A Wizard in War

11

The Duke of Trangray erupted when he heard the news. “That arrogant child! That overweening princeling! How dare he assault one of his elders!”

The spy who had brought the news knew better than to try to answer. Trembling, he crouched, hoping it would pass as a bow, and backed toward the door half a step at a time.

“How dare you bring such atrocious tidings!” The Duke stepped up and backhanded the man across the face. He flew toward the wall, but one of the guards put out a hand and caught him. “Pay the man and send him back to learn more!” the duke snarled, and his seneschal nodded and took the spy aside.

“Bad enough for him to attack, but worse for him to win!” Trangray fumed, pacing the room. “His grandfather tried it when he first came to the throne. Every monarch tries it when first he rises! The crown seems to infect them with this ridiculous notion that simply because they wear jeweled gold on their heads, they have the right to command the rest of us! But my father beat his grandfather home and left him to rule only his own estates all his life, and I shall whip his son in similar fashion!”

The players were all asleep, and the campfire burned low, almost as low as Gar’s and Dirk’s voices—but Coll was still able to hear them, and the nonsense they were talking was troubling enough to keep him awake. Still he tried to sleep—he kept his eyes closed and strove to relax, to ignore their words—but found he couldn’t.

“Traveling with these players is an excellent way of setting up an underground,” Gar said, “but how are we going to keep the separate cells in touch with one another?”

“It’s a puzzler,” Dirk agreed. “It’s one thing in a city, where the different cells are so close together that no one has any problem arranging a way to bump into his contactor even in a forest, where there isn’t going to be too much worry about secret police watching when Banhael sends a messenger to each of the smaller bands. But how do you bring it off when there’re twenty miles of open country between villages, and lords’ soldiers all over the place?”

“We could have Herkimer run up a hundred transceivers,” Gar suggested.

“Isn’t that getting a little obvious?” Dirk asked. “The lords are bound to notice a cultural intrusion of that magnitude.”

Gar nodded. “More importantly, so will the Dominion Police, if they happen to have an agent touring the planet at the moment.”

“You can never tell with those guys,” Dirk sighed. “They might be there or they might not. Give ‘em their due—their disguises are foolproof.”

“And we’re no fools.”

“Just lucky they weren’t around when you stirred up our little revolution on Mélange.”

“It was scarcely ‘little,’ ” Gar said stiffly, “and the Dominion Police couldn’t have done anything about it even if they had discovered it—it was all being engineered by people who’d been born on the planet!”

“Except for a certain very tall party who just happened to be the focus of the whole thing.”

Gar shrugged. “Even then, I was just assuming a role your dead genius had prepared for me five hundred years earlier—and I was just the trigger.”

“True,” Dirk said judiciously, “and since the lords already had radio transceivers and all sorts of high-tech gadgets, there wasn’t really any worry about upsetting the cultural applecart.”

“Here, though, it could be a very different matter,” Gar pointed out.

“Yeah.” Dirk made a wry face. “They don’t even remember what an electron is!”

Gar nodded. “If we taught them to use radios, some of the bright ones would start wondering how they worked, and within a generation, they’d have begun to suspect the answer.”

“And in three, they’d have electrical power stations, radios, three-dimensional television, and microwave networks, all grafted onto a medieval culture…”

“…And the monarchy would become a hereditary totalitarian dictatorship,” Gar pointed out, “with a vastness of oppression which would dwarf the slavery we’re trying to curb now!”

“Maybe not.” A new light gleamed in Dirk’s eye. “If they don’t remember any technology higher than a hammer, anything we do bring in, they’ll dub magic. What’s the matter with that, in a medieval culture?”

“A point,” Gar sighed, “and if technological magic can work, we might just as well call in the Wizard.”

“Of course!” Dirk slapped the side of his head. “I keep forgetting there’s more to you than there seems! Yeah, call him in!”

More to him than there seemed? Coll looked up and down the giant’s frame. If there were more to Gar than that, it must be mighty indeed!

“Let me think it over, while we contact more malcontents and outlaw bands.” Gar rose to his feet. “It’s not one of those things that I do lightly, Dirk.”

