The Crusading Wizard

CHAPTER 6

From the ramparts, Caliph Suleiman could see nothing but tents stretching away from northeast to southeast, all the way to the horizon and, said his spies, well beyond it. The clangor of smiths at work rang over the plain, echoed by the banging of carpenters’ hammers.

“I can see a catapult taking shape,” reported a sharp-eyed sentry.

“Yonder is a rude wheeled tower.” Another sentry pointed toward the east, where a rectangular shape was rising.

“Rude, but effective,” Suleiman said grimly. “In a day, perhaps two, they will strike.”

“We cannot hold against them,” his general said, watching him with dread. He feared to say unwelcome words, but pressed on from the need to have them said. “Their catapults will break our gates, they will pour over our walls from their siege towers. Our soldiers will slay them by the dozens, but will themselves be slain, and in the end there will be none to hinder these barbarians from running loose in the city.”

“There is no help for it,” the Caliph said darkly. “We cannot wait, for the armies from North Africa and Ibile may come too late. We must retreat.”

A barely heard sigh of relief breathed all about him.

“They will slay us all if they see us sally forth,” the general pointed out.

The Caliph nodded. “But they have only a few scouts watching the western walls. Let our footmen and archers build ladders and go pouring down from the ramparts even as our cavalry goes charging out the western gate.”

“Well thought, my lord.” The general nodded slowly. “By the time their scouts can bring their main army, perhaps we will have found a proper ground for a battle.”

“High ground, where our archers can slay them by the hundred,” Suleiman agreed, “and in their eagerness to catch us, perhaps they will neglect the city.”

“When they have finished with us?” the general asked dubiously.

Suleiman’s grin flashed in the sunlight. “Then we must make sure they do not finish with us. Give the orders for the retreat. We shall quit this city when the left hand of dawn is in the sky.”

As the sun rose, Matt drowned his campfire, shouldered his pack, mounted his horse, and set off down the southern road.

Balkis poked her head out of the saddlebag and complained, “You choose a horribly early hour to be on your way!”

“Serves you right for staying out all night,” Matt retorted. “How was the hunting?”

“Very poor,” the cat said, disgusted. “There are many owls by this stream, and they took all the mice. I caught only three voles.”

“How were they?”

“Not as good as those of Allustria.”

“Must be the soil,” Matt said judiciously. “Merovence grows great grapes, but that doesn’t say it’ll do as well for minor mammals.”

“They were tough and stringy.”

Matt nodded. “Had to burrow through. Too much clay, no doubt. Made ‘em muscular.”

“Scarcely worth the effort,” Balkis agreed. “You could at least let me sleep.”

“Hey, what’re you griping about?” Matt countered. “You’ve got a nice comfortable saddlebag all to yourself-I moved the rest of the cargo into the other one. Just settle down and nap.”

“If l can, on a swaying beast,” Balkis griped, but the small head disappeared. The saddlebag rippled for a bit, then stilled.

Matt shook his head. “Just had to have the last word.”

“I did not,” snapped a meowIy voice.

Matt grinned and had sense enough not to answer.

It was a pleasant ride, in the early morning—down a winding road by a stream, leaves stirring in the dawn breeze. Even as the day grew hotter and the road swung away from the water, the landscape was pleasant to watch—hedges dividing fields into a patchwork of different shades of green, lavender, or rose where a fallow field had sprouted flowers. Yes, it was a very pleasant ride until the blunt object struck the back of Matt’s head. He had only time for a feeling of outrage before the darkness closed in.

The eastern sky washed pale with the predawn twilight, and in its silence hundreds of scaling ladders thrust over the western walls of Baghdad, lowered to the ground, and filled with a steady stream of soldiers. They climbed down as quickly as they could, none speaking, all moving as quietly as possible. In similar noiselessness, the doors of the great western gate swung open, and the cavalry rode out at a trot that turned quickly to a canter.

Their silence was laudable, but useless—Turkish sentries in the hills saw, stared in disbelief, then sent horsemen galloping to the khan with the news. Still, it took time for the couriers to arrive and longer for the warriors to leave their tents, strap on swords, sling their bows, and mount their horses. By the time they came shrilling and galloping over the plain, the last of the Arabs had cleared the wall.

