A Wizard in War

2

The knight shouted with anger and spurred his donkey. His men yelled with him and charged the giant’s companion.

Coll shouted in anger of his own and leaped in beside the shorter stranger. He whirled his spear like a quarterstaff, striking aside one sword after another. The donkey took one look at the man wall wielding a sword and sat down where he was. The knight gave a yelp of surprise and half-fell, half climbed off the beast. The giant laughed and stepped in, slashing. It was a halfhearted cut, but enough to make the armored knight scramble to guard and swing his sword to parry. Then the two of them set to in earnest.

Coll parried two more blades, not quite far enough—one of them grazed his arm, but he ignored it, not caring which stroke killed him, for he had known he was dead from the moment the false monk drew his sword. He saw a half-second’s opening and struck with the butt of his spear. It jabbed into the belly of the man to his left; he fell back with a grunt of pain—but another soldier stepped over him and struck. Coll barely had time to parry the thrust from his right before he had to turn the jab from his left, then snap his shaft up to block a blow from the front. He kept the movement going, though, bringing it down hard to his right, stabbing into the shoulder of his attacker just as the man was starting a strike of his own. The soldier dropped his spear with a yell of pain, and Coll fell to one knee, ducking under the stroke from his right, feeling the blade graze his cheek, waking pain, but he came up to stab from below at the man in front. His spearhead found blood; then his shoulder struck the man’s midriff, carrying the soldier into the spear of the one behind him.

Now Coll was free, leaping and turning at a fourth soldier. Another slammed into him from his side; agony streaked the back of his shoulders, but he drove his spear butt into the man’s belly, then yanked it back and cut with his spearhead as though it were a sword, slashing the arm of the soldier who had been on his right. The man staggered back, howling and clutching his wound, then tripped over one of his companions and fell.

And, suddenly, it was over, except for the two knights. The shorter stranger stood in the midst of three fallen soldiers, blood staining his sleeve and running down the side of his face, but the grin he gave Coll was sure and strong. Coll found himself grinning back. Then they turned together to watch the duel, both ready to leap in and help.

There was no need; it was clear the bigger man would already have won if his opponent hadn’t been wearing armor. As it was, blood was seeping through the chain mail between breastplate and hip guard, and the giant’s doublet was streaked with crimson. But the big man fought only with a rapier and dagger, where the knight hewed at him with a two-handed broadsword.

The giant leaped back from a particularly vicious slash, grunting, “Save it for an oak!” The knight stumbled after his sword, off balance, and the stranger stepped in with an extra push! The knight cried out and fell, but he rolled onto his back quickly, slashing as he rolled. The giant swung hard, knocking the sword on down to the earth, where he set one big foot on the blade. The knight cursed, trying to tug it free—then froze, seeing the sword tip poised over the eye-slit in his visor.

“Surrender,” the big stranger said softly, “or I strike.” The knight cursed him again and shouted, “Strike, coward!”

The stranger’s eyes narrowed, but he held the blade poised and said, without looking, “Dirk, shell this lobster for me, will you?”

“Come on,” Dirk said to Coll, and stepped forward to begin unbuckling the knight’s armor. The man cursed him furiously, but didn’t dare move for fear of the sword aimed at his eyes. Coll grinned and stepped in to help.

They threw the plate aside, revealing a heavily muscled man in a sweat-stained gambeson.

“Now the helmet,” the big man instructed, and pulled the sword tip back just long enough for Dirk to yank the helmet off the man. The knight was yellow haired and hard-faced, with cold grey eyes, a scar on his lip, and murder in his eyes.

“Back,” the big man instructed.

“Anything you say, Gar.” Dirk stepped back.

So did Gar. “Get up,” he said to the knight, “and take your sword.” He cast his own aside.

The knight stared in disbelief, then gave a gloating laugh as he scrambled to his feet, caught up his sword, and struck.

