The Haunted Wizard

CHAPTER 16

The bauchan came out of the trees, looking very surly indeed. “I heard, wizard! It’s a foul trick to play upon me!”

“Hey, you were the one who told me to take notice of him,” Matt reminded. “Buckeye, I’d like you to meet my cousin Dolan. Dolan, meet the family curse.”

“This is beneath you, wizard,” the bauchan complained. “He is not of your blood and bone!”

“All people are ultimately related,” Matt said smugly, “and for the time being, he’s a legal relation, too.” He turned to his companions. “Shall we go, gentlemen?”

Sergeant Brock opened his mouth to object, then remembered that he’d been raised to the rank of squire.

“Yes, let us walk,” Sir Orizhan agreed. “Did not the friar say we should turn west at this crossroads?”

“West it is.” Matt followed the S-curve to the left, with the knight and squire beside him.

“Well, there’s no help for it then,” Buckeye grumbled. “Come, mortal, up with you!” He caught the beggar by the waist and swung him high. Dolan squalled with fright and swung his crutch up as a club—but the bauchan settled the man around his own neck and started after the companions, assuring the beggar, “Fear not, I can carry ten times your weight. You have naught to fear from me—but I’ll be revenged on that wizard ten times over!”

“I’m not keeping score,” Matt called back.

“I am,” Buckeye growled, and hurried to catch up, stretching his legs—literally.

Night caught them in the midst of open fields without a village in sight. As they set about pitching camp, Sergeant Brock muttered,” ‘Just one more village, Sir Knight! Surely there will be another inn only a few miles down the road, good sergeant! Just one more, lads, one more!’”

“Oh, stop grousing,” Matt told him. “I thought soldiers were supposed to be used to roughing it.”

“When they travel with you, they are.”

“Hey, you’ve had dinner indoors three nights out of five on this trip.”

“Yes, but have we been able to stay and sleep? No, for we are four when we set out with three!”

“Careful, there—Buckeye is positively gloating to hear you.” Matt told himself the sergeant would feel better with a good hot meal inside him.

While it was cooking, he rummaged in his pack for a scrap of parchment and pulled a stick of charcoal from the fire. Then he sat down next to the beggar and said, “Time we did something about your communication problem. If I make a mark like this, it means I’m supposed to make a sound like this: duh. And this circle means I’m supposed to say ‘oh.’ Then this boot-shape tells me to say ‘luh,’ and this backward potbelly is either ‘eh’ or ‘uh.’ ” He saw the question in Do-lan’s eyes and said, “How can you tell which sound? I’ll explain later, when you’ve learned more letters. This sign is ‘en.’ Now, see what happens when I make all those sounds, one after another…”

By the time the partridges were roasted, Dolan was silently mouthing all the letters of the alphabet, eyes round in wonder.

“What silliness is this, to put so much store by chicken tracks on sheepskin?” Buckeye sniffed.

“Aye,” Sir Orizhan agreed, “and to show a man how to turn squiggles into speech when he can no longer talk.”

“But he knows what the words are supposed to sound like,” Matt pointed out. “He can still write out the words he wants to say, if he can just learn the symbols—and if anybody ever had motivation for it, he has.”

“It’s a fool’s task, to spend so much time learning to do so little!”

“It’s not little,” Matt protested, “and I’ll bet he’ll be able to write complete sentences in five days.”

“Five for the symbols at your door,” Buckeye snorted, and disappeared into the forest.

Matt had the right number but the wrong unit. Five hours later Dolan was writing complete sentences and working out a system of sign language with Sergeant Brock, too. When he had a large enough vocabulary, he told the sergeant a long pantomime, and Brock came away looking pale and shaken.

“What did he tell you?” Matt asked, concerned.

“What the soldiers did to him,” Brock answered, and swallowed thickly. “It was my own fault—I asked. Let us hope I have not given the poor fellow nightmares by dredging up his memories!”

