King Kobold Revived

Chapter 2

And something struck his heels, throwing him back. Something hard, heels, hips, and shoulders, and he tucked his chin in from reflex.

And fire burned in the blackness.

A campfire, only it burned in a small iron cage, black bars slanting up to a point.

Rod’s eyes fastened on that cage for the simple reassurance of solid geometry in a world suddenly crazy. It was a tetrahedron, a fire burning inside a tetrahedron.

But what the hell was it doing here?

And for that matter, where was “here”?

Rephrase the question; because, obviously, the fire and cage belonged here. So…

What was Rod doing here?

Back to Question Number Two: Where was “here”?

Rod started noticing details. The floor was stone, square black basalt blocks, and the fire burned in a shallow circular well, surrounded by the basalt. The walls were distant, hard to see in the dim light from the fire; they seemed to be hung with velvet, some dark deep color, not black. Rod squinted—it looked to be a rich maroon.

The hell with the curtains. Gwen…

A sudden, numbing fear pervaded Rod. He was scarcely able to turn his head, was afraid to look, for fear she might not be there. Slowly, he forced his gaze around the darkened chamber, slowly…

A great black form lay about ten feet from him: Fess.

Rod knelt and felt for broken bones, taking things in easy stages. Satisfied that he didn’t have to be measured in fractions, he clambered carefully to his feet and went over to the horse.

Fess was lying very still, which wasn’t like him; but he was also very stiff, each joint locked, which was like him when he had had a seizure. Rod didn’t blame him; being confronted with that journey, he could do with a seizure himself—or at least a mild jolt; bourbon, for instance…

He groped under the saddlehorn and found the reset switch.

The black horse relaxed, then slowly stirred, and the great head lifted. The eyes opened, large, brown, and bleary. Not for the first time, Rod wondered if they could really be, as the eye-specs claimed, plastic.

Fess turned his head slowly, looking as puzzled as a horsehair-over-metal face can, then turned slowly back to Rod.

“Di-dye… chhhab a… zeizure, RRRRRodd?”

“A seizure? Of course not! You just decided you needed a lube job, so you dropped into the nearest grease station.” Rod tactfully refrained from mentioning just how Fess had “dropped in.”

“I… fffai-led you innn… duhhh… momenduv…”

Rod winced at the touch of self-contempt that coated the vodered words and interrupted. “You did all you could; and since you’ve saved my life five or six times before, I’m not going to gripe over the few times you’ve failed.” He patted Fess between the ears.

The robot hung his head for a moment, then surged to his feet, hooves clashing on the stone. His nostrils spread; and Rod had a strange notion his radar was operating, too.

“We arrre inna gread chall,” the robot murmured; at least when he had seizures, he made quick recoveries. “It is stone, hung with maroon velvet curtains; a fire burns in the center in a recessed well. It is surrounded by a metal, latticework tetrahedron. The metal is an alloy of iron containing, nickel and tungsten in the following percentages…”

“Never mind,” Rod said hastily. “I get the general idea.” He frowned suddenly, turning away, brooding. “I also get the idea that maybe my wife isn’t dead; if she was, her body would have been there. So they’ve kidnapped her?”

“I regret…”

“ ‘That the data is insufficient for…’ ” Rod recited with him. “Yeah, yeah. Okay. So how do we find her?”

“I regret…”

“Skip it. I’ve got to find her.” He struck his forehead with his fist. “Where is she?”

“In the next room,” boomed a deep, resonant voice. “She is unharmed and quite well, I assure thee. Agatha is there also.”

A tall old man with long white hair streaming down over his shoulders and a long white beard down his chest, in a long, dark-blue monk’s robe with the hood thrown back, stood by the fire. His robe was sprinkled with silver zodiac signs; his arms were folded, hands thrust up the wide, flaring sleeves. His eyes were surrounded by a network of fine wrinkles under white tufts of eyebrows; but the eyes themselves were clear and warm, gentle. He stood tall and square-shouldered near the fire, looking deep into Rod’s eyes as though he were searching for something.

“Whoever you are,” Rod said slowly, “I thank you for getting me out of a jam and, incidentally, for saving my life. Apparently I also owe you my wife’s life, and for that I thank you even more deeply.”

The old man smiled thinly. “You owe me nothing, Master Gallowglass. None owe me ought.”

“And,” Rod said slowly, “you owe nothing to anyone. Hm?”

The wizard’s head nodded, almost imperceptibly.

Rod chewed at the inside of his cheek and said, “You’re Galen. And this is the Dark Tower.”

Again the old man nodded.

Rod nodded too, chewing again. “How come you saved me? I thought you ignored the outside world.”

Galen shrugged. “I had an idle moment.”

“So,” said Rod judiciously, “you saved two witches, my horse, and my humble self, just to kill time.”

“Thou art quick to comprehend,” said Galen, hiding a smile deep in his beard. “I had no pressing researches at the moment.”

“Rod,” Fess’s voice murmured, “an analysis of vocal patterns indicates he is not telling the whole truth.”

“For this I need a computer?” Rod muttered dryly.

Galen tilted his head closer, with a slight frown. “Didst thou speak?”

“Oh, uh—just an idle comment about the physical aspects of thought.”

“Indeed.” The old wizard’s head lifted. “Dost thou, then, concern thyself with such problems?”

Rod started to answer, then remembered that he was talking to a wizard who had locked himself away for forty years and had gained power continually throughout that time—and it wasn’t because he’d been fermenting. “Well, nothing terribly deep, I’m afraid—just the practical side of it.”

“All knowledge is of value,” the wizard said, eyes glittering. “What bit of knowledge hast thou gained?”

“Well… I’ve just been getting some firsthand experience in the importance of the prefrontal lobes.” Rod tapped his forehead. “The front of the brain. I’ve just had a demonstration that it acts as a sort of tunnel.”

“Tunnel?” Galen’s brows knit. “How is that?”

Rod remembered that the original Galen had authored the first definitive anatomy text back at the dawn of the Terran Renaissance. Had to be coincidence—didn’t it? “There seems to be a sort of wall between concept and words. The presence of the concept can trigger a group of sounds—but that’s like someone tapping on one side of a wall and someone on the other side taking the tapping as a signal to, oh, let’s say… play a trumpet.”

Galen nodded. “That would not express the thought.”

“No, just let you know it was there. So this front part of the brain”—Rod tapped his forehead again—“sort of makes a hole in that wall and lets the thought emerge as words.”

Galen slowly nodded. “A fascinating conjecture. Yet, how could one verify its accuracy?”

Rod shrugged. “By being inside the mind of someone who doesn’t have prefrontal lobes, I suppose.”

Galen lost his smile, and his eyes lost focus. “Indeed we could—an we could find such a person.”

Rod couldn’t help a harsh bark of laughter. “We’ve got ‘em, Master Wizard—more than we want. Much more! The peasants call ‘em ‘beastmen,’ and they’re raiding our shores.” He remembered the alarm, and guilt gnawed at him. “Raiding ‘em right now, come to think of it.”

“Truly?” The old wizard actually seemed excited. “Ah, then! When I finish my current tests I will have to let my mind drift into one of theirs!”

“Don’t rush ‘em,” Rod advised. “But please do rush me! I’m needed at the home front to help fight your test group—and I’d kinda like to take my wife back with me.”

“As truly thou shouldst.” Galen smiled. “Indeed, there is another here whom thou must also conduct away from this Dark Tower.”

“Agatha? Yeah, I want her too—but not for the same reasons. Would you happen to know where they are?”

“Come,” said Galen, turning away, “thy wife is without the chamber.”

Rod stared after him a moment, surprised at the old man’s abruptness; then he shrugged and followed, and Fess followed Rod.

The wizard seemed almost to glide to the end of the cavernous room. They passed through the maroon hangings into a much smaller room—the ceiling was only fifteen feet high. The walls were hung with velvet drapes, cobalt blue this time, and one huge tapestry. The floor boasted an Oriental carpet, with a great black carven wood chair at each corner. Roman couches, upholstered in burgundy plush, stood between the chairs. A large round black wood table stood in the center of the room before a fair-sized fireplace. Six huge calf-bound volumes lay open on the table.

Rod didn’t notice the splendor, though; at least, not the splendor of the furnishings. The splendor of his wife was something else again.

Her flame-red hair didn’t go badly with the cobalt-blue drapes, though. She stood at the table, bent over one of the books.

She looked up as they came in. Her face lit up like the aurora. “My lord!” she cried, and she was in his arms, almost knocking him over, wriggling and very much alive, lips glued to his.

An eternity later—half a minute, maybe?—anyway, much too soon, a harsh voice grated, “Spare me, child! Pity on a poor old hag who never was one tenth as fortunate as thou!”

Gwen broke free and spun about. “Forgive me, Agatha,” she pleaded, pressing back against her husband and locking his arms around her waist. “I had not thought…”

“Aye, thou hadst not,” said the old witch with a grimace that bore some slight resemblance to a smile, “but such is the way of youth, and must be excused.”

“Bitter crone!” Galen scowled down at her from the dignity of his full height. “Wouldst deny these twain their rightful joy for no reason but that it is joy thou never knew? Hath the milk of love so curdled in thy breast that thou canst no longer bear…”

“Rightful!” the witch spat in a blaze of fury. “Thou darest speak of ‘rightful,’ thou who hast withheld from me…”

“I ha’ heard thy caterwauls afore,” said Galen, his face turning to flint. “Scrape not mine ears again with thy cant; for I will tell thee now, as I ha’ told thee long agone, that I am no just due of thine. A man is not a chattel, to be given and taken like a worn, base coin. I am mine own man to me alone; I never was allotted to a woman, and least of all to thee!”

“Yet in truth thou wast!” Agatha howled. “Thou wert accorded me before thy birth or mine and, aye, afore the world were formed in God’s own mind. As sure as night was given day, wert thou allotted me; for thou art, as I am, witch-blood, and of an age together with me! Thy hates, thy joys, are mine…”

“Save one!” the wizard grated.

“Save none! Thine every lust, desire, and sin are each and all alike to mine, though hidden deep within thy heart!”

Galen’s head snapped up and back.

Agatha’s eyes lit with glee. She stalked forward, pressing her newfound advantage. “Aye, thy true self, Galen, that thou secretest veiled within thy deepest heart, is like to me! The lust and body weakness that ever I made public thou hast in private, mate to mine! Thus thou hast hid for threescore years thy secret shame! Thou hast not honesty enow to own to these, thy covered, covert sins of coveting! Thou art too much a coward…”

“Coward?” Galen almost seemed to settle back, relaxing, smiling sourly. “Nay, this is a cant that I ha’ heard afore. Thou wanest, Agatha. In a younger age, thou wouldst not so soon have slipped back upon old argument.”

“Nor do I now,” the witch said, “for now I call thee coward of a new and most unmanly fear! Thou who cry heed-lessness of all the world without the walls of thy Dark Tower; thou, who scornest all the people, fearest their opinion! Thou wouldst have them think thee saint!”

Galen’s face tightened, eyes widening in glare.

“A saint!” Agatha chortled, jabbing a finger at him. “The Saint of Hot and Heaving Blood! A saint, who hast as much of human failing as ever I did have, and great guilt! Greater! Aye, greater, for in thy false conceit thou hast robbed me of mine own true place with thee! For thou art mine by right, old Galen; ‘twas thou whom God ordained to be my husband, long before thy mother caught thy father’s eye! By rights, thou shouldst be mine; but thou hast held thyself away from me in cowardice and pompousness!”

Galen watched her a moment with shadowed eyes; then his shoulders squared, and he took a breath. “I receive only the curse that I have earned.”

Agatha stared for a moment, lips parting. “Thou wilt admit to it!”

Then, after a moment she fixed him with a sour smile. “Nay. He means only that he hath saved mine life six times and more; and thus it is his fault that I do live to curse him.”

She lifted her head proudly, her eyes glazing. “And in this thou mayst know that he is a weakling; for he cannot help himself but save us witches. It is within his nature, he who claims to care naught for any living witch or plowman. Yet he is our guardian and our savior, all us witches; for, if one of us should die when he might have prevented it, his clamoring conscience would batter down the weakness of a will that sought to silence it, and wake him in the night with haunted dreams. Oh, he can stand aloof and watch the peasant and the noble die, for they would gladly burn him; but a witch, who has not hurt him, and would render him naught but kindness—had he the courage or the manhood to be asking it—these he cannot help but see as part and parcel like him; and therefore must he save us, as he ha’ done a hundred times and more.”

She turned away. “Thou mayst credit him with virtue and compassion if thou wishest; but I know better.”

“ ‘Tis even as she saith,” said the old man proudly. “I love none, and none love me. I owe to none; I stand alone.”

Old Agatha gave a hoot of laughter.

“Uh… yes,” said Rod. The fight seemed to have reached a lull, and Rod was very eager to be gone before it refueled.

And since Galen’s brow was darkening again, it behooved Rod to make haste.

“Yes, well, uh, thanks for the timely rescue, Galen,” he said. “But now, if you’ll excuse us, we really gotta be getting back to Runnymede, uh—don’t we, Gwen?”

He paused suddenly, frowning at the old wizard. “I don’t, uh, suppose you’d consider coming back with us?”

Agatha’s head lifted slowly, fire kindling in her eye.

“I thank thee for thy kindness in offering of hospitality,” said the old wizard in a voice rigid with irony. “Yet greatly to my sorrow, I fear that I cannot accept.”

“Oh, to thy sorrow, to be sure!” spat Agatha. “Indeed, thou art the sorriest man that e’er I knew, for thou hast brought me sorrow deep as sin!”

She spun toward Rod and Gwen. “And yet, fear not; thy folk shall not go all unaided! There lives, at least, still one old witch of power threescore-years-and-ten in learning, who will not desert her countrymen in this time of need! There lives still one, aye, be assured; though this old gelding”—she jerked her head toward Galen—“will idly stand and watch thy folk enslaved, a power strong as his will guard thy land!” She stretched out her hand. “Come take me with thee, get us gone, for my stomach crawls within me at his presence! He thinks of naught but himself.”

“And thou dost not?” Galen grated, glaring at the old witch. “Is this aught but a sop to thy thwarted wish for mothering of a child thou never hadst?”

Agatha flinched almost visibly and turned, hot words on her tongue; but Galen raised an imperious hand and intoned:

“Get thee hence, to Runnymede!”

White light flared, burning, blinding.

When the afterimages faded, Rod could see, as well as feel, Gwen in his arms, which feeling had been very reassuring while the sun went nova.

He could dimly make out Agatha too, leaning shaken against a wall, a gray granite wall.

And a high timbered ceiling, and a knot of young witches and warlocks gathered around them, staring, eyes and mouths round.

Their voices exploded in clamoring questions.

Yep, home, Rod decided. It was obviously the Witches’ Tower in the King’s Castle at Runnymede.

He wondered what would happen if Galen ever got mad enough to tell someone to go to Hell.

One young warlock’s face thrust closer as he dropped to one knee. “Lord Warlock! Where has thou been?”

“Galen’s Dark Tower,” Rod croaked, and was rewarded with a huge communal gasp. He looked around at eyes gone round as wafers. “And as to how we got here—well, he sent us home.”

The teenagers exchanged glances. “We can wish ourselves from place to place,” said one of the warlocks, “but none of us can do it to another.”

“Yeah, well, Galen’s a little older than you, and he’s learned a few more tricks.” Privately, Rod wondered—that did amount to a new kind of psi power, didn’t it? Well, he was prepared for constant surprises. “Your name’s Alvin, isn’t it?”

“Thus am I called, Lord Warlock.”

Rod rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I seem to remember, before I lit out to find Gwen, something about the beastmen attacking?”

“Aye, milord. Their three long ships were only the vanguard. Behind them, their fleet did darken the waters.”

“Fleet?” Rod snapped completely out of his grogginess. “How many of them were there?”

“An army,” a girl answered from behind Alvin. “Thou couldst not call it less.”

Rod staggered to his feet, looking around. He saw the great black horse standing stiff-legged, head hanging low. Rod stumbled over to him and slid a hand under the head. It lifted, turning to look at him. Rod frowned. “No seizure, huh?”

“Indeed I did not,” the robot’s voice said in his ear only, “since I had experienced it once, and knew it to be possible. It thus did not cause great enough anxiety to trigger a seizure.”

“So,” Rod said carefully, “you were awake during the whole thing.”

The horsehead lifted higher. “I was. I… recorded it… all… I must play it back… very slowly… later… later…”

“Just offhand, what would you say… happened? Just at a guess.”

“A preliminary analysis would indicate that we passed through another dimension.” Fess’s body shuddered. “At least, I hope that is what I will decide happened.”

“Yeah.” Rod swallowed. “Uh. Well… decide it later, okay?” He set his foot in the stirrup and swung up onto the saddle. “We’ve got to get to the coast. Where’d you say they landed, Alvin?”

“At the mouth of the River Fleuve, milord. We wait as reserve, yet have heard no call.”

Rod took a more thorough look at the handful left in the room and realized there wasn’t a one over fourteen. Small wonder they hadn’t been called. If they had been, things would have been really desperate. Rod nodded. “The Fleuve isn’t too far. I might still get in on the action.” He leaned down from his saddle to plant a quick kiss on Gwen. “Keep the home fires burning, dear. Come help pick up the pieces when you’ve got your strength back.” He swung back upright and kicked his heels against Fess’s sides. The black horse started trotting toward the doorway, protesting, “Rod, the lintels are too low.”

“So I’ll duck. Upward and onward, Steel Steed! Ho, and away!”

“You forgot the ‘horse and hattock,’ ” Fess reminded.

Fess swept down the road to the south in the easy, tireless, rocking-chair gait possible only to electric horses. Rod sat back in the saddle and enjoyed the ride.

“Of course,” he was saying, “it’s possible this revivalist is just what he seemed to be, nothing more—just a neurotic, unordained religious nut. But somehow I find myself able to doubt it.”

“Coincidence is possible,” Fess agreed, “though scarcely probable.”

“Especially since his activities are weakening the war effort very nicely—nicely for the beastmen, that is. And why else would he start operating at just this particular time? He must have begun preaching a week or two before Catharine began recruiting; otherwise we would have had at least a few volunteers.”

“We may assume, then, that there is some correlation between the two phenomena—the war and the preacher,” Fess opined.

“Correlation, Hell! He’s working for ‘em, Fess! How else could you explain it?”

“I do not have an alternate theory prepared,” the robot admitted. “Nonetheless, the probability of direct collusion is extremely low.”

“Oh, come off it!”

“Examine the data, Rod. The Neanderthals and the preacher are separated by approximately a hundred miles of ocean. Moreover, there is no physiological resemblance apparent from the reports we have received.”

“A point,” Rod admitted. “Still, I say…”

“Pardon the interruption,” Fess said suddenly, “but… you are aware that I am using radar…”

“I should hope so, when we’re going sixty miles an hour!”

“Two flying objects have just passed overhead.”

Rod’s stomach sank. “Just a couple of birds, right?”

“I’m afraid not, Rod.”

Rod darted a glance at the sky. There they were, already dwindling in the distance—two broomsticks, with women attached. “They didn’t!”

“I fear they did, Rod. I estimate their equivalent ground speed in excess of one hundred miles per hour. And, of course, they can fly in a direct, straight line.”

“They’re gonna get to the battlefield before us!” Rod glared after the ladies, then heaved a sigh and relaxed. “Well… I suppose I should be glad they’ll be there in time to help out… Gwen will have enough sense to keep them both up in the sky, won’t she?”

“I trust not, since she will need to be able to concentrate all her powers in fighting the Evil Eye.”

“Yeah… I’d forgotten about that. Well!” Rod sighed and sat back. “That’s a relief!”

“I should think it would cause greater anxiety, Rod.” Fess actually sounded puzzled.

“No—because she’ll probably settle down wherever the Royal Witchforce is stationed—and Tuan’ll have ‘em very well guarded.” Rod grinned. “She’ll be safe in spite of herself. But just in case… step up the pace, will you?”

“Then did the Foemen fall upon us in endless waves. Their long ships were myriad, a plague of Dragons clawing up out of the ocean onto the beach, vomiting forth beastmen in their thousands. Tall, they were, and fanged, with their heads beneath their shoulders, and Murder in their eyes. Our doughty soldiers blanched and fell back; but the King exhorted them, and they held their places. Then did the High Warlock rise up before them, and Thunder smote the air, and Lightning blasted the ground about him. In a voice like unto a trumpet, he swore unto the soldiers that his Witches would ward the Evil Eye away from them; therefore he bade them march forth to meet and best the foemen, for the sakes of their Wives and Daughters and Sweethearts. Courage flowed from him to the heart of every soldier, and they began their march.

But the beastmen then had formed their line, and the lightning glittered from their shields and helms. They roared with bestial Lust and set forth against King Tuan’s army.

With a shout, the soldiers charged; yet each beastman caught the eyes of two among them, or mayhap three, then half a dozen, and froze them where they stood. Then did the beastmen laugh—a hideous, grating Noise—and ‘gan to stride forward to make Slaughter.