Gar danced back; the blade hissed by an inch from his chest. Before the knight could recover, Gar leaped in, caught his wrist on the backswing, and jammed the man’s elbow against his own. The knight cried out in surprise and pain; Gar twitched his arm, and the sword fell from nerveless fingers. Then the big man leaped back, letting the knight stumble free. He rubbed his arm, glaring up at Gar, and spat, “Son of a chancred whore!”

“Pleased to meet you.” Gar bowed. “Myself, I am a son of a lord.”

The knight’s face went purple at having his own insult turned back on him; he shouted with inarticulate rage, starting toward Gar—then pivoting and leaping at Dirk.

Coll stood frozen, taken by surprise, then shouted—but even as he did, Dirk swung his arms up, breaking the knight’s hold, then cracked a fist into his jaw. The knight stood poised for a moment, then fell and lay still.

“Sorry about that,” Gar said.

Dirk shrugged. “Accidents will happen. Next time, forget the stunts and just take out the competition, okay?”

“Comment noted,” Gar confirmed, then turned to Coll. “I hope you’re worth all this trouble, stranger.”

“Not to mention a few flesh wounds.” Dirk turned to Coll, too. “Of course, you took your share. Who are you, anyway?”

Coll stared at them, suddenly realizing that two total strangers had saved him. “Only Coll,” he said, “only a runaway serf and murderer.” He raised his spear to guard. “For your help, I thank you—but why?”

Gar ignored the spear. “We don’t like seeing one man attacked by a pack.”

“No, definitely not,” Dirk agreed. “Of course, there’s also the little matter of our needing a guide. We’re from out of town, see, and we figure we can get around quicker if we have someone who knows the territory.”

“Why … I can guide you through the lands for ten miles about,” Coll said slowly. “I’ve come to know them well, in this month of running and hiding. Beyond that, though, I know no more than you do—and if the lords find you harboring an outlaw, they’ll have your heads!”

Dirk shrugged. “They’ll have to take them first. Besides, how do we know you’re a criminal? You just bumped into us on the road—what did we know?”

Gar pulled tunic and hose from his saddlebag. “Whoever thought that a man dressed so well could be on the run?”

Coll stared. “For me?”

“Well, you’ll have to take a bath first.” Dirk drew a bottle from his saddlebag and came up to Coll, pouring some of the fluid onto a square of cloth. “Of course, we’d better see about those cuts. Hold still—this will sting.”

Coll eyed the cloth with misgiving, but stood his ground. Dirk wiped his shoulder, and Coll gasped with pain, then set his teeth, determined not to cry out. Instead, he managed to say, “You really mean to take me as your servant?”

“ ‘Hire’ is the term,” Gar said helpfully. “You may not know the territory very far away, but you do know which lord is which, and who hates whom—and I suspect you could make a rather shrewd guess as to which will attack the other.”

Dirk stepped back, turning some sort of black cap onto the bottle in place of a cork, and Coll relaxed; the stinging was already passing. “Who will attack?” He shrugged. “Any of the lords. But they will attack the new king, not one another. They have been patching up their feuds ever since he was crowned, getting ready to teach him his place.”

Gar raised his eyebrows. “I thought your noblemen were always fighting one another.”

“They are, and it’s a blessed rest,” Coll told him. “Of course, Graf Knabe is still fighting Count Gascon, and Duke Vladimir is defending his border from the raids of the Marquis de la Port—but their families have been fighting for as long as anyone can remember.”

“So they certainly wouldn’t stop for a mere little thing like a coronation, eh?” Gar asked.

“Of course not,” Dirk answered. “Why waste a perfectly good feud?” He turned back to Coll. “So it’s going to be one of the lords attacking the new king, eh?”

Coll shrugged. “Unless he attacks one of them first.”

“In which case, they’ll all pile in on top of him?”

“They might,” Coll said slowly, “but they also might sit back and wait till he is weakened. If His Majesty wins, some others will look for excuses to attack him, while the neighbors of the losing lord divide up his estates.”