The barbarians rode all out, trying to catch up—but the khan, with a cooler head than Suleiman had hoped, held back half his force. A hundred riders charged through the open western gate into the empty city. Not long after, the eastern gate swung open and barbarians poured into Baghdad.

“There!” The Caliph pointed to rising ground between two rivers. “Give the command for all to ride to that plateau!”

“So slight as that?” the general cried, aghast. “They shall thunder upon us without the slightest slackening of speed, lord! There shall be no chance for our archers to bring them down!”

“There shall, for between us and that table land lie the marshes! Around and up, Emir, quickly!”

The general gave the order, and trumpets blared. The vanguard turned, fording the rivers on each side and turning again to ride up onto the high ground.

As the rear guard rode up, the general looked about him with pleased surprise. “That neck of land is so narrow, only half a dozen barbarians can ride up abreast! How did you know of this, lord?”

“I have heard of this confluence often,” the Caliph replied. “One of my ancestors was balked by a small army here; they held off his horsemen for days, until he tired of assaulting them and rode past to capture Damascus.” He turned to look eastward toward the advancing horde, hooves beginning to be heard as thunder. “We have a river to each side of us and marshland before—but since the ground slopes down gently to those marshes, the barbarians may try to ride directly toward us.”

“They shall succeed!”

“I think not,” the Caliph said, and waited.

The thunder grew louder; it filled the world, and the ground began to tremble under their feet. The Arabs’ horses began to grow restive, tossing their heads and fighting the bridles, but their riders held them steady. Then the horde burst into the marshes, waving their swords and shrilling their war-cries.

Their ponies stumbled in the mud, fell to their knees, and could not rise again.

Riders leaped off, cursing, and tried to help their mounts up. Many struggled back to their feet, but some had ridden into quagmires and, thrash though they might, only sank deeper. Other barbarians threw ropes to the riders and pulled them free. Here and there they even saved a horse or two—but more barbarians, not seeing the fate of the first, galloped into the marshes and bogged down. In minutes the whole breadth of the wetland was filled with barbarians struggling to free their horses from the agglutinative mud.

“Bid the archers loose,” the Caliph said.

The general signaled and the trumpets sang. Archers lifted bows, strings thrummed, and hundreds of barbarians fell with arrows in thigh or chest. Horses, too, died with barbs in them, which was a quicker death than the mud gave.

“Loose again!” the general cried. “Again, and again!”

The air filled with arrows. The barbarians returned the fire, but their bows were made for power, not range; and their arrows fell far short. Immune, the Arabs stood high above and rained arrows upon them. At last the barbarians turned and scrambled for the odd bits of dry land, trying to make their way out of the marshes.

Their khan must have seen their plight, for he sent a diversion to draw the Arabs’ arrows—thousands of horsemen scouting the rivers to find fords, then splashing across to charge the rising ground. Their horses were smaller, though, and had a more difficult time wading, so the rout was well under way before the first horsemen came charging up the slope.

The general bawled orders. Half the archers turned, ran to the rear, and loosed their shafts at the galloping ponies. The front rank went down. The second hurdled them and fell upon the Arab infantrymen with screams of rage—but they could only ride six abreast, and the footmen set their spears for horses to run upon, then struck down the riders with their swords. Here and there a barbarian proved skilled enough to exchange three or four strokes with an Arab, but Damascus steel bit through the softer blades of the barbarians, and they died by scores. Arabs fell, too, but only one for every fifty barbarians. Fearless, the barbarians rode and kept riding, trying to drown the Arabs under sheer weight of bodies, but they succeeded only in building a wall of their dead that quickly rose high enough that even with their skill, they could not hurdle it. The Arabs drew back, wary and watchful, but the wall of flesh held. As the sun reached noon, the barbarians retreated.

They pitched camp, though, round about the low plateau, and settled down with an air that said they meant to stay. “We are besieged, my lord,” the general said, “and the dead will quickly bring a pestilence.”

“Not to us, though,” the Caliph said. “Bid our men roll their dead back down to them. As to the fallen horses, butcher them for stew and boil their bones for soup.”

The general nodded slowly. “If we keep the stewpots boiling, we can last for weeks—and one of the men has found a spring at the top of this rising land.”

“I had hoped for that, with so much water about it.” The Caliph tried not to show the relief he felt. “We can wait, then, for armies to relieve us.”