But the High Warlock cried out to his Witchfolk there on the hill from whence they watched the battle, and they joined hands in prayer, speeding forth the greatest of their Powers, grappling with the beastmen’s darkling Strength, and freeing the minds of all the soldiers from its Spell. The army then cried out in anger, striding forth with pikes upraised; but Thunder crashed, and Lightning smote the land, leaping up into the beastmen’s eyes, to freeze the soldiers there again within their tracks; and on their hill, the Witchfolk lay in a swoon, like unto Death—for the power of the demon Kobold had seared their minds.

And the beastmen grunted laughter and swung huge war axes, laying low the soldiers of the King.

The High Warlock cried out then in his Rage, and did ride down upon them on his steed of Night, laying about him with a sword of Fire, hewing through the beastmen’s line; while his wife and an ancient Hag of the Hills did hear his cry, and sped unto the battle. There they joined hands, and bent their heads in prayer, and did betwixt them what all the King’s Witchfolk together had done—grappled with the Kobold’s power, and lifted its spell from off our soldiers’ minds. Yet too many amongst them had fallen already; they could defend themselves but little more.

Then did the High Warlock again charge the beastmen’s line, chanting high his ancient War Song, and the soldiers heard it and took heart. They gave ground then, step by step, and laid waste such beastmen as were foolhardy enough to come nigh them; thus King Tuan brought them away from that cursed beach whereon so many of their Comrades did lie slain; thus he brought them up into the hills—battered, bruised, yet an army still—and bade them rest themselves and bind their wounds, assuring them their Time would come again.

And the High Warlock turned unto his wife upon the Hill, to consider how they might yet confound the beast-men; and they left the monsters to number their dead, and dig themselves deep Holes to hide in.”

—Chillde’s Chronicles of the Reign of Tuan and Catharine

Fess trotted up to the crest of the hill, and Rod stared down at the most miserable collection of teenage warlocks and witches he’d ever seen. They lay or sat on the ground, heads hanging, huddling inside blankets. Brother Chillde wove his way among them, handing out steaming mugs. Rod wondered what was in them—and wondered even more if the Lord Abbot knew that Brother Chillde was actually helping witchfolk. The little monk seemed, to say the least, unorthodox.

Then Rod realized that one of the blanketed ones was his wife.

“Gwen!” He leaped off Fess’s back, darting down to kneel by her side. “Are you… did you…” He gave up on words and gathered her into his arms, pressing her against his chest. “You feel okay___”

“I am well enough, my lord,” she said wearily; but she didn’t try to pull away. “Thou shouldst have greater care for these poor children—and for poor old Agatha.”

“Have care for thyself, if thou must,” spat the old crone. “I am nearly restored to full energy.” But she seemed just as droopy as the kids.

“What happened?” Rod grated.

Gwen pushed a little away from him, shaking her head. “I scarce do know. When we came, Toby and all his witchlings and warlocks lay senseless on the ground, and our soldiers stood like statues on the beach. The beastmen passed among them, making merry slaughter. Therefore did Agatha and I join hands to pool our power against the beastmen’s Evil Eye—and, oh, my lord!” She shuddered. “It was as though we heaved our shoulders up under a blackened cloud that lay upon us like unto some great, soft…” She groped for words. “ ‘Twas like the belly of a gross fat man, pushing down upon us—dark and stifling. Seemly it could soak up all the force that we could throw unto it; yet we heaved up under, Agatha and I; we did lift it off our soldiers’ minds so that they could, at least, defend themselves—though scarcely more; they were sorely outnumbered. Then lightning rent the sky, and that huge, dark bank fell down upon us, smothering.” She shook her head, eyes closed. “ ‘Tis all that I remember.”

“Yet ‘twas enow.”

Rod looked up; Brother Chillde stood near them, his eyes glowing. “Thy wife, milord, and her venerable crone held off the beastmen’s power long enow.”

“Long enough for what?”

“For King Tuan to retreat back up this slope with the remnant of his soldiers, far enough so that the beastmen durst not follow. Nay, they stayed below, and began to dig their graves.”

“Theirs or ours?” Rod grated. He surged to his feet, giving Gwen’s hand a last squeeze, and strode to the brow of the hill.

A hundred feet below, the river-mouth swept into a long, gentle curve—a bow; and the beastmen were stringing that bow. They were digging, but not graves—a rampart, a fortress-line. Already, it was almost complete. Rod looked down and swore; they’d have a hell of a time trying to dig the beastmen out of that!

Then he saw what lay on the near side of the rampart—a jumbled row of bloody bodies, in the royal colors.

Rod swore again. Then he spat out, “They had to be planning it. They just had to. Somebody had to have put the idea into Gwen’s mind—the idea to go see old Agatha; somebody had to have told that nutty preacher to attack Agatha’s cave right then. Right then, so I’d be pulled away and couldn’t be here! Damn!”

“Do not berate thyself so severely, Lord Warlock,” Tuan said wearily behind him. “ ‘Twas not thy absence that defeated us.”

“Oh?” Rod glared up at him. “Then what was it?”

Tuan sighed. “The power of their Kobold, like as not!”

“Not!” Rod whirled away to glare down at the beach. “Definitely ‘not’! That Kobold of theirs can’t be anything but a wooden idol, Tuan! It’s superstition, sheer superstition!”

“Have it as thou wilt.” Tuan shrugged his shoulders. “It was the beastmen’s Evil Eye, then. We did not think its power would be so great, yet it blasted our witches’ minds and froze our soldiers in their tracks. Then the beastmen slew them at their leisure.”

‘’ ‘Twas the lightning,‘’ Agatha grated in a hollow voice.

Tuan turned toward her, frowning. “What goodly beldam is this, Lord Warlock? Our debt to her is great, yet I wot me not of her name.”

“That’s just ‘cause you haven’t been introduced. She’s, uh, well… she’s kinda famous, in her way.”

Agatha grimaced, squinting against a throbbing headache. “Temporize not, Lord Warlock. Be direct, e’en though it may seem evil. Majesty, I am called ‘Angry Agatha.’ ” And she inclined her head in an attempt at a bow.

Tuan stared, and Rod suddenly realized that the King was young enough to have heard some nasty nursery tales himself. But Tuan was never short on courage; he forced a smile, took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and stepped up to the old lady. “I must needs thank thee, revered dame, for without thee, my men and I had been naught but butcher’s meat.”

Agatha peered up at him through narrowed eyes; then slowly she smiled. “Mine head doth split with agony, and I ache in every limb; yet would I do this service again for so handsome a thanking.” The smile faded. “Aye, or even without it; for I think that I have saved some lives this day, and my heart is glad within me.”

Tuan stood, gazing down at her for a moment.

Then he cleared his throat and turned to Rod. “What manner of hill-hag is this, Lord Warlock? I had thought the ancients ‘mongst the witches were all sour and bitter and hated all of humankind.”

“Not this one, it turns out,” Rod said slowly. “She just hated the way people treated her…”

“Oh, still thy prattle!” Agatha snapped. “I do hate all men, and all women, too, Majesty—unless I’m near them.”

Tuan turned back to her, nodding slowly with glowing eyes. “Now, God save thee! For hypocrisy such as thine would confound the very Devil! Praise Heaven thou wert here!”

“And curse me that I wasn’t!” Rod snapped, turning to glower down at the entrenched beastmen.

“Again thou hast said it!” Tuan cried, exasperated. “What ails thee, Lord Warlock? Why dost thou say that thou wert absent, when thou wert here in truth, and fought as bravely as any—aye, and more!”

Rod froze.

Then he whirled about. “What!”

“Thou wast here, indeed.” Tuan clamped his jaw shut. “Thou wert here, and the beastmen could not freeze thee.”

“I’ truth, they could not!” Brother Chillde cried, his face radiant. “Thou didst sweep across their line, Lord Warlock, like unto a very tempest, laying about thee with thy sword of flame. Five at a time thou didst grapple with, and conquer! Their whole line thou didst confound and craze! And ’twas thou who didst give heart unto our soldiers, and didst prevent their retreat from becoming a rout.”

“But… that’s impossible! I…”

“ ‘Tis even as he doth say, my lord.” Gwen’s voice was low, but it carried. “From this hilltop did I see thee far below; and ’twas thou who didst lead, even as this good friar saith.”

Rod stared at her, appalled. If she didn’t know him, who did?

Then he turned away, striding down the back of the hill.

“Hold, Lord Warlock! What dost thou seek?” Tuan hurried to keep pace with him.

“An on-the-spot witness,” Rod grated. “Even Gwen could be mistaken from a distance.”

He skidded to a stop beside a knot of soldiers who huddled under the protection of a rocky overhang. “You there, soldier!”

The soldier lifted his tousled blond head, holding a scrap of cloth to a long rent in his arm.

Rod stared, amazed. Then he dropped to one knee, yanking the cloth off the wound. The soldier yelled, galvanized. Rod glanced up and felt his heart sink; surely that face belonged to a boy, not a man! He turned back to the wound, inspecting it. Then he looked up at Tuan. “Some brandywine.”

“ ‘Tis here,” the young soldier grated.

Rod looked down and saw a bottle. He poured a little on the cut and the soldier gasped, long and with a rattle, his eyes nearly bulging out of his head. Rod tore open his doublet and tore a strip of cloth from his singlet. He held the wound closed and began to wrap the bandage around it. “There’s a lot of blood, but it’s really just a flesh wound. We’ll have to put some stitches in it later.” He looked up at the young ranker. “Know who I am?”

“Aye,” the young man gasped. “Thou’rt the Lord High Warlock.”

Rod nodded. “Ever seen me before?”

“Why, certes! Thou didst stand beside me in the melee! Thou wert then no farther from me than thou art now!”

Rod stared up at him. Then he said, “Are you sure? I mean, absolutely sure?”

“Nay, be sure that I am! Had it not been for the sight of thee, I’d ha’ turned and fled!” Then his eyes widened and he glanced quickly at his companions, flushing; but they only nodded somber agreement.

“Take heart.” Tuan slapped his shoulder. “Any would have fled such a battle, an they could have.”

The young soldier looked up, finally realized the King himself stood near, and almost fainted.

Rod grasped his shoulder. “You saw me, though. You really did see me.”

“Truly, my lord.” The young man’s eyes were wide. “I’ truth, I did.” He lowered his eyes, frowning. “And yet—’tis strange.”

“Strange?” Rod frowned. “Why?”

The young soldier bit his lip; then the words spilled out. “Thou didst seem taller in the battle—by a head or more! I could have sworn thou didst tower above all soldiers there! And thou didst seem to glow…”

Rod held his eyes for a moment longer.

Then he went back to wrapping the bandage. “Yeah, well, you know how it is during a battle. Everything seems bigger than it really is—especially a man on a horse.”

“Truth,” the young soldier admitted. “Thou wast astride.”

“Right.” Rod nodded. “Big roan horse.”

“Nay, milord.” The young soldier frowned. “Thy mount was black as jet.”

“Calm down, Rod,” Fess’s voice murmured, “you are beside yourself.”

“I am?” Rod looked around in a panic.

“It was a figure of speech,” the robot assured him. “Lower your anxiety level—you are quite definitely a singular personality.”

“I’d like to be sure of that.” Rod frowned down at the soldiers around him. He was walking through the camp, surveying what was left of Tuan’s army. Whether he’d been there during the battle or not, the mere sight of him was putting heart back into them. Personally, he felt sheepish, even guilty; but…

“Your presence is good for morale, Rod,” Fess murmured.

“I suppose,” Rod muttered. Privately, he wondered if he wasn’t “showing himself” to reassure himself that he was indeed himself. “I mean, the phenomenon is totally impossible, Fess. You do understand that, don’t you?”

Soldiers stared up at him in awe. Rod ground his teeth; he knew the rumor would fly through the camp that the Lord Warlock had been talking to his “familiar.”

“Certainly, Rod. Attribute it to mass hysteria. During the battle, they needed the reassurance that the Lord High Warlock stood by them, to oppose the beastmen’s magic. Then one soldier, in the heat of the fight, mistook some other knight for yourself, and doubtless cried out, ‘Behold the High Warlock!’ And all his fellows, in the gloom of a lightning-lit battle, also imagined that they saw you.”

Rod nodded, a little reassured. “Just a case of mistaken identity.”

“Lord Warlock?”

“Um?” Rod turned, looked down at a grizzled old sergeant who sat in the mud. “What’s the matter, ancient?”

“My boys hunger, Lord Warlock.” The ancient gestured to a dozen men in their young twenties, who huddled near him. “Will there be food?”

Rod stared down at him.

After a moment, he said, “Yeah. It’ll just take a little while. Rough terrain, and wagons—you know.”

The ancient’s face relaxed. “Aye, milord.”

As Rod turned away, he heard a soldier say, “Surely he will not.” The man beside him shrugged. “A king is a king. What knows he of a common man-at-arms? What matters it to him if we are slain and frozen?”

“To King Tuan, it matters greatly,” the other said indignantly. “Dost not recall that he was King of Beggars ere he was King of Gramarye?”

“Still… he is a lord’s son…” But the other seemed to doubt his own prejudice. “How could a lordling care for the fate of common men!‘’

“Assuredly thou’lt not believe he wastes his soldiers’ lives?”

“And wherefore should I not?”

“Because he is a most excellent general, if for no reason other!” the first cried, exasperated. “He’ll not send us to our deaths unheeding; he is too good a soldier! For how shall he win a battle if he has too small an army?”

His mate looked thoughtful.

“He’ll husband us as charily as any merchant spends his gold.” The first soldier leaned back against a hillock. “Nay, he’ll not send us ‘gainst the foe if he doth not believe that most of us will live, and triumph.”

The other soldier smiled. “Mayhap thou hast the truth of it—for what is a general that hath no army?”

Rod didn’t wait for the answer; he wandered on, amazed by Tuan’s men. They weren’t particularly worried about the Evil Eye. Dinner, yes; being sent against the beastmen with the odds against them, yes; but, magic? No. Not if Tuan waited till he had the proper counterspell. “Put the average Terran in here,” he muttered, “put him against an Evil Eye that really works, and he’d run so fast you wouldn’t see his tracks. But the way these guys take it, you’d think it was nothing but a new kind of crossbow.”

“It is little more, to them,” Fess’s voice murmured behind his ear. He stood atop the cliff, far above, watching Rod walk through the camp. “They have grown up with magic, Rod—as did their fathers, and their grandfathers, and their ancestors—for twenty-five generations. The phenomena do not frighten them—only the possibility that the enemy’s magic might prove stronger.”

“True.” Rod pursed his lips, nodding. Looking up, he saw Brother Chillde winding a bandage around an older soldier’s head. The man winced, but bore the pain philosophically. Rod noticed several other scars; no doubt the man was used to the process. Rod stepped up to the monk. “You’re all over the field, good friar.”

Brother Chillde smiled up at him. “I do what I may, Lord Warlock.” His smile didn’t have quite the same glow it had had earlier.

“And a blessing it is for the men—but you’re only human, Brother. You need some rest yourself.”

The monk shrugged, irritated. “These poor souls do need mine aid far more, milord. ‘Twill be time enough for rest when the wounded rest as easily as they may.” He sighed and straightened, eyeing the bandaged head. “I’ve eased the passing of those who had no hope, what little I could. ‘Tis time to think of the living.” He looked up at Rod. “And to do what we can to ensure that they remain alive.‘’

“Yes,” Rod said slowly, “the King and I were thinking along the same lines.”

“Indeed!” Brother Chillde perked up visibly. “I am certain thou dost ever do so—yet what manner of aiding dost thou have a-mind?”

The idea crystallized. “Witches—more of ‘em. We managed to talk one of the older witches into joining us this time.”

“Aye.” Brother Chillde looked up at the hilltop. “And I did see that she and thy wife, alone, did hold off the beast-men’s Evil Eye the whiles our soldiers did retreat. Indeed, I wrote it in my book whilst yet the battle raged.”

Rod was sure he had—in fact, that’s why he’d told the monk. He seemed to be the only medieval equivalent to a journalist available, there being no minstrels handy.

Brother Chillde turned back to Rod. “Thy wife must needs be exceeding powerful.‘’

Rod nodded. “Makes for an interesting marriage.”

Brother Chillde smiled, amused, and the old soldier chuckled. Then the monk raised an eyebrow. “And this venerable witch who did accompany her—she, too, must have powers extraordinary.”

“She does,” Rod said slowly. “Her name’s ‘Angry Agatha.’ ”

The old soldier’s head snapped up. He stared; and two or three other soldiers nearby looked up too, then darted quick glances at each other. Fear shadowed their faces.

“She decided it’s more fun to help people than to hurt them,” Rod explained. “In fact, she’s decided to stay with us.”

Every soldier within hearing range began to grin.

“ ‘Tis wondrous!” Brother Chillde fairly glowed. “And dost thou seek more such ancient ones?”

Rod nodded. “A few more, hopefully. Every witch counts, Brother.”

“Indeed it doth! Godspeed thine efforts!” the monk cried. And as Rod turned away, Brother Chillde began to bandage another damaged soldier, chattering, “Dost’a hear? The High Warlock doth seek to bring the ancient wizards and the hill-hags to aid us in our plight!”

Rod smiled to himself; just the effect he’d wanted! By evening, every soldier in the army would know that they were fighting fire with blazing enthusiasm—and that the witches were going out for reinforcements.

He stopped, struck by another thought. Turning, he looked back up the hillside. Tuan stood, silhouetted against a thundercloud, arms akimbo, surveying the devastation below him.

You shouldn’t lie to your army. That’d just result in blasted morale—and, after a while, they’d refuse to fight, because they couldn’t be sure what they’d be getting into, that you wouldn’t be deliberately throwing their lives away.

Rod started back up the hill. He’d promised the rank and file more witch-power; he’d better convince Tuan.

Tuan’s head lifted as Rod came up to the brow of the hill; he came out of his brown study. “An evil day, Rod Gallowglass. A most evil day.”

“Very.” Rod noticed the use of his name, not his title; the young King was really disturbed. He stepped up beside Tuan and gazed somberly down at the valley with him. “Nonetheless, it could have been worse.”

Tuan just stared at him for a moment. Then, understanding, relaxed his face; he closed his eyes and nodded. “I’ truth, it could have. Had it not been for thy rallying of the troops… and thy wife, and Angry Agatha… i’ truth, all the witches…”

“And warlocks,” Rod reminded. “Don’t forget the warlocks.”

Tuan frowned. “I trust I will not.”

“Good. Then you won’t mind seeking out some more of them.”

“Nay, I surely will not,” Tuan said slowly. “Yet where wilt thou discover them?”

Rod sighed and shook his head. “The ladies had the right idea, Tuan. We should’ve gone out recruiting.”

Tuan’s mouth twisted. “What young witch or warlock will join us now, with this crazed preacher raising the whole of the land against them?”

“Not too many,” Rod admitted. “That’s why I’ve realized Gwen had the right idea.”

Tuan’s frown deepened in puzzlement. “Of what dost thou speak?”

“The old ones, my liege—starting with Galen.”

For the first time since Rod had known him, he saw fear at the back of Tuan’s eyes. “Rod Gallowglass—dost thou know whereof thou dost speak?”

“Yeah—a grown wizard.” Rod frowned. “What’s so bad about that? Don’t we want a little more mystical muscle on our side?”

“Aye—if he’s on our side i’ truth!”

“He will not be,” croaked Agatha from a boulder twenty feet away. “He doth care for naught but himself.”

“Maybe.” Rod shrugged, irritated. “But we’ve got to try, don’t we?”

“My lord,” Gwen said softly, “I ha’ told thee aforetime, ’tis the lightning that lends them their strength—and not even old Galen can fight ‘gainst a thunderbolt.’‘

Rod turned slowly toward her, a strange glint coming into his eye. “That’s right, you did mention that, didn’t you?”

Gwen nodded. “We did free our soldiers from the Evil Eye—but the lightning flared, and the witches lay unconscious. ‘Twas then the soldiers froze, and the beastmen mowed them like hay in summer.”

“Lightning,” Rod mused.

He turned away, slamming his fist into his palm. “That’s the key, isn’t it? The lightning. But how? Why? The answer’s there somewhere, if only I could find it and FESSten to it.”

“Here, Rod,” his mentor murmured.

“Why would the Evil Eye be stronger right after a lightning flash?” Rod seemed to ask of no one in particular.

The robot hesitated a half-second, then answered. “Directly prior to a lightning flash, the resistance of the path the bolt will follow lowers tremendously, due to ionization, thus forming a sort of conductor between the lithosphere and the iono-sphere.”

Rod frowned. “So?”

Tuan frowned, too. “What dost thou, Lord Warlock?”

“Just talking to myself,” Rod said quickly. “A dialogue with my alter ego, you might say.”

Fess disregarded the interruption. “The ionosphere is also capable of functioning as a conductor, though the current passed would have to be controlled with great precision.‘’

Rod’s lips formed a silent O.