“Sure. Why not wait till they’re both weakened?” Dirk said.

“No reason that I can think of.” Coll didn’t seem to recognize sarcasm—or didn’t see any place for it. “Some of the village elders favor the one, some the other. One or two do think the lords will all attack the king without waiting for cause, though.”

“Quite a country,” Dirk said to Gar, “when every peasant with a few years’ experience could teach a course in political intrigue.”

Gar shrugged. “We learn what we need, to stay alive.” Then to Coll, “However, since Dirk and I haven’t learned yet, we’d like to take you along as a teacher.”

Coll gave a harsh laugh. “Teacher? When was a serf taught to read or write?”

“Only after the revolution.” Dirk’s face hardened. Coll frowned. “What is a revolution?”

“The peasants getting fed up with the lords,” Dirk explained. “No, I think you have all the qualifications we need. What’s your name, by the way?”

“Coll,” the outlaw said, bemused. “But I tell you, I know nothing! ”

“And we tell you that you know everything we need to learn,” Gar corrected. “Besides, we can be sure whose side you’re on.”

“Yes, you can.” Coll’s face was stone, but turned to confusion again as he blurted, “How can you trust me, though? I’m an outlaw! A killer!”

“What kind of choice did you have?” Gar asked.

“I could have let a knight take my sister,” Coll said grimly, and felt the bitterness rise again. “He probably did, anyway.”

Gar and Dirk exchanged a glance. Dirk gave a nod and turned back to Coll. “Yeah, we can trust you. Now about that bath…”

Dirk helped Coll bathe—helped by giving him a cake of real, actual soap, some sort of oily potion to clean his hair—then some brown liquid to rinse it with. Gar gave him a length of soft, fluffy cloth to dry his body. As Coll pulled on the leggins—no, hose!—he protested, “What if someone from my village should see me? Or one of my lord’s men?”

“They won’t recognize you,” Dirk assured him, “or did you have those scars on your face before you left home?”

“Well … no.” Coll hadn’t thought of that.

“Besides, they all know that Coll has yellow hair.” Gar drew a polished circle of metal from his saddlebag. “Look!” Coll looked at the circle, and saw a face looking back. He stared in shock—it looked very little like the face he had seen staring back from the still pool only a month before! It was hardened, scarred—and topped with brown hair! He looked up at Gar wide-eyed. “What magic is this?”

“Hair dye,” Gar explained, “though it does look a little odd with that yellow beard. We’re going to teach you a new skill, Coll.”

The serf stared up at him. “A skill?”

“It’s called ‘shaving.’ ” Dirk unfolded a strange, square-ended blade from its hollow wooden handle. “You do it with a razor, like this. Hold still, now—this won’t hurt much.”

Which was more or less true, at least compared to being wounded with a spear—but it hurt enough that Coll was dismayed to hear he was going to have to do it every day. When he looked in the mirror again, though, he didn’t recognize himself at all. Why, he was bare-faced as any knight! Or at least a squire… “You were right! Even my neighbors would never know me now!”

“I’m sure they wouldn’t,” Dirk agreed. “Still, it never hurts to make sure. Which way is your home village, Coll?” Coll pointed to the west. “That way, on Earl Insol’s estates.”

“Then we’ll go east.” Dirk mounted his horse. “What lies that way?”

“The king’s own demesne,” Coll answered.

Dirk and Gar exchanged another glance. “Well,” the big man said, as he mounted his tall roan, “no matter who attacks whom, we’ll be there to see it. Do they hire extra soldiers, Coll?”

“Free lances? Yes, and there are many of them riding the roads.” Coll frowned. “If they can’t find work, they turn bandit—and far more cruel than I’ve ever been, from what the minstrels sing!”

Dirk nodded. “That’s the kind of work we’re looking for. You can still change your mind, Coll. You don’t have to come along.”

Coll looked back at his hill and thought of the knight and his men who would be coming to about now and discovering the dead bodies among them. “Thank you for the choice, fine gentleman—but when I think it all through, I find I would just as soon come with you.”