There was a shout of delight, and Arabs began to sing a victory song. “They celebrate too quickly,” the general said, frowning. “Wars are not won by retreats.”

“This one may be,” Suleiman said. “They have proved for themselves that the barbarians can be beaten, for all their numbers. More importantly, the barbarians have learned that they can lose, that their ancient god cannot always give them victory. They will charge with less assurance now.”

The general lifted his head in understanding. “You do not think their khan will wait for Tafas bin Daoud and the other emirs.”

“I think that, as soon as his spies tell him of an army advancing, he will raise the siege and ride for Jerusalem,” the Caliph said, “but Tafas has his own spies, and will invest the Holy City before the khan comes.”

“Then we shall attack from the rear, and catch him between two forces!” The general grinned. “Well planned, my lord! We may yet win this war!”

“We may,” the Caliph said, frowning, “but we will need many more stratagems than these to counter so many men. Bid my wizards come to me, Emir—and bid the muezzin call the faithful to prayer. We have much for which to thank Allah.”

“Do not let him talk,” cautioned a voice with an accent that sounded vaguely Pakistani. “He is a wizard, after all.”

“Doesn’t look like one,” grunted another in common old Merovencian—very common indeed. “More like a mercenary soldier looking for a job.”

“He is not what he seems!”

“How would a wizard not see us jumping out of that hedgerow nor hear us running toward him?”

“Because I know a little magic myself, and used a spell to hide our approach!” said the Asian voice. “Bind that gag tightly, or I shall try another verse I know and see if it really will turn a man to a toad!”

Quickly then, a smelly rag tightened around Matt’s mouth, so smelly that it brought him out of grogginess into full consciousness—and made him aware of the worst headache he’d had since the last time someone had sneaked up behind him and sapped him on the head.

“Sap” was right …

Matt scolded himself for not paying more attention to his surroundings. The fact that his assailant had silenced his approach with magic didn’t help much. Made it worse, really—he should have been aware of hostile magic swirling around. The need for vigilance had never occurred to him, though, in the middle of a peaceful countryside in his own land. In the woods, you expected bandits, but not in open fields.

Which meant this duo had been sent after him in particular. Matt took a closer look at the foreigner, but he didn’t look all that Asian—black haired and olive skinned, maybe, but so were a third of the men in Merovence, especially in the south, near the Middle Sea. Still, by his accent, he was an outlander, and that raised the little question of how the two had known where to find him. But headache stabbed again, and Matt had to shelve the item for future consideration. To make it worse, whatever kind of surface he was on seemed to lift up, then sink down, and his stomach rebelled. Frantically, he tried to stifle the nausea—with a gag on, the law of reverse gravity had even less to recommend it than usual: “What goes down, must come up.” Matt had no wish to choke on his own vomit.

He cracked an eye, peering through his lashes, and was amazed to see planking in front of his face. The surface tilted under him, rolling him onto his back; looking up, he saw a low rail and a single mast. Then the surface tilted back, he rolled onto his side again, but that had been enough—he was on a boat, and the rocking and rolling was due to waves.

He wondered where he was going. One way or another he was certainly going to find out—his verse-chanting wizardry doubly disabled by headache and gag, there wasn’t much he could do to change things. When the pain stopped, it might be another matter—he had found out by experience that he could work a few spells without speech, if he concentrated hard enough. But even in misery, curiosity poked through—he had been most definitely kidnapped, and began to wonder why.

“You have slept long enough,” a meowing voice said sarcastically.

Matt tilted his head enough to see Balkis, brown fur shading into the shadow behind an upright, lying with paws tucked under and eyeing him with disgust. Matt shrugged apologetically.

“If you are so mighty a wizard,” the little cat said, “free yourself from your bonds! Whisk us out of here!”

Matt considered for a moment, then shook his head.

“No?” Balkis demanded, scandalized, “For Heaven’s sake, why not?”

Matt raised his right hand, found the left came with it, bound, and pointed with both toward the sun.

Balkis followed his gaze, frowning—as much as a cat can.

“The sun? What of it? … Oh!”

Matt nodded.

“You mean that they take us where we wish to go!”

Matt nodded.

“How if they try to slay you?” Balkis demanded. “What then?”

