it was without words, and the new god seemed somehow monstrous, though there was no picture of it.”

“Well, that’s not surprising. Haven’t you ever had that flash of thought, the whole concept suddenly clear, before you get around to putting it into words?”

Toby frowned. “I have indeed, though I had not thought of it. And the thought Matilda heard lasted no longer than such a flash.”

“Really?” Rod pricked up his mental ears. “Odd, that. Was there a strong emotion under it?”

Toby nodded. “Very strong; a surge of fear and dread. The beastman’s soul, for a second, did clamor toward the sky and the old gods. Then he realized what he did, and the thought ended. Yet it was enough to waken Matilda, and waken her screaming.”

“Small wonder; I’d wake up halfway out of the room. But it tells us a lot.”

“Aye. It tells us beastmen draw near the eastern coast.”

“Well, a bit more than that. It tells us the beastmen have a religion. So far, we didn’t even have any reason to think they had souls.”

“I had not thought of that,” Toby admitted.

“It also tells us that they’ve just had a conversion, and at least one of the converts wasn’t exactly wholehearted about it. Wonder who the new god is? And what kinds of methods his missionaries use…” Rod was remembering Constantine’s baptism and a new shirt, or death. “But more importantly, it tells us the beastmen’s thoughts can be heard when there are very strong emotions behind them—and gives us some reason to think they may be able to hide their thoughts deliberately.”

Toby frowned. “Why, how is that?”

“Because you said the thought ended just after the beast-man realized what he was doing. That means either that he deliberately hid his thoughts somehow, or that his thoughts can only be read when he’s at an emotional peak.”

“Why, that is so!” Toby looked up at Rod wide-eyed.

Rod squirmed; he hated hero worship, especially when it was directed at him. It made a man feel so responsible… “Of the two, I’d guess they can hide their thoughts. There must’ve been some sort of strong emotion in them when they sacked the Loguire coast, but no witches heard them.”

“But would not a one of them have let slip a thought in the heat of battle?”

Rod nodded. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? So maybe it’s the other way around; maybe their thoughts can only be read when they’re pushing them out. That surge of thought Matilda picked up sounds like a prayer—and a prayer is deliberately aimed away from yourself; you’re trying to reach someone else with that kind of thought.”

“Then, let us be glad there is one strong believer amongst them.”

“Yes, and that the old gods happened to be out of sight at the moment and needed a strong push behind a prayer if it was going to reach them.”

“But how could a god be in sight?” Toby looked puzzled. “They are naught but dreams.”

“Point well-taken,” Rod admitted, “but the beastmen might not know that yet. Especially if they’ve got an idol… Hm! Now you’ve got me wondering…”

“About what, Lord Warlock?”

“About their new god. I wonder just how new he is? What he wants his worshippers to do?”

Toby’s eyes suddenly lost focus. “Lord Warlock… word from Marion… the dragon ship hath shown no sign of turning in toward shore. It sails on past Bourbon…” He frowned a second in concentration, probably his equivalent of, “Acknowledged; that’s a copy,” then turned back to Rod. “The beastmen sail on, northward.”

“Then, we’ll head north too. Sergeant!” Rod called back over his shoulder. “Turn left at the next crossroad!” He turned back to Toby. “Send word to His Majesty.”

“Aye, Lord Warlock.” Toby’s eyes lost focus again. Rod watched him in silence for a few minutes, till the young warlock’s eyes cleared again. He turned to Rod with a half-smile. “His Majesty turns the main army northward. He is quite pleased with his new way of sending messages betwixt the parts of an army.‘’

“I should think he would be. Any medieval commander would’ve given his right arm for an advantage like that. You know, Toby, when this is all over I’ll bet His Majesty tries to set up a permanent witch-and-warlock network—only for royal messages, of course.”

Toby frowned. “That is not wholly a happy thought, Lord Warlock.”

“No, neither for you, nor for the general population. Though you must admit it would guarantee you full employment.”

“Fuller than I wish, I doubt not.”

“Well, that’s a point. It is nice to be able to keep the workday down to eight hours—and it’s even nicer to have some choice as to whether or not you’re going to take the job in the first place. No, it’s okay for an emergency, but we definitely shouldn’t encourage this kind of thing during peacetime.”

“Save for thy messages, of course,” Toby said with his tongue in his cheek.

“Well, of course. But that’s a different case, isn’t it? I mean, I’m almost a member of the tribe.”

“By marriage,” Toby agreed. “Aye, when all’s said and done, thou art a warlock.”

Rod opened his mouth to deny it, thought what would happen if he did, and closed his mouth again.

The sun was only a red glow behind Rod’s right shoulder as he rode down the winding road toward the Romanov beach. “No faster than a trot, Sergeant! Let these folk by! We’re here to defend them, not trample them!”

Peasants thronged the road, with huge packs on their backs and handcarts behind them, hauling their few household goods. Rod swore. “They’d take their whole cottages if they could! Well, at least they’re not stampeding. Here’s the real evidence of the good you’ve done, Toby.”

“How so, Lord Warlock?” Toby reined his horse over to let the peasants pass by.

“Because they’ve got time to evacuate, thanks to the Magic Early Warning system. They even had time to pack up before they started fleeing!”

The Flying Legion swerved over to the side of the road, single file, following Rod’s and Toby’s example. The peasants, seeing them coming, struggled to compress their ranks and leave room for them.

“God save the High Warlock and his legion!” a voice yelled, and the whole flowing crowd joined in a ragged cheer. The soldiers grinned and sat a little straighter in the saddle.

“Always nice to be appreciated,” Rod observed. Toby smiled, amused.

A hand caught Rod’s shin. He looked down into a wrinkled, yellow-eyed face rough with beard stubble. “Drive them away, Lord Warlock! Why can ye not keep ‘em from comin’?”

“Off wi’ ye, now!” The man behind him gave the old whiner a shove. “Here’s men goin’ ‘t’ mortal danger, and you’d ask ‘em to hurry!” Rod smiled his thanks, and the younger man grinned back. “Save your worship!” He hurried on.

“There will ever be such, will there not?” Toby said quietly.

Rod nodded. “ ‘Save us, save us! And please arrange hotel accommodations while you’re doing it!’ But there’ll always be the ones behind them too, who tell ‘em to shut up and let us get on about our business.”

They struggled on through the crowd. The peasants streamed by, and they came out onto the beach while the sky still glowed with dusk. A hundred nervous men looked up at the sound of hoofbeats, and raised a frantic cheer. Rod grinned and waved, muttering under his breath, “Gallop, Fess. Make it look good. Pick out their officer and stop on a penny next to him.”

The black steel horse leapt into a gallop and thundered around in a curve, pulling up beside a cloaked horseman in plate armor. “Hail, Sir Knight! I am Rod Gallowglass, Lord High Warlock, and these men are His Majesty’s Flying Legion.”

“Thou art well come indeed!” cried the knight. “Now, praised be King Tuan for your coming!” Which was pretty good, considering that only three years ago this man must’ve been riding behind his lord, Duke Romanov, against the royal army, such as it had been. “I am Sir Styenkov.”

“We’re just reinforcements,” Rod assured. “I don’t want to upset your battle plan; we’ll just fall in beside you. What’d you planned?”

“What could I, with only an hundred?” The knight spread his hands helplessly. “ ‘Tis all that Their Majesties allow us to keep under arms—God save them, ’tis generous to allow even that! But what can they do? Draw up in a line, and wait.”

“I suppose so. But I’ve got two hundred more behind me. And yours are veterans, aren’t they?”

Styenkov nodded. “All fought in the rebellion, aye. They are not like to break and flee.”

“Then draw ‘em back up the beach as far as you can, and let ‘em wait. There’s only one dragon ship; at least, the witches haven’t said anything about there being more than one.” He frowned at the thought. “Hm. I’ve been careless. Toby!”

“Aye, Lord Warlock.”

“Has anyone done a flyby on the raiders? Actually flown over them, to see how many there are?”

Toby’s eyes lost focus for a minute; then they cleared, and he shook his head. “Nay, milord. None ha’ thought to do so.”

“Then do it, okay?”

“Aye, milord!” Toby sprang up into the air like a javelin trying for a new record, and disappeared into the low-hanging clouds. Sir Styenkov stared after him, open-mouthed. Rod turned to follow his gaze. “Hm. Yeah, that could be a problem, couldn’t it?”

“Only for the beastmen! What fabulous force hast thou assembled, Lord Warlock?”

“Oh, you mean Toby? No, he’s the only one with me; the rest are normal. Picked veterans, every one of ‘em, but normal.” Rod wondered how true that could be of any native of Gramarye. “No, I was talking about the clouds.”

“Oh.” For the first time, Styenkov seemed to notice the overcast. “Aye, those clouds look sullen. Well, I’ve fought in rain aforetimes.”

“Me too, and it was a thoroughly nasty business. Still, we can’t exactly send out an emissary and ask the beastmen to come back on a clear day, can we? But we might manage a different kind of surprise for them. If you pull your men way back, Sir Styenkov, and mine hide behind those rocks, over there”—he gestured toward an outcrop over to his left—“and behind that shrubbery”—he pointed to a line of trees on the right, that grew down almost to the water’s edge.

Sir Styenkov’s eyes lighted. “Then the beastmen will charge up to hack at my men, and yours may close upon them, like to the jaws of a vise!”

“Before they get to your men,” Rod added. “Though, of course, when they see this beach with good cover at each side, they might smell a trap and decide to go look for easier game.”

“I would not object to that…”

A gust of wind fanned Rod’s cheek, and Toby said, “There is only the one of them, Lord Warlock.”

Sir Styenkov nearly swallowed his beard.

“He has to fly out there because he doesn’t know where he’s going,” Rod explained. “But when he wants to come back he knows where it is, so he can teleport. It’s faster that way.” He turned to Toby. “How many men?”

“An hundred on deck. There may be more below—but I think not; their ship is small.”

“It would have been an even fight without us,” Rod observed. “Still, maybe my men can make things move a little faster, save a few lives, things like that.”

“Touching that.” Sir Styenkov scratched his nose. “Shall we take prisoners?”

“Huh?” Rod reflected that Sir Styenkov’s mood had certainly improved. “Take prisoners? Of course!”

Sir Styenkov nodded. “I had thought so. Thou dost need information, and wish to set them talking, dost thou not?”

“Well, that too,” Rod agreed. “But mostly, I want to find out if they can talk. How far off shore were they, Toby?”

“Mayhap half a mile, milord.”

“That sounds like time to get into position.” Rod strode off toward his troops, bawling, “Places, everyone!”

As he came up to the Flying Legion, he noticed the locals pulling back up the beach. Good; Sir Styenkov wasn’t too overconfident. “Sir Lionel! Sir Hampden!”

“Aye, milord,” his lieutenants answered in chorus.

“Sir Lionel, take your hundred over to that outcrop of rocks and hide them. Sir Hampden, take yours over to that line of trees. Charge out to fall upon the enemy when you hear the pipes.”

“Aye, milord!” And the two lieutenants turned away, bawling orders to their sergeants. The sergeants started bellowing before the lieutenants had quite finished, and the beach filled with yells and the tramp of troops. In five minutes, it was clear. Rod turned, grinning, to wave to Sir Styenkov; then he turned and loped across the beach to the rock outcrop.

The beach lay empty, waiting. Tiny drops began to fall, scarcely more than a mist. Sir Styenkov’s soldiers shifted nervously, muttering to one another. Rod heard a few whispers here and there among his own troops. “Hear any thoughts, Toby?”

“Nay, Lord Warlock.” Toby’s eyes were unfocused, watching the landscape of the mind rather than the world around him. “Whoever sent that one prayer, prays no longer.”

“Then, there’s no way of telling how close they are. Can’t be long now, though.”

In the distance, thunder rumbled.

Then it came, gliding out of the mist with muted splashing—a tall, gaunt serpent, mouth wide in a snarl, wicked horns probing from its forehead. Shadowy figures moved on its back.

Rod held his breath.

The dragon drove up onto the beach, slowing to a stop with the grinding of sand against wood. Beastmen began to drop off its back—squat, hulking, helmeted shapes, with round shields covering their torsos and heavy, double-bladed axes in their hands.

Rod squinted, trying to make out details through the rain, but it was no use. He could scarcely see more than a silhouette.

“Let me fight, Lord Warlock,” Toby hissed in his ear.

Rod whirled, pressing a finger to his lips and shaking his head with a furious scowl. Confound the kid, did he want to give away the whole ambush? Rod could’ve sworn his lieutenants could’ve heard that whisper a hundred yards away in the tree line. He wished Toby could read his mind—but he had to settle for a glare and a head-shake. The lad’s juvenile male hormones were getting the better of him, urging him on to glory and an early funeral. Which was his own business—but Rod’s business was making sure Toby’d still be alive afterwards for his main assignment. Which would be more than dangerous enough.

The young man stepped back, smoldering.

Rod turned back to the beach just as the beastmen saw Styenkov’s soldiers. Whatever they yelled to each other was lost in a rumble of thunder, but they quickly scuttled into place, pulling themselves into a rough semblance of a line. Then they began to move forward slowly.

One or two of Styenkov’s soldiers began to march toward the beastmen. He shouted them back into line. Good man. The rest of his men brandished their pikes, waiting for the enemy.

The beastmen were halfway up the beach now. Rod could hear a low rumble as they called to one another. They were beginning to realize something was wrong; their tone was one of alarm, and their advance was grinding down to a halt. What was tipping Rod’s hand? He darted a glance at Styenkov’s soldiers, then looked again. Here and there, a man had straightened up a little, pike drooping—and stood frozen at a completely improbable angle. Rod realized they were the ones who had forgotten the standing order and had looked the enemy square in the eye. Now they were temporary statues, frozen by the Evil Eye.

So it really worked! It wasn’t imagination!

But the rest of Styenkov’s men were watching the enemy’s hands, or feet—and were still very much a menace. The beast-men slowed and stopped—apparently they didn’t have too much taste for an even fight. They hunched in on themselves, heads hunkered down; they seemed to be waiting. For what?

The beastmen began to make bellowing noises in deep rumbling bass voices. Rod suddenly realized that they were calling out in unison. He strained, trying to pick intelligible phonemes out of booming voices. It was getting easier, because they were getting their timing better; it was almost one unified shout now. Rod listened, then shook his head; there was no way of saying what it meant in their own language. To him, though, it sounded like:

“Cobalt! Cobalt! Cobalt!”

… Which was ridiculous; at their level of technology, they couldn’t even have the concept of bombs, let alone atomic fission.

Thunder rocked the land, and the beach lit up with an explosion of lightning. Then there was only gloom again, darker for having had the sudden light. Rod peered through the murk—and stared. Sir Styenkov’s men stood frozen in their buskins!

A ragged cheer rumbled up from the beastmen, and they waddled forward, making a grating sound. With a shock, Rod realized they were laughing.

But they were moving so slowly! Why? Didn’t they want to reach their intended victims?

Then Sir Styenkov’s whole line lurched forward. Then they lurched again, and again—and, step-stumbling-step, they marched toward their butchers!

Something bumped into Rod’s shoulder. He whirled—just in time to catch Toby. The young warlock’s body was rigid, and his eyes had lost focus. Had he been tuned in on a soldier’s mind when the Evil Eye froze him?

Then Rod saw one of Styenkov’s soldiers slow and stop. His head lifted slowly; then he shivered, looked about him wildly, realized what had happened, set his pike on an enemy, and started marching again with grim purpose. Further down the line, another soldier began to waken, too.

Rod stared down at Toby. The young idiot had found a way to get into the fight after all!

Thunder broke over them, and lightning stabbed the land again.

The soldiers froze solid again, and Toby’s whole body whiplashed in a single massive convulsion; then he went limp, eyes closed.

Rod stared, appalled. Then he touched the carotid artery in the boy’s throat and felt the pulse. Reassured, he lowered the young warlock. “Fess!”

“Here, Rod.” The great black horse loomed up out of the darkness.

“Just stand over him and protect him.”

“But, Rod…”

“No ‘buts’!” Rod turned, sprinting away toward the battle-line, whipping out his sword. “Flying Legion! Charge!”

Fess sighed, and stepped carefully over Toby’s still form, so that the young warlock lay directly beneath his black steel body.

Rod caught up with Styenkov’s line just as they began stumbling toward the beastmen again. He looked from one to another frantically; their eyes were glazed, unseeing.

The beastmen began to waddle forward again, making the chugging, grating noise that passed for laughter with them. Rod whirled about, staring at them, just as they broke into a lumbering run. Rod glanced back at the stumbling soldiers, then ahead; the enemy were only huge, hulking shadows against the gray of stormclouds, great shadows looming closer.

Lightning flashed, and the beastmen roared a cheer. And Rod froze solid, but only with shock—because, for the first time, he had a really good look at a beastman.

And he recognized it.

Neanderthal.

There was no mistaking the sloping forehead, the brow ridges, the chinless jaw, the lump at the base of the skull… He had an overwhelming desire to look one in the mouth and check its dentition.

Then a chill hand clutched his belly. What could Neanderthals be doing on Gramarye?

Attacking, obviously. He noticed two war clubs swinging up, then starting to swing down toward him. He leaped aside just as the first whistled past him, then threw himself into a lunge, sword arrowing toward the other clubman. Its round shield swung up; the beastman caught Rod’s point neatly. For a moment, Rod stared directly into the little piggy eyes over the top of the shield—little piggy eyes that seemed to grow, and glow, with a bright, flaming bead at their centers that probed into his brain, leaving a trail of cold fire that didn’t burn, but froze. It fascinated; it held all his attention, numbing his brain, stopping all thought. Dimly, off to the side, he noticed the huge war club swinging up for another blow; but that didn’t matter. All that really mattered was that bright, burning bead at the center of the eyes…

A furious scream rang in his ears, blotting out the sounds of battle, a scream such as a Valkyrie might make if she were actually allowed to attack; and a sudden warmth seemed to wrap around his mind, pushing away the bright, burning bead, away and away until it was only a pair of eyes again… the eyes of a warrior beastman whose huge war club was windmilling down to crush Rod’s head.

He leaped back, yanking his sword free from the shield, and the club whistled past harmlessly. Behind the round shield, the beastman snarled and swung his club up again. Rod advanced and feinted high, at the face. The shield snapped up to cover, and Rod riposted and slashed downward. The sword-tip whipped across the creature’s thighs, tracing a line of bright red. It shrieked, clutching at its legs, and collapsed rolling on the ground. Rod didn’t stay to watch; he turned to glance at the battle-line—and saw a war ax swinging straight at his sinuses, with a broad gloating grin behind it (yes, the dentition was right). Rod leaped to the side and chopped down, lopping off the ax-head.

High above him, the Valkyrie screamed again—now he recognized it; he’d heard it just last week, when Gwen had caught Magnus teleporting the cookie jar over to the playpen. Confound it, didn’t the woman know he couldn’t fight as well if he was worrying about her safety?

On the other hand, she was staying far above the battle—not really in any immediate danger, especially since the beast-men were limited to clubs and axes; not an arrow among the lot of ‘em. He swung about, chopping at another Neanderthal. Snarling, four of them turned on him. Beyond them, he saw with shock, half the soldiers lay dead on the beach, their blood pouring into the sand. Fury boiled up in him, and he bellowed even as he gave ground, sword whirling furiously in feints and thrusts, keeping his attackers back just barely out of club-range. Beyond them, he saw frozen soldiers coming to life again; and a ragged shout of rage went up as they saw their dead companions. The nearest beastman looked back over his shoulder, his swing going wide. Rod thrust in under his shield, and he screamed, doubling over. His companions gave ugly barks, and pressed in. Behind them, two soldiers came running up, blades swinging high. Rod darted back out of the way and braced himself at the sickening thud of steel into meat. Their targets dropped, and the remaining beastman whirled on his two attackers in desperation. Rod shouted “Havoc!” and darted in. Startled, the beastman whirled back to face Rod—and doubled over Rod’s steel. Rod yanked back just before a pike slammed down to end the warrior’s agony. Its owner gave a bloodlust-bellow of victory, and turned back to the battle-line. Rod followed, fighting down sickness. No time for it now; he had to remind the soldiers. “Their eyes! Don’t look at their eyes!”