The tunic and hose were made of good stout broadcloth, better than any Coll had ever worn.

By midafternoon, they had come out of the wastelands and were riding through farmland that had been fruitful sometime in the past. Now, though, the rolling fields were littered with broken spear shafts and wagons, lying on their sides or in pieces, rotted spokes drooping from wheels that no longer had their iron rims. Among them lay the bones of horses and oxen, picked clean—and even, here and there, the bones of men, some with rags of livery still clinging to them, flapping in the breeze. Occasionally they saw a broken spearhead or halberd blade; all other iron was gone, scavenged.

The wreckage clustered along lines where armies had met and fought, lines that divided the fields in place of the hedges that had been trampled underfoot. Peasants were plowing those fields again, as the needs of life triumphed once more over the profligacy of death.

“This was a hard battle.” Gar gazed out over the fields, his face somber. “Who fought whom?”

Yes, they were outlanders. “Count Ekhain and Earl Insol,” Coll told them. “The wasteland is Count Ekhain’s; the little river that borders it also borders these rich lands of Earl Insol’s—or lands that were rich, once.”

“So Count Ekhain tried to take them, and Earl Insol fought him off,” Gar interpreted. “Did Ekhain have any excuse?”

“Excuse?” Coll stared. “Why would he need an excuse?”

“Why indeed?” Gar murmured.

“Some sort of justification, maybe?” Dirk prodded. Coll shrugged. “What justice could there be in war?”

“That plowman.” Gar nodded toward the nearest field, where a grey-headed man with a white beard wrestled with a share. A boy ran along beside the beast’s head with a switch, shouting at the animal now and again to keep it in a straight line. “Isn’t he a little old to be cutting a furrow?”

“Yes, but what choice has he?” Coll replied. “All the young men and the fathers are away at war. Who is left to guide the plow but the grandfathers?”

Gar shuddered. “Let’s hope the war will be over soon!”

“What matter?” Coll shrugged again. “There will be another one in a few months.”

Gar turned to stare at him. “Always?”

“For as long as I can remember, at least,” Coll told him, “and my father before me.” Really, he was beginning to think these men weren’t just strangers—they must be simpletons, too, not to see something so obvious. Wars end? How could wars ever end?

Of course, they might not have been simpletons, but simply from very far away indeed. For a moment, excitement stirred in Coll’s breast. Could there actually be places where wars did end? Where a whole county or duchy might find ten or twenty years of peace? But he shrugged off the notion almost as soon as it came. Fairies and elves were real—everyone knew that, even though they had never seen them—but a land without war? Impossible!

Dirk nodded at the plowman, his white hair tousled by the wind. “How old is that grandfather? Sixty? Or only fifty?”

“Fifty!” Coll stared, amazed. “Few serfs indeed live to that age! No, sir, that man is surely only thirty-five, perhaps forty at the most!”

Dirk stared, and Coll could see that he was unnerved. “I would age early too, in such a land,” Gar said gently. Dirk swallowed thickly and nodded.

Coll was all the more flabbergasted. Surely they were crazed! Surely there could not truly be a land where plowmen lived to be sixty! A lord might live that long, but surely not a serf—and to still look youthful at thirty-five? Impossible!

A similar thought seemed to have occurred to Gar, because he turned and asked, “I had thought you were in your thirties, Coll. How old are you?”

“Thirties?” Coll stared, wondering if he should take offense. “I am twenty, sir!”

“Indeed.” Gar sat gazing at him for a minute, then nodded and turned his face back to the road. “I think we chose the right place, Dirk.”

“I should say we did!” Dirk averred, and came after him.

Coll followed Dirk, wondering.

Then he saw the woman sitting by the roadside with a miserable, scrawny child clutched to each side of her, and anxiety stabbed him. How long before Earl Insol warred against the king? How long before the soldiers reached Coll’s mother and sister? For surely the knight would already have sent Dicea home grieving … His blood boiled at the thought, but Dirk’s voice distracted him, even though he was speaking in a low voice, to Gar. “How old is the woman?”