Gwen sat back with a sigh. She had long ago acquired the wifely virtue of patience with her husband’s eccentricities. He would’ve been patient with hers as well, if he could find any (he didn’t think of esper powers as eccentric).

Fess plowed on. “The ionosphere is thus capable of functioning as a conductor between any two points on earth—though it would tend toward broadcast; to avoid loss of power some means of beaming would need to be developed. There are several possibilities for such limiting. Signals may thus travel via the ionosphere rather than by the more primitive method of…”

“Power, too,” Rod muttered. “Not just signals. Power.”

Gwen looked up, startled and suddenly fearful.

“Precisely, Rod,” the robot agreed, “though I doubt that more than a few watts would prove feasible.”

Rod shrugged. “I suspect psi powers work in milliwatts anyway.”

Tuan frowned. “Milling what?”

“That’s right. You wouldn’t need much for a psionic blast.”

Tuan eyed him warily. “Rod Gallowglass…”

“All that would be needed,” said Fess, “is a means of conducting the power to ground level.”

“Which is conveniently provided by the ionization of the air just before the lightning bolt, yes! But how do you feed the current into the ionosphere?”

Tuan glanced at Gwen; they both looked apprehensive.

Old Agatha grated, “What incantation’s this?”

“That,” said Fess virtuously, “is their problem, not ours.”

Rod snorted. “I thought you were supposed to be logical!”

Tuan’s head came up in indignation. “Lord Warlock, be mindful to whom you speak!”

“Huh?” Rod looked up. “Oh, not you, Your Majesty. I was, uh… talking to my, uh, familiar.”

Tuan’s jaw made a valiant attempt to fraternize with his toes. Rod could, at that moment, have read a gigantic increase in his reputation as a warlock in the diameters of Tuan’s eyes.

“So.” Rod touched his pursed lips to his steepled fingertips. “Somebody overseas lends the beastmen a huge surge of psionic power—in electrical form, of course; we’re assuming psionics are basically electromagnetic. The beastmen channel the power into their own projective telepathy, throw it into the soldier’s minds—somehow, eye contact seems to be necessary there…”

“Probably a means of focusing power. Unsophisticated minds would probably need such a mental crutch, Rod,” Fess conjectured.

“And from the soldiers’ minds, it flows into the witches’, immediately knocking out anyone who’s tuned in! Only temporarily, thank Heaven.”

“An adequate statement of the situation, Rod.”

“The only question now is: Who’s on the other end of the cable?”

“Although there is insufficient evidence,” mused the robot, “that which is available would seem to indicate more beast-men as donors.”

“Maybe, maybe.” Rod frowned. “But somehow this just doesn’t seem like straight ESP… Oh, well, let it pass for the moment. The big question is not where it comes from, but how we fight it.”

Tuan shrugged. “Thou hast said it, Lord Warlock—that we must seek out every witch and wizard who can be persuaded to join us.”

“We tried that, remember?” But Rod smiled, a light kindling in his eyes. “Now that we’ve got some idea about how the Evil Eye gains so much power so suddenly, we should be able to make better use of the available witch-power.”

The phrase caught Tuan’s military attention. A very thoughtful look came over his face. “Certes…” He began to smile himself. “We must attack.”

“What!?”

“Aye, aye!” Tuan grinned. “Be not concerned, Lord Warlock—I have not gone brain-sick. Yet, consider—till now, it has not been our choice whether to attack or not. Our enemy came in ships; we could only stand and wait the whiles they chose both time and place. Now, though, the place is fixed—by their earthworks.” He nodded contemptuously toward the riverbank below. “We do not now seek a single long ship in the midst of a watery desert—we have a camp of a thousand men laid out before us! We can attack when we will!”

“Yeah, and get chopped to pieces!”

“I think not.” Tuan grinned with suppressed glee. “Not if we fight only when the sky is dear.”

A slow smile spread over Rod’s face.

Tuan nodded. “We will make fray whilst the sun shines.”

“You must admit that the idea has merit, Rod,” Fess said thoughtfully. “Why not attempt it full-scale, immediately?”

“Well, for one thing, those earthworks are a major barrier.” Rod sat astride the great black robot-horse on top of the cliffs in the moonlight. “And for another, well… we’re pretty sure it’ll work, Fess, but…”

“You do not wish to endanger your whole army. Sensible, I must admit. Still, logic indicates that…”

“Yes, but Finagle’s Law indicates caution,” Rod interrupted. “If we made a full-scale frontal attack by day, we’d probably win—but we’d lose an awful lot of men. We might be defeated—and Tuan only bets on a sure thing, if he has a choice.”

“I gather he is not the only one who favors caution. Allow me to congratulate you, Rod, on another step towards maturity.”

“Great thanks,” Rod growled. “A few more compliments like that, and I can hold a funeral for my self-image. How old do I have to be before you’ll count me grown-up—an even hundred?”

“Maturity is mental and emotional, Rod, not chronological. Still, would it seem more pleasant if I were to tell you that you are still young at heart?”

“Well, when you put it that way…”

“Then, I will,” the robot murmured. “And to do you justice, Rod, you have never been a reckless commander.”

“Well… thanks.” Rod was considerably mollified. “Anyway, that’s why we’re just gonna try a raid first. We’ll hit ‘em under a clear sky where they’re weak.”

A dark shadow moved up beside them, about even with Rod’s stirrup. “The moon will set in an hour’s time, Rod Gallowglass.”

“Thanks, Your Elfin Majesty.” Rod looked down at Brom. “Any particular point in the earthworks that’s weaker than the others?”

“Nay. Yet should we spring up the riverbanks to attack them, then would they fall back amazed and confused, and elves might hap upon them and trip them in flight.”

Rod grinned. “While our men relieve their camp of everything portable, eh? Not such a bad idea.”

“I shall be amused,” Brom rumbled.

“You shall? They’ll just die laughing.”

The moon set, and Tuan gave the signal. A picked band of soldiers (all former foresters) clambered into the small boats Rod had hurriedly requisitioned from the local fishermen and rowed toward the beastmen’s camp with feathered oars.

But the advance party was already at work.

The sky was clear, the stars drifted across the hours; but there was no moon this night. The Neanderthal camp lay deep in gloom.

There are superstitions holding that the dark of the moon is a time conducive to magical, and not always pleasant, events. They are justified.

Watchfires dotted the plain locked within the semicircle of cliffs. Groups of beastmen huddled around the fires while sentries paced the shore. In the center of the camp, a large long hut announced the location of the chiefs.

The beastmen were to remember this night for a long time, wishing they could forget. Looking back, they would decide the defeat itself wasn’t all that bad; after all, they fought manfully and well, and lost with honor.

It was the prelude to the battle that would prove embarrassing…

While one of the small groups gathered around one of the fires were companionably swiping gripes as soldiers always have, a diminutive shadow crept unseen between two of them, crawled to the fire, and threw something in. Then it retreated, fast.

The beastmen went on grumbling for a few minutes; then one stopped abruptly and sniffed. “Dosta scent summat strange?” he growled.

The beastman next to him sniffed—and gagged—gripping his belly.

The smell reached the rest of the group very quickly, and quite generously. They scrambled for anywhere, as long as it was away, gagging and retching.

Closer to the center of the camp, a dark spherical object hurtled through the air to land and break open in the center of another group of beastmen. With an angry humming sound, tiny black flecks filled the air. The beastmen leaped up and ran howling and swatting about them with more motivation than effect. Little red dots appeared on their skins.

At another group, a series of short, violent explosions from the fire sent the beastmen jumping back in alarm.

At still another fire, a beastman raised his mug to his lips, tilted his head back, and noticed that no beer flowed into his mouth. He scowled and peered into the mug.

He dropped it with an oath as it landed on his toe, and jumped back with notable speed, holding one foot and hopping on the other as a small human figure scampered out of the mug with a high-pitched, mocking laugh.

The elf howled in high glee and scampered on through the camp.

Another beastman swung after him, mouthing horrible oaths as his huge club drove down.

A small hand swung out of the shadows and clipped through his belt with a very sharp knife.

The loincloth, loosened, wobbled a little.

In another two bounds, it had decidedly slipped.

The elf scampered on through the camp, chuckling, and a whole squad of beastmen fell in after him, bellowing, clubs slamming the ground where the elf had just been.

A small figure darted between them and the fugitive, strewing something from a pouch at its side.

The Neanderthals lunged forward, stepped down hard, and jumped high, screaming and frantically jerking leprechaun shoe-tacks out of their soles.

The fleeing elf, looking over his shoulder to laugh, ran smack into the ankles of a tall, well-muscled Neanderthal—a captain who growled, swinging his club up for the death-blow.

A leprechaun popped up near his foot and slammed him a wicked one on the third toe.

The captain howled, letting go of his club (which swung on up into the air, turning end over end) as he grabbed his hurt foot, hopping about.

He hopped up, and the club fell down and the twain met with a very solid and satisfying thunk.

As he went down, the fleeing elf—Puck—scampered away chortling.

He skipped into a tent, shouting, “Help! Help! Spies, traitors, spies!”

Three beastmen dashed in from the nearest campfire, clubs upraised and suspicions lowered, as the tent’s occupants swung at Puck and missed him. Outside, a score of elves with small hatchets cut through the tent ropes.

The poles swayed and collapsed as the tent fabric enfolded its occupants tenderly. The beastmen howled and struck at the fabric, and connected with one another.

Chuckling, Puck slipped out from under the edge of the tent. Within twenty feet, he had another horde of beastmen howling after him.

But the beastmen went sprawling, as their feet shot out from under them, flailing their arms in a losing attempt at keeping their balances—which isn’t easy when you’re running on marbles. They scrambled back to their feet somehow, still on precarious balance, whirling about, flailing their arms, and in a moment it was a free-for-all.

Meanwhile, the captain slowly sat up, holding his ringing head in his hands.

An elf leaned over the top of the tent and shook something down on him.

He scrambled up howling, slapping at the specks crawling over his body—red ants can be awfully annoying—executed a beautiful double-quick goose step to the nearest branch of the river and plunged in over his head.

Down below, a water sprite coaxed a snapping turtle, and the snapper’s jaws slammed into the captain’s already swollen third toe.

He climbed out of the water more mud than man, and stood up bellowing.

He flung up his arms, shouting, and opened his mouth wide for the hugest bellow he could manage, and with a splock, one large tomato, appropriately overripe, slammed into his mouth.

Not that it made any difference, really; his orders weren’t having too much effect anyway, since his men were busily clubbing at one another and shouting something about demons…

Then the marines landed.

The rowboats shot in to grate on the pebbles, and black-cloaked soldiers, their faces darkened with ashes, leaped out of the boats, silent in the din. Only their sword-blades gleamed. For a few minutes. Then they were red.

An hour later, Rod stood on the hilltop, gazing down. Below him, moaning and wailing rose from the beastmen’s camp. The monk sat beside him, his face solemn. “I know they are the foe, Lord Gallowglass—but I do not find these groans of pain to be cause for rejoicing.”

“Our soldiers think otherwise.” Rod nodded back toward the camp and the sounds of low-keyed rejoicing. “I wouldn’t say they’re exactly jubilant—but a score of dead beastmen has done wonders for morale.”

Brother Chillde looked up. “They could not use their Evil Eye, could they?”

Rod shook his head. “By the time our men landed, they didn’t even know where the enemy was, much less his eyes. We charged in; each soldier stabbed two beastmen; and we ran out.” He spread his hands. “That’s it. Twenty dead Neanderthals—and their camp’s in chaos. We still couldn’t storm in there and take that camp, mind you—not behind those earthworks, not with a full army. And you may be very sure they won’t come out unless it’s raining. But we’ve proved they’re vulnerable.” He nodded toward the camp again. “That’s what they’re celebrating back there. They know they can win.”

“And the beastmen know they can be beaten.” Brother Chillde nodded. “ ‘Tis a vast transformation, Lord Warlock.”

“Yes.” Rod glowered down at the camp. “Nasty. But vast.”

“Okay.” Rod propped his feet up on a camp stool and took a gulp from a flagon of ale. Then he wiped his mouth and looked up at Gwen and Agatha. “I’m braced. Tell me how you think it worked.”

They sat inside a large tent next to Tuan’s, the nucleus of a village that grew every hour around the King’s Army.

“We’ve got them bottled up for the moment,” Rod went on, “though it’s just a bluff. Our raids are keeping them scared to come out because of our ‘magic’—but as soon as they realize we can’t fight the Evil Eye past the first thunderclap, they’ll come boiling out like hailstones.”

The tassels fringing the tent doorway stirred. Rod noted it absently; a breeze would be welcome—it was going to be a hot, muggy day.

“We must needs have more witches,” Gwen said firmly.

Rod stared at her, appalled. “Don’t tell me you’re going to go recruiting among the hill-hags again! Uh—present company excepted, of course.”

“Certes.” Agatha glared. The standing cup at her elbow rocked gently. Rod glanced at it, frowning; surely the breeze wasn’t that strong. In fact, he couldn’t even feel it…

Then his gaze snapped back to Agatha’s face. “Must what?”

“Persuade that foul ancient, Galen, to join his force here with ours,” Agatha snapped. “Dost thou not hearken? For, an thou dost not, why do I speak?”

“To come up with any idea that crosses your mind, no matter how asinine.” Rod gave her his most charming smile. “It’s called ‘brainstorming.’ ”

“Indeed, a storm must ha’ struck thy brain, if thou canst not see the truth of what I say!”

The bowl of fruit on the table rocked. He frowned at it, tensing. Maybe a small earthquake coming…?

He pulled his thoughts together and turned back to Agatha. “I’ll admit we really need Galen. But how’re you going to persuade him to join us?”

“There must needs be a way.” Gwen frowned, pursing her lips.

An apple shot out of the bowl into the air. Rod rocked back in his chair, almost overturning it. “Hey!” Then he slammed the chair forward, sitting upright, frowning at Gwen, hurt. “Come on, dear! We’re talking serious business!”

But Gwen was staring at the apple hanging in the air; an orange jumped up to join it. “My lord, I did not…”

“Oh.” Rod turned an exasperated glare on Agatha. “I might have known. This’s all just a joke to you, isn’t it?”

Her head pulled back, offended. “What dost thou mean to say, Lord Warlock?”

A pear shot out of the bowl to join the apple and the orange. They began to revolve, up and around, in an intricate pattern.

Rod glanced up at them, his mouth tightening, then back to Agatha. “All right, all right! So we know you can juggle—the hard way, no hands! Now get your mind back to the problem, okay?”

“I?” Agatha glanced at the spinning fruits, then back to Rod. “Surely thou dost not believe ‘tis my doing!”

Rod just stared at her.

Then he said carefully, “But Gwen said she wasn’t doing it—and she wouldn’t lie, would she?”

Agatha turned her head away, disgusted, and ended looking at Gwen. “How canst thou bear to live with one so slow to see?”

“Hey, now!” Rod frowned. “Can we keep the insults down to a minimum, here? What am I supposed to be seeing?”

“That if I have not done it, and she hath not done it, then there must needs be another who doth do it,” Agatha explained.

“Another?” Rod stared up at the fruit, his eyes widening as he understood. He felt his hackles trying to rise. “You mean…”

“My son.” Agatha nodded. “Mine unborn son.” She waved a hand toward the spinning fruits. “He must needs fill the idle hour. Dost’a not know that young folk have not great patience? Yet is he good-hearted withal, and will not wreak any true troubles. Dismiss him from thy mind and care. We spake, just now, of the wizard Galen…”

“Uh… yeah.” Rod turned back to the two ladies, trying very hard to ignore the fruit bobbing above him. “Galen. Right. Well, as I see it, he’s a true isolate, a real, bona fide, died-in-the-haircloth hermit. Personally, I can’t think of a single thing that could persuade him to join us.”

“I fear thou mayest have the truth of it,” Gwen sighed. “Certes, I would not say that he is amenable.”

Air popped and a baby was sitting in her lap, clapping his hands. “Momma, Momma! Pa’y cake! Pa’y cake!”

Gwen stiffened, startled. Then a delighted smile spread over her face. “My bonny babe!” Her arms closed around Magnus and squeezed.

Rod threw up his hands and turned away. “Why bother trying? Forget the work! C’mere, son—let’s play catch.”

The baby chortled with glee and bounced out of Gwen’s lap, sailing over to Rod. He caught the boy and tossed him back to Gwen.

“Nay, husband.” She caught Magnus and lowered him to the ground, suddenly becoming prim. “ ‘Tis even as thou sayest—we have matters of great moment in train here. Back to thine elf-nurse, child.”

Magnus thrust out his lip in a pout. “Wanna stay!”

Rod bent a stern glance on his son. “Can you be quiet?”

The baby nodded gleefully.

Gwen gave an exasperated sigh and turned away. “Husband, thou wilt have him believing he can obtain aught he doth wish!”

“But just one bit of noise, mind you!” Rod leveled a forefinger at the baby. “You get in the way just one little bit, and home you go!”

The baby positively glowed. He bobbed his head like a bouncing ball.

“Okay—go play.” Rod leaned back in his chair again. “Now. Assuming Galen can’t be persuaded—what do we do?”

Agatha shrugged. “Nay, if he will not be persuaded, I can not see that we can do aught.”

“Just the words of encouragement I needed,” Rod growled. “Let’s try another tack. Other veterans. Any other magical hermits hiding out in the forests?”

“Magnus, thou didst promise,” Gwen warned.

Agatha frowned, looking up at the tent roof. “Mayhap old Elida… She is bitter but, I think, hath a good heart withal. And old Anselm…” She dropped her eyes to Rod, shaking her head. “Nay, in him ‘tis not bitterness alone that doth work, but fear also. There is, perhaps, old Elida, Lord Warlock—but I think…”

“Magnus,” Gwen warned.

Rod glanced over at his son, frowning. The baby ignored Gwen and went on happily with what he had been doing—juggling. But it was a very odd sort of juggling; he was tossing the balls about five feet in front of him, and they were bouncing back like boomerangs.

Rod turned to Gwen. “What’s he doing?”

“Fire and fury!” Agatha exploded. “Wilt thou not leave the bairn to his play? He doth not intrude; he maketh no coil, nor doth he cry out! He doth but play at toss-and-catch with my son Harold, and is quiet withal! He maketh no bother; leave the poor child be!”

Rod swung about, staring at her. “He’s doing what?”

“Playing toss-and-catch,” Agatha frowned. “There’s naught so strange in that.”

“But,” Gwen said in a tiny voice, “his playmate cannot be seen.”

“Not by us,” Rod said slowly. “But, apparently, Magnus sees him very well indeed.”

Agatha’s brows knitted. “What dost thou mean?”

“How else would he know where to throw the ball?” Rod turned to Agatha, his eyes narrowing. “Can you see your son Harold?”

“Nay, I cannot. Yet what else would return the apples to the child?”

“I was kinda wonderin’ about that.” Rod’s gaze returned to his son. “But I thought you said Harold was an unborn spirit.”

“Summat of the sort, aye.”

“Then, how can Magnus see him?” Gwen lifted her head, her eyes widening.

“I did not say he had not been born,” Agatha hedged. She stared at the bouncing fruit, her gaze sharpening. “Yet I ha’ ne’er been able to see my son aforetimes.”

“Then, how come Magnus can?” Rod frowned.

“Why, ‘tis plainly seen! Thy son is clearly gifted with more magical powers than am I myself!”

Rod locked gazes with Gwen. Agatha was the most powerful old witch in Gramarye.

He turned back to Agatha. “Okay, so Magnus is one heck of a telepath. But he can’t see a body if there’s none there to see.”

“My son ha’ told me that he did have a body aforetime,” Agatha said slowly. “ ‘Twould seem that he doth send outward from himself his memory of his body’s appearance.”

“A projective telepath,” Rod said slowly. “Not a very strong one, maybe, but a projective. Also apparently a telekinetic. But I thought that was a sex-linked trait…”

Agatha shrugged. “Who can tell what the spirit may do when it’s far from its body?”

“Yes—his body,” Rod said softly, eyes locked on the point where the fruit bounced back toward Magnus. “Just where is this body he remembers?”

Agatha sighed and leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes and resting her head against the high back. “Thou dost trouble me, Lord Warlock; for I cannot understand these matters that Harold doth speak of.”

“Well, maybe Gwen can.” Rod turned to his wife. “Dear?”

But Gwen shook her head. “Nay, my lord. I cannot hear Harold’s thoughts.”

Rod just stared at her.

Then he gave himself a shake and sat up straighter. “Odd.” He turned back to Agatha. “Any idea why you should be able to hear him, when Gwen can’t?”

“Why, because I am his mother.” Agatha smiled sourly.

Rod gazed at her, wondering if there was something he didn’t know. Finally, he decided to take the chance. “I didn’t know you’d ever borne children.”

“Nay, I have not—though I did yearn for them.”

Rod gazed at her while his thoughts raced, trying to figure out how she could be barren and still bear a son. He began to build an hypothesis. “So,” he said carefully, “how did you come by Harold?”