“Maybe,” Matt said slowly, “but maybe not, too. Sometimes it helps to talk it through, get it out of your system. Just how bad was it?”

“As bad as anything I’ve ever heard,” Brock told him, and looked up at Sir Orizhan. “They tied him down on the rack for a day or two, and when it had stretched his joints to constant pain, they demanded the names of those who had told him what he had blurted out. Poor lad, he’d been so drunk that he could not even remember what he’d said. They did a dozen things to cause him more pain, and by your leave I’ll not repeat them—but I will say that they brought in a sorcerer to work a spell with some of his blood, which wrenched his memories from him with blinding pain. His head ached horribly for days. Then, when they had proved for themselves that he knew no other names of folk who had spoken ill of the prince, they muted him and lamed him as we see, and cast him out to live or die, they cared not which.”

“A sorcerer?” Matt said sharply. “Not a druid?”

Brock gave him a long, steady look, then said, “I shall ask.” He turned away to his pack.

Sir Orizhan watched him go, frowning. “How can he ask if the man was a druid, if Dolan has never seen one?”

“His armed band raided a druid sacrifice,” Matt said, watching Brock. “He kept a souvenir.”

Sir Orizhan’s eyebrows lifted in surprise; then he turned to watch.

Brock went over to Dolan and held up his little silver sickle. The beggar frowned at it, puzzled. Brock made some gestures, and Dolan replied with an emphatic shake of his head. Brock gestured again, and Dolan shook his head again.

Then Brock made a third set of gestures, and Dolan’s face went stony as he nodded.

Brock nodded, satisfied, and came back to his companions. “The man who tortured him did not wear one of these at his belt.” He held up the sickle. “Moreover, he laid his spell in a chant that chopped and ground like a mill. The druids’ magic tongue flows like a clear brook; I’ve heard it.”

“So the sorcerer used a language that was full of gutturals and consonants, huh?” Matt filed the information away for future use. “What did he nod about?”

“That the sorcerer wore a dark robe with strange signs emblazoned on it. The druids wear white, as you have seen.”

“So Prince John is resorting to sorcery,” Sir Orizhan said grimly.

“Resorting to, yes,” Matt pointed out. “He’s got the synthodruids on one side and sorcerers on the other—but he isn’t adept enough to do the magic himself, so he has to bring in specialists. I’ll bet he doesn’t even know how to use them, but has a sorcerous adviser pulling his strings.”

“But you said he was in league with the Chief Druid,” Brock pointed out, confused.

“I did, didn’t I?” Matt said with an acid smile. “Apparently he’s trying to play both ends against the middle, sorcerers on one side and synthodruids on the other. What’s going to happen to him when they both demand their payoffs?”

The three were silent a moment. Then Sir Orizhan ventured, “Can he truly believe he can set them to fighting one another and himself emerge unscathed?”

“Sounds dumb enough to believe of him, yes,” Matt said. “Or it could simply be that he hasn’t thought that far ahead. He probably thinks that if he can just get to be king, he’ll have power over everybody.”

“And while he waits, the false druids and the sorcerers shall tear the land apart between them,” Sir Orizhan said grimly.

Sergeant Brock’s face set like stone.

Mama and Papa were hiking along the high road when Mama suddenly stopped. She laid a hand on Papa’s arm and pointed at a lane that branched off, overhung by tree limbs, a virtual tunnel. “We must take that byway.”

Papa looked at it. “Why, my dear? It doesn’t look very promising.”

“I can’t say why, I only know we must,” she answered.

“I will never argue with your intuition, especially in a universe ruled by magic.” Papa turned off with her, and they strolled under the leafy roof. He looked up and about with a dreamy smile. “If nothing else, you have chosen a pleasant route for us.”

“There is that.” Mama pressed his arm close, smiling.

Then they heard the hound.

It was a strange cry, more howl than bay, and it sent chills down their spines.

“Hurry!” Papa clasped her arm more tightly and started ahead.

But Mama pulled back. “No! We must bide instead!”

