A Wizard in Bedlam

CHAPTER 6

For all their good cheer, the prisoners’ nerves began to fray as the days slipped by. The tension was partly fear, of course; but it was partly eagerness, too. The boxing practice became more feverish, less deft. They began to bark at one another during the slivers of free time, after supper; there was an occasional quarrel.

Their last dinner, the night before the Games, was better than usual—they actually had a few ounces of meat each. But afterward, they sat around the walls of the great chamber, turned in on themselves, occasionally muttering to one another—or, more often, growling.

One of the Merchants sat idly throwing a pebble against the wall, catching it on the rebound, and throwing it again. Chink, chink! It began to get on Dirk’s nerves, even though he was fairly sure of living through the debacle tomorrow. Oliver, the Farmer, paced the chamber, back and forth, back and forth, like a caged gorilla-huge, lithe, and deadly, and ready to erupt into snarling fury.

“Cease that infernal pacing, Farmer!” one of the Woodsmen rasped. “It’s bad enough in here tonight, without you winding it tighter!”

Oliver whirled, his fists coming up; but before he could speak, Gar snapped, “Hold!”

His voice wasn’t loud, but it stopped Oliver—or at least changed his direction. He turned toward Gar slowly, eyes narrowing. “And who are you to command me, Outlander?”

Gar lifted his head, raising his eyebrows. “Why, I am myself. Care to debate the point?”

Oliver started toward him, fists coming up. Hugh, the big Tradesman, growled, “Oh, stop it, the pair of you! Isn’t it bad enough the Lordlings’ll be hacking us to bits tomorrow, without our tearing at each other now?”

Oliver slowed, turned toward him, puzzled. He looked back at Gar; his mouth tightened in a quick grimace, and he turned away, to take up his pacing again.

The Woodsman glared at him and started to speak; but Hugh caught his eye and he subsided. Oliver began to beat his fist into his palm in time to his pacing. “Something’s got to break. It’s got to.”

“It will,” a Hostler growled. “Tomorrow.”

“Don’t speak of tomorrow.” Hugh snapped. His mouth tightened in chagrin. “Damn! I’m doing it too, now.” He looked about him, glowering. “We need a song.”

The room fell suddenly silent. They all knew which song he meant—and they also knew the penalty for singing it. Death. Instant.

Dirk raised his head and looked slowly about the room, saw the naked craving in each face, but also the fear that overlaid it.

So slowly, softly, Dirk began to chant the Lay.

Heads came up slowly, all around the room. They stared at him, startled, a little shocked. Then the hunger rose in their faces, and their eyes fastened on him, greedily.

Dirk sang on:

He sang the whole tale—how DeCade had wakened at midnight, hearing the screams of his love, had caught up his staff and bolted from his but to fall on the band of Soldiers who were stealing her away—a huge bear of a man, nearly seven feet tall, three hundred pounds of silent homicidal muscle, with a hardwood quarterstaff as heavy as a bar of iron, laying about him in fury, not counting the tally of dead.

The leader of the party held a knife to the girl’s throat, and DeCade broke the man’s skull and spilled his brains. But the leader was quick—he sliced her throat as he fell—and DeCade stood, numbed, staring at his love, lying dead in a pool of her own blood, all trace of pity and forgiveness pouring out of him as the blood poured out of her. Then, only when she lay emptied before him and only a hollow, frozen void remained within him, did he turn his eyes to the leader, and realize it was the Lord’s son.

So Dirk sang the tale; and Gar looked down, staring at him as though he were insane. Dirk took a breath and took up the ballad again.

DeCade fled to the forest that night and hid for some time, living on poached meat and killing any Lord or Soldier foolish enough to come in under the trees, alone or in company.

And, finally, the outlaws found him and took him for their leader.

Then churls began to escape to the forest—a few at first, then more and more, hundreds, thousands, who never would have thought of escape before, risking their lives to come join the Lordkiller in the forest.

And the Wizard found him, too—some unnamed genius with magical powers, or so the legend said, who had appeared out of nowhere and given DeCade an enchanted staff. With it, DeCade took on a small army that came to clean out the forest—a band of a hundred—and he slew them all, by himself, alone.