“Yes, I’ve come to realize that.” Dirk rose, too. “It is a bit of a strain on you, isn’t it?”

“There is that,” Gar admitted, “but I can bear it. What really bothers me is that it always seems to be taking unfair advantage.”

“Unfair advantage?” Dirk stared at him. “You’ve got knights in full plate armor massacring unarmed civilians and sending their soldiers out to burn down villages, and you worry about unfair advantages?”

“Yes, that’s why I’ve resorted to it a few times,” Gar sighed, “and probably will again. But this time I had hoped not to.”

“How else are two guys from out of town going to turn over the whole social-stratification heap?” Dirk demanded. “There probably is no way,” Gar admitted. “Still, it bespeaks a lack of skill. I can’t rid myself of the notion that I ought to be able to do it all by strategy.”

“Oh, fine! You scheme, while more serf-soldiers get wiped out in another skirmish between dukes! And you had the gall to talk about noblesse oblige!”

“True,” Gar said, looking as though he had just bitten into a bad nut. “Let me sleep on it, Dirk.”

“Good idea.” Dirk turned toward his blanket roll. “I could do with a few winks, too. After all, we need to contact more outlaw bands before we do anything.”

“Yes, and many more malcontents,” Gar agreed. “I do have a little time, don’t I?”

So they went to bed, but Coll lay awake another hour or more, excitement thrilling through his blood. Not only were they actually trying to throttle the lords—they really had done it before! He had no idea where Mélange was, but if they said they had brought about this “revolution,” this turning of the wheel there, told it to each other when they thought no one else was listening, why, then, surely they had! And they had magic for the doing of it! A wizard to call upon! Was he the “Herkimer” they kept mentioning? And would they really call upon him to work this miracle?

Coll didn’t pray often, but he prayed that night—and, by praying, finally managed to fall asleep.

“Away with you, fellow!” The guard pulled back his hand to slap the bent old beggar, but the man straightened up suddenly, and his eyes flashed with anger. He spoke with the air of authority, the unquestioned assumption that he would be obeyed. “Tell the duke I am come.”

The guard hesitated, hand still pulled back; the man’s very voice, his accent, bespoke him to be of the gentry at least. On the other hand, he could be an impostor. The guard studied the face before him carefully, and stiffened, seeing a hint of someone he knew under the thatch of white hair and beard. “Who … who shall I say is here?”

“That is not for you to know, villein! Send word to your master, and conduct me to his audience chamber!”

The guard had always lived by the rule of passing any problem out of the ordinary on to his officer. He capitulated and led the beggar in to the captain of the guard. The Duke of Trangray was infuriated by the virtual summons, but the captain of the guard seemed so certain of the importance of the old beggar that the duke came to the audience chamber. “What is your wish?” he demanded. The old beggar turned to face the duke, stepping forward so the guard and the captain were behind him, then pulled the false beard from his face. The duke stared for a full minute. Then he turned to the captain and said, “Leave us.”

The captain knew better than to argue or ask. He ushered his guardsman out and left the two alone.

“So the rumors that you were captured were false!” Duke Trangray exclaimed.

“As you see, my lord duke.” Earl Insol bowed. “But I shall not soon forget the humiliation that our puppy of a king has forced upon me in order for me to escape. May I ask your hospitality?”

“Given, and gladly! Come, we will see you equipped as befits your station!” The duke led his guest through his private passage to his own chamber and gave him a robe, then summoned serfs to bring hot water. While the earl bathed, the duke sent garments of his own. An hour later, bathed, shaven, and dressed in rich robes again, the earl joined his host for the midday meal.

Before they could begin, a servant stepped in. “Your Grace, you had asked to be told the instant the messenger arrived.”

“He had better have good news,” the duke snapped. “Show him in.”

The servant bowed and went out. The duke turned to Insol and said, “Four of my brave fellow dukes have sent word to say that the king’s estates are far from their own, so they see no reason to march against him—but they encourage me to chastise him, and wish me well!”

“The craven scoundrels,” Insol said with a curl of the lip. “If it were not for you, the king would gobble them up one by one!”