“I did not.” Her eyes flashed. “He came to me. ‘Tis even as he doth say—he is my son, and old Galen’s.”

“But, Galen…”

“Aye, I know.” Agatha’s lips tightened in bitterness. “He is the son that Galen and I ought to have had, but did not, for reason that we ne’er have come close enough to even touch.”

“Well, I hate to say this—but… uh…” Rod scratched behind his ear, looking at the floor. He forced his eyes up to meet Agatha’s. “It’s, uh, very difficult to conceive a baby if, uh, you never come within five feet of one another.”

“Is’t truly!” Agatha said with withering scorn. “Yet, e’en so, my son Harold doth say that Galen did meet me, court me, and wed me—and that, in time, I did bear him a son, which is Harold.”

“But that’s impossible.”

“The depth of thy perception doth amaze me,” Agatha said drily. “Yet Harold is here, and this is his tale. Nay, further—he doth say that Galen and I reared him, and were ever together, and much a-love.” Her gaze drifted, eyes misting, and he could scarcely hear her murmur: “Even as I was used to dream, in the days of my youth…”

Rod held his silence. Behind him, Gwen watched, her eyes huge.

Eventually, Agatha’s attention drifted back to them. She reared her head up to glare at Rod indignantly. “Canst thou truly say there is no sense to that? If his body has not been made as it should have been, canst thou be amazed to find his spirit here, uncloaked in flesh?”

“Well, yes, now that you mention it.” Rod leaned back in his chair. “Because, if his body was never made—where did his spirit come from?”

“There I can thresh no sense from it,” Agatha admitted. “Harold doth say that, when grown, he did go for a soldier. He fought, and bled, and came away, and this not once, but a score of times—and rose in rank to captain. Then, in his final battle, he did take a grievous wound, and could only creep away to shelter in a nearby cave. There he lay him down and fell into a swoon—and lies there yet, in a slumber like to death. His body lies like a waxen effigy—and his spirit did drift loose from it. Yet could it not begin that last adventure, to strive and toil its way to Heaven…” She shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut. “And how he could be eager for such a quest is more than I can tell. Yet indeed he was”—she looked back up at Rod, frowning—“yet could he not; for though his body lay in a sleep like unto death, yet ‘twas not death—no, not quite. Nor could the spirit wake that body neither.”

“A coma.” Rod nodded. “But let it alone long enough, and the body’ll die from sheer starvation.”

Agatha shrugged impatiently. “He’s too impatient. Nay, he would not wait; his spirit did spring out into the void, and wandered eons in a place of chaos—until it found me here.” She shook her head in confusion. “I do not understand how aught of that may be.”

“A void…” Rod nodded his head slowly.

Agatha’s head lifted. “The phrase holds meaning for thee?”

“It kind of reminds me of something I heard of in a poem—‘the wind that blows between the worlds.’ I always did picture it as a realm of chaos…”

Agatha nodded judiciously. “That hath the ring of rightness to it…”

“That means he came from another universe.”

Agatha’s head snapped up, her nostrils flaring. “Another universe? What tale of cock-and-bull is this, Lord Warlock? There is only this world of ours, with sun and moons and stars. That is the universe. How could there be another?”

But Rod shook his head. “ ‘How’ is beyond my knowledge—but the, uh, ‘wise men’ of my, uh, homeland, seem to pretty much agree that there could be other universes. Anyway, they can’t prove there aren’t. In fact, they say there may be an infinity of other universes—and if there are, then there must also be universes that are almost exactly like ours, even to the point of having—well—another Agatha, and another Galen. Exactly like yourselves. But their lives took—well, a different course.”

“Indeed they did.” Agatha’s eyes glowed.

“But, if Harold’s spirit went looking for help—why didn’t it find the Agatha in that other universe?”

“Because she lay dead.” Agatha’s gaze bored into Rod’s eyes. “She had died untimely, of a fever. So had her husband. Therefore did Harold seek out through the void, and was filled with joy when he did find me—though at first he was afeard that I might be a ghost.”

Rod nodded slowly. “It makes sense. He was looking for help, and he recognized a thought-pattern that he’d known in his childhood. Of course he’d home in on you… Y’know, that almost makes it all hang together.”

“I’ truth, it doth.” Agatha began to smile. “I ne’er could comprehend this brew of thoughts that Harold tossed to me; yet what thou sayest doth find a place for each part of it, and fits it all together, like to the pieces of a puzzle.” She began to nod. “Aye. I will believe it. Thou hast, at last, after a score of years, made sense of this for me.” Suddenly, she frowned. “Yet his soul is here, not bound for Heaven, for reason that his body lies in sleeping death. How could it thus endure, after twenty years?”

Rod shook his head. “Hasn’t been twenty years—not in the universe he came from. Time could move more slowly there than it does here. Also, the universes are probably curved—so, where on that curve he entered our universe could determine what time, what year, it was. More to the point, he could reenter his own universe just a few minutes after his body went into its coma.”

But Agatha had bowed her head, eyes closed, and was waving in surrender. “Nay, Lord Warlock! Hold, I prithee! I cannot ken thine explanations! ‘Twill satisfy me, that thou dost.”

“Well, I can’t be sure,” Rod hedged. ”Not about the why of it, at least. But I can see how it fits in with my hypothesis.”

“What manner of spell is that?”

“Only a weak one, till it’s proved. Then it becomes a theory, which is much more powerful indeed. But for Harold, the important point is that he needs to either kill his body, so he can try for Heaven—or cure it and get his spirit back into it.”

“Cure it!” Agatha’s glare could have turned a blue whale into a minnow. “Heal him or do naught! I would miss him sorely when his spirit’s gone to its rightful place and time—but, I will own, it must be done. Still, I’d rather know that he’s alive!”

“Well, I wasn’t really considering the alternative.” Rod gazed off into space, his lips pursed.

Agatha saw the look in his eyes and gave him a leery glance. “I mistrust thee, Lord Warlock, when thou dost look so fey.”

“Oh, I’m just thinking of Harold’s welfare. Uh, after the battle—a while after, when I was there and you’d recovered a bit—didn’t I see you helping the wounded? You know, by holding their wounds shut and telling them to think hard and believe they were well?‘’

“Indeed she did.” Gwen smiled. “Though ‘tis somewhat more than that, husband. Thou must needs think at the wound thyself, the whiles the wounded one doth strive to believe himself well; for the separate bits of meat and fat must be welded back together—which thou canst do by making them move amongst one another with thy mind.”

“You can, maybe.” Inwardly, Rod shuddered. All he needed was for his wife to come up with one more major power—all corollaries of telekinesis, of course; but the number of her variations on the theme was stupefying.

He turned back to Agatha. “Uh—did you think up this kind of healing yourself?”

“Aye. I am the only one, as far as I can tell—save thy wife, now that I’ve taught her.” Agatha frowned, brooding. “I came to the knowing of it in despair, after I’d thrown aside a lad who sought to hurt me…”

Rod had to cut off that kind of train of thought; the last thing he wanted was for Agatha to remember her hurts. “So. You can help someone ‘think’ themselves well—telekinesis on the cellular level.”

Agatha shook her head, irritated. “I cannot tell thy meaning, with these weird terms of thine—‘tele-kine’? What is that—a cow that ranges far?”

“Not quite, though I intend to milk it for all it’s worth.” Rod grinned. “Y’know, when we were at Galen’s place, he told me a little about his current line of research.”

Agatha snorted and turned away. “ ‘Researches?’ Aye—he will ever seek to dignify his idle waste of hours by profound words.”

“Maybe, but I think there might be something to it. He was trying to figure out how the brain itself, that lumpy blob of protoplasm, can create this magic thing called ‘thought.’ ”

“Aye, I mind me an he mentioned some such nonsense,” Agatha grated. “What of it?”

“Oh, nothing, really.” Rod stood up, hooking his thumbs in his belt. “I was just thinking, maybe we oughta go pay him another visit.”

The dark tower loomed before them, then suddenly tilted alarmingly to the side. Rod swallowed hard and held on for dear life; it was the first time he’d ever ridden pillion on a broomstick. “Uh, dear—would you try to swoop a little less sharply? I’m, uh, still trying to get used to this…”

“Oh! Certes, my lord!” Gwen looked back over her shoulder, instantly contrite. “Be sure, I did not wish to afright thee.”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say I was frightened…”

“Wouldst thou not?” Gwen looked back at him again, wide-eyed in surprise.

“Watch where you’re going!” Rod yelped.

Gwen turned her eyes back to the front as her broomstick drifted sideways to avoid a treetop. “Milord,” she chided, “I knew it was there.”

“I’m glad somebody did,” Rod sighed. “I’m beginning to think I should’ve gone horseback after all—even though it would’ve been slower.”

“Courage, now.” Gwen’s voice oozed sympathy. “We must circle this Dark Tower.”

Rod took a deep breath and squeezed the shaft.

The broomstick began to swing around the tower, following Agatha’s swoop ahead of them. Rod’s stomach lurched once before he forgot it, staring in amazement at the Tower. They were sixty feet up, but it soared above them, a hundred feet high and thirty wide, the top corrugated in battlements. Altogether, it was an awesome mass of funereal basalt. Here and there, arrow-slits pierced the stones—windows three feet high, but only one foot wide.

“I wouldn’t like to see his candle bill,” Rod grunted. “How do you get in?”

The whole bottom half of the Dark Tower reared unbroken and impregnable, pierced by not so much as a single loophole.

“There has to be a door.”

“Wherefore?” Gwen countered. “Thou dost forget that warlocks do fly.”

“Oh.” Red frowned. “Yeah, I did kinda forget that, didn’t I? Still, I don’t see how he gets in; those loopholes are mighty skinny.”

“Yonder.” Gwen nodded toward the top of the Tower, and her broomstick reared up.

Rod gasped and clung for dear life. “He would have to have a heliport!”

Agatha circled down over the battlements and brought her broomstick to a stop in the center of the roof. She hopped off nimbly; Gwen followed suit. Rod disentangled himself from the broom straws and planted his feet wide apart on the roof, grabbing the nearest merlon to steady himself while he waited for the floor to stop tilting.

“Surely, ‘twas not so horrible as that.” Gwen tried to hide a smile of amusement.

“I’ll get used to it,” Rod growled. Privately, he planned not to have the chance to. “Now.” He took a deep breath, screwed up his courage, and stepped forward. The stones seemed to tilt only slightly, so he squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and took another step. “Okay. Where’s the door?”

“Yonder.” Agatha pointed.

Right next to a merlon and its crenel, a trapdoor was set flush with the roof. Rod stepped over to it—carefully—and frowned down, scanning the rough planks. “I don’t see a doorknob.”

“Why would there be one?” Agatha said beside him. “Who would come up here, other than the ancient cockerel himself? And when he doth, I doubt not he doth ope’ this panel from below.”

“And just leaves it open? What does he do about rain?”

Agatha shook her head. “I misdoubt me an he would come up during foul weather.”

“True,” Rod said judiciously. “He probably only comes up to stargaze—so why bother, when there aren’t any stars?”

He drew his dagger and dropped to one knee. “Gotta be careful about this—it’s good steel, but it could break.” He jabbed the tip into the wood and heaved up. The trap rose an inch; he kicked his toe against it to hold it, pulled the dagger out, and dropped it, then caught the wood with his fingertips and heaved again—with a whine of pain; the maneuver certainly didn’t do his manicure any good. But he hauled it up enough to get his boot-toe under, then caught it with his fingers properly and swung it open. “Whew! So much for basic breaking-and-entering!”

“Well done!” Agatha said, mildly surprised.

“Not exactly what I’d call a major effort.” Rod dusted off his hands.

“Nor needful,” the old witch reminded him. “Either thy wife or myself could ha’ made it rise of its own.”

“Oh.” Rod began to realize that, with very little persuasion, he could learn to hate this old biddy. In an attempt to be tactful, he changed the subject. “Y’know, in a culture where so many people can fly, you’d think he’d’ve thought to use a lock.”

At his side, Gwen shook her head. “Few of the witchfolk would even dare to come here, my lord. Such is his reputation.”

That definitely was not the kind of line to inspire confidence in a hopeful burglar. Rod took a deep breath, stiffened his muscles to contain a certain fluttering in the pit of his stomach, and started down the stairs. “Yes. Well—I suppose we really should have knocked…” But his head was already below the level of the roof.

The stairs turned sharply and became very dark. Rod halted; Agatha bumped into his back. “Mmmmf! Wilt thou not give warning when thou’rt about to halt thy progress, Lord Warlock?”

“I’ll try to remember next time. Darling, would you mind? It’s a little dark down here.‘’

“Aye, my lord.” A ball of luminescence glowed to life on Gwen’s palm. She brushed past him—definitely too quickly for his liking—and took up the lead, her will-o’-the-wisp lighting the stairway.

At the bottom, dark fabric barred their way—curtains overlapping to close out drafts. They pushed through and found themselves in a circular chamber lit by two arrow-slits. Gwen extinguished her fox fire, which darkened the chamber; outside, the sky was overcast, and only gray light alleviated the gloom. But it was enough to show them the circular worktable that ran all the way around the circumference of the room, and the tall shelf-cases that lined the walls behind the tables. The shelves were crammed with jars and boxes exuding a mixture of scents ranging from spicy to sour; and the tables were crowded with alembics, crucibles, mortars with pestles, and beakers.

Agatha wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Alchemy!”

Rod nodded in slow approval. “Looks as though the old geezer has a little more intellectual integrity than I gave him credit for.”

“Thou canst not mean thou dost condone the Black Arts!” Agatha cried.

“No, and neither does Galen, apparently. He’s not satisfied with knowing that something works—he wants to know why, too.”

“Is’t not enough to say that devils do it?”

Rod’s mouth tightened in disgust. “That’s avoiding the question, not answering it.”

Glass tinkled behind him. He spun about.

A jar floated above an alembic, pouring a thin stream of greenish liquid into it. As Rod watched, the cover sank back onto the jar and tightened in a half-turn as the jar righted itself, then drifted back up onto a shelf.

“Harold!” Agatha warned. “Let be; these stuffs are not thine.”

“Uh, let’s not be too hasty.” Rod watched a box float off another shelf. Its top lifted, and a stream of silvery powder sifted into the alembic. “Let the kid experiment. The urge to learn should never be stifled.”

“ ‘Tis thou who shouldst be stifled!” Agatha glowered at Rod. “No doubt Harold’s meddling doth serve some plan of thine.”

“Could be, could be.” Rod watched an alcohol lamp glow to life under the alembic. “Knocking probably wouldn’t have done much good anyway, really. Galen strikes me as the type to be so absorbed in his research that…”

“My lord.” Gwen hooked fingers around his forearm. “I mislike the fashion in which that brew doth bubble.”

“Nothing to be worried about, I’m sure.” But Ron glanced nervously at some test tubes on another table, which had begun to dance, pouring another greenish liquid back and forth from one to another. They finally settled down, but…

“That vial, too, doth bubble,” Agatha growled. “Ho, son of mine! What dost thou?”

Behind them, glass clinked again. They whirled about to see a retort sliding its nose into a glass coil. Flame ignited under the retort, and water began to drip from a hole in a bucket suspended over the bench, spattering on the glass coil.

“My lord,” Gwen said nervously, “that brew doth bubble most marvelously now. Art thou certain that Harold doth know his own deeds?”

Rod was sure Harold knew what he was doing, all right. In fact, he was even sure that Harold was a lot more sophisticated, and a lot more devious, than Rod had given him credit for. And suspense was an integral part of the maneuver, pushing it close to the line…

But not this close! He leaped toward the alembic. Gasses being produced in the presence of open flame bothered him.

“What dost thou?”

The words boomed through the chamber, and Galen towered in the doorway, blue robe, white beard, and red face. He took in the situation at a glance, then darted to the alembic to dampen the fire, dashed to seize the test tube and throw it into a tub of water, then leaped to douse the lamp under the retort.

“Thou dost move most spryly,” Agatha crooned, “for a dotard.”

The wizard turned to glare at her, leaning against the table, trembling. His voice shook with anger. “Vile crone! Art so envious of my labors that thou must needs seek to destroy my Tower?”

“Assuredly, ‘twas naught so desperate as that,” Gwen protested.

Galen turned a red glower on her. “Nay, she hath not so much knowledge as that—though her mischief could have laid this room waste, and the years of glassblowing and investigating that it doth contain!” His eyes narrowed as they returned to Agatha. “I do see that ne’er should I ha’ given thee succor—for now thou’lt spare me not one moment’s peace!”

Agatha started a retort of her own, but Rod got in ahead of her. “Uh, well—not really.”

The wizard’s glare swiveled toward him. “Thou dost know little of this haggard beldam, Lord Warlock, an thou dost think she could endure to leave one in peace.”

Agatha took a breath, but Rod was faster again. “Well, y’ see—it wasn’t really her idea to come back here.”

“Indeed?” The question fumed sarcasm. “ ‘Twas thy good wife’s, I doubt me not.”

“Wrong again,” Rod said brightly. “It was mine. And Agatha had nothing to do with tinkering with your lab.”

Galen was silent for a pace. Then his eyes narrowed. “I’ truth, I should ha’ seen that she doth lack even so much knowledge as to play so learned a vandal. Was it thou didst seek explosion, Lord Warlock? Why, then?”

“ ‘Cause I didn’t think you’d pay any attention to a knock on the door,” Rod explained, “except maybe to say, ‘Go away.’ ”

Galen nodded slowly. “So, thou didst court disaster to bring me out from my researches long enough to bandy words with thee.”

“That’s the right motive,” Rod agreed, “but the wrong culprit. Actually, not one single one of us laid a finger on your glassware.”

Galen glanced quickly at the two witches. “Thou’lt not have me believe they took such risks, doing such finely detailed work, with only their minds?”

“Not that they couldn’t have,” Rod hastened to point out. “I’ve seen my wife make grains of wheat dance.” He smiled fondly, remembering the look on Magnus’s face when Gwen did it. “And Agatha’s admitted she’s healed wounds by making the tiniest tissues flow back together—but this time neither of them did.”

“Assuredly, not thou …”

“ ‘Twas thy son,” Agatha grated.

The laboratory was silent as the old wizard stared into her eyes, the color draining from his face.

Then it flooded back, and he erupted. “What vile falsehood is this? What deception dost thou seek to work now, thou hag with no principle to thy name of repute? How dost thou seek to work on my heart with so blatant a lie? Depraved, evil witch! Thou hast no joy in life but the wreaking of others’ misery! Fool I was, to ever look on thy face, greater fool to e’er seek to aid thee! Get thee gone, get thee hence!” His trembling arm reared up to cast a curse that would blast her. “Get thee to…”

“It’s the truth,” Rod snapped.

Galen stared at him for the space of a heartbeat.

It was long enough to get a word in. “He’s the son of another Galen, and another Agatha, in another world just like this one. You know there are other universes, don’t you?”

Galen’s arm hung aloft, forgotten; excitement kindled in his eyes. “I had suspected it, aye—the whiles my body did lie like to wood, and my spirit lay open to every slightest impress. Distantly did I perceive it, dimly through chaos, a curving presence that… But nay, what nonsense is this! Dost thou seek to tell me that, in one such other universe, I do live again?”

“ ‘Again’ might be stretching it,” Rod hedged, “especially since your opposite number is dead now. But that a Galen, just like you, actually did live, yes—except he seems to have made a different choice when he was a youth.”

Galen said nothing, but his gaze strayed to Agatha.

She returned it, her face like flint.

“For there was an Agatha in that other universe, too,” Rod said softly, “and they met, and married, and she bore a son.”

Galen still watched Agatha, his expression blank.

“They named the son Harold,” Rod went on, “and he grew to be a fine young warlock—but more ‘war’ than ‘lock.’ Apparently, he enlisted, and fought in quite a few battles. He survived, but his parents passed away—probably from sheer worry, with a son in the infantry…”

Galen snapped out of his trance. “Do not seek to cozen me, Master Warlock! How could they have died, when this Agatha and I…” His voice dwindled and his gaze drifted as he slid toward the new thought.

“Time is no ranker, Master Wizard; he’s under no compulsion to march at the same pace in each place he invests. But more importantly, events can differ in different universes—or Harold would never have been born. And if the Galen and Agatha of his universe could marry, they could also die—from accident, or disease, or perhaps even one of those battles that their son survived. I’m sure he’d be willing to tell you, if you asked him.”

Galen glanced quickly about the chamber, and seemed to solidify inside his own skin.

“Try,” Rod breathed. “Gwen can’t hear him, nor can any of the other witches—save Agatha. But if you’re the analog of his father, you should be able to…”

“Nay!” Galen boomed. “Am I become so credulous as to hearken to the tales of a stripling of thirty?”

“Thirty-two,” Rod corrected.

“A child, scarcely more! I credit not a word of this tale of thine!”

“Ah, but we haven’t come to the evidence yet.” Rod grinned. “Because, you see, Harold didn’t survive one of those battles.”

Galen’s face neutralized again.