Papa reined in impatience and exasperation and tried to speak reasonably—but before he could, he heard the sound of hooves approaching with the baying. “You’re right—we can’t outrun horses. We hide!”

Mama found a small thicket and pushed her way through the underbrush. Papa came after her, walking backward and doing what he could to erase the signs of their passage. Then he lifted his staff to guard position, with the sick feeling that comes with knowing the battle is lost before it has begun— but behind him, Mama drew her wand from beneath her robes.

The howl-baying passed the junction with the main road, though, and kept on going. The hooves thundered up, mixed with the shouting of men’s voices, then faded away.

Papa let out a long shaky breath as he dropped the butt of his staff. “They’re chasing someone else, poor soul!”

“No,” Mama snapped, “they are chasing us—don’t ask me how I know! It was only this turnoff that deceived them, but their hound will realize he has lost the scent all too soon! Quickly, husband! There is safety at the end of this road, if we can only come there soon enough!” She pushed her way out of the thicket and hurried down the lane.

Papa caught up with her. “What sort of safety?”

“I do not know, but I have never had presentiments so strong as this before! Walk as quickly as you can, and we may come safely through it!”

But twenty minutes later they heard the howling behind them again.

“Quickly, walk backward as much in our own footprints as you can!” Papa turned and retraced his steps.

“Are you mad?” But Mama caught up with him anyway. “You are going toward danger!”

“Only ten minutes or so! I have seen another hiding place! Come!”

A few minutes back on the trail, they came to a low-hanging branch. Papa made a stirrup with his hands. “Up with you!”

Mama knew better than to protest. She stepped in Papa’s hands and caught the branch, then scrambled up as he lifted her foot higher. Lying full-length on the limb, she reached down for his hand. He leaped up with her help and caught the wood; she scrambled back to make room for him to lie full-length, surrounded by leaves.

They were barely in time. The howling swelled immensely, and the hound came charging by below, following their scent. It was a huge misshapen thing, with a face like a mastiff’s behind the upper muzzle of a bloodhound, and legs as bandy as a bulldog’s but as long as a Great Dane’s. Its massive body was easily the size of a small pony, and its eyes burned with blood lust. It went past below, belling and baying and howling as though it were three beasts in one. Behind it came half a dozen soldiers, their eyes afire with the excitement of the hunt, their faces lit with gleeful anticipation. Mama looked at them and shuddered.

But the last was several lengths behind his fellows, for he was much fatter, and wheezed as he urged his horse onward. As he passed under the limb, Papa dropped to land behind him and struck with the hilt of his knife. The man slumped, eyes rolling up, and Papa shoved him aside. He fell, rolling to the side of the trail, and Papa caught the reins. The horse whinnied in fright, but Papa spoke to it in soothing tones, turned it around and brought it back, then off the side of the trail.

Ahead, the hound’s belling turned into burbles of confusion. The horsemen cursed, and there was a sound of beating. The hound howled in anger, then yelped in pain, finally coming back toward them, bay-howling again.

Papa turned the horse into the brush beside the road, behind a screen of leaves, then leaped down and ran around to hold the horse’s head and stroke its nose, murmuring soothing nonsense to keep it from whinnying.

The hound came charging by, following their back trail, baying as though it were new. The horsemen rode by, cursing, and Papa and Mama caught a single sentence: “Cursed magicians laid us a false trail!” Then they were gone again, not even noticing their fallen comrade under the roadside leaves, and too quickly for the horse to even think of calling to its fellows.

Papa remounted, rode out onto the trail and back to the low-hanging limb. “Quickly, Jimena! Before they realize their error!”

Mama leaped from her perch and ran to him, grasped his arm and swung up to ride in front of him. Papa turned the horse and kicked its sides gently. It sprang into motion again, galloping away down the lane.

Far behind them the belling grew fainter—for a few minutes. Then it turned into confusion again, mixed with angry shouting for several minutes, before the hound yelped as the men drove it back into the lane, and its voice began to grow louder again.