Matt grinned behind his gag. Balkis read the wrinkles at the comers of his eyes correctly and shuddered. “You are quite sure of yourself.”

Matt wasn’t, but he nodded anyway.

“Would it not be safer to go on our own?”

Matt raised his bound hands and pointed to his ear.

The cat stared, puzzling out his pantomime, then said, “You believe you can learn of our enemy from what they say?”

Matt nodded again.

“It is most horribly dangerous,” Balkis said, coming to her feet, “and I’ll have nothing to do with it!” She stalked away, her tail straight as an exclamation point.

She’d stay, though, Matt knew. After all, if she didn’t, how would she learn his magic? Besides, they were in a boat, and he knew how cats felt about water.

In the middle of the day they fed him and gave him a drink—but the hulking Merovencian stood over him with a raised club as the foreigner took his gag off, promising, “Say one word and my companion will knock you senseless again.”

Matt nodded to show he understood, then ate with bound hands. He gave a groan of pleasure at the first taste of food, then made noises of delight with each spoonful. Of course, those moans and burps had consonants in them, and when strung together they added up to:

Which was French for:

“That had the sound of a word,” the thug said suspiciously.

The foreigner frowned, listening for the next groan of delight, then shook his head. “Not in any language I ever heard.”

That was nothing but plain truth, of course, for the French of Matt’s home universe was quite different from the Merovencian of Alisande’s. Nonetheless, the verse, rude though it was, worked quite well, as Matt discovered the next time the Asian muttered to himself under his breath. What he said was enough to make Matt sorry he’d understood, and to hope the cat didn’t—though it took a lot to embarrass a cat.

They retied the gag and, before they again shortened the rope that held him to the mast, gave him a chance to take care of sanitary functions at the gunwale. This involved standing up, so Matt was able to see that they were sailing down a river. From what he knew of the geography, he guessed which one, and had it borne out several days later when they docked at Playamer, the greatest of Merovence’s southern ports.

Matt’s first hint was the increase in river traffic—small sailboats scudding past, or at least the tops of their sails, and shouts and curses to give way—Matt himself had introduced the tiller, but the sailors were slow taking to the newfangled invention, and couldn’t see any sense in his triangular sails. As the number of masts increased, so did the noise, until, when they jarred against a dock, he was surrounded by a forest of bare poles and a cacophony of voices in a number of different languages, shouting, cursing, and calling their wares. Matt began to regret he’d laid the translation spell, once he understood what some of the voices were saying.

The Asian and the thug untied him from the mast and hoisted him onto his feet. Something sharp poked into his ribs and the Asian hissed, “Put one foot wrong and I’ll skewer your spleen.”

Matt took a step and stumbled, more or less deliberately.

“All right, all right, so it will take you a minute or so to regain your land legs,” the foreigner snapped. “Even so, be wary how you walk.”

Matt was very careful—in fact, as slow as he could be. He wanted to leave Balkis plenty of opportunity to follow. Obviously the little cat had decided to go along with his plan, or at the very least, she would have turned his bonds into mice and chased them away.

“I thought we were supposed to kill him,” the thug grunted.

“We were,” said the Asian, “but why not make a bit of a profit off him while we can? Levantine galleys will ply the Middle Sea until my masters conquer their caliph, and they always want more slaves for their oars. Why not make a bit of cash while we can? He will be dead soon enough aboard one of those ships.”

Matt felt a cold chill down his back, but pretended not to have heard them.

The galley they chose was a merchantman; its master looked as though his home port was Tripoli and honest trading was a sideline. He wore a gold ring in his ear, a colorful scarf instead of a turban, a vest over a bare chest, and knee-length loose trousers. He grinned under a huge black moustache and said, “You would sell me a man with a gag? What is he, a Finn?”

“Finn?” the Asian asked, frowning, but the Merovencian said quickly, “Aye, a Finn he is, and a sorcerer, like all his race! Keep his mouth bound or he’ll sing up a storm to sink you!”

“Why then should I buy him?” the captain challenged.

“Because he is strong—look at the broadness of his back, the thickness of his arms! Only see to it his mouth stays shut, and you will have much work from him!”

“Well, I’ve a wizard of my own on this ship: that should be protection enough,” the captain allowed. “I will give you fifty doubloons for him.”