The word was brought to the King, in his castle at Albemarle. At last, he realized that a vast churl army lay hidden in the huge forest that was nearly at his doorstep. So he summoned his Lords from the length and breadth of the kingdom and their armies with them, to raze the forest, if they had to, to wipe out the outlaws.

But DeCade didn’t wait for His Majesty. On the Wizard’s advice, he marched out of the forest with a horde at his back, to storm the nearest castle and take it, by surprise and sheer weight of numbers. He armed his men and moved on, his army swelling into the tens of thousands as he marched. He stormed and took castle after castle—until the King moved out of Albermarle.

The King marched out with a hundred thousand well-armed Soldiers at his back, and five thousand Lords with laser rifles to watch the Soldiers. He met DeCade at the field of Blancoeur and raised a clamor that clawed at the sky and brought vultures down; for, at the end of the battle, DeCade retreated, leaving a third of his men dead or dying. The King marched after him and met him again at the foothills of Mont Rouge. DeCade lost half his men before night; but darkness and a heavy overcast saved him, covering his retreat up the mountain to Champmortre, the bone-white, sunbleached plateau high in the mountains near Albemarle. There he stationed his remaining men in a human parapet, armed with spears, bows, and a few captured laser rifles. The King, in a rage, marched up against him, and the churls mowed his army down—till the archers ran out of arrows and the rifle power-packs ran dry.

Then the King scaled the heights and drove DeCade back to the center of the bald plain with his men grouped around him, fighting a last, desperate, doomed battle with no quarter given or asked, knives and swords against swords and lasers, each churl thinking only of how many Soldiers and Lords he could take with him, killing and dying in an orgy of blood-lust and vengeance, till the setting sun threw the long shadow of a ring of dead churls on the plain; and, within the ring only DeCade and the Wizard stood alive, back to back, with a circle of King’s men outside the rampart of dead. Then the King shouted the command, but the Soldiers stood, surly, unwilling to attack DeCade. Laserbolts crackled; the rearmost soldiers fell, screaming, and the rest pressed forward, flowing over the heap of corpses to press in. Then DeCade’s staff whirled, threshing out a crop of death, and hundreds of Soldiers died before they buried him under sheer weight of numbers. Then the Lords broke his neck, broke his back, stripped his body and cut his flesh into ribbons, tore out his entrails to prophesy that the churls would never rise again, broke each separate bone in his body—and took up the golden staff, and broke it in two.

Then, as the shouting and madness subsided, they looked all about the plain, and found it filled only with dead. The Wizard was gone. They searched, but did not find him. They never did.

Sated, the King and his men marched away, leaving DeCade’s corpse to the vultures. But the next day, the King realized that even DeCade’s bones could threaten his peace. A host of churls might rally around them. He sent men to take the bones away and burn them. But they came too late. The giant body was gone, and the golden staff with it, never to be seen by Lordling or Soldier again. Only the churls knew where he lay, beneath a great hollow mountain, the mountain from which the Wizard fled into the sky. But he would return—oh yes. He would return when the churls’ time had come; he would return, to waken DeCade. Then DeCade would ring the bell and march out to challenge the Lords, with new and magical weapons and a churl army behind him. They would crush the Lords then; they would free all the churls …

Dirk took a long, deep breath; then, more loudly, he began to intone the last verse; after a few words, Hugh joined him, his voice a low chant; then Oliver joined, then the Merchants, then more, till all the prisoners together roared out the last lines, shaking the chamber around them:

The echoes faded; the chamber was still. Each churl looked at his fellows, eyes glowing, filled with the fire of a Cause.

Dirk leaned back, drained and satisfied. It was worth the risk.

Then armor jangled in the hall, a harsh voice bawled out, and he suddenly wasn’t so sure.

The guard came into sight on the other side of the bars, carrying an ugly, short-barrelled weapon—a laser pistol. He shoved it through the bars and glared around at the prisoners, eyes probing their faces. “All right. Who started it?”

Fifty-odd pairs of eyes swiveled toward him, chilled holes in hating masks. The room was as quiet as a sepulcher.

Gar straightened, seeming to gather himself, his gaze becoming remote, abstracted. Dirk took notice of it and frowned.