So, of course, half of the soldiers immediately confronted the enemy stare-to-stare, and froze in their tracks.

The Valkyrie screamed again, and the soldiers jolted awake. Their pikes lifted just in time to block war axes…

And lightning seared, thunder exploding around it.

As the afterimages ebbed, Rod saw the soldiers standing frozen again. High above him, a sudden wail trailed away.

“Gwen!” Rod bellowed. He stared into the sky, frantically probing the darkness—and saw the darker shadow hurtling downward. He spun, scrambling back up the beach, then whipped about, staring up at the swooping silhouette, running backward, tracking it as it grew larger and larger…

Then it cracked into him, rock, bone, and sinew. Pain shot through his head, and the sky filled with stars. A myriad of tiny stabs scored his back and sides, and a chorus of cracking sounds, like a forest falling, filled his ears. His diaphragm had caved in; he fought for breath in near-panic. Finally air seeped in; he sucked it thankfully, the more so because it was filled with the perfume he’d given Gwen last Christmas. He looked down at the unguided missile that had flattened him, and at a noble bush that had given its life for the cause. He felt gratitude toward the shrub; Gwen was delicate, but she was no lightweight, especially when she was coming down at twenty miles an hour.

He struggled upward, lifting his wife clear of the bush and laying her carefully out just under the next shrub down the line. As far as he could tell, she was perfectly all right; no breaks or wounds. She’d have a hell of a bruise tomorrow, of course… And she was unconscious; but he was pretty sure that had happened before she fell.

Rain suddenly drenched him. He remembered the last lightning-flash, and turned to look down the beach. Through the downpour he could just barely make out frozen forms toppling, and a dozen or so that fought back. Another lightning-flash showed them clearly laying furiously about them with their pikes; and they kept fighting, even as the lightning faded. A few, then, had heeded him and were watching their enemies’ hands and weapons instead of their eyes. Too late to do them much good, though—they were outnumbered three to one.

Rod struggled back to his feet, ungallantly heaving Gwen up over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and stumbled blindly back over the scrubline in a shaky trot. “Fess! Talk me in!”

“Turn toward the sea, Rod,” the robot’s voice murmured through the earphone set in Rod’s mastoid process. “Approach fifty feet… turn right now… another twenty feet…Stop.”

Rod dug his heels in, just barely managing to counter Gwen’s momentum. He put out a hand and felt the synthetic horsehair in front of him. “Good thing they built your eyes sensitive to infrared,” he growled.

He threw Gwen over the saddlebow, then dropped to one knee, reaching under the robot horse to lift Toby’s head in the crook of his elbow. He slapped the boy’s cheeks lightly, quickly. “Come on, lad, wake up! You’ve done your bit, contrary to orders; now it’s time to get out of here.”

“What… Where…” Toby’s eyelids fluttered. Then he looked up at Rod, squinting against a painful headache. “Lord Warlock! What…”

“You tried to get into the battle by proxy, and got knocked out in person,” Rod explained. “Gwen tried the same thing and got the same result. Now we’ve got to get out of here, before our few remaining soldiers get wiped out. Come on, lad—up in the air. Let’s go!”

Toby stared up at him painfully. Slowly, he nodded. He squeezed his eyes shut, his face screwing up in concentration; then, suddenly, he was gone. Air boomed in to fill the space where he’d been.

Rod leaped up and swung into the saddle, bracing his wife’s still form with one hand as he bellowed, “Retreat! Retreat!”

The dozen soldiers left standing leaped backward, then began to yield ground a step at a time. The beastmen roared and followed, but the Gramarye pikes whirled harder than ever with the power of desperation, keeping the Neanderthals at a distance. There were too many beastmen ganging up on each soldier, though; given time, they’d wipe out the Gramarye force.

Rod didn’t intend to give them that time. “All right, Iron Horse—now!”

Fess reared back, pawing the air with a whinnying scream. The beastmen’s heads snapped up in alarm. Then the great black horse leaped into a gallop, charging down at them. At the last second, he wheeled aside, swerving to run all along their line. The beastmen leaped back in fright, and the soldiers turned and ran. Fess cleared the battle-line; the beastmen saw their fleeing foes, shouted, and lumbered after them.

Fess whirled with another scream and raced back along the Neanderthal line. The beastmen shouted and leaped back—except for one who decided to play hero and turned to face the galloping horse, club raised.

Rod hunkered down and muttered, “Just a little off-center—with English.”

Fess slammed into the Neanderthal, and he caromed off the horse’s chest with a howl. He landed twenty feet away, and was silent. His companions stood poised, wavering.

On the saddlebow, Gwen stirred, lifting her head with a pained frown. She took one look and grasped the situation.

The beastmen growled to one another, softly at first, but gaining volume and anger. They began to waddle back up the beach, their low, ugly rumble filling the air.

Gwen’s eyes narrowed, and the beastmen’s clubs exploded into flame.

They howled, hurling their clubs after the Gramarye soldiers, turned, and ran.

Gwen glared after them. Then her head began to tremble, and she collapsed again.

“Retreat!” Rod snapped. Fess pivoted and raced back up the beach after the soldiers.

They came to rest high in the rocks atop the cliff, behind the long, sloping beach. “You did well,” Rod assured the soldiers. “No one could have done better.”

One of the men spread his hands helplessly. “How can we fight an enemy who can freeze us in our tracks, milord?”

Rod dismounted and lifted Gwen down tenderly. “I think my wife’s given us the basic idea. I’ll work it out with her when she comes to.” He knelt, lowering Gwen to the ground behind two boulders, cradling her head and shoulders against his chest. He winced at a sudden pain in his arm and remembered a club hitting him there. He remembered a few other blows, too, now that he thought about it. With the adrenaline of battle beginning to wear off, the bruises were beginning to hurt. With surprise, he noticed a bright crimson streak across his chest—one of the ax-blows had come closer than he’d realized. When he understood just how close, he began to get the shakes. He clamped down on them sternly; there’d be time for that later. “What’re they doing, men?”

“They begin to feel brave again, milord.” One of the soldiers was lying among the seaward rocks, peering out between two boulders. “They are stepping away from their dragon.”

“Any sign of the villagers?”

“None, milord. All fled in time.”

Rod nodded. “Well, it’s a shame about the village, but they can rebuild it.”

“ ‘Tis not destroyed yet, milord.”

“Yet,” Rod echoed. “There’s a wineskin in my saddlebag, boys. Pass it around.”

A soldier leaped and wrenched the wineskin out. He squirted a long streak into his mouth, then passed it to his comrade.

“Toby!” Rod yelled. Nothing happened.

Gwen stirred in Rod’s arms, squinting against a raging headache, looked up, saw Rod, and relaxed, nestling against his chest, closing her eyes. “I am safe.”

“Praise Heaven,” Rod breathed.

“What doth hap, my lord?”

“We lost, darling. You came up with a good idea, but they outnumbered you.”

She shook her head, then winced at the pain it brought. “Nay, my lord. ‘Twas the lightning.”

“Lightning?” Even through his exhaustion, Rod felt something inside him sit up and take notice. “Well…”

“Milord,” the sentry called, “fire blossoms in the village.”

Rod nodded with a grimace. “Whole place’ll be one big torch in a few minutes. The beastmen won’t find much to pick there, though. Peasants don’t own much—and what they do have they can carry.”

“There is the granary, milord,” one of the locals pointed out, “and the smokehouse.”

Rod shrugged. “So they’ll have a picnic on the way home. Don’t worry, lad—the King and Queen will send you food for the winter. Grain they could’ve had for the asking.” He looked down at Gwen. “Can you find Toby, darling?”

Gwen nodded and closed her eyes, then winced. Rod felt a stab of guilt—but he needed the young warlock.

Air slammed outward with a soft explosion, and Toby stood before him. “Milord Warlock?”

One of the soldiers stared, then turned away, muttering and crossing himself.

Rod pretended not to notice. “Feel up to some action again?”

“Assuredly, an’ thou dost wish it, milord.” Toby’s knees were shaking with exhaustion.

“I do,” Rod said. “I hate to ask it of you, but we’ve got to salvage something out of this. When they ship out, can you follow them?”

Toby stared off into space for a moment, then nodded. “There are clouds. They will not see me.”

“You don’t have to go all the way,” Rod pointed out. “Just see ‘em on their way, then call for one of your mates. He can teleport out to you, and you can disappear. Just get them started.”

Toby nodded slowly. “Wise, milord. We will.”

“The flames slacken, milord.”

“Yes. Thank heaven for the rain.” But Rod looked up, frowning; the sentry’s voice had changed. A different soldier lay among the rocks, his arm in a fresh, gleaming sling.

Rod stared. “Hey—who gave you that?”

The sentry looked up, surprised, then nodded toward another soldier who sat, teeth gritted against pain, while a chubby figure in a brown robe wrapped linen around a long gash in his arm.

“Father Chillde,” Rod said slowly.

The monk looked up, then smiled sadly. “I fear I have come too late, Milord Gallowglass. At least I may be of some service now.”

“We appreciate it, of course—but the chaplain doesn’t have to come into battle.”

The sad smile stayed. “There are two ways of thinking of that, milord.”

Nice to know they had a dedicated one—and his mere presence was definitely a comfort to the soldiers. Him, and the wine.

“They move back toward their ships,” the sentry reported.

“There will be much work for me when they have gone,” the priest said sadly.

Rod shook his head. “I don’t think so, Father. From what I saw during battle, they didn’t leave any wounded.”

The priest’s mouth pressed thin. “ ‘Tis to be lamented. But there will be other work, more’s the pity.”

Rod turned toward him, frowning. “What…? Oh. Yeah—the Last Rites.” He turned back toward the beach. “But it won’t just be our dead down there, Father. How about the beastmen? Think they have souls?”

“Why—I had not thought of it,” the priest said, surprised. “But is there reason to think they would not?”

One of the soldiers growled a reply.

The monk shook his head. “Nay, goodman. I ha’ known Christian men to do worse—much worse.”

“I would, could I but get one of them alone,” another soldier snarled.

“There—do you see?” The priest spread his hands. “Still, souls or none, I misdoubt me an they be Christian.”

“They called upon their false god at the battle’s beginning, did they not?”

“Was that the burden of their chant?” another soldier wondered. “ ‘Go Bald,’ was it not?”

“Something of the sort,” the first growled.

Rod frowned; he’d heard ‘Cobalt,’ himself. Well, each interpreted it according to words he knew. What did it really mean, though? He shrugged; it could be some sort of heathen god, at that.

“They have boarded their ship,” the sentry called. “They are launching… they turn…”

“May I build a fire now?” Father Chillde asked.

Rod shrugged. “Please do, Father—if you can find shelter for it and anything dry enough to burn.” He turned to the young warlock. “Sure you feel up to it, Toby?”

The esper nodded, coming to his feet. He was looking a little better, having rested. “I will start them, at least. When I’ve learned the trick of following a ship without being seen, I’ll call another of our band and teach it to him.”

Rod nodded. “See you soon, then, Toby.”

“Thou shalt, Lord Warlock.” Toby sprang into the air. The soldiers stared after him, gasping, as he soared up and up, then arrowed away over the waves. A few crossed themselves, muttering quick prayers.

“There is no need for that,” Father Chillde said sharply. “He is naught but a man, like to yourselves, though somewhat younger and with a rare gift. But he is not proof ‘gainst arrows or spears; if you would pray, beseech God for his safety.”

Rod stared at the chubby priest, surprised. Then he nodded his head in slow approval.

“He has gone through the clouds,” the sentry reported.

Rod nodded. “Wise, once he’s figured out which way they’re headed. He’ll probably drop down for a quick peek now and then, just to check on them.”

“They have crossed the bar,” the sentry reported. “They stand out to sea.”

Rod sighed and came to his feet, cradling Gwen in his arms. “It’s over, men. Let’s go.”

Below them, on the beach, the village smoldered.

“Nay, my lord. ‘Twas the lightning, I am certain of it!” Gwen spoke calmly, but her chin was a little more prominent than usual.

“Lightning!” Queen Catharine cried. She threw her hands in the air. “Why not the thunder, then? Or the wind, or the rain? Lightning, i’ sooth!”

“Nay, Majesty—hear her out.” Tuan touched her arm gently, restraining—but Rod noticed he’d become awfully formal all of a sudden.

“ ‘Majesty,’ indeed!” Catharine stormed, turning on him. “What wouldst thou, mine husband? To blame it on the lightning! Nay, ‘twas these beastmen only—themselves, and no more! They are vile sorcerers, and the spawn of Hell!”

“You may have a point there,” Rod admitted. “We’re not really disagreeing, you see—we’re just getting into the how of their sorcering.”

“Why, by peering into thine eye,” Catharine shrieked, whirling back on him. “Lightning, forsooth! Was it at lightning that thy soldiers stared?”

“Nay, certes,” Gwen said wearily. “ ‘Tis true, when they stared at the beastmen’s eyes, then could the beastmen cast their spell. And ’tis a foul spell!” She shuddered. “I had some taste of it when I sought to lift it. ‘Tis a vile thing that doth fascinate with ugliness!”

“ ‘Fascinate’ is the term,” Rod agreed. “They focused all the soldiers’ attention on one single point—the beastmen’s pupils. Then…”

“Then they could spare no attention for fighting?” Tuan nodded heavily. “Vile, indeed, that will not even allow a soldier the chance of defense.”

Catharine rounded on Gwen. “Hast thou never encountered a spell like to this before?”

“There are tales of it,” Gwen said slowly, “of the Evil Eye. I, though, have never found it in life.”

“I have,” Rod said slowly, “though it was a milder version.”

Tuan frowned. “When?”

“In prefligh… uh, in apprenticeship,” Rod hedged, “when I was being trained in the, uh”—he took a deep breath and gave up on honesty—“in the wizardry I use. This particular form of magic was called ‘hypnotism,’ but it looked a lot like this Evil Eye. It came to the same thing in the long run; it’s just that they had to do it much more slowly.”

“Aye, therein is it most phenomenal.” Tuan frowned. “How can they fascinate so quickly?”

“Therein I have some experience,” Gwen said slowly. “ ‘Tis a matter of throwing one’s thoughts into another’s mind.”

Fess’s voice murmured in Rod’s ear, “Your wife is describing projective telepathy, Rod.”

“Scientific terminology is wonderful,” Rod growled. “It lets skeptics believe in magic. In fact, it transforms them into instant authorities.”

Catharine turned on him, glowering. “Of whom dost thou speak, sirrah?”

Not you, Rod thought, remembering the rumors that the Queen had a touch of ‘witch-power’ herself. Aloud, he said, “To whom is more the point—and the problem is that the beastmen do it to whomever they want. I think we’ve got a pretty good idea of how they do it now—but how do we fight back?”

“Why, as we did.” Gwen looked up in surprise.

Rod frowned down at her. “ ‘We’?” He felt a chill trickle down his back.

“Toby and I,” Gwen explained. “What we did was even as thou didst say, mine husband—we cast our thoughts into the soldiers’ minds and made them see what the glowing point at which they stared was in truth—naught but a pair of tiny eyes. We made them see again the face around the eyes, and the body ‘neath the face.”

“Yeah,” Rod said with a curt nod. “Then they stepped up the strength of their Evil Eye and knocked you both out.”

But Gwen shook her head. “Not ‘they,’ milord. ‘Twas the lightning.”

Catharine threw up her hands in despair and whirled away.

“Lightning or not, they did knock you out,” Rod growled, “and you’ll pardon me, but I didn’t like the look of it.”

Gwen spread her hands. “What wouldst thou, my lord? There were but Toby and myself—and we acted at the same moment, but not in concert.”

“Huh?” Rod’s scowl deepened. “ ‘Not in concert’? What did you want—a drum-and-bugle corps?”

“Nay, my lord.” Gwen visibly fought for patience. “We could not join our powers—and there were too many soldiers for poor two of us. We did attempt to cast our thoughts into all their minds—but we did it side by side, not by blending both our powers into one.”

“I take it you think it’s possible to merge your powers,” Rod said softly.

“Mayhap.” Gwen frowned, gaze drifting to the window. “When two who can hear thoughts do touch, there is ever some greater sense of contact—threat, I should say; for I’ve never known two who have risked reaching out through touch to thoughts.”

The door shot open, and Brom O’Berin stumped in, followed by two men-at-arms, each with a shoulder under one of Toby’s arms. The young warlock limped between them, panting, “Nay! I… I can bear mine own…”

“Thou canst scarcely bear thine head upon thy shoulders, now,” Brom growled. “Indeed, an thou wert a crab tree, thou couldst not bear an apple. There,” he said to the two men-at-arms, nodding toward a chair. They lowered the young warlock carefully, and he sagged back, mouth gaping open, eyes closed, panting in huge hoarse gasps.

“What ails him?” Gwen cried.

“Naught but exhaustion.” Brom’s mouth held tight. “Were his news not vital, I would have sent him to his bed.”

“Young idiot! I told him to call for a relief!” Rod strode over to the teenager and caught up a wrist, feeling for the pulse. “Didn’t you bring any wine?”

Brom turned to the doorway and snapped his fingers. A page scurried in, wide-eyed and apprehensive, bearing a tray with a flagon and a flask. Brom caught them up, poured the mug half-full, and held it to Toby’s lips. “A sip only, my lad, then a draught. Attempt it, there’s a good fellow.”

Toby sipped, and promptly coughed. Rod thumped him on the back till the boy nodded weakly, then sipped again. It stayed down, so he took a big swallow.

“Feel a little better now?” Rod asked.

Toby nodded and sighed.

“Don’t fall asleep on us,” Rod said quickly. “What did you see?”

“Only the dragon ship, and miles and miles of water,” Toby sighed. “I sickened at the sight. I swear I’ll never drink the stuff again!” And he took a long pull on the wine.

“Steady there, now,” Rod cautioned. “So they sailed a lot. Which way did they go?”

“West,” Toby said firmly, “west and south. I called for Giles, and set him to the following, whiles I appeared upon my bed and slept till he did call to say he’d sighted land. Then I appeared beside him and sent him home. He was sorely tired, seest thou, whilst I was fresh.”

From the gray cast of the youth’s face, Rod doubted that. “There was also a little matter of possible danger if you’d reached their homeland.”

“Well, that too,” Toby admitted. “In any case, the journey’s end was mine affair. The danger was not great; the sky was lightening but not yet dawning, and clouds still hung low and heavy.”

“E’en so, I had hoped thou wouldst not take too great a chance,” Gwen said. “What had the beastmen come home to?”

“A bend of land in the coastline,” Toby explained, “low land, with high sky-reaching cliffs behind it a mile or two from shore.”

Rod nodded. “How big was the low land?”

“Mayhap some five miles wide.”

“He describes an alluvial plain,” Fess’s voice murmured in Rod’s ear.

“You’re a better observer than I knew,” Rod told the youth. “What was on the plain?”

“A village.” Toby looked up at him. “Huts of daub and wattle, at a guess—round and with thatched roofs. Around and about their fields they did lie, with greening crops.”

“Farmers?” Rod frowned, puzzled. “Not the kind of people you’d expect to go pillaging. Any idea how many huts there were?”

Toby shook his head. “More than I could count at ease, Lord Warlock. ‘Twas as far across as any village I ha’ seen in Gramarye.”

“Village,” Rod repeated. “Not a town?”

Toby pursed his lips. “Well… mayhap a small town… Still, the houses were set far apart.”

“Maybe a thousand households, then. How’d they react when they saw the dragon ship come back?”

“They did not,” said Toby.

“What?” Rod gawked. “They didn’t react? Not at all?”

“Nay—they did not see it. ‘Twas not yet dawn, as I’ve said, and the dragon ship did not come to the village. Nay, it sailed instead to southward, and found a narrow river-mouth just where the cliffs came down to join the water. Then the beast-men unshipped oars and furled their sail and rowed their ship upstream, until they slipped into a crack within the cliff-wall from which their river issued.”