Matt was surprised to hear the Spanish coin mentioned, then realized that it was probably a standard medium of exchange throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. They were still close to Ibile, after all.

“Fifty!” the Asian protested. “He is worth two hundred.”

“Perhaps seventy-five …”

Matt listened to them bargaining over him, with the Asian pointing out his finer features to boost the price, and the captain pointing to old scars and new sunburn to beat the Asian down. In the end Matt went for ninety-four doubloons and a flask of brandy, and felt thoroughly mortified.

The Asian and the Merovencian went their way, but Matt noticed a small brown shape slipping between the legs of the crowd to follow them. He wondered if Balkis would come back, and if she did, what tales she would have to tell.

Then the captain kicked his legs out from under him and said, “Now, Rosandry! Bind his tongue so we may dispense with that gag!”

Matt looked up into a face of wrinkles that cleverly disguised a mouth and eyes. The blade of nose was easy to make out, and so were the lips, after they opened to reveal a grin featuring a few yellow teeth. Matt could have sworn the man had discovered tobacco.

“What have we here, then?” Rosandry leaned over to peer at Matt, who realized the Berber’s magic didn’t include a cure for nearsightedness. “This is one who has seen little work with his hands.”

“He will learn it, never fear. Now lock his tongue!”

“Easily done,” Rosandry sniffed, and tossed some powder into a brazier that sat in front of his crossed legs. He chanted in his own language, and thanks to his French translation spell, Matt caught the sense of it, if not the poetry. It came down to the fact that his lips would be able to open, but would be stiff and numb, as would his tongue—able to move enough to swallow, but not enough to form syllables. Even as he chanted, Matt felt the heaviness stealing over his mouth. It felt as though he’d had a complete treatment with novocaine.

Rosandry finished the verse with a triumphant flourish and said, “Remove his gag.”

The captain summoned a sailor, who held his scimitar above Matt’s head, then cut the strip of cloth with his dagger. Matt opened and closed his mouth, waggled his jaw, and decided that even filled with the stench of rotting fish, the waterfront air tasted marvelous.

“What is your name?” the captain demanded.

Matt turned wary and tried an alias—but somehow “William Shakespeare” didn’t sound the same without consonants. Matt stared, thunderstruck-Rosandry’s spell had worked, and all too well!

The sorcerer cackled with glee.

“He might be faking,” the captain said, scowling, and stamped on Matt’s foot.

Matt howled and turned on the man, swinging his bound hands up and shouting, “You blasted runt, get back to Tripoli or I’ll send the Marines after you!”

Unfortunately, all that came out was a sort of modulated bellowing. Matt froze in shock.

The captain laughed. “Well done, Rosandry, well done! Take him below, Hakim, and chain him to his oar. Be quick about it—I wish to catch the evening tide for Said!”

All Matt could think, as the mate hustled him below, was that he was still going in the right direction, so he might as well play along. Hard work didn’t bother him—he needed to get back into shape, anyway. He could always jump ship in Egypt.

The mate manacled him to five feet of oar and said, “Row as the others do and when they do, or the oar itself will break your neck!” With those words of tender consideration, he stamped away down the aisle between the benches, bending low because the whole space was only four feet high, and disappeared up through a hatch into the realm of sunlight and fresh air.

The boss could certainly learn a thing or two about ventilation, Matt decided, and wondered if he’d smell as badly as the others by the time they reached Port Said. He looked around, picking out human forms in the gloom, and wondered how men could be so muscular and still so emaciated.

Then his gaze took in the glowing yellow eyes and the furry brown body wedged into a cranny in the side of the ship.

“You certainly must be able to find a more comfortable way to travel to the east,” Balkis said, and at his look of alarm to the slaves in front and in back of him, she said, “Be not anxious, I have cast a sleep over them, not that they needed much aid.”

Matt decided his new apprentice had some ability after all.

“Can you not find a safer way to travel?” Balkis repeated.

Matt grinned, as much as he could with numb lips, and shook his head.

“Can you not talk?” the cat asked with anxiety.

Matt shook his head and made a cawing sound to prove it.

“That could be troublesome.” The cat fluffed herself, unnerved. “Well, would it interest you to learn where your captors went?”

Matt nodded, and his eyes gleamed in the gloom as he fantasized revenge.