“Somebody talk!” the guard snarled. “Talk, or we’ll pound you flat. Oh, you’ll be able to totter out into the arena tomorrow just barely!”

His voice rang off the granite walls and was swallowed up in the cavern of fifty united minds. The guard’s lips writhed back with his snarl; the pistol rose …

“And what will you do to the man who sang it?”

Dirk looked up, startled. The voice had come from Gar; but it was deeper, more resonant, almost seeming to come from someplace else.

The pistol tracked toward him, steadied. “Who asks?”

Slowly, Gar stood—unhurried, easy: And ready.

“What will you do? Kill the man? Will that hold the song from its ending?”

The guard’s eyes narrowed. “Are you saying you began it?”

“Why, no.” Gar moved toward him, easily, almost causally, slow movements hiding the speed of long strides.

“You lie!”

“Why would I do such a horrible thing?” He was halfway to the guard.

The pistol flicked upward toward Gar’s head. “Stand where you are!”

“Why? Are you afraid to speak to my face?” Gar kept moving. And suddenly, somehow, something clicked together in Dirk’s mind, and it all made some sort of crazy sense. Nothing he could say, but … He rose to his feet and paced after Gar.

“Stop!”

“Why? I can come only as far as the bars,” Gar said reasonably. “Are you afraid of me even behind bars?”

The prisoners watched—tense, ready.

Gar was a stride away from the bars. The guard took a step back. “If you did it, say so!”

“But I didn’t,” the strange voice purred. Gar took the last stride and raised his fists to clasp the bars at shoulder level. “Would I be fool enough to talk this way if I had?”

“Then tell me who did!” The pistol rose level with Gar’s eyes. “Or I promise you, you’ll die in his place!”

Dirk ducked around between Gar and the bars. “I sang it!”

The guard’s eyes flicked down to him, startled; the muzzle wavered.

Gar’s whole body went rigid—and the bars bent.

The guard looked up, saw, and wild terror spread over his face. The gun muzzle jerked upward—Dirk leaped through the bars and slapped it aside. The searing light-lance spat wide, shearing through four more bars as Gar’s huge fist closed around hand and gun both, squeezing. The guard’s face went white; his mouth stretched in a silent scream as he dropped, unconscious.

Gar stood over him, his body slowly loosening. Dirk could almost see him changing back to his normal self. It was as though something were lifted off of him, out of him …

The prisoners rose as though one string pulled them all upright, with one massive shushing hiss of straw sandals on stone.

Dirk looked up, ducked back through the hole in the bars, sure of what to do without knowing why, as the prisoners began moving toward him like a single enormous machine. “Oliver, Hugh, Gaspard!” he called out softly, but the prisoners paused while the Tradesman, the Woodsman, and the Merchant stepped forward to Dirk.

Dirk whirled back to Gar. “It’s your party. What do we do?”

Gar shook himself, looked up, frowning. He gazed at the churls, seeming to see them for the first time. He nodded. “The guards should be gathered in the wardroom by the main gate. But we’ve made something of a noise, so they may have a patrol out checking the halls, and they may have put a guard on the armory. Divide into three parties—one to the armory, one to the arena gate, and one to the wardroom. That’ll cover all the halls, and the trouble points, too.”

Dirk swung back to the three churls. “Oliver, go to the arena gate. Gaspard, to the armory.” They didn’t even wait to nod just slipped through the hole in the bars and split, Oliver to the left, Gaspard to the right. Two-third of the churls stepped after them like a wave and filed through the hole in perfect order, half turning to the left, half to the right, following Oliver and Gaspard, moving with the precision of drilled soldiers without command or question—like zombies or robots, Dirk thought—till he looked in their eyes and shuddered.

He turned back to Hugh. The big Tradesman just stood there, watching Dirk and waiting, with seventeen churls waiting behind him.

Dirk turned to Gar and nodded.

The big man let out a long, hissing breath, set his jaw, nodded, and turned away. Dirk followed, and behind him, Hugh stepped through the bars with seventeen silent churls behind him.

“Mind telling me how you did that?” Gar growled down at Dirk as they led their squad down an empty hall.

“Sure!” Dirk smiled brightly. “As soon as I figure it out.”