“A crack.” Rod kept his face expressionless.

Toby nodded. “ ‘Twas a crack thou couldst have marched thy Flying Legion through, milord; but in that vast wall of rock ’twas nonetheless a crack.”

“So they sailed into a river-pass.” Rod frowned, trying to make sense of it. “What happened then?”

“Naught to speak of. When they slipped into the cliff-face, I dropped down to the cliff-top, where I lay and watched. Anon, I saw them slip out on a footpath, without their shields or helmets, and naught of weapons save the knives at their belts. They trudged across the plain, back to the village. I did not follow, for I feared sighting by an early-riser.”

Rod nodded. “Wise. After all, we found out everything we really needed to know.” He frowned. “Maybe more.”

“What then?” Brom demanded.

Toby spread his hands. “Naught. The work was done… and I commenced to feel as weary as though I’d not had a night of sleep.”

“Not surprising, with the psychic blast you pulled yesterday,” Rod reminded him. “And teleporting takes some energy out of a man too, I’ll bet.”

“I think that it doth,” Toby agreed, “though I’d not noticed it aforetime.”

“Well, you’re not as young as you used to be. What are you now, nineteen?”

“Twenty,” Toby answered, irritated.

“That’s right, it’s a huge difference. But that does mean your body’s stopped growing, and you no longer have that frantic, adolescent energy-surplus. Besides, what’s the furthest you’ve ever teleported before?”

“On thine affairs, some ten or twenty miles.”

“Well, this time, you jumped… oh, let’s see now…” Rod stared off into space. “All night in a sailing ship… let’s assume the wind was behind it… say, ten miles an hour. Maybe ten hours, factored by Finagle’s Variable Constant…” He looked back at Toby. “You jumped a hundred miles or more. Twice. No wonder you’re tired.”

Toby answered with a snore.

“Take him up,” Brom instructed the men-at-arms, “and bear him gently to his bed. He hath done great service for our land this morn.”

One of the soldiers bent to gather up Toby’s legs, but the other stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Nay. Only lift the chair.” The first soldier looked up, nodded approvingly, and picked up the chair legs as his companion lifted the back. Rod instantly memorized the second one’s face, marking him as one who might have potential.

The door closed behind them, and Brom turned on Rod. “What makest thou of this, Lord Warlock?”

“Confusion,” Rod answered promptly. “For openers, I want him to draw a map when he wakes up. Beyond that?” He shrugged. “We do have a tidy little mystery, don’t we?”

“Aye,” Brom agreed. “Why would they come so silently back to their lair?”

“Mayhap ‘twas not all returned from this sally,” Tuan offered, “and they feared the censure of the slain ones’ kin.”

“Possible, I suppose.” Rod frowned. “But it doesn’t seem very likely. I mean, I suppose there really are some hard-hearted cultures who take that attitude—you know, ‘Return with your shield, or on it,’ and all that. But their mission wasn’t exactly a total flop, you know. Their ship did come back stuffed. They took everything that wasn’t nailed down before they burned the stuff that was.”

“E’en so, they did have dead,” said Brom, “and if they’d gained recruits by promising great bounty with little danger, they would now have reason to fear the wrath of the kin of the slain ones.”

“Ah, I see you know the ways of recruiting-sergeants,” Rod said brightly. “But they’d have to face that anger anyway as soon as the rest of the villagers found out they were back. I mean, sooner or later, somebody was bound to notice they were there. So why sneak in?”

Catharine looked up slowly, her face lighting. “They stole back like thieves in the night, did they not?”

Rod frowned and nodded. “Yeah. How does that…” Then his eyes widened. “Of course! Your Majesty has it!”

“What?” Brom looked from one to the other, frowning.

“Aye, she hath!” Gwen jumped up. “The whole of this expedition was done in secret!”

“Aye!” Tuan’s eyes fired. “Indeed, that hath the ring of truth!”

“Hypothesis does not account for all available data,” Fess said flatly behind Rod’s ear.

“But it’s got the right feel,” Rod objected. “Now, just how they managed to hide the little fact that they were gone for thirty-six hours, I don’t know; but I could think of a few ways, myself.”

Gwen looked up, alarmed.

“That means, Your Majesty,” Rod said, hastily turning to the King, “that we’re not being attacked by a hostile nation.”

“Nay, only thieves who come in ships.” Tuan frowned. “Is there not a word for such as they?”

“Yeah; they call ‘em ‘pirates.’ ” Rod wasn’t surprised that the people of Gramarye had forgotten the term; their culture was restricted to one huge island and had been isolated for centuries.

Tuan frowned thoughtfully, gazing off into space. “How doth one fight a seaborne bandit?”

“By knowing something about the sea.” Rod turned to Brom. “Is there anybody in Gramarye who does?”

Brom frowned. “We have some fisherfolk in villages along the coast.”

“Then, get ‘em,” Rod called back over his shoulder as he headed for the door. “Get me a fisherman who knows something about the winds and the coastlines.”

“An thou wishest it, we shall. But where dost thou go, Lord Warlock?”

“To find out what’s current,” Rod called back.

“But there’s got to be a current here somewhere!”

“They are not visible on standard reflected-light photographs, Rod,” Fess explained, “and when we arrived on Gramarye we had no reason to take infrared stills.”

Rod’s starship was buried under ten feet of clay in a meadow a few hours ride from Runnymede. He had persuaded the elves to dig a tunnel to it so he could visit it whenever he wanted.

Now, for instance. He was enjoying the rare luxury of Terran Scotch while he pored over a set of still pictures on the chart-table screen. “I don’t see anything, Fess.”

“Isn’t that what you expected, Rod?”

Fess’s robot brain, a globe the size of a basketball, hung in a niche in the curving wall. Rod had temporarily taken it out of the steel horse body and plugged it in to act as the ship’s automatic control section. Not that he was going anywhere; he just needed Fess to operate the ship’s auxiliary equipment, such as the graphic survey file. And, of course, the autobar.

“Well, yes, now that you mention it.” Rod scowled at the aerial picture of the Gramarye coastline, the mainland coastline opposite, and the open sea in between. Fess had taken the pictures during their orbital approach to the planet two years earlier. Now they were stored as rearrangements within the electrical charges of giant molecules within the crystal lattice of the on-board computer memory. “I hadn’t expected to find anything except plants and animals—but I hadn’t said so. Better watch out, Metal Mind—you’re getting close to intuitive hunches.”

“Merely integrating large numbers of nonverbal signs, Rod,” the robot assured him.

“I should be so good at integrating.” Rod stabbed a finger at a bump on the mainland coastline. “Expand that one for me, will you?”

The glowing plate in the tabletop stayed the same size, of course, but the picture within its borders grew, expanding out of sight at the edges, so that the bump became larger and larger, filling the whole screen.

Rod drew an imaginary line with his finger. “Quite a demarcation here—this arc that goes across the bump. Divides the vegetation rather neatly, don’t you think?”

“I do not think, Rod; I simply process data.”

“One of these days, you’ll have to explain the difference to me. What’s this stuff in the upper left? Looks like the tops of a lot of ferns.”

“It may well be so, Rod. The majority of the planet is in its Carboniferous Era, and giant ferns are the dominant plant form.”

“There’s a strip of beach alongside them. What’s that lying on it?”

“A primitive amphibian, Rod.”

“Kind of fits in with the whole ambiance,” Rod said, nodding. “Wonder what’s under the Carboniferous flora?”

“Carboniferous fauna, I would presume.”

“You certainly would. No bogeymen?”

“Human habitation usually occurs in cleared spaces, Rod.”

“You never know; they might have something to hide. But if you’re going to talk about a cleared space, here’s the rest of the bump.” Rod frowned, peering closely. “Looks like there might be some small trees there.”

Fess was silent for a few seconds, then said slowly, “I agree, Rod. Those do appear to be trees. Stunted, but trees nonetheless.”

“Odd-looking for a fern, isn’t it? Where did trees come from, Fess?”

“There can only be one source, Rod—the Terra-formed island of Gramarye.”

“Well, let’s be fair—maybe some of the seed got scattered during the Terra-forming.”

“Quite possible, Rod—but it is the mechanism of scattering that is of importance. There must be some sort of communication between this mainland area and Gramarye.”

“Such as the ocean current I’m looking for? Well, well!” Rod peered closer, delighted. “Let’s see—besides the trees, it’s just a featureless light green. Can you check what makes that color, Fess?”

The picture stayed the same size on the screen, but the robot analyzed the pattern of electrical charges that was the recorded image. “It is grass, Rod.”

Rod nodded. “Again, that couldn’t come from a Carboniferous fern-patch. But it’s such a clean break between the ferns and the grassland! What could make such a clear demarcation, Fess?”

“Exactly what you are no doubt thinking of, Rod—a line of cliffs, the cliffs Toby mentioned.”

“I was kind of thinking along that line, now that you mention it.” Rod looked down at the picture. “So we could be looking at the beastmen’s lair. It does match Toby’s description—except for one little thing.”

“I see no anomaly, Rod.”

“Right. It’s not what is there—it’s what isn’t. No village.”

Fess was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I see your point. There is no sign of human—or subhuman—habitation.”

“No dragon ships drawn up on the beach, anyway.”

“There is only one logical conclusion, Rod.”

“Yeah.” Rod leaned back and took a sip of Scotch. “I know what I think it is—but let’s hear what you’ve got in mind first.”

“Surely, Rod. We recorded these pictures two years ago during our first approach to this planet. Apparently the beastmen were not here then. Therefore, they arrived within the last two years.”

“That’s kinda what I was thinking, too… Say!” Rod leaned forward again. “That reminds me. I’ve been meaning to tell you about something I noticed during the battle.”

“Some historical inaccuracies in the beastmen’s Viking equipage, Rod?”

“Well, an anachronism, anyway. Fess, those beastmen are Neanderthals.”

The little ship was very quiet for a few seconds.

Then Fess said, “That is impossible, Rod.”

Rod answered with a wicked grin. “Why? Just because the last Neanderthal died off at least fifty thousand years before the Norse began to go a-viking?”

“That was rather the general trend of my thoughts, yes.”

“But why should that bother you?” Rod spread his hands. “We found a time machine hidden away in the back hallways of Castle Loguire, didn’t we?”

“Yes, but we disabled it shortly after we defeated Anselm Loguire.”

“Sure—but how did it get there in the first place?”

“Why… a time-traveler must have been sent back to build it.”

“Quick figuring, Reasoning Robot.” Rod pointed a finger at the nearest vision pickup. “And if they could do it once, they could do it again.”

“Why… that is certainly logical…”

“Sure is. ‘Sensible’ is another matter. But that time machine didn’t exactly look as though it had been improvised, you know?”

“Surely you are not implying that they are mass-produced.”

“Well, not mass-produced, really—but I did have in mind a small factory somewhen. Two or three a year, maybe.”

A faint shudder vibrated the little ship. “Rod—do you have any idea how illogical such an event could make human existence?”

Rod looked up in alarm. “Hey, now! Don’t go having any seizures on me!”

“I am not that completely disoriented by the concept, Rod. I may have the robotic equivalent of epilepsy, but it requires an extremely illogical occurrence to trigger a seizure. A time-machine factory may be illogical in its effects, but not in its sheer existence.”

That wasn’t quite the way Fess had reacted to his first discovery of a time machine, but Rod let it pass. “Well, I did have some notion of just how ridiculous widespread time machines could make things, yes. Something like having neanderthals dressed up in Viking gear, showing up on a planet that’s decided to freeze its culture in the Middle Ages. That what you had in mind, Fess?‘’

“That was a beginning, yes,” the robot said weakly. “But are you certain they were Neanderthals, Rod?”

“Well, as sure as I can be.” Rod frowned. “I mean, conditions were a little rushed, you know? I didn’t get a chance to ask one of them if he’d be good enough to take off his helmet so I could measure his skull, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, but several beastmen did meet with fatal accidents during the battle. Perhaps we should send a scribe with a tape measure.”

“Brother Chillde will do; might as well put him to some use. But he’ll just confirm what I’m telling you, Fess: heavy jaw, no chin, brow ridges, sloping forehead—and I mean really sloping; obviously no prefrontal lobes.”

“An occipital lump, Rod?‘’

Rod scowled. “Well now, that I can’t really say. I mean, after all, that’s down at the base of the skull where the helmet would hide it. Check that on one of the, ah, specimens, would you?”

“I shall leave written directions to that effect, Rod—in your name, of course. So, then, you are positing someone removing a tribe of Neanderthals from approximately 50,000 B.C. Terra, and transporting them here?”

“Where else could they dig up Neanderthals?”

“The theory of parallel evolution…”

“Parallel lines don’t converge. Still, you never know; we’ll leave the possibility open.”

“But for the time being, we will assume they were taken from Terra. And whoever brought them here outfitted them with Viking ships, armor, and weaponry. Presumably this unidentified party also taught them navigation. But why would they have attacked you?”

Rod shrugged. “Presumably because the unidentified party told them to—but we’ll leave that one open for the moment.”

“As we must also leave open the question of the unidentified party’s identity.”

“Well, that doesn’t have to be too open.” Rod frowned. “I mean, whoever it is has got to have a time machine—and we already know two organizations so equipped who’re involved in Gramarye.”

“The futurian anarchists, and the futurian totalitarians. Yes.”

“Right. And, with two candidates like that available, I don’t see any need to posit a third.”

“Which of the two would you favor in this case?”

“Oh, I’d say the anarchists probably masterminded it,” Rod reflected. “It strikes me as being their style.”

“In what way?”

Rod shrugged. “Why Viking gear? Presumably for the same reason the Vikings used it—to strike terror into the hearts of their victims. And striking terror like that serves the general purpose of making chaos out of whatever social order is available. Besides, they like to get somebody to front for them—the ‘power behind the throne,’ and all that.”

“Or behind the pirates, in this case. Still, your point is well-taken, Rod. The totalitarians do tend toward more personal involvement. Also, they prefer careful, hidden preparation resulting in a revolution, not continual harassing that slowly disintegrates local authority. Yes, the anarchists are the logical perpetrators.”

“And if that’s logical, it’s probably also wrong.” Rod leaned forward over the chart screen again. “Which reminds me—there’s a complete difference in vegetation, depending on which side of the cliffs you’re on.”

“Totally different, Rod. Grasses exclusively.”

“What, not even a fungus amongus?”

“Well, there are a few mosses and lichens.”

“How come nothing more?”

“The vegetation would seem to indicate a small area in which the temperature is far below that of the surrounding forest. I conjecture that a cold breeze blows off the sea at that point, chilling the area around the bay. The cliff-wall prevents it from reaching the interior.”

Rod looked up. “Hey! Would that indicate a cold current?”

“In all probability, Rod.” The robot’s voice sounded a little patronizing.

“That’s the current that would go past Gramarye.”

“It would seem so,” Fess answered.

Rod smiled sourly and tossed his shot glass into the recycler. “Well, enough loafing.” He stood up, strode over to the wall, and began to loosen the clamps that held Fess’s basketball brain. “What happens after that cold current hits the shoreline, Fess?”

“It would probably be warmed by contact with the tropical mainland just south of the cliffs, Rod. Then it would be forced out to sea by the mass of the continent.”

Rod nodded. “From the mainland’s position and contour, that means the current would be sent northeast—back toward Gramarye.”

“Quite possibly, Rod—but you should not hypothesize without sufficient data.”

“All right.” Rod tucked the silver basketball under his arm. “Anything you say, Fess. Besides, it’s time for lunch.”

“You know robots do not eat, Rod.”

“That’s funny, I thought you might be in the mood for a few bytes…”

The sentry at the door to the solar stepped in and announced, “The Lord High Warlock, Majesties.”

Rod pushed past him and stopped, taking in the tall, saturnine man with the lantern jaw who stood facing Catharine and Tuan. His face was tanned and leathery. He wore a short brocaded coat, fur-trimmed, over doublet and hose, and clenched a round hat in his hands.

Then Rod remembered his manners and turned to bow.

“Your Majesties! I’ve been doing a little research.”

“I trust our new source will aid it, Lord Warlock.” Catharine nodded toward the stranger. “May I present Master Hugh Meridian, captain of a merchant ship.”

“Merchant ship?” Rod turned to the seaman, startled. “I didn’t know we had any.”

“In truth, we do, milord.” The shipmaster gave him a frosty bow. “ ‘Tis quicker, and less costly, to ship goods along the coastline than to haul them over the highways.”

“Of course; it would be. I should’ve thought of it. But how did you learn that we needed seafaring advice, Master Meridian?”

“We sent word quickly to the fisherfolk at Loguire’s estates, and those in Romanov. Each claimed they did know there were currents sweeping past the shore, farther out than they generally sailed,” Tuan answered. “Yet all claimed further that they knew naught more.”

“Of course; they couldn’t know where the currents went.” Rod frowned. “They never go out farther than they can come back, all in one day. But they did know about you, Captain?”

The captain nodded. “Ever and anon, the lords hire out their fisherfolk to be my crews, milord. They know of me, aye.”

“And you know where the currents go.” Rod started to look for a chair, then remembered it was bad form to sit in Their Majesties’ presence. Brom could; but Brom was special. “At least you know where they go, around the Isle of Gramarye.”

“I do, milord—though it might be better to say I know where the currents do not go.”

“Really? There’re currents all around the island?”

“Not quite; the western coast is bare of them.”

“Odd.” Rod frowned. “Can you show me on a map?”

“Map?” Captain Meridian looked lost for a second; then he fumbled a small book out of his belt-pouch. “Aye, I can show where I ha’ writ about it in my rudder; yet is’t not easier to hear it?”

“No, no! I want you to show me, on…” Rod let his voice trail off, remembering that medieval people didn’t have maps as he knew them; the idea of graphing out the outlines of a coast was foreign to them. Maps had had to wait for the Renaissance, with its concept of continuous, uniform space. Rod turned to the door, stuck his head out, and advised the sentry, “Parchment and pen, soldier—and quickly.” He turned back into the room. “We’ll have one in a minute, Majesties. Master Meridian, imagine yourself being a bird, flying over the Isle of Gramarye, looking down on its coasts.”

Meridian smiled. “ ‘Tis a pleasant enough conceit, Milord Warlock—but I cannot see that it serves any purpose.”

“Ah, but it does!” Rod held up a forefinger. “I’ll draw you a picture of the coasts as the bird would see them.”

The door opened, and a round-eyed page popped in with parchment, pen, and ink.

“Thank you, lad!” Rod seized the tools and marched to the solar’s table. He rolled out the parchment and began sketching. “This is the western coast, Captain Meridian.” He drew a long jagged curving line, then pointed back toward its top. “There’s the Duchy of Savoy, and here’s Hapsburg.” He turned the bottom of the line into a point, and began to draw a lateral line, full of jags and gouges. Captain Meridian followed his hand, frowning, trying to relate this ink-scrawl to the realities of rocks, tides, currents, and distant hills seen through the mist. Finally, his face lit and his finger stabbed down at the southernmost curve. “Yonder is Cape Souci! Many’s the time I’ve had to shorten sail to keep the southwesterly gale from rolling my ship over as we rounded that headland!”

“Southwesterly?” Rod looked up. “Does the current come past there?”

Captain Meridian nodded eagerly. “Aye, aye! ‘Tis that very place. Westerly of that, milord, I know naught of the current; indeed, I know naught at all, for never have I had any occasion to sail there. But north of that, there is no current; the whole westerly shore hath naught but tides and local stirrings.”

Rod nodded. “That’s where the current comes to Gramarye, then. This is the southern shore, Master Meridian.” He drew a long curve; then his pen wandered north. Meridian watched spellbound as the outline of the island took shape before him.

“ ‘Tis witchcraft,” he sighed when Rod was done, and pointed at the map. “Yonder is the Bay of Roland, and hither lies the coast of Romanov. This is the mouth of the River Fleuve, and yon peninsula is Tristesse Point.” He looked up at Rod. “Thou art indeed the Lord High Warlock! By what magic canst thou tell the shape of this coastline so well?”