“He was wounded, and badly,” Rod pressed. “He barely managed to crawl into a cave and collapse there—and his spirit drifted loose. But his body didn’t. No, it lay in a lasting, deathlike sleep; so his spirit had no living body to inhabit, but also had not been freed by death and couldn’t soar to seek Heaven. But that spirit was a warlock, so it didn’t have to just haunt the cave where its body lay. No, it went adventuring—out into the realm of chaos, seeking out that curving presence you spoke of, searching for its parents’ spirits, seeking aid…”

“And found them,” Galen finished in a harsh whisper.

Rod nodded. “One, at least—and now he’s found the other.”

Galen’s glances darted around the chamber again; he shuddered, shrinking more tightly into his robes. Slowly then, his frosty glare returned to Rod. “Thou hadst no need to speak of this to me, Lord Warlock. ‘Twill yield thee no profit.”

“Well, I did think Harold deserved a chance to at least try to meet you—as you became in this universe. Just in case.”

Galen held his glare, refusing the bait.

“We have the beastmen bottled up, for the time being,” Rod explained, “but they’re likely to come charging out any minute, trying to freeze our soldiers with their Evil Eye. Our young warlocks and witches will try to counter it with their own power, feeding it through our soldiers. They wouldn’t stand a chance against the beastmen’s power by themselves—but they’ll have my wife and Agatha to support them.”

“Aye, and we’re like to have our minds blasted for our pains,” Agatha ground out, “for some monster that we wot not of doth send them greater power with each thunderbolt. Though we might stand against them and win, if thou wert beside us.”

“And wherefore should I be?” Galen’s voice was flat with contempt. “Wherefore should I aid the peasant folk who racked and tortured me in my youth? Wherefore ought I aid their children and grandchildren who, ever and anon all these long years, have marched against me, seeking to tear down my Dark Tower and burn me at the stake? Nay, thou softhearted fool! Go to thy death for the sake of those that hate thee, an thou wishest—but look not for me to accompany thee!”

“Nay, I do not!” Agatha’s eyes glittered with contempt. “Yet, there’s one who’s man enough to do so, to bear up with me under that fell onslaught.”

Galen stared at her, frozen.

“Harold’s a dutiful son,” Rod murmured. “I thought you might like the chance to get acquainted with him.” He left the logical consequence unsaid. Could a spirit be destroyed? He hoped he wouldn’t find out.

“I credit not one single syllable!” Galen hissed. “ ‘Tis but a scheme to cozen me into placing all at risk for them who like me not!” He turned back to Rod. “Thou dost amaze me, Lord Warlock; for even here, in my hermitage, I had heard thy repute and I had thought thee lord of greater intellect than this. Canst thou author no stronger scheme to gain mine aid, no subtle, devious chain of ruses?”

“Why bother?” Rod answered with the ghost of a smile. “The truth is always more persuasive.”

Galen’s face darkened with anger. His arm lifted, forefinger upraised, to focus his powers for teleporting them away. Then, suddenly, his head snapped about, eyes wide in shock for a moment before they squeezed shut in denial.

Agatha winced too, but she grinned. “Ah, then! That shout did pierce even thy strong shield!”

The wizard turned his glare to her. “I know not what trickery thou hast garnered to thus simulate another’s mind…”

“Oh, aye, ‘tis trickery indeed! Oh, I have studied for years to fashion the feel and texture of another’s mind, and all for this moment!” Agatha turned her head and spat. “Lord Warlock, let us depart; for I sicken of striving to speak sense unto one who doth seek to deafen his own ears!”

“Aye, get thee hence,” Galen intoned, “for thy scheme hath failed! Get thee hence, and come not hither again!”

“Oh, all right!” Rod shuddered at the thought of another broomstick ride. “I was kinda hoping to catch the express…”

“Thou wilt come to joy in it, husband,” Gwen assured him, pushing past, “if thou canst but have faith in me.”

“Faith?” Rod bleated, wounded. “I trust you implicitly!”

“Then thou’lt assuredly not fear, for ‘tis my power that doth bear thee up.” Gwen flashed him an insouciant smile.

“All right, all right!” Rod held his hands up in surrender. “You win—I’ll get used to it. After you, beldam.”

Agatha hesitated a moment longer, trying to pierce Galen’s impenetrable stare with her whetted glance, but turned away in disgust. “Aye, let him remain here in dry rot, sin that he doth wish it!” She stormed past Rod, through the curtains, and up the stair.

Rod glanced back just before dropping the curtain, to gaze at Galen, standing frozen in the middle of his laboratory, staring off into space, alone, imprisoned within his own invisible wall.

Rod clung to the broomstick for dear life, telling himself sternly that he was not scared, that staring at the gray clouds over Gwen’s shoulder, hoping desperately for sight of Tuan’s tent, was just the result of boredom. But it didn’t work; his stomach didn’t unclench, and the only object ahead was Agatha, bobbing on her broomstick.

Then, suddenly, there was a dot in the sky two points off Agatha’s starboard bow. Rod stared, forgetting to be afraid. “Gwen—do you see what I see?”

“Aye, my lord. It doth wear a human aspect.”

It did indeed. As the dot loomed closer, it grew into a teenage boy in doublet and hose, waving his cap frantically.

“Human,” Rod agreed. “In fact, I think it’s Leonatus. Isn’t he a little young to be out teleporting alone?”

“He is sixteen now,” Gwen reminded. “Their ages do not stand still for us, my lord.”

“They don’t stand for much of anything, now that you mention it—and I suppose he is old enough to be a messenger. See how close you can come, Gwen; I think he wants to talk.”

Gwen swooped around the youth in a tight hairpin turn, considerably faster than Rod’s stomach did. “Hail, Leonatus!” she cried—which was lucky, because Rod was swallowing heavily at the moment. “How dost thou?” “Anxiously, fair Gwendylon,” the teenager answered. “Stormclouds lower o’er the bank of the Fleuve, and the beastmen form their battle-line!”

“I knew there was something in the air!” Rod cried. Ozone, probably. “Go tell your comrades to hold the fort, Leonatus! We’ll be there posthaste!” Especially since the post was currently air mail.

“Aye, my lord!” But the youth looked puzzled. “What is a ‘fort’?”

“A strong place,” Rod answered, “and the idea is to catch your enemy between it and a rock.”

“An thou dost say it, Lord Warlock.” Leonatus looked confused, but he said manfully, “I shall bear word to them,” and disappeared with a small thunderclap.

Rod muttered, “Fess, we’re coming in at full speed. Meet me at the cliff-top.”

“I am tethered, Rod,” the robot’s voice reminded him.

Rod shrugged. “So stretch it tight. When you’re at the end of your tether, snap it and join me.”

They dropped down to land at the witches’ tent, just as the first few drops of rain fell.

“How fare the young folk?” Agatha cried.

“Scared as hell,” Rod called back. “Will they ever be glad to see you!” He jumped off the broomstick and caught up his wife for a brief but very deep kiss.

“My lord!” She blushed prettily. “I had scarcely expected…”

“Just needed a little reminder of what I’ve got to come home to.” Rod gave her a quick squeeze. “Good luck, darling.” Then he whirled and pounded away through the drizzle.

He halted at the edge of the cliff-top by the river, staring down. He was just in time to see the first wave of beastmen spill over their earthworks and lope away up the river valley, shields high and battle-axes swinging. Rod frowned, looking around for the Gramarye army. Where was it?

There, just barely visible through the drizzle, was a dark, churning mass, moving away upstream.

“Fess!”

“Here, Rod.”

Rod whirled—and saw the great black horsehead just two feet behind him. He jumped back, startled—then remembered the sheer drop behind him and skittered forward to slam foot into stirrup and swing up onto the robot-horse’s back. “How’d you get here so fast?”

“I do have radar.” Fess’s tone was mild reproof. “Shall we go, Rod? You are needed upstream.”

“Of course!” And, as the great black horse sprang into a canter, “What’s going on?”

“Good tactics.” The robot’s tone was one of respect, even admiration. He cantered down the slope, murmuring, “Perhaps Tuan should explain it to you himself.”

Rod scarcely had time to protest before they had caught up with the army. Everything was roaring confusion—the clanging clash of steel, the tramping squelch of boots in ground that had already begun to turn to mud, the bawling of sergeants’ orders, and the whinnies of the knights’ horses. Rod looked all about him everywhere, but saw no sign of panic. Sure, here and there the younger faces were filled with dread and the older ones were locked in grim determination and the army as a whole was moving steadily away from the beastmen—but it was definitely a retreat, and not a rout.

“Why?” Rod snapped.

“Tuan has ordered it,” Fess answered, “and wisely, in my opinion.”

“Take me to him!”

They found the King at the rear, for once, since that was the part of the army closest to the enemy. “They fall back on the left flank!” he bawled. “Bid Sir Maris speed them; for stragglers will surely become corpses!”

The courier nodded and darted away through the rain.

“Hail, sovereign lord!” Rod called.

Tuan looked up, and his face lit with relief. “Lord Warlock! Praise Heaven thou’rt come!”

“Serves you right for inviting me. Why the retreat, Tuan?”

“Assuredly thou dost jest, Lord Warlock! Dost thou not feel the rain upon thee? We cannot stand against them when lightning may strike!”

“But if we don’t,” Rod pointed out, “they’ll just keep marching as long as it rains.”

Tuan nodded. “The thought had occurred to me.”

“Uh—this could be a good way to lose a kingdom…”

“Of this, too, I am mindful. Therefore, we shall turn and stand—but not until they are certain we’re routed.”

Rod lifted his head slowly, eyes widening. Then he grinned. “I should’ve known better than to question your judgment on tactics! But will they really believe we’d just flat-out run, when we’ve been fighting back for so long?”

“They’ll expect some show of resistance, surely,” Tuan agreed. “Therefore wilt thou and the Flying Legion ride out against them.” He nodded toward the right flank. “They await thee, Lord Warlock.”

His commandos raised a cheer when they saw him, and he raised them with quick orders. A minute later, half of them faded into the grass and scrub growth that lined the riverbank. The other half, the ones with the hipboots, imitated Moses and drifted into the bullrushes.

Rod stayed with the landlubbers, easing silently back along the bankside till they reached a place where the beach widened, walled with a semicircle of trees, the spaces between them filled with brush. Ten minutes later, the first scouts from the beastman advance guard came up even with them. Rod waited until they were right in the middle of the semicircle, then whistled a good imitation of a whippoorwill. But the cry was a strange one to the beastmen, and something rang fowl. One Neanderthal looked up, startled, his mouth opening to cry the alarm—when a dozen Gramarye commandos hit him and his mates.

The rangers surrounded the beastmen completely, so Rod didn’t see what happened; all he knew was that it lasted about thirty seconds, then his men faded back into the trees, leaving three corpses in the center of the glade, pumping their blood into the pale sand.

Rod stared, shaken and unnerved. Beside him, his sergeant grinned. “ ‘Twas well done, Lord Warlock.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Rod muttered. “What’d these boys do in peacetime—work in a slaughterhouse?”

The sergeant shrugged. “Any farm lad must know how to slit the throat of a swine, and these ogres are little more.”

Rod had to bite back a sudden impulse to explain the conflict as the beastmen saw it. “They’re the enemy,” he agreed unhappily, “and this is war. They’ve already pretty well proved that they’ll kill us if we don’t kill them first.” Privately, he wondered how many of them really wanted to.

Later. Right now, it was time to play monster. “Tell the men to spread out along the backtrail, sergeant.”

The sergeant turned away to mutter a few words, but that was the only effect Rod saw or heard. He sat his saddle securely anyway, knowing his men had spread out toward the beastmen. He sat securely, and waited.

After about five minutes, the vanguard came up. Their leader saw the corpses in the center of the glade and held out an arm to stop his men. While they stared, shocked, Rod called like a gull, and fifty commandos slid from the brush, swords slashing throats before the beastmen even realized they’d been attacked.

As the first Neanderthals fell, the others turned with a roar, axes whirling down. Rod’s men leaped back, but a couple weren’t quick enough. He let the anger fuel him as he commanded Fess, “Go!” The great black steel horse leaped out into the battle as Rod shouted, “Havoc!” The beastmen’s eyes all riveted on this new threat, so they didn’t notice the shadows that slid out of the rushes behind them in answer to Rod’s cry. Beastmen began dropping at the rear as Rod and his men began their deadly gavotte, skipping back out of reach of the beastmen’s axes as they tried to catch Gramarye glances, but Rod’s men held to their hard-learned tactic—staring at the enemy’s weapons, not at his pupils. Here and there a soldier accidentally looked at the reddened eyes of the foe, and slowed. It even happened to Rod—being on horseback, he attracted eyes. One Neanderthal managed to catch him squarely, and suddenly he was plowing through molasses, panic touching him as he felt two rival impulses battling in his brain, and realized neither of them was his own.

Then a spreading warmth coursed through his head and down his spine, a familiar touch, and he could almost scent Gwen’s perfume as his shield-arm leaped up to give the ax a slight push that deflected it to just barely miss, while his sword stabbed down over the beastman’s shield. He felt it sink in, jar against bone, and yanked back on it furiously, turning to the next foeman, trying hard to ignore the falling body.

Then lightning strobe-lit the beach, and thunder broke upon their heads. Rod blocked ax-blows frantically, realizing that almost half his force was frozen. Axes swung and the Gramarye soldiers fell, while their opponents turned to help their fellows gang up on soldiers. Darting frantic glances from one to another, most of the soldiers slipped and chanced to look a Neanderthal in the eye—and froze.

Rod bellowed in anger and fear and chopped down at a beastman. He dodged aside, revealing a grinning face that stared up at Rod, catching his gaze full in the eyes.

It was as though Rod’s riposte had slammed into a wall. Frantically, he pushed at the sword, but it wouldn’t move, and an ax was swinging up at him. Only a spare tendril lingered in his mind, probing weakly at a dark wall that seemed to have settled there…

Then a blazing shield tore into the dark mass, shredding it to tatters—and Rod’s arms answered his summons. He whipped aside as the ax swung past, then bobbed back to stab downward. His men tore into the beastmen like wildcats, outnumbered but determined to bring down ten times their number by sheer ferocity. But more beastmen were welling up behind the vanguard, more and more; and, in a stab of fear, Rod saw a long, slender dragon ship shouldering up out of the drizzle behind the masses of enemy.

But a roaring bellow shook the beach, and the beastmen looked up in sudden terror at five thousand Gramarye soldiers pouring down along the riverbank.

Rod bit back a shout of triumph; all his men kept silence and channeled the surge of energy into a series of quick stabs. Beastmen dropped before them, then came out of their trances enough to turn and defend themselves; but it was frantic and scrambling now, for the soldiers outnumbered them.

Stabbing and blocking fiercely, Rod became dimly aware of a rhythmic rumble coming from the enemy.

“Rod,” Fess’s voice ground out like a slowing recording, “the strain increases… I may fail you…”

“Hold on while you can!” Rod shouted, and mentally prepared himself to leap down and use Fess as a back-shield.

The rumbling grew louder, became coherent; the enemy army chanted, as with one voice, “Kobold! Kobold! Ko-bold!”

And it almost seemed that their god heard them; the whole riverbank was suddenly transfixed by a shimmering glare, and thunder wrapped them inside a cannon shot.

As the glare dimmed, soldiers slowed. A beastman caught Rod’s gaze and he felt himself pushing his arms with agonizing slowness again.

Then the white-hot shield burned through the dark mass again, and his arms leaped free. The whole Gramarye army erupted in a shout of joy and fought with new, savage vigor. A bellow of anger answered them, but it was tinged with despair; and the beastmen seemed to shrink together, forming a wall against the Gramarye spears. But the island wolves harried at that wall, chipping and digging, loosing the blood that it held dammed; and the night was a bedlam of screaming and the crashing of steel.

Suddenly, Rod realized that they were gaining ground. But how could they be, when the enemy had their backs to the water? Looking up, he saw beastmen scrambling single-file back aboard the dragon ships.

“They flee!” he cried, exultant. “The enemy runs! Harrow them!”

His men responded with a crazed scream, and fought like madmen. They couldn’t really do much more than scratch and chip; the beastmen’s wall was solid, and became all the more so as it shrank in on itself as one boat glided away and another replaced it. But finally, the last few turned and ran to scramble up the sides of the boat. Soldiers leaped to chase them, but Rod, Tuan, and Sir Maris checked them with whiplash commands that echoed through every knight to every sergeant; and, looking up, the soldiers saw the beastmen already aboard poised to throw down everything from axes to rocks upon them. Seeing the soldiers checked, they did throw them, with crazed howls; and shields came up, bouncing the missies away harmlessly. But as they did, the dragon ship slid out into the current, swooped around in a slow, graceful curve, and drifted away downstream.

Tuan stabbed a bloody sword up at the sky with a victorious scream. Looking up, the astonished army realized they had won. Then a forest of lances and swords speared up with a screaming howl of triumph.

Before the echoes had faded, Rod had turned Fess’s head downstream again. “You made it through, Old Iron!”

“I did, Rod.” The electronic voice was still a little slowed. “They could only come at me from the front in this battle.”

Rod nodded. “A huge advantage. Now head for the witches’ tent, full speed!”

The sentries outside the tent recognized him and struck their breastplates in salute. Rod leaped off his horse and darted in.

Guttering candles showed young witches and warlocks sprawled crazily all over the floor, unconscious. In the center, Agatha slumped against one tent-post, her head in her hands, and Gwen huddled against the other, moaning and rubbing the front and sides of her head.

Fear stabbed. Rod leaped to her, gathered her into his arms. “Darling! Are you…”

She blinked up at him, managed a smile. “I live, my lord, and will be well again—though presently mine head doth split…”

“Praise all saints!” Rod clasped her head to his breast, then finally let the shambles about him sink in. He turned back to Gwen, more slowly this time. “He showed up, huh?”

“Aye, my lord.” She squinted against the pain. “When the second bolt of lightning struck, all the younglings were knocked senseless. Agatha and I strove to bear up under the brunt of that fell power, and I could feel Harold’s force aiding her. But we all feared a third bolt, knowing we could not withstand it…”

“And Galen was mentally eavesdropping, and knew you probably couldn’t hold out against it.” Rod nodded. “But he didn’t dare take the chance that his ‘son’ might be burned out in the process, even though that son wasn’t born of his body.”

“Do not depend on his aid again,” came a croak from across the tent, and the pile of cloth and bones that was Agatha stirred. “Beware, Warlock, he doth know that thou wilt now seek to use him by placing Harold at risk.”

“Of course.” Glints danced in Rod’s eyes. “But he’ll come, anyway.”

Tuan had left squadrons on both banks, chafing with anger at not being able to take part in the battle; but now, as they saw the dragon ships sailing down toward them, they yelled with joy and whipped out their swords.

The beastmen took one look and kept on sailing.

Frustrated, the young knights in charge gave certain orders; and a few minutes later, flaming arrows leaped up to arc over and thud into decks and sails. The archers amused themselves for a few minutes by watching beastmen scurry about the decks in a panic, dousing flames. But as soon as they were all out, the next squad down the river filled the air with fire-arrows, and the fun began all over again. So, even though Tuan sent a squad of revived witchfolk to fly alongside the fleet, keeping carefully out of arrow-range, they weren’t needed. Still, they stood by, watchful and ready, as the dragon ships sailed down the Fleuve and out to sea.

On the horizon, the dragon ships paused, as though considering another try. But a line of archers assembled on the sea-cliffs with telekinetic witches behind them, and the resulting fire-arrows managed to speed all the way out to the horizon before they fell to rekindle charred ships.

The dragon ships gave up, turned their noses homeward, and disappeared.

In the midst of the cheering and drinking, Rod shouldered through to Tuan. He grabbed the King by his royal neck and shouted in his ear to make himself heard. “You know it’s not really over yet, don’t you?”

“I know,” the young King replied with dignity, “but I know further that this night is for celebration. Fill a glass and rejoice with us, Lord Warlock. Tomorrow we shall again study war.”

He was up and functioning the next morning, though not happily. He sat in a chair in his tent, gray daylight filtering through the fabric all around him. The sky was still overcast, and so was Tuan. He pressed a cold towel against his forehead, squinting. “Now, Lord Warlock. I will hear the talk that I know I must heed: that our war is not done.”

Brom O’Berin stepped close to the King’s chair, peering up into his face. “I misdoubt me an thou shouldst speak of war when thine head is yet so filled with wine its skin is stretched as taut as a drumhead.”

Tuan answered with a weak and rueful smile. “ ‘Twill do no harm, Lord Councillor; for I misdoubt me an we shall speak of aught which I know not already.”

“Which is,” Rod said carefully, “that if we don’t follow them, they’ll be back.”

Tuan nodded, then winced, closing his eyes. “Aye, Lord Warlock. Next spring, as soon as thunderstorms may start, we shall see them here upon our shores again—aye, I know it.”

Brom frowned. “Yet hast thou thought that they’ll have reasoned out a way to conquer all the power our witches can brew up?”