“What kind of hound is this, who can follow our scent even on horseback?” Papa asked.

“One who senses magic and those who work it,” Mama told him, “and I hate to think where it came from!”

“I used magic as we were laying the false trail!” Papa exclaimed in surprise.

“So did I! Ride as quickly as we can, husband, and pray they go more slowly!”

Then suddenly the trail opened out into fields. In the distance the amber and green of crops surrounded the low beige walls of a convent or monastery, golden in the late afternoon sun.

“There is the safety I sensed!” Jimena cried. “Ride, husband, for our lives!”

But the poor horse was carrying double, and no matter how Papa urged it on, it couldn’t go as fast as the steeds chasing them. Behind them the howling and hoofbeats grew louder.

“Hist!” Sir Orizhan stopped, holding up a hand, and frowned, looking back over the road they had traveled.

They were all silent, listening. Then Dolan’s eyes widened, and he nodded vigorously, beginning to tremble.

“He hears it, too, whatever it is,” Matt said.

“So do I.” Buckeye grinned. “It is a kind of hound that sorcerers breed, half spirit and half dog.”

Matt shuddered. “What’s it for?”

“Tracking magicians!” Buckeye crowed.

“I think we’d better start walking faster.” Matt turned eyes front and made long strides.

Sir Orizhan matched him. “We might even consider running.”

“Run for a minute, walk for a minute,” Matt agreed. “Can you keep up, Buckeye?”

“Keep up, forsooth!” the bauchan snorted. “I can surpass you in this as in all things! Hold tightly, Dolan!” He sprang ahead of the companions.

Matt loped after him, not hurrying.

“Dare we let him escape our sight?” Sir Orizhan asked beside him.

“We dare,” Matt answered. “The question is, does Dolan? And I think the answer to that is, he’ll get to safety first.”

“What safety?” Sergeant Brock panted.

“The convent,” Matt explained. “We’re assuming it has a guest house—and if these hunters are anything like the usual run of evil spirits, they won’t be able to enter consecrated ground.”

“True enough,” Sir Orizhan said, with some relief.

But Sergeant Brock panted, “What if… the hunters … are men?”

“Then only the hound will be stuck outside the wall,” Matt said grimly, “and we may have to do a bit of fighting ourselves.”

Sergeant Brock grinned and loosened his short sword in its sheath.

” ‘May,’ I said,” Matt cautioned. “I didn’t make any promises.”

“You deal with … evil magic,” Brock panted. “We shall deal… with evil… men. Sir Knight?”

“We shall indeed,” Sir Orizhan said, matching Brock’s grin.

They stopped to walk for a minute, then ran on toward the convent.

Suddenly, hooves pounded behind them.

“Run!” Matt shouted, and stretched his legs for all he was worm—but the horse was galloping, and caught up with them easily. Dolan waved down at them from its back, looking frightened. One hand held reins, the other held the cantle of the saddle to hold him on—and the reins of a second horse that galloped beside the first.

Matt stared. “How’d you get behind us?” Then he answered his own question. “No, don’t answer. Silly of me. You were riding a bauchan.”

“Pull back on the reins!” Sir Orizhan called. Dolan dutifully obeyed, and the horses slowed enough for Sergeant Brock to run around and catch the reins of the riderless mount while Sir Orizhan caught Dolan’s. They stopped the horses and mounted, Sir Orizhan behind Dolan, Matt behind Sergeant Brock. Sir Orizhan kicked his heels into the horse’s flanks, Sergeant Brock did likewise, and off they went.

“I should ask what happened to the men who were riding these horses,” Matt called, “but I don’t think I want to know.”

Dolan shook his head emphatically.

“Ride!” Sir Orizhan commanded. “If these horses have caught us, the others cannot be far behind!”

“Yes they can,” Matt called back. “These two knew where they were going. The hunters still have to follow the hound.”

“It will speed soon enough,” Brock called grimly.