“Oh, I know some people who do a lot of flying,” Rod shrugged. “Anything I’ve missed?”

“Not of the coast itself.” Meridian turned back to the map and pointed. “But you must draw the Grand Skerry here, midway down the west coast—and Geburn Rock here”—his finger jabbed at the map just off the coast of Romanov—“and… but, another time.” He waved the thought away. “There are a host of such things that are not on your map, but that any seafarer would need to know of.”

“Such as currents?” Rod dipped the pen in the ink and handed it to him, feather first. “Would you show me where they lie, Master Meridian?”

The captain’s eyes widened. Slowly, he took the pen and began to sketch. Rod watched flowing, sweeping lines grow from the pen-point, coming from Heaven knew where at Cape Souci, flowing along the southern coast, sweeping around the eastern coast and the Baronetcy of Ruddigore, around the Duchy of Bourbon and along the northern coast, past Romanov, past Hapsburg—and out into the unknown again.

Meridian set the pen back into the inkwell with a sigh. “Better I cannot do, Lord Warlock.” He looked up at Rod. “I know no more.”

“Well, I might happen to be able to add something there.” Rod took up the pen. “One of our young warlocks just made a quick, overnight trip into the west, you see.” He began to sketch a concave curve in the lower left-hand corner of the parchment. “He saw something like this…” The curve hooked into a right angle with an upstanding bump. Rod sketched a dotted line across the base of the bump, then reached up to begin sketching where Captain Meridian had left off with the current. “He was following that last party of raiders home, and from what he said, I’d guess they sailed along this route—which means the northern current flows down to the southwest, like this…” His pen strokes swept down to the mainland, then turned sharply to flow around the bump. “You know, of course, Master Meridian, that Gramarye is only an island, and that there’s a mainland over to the west, a continent.”

Captain Meridian nodded. “We had known o‘ that, Lord Warlock—yet only that, and naught more. Too, that much came only from tales that grandfathers told grandsons.”

“Well, our young warlock checked on it, and it’s there, right enough.” Rod’s penstrokes flowed around the bump. “We think this semipeninsula is what the beastmen call ‘home.’ It’s a safe bet that the current flows past there.” He didn’t feel any need to tell the captain just how safe the bet was. “Then it flows on southward, hugging the shoreline, till it’s warmed by this outward bulge of the continent, which also forces it back out to sea, toward the northeast—and, of course, it just keeps going in the same line…” His pen sketched strokes upward and to the right until they joined up with Captain Meridian’s line at Cape Souci. “… And there’s where it comes back into your ken.” He straightened up, dropping the quill back into the inkwell. “And there you have it, Master Meridian. Between the two of us, we’ve filled in a map of the current.”

A discreetly modest, electronic cough sounded in Rod’s ear.

“Of course, we had a bit of help gaining the basic information,” Rod added. “Does it all make sense?”

The shipmaster nodded, eyes glowing. “Indeed it doth, milord.” He turned to Tuan and Catharine. “Behold, Thy Majesties!” He traced the current with a forefinger. “The beastmen bring their dragon ships out into the eastward current, here. It carries them across, first to Loguire, so; then, out into the current, around the eastern coast, and away to the west again, o’er the roof of Gramarye, and so back to their home again.” His finger completed the circuit, arriving back at the bump on the mainland’s coastline.

Tuan drew in a long, hissing breath. “Aye, Master Meridian. So. We understand.”

The door opened, and the sentry stepped in. “Majesties—Gwendylon, Lady Gallowglass.”

Gwen stepped in, and dropped a quick curtsy.

“Well met, my dear.” Catharine rose from her chair and stepped toward Gwen, one hand outstretched. “Well met, in good time. These silly men are like to make mine head to spin with their nonsensical talk of currents and capes.”

Gwen rose, catching Catharine’s hand with a smile of shared amusement.

Rod did a double take. Then he straightened up, watching the ladies out of the corner of his eye. Catharine and Gwen had never exactly been on close terms, especially since Catharine had seemed quite interested in Rod before he brought Tuan back into her life. He didn’t think Gwen knew about that—but then, you never can tell with a telepath. All in all, this warm greeting worried him. “What have you two been planning?”

“Planning? Why, naught!” Catharine was all offended innocence. “E’en so, we have found some space to discuss the errors of thy ways, Lord Warlock—and thou, my noble husband.”

Tuan looked even more wary than Rod. “Indeed, sweet lady. And in what ways am I lacking?”

“Thou dost always speak of ways to go about beating other males with thy clubs, and cleaving them with thy swords. We, though, have seen ‘tis of greater import to ward thy soldiers from thy foemen’s clubs and axes!”

“A point well-taken,” Tuan admitted, “if thou couldst also thus ward their wives and babes, and the lands and stock that give them sustenance.”

“I hate to admit it,” Rod agreed, “but knocking a man out with your club is a very effective way of making sure he doesn’t knock you.”

“Ah, but in this instance, my lord, thou must needs make thy soldier able to strike such a blow,” Gwen reminded. “For that, thou must needs ward him from the beastmen’s Evil Eye.”

Rod exchanged a sheepish glance with Tuan. “They’ve got us, Your Majesty. We’ve been so busy thinking about launching the counterattack that we haven’t put much time into the psychic defenses.”

“Be easy of heart, lords,” Catharine assured them, “for we have.”

“Indeed,” Gwen chirped. “The means is ready to hand, as Toby and I did manifest when the beastmen fought our soldiers.”

Tuan frowned. “I fear that I mistook. Didst thou give warding?”

“Oh, they surely did!” Rod assured him. “We probably wouldn’t even have saved the handful of men who did survive that battle if Gwen and Toby hadn’t, ah, broken the spell of the Evil Eye.”

“I mind me that thou didst say thou hadst, for short spaces, dispelled the charm.” Tuan rubbed his chin. “Yet ‘twas only for brief minutes.”

“Indeed, their thoughts were too heavy for us,” Gwen admitted. “Yet be mindful, my liege, that there were but two of us, and that we acted each alone.”

“You’re trying to say they simply overpowered you,” Rod interpreted. “But what’s to stop them from doing it again?”

“Why, more witches!” Gwen’s face bloomed into a rosy smile.

Catharine tucked Gwen’s arm into her own, nodding. “Indeed, Lord Warlock! Thy wife doth think that, if witches do join hands, they may then be able to act in concert. Thus, if we may have a score of witches altogether, they might among them counter the Evil Eye of one dragon-full of beastmen.”

“Just twenty of you, against a hundred of them?” Rod felt his backbone chill. “You’ll pardon me, but I don’t like the odds.”

“Nor do we,” Gwen said earnestly. “It would indeed be well if we could have more witches.”

The chill along the backbone turned colder. “Somehow, I don’t like the sound of this.”

“Nor I,” Tuan agreed. “What dost thou plan, my wife?”

“A royal summons.” Catharine’s chin tilted up. “There are witches, husband, who do hide about the hinterlands, on farms and in small villages, seeking to disguise their powers for fear their friends and kin may turn away from them. These have not come unto the Royal Coven through fear of us, or reluctance to leave their folk.”

“You’re going recruiting,” Rod said in a hollow tone.

“An thou dost call it so. I will!” Catharine tossed her head. “Bethink thee—would a summons from a mere herald bring a frightened lass to court? Nay. Yet the presence of her Queen would command her loyalty.” She glared at Tuan, daring him to contradict her.

“And where do you fit into this?” Rod leveled a doubtful gaze on his wife.

“Lady Gallowglass shall rest here, to train the Royal Witches in the breaking of the Evil Eye, whilst I do wander round and ‘bout the countryside, summoning shy witches to the court.” Catharine patted Gwen’s arm protectively, glaring at Rod.

Rod opened his mouth to argue (he couldn’t resist it, even if there wasn’t much to argue about; Catharine was just asking for it too plainly), but the door slammed open and a pale-faced guard stepped in and bowed. “Majesties!”

Catharine whirled, transferring her glare to the page. “What means this unseemly outburst, sirrah?”

“Word hath come through the witches, Majesties! Beast-men have landed at the mouth of the River Fleuve!”

“Call out the army!” Rod snapped to Tuan. He headed for the door. “I’ll get the Flying Legion out—or what’s left of ‘em!”

“Nay, milord!” the page cried. “They have landed under flag of truce!”

“What!” Rod spun around, staring.

The sentry nodded. “Aye, milord. There are but a handful of them, and they have surrendered themselves to the knights of My Lord of Bourbon. Even now, they ride toward Runnymede, guarding well their beastmen”—he hesitated, then turned a questioning glance to the king—“guests?”

“They are if they indeed landed under a flag of truce.” Tuan rose. “Send word to guard them well, for I doubt not there are many of our goodfolk who would gladly slay them. Lord Warlock, come!” And he strode toward the door.

“Where dost thou go?” Catharine demanded.

Tuan turned back at the door. “I ride to meet them, sweeting, for we must converse with them as soon as we may. An hour lost could means ten lives.”

He marched through the portal, and Rod hurried to catch up with him. He shut the door on Catharine and Gwen with a feeling of relief.

“Then did the High Warlock ride east to meet the beastmen who had come so strangely under a Flag of Truce, and His Majesty the King rode with him; for, though they were few in number, the beastmen were huge and fierce of mien, like unto Demons in their visages, who moved over the face of the Earth like ravening lions. They were tusked like boars, with their heads beneath their shoulders, and bore huge spiked clubs, stained with old blood; and ever and anon did they seek someone to slay. So, when they had come nigh the beastmen, His Majesty the King bade the High Warlock guard them closely with his magic, lest they forget their Truce or it proved to be vile Treachery. And the High Warlock wove a spell about them, standing tall beneath the sun, towering over the beastmen; and his eyes flashed like diamonds in dawnlight, and the aspect of his visage struck Terror into their hearts, so that they stood mute. Then he wove a Spell about them, a cage unseen, a Wall of Octroi, through which they might speak, but never strike. Then spake he unto the King, saying, ‘Lo, these monsters are now circumscribed, and naught can harm ye the whiles ye speak unto them.’ Then spake King Tuan, ‘What manner of men are ye, and wherefore have ye come unto this land of Gramarye?’ Then one among them did stand forth and say, in accents barbarous, that he was the highest Lord of their wild savage Realm, but the other Lords had risen up against their King and overthrown him, wherefore this small band had come beseeching King Tuan’s mercy. Then was King Tuan’s heart moved to Pity, and he spake and said, ‘Poor noble hearts! For I perceive that these treacherous villains who have laid waste my Kingdom have wasted ye likewise!’ And he brought them back with him to Gramarye; yet the High Warlock kept woven tight his net unseen about them…”

—Chillde’s Chronicles of the Reign of Tuan and Catharine

“Your name is what?” Rod stared, unbelieving.

“Yorick.” The beastman spread his hands. “Whatsa-matter? Ain’cha never heard the name before?”

“Well, yes, but never in real life—and as to fiction, you don’t exactly look English.” He glanced back over his shoulder at the soldiers who stood behind him with leveled pikes, then looked up at their companions who stood in a ring around the Neanderthals, pike-points centered on the beast-men. Rod considered telling them to lower their weapons, but decided it would be a little premature.

“A word from you, and they’d drop those spears like magic,” the beastman pointed out.

“Yeah, I know.” Rod grinned. “Ain’t it great?”

“On your side, maybe.” Yorick rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I keep getting the feeling I’ve been through this all before.”

“Nay, dost thou truly?” Tuan said, frowning. “I too have such a sense.”

The Neanderthal shook his head. “Really weird. Like I’ve lived through this already. Except…” He turned to Rod. “You ought to be about a foot taller, with piercing eyes and a wide, noble brow.”

Rod stiffened. “What do you mean, ought to?”

The Neanderthal held up a palm. “No offense. But you ought to have a haughty mien, too—whatever that is.”

“Indeed,” Tuan agreed. “And thou shouldst be hunchbacked, with fangs protruding from the corners of thy jaws, and a look of murdering idiocy in thine eye.”

Yorick reared, startled. Then his face darkened and his eyebrows pulled down to hide his eyes (he had a lot of eyebrow). He stepped forward, opening his mouth—and Rod jumped in quickly. “You, ah, both have this same, ah, sense of, ah, déjá vu?”

“Nice phrase.” Yorick nodded in approval. “I knew there was a word for it.”

Now it was Rod’s turn to stare. Then he said, “Uh—you’ve heard ‘déjá vu’ before?”

“Know I have, know I have.” Yorick bobbed his head, grinning. “Just couldn’t place it, that’s all.”

The handful of beastmen behind him growled and muttered to each other, throwing quick, wary glances at Rod and Tuan.

“How about you?” Rod turned to Tuan. “ ‘Déjá vu.’ Ever heard it before?”

“Never in my life,” Tuan said firmly. “Doth that signify?”

“ ‘Course it does.” Yorick grinned. “It means I’m not a native. But you knew that, didn’t you, High Warlock? I mean, it’s pretty plain that I didn’t evolve here.”

“Yeah, but I sorta thought you’d all been kidnapped.” Rod frowned. “But one of you was in on the kidnapping, weren’t you?”

Yorick winced. “Please! I prefer to think of it as helping place refugees.”

“Oh, really! I thought that kind of placement usually involved finding a willing host!”

“So, who was to host?” Yorick shrugged. “The land was just lying there, perfectly good; nobody was using it. All we had to do was kick out a few dinosaurs and move in.”

“You never thought we folk over here on Gramarye might have something to say about it, huh?”

“Why? I mean, you were over here, and we were over there, and there was all this ocean between us. You weren’t even supposed to know we were there!”

“Lord Warlock,” Tuan interrupted, “this news is of great interest, but somewhat confusing.”

“Yes, it is getting a little complicated,” Rod agreed. He turned back to Yorick. “What do you say we begin at the beginning?”

“Fine.” Yorick shrugged. “Where’s that?”

“Let’s take it from your own personal point of view. Where does your story begin?‘’

“Well, this lady picked me up by the feet, whacked me on the fanny, and said, ‘It’s a boy!’ And this man who was standing near…”

“No, no!” Rod took a deep breath. “That’s a little too far back. How about we start with your learning English. How’d you manage that?”

Yorick shrugged. “Somebody taught me. How else?”

“Dazzling insight,” Rod growled. “Why didn’t I think of that? Could we be a little more specific about your teacher? For one thing, the way you talk tells me he wasn’t from a medieval culture.”

Yorick frowned. “How’d you guess? I mean, I know they didn’t exactly send me to prep school, but…”

“Oh, really! I would’ve thought they’d have enrolled you in Groton first thing!”

Yorick shook his head firmly. “Couldn’t pass the entrance exam. We Neanderthals don’t handle symbols too well. No prefrontal lobes, you know.”

Rod stared.

Yorick frowned back at him, puzzled. Then his face cleared into a sickly grin. “Oh. I know. I’ll bet you’re wondering, if I can’t handle symbols, how come I can talk. Right?”

“Something of the sort did cross my mind. Of course, I do notice that your mates have something of a language of their own.”

“Their very own; you won’t find any other Neanderthal tribe that uses it.”

“I wasn’t really planning to look.”

Yorick ignored the interruption. “These refugees come from so many different nations that we had to work out a lingua franca. It’s richer than any of the parent languages, of course—but it’s still got a very limited vocabulary. No Neanderthal language gets very far past ‘Me hungry. That food—go kill.’ ”

“This, I can believe. So how were you able to learn English?”

“Same way a parrot does,” Yorick explained. “I memorize all the cues and the responses that follow them. For example, if you say, ‘Hello,’ that’s my cue to say ‘Hello’ back; and if you say, ‘How are you?’ that’s my cue to say, ‘Fine. How’re you?’ without even thinking about it.”

“That’s not exactly exclusive to Neanderthals,” Rod pointed out. “But the talking you’ve been doing here is a little more complicated.”

“Yeah, well, that comes from mental cues.” Yorick tapped his own skull. “The concept nudges me from inside, see, and that’s like a cue, and the words to express that concept jump out of memory in response to that cue.”

“But that’s pretty much what happens when we talk, too.”

“Yeah, but you know what the words mean when you say ‘em. Me, I’m just reciting. I don’t really understand what I’m saying.”

“Well, I know a lot of people who…”

“But they could, if they’d stop and think about it.”

“You don’t know these people,” Rod said with an astringent smile. “But I get your point. Believing it is another matter. You’re trying to tell me that you don’t understand the words you’re saying to me right now—even if you stop to think about each word separately.”

Yorick nodded. “Now you’re beginning to understand. Most of them are just noises. I have to take it on faith that it means what I want it to mean.”

“Sounds pretty risky.”

“Oh, not too much—I can understand the gist of it. But most of it’s just stimulus-response, like a seeing-eye parrot saying ‘Walk’ when he sees a green light.”

“This is a pretty complicated explanation you’ve just been feeding me,” Rod pointed out.

“Yeah, but it’s all memorized, like playing back a recording.” Yorick spread his hands. “I don’t really follow it myself.”

“But your native language…”

“Is a few thousand sound effects. Not even very musical, though—musical scales are basically prefrontal, too. Manipulating pitches is like manipulating numbers. I love-hearing music, though. To me, even ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ is a miracle.”

Tuan butted in, frowning. “Doth he say that he is a blinking idiot?”

“Hey, no, now!” Yorick held up a hand, shaking his head indignantly. “Don’t sell us short. We’re smart, you know—same size brain as you’ve got. We just can’t talk about it, that’s all—or add and subtract it either, for that matter. We can only communicate concrete things—you know—food, water, stone, fire, sex—things you can see and touch. It’s just abstractions that we can’t talk about; they require symbols. But the intelligence is there. We’re the ones who learned how to use fire—and how to chip flint into weapons. Not very good tools, maybe—but we made the big breakthrough.”

Rod nodded. “Yeah, Tuan, don’t underestimate that. We think we’re smart because we invented the nuclea—uh…” Rod remembered that he wasn’t supposed to let the Gramaryans know about advanced technology. It might disrupt their entire culture. He opted for their version of the weapon that endangered civilization. “The crossbow. But taming fire was just as hard to figure out.”

“Good man.” Yorick nodded approvingly. “You sapiens have been able to build such a complicated civilization because you had a good foundation under you before you even existed; you inherited it when you evolved. But we’re the ones who built the basement.”

“Neanderthals had the intelligence,” Rod explained. “They just couldn’t manipulate symbols—and there’s just so far you can go without ‘em.”

Yorick nodded. “Analytical reasoning just isn’t our strong suit. We’re great on hunches, though—and we’ve got great memories.”

“You’d have to, to remember all these standard responses that you don’t understand.”

Yorick nodded. “I can remember damn near anything that ever happened to me.”

“How about who taught you English?”

“Oh, sure! That’s…” Then Yorick gelled, staring. After a minute, he tried the sickly grin again. “I, uh, didn’t want to get to that, uh, quite so soon.”

“Yes, but we did.” Rod smiled sweetly. “Who did teach you?”

“Same guy who gave me my name,” Yorick said hopefully.

“So he had a little education—and definitely wasn’t from a medieval culture.”

Yorick frowned. “How’d you make so much out of just one fact?”

“I manipulated a symbol. What’s his name?”

“The Eagle,” Yorick sighed. “We call him that ‘cause he looks like one.”

“What? He’s got feathers?” Rod had a sudden vision of an avian alien, directing a secondhand conquest of a Terran planet.

“No, no! He’s human, all right. He might deny it—but he is. Just got a nose like a beak, always looks a little angry, doesn’t have much hair—you know. He taught us how to farm.”

“Yeah.” Rod frowned. “Neanderthals never got beyond a hunting-and-gathering culture, did you?”

“Not on our own, no. But this particular bunch of Neanderthals never would’ve gotten together on their own anyway. The Eagle gathered us up, one at a time, from all over Europe and Asia.”

Rod frowned. “Odd way to do it. Why didn’t he just take a tribe that was already together?”

“Because he didn’t want a tribe, milord. He wanted to save a bunch of innocent victims.”

“Victims?” Rod frowned. “Who was picking on you?”

