The High Crusade

Chapter VIII

We had been too excited at first to pay attention, and afterward we slept too long. But when I woke again, finding it still dark, I checked the movement of stars against trees. Ah, how slowly! The night here was many times as long as on Earth.

This unnerved our folk badly enough in itself. The fact that we did not flee (by now, it could no longer be concealed that treason, rather than desire, had brought us hither) puzzled many. But at least they expected weeks to carry out whatever the baron decided. The shock, when enemy ships appeared even before dawn, was great.

“Be of good heart,” I counseled Red John, as he shivered with his bowman in the gray mists. “’Tis not that they have powers magical. You were warned of this at the captains’ council. ’Tis only that they can talk across hundreds of miles and fly such distances in minutes. So as soon as one of the fugitives reached another estate, the word of us went abroad.”

“Well,” said Red John, not unreasonably, “if that’s not magic, I’d like to know what is.”

“If magic, you need have no fear,” I answered, “for the black arts do not prevail against good Christian men. However, I tell you again, this is mere skill in the mechanic and warlike arts.”

“And those do prevail against g-g-good Christian men!” blubbered an archer. John cuffed him to silence, while I cursed my own clumsy tongue.

In that wan, tricky light, we could see many ships hovering, some of them as big as our broken Crusader. My knees drummed under my cassock. Of course, we were all inside the force screen of the smaller fort, which had never been turned off. Our gunners had already discovered that the fire-bombards placed here had controls as simple as any in the spaceship, and stood prepared to shoot. However, I knew we had no true defense. One of those very powerful explosive shells whereof I had heard hints could be fired. Or the Wersgorix might attack on foot, overwhelming us with sheer numbers.

Yet those ships did only hover, in utter silence under the unknown stars. When at length the first pale dawnlight streamed off their flanks, I left the bowmen and fumbled through dew-wet grass to the cavalry. Sir Roger sat peering heavenward from his saddle. He was armed cap-a-pie, helmet in the crook of an arm, and none could tell from his face how little sleep had been granted him.

“Good morning, Brother Parvus,” he said. “That was a long darkness.”

Sir Owain, mounted close by, wet his lips. He was pale. his large long-lashed eyes sunken in dark rims. “No midwinter night in England ever wore away so slowly,” he said, and crossed himself.

“The more daylight, then,” said Sir Roger. He seemed almost cheerful, now when he dealt with foemen rather than unruly womenfolk.

Sir Owain’s voice cracked across like a dry twig. “Why don’t they attack?” he yelled, “Why do they just wait up there?’

“It should be obvious. I never thought ’twould need mentioning,” said Sir Roger. “Have they not good reason to be afraid of us?”

“What?” I said. “Well, sire, of course we are Englishmen. However—” My glance traveled back, over the pitiful few tents pitched around the fortress walls; over ragged, sooty soldiers; over huddled women and grandsires, wailing children; over cattle, pigs, sheep, fowl, tended by cursing serfs; over pots where breakfast porridge bubbled — “However, my lord,” I finished, “at the moment we look more French.”

The baron grinned. “What do they know about French and English? For that matter, my father was at Bannockburn, where a handful of tattered Scottish pikemen broke the chivalry of King Edward II. Now all the Wersgorix know about us is that we have suddenly come from nowhere and — if Branithar’s boasts be true — done what no other host has ever achieved: taken one of their strongholds! Would you not move warily, were you their constable?”

The guffaw that went up among the horse troopers spread down to the foot, until our whole camp rocked with it. I saw how the enemy prisoners shuddered and shrank close together when that wolfish noise smote them.

As the sun rose, a few Wersgor boats landed very slowly and carefully, a mile or so away. We held our fire, so they took heart and sent out people who began to erect machinery on the field.

“Are you going to let them build a castle under our very noses?” cried Thomas Bullard.