“I would have said fifty,” Gar replied, “but judging by what Coll’s been telling us, she can’t be more than thirty.” Coll glanced at the woman and nodded.

“Are those boys or girls?” Gar’s voice was still pitched low. “Or one of each?”

“Can’t say, just by looking,” Dirk replied, “but I’d guess they were five years old, both.”

“So skinny…” Gar shuddered.

Coll looked more closely, and felt a stab of pity. These were children who had never known a time without war, without soldiers marching through their village—and never known a day without hunger, or with enough to eat. He wondered if their father still lived, and if so, with which army he marched.

The woman raised bleary eyes at the sound of the horses’ hooves, then pushed herself to her feet with a sudden burst of energy, cupped hands outstretched. “Alms, good sirs! A penny for the children, a heel of bread, a crust! ”

“More than that!” Dirk said with indignation, even a little anger. He pulled a loaf from his saddlebag.

Gar touched him on the shoulder. “Not too much. They’re starving…”

Coll frowned. Surely, if they were starving, that was all the more reason to give them as much as they would take! But it was the knights’ food, after all, and if they didn’t want to share too much, who could blame them?

Dirk gave a curt nod, broke off the heel, and handed it to the woman. She took it eagerly and started to break it, but Dirk said, “No. One for each of you.”

The woman froze, staring at him, amazed.

Dirk broke off another piece, and another, taking up half the loaf, and handed them down. “Here, eat.” As they began to gobble the bread, he looked a question at Gar, who nodded, and Dirk turned around to dismount. “Some broth would help.” He took a pot and a handful of rods from his saddlebag, and a small box with them. Stepping off the road, he unfolded the rods and set a ring with four short legs on the ground. He kindled a fire beneath it, set the pot on top of it, poured in water from his water bag, took a cube of something dark from the box, and dropped it in. The woman watched him with curious, avid eyes, and as the water began to boil, she sniffed the aroma of beef broth with delight. “It has to boil,” Dirk told her, “then cool—but it will be good to drink.”

The children pressed in, half hiding behind their mother, staring at the pot with famished eyes.

“Are your children boys or girls?” Dirk asked with a gentle smile—but the woman stiffened with alarm, clutching both little ones to her as she rattled, “Boys, sir, both boys!”

Coll wondered why Dirk seemed so startled. Surely he must know that any girl had to be protected from the lords’ soldiers, no matter how young.

“They’re fine young lads of ten and twelve,” the mother assured Dirk. Coll understood why the knight seemed so startled, so troubled, for he had heard him guess at their ages.

Mother and children were sitting by the roadside, eating a little more bread and drinking the broth from wooden mugs, when harness jingled, and horse hooves sounded on the road.

“Company,” Gar said softly, and Dirk paused in the act of dropping his cooking gear back into his saddlebag, to look up at the armored knight with his dozen men behind him, coming up the road toward them. Dirk mounted his horse as Gar said in a hard, low voice, “Take them into the woods, Coll.”

“Go along with you now!” Coll shooed the mother and children off the road and into the trees. They turned and ran, still holding their mugs. Once behind the screen of leaves, Coll called, “Finish your broth, leave the mugs, then go as quickly and quietly as you may.”

The woman nodded, wide-eyed; the children drank off the rest of their ration, and the mother brought their cups to Coll. He gave her a curt nod, never taking his eyes from the roadway, never turning to watch them lose themselves in the woods. He was far too concerned with watching the knight ride up to Coll’s new masters, gesturing to his men to surround them, saying curtly to Gar and Dirk, “I hereby impress you into His Majesty’s service!”

Coll felt as though something were breaking inside him, felt as though the scrap of hope the two men had offered were being snatched away—then felt fear mount in its place as Dirk said, loudly and dryly, “We are not impressed.”