“Everybody.” Yorick spread his arms. “The Flatfaces, for openers—like you, only bigger. They chipped flint into tools, same as we do—only they’re a lot better at it.”

“The Cro-Magnons,” Rod said slowly. “Are your people the last Neanderthals?”

“Oh, nowhere near! That was our problem, in fact—all those other Neanderthals. They’d’ve rather’d kill us than look at us.”

Suddenly, Rod could place Yorick—he was paranoid. “I thought it worked the other way around.”

“What—that we’d as soon kill them as look at them?”

“No—that you’d kill them when you looked at them.”

Yorick looked uncomfortable. “Well, yes, the Evil-Eye thing—that was the problem. I mean, you try to cover it up as best you can; you try to hide it—but sooner or later somebody’s gonna haul off and try and whack you with a club.”

“Oh, come on! It wasn’t inevitable, was it?”

“Haven’t lived with Neanderthals, have you?”

“Oh.” Rod cocked his head. “Not very civilized, were you?”

“We lived like cavemen,” Yorick confirmed.

“Oh. Right.” Rod glanced away, embarrassed. “Sorry—I forgot.”

“Great.” Yorick grinned. “That’s a compliment.”

“I suppose it is,” Rod said slowly. “But how come your quarrels had to turn violent?”

Yorick shrugged. “What can I tell you? No lawyers. Whatever the reason, we do tend to clobber—and you can’t help yourself then; you have to freeze him in his tracks.”

“Purely in self-defense, of course.”

“Oh yeah, purely! Most of us had sense enough not to hit back at someone who was frozen—and the ones who didn’t, couldn’t; it takes some real concentration to keep a man frozen. There just ain’t anything left over to hit with.”

“Well, maybe.” Rod had his doubts. “But why would he want to kill you, when you hadn’t hurt him?”

“That made it worse,” Yorick sighed. “I mean, if I put the freeze on you, you’re gonna feel bad enough…”

The clanking and rustling behind Rod told him that his soldiers had come to the ready. Beside him Tuan murmured, “ ‘Ware, beastman!”

Yorick plowed on, unmindful of them. “But if I don’t clobber you, you’re gonna read it as contempt, and hate me worse. Still, it wasn’t the person who got frozen who was the problem—it was the spectators.”

“What’d you do—sell tickets?”

Yorick’s mouth tightened with exasperation. “You know how hard it is to be alone in these small tribes?”

“Yeah… I suppose that would be a problem.”

“Problem, hell! It was murder! Who wants you around if you can do that to them? And there’s one way to make sure you won’t be around. No, we’d have to get out of the village on our own first. Usually had a lot of help…”

“It’s a wonder any of you survived.” Then something clicked in Rod’s mind. “But you would, wouldn’t you? If anyone got too close, you could freeze him.”

“Long enough to get away, yes. But what do you do when you’ve gotten away?”

“Survive.” Rod stared off into the sky, imagining what it would be like. “Kind of lonely…”

Yorick snorted. “Never tried to make it on your own in a wilderness, have you? Loneliness is the least of it. A rabbit a day keeps starvation away—but a sabertooth has the same notion about you. Not to mention dire wolves or cave bears.”

Rod nodded thoughtfully. “I can see why you’d want to form a new tribe.”

“With what?” Yorick scoffed. “We weren’t exactly over-populated, you know. It was a long way between tribes—and not very many Evil-Eye espers in any one of ‘em. You might have one in a hundred square miles—and do you know how long a hundred miles is, on foot in rough country?”

“About two weeks.” But Rod was really thinking about Yorick’s choice of word—he’d said “esper,” not “witch” or “monster.”

“This is where your ‘Eagle’ came in?”

Yorick nodded. “Just in time, too. Picked us up one by one and brought us to this nice little mountain valley he’d picked out. Nice V high up, plenty of rain, nice ‘n’ cool all year ‘round…”

“Very cool in winter—I should think.”

“You should, ‘cause it wasn’t. Pretty far south, I suppose—’cause it never got more than brisk. ‘Course, there wasn’t enough game for the whole four thousand of us.”

“Four thousand? A hundred miles or more apart? What’d he do—spend a lifetime finding you all?”

Yorick started to answer, then caught himself and said very carefully, “He knew how to travel fast.”

“Very fast, I should think—at least a mile a minute.” Rod had a vision of a ground-effect car trying to climb a forty-five-degree slope. “And how did he get you up to that mountain valley? Wings?”

“Something like that,” Yorick confessed. “And it wasn’t all that big a valley. He taught us how to use bows and arrows, and we had a whee of a time hunting—but the Eagle knew that could only last just so long, so he got us busy on planting. And, just about the time game was getting scarce, our first maize crop was getting ready to harvest.”

“Maize?” Rod gawked. “Where the hell’d he get that?”

“Oh, it wasn’t what you think of as maize,” Yorick said quickly. “Little bitty ears, only about four inches long.”

“In 50,000 B.C. maize was just a thickheaded kind of grass,” Rod grated, “like some parties I could mention. And it only grew in the New World. Neanderthals only grew in the Old.”

“Who says?” Yorick snorted. “Just because we weren’t obliging enough to go around leaving fossils doesn’t mean we weren’t there.”

“It doesn’t mean you were, either,” Rod said, tight-lipped, “and you’ve got a very neat way of not answering the question you’re asked.”

“Yeah, don’t I?” Yorick grinned. “It takes practice, let me tell you.”

“Do,” Rod invited. “Tell me more about this ‘Eagle’ of yours. Just where did he come from, anyway?”

“Heaven sent him in answer to our prayers,” Yorick said piously. “Only we didn’t just call him ‘Eagle’ anymore—we called him the ‘Maize King.’ That way, we could stay cooped up in our little mountain valley and not bother anybody.”

“A laudable ideal. What happened?”

“A bunch of Flatfaces bumped into us,” Yorick sighed. “Pure idiot chance. They came up to the mountains to find straight fir trees for shafts, and blundered into our valley. And, being Flatfaces, they couldn’t leave without trying a little looting and pillaging.”

“Neanderthals never do, of course.”

Yorick shook his head. “Why bother? But they just had to try it—and most of ‘em escaped, too. Which was worse—because they came back with a whole horde behind ‘em.”

Rod was still thinking about the “most.”

“You’re not going to try to tell me your people were peaceful!”

“Were,” Yorick agreed. “Definitely ‘were.’ I mean, with five hundred screaming Flatfaces charging down on us, even the most pacifistic suddenly saw a lot of advantages in self-defense. And the Eagle had taught us how to use bows, but the Flatfaces hadn’t figured out how to make them yet; so we mostly survived.”

Again, “most.”

“But the Eagle decided he hadn’t hidden you well enough?”

“Right.” Yorick bobbed his head. “Decided we couldn’t be safe anywhere on Earth, in fact—so he brought us here. Or to Anderland, anyway.” He jerked his head toward the west. “Over that way.”

“The mainland,” Rod translated. “Just—brought you.”

“Right.”

“How!?”

“I dunno.” The Neanderthal shrugged. “He just took us to this great big square thing and marched us through, and… here we were!” He grinned. “Just like that!”

“Just like that.” It was strange, Rod reflected, how drastically Yorick’s IQ could change when he wanted it to. From the sound of it, the Neanderthals had walked through a time machine. Dread gnawed at Rod’s belly—was this Eagle one of the futurian totalitarians who had staged the rebellion two years ago? Or one of the futurian anarchists, who had tried to stage a coup d’etat?

Or somebody else from the future, trying to horn in on Gramarye?

Why not? If there were two time-traveling organizations, why not a third? Or a fourth? Or a fifth? Just how many time machines were hidden away on this planet, anyway? Could Gramarye be that important?

But it could be, he admitted silently to himself. He’d learned from a renegade Futurian that Gramarye would eventually become a democracy, and would supply the telepaths that were vital to the survival of an interstellar democracy. That meant that the futurian anarchists and totalitarians were doomed to failure—unless they could subvert Gramarye into dictatorship, or anarchy. The planet was a nexus, a pivotal element in the history of humanity—and if it was the pivot, Rod was its bearing.

The Eagle was obviously a futurian—but from which side? Rod certainly wasn’t going to find out from Yorick. He could try, of course—but the Neanderthal was likely to turn into a clam. Rod decided not to press the point—let Yorick finish talking; just sit back and listen. That way, Rod would at least learn everything the Neanderthal was willing to say. First get the basic information; then dig for the details. Rod forced a grin and said, “At least you were safe from Flatfaces… I mean, Cro-Magnons.”

“We sure were. In fact, things were really hunky-dory, for a while. We chased out the dinosaurs, except for the ones who couldn’t run fast enough…”

“How’d you handle them?”

“With a knife and fork. Not bad, with enough seasoning. Especially if you grind ‘em up and sprinkle it on top of some cornbread, with some cheese sauce.”

“I, uh, think we can, uh, delay that tangent.” Rod swallowed hard against a queasy stomach. “But I’m sure the regimental cook would love to hear your recipes.” There was a gagging sound from the soldiers behind him, and Tuan swallowed heavily. Rod changed the subject. “After you took care of the wildlife, I assume you cleared the underbrush?”

“And the overbrush; made great little houses. Then we put in a crop and practiced fishing while we watched it grow.”

“Catch anything?”

“Just coelacanths, but they’re not half bad with a little…”

“How about the farming?” Rod said quickly.

“Couldn’t be better. Grew real fast, too, and real big; nice soil you’ve got here.”

“A regular Garden of Eden,” Rod said drily. “Who was the snake?”

“A bright-eyed boy, eager to make good.”

Rod had been getting bored, but he suddenly gained interest. “A boy?”

“Well, okay, so he was about forty. And the brightness in his eye was pure greed—but you couldn’t call him grown-up, really. Still couldn’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy. He decided he was a magician and a priest all rolled into one, and went around telling everybody they should worship the Elder God.”

Rod frowned. “Who is the ‘Elder God’?”

“ ‘What’ would be more like it. Nobody’s ever seen it, mind you…”

“That’s the way it is with most gods.”

“Really? From all the stories I hear, it’s just the other way around. But this shaman drew pictures of him for us; it was a huge bloated grotesque thing, with snakes for hair and little fires for eyes. Called him the Kobold.” Yorick shuddered. “Gives me the creeps, just to think about it.”

“Not the type to inspire confidence,” Rod agreed. “And he was hoping to win converts with this thing?”

Yorick nodded. “Didn’t get ‘em, though—at least, until his buddy Atylem got lost at sea.”

“His buddy got lost. This made people think his god was true?”

“No, it was because Atylem came back.”

“Oh—the Slain and Risen One.”

“Not really. Atylem had been out fishing, see, and he hadn’t come back. But finally he did, two weeks later—and he said he’d found a whole new land five days across the water. And it was just chock-full of Flatfaces!”

“Oh.” Rod lifted his head slowly, eyes losing focus. “So. Your people decided the Eagle was wrong, eh?”

“You’re quick, milord.”

“And that meant the Kobold was right.”

Yorick nodded. “Doesn’t really make sense, does it?”

Rod shrugged. “That’s the way people think. I mean, we’re talking about public opinion, not logic.”

“Sure.” Yorick spread his hands. “Put yourself in their place. Why would the Eagle bring you so close to your old enemies if he were really powerful and wise?”

“But they were all the way across the water,” Rod said reasonably, “a day’s journey.”

“That’s what we all said.” Yorick nodded toward his friends. “We were Eagle’s leadership cadre, you see. I was his right-hand man—and Gachol over there was his left-hand.”

“And the rest were the fingers?”

“You got it. Anyway, we all said the Flatfaces couldn’t bother us much—not with all that water to cross. But one day we looked up, and there was a Flatface floating in the sky.”

Rod stiffened, galvanized. Toby, on his spy mission! But hadn’t Yorick left something out? A little matter of a raid?

But the Neanderthal plowed on. “Well! The fat was in the fire, I can tell you! That shaman—Mughorck was his name—he was out and about the village before the Flatface was out of the sky, shouting about how Eagle had betrayed us and now the Flatfaces were gonna come over like a ton of devilfish and knock us all into the gizzard!”

“Didn’t anybody argue with him?”

“A few of us did try to point out that one Flatface does not an army make—nor a navy, for that matter. But, I mean, this Flatface was flying! Everybody was panicking. Some of them were so scared, they actually started digging themselves holes to crawl into! I mean, they were talking magic, and they were talking sorcery—and Eagle had made a big point of telling them that he wasn’t magical, and he wasn’t a sorcerer. Not that anybody believed him, of course, but…”

“But it laid the egg of doubt,” Rod inferred. “I should be so lucky!”

The apeman frowned. “How’s that again?”

“Uh, nothing,” Rod said hastily. “I take it the people began to believe him, at just the wrongest time?”

“Right. After all, there was Mughorck the shaman, running around telling people that he was magical, and was a sorcerer—and that his god, the Kobold, could make them strong enough to defeat the Flatfaces, and, well… people don’t think too clearly when they’re scared stiff. First thing you knew, everybody was yelling and shouting that the shaman was right, and the Kobold had to be a true god, after all.”

“Didn’t you begin to get the feeling that the climate was turning unhealthy?”

“Just about then, yeah. We”—Yorick jerked his head toward his companions—“began to feel the wind shifting. So we headed up to the High Cave, to tell the Eagle to fly.”

“I hope he listened to you.”

“Listened! He was ahead of us—as usual. He had our knapsacks all packed. While we were slinging our packs onto our backs, he slapped our bows into our hands. Then he told us to disappear into the jungle and build a raft.”

“Raft?” Rod frowned.

Yorick nodded. “We had some really thick trees, with really thick bark, and they floated really well. He told us not to worry about where we were going—just to paddle it out into the ocean and hang on. Oh, and he told us to bring plenty of food and lots of drinking water, ‘cause we might be on that raft for a long time.”

“Without a sail or oars, it must’ve been.” Rod noted silently that the Eagle, whether or not he was a wizard, obviously knew the odd bit about science—which he should have, if he’d been running a time machine. It seemed that he knew about the Beastland-Gramarye current. “Did he tell you where’d you’d land?”

“Yeah—the Land of the Flatfaces. But he told us not to worry about it, because these Flatfaces were good people, like him.” He clapped his hand over his mouth, eyes wide.

The slip, Rod decided, had been a little too obvious. “Didn’t you want me to know he was good?”

“Uh… yeah.” Yorick took his hand away, bobbing his head eagerly, grinning. “Yeah, sure. That he was good, that’s all.”

“Thought so. I mean, you couldn’t’ve been worried about letting me know he was a Flatface—that’s been pretty obvious all along.”

“Oh.” Yorick’s face fell. “You guys are good at manipulating symbols, aren’t you?”

But how could a Neanderthal realize that words were symbols? His education was showing again. “So you built your raft and paddled out into the ocean—and the current brought you here.”

“Yeah.” Yorick eyed the wall of spearpoints that hedged him in. “And I don’t mind telling you that, for a while there, we thought maybe the Eagle had been wrong about you.”

Rod shrugged. “Can you blame them? Some of these men are locals; and your boys hit a village not far from here a few days ago. They turned it into toothpicks and meatloaf—and some of my soldiers had relatives there.”

“They what?” Yorick stared at him in stark horror. Then he whirled to his own men, pouring out a furious cascade of gutturals and barks. His companions’ heads came up; they stared in horror. Then their faces darkened with anger. They answered Yorick in growls of rage. He turned back to Rod. “I don’t mean to sound callous, milord—but are you sure about this?”

Rod nodded, fighting to keep his face expressionless. Yorick and his men were either actually surprised and shocked by the news—or very good actors. “They hit a village up north, too. I was there; I saw it. Most of the villagers got away, but they carved up my soldiers like hams at a family reunion.”

Yorick’s face worked for a moment; then he turned his head and spat. “That skinny, catbait Mughorck! He’s got to be behind it somehow!”

“Didst thou, then, know nothing of this?” Tuan demanded.

Yorick shook his head. “No one in the village did.”

“There were five score of men at least aboard that long ship,” Tuan said. “Many in your village must have known of it.”

“If they did, they did a real good job of keeping the secret,” Yorick growled. Then he pursed his lips. “ ‘Course, nobody really would’ve noticed, with that epidemic going on.”

“Epidemic?” Rod perked up his ears. “What kind?”

“Oh, nothing really serious, you understand—but enough so that people had to take to their beds for a week or two with chills and fever. You’ll understand we were a little preoccupied.”

“I’ll understand they were goldbricking,” Rod snapped. “This fever didn’t happen to affect only single men, did it?”

Yorick gazed off into space. “Now that you mention…”

“Simple, but effective,” Rod said to Tuan. “If anybody came knocking and didn’t get any answer, they’d figure the guy was sleeping, or too sick to want to be bothered.” He turned back to Yorick. “Nobody thought to stop in to check and see if they wanted anything, I suppose?”

Yorick shrugged. “Thought, yes—but you don’t go into somebody’s house without being invited. We left food at the door every night, though—and it was always gone the next morning.”

“I’ll bet it was—and your shaman’s friends had extra rations.”

“You’ve got a point.” Yorick’s face was darkening. “But we never thought to check on the sick ones—we trusted each other. You don’t know how great it is, when you’ve been alone all your life, to suddenly have a whole bunch of people like yourself. And we wouldn’t stop in just to say hello when we were pretty sure the person was feeling rotten; nobody wanted to catch it.”

Rod nodded grimly. “Simple. Despicable, but simple.” He turned back to Tuan. “So we got hit with private enterprise—a bunch of buckoes out for their own good, without regard to how much harm it might do their neighbors.”

“So that louse Mughorck was sending out secret commando raids to get you Flatfaces angry,” Yorick growled. “No wonder you sent a spy.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Rod countered. His eyes narrowed. “Come to think of it, maybe you have.”

“Who, us?” Yorick stared, appalled. “Make sense, milord! This is like walking in on a hibernating cave bear and kicking him awake! Do you think we’d take a chance like this if we had any choice?”

“Yes,” Rod said slowly. “I don’t think you’re short on courage. But you wouldn’t be dumb enough to come walking in without a disguise, either—especially since at least one of you speaks good Terran English.”

Beside him, Tuan nodded heavily. “I think they are what they seem, Lord Warlock—good men who flee an evil one.”

“I’m afraid I’d have to say so too,” Rod sighed. “But speaking of good men—what happened to the Eagle?”

Yorick shrugged. “All he said was that he was going to hide.”

“And take his gadgets with him, I hope,” Rod said grimly. “The enemy has entirely too many time machines already.”

“ ‘Enemy’?” Tuan turned to him, frowning. “There is naught here but an upstart hungry for power, Lord Gallowglass.”

“Yeah, one who thinks Gramarye looks like a delicious dessert! If that’s not ‘the enemy,’ what is?”

“The futurian totalitarian,” Fess murmured through the earphone implanted in Rod’s mastoid, right behind his ear, “and the futurian anarchists.”

“But you know my devious mind,” Rod went on, ostensibly to Tuan. “I always have to wonder if there’s a villain behind the villain.”

Tuan smiled, almost fondly. “If this suspicion will aid thee to guard us as thou hast in the past, why, mayst thou ever see a bear behind each bush!”

“Well, not a bear—but I usually do see trouble bruin.”

“Optimists have more fun, milord,” Yorick reminded him.

“Yeah, because pessimists have made things safe for ‘em. And how do we make things safe when we never know where the enemy’s gonna strike next?”

Yorick shrugged. “Mughorck can only field a thousand men. Just put five hundred soldiers every place they might hit.”

“Every place?” Rod asked with a sardonic smile. “We’ve got three thousand miles of coastline, and we’d need those five hundred soldiers at least every ten miles. Besides, five hundred wouldn’t do it—not when the enemy can freeze ‘em in their tracks. We’d need at least a couple of thousand at each station.”

Yorick shrugged. “So, what’s the problem?”

Rod felt anger rise, then remembered that Neanderthals couldn’t manipulate symbols—including simple multiplication. “That’d be about six hundred thousand men, and we’ve…”

Yorick stopped him with a raised palm. “Uh… I have a little trouble with anything more than twenty. If it goes past my fingers and toes…”

“Just take my word for it; it’s a lot more men than we have available. Medieval technology doesn’t exactly encourage massive populations.”