“’Tis less likely they’ll attack us, if they feel a little more secure,” the baron answered. “I want it made plain that we’ll parley.” His smile turned wry. “Remember, friends, our best weapon now is our tongues.”

Soon the Wersgorix landed many ships in a circular formation-like those stonehenges which giants raised in England before the Flood — to form a camp walled by the eerie faint shimmer of a force screen, picketed by mobile bombards, and roofed by hovering warcraft. Only when this was done did they send a herald.

The squat shape strode boldly enough across the meadows, though well aware that we could shoot him down. His metallic garments were dazzling in the morning sun, but we discerned his empty hands held open. Sir Roger himself rode forth, accompanied by myself gulping Our Fathers on a palfrey.

The Wersgor shied a trifle, as the huge black stallion and the iron tower astride it loomed above him. Then he gathered a shaky breath and said, “If you behave yourselves, I will not destroy you for the space of this discussion.

Sir Roger laughed when I had fumblingly translated. “Tell him,” he ordered me, “that I in turn will hold my private lightnings in check, though they are so powerful I can’t swear they may not trickle forth and blast his camp to ruin if he moves too swiftly.”

“But you haven’t any such lightnings at your command, sire,” I protested. “It wouldn’t be honest to claim you do.”

“You will render my words faithfully and with a straight face, Brother Parvus,” he said, “or discover something about thunderbolts.”

I obeyed. In what follows I shall as usual make no note of the difficulties of translation. My Wersgor vocabulary was limited, and I daresay my grammar was ludicrous. In all events, I was only the parchment on which these puissant ones wrote, erased, and wrote again. Aye, in truth I felt like a palimpsest ere that hour was done.

Oh, the things I was forced to say! Above all men do I reverence that valiant and gentle knight Sir Roger de Tourneville. Yet when he blandly spoke of his English estate — the small one, which only took up three planets — and of his personal defense of Roncesvaux against four million paynim, and his singlehanded capture of Constantinople on a wager, and the time guesting in France when he accepted his host’s invitation to exercise the droit de seigneur for two hundred peasant weddings on the same day — and more and more — his words nigh choked me, though I am accounted well versed both in courtly romances and the lives of the saints. My sole consolation was that little of this shameless mendacity got through the language difficulties, the Wersgor herald understanding merely (after a few attempts to impress us) that here was a person who could outbiuster him any day of the week.

Therefore he agreed on behalf of his lord that there would be a truce while matters were discussed in a shelter to be erected midway between the two camps. Each side might send a score of people thither at high noon, unarmed. While the truce lasted, no ships were to be flown within sight of either camp.

“So!” exclaimed Sir Roger gaily, as we cantered back. “I’ve not done so ill, have I?”

“K-k-k-k,” I answered. He slowed to a smoother pace, and I tried again: “Indeed, sire, St. George — or more likely, I fear, St. Dismas, patron of thieves — must have watched over you. And yet—”

“Yes?” he prompted me. “Be not afraid to speak your mind, Brother Parvus.” With a kindness wholly unmerited: “Ofttimes I think you’ve more head on those skinny shoulders than all my captains lumped together.”

’Well, my lord,” I blurted, “you’ve wrung concessions from them for a while. As you foretold, they are being cautious whilst they study us. And yet, how long can we hope to fool them? They have been an imperial race for centuries. They must have experience of many strange peoples living under many different conditions. From our small numbers, our antiquated weapons, our lack of home-built spaceships, will they not soon deduce the truth and attack us with overwhelming force?”

His lips thinned. He looked toward the pavilion which housed his lady and children.

“Of course,” he said. “I hope but to stay their hand a short while.”

“And what then?” I pursued him.

“I don’t know.” Whirling on me, fierce as a stooping hawk, he added: “But ’tis my secret, d’ you understand? I tell it to you as if in confession. Let it come out, let our folk know how troubled and planless I truly am … and we’re all done.”

I nodded. Sir Roger struck spurs to his horse and galloped into camp, shouting like a boy.