There were two doors to the wardroom. Dirk split off from Gar and Hugh and padded silently through the hall that led to the far door. Once he glanced back over his shoulder, saw eight churls following him. Eight—just about half. He turned away with a shudder; not so much because of their unthinking precision—he was almost getting used to that—but because he’d known what he was going to see before he looked. That bothered him.

He rounded a corner and stopped just short of the opened door, waiting. He didn’t know what he was waiting for, or how Gar would let him know when to charge—but he knew it wasn’t time yet. The other eight churls had stopped behind him and were waiting with a stone’s patience; he knew that—he didn’t bother to look. On the other hand, he probably didn’t dare …

Suddenly, it was time. Dirk leaped through the door and saw Gar and Hugh burst through the door opposite him. And he saw a startled guard whip around, staring. Dirk dove, reaching for his throat, and saw a huge fist coming up at his face. He twisted in mid-air, felt a boulder the size of a house crush his shoulder, and felt his hands close around a flexible tree-trunk. Then body slammed body; the guard staggered, overbalanced, and went down. Dirk whiplashed the head, cracked the guard’s skull on the stone floor, let go of a limp body, and leaped to his feet as his churls charged into the room in perfect unison. The guards were surging to their feet, catching up weapons, but Gar and Hugh’s churls whooped, and the guards looked back startled, as the first wave of churls hit them from the east. A moment later, the western wave poured in, and the sea closed. There were nineteen prisoners and twelve guards. The troubled waters spewed up jetsam.

Some of the guards died trying to raise their weapons. The ones who just laid about them with their fists lasted a little longer. Dirk threw a punch and danced back out of range; the guard charged him, roaring, and a silent fury landed on his back, slamming him to the floor. Dirk heard something crunch as he turned away, but he didn’t have time to think about it; a guard was backing toward him, retreating from two Merchants. Dirk dropped to hands and knees; the guard tripped on him, bellowing, as the Merchants moved in.

It was all over in three minutes. Dirk climbed to his feet and saw Gar standing, glaring down at the still bodies; but there was something bleak about him. Dirk recognized the look; he got over to Gar fast. “You don’t have time for a conscience now, Blunderbore. We still have a small problem of a full arena tomorrow.”

Gar looked up, frowning. He closed his eyes, nodding, then turned to Hugh. “Pick up the live ones and lock them up somewhere. Set someone to doctoring the ones who might make it, but give him a strong guard. Then get down to the armory and break out weapons.”

“Ho!”

Dirk looked up, saw Gaspard coming through the east door with fifteen churls behind him. The big churl looked down at the carnage, shaking his head sadly. “Too late for the party, hey?” He looked up at Gar. “Fortune was against us; they were all here.”

Gar nodded, then turned as Oliver appeared at the west door. “There were two of them guarding the armory,” the big Farmer reported. “Bertrand Hostler is dead.”

Gar nodded. He didn’t bother asking about the guards.

Fifteen minutes later, the churls assembled in the wardroom, armed and somewhat armored. There was an occasional moan from the punishment cell down the hall, where the live ones were locked; but it was blocked by the chink of mail and the quiet, exultant laughter of the prisoners.

Hugh and his men swaggered back into the wardroom, fresh from a trip to the armory. Hugh held up a short sword and slapped the pistol at his side, grinning. “It’s astounding how these lift your spirits.”

Dirk couldn’t help grinning. “Just don’t lose your head, Tradesman. There’s still tomorrow, and an arena full of guards to get through.”

Hugh shrugged and thumped Gar on the chest. “What matter? With a brute like this to lead us, who could stop us?”

Gar looked down with a bleak smile. “So I’m appointed permanent leader, eh?”

Hugh looked up, surprised. “Why, so you were before this coil began. Did you not say you could conquer a world with us, Outlander?”

The holiday dawned bright and clear. The churls arrived with the sun, carrying baskets of food; they were expecting a long day.

Dirk and Gar peered through the portcullis at the arena gate, watching the huge beige bowl fill from the top down. Gar frowned, quizzically. “Little quiet for a holiday crowd, aren’t they?”

“I assure you,” Dirk said sourly, “that this is one holiday during which all the workers wish they were back at their drudgery.”