Tuan grimaced. “Nay, I had not. It strengthens my resolve. We must needs bring the war home to them; we must follow them across the sea, and strike.”

“And the time to strike is now,” Brom rumbled.

Tuan nodded and looked up at Rod. “Yet how shall we bring our army there, Lord Warlock? Canst thou transport so many men and horses with a spell?”

Rod smiled, amused. “I don’t think even Galen could send that many, my liege. But we have discovered that Gramarye has a thriving merchant fleet who would no doubt be delighted to lend their services to helping wiping out a potential pirates’ nest.”

Tuan nodded slowly. “I do believe ‘twould gain their heartfelt cooperation, an thou wert to word it so.”

“It’s just a matter of figuring out their area of self-interest. We’ve also got an amazing number of fishing boats, and their owners will probably be very quick to agree we should forestall any poaching on their fishing-grounds, before it starts.”

The King nodded—again very slowly. “Then thou dost think we may have transport enow.”

“Probably. And what we lack, I think shipwrights can turn out with around-the-clock shifts by the time we’ve gathered all the provisions we’ll need. No, transportation’s not the problem.”

“Indeed?” The King smiled weakly. “What is, then?”

“Fighting the beastmen on their home ground when they’re battling for their lives—and for their wives’ and children’s lives, too.”

Tuan stared at him for a moment. When he spoke his voice was a ghostly whisper. “Aye, ‘twill be a bloody business. And few of those who sail shall be wafted home.”

“If we make it a fight to the death,” Rod agreed.

“What else can it be?” Brom demanded, scowling.

“A coup d’etat.” Rod grinned. “According to Yorick and our other beastman-guests, this invasion is the result of a junta managing to seize power in Beastland.”

Tuan shrugged, irritated. “What aid is that, if these people have adhered to their new leader?” But as soon as he’d said it, his gaze turned thoughtful.

Rod nodded. “After a defeat like this, they’re not going to be very happy with the leadership of that shaman, Mughorck, and his Kobold-god. And from what Yorick said, I kinda got the feeling that they never really were screamingly enthusiastic about him anyway—they were just bamboozled into putting him into power in the panic of the moment. If we can make it clear right from the beginning that we’re fighting Mughorck, and not the beastmen as a whole—then maybe they’ll be willing to surrender.”

Tuan nodded slowly. “Thou dost speak eminent good sense, Lord Warlock. But how wilt thou convey to them this intention?”

“That,” Rod said, “is for Yorick to figure out.”

“Nothing to it, m’lord.” Yorick waved the problem away with one outsized ham-hand. “Oldest thing in the book—a nice little whispering-campaign.”

“Whispering-campaigns are that old?” Rod had a dizzying vision of 50,000 years of slander. “But how’ll you get it started?”

Yorick glanced at his fellows, then shrugged as he turned back to Rod. “No help for it—we’ll have to go in ahead of you and do it ourselves.” When Rod stared, appalled, Yorick grinned. “What were you thinking of—leaflets?”

“I was really thinking we might be able to do something with telepathy,” Rod sighed, “but none of our projectives know the language. Yorick’s right—he and his men have got to get the word started somehow. The question is—can we trust them?”

“Trust a man of the foe?” Catharine cried. “Nay, Lord Warlock, I would hope you would not!”

“But he’s really on our side,” Rod argued, “because he’s fighting the same enemy—the shaman, Mughorck.”

They sat in a small chamber—only forty feet square—of the royal castle in Runnymede. The Oriental carpet, tapestries on the walls, gleaming walnut furniture, graceful hourglass-shaped chairs, and silver wine goblets belied any urgency. But even though the fireplace was cold, the talk was heated.

“He doth say Mughorck is his enemy,” Catharine said scornfully. “Yet, might he not be an agent of just that fell monster?”

Rod spread his hands. “Why? For what purpose could Mughorck send an agent who couldn’t possibly be mistaken for a Gramarye native? Not to mention his handful of cronies who don’t even speak our language.”

“Why, for this very purpose, lad,” Brom O’Berin grunted, “that we might send them in to strengthen our attack, whereupon they could turn their coats, warn their fellows, and have a hedge of spears for our soldiers to confront when they land.”

“Okay,” Rod snorted, disgusted. “Farfetched, but possible, I’ll grant you. Still, it just doesn’t feel right.”

Catharine smiled wickedly. “I had thought ‘twas only ladies who would decide great matters by such feelings.”

“All right, so you’ve got a point now and then,” Rod growled. “But you know what I mean, Your Majesty—there’s some element of this whole situation that just doesn’t fit with the hypothesis that Yorick’s an enemy.”

Catharine opened her mouth to refute him, but Brom spoke first. “1 take thy meaning—and I’ll tell thee the element.”

Catharine turned to him in amazement, and Tuan looked up, suddenly interested again.

“ ‘Tis this,” Brom explained, “that he doth speak our language. Could he have learned it from Mughorck?”

“Possibly, if Mughorck’s an agent of the Eagle’s enemies,” Rod said slowly. “If the Eagle taught Yorick English, there’s no reason why Mughorck couldn’t have, too.”

“Still, I take thy meaning.” Tuan sat up straighter. “We know that Yorick doth hold the Eagle to be some manner of wizard; if we say that Mughorck is too, then we have pitted wizard ‘gainst wizard. Would not then their combat be with one another? Why should we think they care so greatly about us that they would combine against us?”

“Or that Mughorck would oust Eagle only to be able to use the beastmen ‘gainst us,” Brom rumbled. “Why could we be of such great moment to Mughorck?”

“Because,” Fess’s voice said behind Rod’s ear, “Gramarye has more functioning telepaths than all the rest of the Terran Sphere together; and the interstellar communication they can provide will in all probability be the single greatest factor in determining who shall rule the Terran peoples.”

And because the Eagle and Mughorck were probably both time-traveling agents from future power-blocs who knew how the current struggle was going to come out and were trying to change it here, Rod added mentally. Aloud, he just said sourly, “It’s nice to know this chamber has such thick walls that we don’t have to worry about eavesdroppers.”

“Wherefore?” Tuan frowned. “Is there reason to question the loyalty of any of our folk?”

“Uhhhhhh… no.” Rod had to improvise quickly, and surprisingly hit upon truth. “It’s just that I brought Yorick along, in case we decided we wanted to talk to him. He’s in the antechamber.”

Catharine looked up, horrified, and stepped quickly behind Tuan’s chair. The King, however, looked interested. “Then, by all means, let’s bring him in! Can we think of no questions to ask that might determine the truth or falsehood of this beastman’s words?”

Brom stomped over to the door, yanked it open, and rumbled a command. As he swaggered back Rod offered, “Just this. From Toby’s report, the beastmen’s village is very thoroughly settled and the fields around it are loaded with corn, very neatly cultivated. That settlement’s not brand-new, Tuan. If the Eagle had come here with conquest in mind, would he have taken a couple of years out to build up a colony?”

The young King nodded. “A point well-taken.” He turned as the beastman ambled in, and Catharine took a step back. “Welcome, captain of exiles!”

“The same to you, I’m sure.” Yorick grinned and touched his forelock.

Brom scowled ferociously, so Rod figured he’d better butt in. “Uh, we’ve just been talking, Yorick, about why Mughorck tried to assassinate the Eagle.”

“Oh, because Mughorck wanted to conquer you guys,” Yorick said, surprised. “He couldn’t even get it started with the Eagle in the way, preaching understanding and tolerance.”

The room was awfully quiet while Tuan, Brom, Catharine, and Rod exchanged frantic glances.

“I said something?” Yorick inquired.

“Only what we’d all just been saying.” Rod scratched behind his ear. “Always unnerving, finding out you guessed right.” He looked up at Yorick. “Why’d Mughorck want to conquer us?”

“Power-base,” Yorick explained. “Your planet’s going to be the hottest item in the coming power-struggle. Your descendants will come out on the side of democracy, so the Decentralized Democratic Tribunal will win. The only chance the losers will have is to come back in time and try to take over Gramarye. When Mughorck took over we realized he must’ve been working for one of the future losers… What’s the matter, milord?”

Rod had been making frantic shushing motions. Tuan turned a gimlet eye on him. “Indeed, Lord Warlock.” His voice was smooth as velvet. “Why wouldst thou not wish him to speak of such things?”

“For that they are highly confusing, for one.” Catharine knit her brows, but the look she bent on Rod was baleful. “Still, mine husband’s point’s well taken. For whom dost thou labor, Lord Warlock?”

“For my wife and child, before anyone else,” Rod sighed, “but since I want freedom and justice for them, and you two are their best chance for that condition—why, I work for you.”

“Or in accord with us,” Tuan amended. “But hast thou other affiliations, Lord Warlock?”

“Well, there is a certain collaborative effort that…”

“…that doth give him information vital to the continuance of Your Majesties’ reign.” Brom glanced up at them guiltily. “I ha’ known of it almost since he came among us.”

Some of the tension began to ease out of Tuan, but Catharine looked more indignant than ever. “Even thou, my trusted Brom! Wherefore didst thou not tell this to me?”

“For reason that thou hadst no need to know it,” Brom said simply, “and because I felt it to be Lord Gallowglass’s secret. If he thought thou shouldst know it, he would tell thee—for, mistake not, his first loyalty is here.”

Catharine seemed a bit mollified, and Tuan was actually smiling—but with a glittering eye. “We must speak more of this anon, Lord Warlock.”

But not just now. Rod breathed a shuddering sigh and cast a quick look of gratitude toward Brom. The dwarf nodded imperceptibly.

“Our cause of worry is before us.” Tuan turned back to Yorick. “It would seem, Master Yorick, that thou dost know more than thou shouldst.”

Yorick stared. “You mean some of this was classified?”

Rod gave him a laser glare, but Tuan just said, “Where didst thou learn of events yet to come?”

“Oh, from the Eagle.” Yorick smiled, relieved. “He’s been there.”

The room was very still for a moment.

Then Tuan said carefully, “Dost thou say this Eagle hath gone bodily to the future?‘’

Yorick nodded.

“Who’s he work for?” Rod rapped out.

“Himself.” Yorick spread his hands. “Makes a nice profit out of it, too.”

Rod relaxed. Political fanatics would fight to the death, but businessmen would always see reason—provided you showed them that they could make a better profit doing things your way.

But Tuan shook his head. “Thou wouldst have us believe the Eagle brought all thy people here and taught them to farm enough to support themselves. Where’s the profit in that?”

“Well,” Yorick hedged, “he does undertake the occasional humanitarian project…”

“Also, for certain assignments you boys probably make unbeatable agents,” Rod said drily.

Yorick had the grace to blush.

“Or is it,” rumbled Brom, “that he doth fight the future-folk who backed Mughorck? Would thy people not be a part of that fight?”

Yorick became very still. Then he eyed Rod and jerked his head toward Brom. “Where’d you get him?”

“You don’t want to know,” Rod said quickly. “But we do. How were you Neanderthals a weapon in the big fight?”

Yorick sighed and gave in. “Okay. It’s a little more complicated than what I said before. The bad guys gathered us together to use us as a tool to establish a very early dictatorship that wouldn’t quit. You’ll understand, milord, that we’re a bit of a paranoid culture.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Rod said drily.

“What is this ‘paranoid’?” Tuan frowned. “And what matters it to government?”

“It means you feel as though everyone’s picking on you.” Yorick explained, “so you tend to pick on them first, to make sure they can’t get you. Governments like that are very good at repression.”

Catharine blanched, and Tuan turned to Rod. “Is there truth in what he doth say?”

“Too much,” Rod said with a woeful smile, “and anyone with witch-power tends to be repressed. Now you know why I’m on your side, my liege.”

“Indeed I do.” Tuan turned back to face Yorick. “And I find myself much less concerned about thine other associations.”

But Rod was watching Catharine closely out of the corner of his eye. Was she realizing that she’d been on the road to becoming a tyrant when she’d reigned alone? Mostly over-compensating for insecurity, of course—but by the time she’d gained enough experience to be sure of herself, she’d have had too many people who hated her; she’d have had to stay a tyrant.

But Tuan was talking to Yorick again. “Why doth thine Eagle fight these autocrats?”

“Bad for trade,” Yorick said promptly. “Dictatorships tend to establish very arbitrary rules about who can do business with whom, and their rules result in either very high tariffs or exorbitant graft. But a government that emphasizes freedom pretty much has to let business be free, too.”

“Pretty much.” Rod underscored the qualifier.

Yorick shrugged. “Freedom’s an unstable condition, my lord. There’ll always be men trying to destroy it by establishing their own dictatorships. Businessmen are human too.”

Rod felt that the issue deserved a bit more debate, but the little matter of the invasion was getting lost in the shuffle. “We were kind of thinking about that whispering campaign you mentioned. Mind explaining how you could work it without getting caught? And don’t try to tell me you guys all look alike to each other.”

“Wouldn’t think of it.” Yorick waved away the suggestion. “By this time, see, I’m pretty sure there’ll be a lot of people who’re fed up with Mughorck. In fact, I even expect a few refugees from his version of justice. If you can smuggle me back to the mainland, into the jungle south of the village, I think I can make contact with quite a few of ‘em. Some of them will have friends who’ll be glad to forget any chance meetings they might have out in the forest gathering fruit, and the rumor you want circulated can get passed into the village when the friend comes back.”

Tuan nodded. “It should march. But couldst thou not have done this better an thou hadst remained in thine own country?”

Yorick shook his head. “Mughorck’s gorillas were hot on my trail. By now, he should have other problems on his hands; he won’t have forgotten about me and my men, but we won’t be high-priority any more. Besides, there might even be enough refugees in the forest so that he’s not willing to risk any of his few really loyal squads on a clean-out mission; the odds might be too great that they wouldn’t come back.”

The King nodded slowly. “I hope, for thy sake, that thou hast it aright.”

“Then, too,” Yorick said, “there’s the little matter that, if I’d stayed, there’d have been no message to pass. Frankly, I needed allies.”

“Thou hast them, an thou’rt a true man,” Tuan said firmly. Catharine, however, looked much less certain.

Yorick noted it. “Of course I’m true. After all, if I betrayed you and you caught me, I expect you’d think of a gallows that I’d be the perfect decoration for.”

“Nay, i’ truth,” Tuan protested, “I’d have to build one anew especially for thee, to maintain harmony of style.”

“I’m flattered.” Yorick grinned. “I’ll tell you straightaway, though, I don’t deserve to be hanged in a golden chain. Silver, maybe…”

“Wherefore? Dost thou fear leprechauns?”

Tuan and Yorick, Rod decided, were getting along entirely too well. “There’s the little matter of the rumor he’s supposed to circulate,” he reminded Tuan.

Yorick shrugged. “That you and your army have really come just to oust Mughorck, isn’t it? Not to wipe out the local citizenry?”

“Thou hast it aright.”

“But you do understand,” Yorick pointed out, “that they’ll have to fight until they know Mughorck’s been taken, don’t you? I mean, if they switched to your side and he won, it could be very embarrassing for them—not to mention their wives and children.”

“Assuredly,” Tuan agreed. “Nay, I hope only that, when they know Mughorck is ta’en, they’ll not hesitate to lay down their arms.”

“I have a notion that most of them will be too busy cheering to think about objecting.”

“ ‘Tis well. Now…” Tuan leaned forward, eyes glittering. “How can we be sure of taking Mughorck?”

“An we wish a quick ending to this battle,” Brom explained, “we cannot fight through the whole mass of beast-men to reach him.”

“Ah—now we come back to my original plan.” Yorick grinned. “I was waiting for you guys to get around to talking invasion. Because if you do, you see, and if you sneak me into the jungles a week or two ahead, I’m sure my boys and I can find enough dissenters to weld into an attack force. Then, when your army attacks from the front, I can bring my gorillas…”

“You mean guerrillas.”

“That, too. Anyway, I can bring ‘em over the cliffs and down to the High Cave.”

“ The High Cave‘?” Tuan frowned. “What is that?”

“Just the highest cave in the cliff-wall. When we first arrived we all camped out in caves, and Eagle took the highest one so he could see the whole picture of what was going on. When the rank and file moved out into huts, he stayed there—so Mughorck will have to have moved in there, to use the symbol of possession to reinforce his power.”

“Well reasoned,” Brom rumbled, “but how if thou’rt mistaken?”

Yorick shrugged. “Then we keep looking till we find him. We shouldn’t have too much trouble; I very much doubt that he’d be at the front line.”

Tuan’s smile soured with contempt.

“He’s the actual power,” Yorick went on, “but the clincher’ll be the Kobold. When we take the idol, that should really tell the troops that the war’s lost.”

“And you expect it’ll be in the High Cave too,” Rod amplified.

“Not a doubt of it,” Yorick confirmed. “You haven’t seen this thing, milord. You sure as hell wouldn’t want it in your living room.”

“Somehow I don’t doubt that one bit.”

“Nor I,” Tuan agreed. He glanced at his wife and his two ministers. “Are we agreed, then?”

Reluctantly, they nodded.

“Then, ‘tis done.” Tuan clapped his hands. “I will give orders straightaway, Master Yorick, for a merchantman to bear thee and thy fellows to the jungles south of thy village. Then, when all’s in readiness, a warlock will come to tell thee the day and hour of our invasion.”

“Great!” Yorick grinned with relief: then, suddenly, he frowned. “But wait a minute. How’ll your warlock find us?”

“Just stare at a fire and try to blank your mind every evening for a few hours,” Rod explained, “and think something abstract—the sound of one hand clapping, or some such, over and over again. The warlock’ll home in on your mind.”

Yorick looked up, startled. “You mean your telepaths can read our minds?”

“Sort of,” Rod admitted. “At least, they can tell you’re there, and where you are.”

Yorick smiled, relieved. “Well. No wonder you knew where the raiders were going to land next.”

“After the first strike, yes.” Rod smiled. “Of course, we can’t understand your language.”

“Thanks for the tip.” Yorick raised a forefinger. “I’ll make sure I don’t think in English.”

Rod wasn’t sure he could, but he didn’t say so.

Yorick turned back to the King and Queen. “If you don’t mind, I’ll toddle along now, Your Majesties.” He bowed. “I’d like to go tell my men it’s time to move out.”

“Do, then,” Tuan said regally, “and inform thy men that they may trust in us as deeply as we may trust in them.”

Yorick paused at the door and looked back, raising one eyebrow. “You sure about that?”

Tuan nodded firmly.

Yorick grinned again. “I think you just said more than you knew. Godspeed, Majesties.” He bowed again and opened the door; the sentry ushered him out.

Catharine was the first to heave a huge sigh of relief. “Well! ‘Tis done.” She eyed her husband. “How shall we know if the greatest part of his bargain’s fulfilled, ere thy battle?”

“Well, I wasn’t quite candid with him,” Rod admitted. He stepped over to the wall and lifted the edge of a tapestry. “What do you think, dear? Can we trust him?”

Gwen nodded as she stepped out into the room. “Aye, my lord. There was not even the smallest hint of duplicity in his thoughts.”

“He was thinking in English,” Rod explained to the startled King and Queen. “He had to; he was talking to us.”

Tuan’s face broke into a broad grin. “So that was thy meaning when thou didst speak of ‘eavesdroppers’!”

“Well, not entirely. But I did kind of have Gwen in mind.”

“Yet may he not have been thinking in his own tongue, beneath the thoughts he spoke to us?” Catharine demanded.

Gwen cast an approving glance at her. Rod read it and agreed; though Catharine tended to flare into anger if you mentioned her own psi powers to her, she was obviously progressing well in their use, to have come across the idea of submerged thoughts.

“Mayhap, Majesty,” Gwen agreed. “Yet, beneath those thoughts in his own tongue there are the root-thoughts that give rise to words, but which themselves are without words. They are naked flashes of idea, as yet unclothed. Even there, as deeply as I could read him, there was no hint of treachery.”

“But just to be sure, we’ll have Toby check out his camp right before the invasion,” Rod explained. “He’s learned enough to be able to dig beneath the camouflage of surface thoughts, if there is any.”

The door opened, and the sentry stepped in to announce, “Sir Maris doth request audience, Majesties.”

“Aye, indeed!” Tuan turned to face the door, delighted. “Mayhap he doth bring word from our sentries who have kept watch to be certain the beastmen do not turn back, to attempt one last surprise. Assuredly, present him!”

The sentry stepped aside, and the seneschal limped into the chamber, leaning heavily on his staff, but with a grin that stretched from ear to ear.

“Welcome, good Sir Maris!” Tuan cried. “What news?”

“ ‘Twas even as thou hadst thought, Majesty.” Sir Maris paused in front of Tuan for a sketchy bow, then straightened up, and his grin turned wolfish. “Three ships did curve and seek to sail into the mouth of a smaller river that runs athwart the Fleuve.”

“They were repulsed?” Glints danced in Tuan’s eyes.

“Aye, my liege! Our archers filled their ships with fire, the whiles our soldiers slung a weighty chain across the river. When they ground against it and found they could sail no further, they sought to come ashore; but our men-at-arms presented them a hedge of pikes. Nay, they turned and fled.” He turned to Rod. “Our thanks, Lord Warlock, for thy good aid in this endeavor!”