True enough, the hound’s bell-howling was growing louder and louder. Matt chanced a glance back and saw a dust cloud with several horses coming out of it, a strange, ungainly beast loping ahead of them—ungainly, but moving even more quickly than they were. He shut up and let the sergeant kick the horse up into overdrive.

“I thought troopers weren’t allowed to ride,” he called to Sergeant Brock ahead of him.

“We are not,” Brock called back, “but not for lack of knowing. Any serf’s son learns how to ride a plow horse.”

They came out of the woods and into a broad plain, cut into a patchwork of fields with a variety of crops, including pastures dotted with sheep. At its center, far ahead, rose the tawny walls of the convent.

“Ride!” Matt shouted. “Safety’s in sight!”

Then he saw the other horse off to their right with two riders on its back, riding hell-bent for leather—and saw the hell-bended hound behind, running at its top speed, leading half a dozen riders who shouted with glee as they chased. Looking back at his own pursuers, he heard the same sort of shouts—and noticed that the soldier in front had his hood up. He seemed much more gangly than the rest, knees up as high as the saddlebow. Matt deleted an expletive under his breath. Buckeye was leading the pursuit, howling with glee.

Matt undeleted the expletive. “Blasted monster can’t decide whether he’s for us or against us!”

“What monster?” Sergeant Brock looked back, then swore as only a soldier could, something involving a physiological impossibility and the questionable ancestry of the bauchan. But he recovered enough to say, “Be sure he’ll not let them slay you, milord, for who then would he have to torment?”

“Don’t say that word ‘torment,’ ” Matt told him. “There’s a lot they can do without killing me.” He didn’t add that the soldiers might treat the rest of the party to a few quick sword strokes.

Fortunately, the humans weren’t the only ones the hound scared. The horses heard that howl-baying growing louder and stretched themselves even harder. Somehow they seemed to understand that the beige walls ahead meant safety, and redoubled their pace.

Atop the wall, several black-robed figures appeared. One looked up to Heaven and raised her clasped hands in prayer. The others imitated her.

Matt glanced over at the other travelers and saw that their hunters were gaining, too. Of course, it would be too much to hope for that the two packs might collide…

Not with a bauchan with a twisted sense of humor leading one of the groups, it wasn’t. The two roads joined a hundred yards from the gate, and the other travelers galloped through the intersection just a few feet ahead of Mart’s party—and as he came alongside he stared in amazement. “Mama! Papa!”

The two riders looked up, astonished, and cried with one voice, “Matthew!”

Then the two groups of hunters howled with triumph—and crashed into one another.

They bawled and cursed and bellowed, slashing at one another with short cavalry swords, while the two hounds sprang to fight with explosive barks, each trying to sink its teeth into the other first.

Buckeye broke loose from the melee and shouted, “Ride!” He even ran after to slap the rumps of all three horses before he turned back to dive into the churning mass again.

He was just in time, too. The leader of one group saw who he was fighting and shouted, “We are king’s men!”

“We are reeve’s men, under the prince’s orders!” his opposite number answered, and they might have made peace there and then if Buckeye hadn’t reached up and clobbered one of them in the kidneys. The man howled with pain and yelped, “Call off your men!”

“Lay off!” the other leader shouted, just before Buckeye stretched an arm to rabbit-punch him.“Yowoo! I thought you called for peace!”

And the two groups set upon each other again, hammer and tongs, short swords clashing on bucklers and steel caps. Buckeye danced around and through the dust cloud, timing his punches perfectly to keep them fighting one another.

The gates of the convent opened wide just in time for all three horses to gallop through, then swung shut again. A team of nuns hefted a huge bar into the brackets on the backs of the gates, and Matt turned in the saddle to throw his arms around his parents. “Thank Heaven you made it!”

“And you, my son,” Mama said, returning the embrace, then holding Matt off at arm’s length. “Thank Heaven indeed.”

“Aye, thank Heaven,” said a severe voice.

They looked up to see an older nun coming down off the wall toward them, eyes flashing. “Who are you, who come unbidden to the Convent of St. Ursula?”