“Oh.” Yorick seemed crestfallen. Then he brightened. “But you could post sentries.”

“Sure—and we did. But there’s still the problem of getting the army to where the raiders are in time to meet them.”

“It can’t be all that hard!”

Rod took a deep breath. “Look—we have to move at least as many men as your whole village.”

“What for—to fight just a lousy thousand?”

“I don’t think you realize just how much of an advantage that Evil Eye gives your men,” Rod said sourly.

“Not all that much. I mean, one man can only freeze one other man. Maybe two, if he pushes it—but not very well.”

Rod stared at him for a moment.

Then he said, “One boatload of your men held a small army of ours totally frozen.”

“What!?”

Rod nodded. “That’d be about, uh, two hands of my men for every one of yours.”

Yorick stared at his outspread fingers and shook his head. “Can’t be. No way. At all.”

Rod gazed at him, then shrugged his shoulders. “Apparently, somebody found a way to do it.” He remembered what Gwen had said about the lightning.

“Then figure out a way to undo it,” Yorick said promptly. “You Flatfaces are good at that kind of thing. We can show you how the Freeze—what’d you call it, the Evil Eye?—we can show you how it works.”

“That might help…”

“Sure it will! You gotta be able to figure out something from that!”

“Oh, I do, do I? How come?”

“Because,” Yorick said, grinning, “you can manipulate symbols.”

Rod opened his mouth to answer—but he couldn’t really think of anything, so he closed it again. That’s what set him apart from ordinary men. He just smiled weakly and said, “Manipulating symbols doesn’t always produce miracles, Yorick.”

“I’ll take a chance on it. You just tell us what we can do, and we’ll do it.”

“Might they not be of some value with our force?” Tuan inquired.

Rod turned to him, frowning. “Fighting side by side with our soldiers? They’d get chopped up in the first battle by our own men.”

“Not if we were to employ them to slip ahead of our main force to reconnoitre the enemy’s forces. Let us train them in the use of longbow, crossbow, and lance, and send them ahead to wreak havoc ere we arrive.”

Rod shook his head. “The nearest knight would charge them in a second. They’re not exactly inconspicuous, you know.” Suddenly his eyes widened; he grinned. “Oh!”

“Oh?” Tuan said warily.

“Yeah. If they stand out too much to do any good here—then we should use them someplace where they won’t!”

Tuan’s face slowly cleared into a beatific smile. “Aye, certes! Train them well, and send them back to Beastland. Then they can attack this Mughorck’s men unbeknownst!”

“Well, not quite. Just because they all look alike to us doesn’t mean they look alike to one another. But they could hide out in the bush and recruit some others from among the disaffected, and…”

“Aye! Build up a small army!”

“Well, I wasn’t thinking on that scale…”

“Couldn’t manage an army.” Yorick shook his head. “Fifty men, though, I might be able to get—but that’s fifty, tops.” He glanced back at his colleagues, then up at Rod. “That’s all our hands together—right?”

“Right.” Rod fought down a grin. “But put ‘em in the right place, at the right time…”

“Aye, fifty men who know the lay of the land.” Tuan’s eyes kindled. “ ‘Twould be well done indeed, Master Beastman.”

“ ‘Yorick’ is good enough,” the Neanderthal said with a careless wave of his hand. “Fifty, I think I could get. Yeah. We could hide out in the jungle on the other side of the cliffs from the village. no more than fifty, though. Most of the men have wives and children. That makes a man cautious.”

Rod nodded toward the other Neanderthals. “How about your guys?”

Yorick shook his head. “All bachelors. We wondered why the Eagle didn’t choose any of the married men for his cadre—and I don’t mind telling you, some of the ladies were pretty upset about it.”

“Don’t worry—it was nothing compared to how they would’ve squawked the first time their husbands had to work late.” Rod thought of Gwen with a gush of gratitude. “So they thought Eagle was a misogynist?”

“No; he turned handsprings anytime anyone married. And if one of the Inner Circle got spliced, he was even happier. Kicked ‘em into the Outer Circle, of course—but he always said the guy was being promoted, to husbandry.”

“Odd way to look at it.” Rod mulled it over. “Maybe accurate, though…”

“It is a job, all by itself,” Yorick agreed. “But the lack of dependents sure came in handy when we had to leave town in a hurry.”

“Think the Eagle had that in mind all along?”

“I’m sure of it—now. So, we’ll get bachelors for this guerrilla force, for you—but what do you want us to do with them?”

“Thou must needs assault them from their rear, whilst we storm in from the ocean,” Tuan answered. “Then, mayhap, we can bring thine Eagle from his aerie.”

“Or wherever he’s hiding.” Yorick nodded. “Sounds like a great idea.”

“Then, it’s a deal.” Rod held out a hand—carefully, it must be admitted.

Yorick frowned at Rod’s hand for a moment. Then he grinned. “Oh, yeah! Now I remember!” He grabbed Rod’s hand in both of his and pumped it enthusiastically. “Allies, huh?”

“Allies,” Rod confirmed. “By the way, ally…”

“Anything, milord,” Yorick said expansively.

“Viking gear.”

“Huh?”

“Viking gear,” Rod said again. He was glad to see the phrase had meant absolutely nothing to the Neanderthal. “Your shaman’s raiders came decked out in Viking gear—you know, horned helmets, round shields…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know what Vikings were,” Yorick said in annoyance. “Dragon ships too?”

Rod nodded. “Any idea why?”

“Well, nothing very deep—but I’ll bet it scared hell out of the locals.”

Rod stared at him for a second.

“Makes sense, if you’re trying to adapt terrorism to a medieval culture,” Yorick explained.

“Too much sense,” Rod agreed. “Come on, let’s get back to Runnymede—we’ve got to start a military academy for you.”

The train headed northward with a squad of spearmen leading; then Rod and Tuan; then the Neanderthals, à la carte—or à la wagon, anyway, commandeered from the nearest farmer (the Neanderthals had never even thought of riding horses; eating, maybe… ); and well-surrounded by spearmen and archers. The soldiers and the beastmen eyed each other warily through the whole trip.

“I hope your wife doesn’t mind surprise guests,” Rod cautioned Tuan.

“I am certain she will be as hospitable as she ever is,” Tuan replied.

“That’s what I was afraid of…”

“Come, Lord Warlock! Certes, thou’lt not deny my gentle wife’s goodness!”

“Or your good wife’s gentleness,” Rod echoed. “We’ll just have to hope these cavemen know what a bed and a chair are.”

“I doubt not we’ll have to teach them the uses of many articles within our castle,” Tuan sighed, “save, perhaps, their captain Yorick. He doth seem to have acquired a great deal of knowledge ere this.”

“Oh, yeah! He’s a regular wise guy! But I’m not so much worried about what he’s learned, as who he learned it from.”

Tuan glanced at him keenly. “Dost thou speak of the Eagle?”

“I dost,” Rod confirmed. “That’d you get out of our little cross-examination?‘’

“I was cross that we had so little opportunity to examine. The fellow hath a deliberate knack for turning any question to the answer he doth wish to give.”

“Nicely put,” Rod said judiciously. It was also unusually perceptive, for Tuan. “But I think I did figure out a few items he didn’t mean to tell us. What did you hear between his bursts?”

Tuan shrugged. “I did learn that the Eagle is a wizard.”

“Yeah, that was pretty obvious—only I’d say he was my kind of wizard. He does his magic by science, not by, uh, talent.”

Tuan frowned, concerned. “How much of this ‘science’ hath he taught to Yorick?”

“None. He couldn’t have; it depends on mathematics. The basic concepts, maybe—but that’s not enough to really do anything with. He has taught Yorick some history, though, or the big lug wouldn’t’ve known what the Vikings were. Which makes me nervous—what else did the Eagle teach Yorick, and the rest of his people, for that matter?”

Tuan waved away the issue. “I shall not concern myself with such matters, Lord Warlock. These beastmen, after all, cannot have sufficient intelligence to trouble us—not these five alone—when they cannot truly learn our language.”

“I… wouldn’t… quite… say… that…” Rod took a deep breath. “I will admit that not being able to encode and analyze does limit their ability to solve problems. But they’ve got as much gray matter between their ears as you and I do.”

Tuan turned to him, frowning. “Canst thou truly believe that they may be as intelligent as thyself or myself?”

“I truly can—though I have to admit, it’s probably a very strange sort of intelligence.” He glanced back over his shoulder at the group of Neanderthals. The spearmen surrounding them happened to lean toward the outside at that moment, affording Rod a glimpse of Yorick’s face. He turned back to the front. “Very strange.”

Gwen snuggled up to him afterward and murmured, “Thou hast not been away so long as that, my lord.”

“So now I need a reason?” Rod gave her an arch look.

“No more than thou ever hast,” she purred, burrowing her head into the hollow between his shoulder and his jaw.

Suddenly Rod stiffened. “Whazzat?”

“Hm?” Gwen lifted her head, listening for a moment. Then she smiled up at him. “ ‘Twas naught but a tree branch creaking without, my lord.”

“Oh.” Rod relaxed. “Thought it was the baby… You sure he’s snug in his crib?”

“Who may say, with an infant warlock?” Gwen sighed. “He may in truth be here—yet he might as easily be a thousand miles distant.” She was still for a moment, as though she were listening again; then she relaxed with a smile. “Nay, I hear his dream. He is in his crib indeed, my lord.”

“And he won’t float out, with that lid on it.” Rod smiled. “Who would ever have thought I’d have a lighter-than-air son?”

“Dost thou disclaim thine own relative?”

Rod rolled over. “That comment, my dear, deserves…” He jerked bolt-upright. “Feel that?”

“Nay,” she said petulantly, “though I wish to.”

“No, no! Not that! I meant that puff of wind.”

“Of wind?” Gwen frowned. “Aye, there was…” Then her eyes widened. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” Rod swung his legs over the side of the bed and pulled on his robe. “There’s a warlock within.” He raised his voice, calling, “Name yourself!”

For answer, there was a knock on the front of the cave.

“Of all the asinine hours of the night to have company calling,” Rod grumbled as he stamped down the narrow flight of stairs to the big main room.

A figure stood silhouetted against the night sky in the cave mouth, knocking.

“Wait a minute.” Rod frowned. “We don’t have a door. What’re you knocking on?”

“I know not,” the shadow answered, “yet ‘tis wood, and ‘tis near.”

“It’s a trunk,” Rod growled. “Toby?”

“Aye, Lord Warlock. How didst thou know of mine arrival?”

“When you teleported in you displaced a lot of air. I felt the breeze.” Rod came up to the young warlock with a scowl. “What’s so important that I have to be called out at this time of night? I just got back! Have our, ah, ‘guests’ escaped?”

“Nay, Lord Warlock. They are snug in their dunge… ah, guest room. Still, His Majesty summons thee.”

“What’s the matter? Did the cook leave the garlic out of the soup again? I keep telling him this isn’t vampire country!”

“Nay,” Toby said, his face solemn. “ ‘Tis the Queen. She is distraught.”

The guard saw Rod coming, and stepped through the door ahead of him. Rod stamped to a halt, chafing at the bit. He could hear the sentry murmuring; then the door swung open. Rod stepped through—and almost slammed into Tuan. The young King held him off with a palm, then lifted a finger to his lips. He nodded his head toward the interior of the room. Rod looked and saw Catharine seated in a chair by the hearth, firelight flickering on her face. Her eyes reflected the flames, but they were cold, in a face of granite. As he watched she bent forward, took a stick from the hearth, and broke it. “Swine, dog, and offal!” She spat. “All the land knows the Queen for a half-witch, and this motley half-monk hath bile to say…” She hurled the broken stick into the fire, and the flames filled her eyes as she swore, “May he choke on the cup of his own gall and die!”

Rod murmured to Tuan, “What’s got her so upset?”

“She rode out about the countryside, with heralds before her and guardsmen after, to summon all who might have any smallest touch of witch-power within them to come to the Royal Coven at Runnymede.”

Rod shrugged. “So she was recruiting. Why does that have her ready to eat sand and blow glass?”

Catharine looked up. “Who speaks?”

“ ‘Tis the Lord Warlock, my love.” Tuan stepped toward her. “I bethought me he’d find thine news of interest.”

“Indeed he should! Come hither, Lord Warlock! Thou wilt rejoice exceedingly in the news I have to tell, I doubt not!”

Rod could almost feel his skin wither under her sarcasm. He stepped forward with a scowl. “If it has anything to do with witches, I’m all ears. I take it your people didn’t exactly give you a warm reception?”

“I would have thought ‘twas the dead of winter!” Catharine snapped. “My heralds told me that, ere my coach came in view, they felt ’twas only the royal arms on their tabards saved them from stoning.”

“Not exactly encouraging—but not exactly new, either. Still, I had been hoping for a change in public attitude toward our espers… uh, witches.”

“So had I also, and so it might have happed—had there not been a voice raised against them.”

“Whose?” Rod’s voice held incipient murder.

“A holy man.” Catharine made the words an obscenity.

Rod’s mouth slowly opened, then snapped shut. He straightened, a touch of disgust in his face. “I should have known.”

“ ‘Tis a renegade friar,” said the Queen, toying with her ring, “or seems to be. I ha’ spoke with Milord Abbot, and he disclaims all knowledge of the recreant.”

“A self-appointed Jonah.” Rod smiled, with acid. “Lives in a cave in the hills on berries and bee-stings, calling himself a holy hermit and a prophet, and sanctifying his flesh by never sullying it with the touch of water.”

“He doth preach against me,” said Catharine, her hand tightening on the glass, “and therefore against the King also. For I gather the witches to me here in our castle, and therefore am I unworthy of my royal blood, and mine husband of his crown, though he be anointed sovereign of Gramarye; for mine own slight witchcraft, saith this preacher, is the work of the devil.”

Progress, Rod noted silently. Two years ago, she wouldn’t have admitted to her own telepathic powers, rudimentary though they were.

“And therefore,” said the Queen, “are we agents of Satan, Tuan and I, and unfit to rule. And, certes, all witches in our land must die.” She released her wineglass, striking the table with her fist.

Catharine let her head drop into her hands, massaging the temples with her fingertips. “Thus is all our work, thine, mine, and Tuan’s, our work of two years and more, brought low in a fortnight; and this not by armies, nor knights, but by one unclean, self-ordained preacher, whose words spread through the land faster than ever a herald might ride. It would seem there is no need of battles to unseat a King; rumor alone is enough.”

“I think,” Rod said slowly, “that this is one little virus that had better be quarantined and eliminated, but fast.”

“Fear not that,” Tuan growled. “Sir Maris hath even now dispatched men throughout the kingdom to listen for word of this monster. When we find him he will be in our dungeons ere the sun sets.”

The words sent a cold chill down Rod’s spine. Sure, when he said it, it sounded okay—but when it came from the King, it had the full iron ring of censorship in its worst form. For the best of reasons, of course—but it was still censorship.

That was about when he began to realize that the real danger here was Gramarye’s reaction to attack, not the raids themselves.

“I’m not so sure it’d do much good to lock up just one man,” he said slowly.

“ ‘Just one’?” Catharine looked up, her eyes wild. “What dost thou say?”

“There could be several.” Rod chose his words carefully. “When you have beastmen attacking from the outside, and you suddenly discover enemies inside…”

“Aye, I should have thought!” Tuan’s fist clenched. “They would be in league, would they not?”

“We call them ‘fifth columnists,’ where I come from.” Rod stared at the flames. “And now that you mention it, Tuan, the thought occurs to me…”

“The enemy behind the enemy again?” Tuan breathed.

Rod nodded. “Why couldn’t it be the same villain behind both enemies?”

“Of what dost thou speak?” Catharine demanded.

“The beastmen’s king be o’erthrown, sweet chuck.” Tuan stepped up behind her, clasping her shoulder. “Their king, whom they call the Eagle. He hath been ousted by one whom they name Mughorck the shaman. Mughorck is his name; and by ‘shaman,’ they mean some mixture of priest, physician, and wizard.”

“A priest again!” Catharine glared up at her husband. “Methinks there is too much of the religious in this.”

“They can be very powerful tools,” Rod said slowly.

“They can indeed. Yet, who wields these tools?”

“Nice question. And we may need the answer FESSter then we can get it.”

Behind his ear, Fess’s voice murmured, “Data cannot yet support an accurate inference.”

Well, Rod had to admit the truth of it; there wasn’t any real evidence of collusion. On the way back north, he’d pretty much decided that the shaman was probably backed by the futurian totalitarians. Might even be one himself; never ignore the wonders of plastic surgery. What he’d effected was, essentially, a palace revolt with popular support, bearing an uncomfortable resemblance to the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, back on old Terra.

But that was quite another breed from the witch-hunt the Gramaryan preachers were mounting, which wasn’t the kind of movement that lent itself well to any really effective central control. A single voice could start it, but it tended to get out of hand very quickly. A central power could direct its broad course but couldn’t determine the details. It was an anarchist’s technique, destroying the bonds of mutual trust that bound people together into a society—and it could lay the groundwork for a warlord.

Of course, if a warlord took over a whole nation, the distinction between warlord and dictator became rather blurry; but the anarchist’s technique was to keep several warlords fighting, and increase their number as much as possible.

“Dost thou truly believe,” Tuan asked, “that both are prongs of one single attack?”

Rod shook his head. “Can’t be sure; they could just as easily be two independent efforts, each trying to take advantage of the other. But for all practical purposes, we’re fighting two separate enemies, and have to split our forces.”

“Then,” said Tuan with decision, “the wisest course is to carry the fight to one enemy, and maintain a guard against the other.” He looked down at Catharine. “We must double the size of our army, at least, my love; for, some must stay here to guard whilst some go overseas to the beastmen’s domain.”

“Thou dost speak of war, mine husband—of war full and bloody.”

Tuan nodded gravely.

Catharine squeezed her eyes shut. “I had feared it would come to this pass. Eh, but I have seen men in battle ere now—and the sight did not please me.”

That, Rod decided, was another huge improvement.

Catharine looked up at Tuan again. “Is there no other way?”

He shook his head heavily. “There cannot be, sweet chuck. Therefore must we gather soldiers—and shipwrights.”

Tuan, Rod guessed, was about to invent a navy.

All Rod had said was, “Take me to the beastmen.” He hadn’t asked for a tour of the dungeons.

On second thought, maybe he had.

The sentry who guided him turned him over to a fat warder with a bunch of huge keys at his belt. Then the soldier turned to go. Rod reached out and caught his arm. “Hold on. The beastmen’re supposed to be our guests, not our captives. What’re they doing down here?”

The sentry’s face hardened. “I know not, Lord Warlock. ‘Tis as Sir Maris commanded.”

Rod frowned; that didn’t sound like the old knight. “Fetch me Sir Maris forthwith—uh, that is, give him my compliments and tell him I request his presence down here.” Then he turned to follow the warder while the sentry clattered off angrily.

Rod lost track of his whereabouts very quickly; the dungeon was a virtual maze. Probably intentionally…

Finally the warder stopped, jammed a one-pound key into a porthole lock in a door that was scarcely wider than he was. He turned it with both hands, and the key grated through a year or two’s worth of rust. Then the warder kicked the door open, revealing a twenty-foot-square chamber with a twelve-foot ceiling and five glowering beastmen who leaped to their feet, hands reaching for daggers that weren’t there any more. Then the flickering light of the warder’s torch showed them who their visitor was, and they relaxed—or at least Yorick did, and the others followed suit.

Rod took a breath to start talking, then had to shove his face back into the hall for a second one. Braced against aroma, he stepped through the doorway, looking around him, his nose wrinkling. “What in the name of Heaven do you call this?”

“A dungeon,” Yorick said brightly. “I thought that’s where we were.”

“This is an insult!”

Yorick nodded slowly. “Yeah… I’d say that was a good guess…”

Rod spun about, glaring at the warder. “These men are supposed to be our guests!‘’

“Men?” the warder snorted. Then he squelched his feelings under an occupational deadpan. “I but do as I am bid, Lord Warlock.”