Rod started, staring, and Gwen caught his arm and her breath; but Sir Maris whirled back to the King, fairly crowing, “He did seem to be everywhere, first on this bank, then on that, amongst the archers, then amongst the pikemen, everywhere urging them on to feats of greater valor. Nay, they’ll not believe that they can lose now.”

Gwen looked up, but Rod stood frozen.

“Yet, withal,” said the old knight, frowning, “why hadst thou assigned command to me? If the High Warlock were there to lead, he should have had command as well!”

“But,” said Tuan, turning to Rod, “thou wast ever here in Runnymede, with ourselves, the whiles this raid was foiled!”

“I noticed,” Rod croaked.

“My lord, not all things that hap here are impossible,” Gwen sighed.

“Oh, yes, they are. Take you, for example—that someone as wonderful as you could even exist is highly improbable. But that you could not only exist but also fall in love with someone like me—well, that’s flatly impossible.”

Gwen gave him a radiant smile. “Thou wilt ever undervalue thyself, Rod Gallowglass, and overvalue me—and thus hath made a cold world turn warm for me.”

That look in her eyes he couldn’t resist; it pulled him down, and down, into a long, deep kiss that tried to pull him deeper. But eventually Rod remembered that he was on the deck of a ship, and that the crew were no doubt watching. He was tempted to consign them all to the Inferno, but he remembered his responsibilities and pulled out of the kiss with a regretful sigh. “We haven’t been doing enough of that lately.”

“I am well aware of that, my lord.” Gwen fixed him with a glittering eye.

“And I thought the Neanderthals had an ‘Evil Eye’!” Rod breathed, and turned to hook her hand firmly around his elbow as he strolled down the deck. “For now, however, let’s enjoy the Seabreeze and the salt air. After all, this is the closest thing to a pleasure cruise we’re ever apt to get.”

“As thou dost say, my lord,” she said demurely.

“Just so you don’t mistake my doppelganger for me,” Rod amended.

Gwen shook her head firmly. “That could not hap at any distance less than an hundred feet.”

“Well, I hope not—but quite a few people seem to have been making the error.”

“Ah, but how well do they know thee?” Gwen crooned. “If they’ve seen thee at all before, it has been only briefly and from a distance.”

“Yeah, but there’re some who… well, there’s one!” Rod stopped next to a brown-robed form that sat cross-legged on the deck, leaning against the rail with a half-filled inkhorn in his left hand, writing in a careful round hand in a book of huge vellum sheets. “Hail, Brother Chillde!”

The monk looked up, startled. Then a smile of delight spread over his face. “Well met, Lord Warlock! I had hoped to espy thee here!”

Rod shrugged. “Where else would I be? It’s the King’s flagship. But how do you come to be here, Brother Chillde?”

“I am chaplain,” the monk said simply. “And I wish to be near to the King and his councillors as may be, an I am able; for I strive to record what doth occur during this war as well as I may.”

“So your chronicle’s coming well? How far back have you managed to dig?”

“Why, I began four years agone, when the old King died, and have writ down all I’ve seen or heard that has occurred during, first, the reign of Catharine, then during the reign of both our goodly King and Queen.” He beamed up at them. “Yet, in this present crisis I have been fortunate to be in the thick of it, almost from the first. My journal shall be precise, so that folk yet unborn, and many hundreds of years hence, may know how nobly our folk of this present age did acquit themselves.”

“A noble goal.” Rod smiled, though without, perhaps, as much respect as the project deserved. “Be sure what you write is accurate, though, won’t you?”

“Never fear. I’ve asked several folk for their accounts of each event, and thus believe I’ve found somewhat of the truth. Yet, for the greater part, I’ve writ only what I’ve seen myself.”

Rod nodded with approval. “Can’t do better than primary source material. May your endeavor prosper, Brother Chillde.”

“I thank thee, lord.”

And Rod and Gwen strolled on down the deck as the monk bent over his journal again. When they were safely out of ear-shot, Rod murmured to Gwen, “Of course, eyewitness accounts aren’t necessarily what really happened. People’s memories are always colored by what they want to believe.”

“I can well credit it.” Gwen glanced back at the monk. “And he’s so young and filled with the ideals of youth! I doubt me not an Catharine and Tuan seem to him impossibly regal and imposing—and the beastmen immensely vile, and…”

“Mama!”

Gwen recoiled in surprise, then blossomed into a radiant smile as she realized she was suddenly holding an armful of baby. “Magnus, my bonny boy! Hast thou, then, come to wish thy parents well on this their venture?”

Her eyes darkened as the baby nodded, and Rod guessed she was thinking that Mama and Papa might not come home to Baby. She needed a distraction. “What’s he got there—a ball?”

The spheroid was dull and gray, about four inches in diameter—and its surface suddenly rippled. Rod stared.

Gwen saw his look of disgust and said quickly, “Be not concerned, my lord. ‘Tis naught but witch moss with which, I doubt me not, he hath been toying.”

“Oh.” Rod knew the substance well; it was a variety of fungus that had the peculiar property of responding to the thoughts of projective telepaths. Rod had a strong suspicion that it had contributed to the development of elves, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures around the Gramarye landscape. “When did he begin to play with…”

He broke off, because the ball was changing in the child’s hand—and Magnus was staring at it in surprise. It stretched itself up, flattening and dwindling toward the bottom, where it divided in half lengthwise for half its height, and two pieces broke loose at the sides. The top formed itself into a smaller ball, and dents and lines began to define the form.

“What doth he make?” Gwen whispered.

“I’m afraid to guess.” But Rod knew, with a sickening certainty, what he was going to see.

And he was right—for the lump finished its transformation and swung up a wicked-looking war ax, opening a gash of a mouth to reveal canines that would have done credit to a saber-toothed tiger. Its piggy eyes reddened with insane blood-lust, and it began to shamble up Magnus’s arm.

The child shrieked and hurled it as far away from him as he could. It landed on the deck, caving in one side; but that side bulged out into its former form as it pulled itself to its feet and shambled off down the deck, looking for something to ravish.

Magnus plowed his head into Gwen’s bosom, wailing in terror. “There, love—‘tis gone,” she assured him, “or will be in a moment…” And she glared at the diminutive monster, eyes narrowing. It took one step, and its leg turned into mush.

“It’s a beastman,” Rod whispered, “a vicious parody of a Neanderthal.”

Another step, and the model beastman turned into a ball again.

“But the kid didn’t see any of the battles!” Rod protested. “How could he…”

“My lord,” Gwen grated, “it will not hold its shape unless I force it. Another mind fights me for the forming of it.”

“Then, get rid of it—fast! You never know, it might find another one like it, and breed true!”

“Done,” Gwen snapped.

The witch moss turned into a ball so smooth that it gleamed, then shot off the deck and far, far away, heading for the horizon.

Gwen turned her attention back to Magnus. “There, there, child! ‘Twas no fault of thine; ‘twas some mean and heartless person who crafted thy ball thus, to afright a babe!” She looked up at Rod with murder in her eyes. “Who would ha’ done such a thing?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” Rod was feeling in a mayhem mood himself. He glanced quickly about the decks, even up into the rigging, trying to find anyone gazing at them—but there were only two sailors in sight, and neither was even looking in their direction.

But Brother Chillde still scribbled in his book.

Rod stared. No. It couldn’t be.

But…

He stepped over to Brother Chillde again, lightly, almost on tiptoe, and craned his neck to peer over the monk’s shoulder at the words he was writing.

“… Huge they were,” the manuscript read, “with arms that hung down to their knees, and fangs that sank below their chins. Their eyes were maddened bits of red, more suited to a swine than a man, in a head like unto a ball, but too small for so great a body. Their sole weapon was a huge and murderous ax, and with it they quested always, seeking for living things to slay.”

“Thou knowest not what thou dost ask,” Puck cried. “Ever was I made for battle, Rod Gallowglass! Hast thou any comprehension of the opportunities for mischief that occur when men do war?”

“Very much,” Rod answered grimly. “Look, I know it’s a hardship to stay out of the fighting—but you’ve got to think of the good of the whole of Gramarye, not just of your own excitement.”

“Who says I must?” the elf demanded with a truculent scowl.

“I,” answered Brom O’Berin; and Puck took one look at his sovereign’s face and shrank back.

“Well, then, so I must,” he sighed. “But wherefore must it be I? Are there no other elves who can execute so simple a task?”

“None,” Rod said with absolute certainty. “It only seems simple to you. I can think of a few other elves who might be able to bring it off—but you’re the only one I’m sure of.”

Puck visibly swelled with self-importance.

“You’re the only one,” Rod pressed on, “who has the imagination, and the gift of gab, to pull this off.”

“Thou wilt do it,” Brom commanded sternly, “else thou wilt answer to me, hobgoblin, when the battle’s ended.”

“Ah, then, I shall,” Puck sighed—but preened himself, too. “E’en so, Warlock—I ken not why the monk will need one to detail to him what doth occur when he hath two eyes to see with.”

“Yes, well, that’s the first thing you’ll have to arrange, isn’t it? Some way of making his eyes unusable for the duration of the battle. Nothing permanent,” Rod added hastily, seeing the gleam in Puck’s eye.

“Well-a-day,” the elf sighed, “so be it. We shall benight him only for an hour or two. But what purpose doth that serve, when I am but to tell to him what doth occur?”

“But you’re not,” Rod contradicted. “You’re supposed to tell him what isn’t happening.”

“What word is this?” Puck stared. “Do I hear aright? 1 am to say, ‘Nay, be of good cheer! It doth not rain, nor doth the moon shine! The soldiers do not shake the beastmen’s hands in friendship, nor do they lose a foot of land!’ What foolery is this?”

“Not quite what I had in mind, that’s for sure.” Rod fought a smile. “Don’t be so negative, Puck. Think of it like this: ‘Our brave, heroic line doth advance, and the murderous mass of craven beastmen stumble toward them with mayhem in their eyes! They catch our soldiers’ gazes, and our goodmen freeze, terror-stricken by the Evil Eye! But the witch-folk wrench them free, and the High Warlock doth rise up, a gleaming paragon on a giant steed of jet, to call them onward! Inspired by his valor, our soldier-men take heart; they shout with anger and do charge the foe!’ ”

Puck gave him a jaundiced eye. “Thou’rt not slow to trumpet thine own virtues, art thou?”

“Well, not when it’s warranted,” Rod said, abashed. “And in this case, it’s downright vital. Brother Chillde won’t believe anything less of me, Puck—and, whatever other effect you achieve, you’ve got to make him believe what you tell him, totally.”

Air boomed outward, and Toby stood before them. “Lord Warlock, thou’rt wanted on the poop deck.”

“From the poop deck?” Rod raised an eyebrow in surprised sarcasm. “All that way? Gee, Toby, I hope you didn’t tire yourself out.”

The young warlock reddened. “I know thou dost enjoin us, Lord Warlock, to not appear and disappear, or fly, when simple walking will be nearly as fast…”

“Darn right I do. Totally aside from what it does to your fitness and your character, there’s the little matter of its effects on the non-psi majority.”

“I did forget,” Toby sighed. “When great events are in train, such matters seem of slight import.”

“That’s why you need to make normal conduct a habit. But what great event’s in train now?”

“I am!” the young warlock cried in exasperation. “I have but now returned from bearing word of our arrival to Master Yorick and his band! Wilt thou not come attend to me?”

“Oh!” Rod bolted off his stool, feeling like a pompous idiot. “What an ass I am!”

Puck perked up and opened his mouth.

“Just a figure of speech,” Rod said quickly. “But accurate. Here I am, catechizing you about details, when you’ve just finished a hazardous mission! My deepest apologies, Toby—and I’m glad to see you’re back intact. And, of course, you can’t report to me here—you’ve got to say it the first time where the King can hear it.”

“No offense, milord,” Toby said with a grin. He stepped over to the door and held it open. “And, since thou canst not transport thyself from place to place, I’ll company thee on foot.”

“I, too,” Brom growled. “I must hear what progress this grinning ape hath made.”

The door slammed behind them, leaving Puck alone to mutter imprecations to himself.

“Welcome, Lord Warlock,” Tuan said quietly, as the door closed behind them, “and thou, too, Lord Brom.” His eyes glittered. “Now! May we hear this warlock’s tale?”

Toby looked around at the glowing eyes, all fixed upon him, and succumbed to sudden embarrassment. “Where… what shall I tell?”

“Everything that happened,” Rod suggested, “starting from the beginning.”

Toby heaved a sigh. “Well, then! I listened for the beast-men’s thoughts, and felt a mind belaboring with emptiness. This did resemble the ‘sound of one hand clapping’ that the High Warlock had told me of, so I drifted toward where it seemed the loudest, and looked down. I was far past the beast-men’s village, and the feelings of their thoughts had thinned; but now I felt the thrust of several minds, mayhap threescore. Yet all I saw were treetops.”

Rod nodded. “They hid well. What then?”

“I listened close, till the un-clapping mind had begun to think of other matters—yet, even there, no inkling-thought of treachery did come. Therefore did I drift down into a treetop and clambered down into their midst, the less to afright them.”

Tuan smiled thinly. “That might somewhat lessen their startlement, I wot—yet not abundantly. What said they when they beheld thee?”

“Oh, the first beastman that laid eyes upon me shrieked and whirled up a war club, and I readied myself to disappear; but I also held up open hands, and he stayed his blow, then nodded toward his left. I went thither, and he followed me, though with ne’er a bit of trust in’s eyes. And thus came I unto Master Yorick.”

“Where?” Rod pounced on it.

Toby looked up, surprised. “He sat beside a nearly smokeless fire with several others, only one among many, till he looked up and saw me. Then he stood, and grinned, and came up to me, hand upheld in salute.”

Tuan had caught Rod’s point. “Ah, then. He sat among his men as an equal, with neither state nor honor.”

“None that I could see. I’ truth, there were as many women as men around that fire—yet they did defer to him, that much was plain.”

“How many were there?” the King demanded.

“A score of men, at least; and he assured me others stood sentry-guard, the whiles a squadron patrolled the jungle’s edge, nigh to the village, to aid those who sought to escape. His force, he said, has strength of twoscore and more.”

“How many women and children are there?” Catharine sounded anxious.

“A dozen that I could see, of women; each had two babes, or three.”

“Thriving little family group.” Rod smiled. “If we didn’t clean out Mughorck, Yorick’d have his own village going.”

“Aye, and betimes the two villages would battle.” Tuan smiled with irony. “Mayhap we ought to keep our men at home and let our foemen slay one another.”

“Thou canst not mean to say it!” Catharine flared.

“Nor do I,” Tuan sighed, “for Yorick and his folk are allies now; and if Mughorck did battle him, Mughorck would surely win, since that he hath thousands. Nay, we must needs strike whiles yet we have a force to aid us. What did he say of the rumor he had hoped he’d seed?”

“He said that in these few weeks time it hath increased amazingly.” Toby grinned. “Indeed, saith Master Yorick, ‘Tis ready to be reaped and sheaved, and gathered into barns.’ ”

“The seed, then, fell on fertile ground,” Brom rumbled.

Toby nodded. “Thus saith Yorick: ‘There are some hundreds of widows now where there were none two months agone—and what hath their blood bought? Why, naught—save the fear of vengeance.’ Aye, milord, these folk were more than ready to believe that vengeance would be aimed only at the Kobold and his priest Mughorck.”

“What of the High Cave?” Brom rumbled. “Hath he sign that the ones we seek do lair therein?”

“They do.” Toby nodded. “Those lately come agree with those who ‘scaped two months agone—the Eagle’s High Cave now holds the Kobold and his priests.”

“The Eagle—aye. What of him?” Tuan frowned.

“He dwells near them, but not with them,” Toby answered, returning his frown. “Ever and anon doth Yorick go to speak with him, but he dwells not with his folk.”

“Afraid?” Rod demanded.

“Not of Yorick’s band. Yet he seems to think Mughorck might come in search of him, and doth not wish his loyalists to be caught in a net that might be laid for him.”

“I think the Neanderthals aren’t the only ones who’re paranoid,” Rod noted with a lift of the eyebrow toward Tuan. “Well, Your Majesty, it sounds as though our partisans are in good shape, and definitely ready to pitch in on our side.”

“I would so conjecture.” But Tuan still watched Toby. “Art thou certain there was no hint of treachery in his manner, nor in his thoughts?”

The young warlock shook his head firmly. “Nay, my liege—and I did probe. There might be summat hid in the fast-nesses of his heart… but if there is, ‘tis beyond my comprehension.”

“Mayhap there is,” Tuan said frowning, “but when there’s no sign, we would be fools to turn away their aid.”

“Still,” Rod pointed out, “we could try to be ready for a last-minute change of heart.”

“We must be so, indeed,” Tuan agreed. “Let us count the beastmen loyal only when the battle’s won.”

“Which will not be easy.” Rod stood, frowning down. “We’ll be on the beastmen’s home territory this time. They won’t need lightning to bring them their extra power; they’ll have it right there at hand.‘’

“Indeed, ‘twill be a most fell battle,” Tuan agreed. “Art thou certain of this ancient wizard’s aid?”

Rod started to answer, then hesitated.

“So I feared,” Tuan said grimly.

Rod nodded unhappily. “But if he jumped in to save his ‘son’ once, he’s almost certain to do it again.”

“Well, one can but pick the strongest ground and do one’s best,” Tuan sighed. “For, after all, no outcome’s certain in battle, commerce, love, or life. Godspeed ye, my commanders—and may we all meet again, when tomorrow’s sun hath dawned.”

The Neanderthal village breathed uneasily in its slumber, bathed by the moon. The sentries on cliff-top and in small boats were bone-weary but not at all sleepy, for Mughorck had filled them with fear of the wild-eyed, ferocious Flatfaces who were so powerful as to be able to throw off the effects of the Evil Eye. What other powers did they have? How soon would they descend upon the hapless people, filled with vengeful blood-lust?

But, countering these tales, was the rumor that filtered throughout the village now—that the Flatfaces’ anger was blunted; that Yorick had pled with them and brought them to see that this madness of raiding and invasion was only Mughorck’s doing, and that when the Flatfaces came they would be satisfied with only Mughorck, and his lieutenants. And, of course, the Kobold…

The sentries shuddered. What race of wizards was this, who could dare to strive against a god?

Thus their thoughts ran through the hours while the moon slowly drifted down toward the horizon, then slipped below it—and the land lay shadowed, its darkness lightened only by the stars. The sentries, weary to begin with, began to grow sleepy. The night was almost past; the Flatfaces had not come. For a few more hours, they were safe…

Then they started, staring. What were those dark shapes that scuttled over the water toward the beach, so many as to seem like a field of darkened stars? In disbelief, the sentries squeezed their eyes shut, shook their heads—but when they looked again the squat, dark shapes still drove toward the beach. Surely these could not be the Flatfaces, flooding in so silently…

But the dark shapes plowed up the beach, grinding to a halt, and scores of smaller shadows dropped off their sides. Nightmare though it seemed, this was no dream! The sentries clapped horns and conch shells to their lips, and blew the alarm!

Neanderthals tumbled out of their huts, pulling on helmets, hefting war axes, groggy but waking fast, calling to one another in alarm.

The Gramarye soldiers formed their line and marched toward the village.

The High Warlock rode back and forth behind the lines, cautioning, “No shouting yet! Remember, silence! The more noise they make, the more eerie we’ll seem.”

But the beastmen pulled a ragged line together and stumbled toward the Gramarye soldiers with querulous, ragged war cries.

“Now!” Rod bellowed, and the soldiers charged with a hundred-throated ear-splitting shriek.

The lines crashed together, and the long pikes did their murder. Axes chopped through their shafts, but the beastmen died. Then, here and there, a beastman began to catch a soldier’s eyes, and the Gramarye line slowed as its members began to freeze.

In the flagship’s cabin, the witches and warlocks sat in a circle, hands joined, staring at the ceiling.

The Gramarye line gained speed again as the numbing darkness lifted from the soldiers’ minds.

Frantically, the beastmen reached for the power of the Kobold.

A second wave of Gramarye soldiers charged up the beach, and new pikes poked through the line. The first wave retreated, minds dizzy from the Evil Eye.

“We are come, Lord Warlock,” Tuan called, as he reined in his steed next to Fess. “Do as thou must; Sir Maris and I will care for our men.”

“All thanks, my liege!” Rod called back. He ducked down, lying flat on Fess’s back. “Now, Steel Steed! Head for the low scrub!”

The robot-horse leaped into a gallop, heading for the brush and low trees at the edge of the beach. “Rod, this subterfuge is scarcely needed! My thoughts were not even growing fuzzy yet!”

“For once, I’m not worried about you having a seizure in the middle of a battle.”

“Then, why this retreat?” Fess slowed and halted behind a screen of brush.