“Yes, and they are content to let me wear myself out in fighting him,” Trangray replied, “whereupon they no doubt intend to swoop down upon me and take all I have! So I shall not battle the king alone. But if I do not have at least a few more lords to fight beside me, I may not fight at all!”

The servant led a messenger in, still dusty with travel. “My lord duke!” he said, bowing low.

“Out with it, man!” the duke snapped. “To whom were you sent, and what is his answer?”

“The Duke of Grenlach, my lord.” The messenger held out a scroll tied with ribbon. “He was outraged to hear the news you sent, and bids me tell you by my own lips that he will ride posthaste with ten knights and a thousand men!”

“A beginning, a good beginning!” Trangray’s eyes gleamed. “Go find food and refreshment!” The messenger bowed and left, and the duke snapped open Grenlach’s letter. “Look, my lord earl, and read the beginning of the king’s doom!”

By the end of the week, all the messengers had returned. Four more dukes had sent word of outrage and a pledge of aid. In fact, they told Trangray they would be on the march by the time he read their letters, and asked what action he intended.

“They have chosen you their leader, my lord duke,” Earl Insol said as they watched the couriers ride away with the duke’s directions to his fellow warlords.

“They have indeed!” Trangray’s eyes gleamed with pride as he watched the horsemen gallop off. “Come, my lord! We must ready our own army to march, for I’ve told my fellow dukes to advance on your own estates! There will we meet, to begin the disciplining of this would-be tyrant! To Castle Insol!”

“I thank you, my lord.” The earl bowed. “It seems I shall return home sooner than I thought.”

The players toured from one town to another, and in each one, large or small, Gar and Dirk managed to fall into conversation with serfs and merchants and young noblemen about “cells” and the hard lot of the peasants and the wrongs done to them by their lords. Coll began to develop a bad case of nerves at the second town; if any lord’s man heard them, the whole company was liable to be clapped into irons, or worse!

Somehow, though, the axe never fell; Dirk explained that they were on their way again before their rabble-rousing could alarm the authorities. But with each town they entered, Coll became more and more apprehensive, and as they left each set of gates behind, he breathed with greater and greater relief—until the next town brought even more fear.

He couldn’t understand why Master Androv didn’t kick the two knights out of his troupe—though admittedly, the thought of kicking Gar out of anywhere was enough to freeze the blood of any man. Still, Coll knew the giant was so courteous that he would have gone without any fuss, simply by being asked—so why didn’t Master Androv ask? Could it be because Gargantua always brought in so much money, and assured them of packed innyards every day they played? Surely he, Dirk, and Gar made themselves useful, helping pack the carts and unpack, setting up the stage and taking it down, and even marching onto the stage with wooden swords and spears, playing soldiers or messengers. Coll even managed a few stammering lines himself. “Milady, the thane approaches,” or “Help, help!” Certainly Androv must have known what Dirk and Gar were doing, the alarming things they were saying! Could he really have seen no harm in it?

He must have, because the greybeard became quieter and quieter the longer they stayed with the company—but he never asked them to go. Could it be because the young bloods left off harassing the actresses when Gar stepped up behind them? Or because Dirk had a way of strolling up to any group of townsfolk who were jibing at the players, rattling his sword and coughing in a way that seemed to calm the hecklers amazingly?

Surely it couldn’t have been because Coll himself was scarcely ever far from Ciare, or because Dicea fumed and sizzled whenever any of the actresses took time to chat with Dirk or Gar, especially since she took it out by flirting outrageously with every male in the company. Some of the townsfolk tried propositioning her, but Coll came up beside her quickly, real spear in hand. She scolded him for it when they were alone, and the next time the young bloods started making insulting, insinuating remarks, it kept on until Gar stepped up. When they went away, Dicea took advantage of the chance to show Gar just how grateful she was; he accepted her profuse thanks gravely, made sure she was well, and went back to work on the stage, leaving her sizzling worse than before.

So on top of dreading the moment the soldiers fell upon them, Coll also had to worry about his sister finally exploding, ranting and raving at the actresses and at Dirk and Gar alike. Fortunately, Mama was so good a cook, and so skilled with her needle, and had become so fast a friend of everyone in the little troupe, that they all would have forgiven Dicea in an instant, just for Mama’s sake. Coll began to realize that his mother had done it intentionally.