“And what’s this?” Rod reached out a foot to nudge a wooden bowl next to Yorick’s foot.

“Gruel,” Yorick answered.

Rod felt his gorge rise. “What’s in it?”

“They didn’t bother telling us,” Yorick said. “But let me guess—an assortment of grains from the bottom of the bin. You know—the ones that fell out of the bag and spilled on the floor…”

“I hope you didn’t eat any of it!”

“Not really.” Yorick looked around. “To tell you the truth, it’s not what’s in it that bothers me. It’s how old it is.”

Rod scowled. “I thought that was a trick of the light.”

“No.” Yorick jerked his head up at a window set high in the wall—barred, of course. “We took it over into the sunshine while there still was some. It really is green. Made great bait, though.”

“Bait?” Rod looked up with foreboding.

“Yeah. We’ve been holding a rat-killing contest.” Yorick shrugged. “Not much else to do with the time.” He jerked his head toward a pile of foot-long corpses. “So far, Kroligh’s ahead, seven to four.”

Against his better judgment, Rod was about to ask who had the four when the warder announced, “Comes Sir Maris.”

The old knight stepped through the door, his head covered with the cowl of his black robe; but the front was open, showing chain mail and a broadsword. “Well met, lord Warlock.”

That’s debatable, Rod thought; but he had always respected and liked the old knight, so he only said, “As are you, Sir Maris.” He took a deep breath to hold down the anger that threatened to spill over now that it had a logical target. “Why are these men housed within a prison?”

Sir Maris blinked, surprised at the question. “Why—His Majesty bade me house them according to their rank and station!”

Rod let out a huge, gusty breath. “But, Sir Maris—they are not criminals! And they are not animals, either.”

“Assuredly they cannot be much more!”

“They can—vastly more!” Rod’s anger drowned under the need to make the old knight understand. “It’s the soul that matters, Sir Maris—not intelligence. Though they’ve enough of that, Lord knows. And their souls are every bit as human as ours. Just as immortal too, I expect.” Rod didn’t mention that there were two ways of interpreting that statement. “Their appearance may differ from ours, and they may wear only the skins of beasts; but they are free, valiant warriors—yeomen, if you will. And, within their own land and nation, the least of these is the equal of a knight.”

Sir Maris’s eyes widened, appalled; but Yorick had a complacent smile. “A little thick, maybe, milord—but gratifying. Yes, gratifying. We are refugees, though.”

Rod clasped Sir Maris’s shoulder. “It’ll take a while to understand, I know. For the time being, take my word for it: the King would be appalled if he knew where they were. Take them up to a tower chamber where they may climb up to the roof for air.”

“To walk the battlements, my Lord Warlock?” Sir Maris cried in outrage. “Why, they might signal the enemy!”

Rod closed his eyes. “The enemy has never come closer than the coast, Sir Maris—hundreds of miles away. And these men are not the enemy—they’ve fled from the enemy!” He glanced back at the Neanderthals. “And, come to that—please give them back their knives.”

“Arms!?” the old knight gasped. “Lord Warlock—hast thou thought what they might do with them?”

“Kill rats,” Rod snapped. “Which reminds me—give them rations fit for a fighting man. Bread, Sir Maris—and meat!”

The old knight sighed, capitulating. “It shall be as thou hast…”

“Dada!” Rod’s shoulder suddenly sagged under twenty pounds of baby. He reached up in a panic to catch Magnus’s arm, then remembered that, for Magnus at least, falling was scarcely a danger. He let out a sigh of relief, feeling his knees turn to jelly. “Don’t do that to me, Son!”

“Da’y,‘s’ory! Tell’s’ory!”

“A story? Uh—not just now, Son.” Rod lifted the baby from his shoulder and slung him in front of his stomach. “I’m a little busy.”

The beastmen stared, then began muttering apprehensively to one another.

“Uh—they’re saying that baby’s gotta be a witch,” Yorick advised gently.

“Huh?” Rod looked up, startled. “No, a warlock. That’s the male term, you know.”

Yorick stared at him for a beat, then nodded deliberately. “Right.” He turned and said something to the other Neanderthals. They looked up, their faces printed with fear of the supernatural. Yorick turned back to Rod. “They’re not what I’d call ‘reassured,’ milord.”

So, it started that early, Rod noted. He shrugged. “They’ll get used to it. It’s endemic around here.” He looked directly into Yorick’s eyes. “After all, we’re not exactly used to your instant freeze, either, are we? I mean, fair is fair.”

“Well, yeah, but the Evil Eye isn’t witch-power, it’s…” Yorick held up a finger, and ran out of words. He stared at Rod for a second, then nodded his head. “Right.” He turned back to the beastmen to try to explain it.

“No, no time for a story.” Rod bounced Magnus against his belt. “Go ask Mommy.”

“Mommy gone.” The baby glowered.

Rod froze.

Then he said, very quietly, “Oh.” And, “Is she?”

Magnus nodded. “Mommy gone away!”

“Really!” Rod took a deep breath. “And who’s taking care of you while she’s gone?”

“Elf.” The baby looked up, grinning. “Elf slow.”

Rod stared at him. Then he nodded slowly. “But elf catch up with Baby.”

The child’s smile faded.

“Baby naughty to run away from elf,” Rod pursued, punching the moral of the story.

Magnus hunkered down with a truculent look.

“Baby stay with the nice elf,” Rod advised, “or Daddy spank.” Rod tried not to look too severe.

Magnus sighed, took a deep breath, and squeezed his eyes shut.

“No, no! Don’t go back quite yet!” Rod squeezed the kid a little tighter.

Magnus opened his eyes in surprise.

“Let’s get back to Mommy for a second,” Rod said casually. “Where… did Mommy… go?”

“Dunno.” The baby shook his head, wide-eyed. “Mommy say…”

“There thou art, thou naughty babe!” A miniature whirl-wind burst through the door and up to Rod, where it screeched to a halt and resolved itself into the form of an eighteen-inch-high elf with a broad mischievous face and a Robin Hood costume. At the moment, he looked definitely chagrined. “Lord Warlock, my deepest apologies! He did escape me!”

“Yes, and I’ve scolded him for it.” Rod kept a stern eye on Magnus. The baby tried to look truculent again, but began to look a little tearful instead. “I think he’ll stay with you this time, Puck,” Rod went on, smiling. The baby saw, and tried a tentative smile himself. Rod tousled his hair, and he beamed. Rod eyed the elf sideways. “Did Gwen tell you where she was going?”

“Aye, Lord Warlock. When the Queen did return from her progress of the province, she did summon thy wife to tell her what ill luck she had had in seeking out witches to swell the ranks of the Royal Coven—and spoke unto her the why of it, too.”

“The hedge priest.” Rod nodded grimly. “I’ve heard about him. I take it she wasn’t happy?”

“Indeed she was not. But thy wife was never one to think of revenge.”

Remembering some of the things Rod had seen Gwen do, he shuddered. “Lucky for him.”

“It is indeed. Yet she did not think of what he had done; she thought only of other ways to gain more witches for the Royal Coven.”

“Oh?” Rod felt dread creeping up over the back of his skull. ‘’What ways?”

“Why—she did believe the surest way now would be to seek out the ancient witches and warlocks who have hidden away in the forests and mountains, for they care not what the people think or say.”

The dread gained territory. “Yeah, but—I thought they were supposed to be sour and bitter, as likely to hex you as help you.”

“They are indeed,” Puck acknowledged. “E’en so, if aught can bring them to give aid, ‘twould be thy sweet Gwendylon’s cajoling.”

“Yeah, provided they don’t hex her first.” Rod whirled to plop Magnus into Puck’s arms. Puck stared at the baby in surprise, but held him easily—even though Magnus was at least as big as he.

“Where’d she go?” Rod snapped. “Which witch?”

“Why, the most notorious,” Puck answered, surprised, “the one whose name all folk do know, who comes first to mind when mothers tell their babes witch tales…”

“The champion horror-hag, eh?” Sweat sprang out on Rod’s brow. “What’s her name? Quick!”

“Agatha, they call her—Angry Aggie. She doth dwell high up in the Crag Mountains in a cave, noisome, dark, and dank.”

“Take care of the kid!” Rod whirled toward the door.

Air boomed out and Toby was there, right in front of him. “Lord Warlock!”

The beastmen shrank back, muttering fearfully to one another. Yorick spoke soothingly to them—or it would’ve been soothingly if his voice hadn’t shaken.

“Not now, Toby!” Rod tried to step around him.

But the young warlock leaped in front of him again. “The beastmen, Lord Warlock! Their dragon ships approach the coast! And three approach where formerly there was but one!”

“Tell ‘em to wait!” Rod snapped, and he leaped out the door.

Being a robot, Fess could gallop much faster than a real horse when he wanted to; and right now Rod wanted every ounce of speed the black horse could give him. Fess had been reluctant to go faster than twenty miles per hour until Rod had had an oversized knight’s helmet outfitted with webbing, making it an acceptable crash helmet; but he still wouldn’t ride with the visor down.

“But don’t you dare try to get me to wear the rest of the armor!”

“I would not dream of it, Rod.” Which was true; being a machine, Fess did not dream. In fact, he didn’t even sleep. But he did do random correlations during his off hours, which served the same function. “However, I would appreciate it if you would strap yourself on.”

“Whoever heard of a saddle with a seat belt?” Rod griped; but he fastened it anyway. “You shouldn’t have to stop that fast, though. I mean, what do you have radar for?”

“Precisely.” Fess stepped up the pace to sixty miles per hour. “But I must caution you, Rod, that such breakneck speed on a horse will not diminish your reputation as a warlock.”

“We’ll worry about public relations later. Right now, we’ve got to get to Gwen before she runs into something fatal!”

“You have a singular lack of confidence in your wife, Rod.”

“What?” Rod’s double take was so violent, he almost knocked himself off the saddle. “I’d trust her with my life, Fess!”

“Yes, but not with hers. Do you really think she would have gone on this mission alone if she thought there were any real danger?”

“Of course I do! She’s not a coward!”

“No, but she has a baby and a husband who need her. She would no longer be willing to risk her life quite so recklessly.”

“Oh.” Rod frowned. “Well—maybe you’ve got a point.” Then his sense of urgency returned. “But she could be underestimating them, Fess! I mean, that sour old witch has been up in those hills for probably forty years, at least! Who knows what kind of deviltry she’s figured out by now?”

“Probably Gwendylon does. Your wife is a telepath, Rod.”

“So’s Agatha. And what Gwen can read, maybe Agatha can block! Come on, Fess! We’ve got to get there!”

Fess gave the static hiss that was a robot’s sigh, and stepped up the pace. Drowsy summer fields and tidy thatched cottages flew by.

“She’s up there?” Rod stared up at an almost sheer wall of rock towering into the sky above him, so close that it seemed to snare laggard clouds.

“So said the peasant we asked, Rod. And I think he was too terrified by our speed to have prevaricated.”

Rod shrugged. “No reason for him to lie, anyway. How do we get up there, Fess?”

“That will not be so difficult.” The robot eyed the uneven surfaces of the cliff face. “Remember, Rod—lean into the climb.” He set hoof on the beginning of a path Rod hadn’t even noticed before.

“If that peasant is watching, he’s going to go under for good now,” Rod sighed. “Who ever saw a horse climbing a mountain before?”

“Everything considered,” Fess said thoughtfully as he picked his way along a ledge a little narrower than his body, “I believe it would have been faster to have replaced my brain-case into the spaceship and flown here.”

“Maybe, but it would’ve been a lot harder to explain to the peasantry—and the lords, for that matter.” Rod eyed the sheer drop below, and felt his stomach sink. “Fess, I don’t suppose this body was built with a few antigravity plates in it?”

“Of course it was, Rod. Maxima designers consider all eventualities.” Fess was a little conceited about the planetoid where he’d been manufactured.

“Well, it’s a relief to know that, if we fall, we won’t hit too hard. But why don’t we just float up to the cave?”

“I thought you were concerned about our passage’s effect on observers.”

“A point,” Rod sighed. “Onward and upward, Rust Rider. Excelsior!”

Ahead and to their left, a cave-mouth yawned—but it was only six feet high. Rod eyed it and pronounced, “Not quite high enough for both of us.”

“I agree. Please dismount with caution, Rod—and be careful to stay against the rock wall.”

“Oh, don’t worry—I won’t stray.” Rod slid down between Fess and the cliff-face, trying to turn himself into a pancake. Then he eased past the great black horse and sidled along the ledge toward the black emptiness of the cave-mouth. He edged up to it, telling himself that a real witch couldn’t possibly look like the ones in the fairy tales; but all the cradle epics came flooding back into his mind as he oozed toward the dank darkness of the witch’s lair. The fact that Angry Aggie was mentioned by name in the Gramarye versions of most of those stories, in a featured, popular, but not entirely sympathetic role, did not exactly help to calm him. A comparison of the relative weights of logic and childhood conditioning in determining the mature human’s emotional reactions makes a fascinating study in theory; but firsthand observation of the practical aspects can be a trifle uncomfortable.

A wild cackle split the air. Rod froze; the cackle faded, slackened, and turned into sobbing. Rod frowned and edged closer to the cave… Gwen’s voice! He could hear her murmuring, soothing. Rod felt his body relax; in fact, he almost went limp. He hadn’t realized he’d been that worried. But if Gwen was doing the comforting, well… she couldn’t be in too much danger. Could she?

Not at the moment, at least. He straightened and took a firm step forward to stride into the cave—but the testy crackle of the old woman’s voice froze him in his tracks.

“Aye, I know, they are not all villains. They could not be, could they? Yet I would never guess it from my own life!”

Gwen, Rod decided, was amazing. She couldn’t have been here more than half an hour ahead of him, and already she had the old witch opened up and talking.

Gwen murmured an answer, but Rod couldn’t make it out. He frowned, edging closer to the cave—just in time to hear old Agatha say, “Rejoice, lass, that thou dost live in the new day which has dawned upon us—when the Queen protects those with witch-power, and a witch may find a warlock to wed her.”

“In that, I know I am fortunate, reverend dame,” Gwen answered.

Rod blushed. He actually blushed. This was going too far. He was eavesdropping for certain now. He straightened his shoulders and stepped into the cave. “Ahem!” It was very dim. He could scarcely make out anything—except two female figures seated in front of a fire. The older one’s head snapped up as she heard him. Her face was lit by the firelight below, which made it look unearthly enough; but even by itself, it was a hideous, bony face.

For a second, she stared at him. Then the face split into a gargoyle grin, with a huge cackle. “Eh, what have we here? Can we not even speak of men without their intruding upon us?”

Gwen looked up, startled. Then her face lit with delighted surprise. “My lord!” She leaped to her feet and came toward him.

The old woman’s face twisted into a sneer. She jerked her head toward Rod. “Is it thine?”

“It is.” Gwen caught Rod’s hands; her body swayed toward him for a moment, then away. Rod understood; public display of affection can be offensive, especially to those who don’t have any. But her eyes said she was flattered and very glad of his support.

Her lips, however, said only, “Why dost thou come, husband?”

“Just a little worried, dear. Though I see it was foolish of me.”

“Not so foolish as thou might have thought,” the witch grated. “Yet thou art lately come, to be of aid.” She frowned in thought. “Nay, but mayhap thou’rt timely come also; for, an thou hadst been with her when first she had appeared in my cave-mouth, I doubt not I would have sent thee both packing.”

Rod started to add, “If you could,” then thought better of it. “Uh. Yeah. Sorry to intrude.”

“Think naught of it,” Agatha said acidly, “no other man has.” She transferred her gaze to Gwen. “Thou’rt most excellent fortunate, to be sure.”

Gwen lowered her eyes, blushing.

“Yet, I doubt thou knowest the true extent of thy fortune.” The witch turned back to the fireplace, jammed a paddle into a huge cauldron, and stirred. “There was no tall young wizard for me, but a horde of plowboys from mountain villages, who came by ones and by fives to me for a moment’s pleasure, then come threescore all together, with their mothers and sisters and wives and their stern village clergy, to flog me and rack me and pierce me with hot needles, crying, ‘Vile witch, confess!’ till I could contain it no longer, till my hatred broke loose upon them, smiting them low and hurling them from out my cave!”

She broke off, gasping and shuddering. Alarmed, Gwen clasped Agatha’s hands in her own, and paled as their chill crept up to her spine. She had heard the tale of how, long years ago, the witch Agatha had flung the folk of five villages out of her cave, how many had broken their heads or their backs on the slopes below. No witch in Gramarye, in all the history of that eldritch island, had been possessed of such power. Most witches could lift only two, or perhaps three, at a time. And as for hurling them about with enough force to send them clear of a cave—why, that was flatly impossible.

Wasn’t it?

Therefore, if a witch had indeed performed such a feat, why, obviously she must have had a familiar, a helping spirit. These usually took the form of animals; but Agatha had kept no pets. Therefore—why, there still had to be a familiar, but it must have been invisible.

“ ‘Twas then,” panted the witch, “that I came to this cavern, where the ledge without was so narrow that only one man could enter at once, and so that in my wrath I might never injure more than a few. But those few…”

The scrawny shoulders slackened, the back bowed; the old witch slumped against the rough table. “Those few, aie! Those few…”

“They sought to burn thee,” Gwen whispered, tears in her eyes, “and ‘twas done in anger, anger withheld overlong, longer than any man might have contained it! They debased thee, they tortured thee!”

“Will that bring back dead men?” Agatha darted a whetted glance at Gwen.

Gwen stared at the ravaged face, fascinated. “Agatha…” She bit her lip, then rushed on. “Dost thou wish to make amends for the lives thou hast taken?”

“Thou dost speak nonsense!” The witch spat. “A life is beyond price; thou canst not make amends for the taking of it!”

“True,” Rod said thoughtfully, “but there is restitution.”

The whetted glance sliced into him, freezing almost as effectively as the Evil Eye.

Then, though, the gaze lightened as the witch slowly grinned. “Ah, then!” She threw her head back and cackled. It was a long laugh, and when it faded Agatha wiped her eyes, nodding. “Eh! I had pondered the why of thy coming; for none come to old Agatha lest they have a wish, a yearning that may not be answered by any other. And this is thine, is it not? That the folk of the land be in danger; they stand in need of old Agatha’s power! And they have sent thee to beg me the use of it!”

Her gaunt body shook with another spasm of cackling. She wheezed into a crooning calm, wiping her nose with a long bony finger. “Eh, eh! Child! Am I, a beldam of threescore years and more, to be cozened by the veriest, most innocent child? Eh!” And she was off again.

Rod frowned; this was getting out of hand. “I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘cozening.’ ”

The witch’s laughter chopped off. “Wouldst thou not?” she spat. “But thou wilt ask aid of me, aye! And wilt seek to give me no recompense, nay!” She transferred her gaze to Gwen. “And thou wilt do as he bids thee, wilt thou not?”

“Nay!” Gwen cried, affronted. “I have come of my own, to beg of thee…”

“Of thine own!” The witch glared. “Hast thou no stripes to thy back, no scars to thy breasts where their torturers have burned thee? Hast thou not known the pain of their envy and hate, that thou shouldst come, unforced, uncajoled, to beg help for them?”

“I have.” Gwen felt a strange calm descend over her. “Twice I was scourged, and thrice tortured, four times bound to a stake for the burning; and I must needs thank the Wee Folk, my good guardians, that I live now to speak to thee. Aye, I ha’ known the knotted whip of their fear; though never so deeply as thou. Yet…”

The old witch nodded, wondering. “Yet, you pity them.”

“Aye.” Gwen lowered her eyes, clasping her hands tight in her lap. “Indeed, I do pity them.” Her eyes leaped up to lock with Agatha’s. “For their fear is the barbed thong that lashes us, their fear of the great dark that stands behind such powers as ours, the dark of unknown, and the unguessable fate that we bring them. ‘Tis they who must grope for life and for good in midnightmare, they who never ha’ known the sound of love-thoughts, the joy of a moonlit flight. Ought we not, then, to pity them?”