The Master of the Games arrived about that time, too, banging on the wicket door and striding in, bedecked in finery-yellow waistcoat and breeches under a scarlet coat, gleaming linen, and a huge cocked hat. He strutted up and down between the cages, filled with self-importance, watching the prisoners eating breakfast in the pen, as they always had; he saw nothing out of the ordinary. On the other hand, he wasn’t looking for suspicious bulges. “It seems as though there were more of them yesterday.”

“Why, that’s only because ‘tis the day of the Games,” the guard beside him explained easily. “They’ve shrunk in on themselves, don’t you see.” He was the only real guard left free; the rest of the day shift were behind bars, unconscious, where they’d been dumped as soon as they came through the wicket door. But Dirk had recognized Belloc, the man who’d smuggled him in, and had realized the value of having one genuine Soldier among them.

The Master of the Games nodded, apparently satisfied. He swaggered up and down the halls for half an hour, slapping at the guards with a riding crop, barking out last-minute instructions. He didn’t seem to notice how much his guards’ faces had changed overnight.

When Belloc had closed the door behind the Master, he turned about and collapsed against it with a sigh of relief.

“When will we see him again?” Gar appeared from the watchman’s booth.

“Not until after the Games.” The rebel Soldier pulled himself up. “Which means never, I hope. For a while there, I was afraid I would have to kill him.”

Now it was Gar who strode through the barred halls, checking to be sure each churl had at least one weapon hidden on him somewhere. All the “guards” had laser pistols. Gar tucked the last one into his loincloth, snaked out a hand to catch Belloc by the shoulder, and headed for the arena gate. “Where do you boys usually stand during the Games, Belloc?”

“Up there.” Belloc pointed through the portcullis as they came up to the gate. “Atop the wall, all around the Arena—in case of accidents.”

Dirk smiled sourly. “Which means, in case three or four churls manage to gang up on one lordling.” Gar nodded, peering up to the stands. “Lot of brass up there, too.”

Sunlight glared off the armor and bared weapons of the Soldiers, fifty feet apart, forming interlocking squares all through the stands.

“Castle Soldiers,” Belloc explained, “there in case of trouble. We never had anything to do with each other.”

Gar nodded, lowering his eyes to the glare of full plate armor at the other side of the arena. “These, I take it, are our worthy opponents?”

Dirk nodded. “With ten years of tutoring behind their swords and full plate armor for a womb. The young sons of the noble houses—not a one under eighteen or over twenty-one.”

Gar scowled, squinting against the sun. “What is this—their rite of passage?”

“You could call it that,” Dirk said slowly, “though no lordling could live this long without getting a taste of blood. Whipping churls, or killing one who tried to escape. For most of them, this is the first time the churls fight back. But that’s only part of it.”

Gar transferred his scowl to Dirk. “Would you mind explaining that?”

“Our lords and masters are very efficient; anything they do has to have at least two purposes.” Dirk turned away, looking out at the arena. “You see, in spite of everything they can do with education, youth does tend toward idealism. Somehow, in spite of everything they can do, a few of their sons always wind up with horribly humanitarian ideas—churls are human, justice for all men, sympathy with the underdog, all men should be happy—downright subversive.”

Gar looked down in surprise. “Liberals? You mean these dinosaurs are actually capable of producing an open-minded man?”

Dirk nodded. “Far too often for their comfort. Happens to every noble family at least once in every generation. So they bring them here, put them in the arena against churls who’re armed enough to be dangerous, and just possibly lethal, even to a man in full plate armor. And these churls are the hotheads of the nation, drilled and primed to come out craving blood and howling hate.”

“Like killer wolves,” Gar said tenderly.

“It seems to be singularly effective. What chance is there of a young man coming out of that with any thoughts of gentleness left—fifty steelfisted churls charging down on him, screaming for his blood.”

“It would tend to cool idealistic enthusiasm,” Gar agreed.

Dirk twisted on a smile. “Moral: Kindness to churls is lethal. And that’s how you make a reactionary out of a young radical.”

“How many come through it with any shred of an ideal left?”

“One,” Dirk said judiciously. “I’m no historian, mind you but I know of only one.”

“Oh?” Gar raised an eyebrow. “What happened to him?”