So it was no surprise when one of the peasants, listening to Gar and Dirk and growing redder and redder with righteous indignation, finally burst out, “You’re speaking treason! Guards! Arrest them all!”

A dozen men in cloaks threw them open, revealing the livery of soldiers, and drew swords as they fell upon the players, driving them into a knot in the center of the innyard with shouts and curses.

Dirk started to draw his sword, but Gar set a hand upon his, holding the rapier in its scabbard. “No. Our punishment might be visited upon the others.” Dirk froze, and contented himself with glaring at the spy, who showed all his teeth in a grin. “Herd them up! So, gaffer, you thought you could defy the earl, did you?”

“I have defied no one!” Androv protested. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about! ”

“Talking about! I’m talking about the talking these two have been doing, about lords catering to the whims of their serfs and lowborn soldiers refusing to strike at slaves who disobey! Don’t tell me you know nothing about this!”

“Nothing at all!” Androv protested. “You don’t think I would have let them stay in my company if I had, do you?”

“We’re very discreet,” Gar told the spy. “In fact, you wouldn’t have suspected us at all if you hadn’t just happened to be wandering around town listening for subversion, would you?”

The spy reddened again. “But I did hear you, and came back today to arrest you! Secrets always come to light, don’t you know that?” He waved to his men. “Come, take them all!”

The soldiers moved in around the players, and Ciare turned on Call. “You traitor, you snake! We took you in, we took you to our bosoms, and all the while you were endangering us all by preaching sedition! How vile, how unspeakable! Do you think we’re nothing but toys to play with, mere pawns in your game? How could you, Coll? How could you?”

Coll turned pale but didn’t answer, only standing rigid. “Oh, aye, hold your tongue! There’s nothing you can say, is there? You have wronged us, and there’s nothing more to be said about it! Now we’re all going to suffer in the duke’s dungeon, and all because you couldn’t be honest with us! We may be hanged for your lies!”

“But it wasn’t you!” Coll burst out. “None of you! We kept it secret from you all, you couldn’t have known about it! How could I imagine they would arrest you all with us?”

“A singular lack of imagination, for a player.” The spy watched Coll narrowly.

Coll rounded on the spy. “I’m not a player, damn it!”

“True,” Gar put in. “None of us three are players.”

“I’m a mercenary, a soldier!” Dirk told the man. “Did you see us do any acting? No! We carried spears onto the stage and off it, we held the gentlemen’s horses, we told the hecklers to shut up—we earned our keep! But did you ever hear any of us three say more than four words at a time on that stage?”

“No, there’s truth in that,” the spy admitted, and turned to Ciare. “You have convinced me, lass. It was all their doing, and none of your own.”

Ciare stared, then whipped about to glare at Coll again, turning pale.

“I never asked for more than justice,” he told her. “You’re innocent; you shouldn’t share my punishment.” His voice sank to a whisper. “You’ve done right.”

Her lips parted in a soundless cry, her eyes filled, and she turned away. Mama reached out and took the girl in her arms, and Ciare burst into tears.

“How touching,” the spy said, with full sarcasm, “but I’m afraid we can’t stay to see it. Put your arms behind your backs! Sergeant! Tie their wrists! That one, too!” He stabbed a finger at Coll. “He’s one of them. I’ve seen how he stays near the big one as much as he can!” He turned on Androv. “He’s theirs, isn’t he?”

Androv glanced at the rest of his company, weighed those he could save against those he could not, and croaked, “Yes.”

“Off with you, villein!” The spy caught Coll’s shoulder and spun him away to a soldier, who held him fast while another lashed his wrists behind his back. “You can rot in the duke’s prison until he’s good and ready to let you hang! Be off! ”

The spy reached up to give Gar a shove. The big man started meekly off, hands already reddening from the tightness of the bonds. Dirk and Coll stumbled after him, but the serfs heart was singing with the relief of a partial victory. Dicea and Mama had stayed with the players, and the spy seemed never to have guessed they were tied to Dirk and Gar! Silently, he blessed Androv, who hadn’t said a word to betray them. At least his mother and sister would be safe.