Agatha nodded slowly. Her old eyes filmed over, staring off into a life now distant in time. “So I had thought once, in my girlhood…”

“Pity them, then,” said Gwen, sawing hard at the reins of her eagerness. “Pity them, and…”

“And forgive them?” Agatha snapped back to the present, shaking her head slowly, a bitter smile on her gash of a mouth. “In my heart, I might forgive them. The stripes and the blows, the burning needles, the chains and the flaming splinters under my nails—aye, even this might I forgive them…”

Her eyes glazed, gazing back down the years. “But the abuse of my body, my fair, slender girl’s body and my ripe-blossomed woman’s body, all the long years, my most tender flesh and the most intimate part of my heart, the tearing and rending of that heart, again and again, to feed them, their craving, insensible hunger… no!” Her voice was low and guttural, gurgling acid, a black-diamond drill. “No, nay! That, I may never forgive them! Their greed and their lust, their slavering hunger! Forever and ever they came, to come in and take me, and hurl me away; to come for my trembling flesh—then spurn me away, crying, ‘Whore!’ Again and again, by one and by five, knowing I would not, could not, turn them away; and therefore they came and they came… Nay! That, I may never forgive them!”

Gwen’s heart broke open and flowed; and it must have shown in her face, for Agatha transfixed her with a shimmering glare. “Pity them if you must,” she grated, “but never have pity for me!”

She held Gwen’s eyes for a moment, then turned back to the caldron, taking up her paddle again. “You will tell me that this was no fault of theirs,” she muttered, “any more than it was of mine, that their hunger forced them to me as truly as mine constrained me to welcome them.”

Her head lifted slowly, the eyes narrowing. “Or didst thou not know? Galen, the wizard of the Dark Tower. He it was who should have answered my hunger with his own. The greatest witch and the greatest warlock of the kingdom together, is it not fitting? But he alone of all men would never come to me, the swine! Oh, he will tell you he hath too much righteousness to father a child into a Hell-world like this; yet the truth of it is, he fears the blame of that child he might father. Coward! Churl! Swine!”

She dug at the caldron, spitting and cursing. “Hell-spawned, thrice misbegotten, bastard mockery of a man! Him”—she finished in a harsh whisper—“I hate most of all!”

The bony, gnarled old hands clutched the paddle so tight it seemed the wood must break.

Then she was clutching the slimy wooden paddle to her sunken dried breast. Her shoulders shook with dry sobs. “My child,” she murmured. “O my fair, unborn, sweet child!”

The sobs diminished and stilled. Then, slowly, the witch’s eyes came up again. “Or didst thou not know?” She smiled harshly, an eldritch gleam in her rheumy yellowed eye. “He it is who doth guard my portal, who doth protect me—my unborn child, Harold, my son, my familiar! So he was, and so he will ever be now—a soul come to me out of a tomorrow that once might have been.”

Gwen stared, thunderstruck. “Thy familiar…?”

“Aye.” The old witch’s nod was tight with irony. “My familiar and my son, my child who, because he once might have been, and should have been, bides with me now, though he never shall be born, shall never have flesh grown out of my own to cover his soul with. Harold, most powerful of wizards, son of old Galen and Agatha, of a union unrealized; for the Galen and Agatha who sired and bore him ha’ died in us long ago, and lie buried in the rack and mire of our youth.”

She turned back to the caldron, stirring slowly. “When first he came to me, long years ago, I could not understand.”

Frankly, Rod couldn’t either—although he was beginning to suspect hallucinations. He wondered if prolonged loneliness could have that effect in a grown person—developing an imaginary companion.

But if Agatha really believed in this “familiar,” maybe the hallucination could focus her powers so completely that it would dredge up every last ounce of her potential. That could account for the extraordinary strength of her psi powers…

Agatha lifted her head, gazing off into space.

“It seemed, lo, full strange to me, most wondrous strange; but I was lonely, and grateful. But now”—her breath wheezed like a dying organ—“now I know, now I understand.” She nodded bitterly. “ ‘Twas an unborn soul that had no other home, and never would have.”

Her head hung low, her whole body slumped with her grief.

After a long, long while, she lifted her head and sought out Gwen’s eyes. “You have a son, have you not?”

There was a trace of tenderness in Agatha’s smile at Gwen’s nod.

But the smile hardened, then faded; and the old witch shook her head. “The poor child,” she muttered.

“Poor child!” Gwen struggled to hide outrage. “In the name of Heaven, old Agatha, why?”

Agatha gave her a contemptuous glance over her shoulder. “Thou hast lived through witch-childhood, and thou hast need to ask?”

“No,” Gwen whispered, shaking her head; then, louder, “No! A new day has dawned, Agatha, a day of change! My son shall claim his rightful place in this kingdom, shall guard the people and have respect from them, as is his due!”

“Think thou so?” The old witch smiled bitterly.

“Aye, I believe it! The night has past now, Agatha, fear and ignorance have gone in this day of change. And never again shall the folk of the village pursue them in anger and fear and red hatred!”

The old witch smiled sourly and jerked her head toward the cave-mouth. “Hear thou that?”

Rod saw Gwen turn toward the cave-mouth, frowning. He cocked his ear and caught a low, distant rumble. He realized it had been there for some time, coming closer.

The heck with the cover. “Fess! What’s that noise?”

“ ‘Tis these amiable villager folk of thine,” said old Agatha with a sardonic smile, “the folk of twelve villages, gathered together behind a preacher corrupted by zeal, come to roust old Agatha from her cave and burn her to ashes, for once and for all.”

“Analysis confirmed,” Fess’s voice said behind Rod’s ear.

Rod leaped to the cave-mouth, grabbed a rocky projection, and leaned out to look down.

Halfway up the slope, a churning mass filled the stone ledges.

Rod whirled back to face the women. “She’s right—it’s a peasant mob. They’re carrying scythes and mattocks.”

A sudden gust blew the mob’s cry more loudly to them.

“Hear!” Agatha snorted, nodding toward the cave-mouth. Her mouth twisted with bitterness at the corners. “Hear them clamoring for my blood! Aye, when an unwashed, foaming madman drives them to it!”

She looked down at the swarming mob climbing ledge by ledge toward them. Steel winked in the sun.

Gwen felt the clammy touch of fear; but fear of what, she did not know. “Thou speakest almost as though thou hadst known this beforehand…”

“Oh, to be certain, I did.” The old witch smiled. “Has it not come often upon me before? It was bound to be coming again. The time alone I did not know; but what matter is that?”

The ledges narrowed as the horde surged higher. Gwen could make out individual faces now. “They come close, Agatha. What must we do against them?”

“Do?” The old witch raised shaggy eyebrows in surprise. “Why, nothing, child. I have too much of their blood on my hands already. I am tired, old, and sick of my life; why then should I fight them? Let them come here and burn me. This time, at least, I will not be guilty of the blood of those I have saved.”

Agatha turned away from the cave-mouth, gathering her shawl about her narrow old shoulders. “Let them come here and rend me; let them set up a stake here and burn me. Even though it come in the midst of great torture, death shall be sweet.”

Rod stared, appalled. “You’ve got to be joking!”

“Must I, then?” Agatha transfixed him with a glare. “Thou shalt behold the truth of it!” She hobbled over to a scarred chair and sat down. “Here I rest, and here I stay, come what will, and come who will. Let them pierce me, let them burn me! I shall not again be guilty of shedding human blood!”

“But we need you!” Rod cried. “A coven of witches scarcely out of childhood needs you! The whole land of Gramarye needs you!”

“Wherefore—the saving of lives? And to save their lives, I must needs end these?” She nodded toward the roaring at the cave-mouth. “I think not, Lord Warlock. The very sound of it echoes with evil. Who saves lives by taking lives must needs be doing devil’s work.”

“All right, so don’t kill them!” Rod cried, exasperated. “Just send them away.”

“And how shall we do that, pray? They are already halfway up the mountain. How am I to throw them down without slaying them?”

“Then, do not slay them.” Gwen dropped to her knees beside Agatha’s chair. “Let them come—but do not let them touch thee.”

Rod’s eyes glowed. “Of course! Fess’s outside on the ledge! He can keep them out!”

“Surely he is not!” Gwen looked up, horrified. “There must be an hundred of them, at the least! They will pick him up and throw him bodily off the cliff!”

Rod’s stomach sank as he realized she was right. Not that it would hurt Fess, of course—he remembered that antigravity plate in the robot’s belly. But it wouldn’t keep the peasants out, either.

“What is this ‘Fess’ thou dost speak of?” Agatha demanded.

“My, uh, horse,” Rod explained. “Not exactly… a horse. I mean, he looks like a horse, and he sounds like a horse, but…”

“If it doth appear to be an horse, and doth sound like to an horse, then it must needs be an horse,” Agatha said with asperity, “and I would not have it die. Bring it hither, within the cave. If it doth not impede them, they will not slay it.”

Loose rock clattered, and hooves echoed on stone as Fess walked into the cave. Behind Rod’s ear his voice murmured, “Simple discretion, Rod.”

“He’s got very good hearing,” Rod explained.

“And doth understand readily too, I wot,” Agatha said, giving Fess a jaundiced glance. Then her eye glittered and she looked up, fairly beaming. “Well-a-day! We are quite cozy, are we not? And wilt thou, then, accompany me to my grave?”

Gwen froze. Then her shoulders straightened, and her chin lifted. “If we must, we will.” She turned to Rod. “Shall we not, husband?”

Rod stared at her for a second. Even in the crisis, he couldn’t help noticing that he had been demoted from “my lord” to “husband.” Then his mouth twisted. “Not if I can help it.” He stepped over to the black horse and fumbled in a saddlebag. “Fess and I have a few gimmicks here…” He pulled out a small compact cylinder. “We’ll just put up a curtain of fire halfway back in the cave, between us and them. Oughta scare ‘em outa their buskins…”

“It will not hold them long!” Agatha began to tremble. “Yet, I see thou dost mean it. Fool! Idiot! Thou wilt but madden them further! They will break through thy flames; they will tear thee, they will rend thee!”

“I think not.” Gwen turned to face the cave-mouth. “I will respect thy wishes and not hurl them from the ledge; yet, I can fill the air with a rain of small stones. I doubt me not an that will afright them.”

“An thou dost afright them, they will flee! And in their flight, they will knock one another from the ledge, a thousand feet and more down to their deaths!” Agatha cried, agonized. “Nay, lass! Do not seek to guard me! Fly! Thou’rt young, and a-love! Thou hast a bairn and a husband! Thou hast many years left to thee, and they will be sweet, though many bands like to this come against thee!”

Gwen glanced longingly at her broomstick, then looked up at Rod. He met her gaze with a somber face.

“Fly, fly!” Agatha’s face twisted with contempt. “Thou canst not aid a sour old woman in the midst of her death throes, lass! Thy death here with me would serve me not at all! Indeed, it would deepen the guilt that my soul is steeped in!”

Rod dropped to one knee behind a large boulder and leveled his laser at the cave-mouth. Gwen nodded and stepped behind a rocky pillar. Pebbles began to stir on the floor of the cave.

“Nay!” Agatha screeched. “Thou must needs be away from this place, and right quickly!” Turning, she seized a broomstick and slammed it into Gwen’s hands; her feet lifted off the floor. Rod felt something pick him up and throw him toward Gwen. He shouted in anger and tried to swerve aside, but he landed on the broomstick anyway. It pushed up underneath him, then hurtled the two of them toward the cave-mouth—and slammed into an invisible wall that gave under them, slowed them, stopped them, then tossed them back toward old Agatha. They jarred into each other and tumbled to the floor.

“Will you make up your mind!” Rod clambered to his feet, rubbing his bruises. “Do you want us out, or don’t…” His voice trailed off as he saw the look on the old witch’s face. She stared past his shoulder toward the cave-mouth. Frowning, he turned to follow her gaze.

The air at the cave-mouth shimmered.

The old witch’s face darkened with anger. “Harold! Begone! Withdraw from the cave-mouth, and quickly; this lass must be away!”

The shimmering intensified like a heat haze.

A huge boulder just outside the cave-mouth stirred.

“Nay, Harold!” Agatha screeched. “Thou shalt not! There ha’ been too much bloodshed already!”

The boulder lifted slowly, clear of the ledge.

“Harold!” Agatha screamed, and fell silent.

For, instead of dropping down onto the toiling peasants below, the boulder lifted out and away, rising swiftly into the sky.

It was twenty feet away from the cave when a swarm of arrows spat out from the cliff above, struck the boulder, and rebounded, falling away into the valley below.

The old witch stood frozen a long moment, staring at the heat haze and the boulder arcing away into the forest.

“Harold,” she whispered, “arrows…”

She shook her head, coming back to herself. “Thou must not leave now.”

“He ha’ saved our lives.” said Gwen, round-eyed.

“Aye, that he hath; there be archers above us, awaiting the flight of a witch. Mayhap they thought I would fly; but I never have, I ha’ always stayed here and fought them. It would seem they know thou’rt with me. A yard from that ledge now, and thou wouldst most truly resemble two hedgehogs.”

Agatha turned away, dragging Gwen with her toward the back of the cave. “Thou, at least, must not die here! We shall brew witchcraft, thou and I, for a storm of magic such as hath never been witnessed in this land! Harold!” she called over her shoulder to the heat haze. “Guard the door!”

Rod started to follow, then clenched his fists, feeling useless.

Agatha hauled a small iron pot from the shelf and gasped as its weight plunged against her hands. She heaved, thrusting with her whole body to throw it up onto a small tripod that stood on the rough table. “I grow old,” she growled as she hooked the pot onto the tripod, “old and weak. Long years it ha’ been since I last stewed men’s fates in this.”

“Men’s fates…?” Gwen was at her elbow. “What dost thou, Agatha?”

“Why, a small cooking, child.” The old witch grinned. “Did I not say we would brew great magic here?”

She turned away and began pulling stone jars from the shelf. “Kindle me a fire, child. We shall live, lass, for we must; this land hath not yet given us dismissal.”

A spark fell from Gwen’s flint and steel into the tinder. Gwen breathed on the resulting coal till small flames danced in the kindling. As she fed it larger and larger wood scraps, she ventured, “Thou art strangely joyous for a witch who ha’ been deprived of that which she wanted, old Agatha.”

The old witch cackled and rubbed her thin, bony hands. “It is the joy of a craftsman, child, that doth his work well, and sees a great task before him, a greater task than ever his trade yet ha’ brought him. I shall live, and more joyous and hearty than ever before; for there is great need of old Agatha, and great deeds a-doing. The undoing of this war thou hast told me of will be old Agatha’s greatest work.”

She took a measure from the shelf and began ladling powders from the various jars into the pot, then took a small paddle and began stirring the brew.

Gwen flinched at the stench that arose from the heating-pot. “What is this hideous porridge, Agatha? I have never known a witch to use such a manner of bringing magic, save in child’s tales.”

Agatha paused in her stirring to fasten a pensive eye on Gwen. “Thou art yet young, child, and know only half-truths of witchery.”

She turned back to stirring the pot. “It is true that our powers be of the mind, and only of the mind. Yet true it also is that thou hast never used but a small part of thy power, child. Thou knowest not the breadth and the width of it, the color and the warp and the woof of it. There be deep, unseen parts of thy soul thou hast never uncovered; and this deep power thou canst not call up at will. It lies too far buried, beyond thy call. Thou must needs trick it into coming out, direct it by ruse and gin, not by will.” She peered into the smoking, bubbling pot. “And this thou must do with a bubbling brew compounded of things which stand for the powers thou doth wish to evoke from thy heart of hearts and the breadth of thy brain. Hummingbird’s feathers, for strength, speed, and flight; bees, for their stings; poppyseed, for the dulling of wits; lampblack, for the stealth and silence of night; woodbine, to bind it to the stone of the cliffs; hearth-ash, for the wish to return to the home.”

She lifted the paddle; the mess flowed slowly down from it into the pot. “Not quite thick enow,” the old witch muttered, and went back to stirring. “Put the jars back on the shelves, child; a tidy kitchen makes a good brew.”

Gwen picked up a few jars, but as she did she glanced toward the cave-mouth. The clamor was much louder. “Old Agatha, they come!”

The first of the villagers stormed into the cave, brandishing a scythe.

“Their clamor shall but help the brew’s flavor,” said the old witch with a delightedly wicked grin. She bent over the pot, and crooned.

The peasant slammed into the invisible haze barrier, and rebounded, knocking over the next two behind him. The fourth and fifth stumbled over their fallen comrades, adding nicely to the pile. The stack heaved as the ones on the bottom tried to struggle to their feet. The top layers shrieked, leaped up, and fled smack-dab into the arms of their lately-come reinforcements. The resulting frantic struggle was somewhat energetic, and the ledge was only wide enough for one man at a time; the peasants seesawed back and forth, teetering perilously close to the edge, flailing their arms for balance and squalling in terror.

“ ‘Tis a blessing the ledge is so narrow, they cannot come against me more than one at a time.” Agatha wrapped a rag around the handle of the pot and hefted it off the hook, strands of muscle straining along her arms. “Quickly, child,” she grated, “the tripod! My son Harold is summat more than a man, but he cannot hold them long, not so many! Quickly! Quickly! We must prepare to be aiding him!”

She hobbled into the entryway. Gwen caught up the tripod and ran after her.

As she set down the tripod and Agatha hooked the pot on it again, two sticks of wood thudded against the ledge, sticking two feet up above the stone.

“Scaling ladders!” gasped Agatha. “This was well-planned, in truth! Quickly, child! Fetch the bellows!”

Gwen ran for the bellows, wishing she knew what old Agatha was planning.

As she returned—handing the bellows to Agatha where she crouched over the pot in the middle of the entryway—a tall, bearded figure appeared at the top of the ladder, clambering onto the ledge. The man leveled his dark, polished staff at the cave-mouth. The staff gave a muted clank as he set its butt against the stone.

“An iron core!” Agatha pointed the bellows over the pot at the preacher and began pumping them furiously. “That staff must not touch my son!”

But the forward end of the staff had already touched the heat haze. A spark exploded at the top of the staff. Skolax howled victory and swung his staff to beckon his forces. The peasants shouted and surged into the cave.

“Bastard!” Agatha screamed. “Vile Hell-fiends! Murrain upon thee! Thou hast slain my son!”

She glared furiously, pumping the bellows like a maniac. The steam from the pot shot forward toward the mob.

They stopped dead. A deathly pallor came over their faces. Little red dots began appearing on their skins. They screamed, whirling about and flailing at their comrades, swatting at something unseen that darted and stung them.

For a moment, the crowd milled and boiled in two conflicting streams at the cave-mouth; then the back ranks screamed and gave way as the phantom stings struck them too, and the mob fled back along the ledge, away from the cave.

Only the preacher remained, struggling against the flock of phantom bees, his face swelling red with ghost-stings.

The old witch threw back her head and cackled shrill and long, still pumping the bellows. “We have them, child! We have them now!” Then she bent grimly over the pot, pumping harder, and spat, “Now shall they pay for his death! Now shall my Eumenides hie them home!”

With a titanic effort, Skolax threw himself forward, his staff whirling up over the witch’s head. Gwen leaped forward to shield her; but the staff jumped backward, jerking the preacher off his feet and throwing him hard on the stone floor. Agatha’s triumphant cry cut through his agonized bellow: “He lives! My son Harold lives!”

But the preacher lifted his staff as though it were a huge and heavy weight, his face swelling with ghost-stings and rage. “Hearken to me! Hearken to Skolax! Tear them! Rend them! They cannot stand against us! Break them—now!” And he lurched toward his victims with a roar.

Rod leaped forward, grabbing the staff, yanking it out of the preacher’s hands with a violent heave. But the whole crowd surged in after him, screaming and shouting. Fingers clawed at the witches; scythes swung…

Then light, blinding light, a sunburst, a nova—silent light, everywhere.

And silence, deep and sudden, and falling, falling, through blackness, total and unrelieved, all about them, and cold that drilled to their bones…