“He started treating his churls decently, and the neighboring Lord didn’t like that—it might give his own churls nasty ideas. So he declared war, and the King lent some of his own troops to help out.”

Gar nodded slowly. “I take it there wasn’t too much of him left by the time they got through.”

“His daughter managed to escape, with her grandfather. We smuggled them out; now he’s lobbying for us with the Tribunal.”

Gar nodded. “And the liberal?”

“He stayed on the planet—or in it, I should say. Six feet down.”

A trumpet blew in the arena, and Belloc reached up to touch Gar’s shoulder. “Gather them, Outlander. It is time.”

The churls were pacing, impatiently swinging their lead-clad fists and growling at one another. Dirk slammed the iron door open, and every head in the room snapped around toward the crash. The muttering cut off, and every eye fastened on Gar as he stepped in. He ran his gaze over them in a quick survey and nodded, satisfied. “All right, now’s your chance. Come out howling, they expect that—but don’t get carried away. Keep sight of me, whatever you do. Follow me wherever I go, and I may bring some of you out of this alive. Don’t stop to pick off a tempting lordling along the way just follow.”

Their cheer went up, and Dirk’s spirits dropped. They wouldn’t remember.

But Gar nodded, satisfied, and turned away. The churls streamed out after him, down the halls to pile up against the portcullis like a human flood.

The Master of the Games strutted about in the center of the arena, calling out the opening amenities in a clarion tone. When he finished, he turned away toward the safety of the arena wall, walking very quickly. He stepped on a stairway, and it retracted as he climbed, telescoping in till it swung away into a recess in the wall.

The lordlings stepped forward, swinging their swords and glancing at one another nervously, stretching out into a line across the far end of the arena.

A trumpet blasted. Gears clashed, iron grumbled, and the portcullis slid up. Gar bellowed and charged out. Dirk leaped into place beside him, glancing back to make sure; Hugh, Bertrand, and Oliver were following, and the three separate groups of churls were following them. He looked back just in time to avoid slamming into Gar as the giant skidded to a halt, facing the steel-clad line fifty feet away. Dirk stopped and Hugh snapped dead still just behind him. Bertrand and Oliver leaped to the sides, and the churls fanned out behind them into a solid, charged line, like a condenser about to spit.

A murmur rippled through the arena, rose in a wave. The gladiator-churls had never been organized before.

The lordlings stood frozen, galvanized.

Then Gar paced forward slowly, bringing up his mailed fists—a panther with brass knuckles. Dirk followed; Bertrand, Hugh, and Oliver followed him; and the line of churls ground forward like a steamroller.

The lordlings lifted their swords and crouched down behind their shields.

A trumpet snarled, kettledrums bellowed, and a clarion voice cried, “Hold!”

Gar only grinned and paced forward faster. The lordlings glanced at one another, clanked uncertainly, nodded, and stepped forward, snarling. The churls quickened their pace.

A laser bolt boiled the dust between them.

Gar’s head snapped back with a frown, nose wrinkling. Dirk agreed; ozone stinks. The churls hesitated while Gar thought it over; then his mouth tightened in disgust, and he relaxed, resting his mailed fists on his hips. The churl ranks rustled in a sigh, and came to a halt.

The lordlings relaxed, lowering the swords, and the grandstands subsided, muttering.

“They smell something,” Dirk growled. “They’re stopping it before it gets out of hand.”

“Aye.” Hugh grinned like a wolf, right behind him. “Come, Outlander! Let’s get out of hand!”

But Gar held up a palm, shaking his head slowly, a slight smile touching his lips. “There isn’t much they can do now except shoot us down; if they were going to do that, they’d have done it. No, let’s see their reason for stopping the show.” A ladder swung out from its recess and telescoped down to touch the sand.

Gar’s smile widened to a grin. “Oh yes. I was hoping they’d do that.”

“Sorry to disagree,” Dirk grunted, “but right now, I don’t like anything out of the ordinary.” “And you claim to be a liberal?”

A tall, lean figure in plum-colored coat and white waist-coat, breeches, shirt, and stockings came down the stairs, followed by twenty Soldiers with laser rifles ready.

“Core!” Dirk hissed.

“I believe we’ve met,” Gar murmured.