“At least we’ve got the right address,” Matt told Sir Orizhan, then, “Matthew Mantrell, Lord Wizard of Merovence, with Lord and Lady Mantrell, my parents—” He gestured to his mother and father, then to his companions. “—and Sir Orizhan, knight of Toulenge, with his squire, Sergeant Brock of Bretanglia. This other gentleman is Dolan, an unfortunate who has suffered at the hands of Prince John’s torturers.”

Dolan and Brock pulled their forelocks; Sir Orizhan bowed as well as he could from the saddle.

“And whom have we the pleasure of addressing?” Matt asked.

“I am Mother Diceabo, abbess of this convent. Do you claim the right of sanctuary?”

“We do!” all six of them chorused.

Then Sergeant Brock said nervously, “By your leave, lords and ladies, may we put off the courtesies till we have done with the attackers at your gates?”

“Attackers!” Mother Diceabo exclaimed. “Have they not left off once they saw you were safe?”

In answer, five howling soldiers leaped over the wall— only eight feet high, no bar to a horseman who could stand on his saddle and vault over it. Most of the nuns screamed and ran—for quarterstaves piled in a cone by the gate. Each grasped her stick and turned to face the invaders.

But Sir Orizhan and Sergeant Brock were there before them, spurring their horses and shouting war-cries. Dolan hung on for dear life.

Sergeant Brock turned a cut from a foeman, then whirled his sword in to thrust, but the enemy blocked it with his buckler, swinging his sword up for another strike. Matt leaned around Brock and thrust at the unarmored line between breastplate and hip. He couldn’t reach very far, but it was enough to make the soldier scream and clap his hand over his gut. Brock drove his hilt down, but the man was already clawing his way back over the wall.

Sir Orizhan turned his horse and swung a cut at another soldier, knocking the man’s sword aside. The soldier howled and ran for the wall. Behind the knight, swords clattered against quarterstaves and the other soldiers ran bleating for the wall, dropping their blades as they ran.

Matt stared as they leaped back over—it had been too easy. He darted a glance back at his parents and saw why—Papa was gesturing and muttering while Mama sat ready to fight off any return spells. Matt wondered what the soldiers had thought they were seeing.

“Are they repulsed so easily?” Mother Diceabo declared in astonishment.

“I doubt it,” Matt answered.

Sir Orizhan sprang up to the low parapet to look over and report, “They are riding to the gate… They are turning their horses’ backs to it…”

“They’re going to try to have the horses kick down the gate!” Matt cried. “Get ‘em away from there!”

One of the nuns started chanting and gesturing as though she was swatting flies.

The horses reared with whinnies of anguish and shot away from the gates, bucking and rearing. The soldiers shouted, barely managing to stay in their saddles, and fought their horses back down, then managed to quiet them—a hundred yards from the convent.

Matt looked up in surprise. “You have some talented people among your nuns, Mother Diceabo.”

“More importantly, they are pious,” the abbess replied tartly. “Even I prayed for your safe arrival.”

“I can’t thank you enough.” Matt wondered what Buckeye would say if he knew he had been part of the answer to a nun’s prayer.

“They are putting their heads together in conversation,” Sir Orizhan reported. “One is riding away … The rest are dismounting … They are picketing their horses… Most are sitting down, some lying, though one stands sentinel …” He looked down at Matt “They have given up assaulting us, it seems—and I would guess the one who has ridden away has gone for aid.”

“Surely they would not bring an army against a House of God!” Mother Diceabo protested.

“Maybe not an army, but probably a sorcerer,” Matt said, his voice hard, “at least, as long as we’re here. I’m sorry, Mother. I hadn’t meant to bring them upon you. There have been a few changes in Bretanglia lately.” Matt dismounted. “Let me tell you about them.”

“Lord Wizard,” Sir Orizhan said, his voice tense, “I think you should—”

Matt didn’t wait for the end of the sentence.