“Just wait. Trust me.” Rod parted the bushes and peeked out toward the beach. The battle was raging nicely, he noticed. But that wasn’t his prime concern. He scanned the beach—more especially, the brush. It was very dark, so of course he couldn’t be sure. The Gramarye soldiers had lighted torches to see their enemy by, and the light spilled over, dimly illuminating the edges of the beach; he thought he could just barely make out some dim, amorphous mass, bulging very slowly, and growing larger—but he couldn’t be sure.

The second wave of soldiers had carried the charge almost into the Neanderthal camp before sheer reflex had made individual beastmen begin seeking out the eyes of single opponents. Power flowed into the beastmen; their eyes burned more brightly. The Gramarye line slowed to a grinding halt.

In the flagship’s cabin, Agatha and Gwen squeezed the hands of the witches to each side of them and shut their eyes, bowing their heads.

Pikes, spears, and swords began to move again, slowly, gathering force to block the beastmen’s swings.

The beastmen chopped hysterically in the desperation born of superstitious fear—but wildly, too, dropping their guards. The pikes drove in, and blood flowed out.

Coming down the gangplank, Brother Chillde tripped, stumbled, and fell, sprawling on the sand with a howl of dismay.

Puck chuckled, tossed aside the stick he’d jabbed between the monk’s feet, and scurried to his side, moving his hands in arcane, symbolic gestures, and chanting under his breath,

“Chronicler, whose zeal doth blind thee To the truth’t‘which sight should bind thee, Be thou bound in falsehood’s prison! For an hour, lose thy vision!”

“What… what doth hap?” Brother Chillde cried, pushing himself up out of the sand. He glanced about him, then squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head, and opened them again. “What! Is the night become so dark? Is there no light at all?” Then his face twisted into a mask of terror as the truth hit him. “I am blinded! Heaven forgive me—my sight is lost!”

“Here, now, fellow,” Puck growled in a deep and throaty voice as he strode up to Brother Chillde, “what ails thee? Eh, thou’rt o’ the cloth!”

“Oh, kind sir!” Brother Chillde flailed about him, caught Puck’s shoulder, and grasped it. “Have pity on me, for I’m struck blind!”

“What sins are these,” Puck rumbled, “that must needs meet such desperate punishment?”

“I cannot say.” Brother Chillde bowed his head. “Pride, mayhap—that I should dare to scribble down all that did hap within this war…” His head snapped up, sightless eyes staring. “The battle! Oh, stranger, take pity! I have labored all these months to record in writing each separate event of this war! I cannot miss the knowledge of the final battle! Pray, have mercy! Stay, and speak what thou dost see! Tell me the course of the day!”

“I should be gone,” Puck growled, “to aid in tending other wounded.”

“Hast thou hurt, then?” Brother Chillde was suddenly all solicitousness, groping about him. “Nay, let me find it! I shall bandage…”

“Spare thy trouble,” Puck said quickly, “for the flow already hath been stanched. Yet I’ll own I have no occupation now…”

“Then, stay,” Brother Chillde implored, “and speak to me of all that thou mayst see.”

“Well, I will, then,” Puck sighed. “Attend thou, then, and hear, for thus it doth occur.”

“May Heaven bless thee!” Brother Chillde cried.

Puck took a deep breath, recalling the main thrust of Rod’s prompting. “The beastmen and our brave soldiers are drawn up in lines that do oppose. They grapple, they struggle; battle axes flail; pikes hover and descend. The clank of arms doth fill the air, and soldiers’ groans and horses’ neighs—eh, but that thou canst hear of thine own.”

“Aye, but now I ken the meaning of the sounds!” Brother Chillde clutched Puck’s shoulder again. “But the High Warlock! What of the High Warlock?”

“Why, there he rides,” Puck cried, pointing at empty air. “He doth rise up on’s huge black horse, a figure strong and manly, with a face that doth shine like unto the sun!” He grinned, delighted with his own cleverness. “Nay, his arms are corded cables, his shoulders a bulwark! He fairly gleams within the starlight, and his piercing eye doth daunt all who do behold him! Now rides he against the center of the line; now doth it bend and break! Now do his soldiers rush to widen the breach that he hath made!”

In the scrub brush, Rod eyed the heaving lump of jelly apprehensively. He’d watched smaller lumps of fungus ooze over to merge with it; the whole mass had grown amazingly. Now it was bulging very strangely, stretching upward, higher and higher, coalescing into a giant double lump. It thrust out a pseudopod that began to take on the shape of a horsehead, and the top narrowed from front to back and broadened from side to side. A piece split off on each side to assume the shapes of arms; a lump on top modeled itself into a head.

“I can scarcely believe it,” Rod hissed.

“Nor I.” Fess’s voice wavered. “I know of the fungus locally termed witch moss, and its link to projective telepaths—but I never suspected anything on this scale.”

Neither had Rod—for he was staring at himself. Himself the way he’d always wanted to be, too—seven feet tall, powerful as Hercules, handsome as Apollo! It was his face; but with all the crags and roughness gone, it was a face that could have dazzled a thousand Helens.

“Terre et ciel!” the figure roared, hauling out a sword the size of a small girder, and charged off into the battle on a ten-foot war-horse.

“Brother Chillde,” Rod sighed, “is one hell of a projective!”

“He is indeed,” Fess agreed. “Do you truly believe he does not know it?”

“Thoroughly.” Rod nodded. “Can you really see the Abbot letting him out into the world if he knew what Brother Chillde was?” He turned Fess’s head away. “Enough of the sideshow. He’ll keep the beastmen busy—and anybody who’s looking for me will see me.”

“Such as Yorick?” Fess murmured.

“Or the Eagle. Or our own soldiers, come to that—‘my’ presence there will sure lend them courage—especially when I look like that!” He sort of hoped Gwen didn’t get a close look at his doppelganger; she might never be satisfied with reality again. “Now we can get on with the real work of the night—and be completely unsuspected, too. To the cliff-face, Fess—let’s go.”

The robot-horse trotted through the starlight, probing the brush with infrared to see the path. “Is this truly necessary, Rod? Surely Yorick has an adequate force.”

“Maybe,” Rod said with a harsh smile, “but I’d like to give him a little backup, just in case.”

“You do not truly trust him, do you?”

Rod shrugged. “How can you really trust anybody who’s always so cheerful?”

On the beach, Brother Chillde cried, “Why dost thou pause? Tell me!”

But Puck stared, stupefied, at the giant shining Rod Gallowglass who galloped into the fray.

“The High Warlock!” Brother Chillde chattered, “The High Warlock! Tell me, what doth he?”

“Why… he doth well,” Puck said. “He doth very well indeed.”

“Then he doth lead the soldiers on to victory?”

“Nay… now, hold!” Puck frowned. “The soldiers do begin to slow!”

“ ‘Tis the Evil Eye!” Brother Chillde groaned, “and that fell power that doth bolster it!”

It did seem to be. The soldiers ground to a virtual halt. The beastmen stared a moment in disbelief, then shouted (more with relief than with bloodlust) and started chopping.

In the witches’ cabin, the young folk grimaced in pain, shoulders hunching under the strain as a huge, black amoeba strove to fold itself over their minds.

Rod and Fess galloped up the series of rock ledges that led to the High Cave, and found Brom waiting.

Rod reined in, frowning up at the dwarf where he stood on a projection of rock a little above Rod’s head.

“Didn’t expect to find you here, Brom. I’m glad of it, though.”

“Someone must see thou dost not play the fool in statecraft in the hot blood of this hour,” the dwarf growled. “I fail to see why thou wilt not trust these beastmen allies by themselves; but, if thou must needs fight alongside of them ‘gainst the Kobold and, mayhap, against them, when the Kobold is beaten, I will fight by thy side.”

“I’m grateful,” Rod said, frowning. “But what’s this business about beating the Kobold? It’s only a wooden idol, isn’t it?”

“So I had thought, till I came here,” Brom growled. “But great and fell magic doth lurk on this hillside, magic more than mortal. Mughorck is too slight a man for the depths of this foul power, or I mistake him quite. I feel it deep within me, and…”

There was a yell up ahead of them within the cave, then the clash of steel and a chaos of howling.

“It’s started,” Rod snapped. “Let’s go.”

Fess leaped into a gallop as Brom hurtled through the air to land on the horse’s rump. Rod whipped out his sword.

They rode into a mammoth cave more than a hundred feet deep and perhaps seventy wide, coated with glinting limestone, columned with joined stalactites and stalagmites, and filled with a dim eldritch light.

Three Neanderthals lay on the floor, their throats pumping blood.

All about the cave, locked pairs of Neanderthals struggled.

But Rod saw none of this. His eyes, and Brom’s, went straight to the dais at the far end of the cave.

There, on a sort of rock throne, sat a huge-headed, pot-bellied thing with an ape’s face, concave forehead, and bulging cranium. Its limbs were shriveled; its belly was swollen, as though with famine. It was hairless and naked except for a fringe of whiskers around its jowls. Its eyes were fevered, bright, manic; it drooled.

Two slender cables ran from its bald pate to a black box on the floor beside it.

The spittle dribbled from its chinless mouth into its scanty beard.

Behind it towered three metal panels, keys and switches, flashes of jeweled light, and a black gaping doorway.

At its feet, Yorick and a short skinny Neanderthal strained, locked in combat.

Its eyes flicked to Rod’s.

Icicles stabbed into Rod’s brain.

The monstrosity’s eyes flicked to Brom’s, then back to Rod’s.

Brom moved slowly, like a rusted machine, and the Kobold’s eyes flicked back to him. Brom moved again, even more slowly.

The Kobold’s jaw tightened; a wrinkle appeared between its eyes.

Brom froze.

In the witches’ cabin, the air seemed to thicken next to Agatha, like a heat haze. It began to glow.

A young witch slumped unconscious to the ground. A fourteen-year-old warlock followed her into a blackout, then a fifteen-year-old. A few moments later, a seventeen-year-old witch joined them, then a young warlock in his twenties.

One by one, the young psis dropped, to sprawl unconscious.

Agatha and Gwen caught each other’s free hands, bowing their heads, every muscle in their bodies rigid, hands clasped so tightly that the knuckles whitened.

Then Gwen began to sway, only a centimeter or so at first, then wider and wider till suddenly her whole body went limp and she fell.

Agatha dropped Gwen’s hands, clenched her fists; her face tightened into a granite mask and a trickle of blood ran down from the corner of her mouth.

Above her, the heat haze brightened from red to yellow. Then the yellow grew brighter and brighter.

A blast shook the tent, a hollow booming, and Galen knelt there before Agatha. He clutched her fists, and his shoulders heaved up, hunching under some huge, unseen weight. He bowed his head, eyes squeezing shut, his whole face screwing up in agony.

The heat haze’s yellow dimmed, became orange.

On the beach, the soldiers began to move again, slowly at first, then faster and faster, stepping aside from ax-blows, returning pike-stabs.

The beastmen howled in fear and fought in panic.

But the High Cave lay silent, like some fantastic Hall of Horrors in a wax museum. An occasional whine or grunt escaped the Neanderthals frozen body-to-body in combat, straining each against the other—Kobold’s men to Eagle’s partisans, Mughorck locked with Yorick.

Rod and Brom stood frozen, the Kobold’s glittering, malevolent eyes fixed on them, holding its frozen prey in a living death.

There was agony in Rod’s eyes. A drop of sweat ran down from his hairline.

Silence stretched out in the glimmering, ghostly elf-light.

On the beach, the soldiers slowly ground to stasis again, their muscles locking to stone.

The Neanderthals roared and swung their axes like scythes, mowing through the Gramarye ranks, their victory song soaring high.

In the cabin, Galen bent low, the black weight pressing down, squeezing, kneading at his brain. The other soul was still there with him, fighting valiantly, heaving with him against the dark cloud.

And the High Cave lay silent.

A crowing laugh split the air, and a wriggling infant appeared on Rod’s shoulders, straddling his neck, chubby hands clenched in his hair, drumming his collarbone with small heels. “Horsey! Gi’y‘up! Da’y, gi’y’up!”

The Kobold’s gaze focused on the baby boy.

Magnus looked up, startled, and stared at the creature for a moment, then darted a glance at his frozen father. Terror started to show around the edges of the boy’s expression; but hot, indignant anger darkened his face faster. He clutched his father’s temples and glared back at the monster.

Rod shuddered, his neck whiplashing as the dark mantle wrenched free of his mind.

He tore his eyes from the Kobold’s, saw Mughorck and Yorick locked straining in the embrace of hatred.

Rod leaped forward, ducking and dodging through the paired immobile Neanderthals, and sprang. His stiffened hand lashed out in a chop at the back of Mughorck’s neck. The skinny tyrant stiffened, mouth gaping open, and slumped in Yorick’s arms.

Yorick dropped the contorted body and lunged at the black box, slapping a switch.

Slowly, the Kobold’s eyes dulled.

Galen’s body snapped upward and back.

His hands still held Agatha’s.

For a moment, minds blended completely, point for point, id, ego, and conscience, both souls thrown wide open as the burden they had strained against disappeared—open and vulnerable to the core. For one lasting, soul-searing moment, they knelt, staring deeply into each other’s eyes.

Then the moment passed. Galen scrambled to his feet, still staring at Agatha, but his eyes mirrored panic.

She gazed up at him, lips slowly curving, gently parting, eyelids drooping.

He stared, appalled. Then thunder cracked, and he was gone.

She gazed at the space he’d filled with a lazy, confident smile.

Then a shout of joy and triumph exploded through her mind. Her gaze darted upward to behold the heat haze one last time before it vanished.

On the beach, the Gramarye soldiers jerked convulsively and came completely to life, saw the carnage around them, the mangled remains of friends, brothers, and leaders, and screamed bloody slaughter.

But a howl pierced the air, freezing even the soldiers. They stared as a beastman in the front line threw down his ax and shield and sank to his knees, wailing and gibbering to his mates. They began to moan, rocking from side to side. Then, with a crash like an armory falling, axes and shields cascaded down, piling up in waist-high windrows.

Then the beastmen sank to their knees, hands upraised, open, and empty.

Some of the soldiers snarled and hefted their pikes; but Tuan barked an order, and knights echoed it; then sergeants roared it. Reluctantly, the soldiers lowered their weapons.

“What hath happed?” Sir Maris demanded.

“I can only think ‘tis some event within their minds,” Tuan answered in a low voice, “mayhap to do with that fell weight being lifted from ours.”

“But why have they not fought to the death?”

“For that, haply we may thank Master Yorick’s rumormongering.” Tuan squared his shoulders. “Yet, when we bade him spread that word, we did effectively make compact with him, and with all his nation. Bid the men gather up the weapons, Sir Maris—but be certain they do not touch a hair of any beastman’s head!” He turned his horse away.

“Why, so I shall,” the old knight growled reluctantly. “But whither goest thou, my liege?”

“To the High Cave,” Tuan said grimly, “for I misdoubt me as to what occurreth there.”

Fess’s hooves lifted, slamming down at the back of a Neanderthal’s head. The beastman slumped.

Rod caught two beastmen by the neck, yanked them apart, and smashed their heads back together. He turned away, letting them drop, and saw a pair of rocks flying through the air to brain two beastmen “Tag!” cried Magnus; and, as the Neanderthals fell, he gurgled, “Fun game!”

Rod repressed a shudder, and turned just in time to see Brom heave at a beastman’s ankles. The Neanderthal fell like a poleaxed steer, and Brom sapped him with the hilt of his knife.

But beastmen came in mismatched pairs here, and Brom had guessed wrongly. The other half roared and lunged at him.

The dwarf grabbed an arm and pulled sharply. The beast-man doubled over, his head slamming against the rock floor.

“Nice work,” Rod called approvingly. “That’s why I’ve been knocking out both halves of each couple. We can winnow out the friends from the foes later.”

Yorick finished trussing up Mughorck like a pot roast, and turned to join the battle; but just as he did, Fess nailed the last beastman. “Aw-w-w! I always miss the fun!”

Rod looked around the huge cave and saw that there was nothing left standing except himself, Brom, Fess, Yorick, and Magnus. Though Magnus wasn’t really standing, actually; he was floating over an unconscious beastman, lisping, “S’eepy?”

“Hey, we did it!” Yorick strode around Mughorck’s inert form with his hand outstretched—but he kept on rounding, circling further and further toward the mouth of the cave as he came toward Rod. Rod suddenly realized Yorick was pulling Rod’s gaze away from the back of the cave. He spun around just in time to see the black doorway behind the monster glow to life, a seven-by-three-foot rectangle. Its light showed him a short twisted man. From the neck down, he looked like a caricature of Richard III—an amazingly scrawny body with a hunched back, shriveled arm, shortened leg—and so slender as to seem almost frail.

But the head!

He was arresting, commanding. Ice-blue eyes glared back at Rod from beneath bushy white eyebrows. Above them lifted a high, broad forehead, surmounted by a mane of white hair. The face was crags and angles, with a blade of a nose. It was a hatchet face, a hawk face…

An eagle’s face.

Rod stared, electrified, as the figure began to dim, to fade. Just as it became transparent, the mouth hooked upward in a sardonic smile, and the figure raised one hand in salute.

Then it was gone, and the “doorway” darkened.

“Impressive, isn’t he?” Yorick murmured behind him.

Rod turned slowly, blinking. “Yes, really. Quite.” He stared at Yorick for a moment longer, then turned back to the “doorway.”

“Time machine?”

“Of course.”

Rod turned back. “Who is he? And don’t just tell me the Eagle. That’s pretty obvious.”

“We call him ‘Doc Angus,’ back at the time lab,” Yorick offered. “You wouldn’t have heard of him, though. We’re very careful about that. Publicly, he’s got a bunch of minor patents to his credit; but the big things he kept secret. They just had too much potential for harm.”

“Such as—a time machine?”

Yorick nodded. “He’s the inventor.”

“Then”—Rod groped for words—“the anarchists… the totalitarians…”

“They stole the design.” Yorick shook his head ruefully. “And we thought we had such a good security setup, too! Rather ingenious how they did it, really…” Then he saw the look on Rod’s face, and stopped. “Well, another time, maybe. But it is worth saying that Doc Angus got mad at them—real mad.”

“So he decided to fight them anywhere he could?”

Yorick nodded. “A hundred thousand B.C., a million B.C., one million A.D.—you name it.”

“That would take a sizable organization, of course.”

“Sure—so he built one up and found ways to make it finance itself.”

“And if he’s fighting the futurian anarchists and the futurian totalitarians,” Rod said slowly, “that puts him on our side.”

Yorick nodded.

Rod shook his head, amazed. “Now, that’s what I call carrying a grudge!”

“A gripe,” Yorick chuckled. “That’s the name of the organization, actually—G.R.I.P.E., and it stands for ‘Guardians of the Rights of Individuals, Patentholders Especially.’ ”

Rod frowned. Then understanding came, and the frown turned to a sour smile. “I thought you said he didn’t patent the time machine.”

“That just made him madder. It was his design, and they should have respected his rights. But the bums don’t even pay him royalties! So he gathered us together to protect patent rights up and down the time line, especially his—and democracy guards individual rights better than any other form of government, including patent rights; so…”

“So he backs us. But how does that tie in with several thousand psionic Neanderthals cavorting around our planet?”

Yorick tugged at an earlobe, embarrassed. “Well, it wasn’t supposed to work out quite this way…”

“How about telling me how it was supposed to work?” Rod’s voice was dangerously soft.

“Well, it all began with the totalitarians…”

Rod frowned. “How?”

“By tectogenetics.” Yorick hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the Kobold. “You may have noticed they’re pretty good at it. The future has worked up some dandy genetic engineering gadgets.”

Rod nodded, still frowning. “All right, I’ll buy it. So, what did they engineer?”

“Evil-Eye Neanderthals.” Yorick grinned. “They cooked up a strain of mutant projective telepaths and planted ‘em all over Terra. Figured they’d breed true and become dominant in whatever society they were in—take over completely, in fact. It would’ve made things a lot easier for the futurians if they’d been able to prevent democracy’s ever getting started at all.”

Rod shuddered. “It sure would have.” He had a quick mental vision of humanity evolving and progressing down through the long road of history, always shackled to the will of one group of tyrants after another. “I take it they’re genetically a different race from the other Neanderthals.”

Yorick nodded. “Can’t interbreed to produce fertile offspring. So they’d stay a minority and they wouldn’t dare loosen the reins, for fear of being wiped out by the non-psis.”

Rod began to realize that humanity had had a close call. “But you caught them at it.”

Yorick nodded. “Caught ‘em, and managed to persuade all the little groups of projectives to band together. The totalitarians made the mistake of just letting nature take its course; they left ‘em unsupervised.”

“Which you didn’t, of course.”

“Well, we thought we were keeping a close watch.” Yorick seemed embarrassed. “But the totalitarians dropped some storm troopers on us one night, killed most of the GRIPE force and chased away the rest, then set up a time machine and herded all the Neanderthals to Gramarye.”

Rod’s eyes widened. “Now it begins to make sense. What’d they expect the beastmen to do, take over right away?”

“I’m sure they did. Leastways, by the time we managed to find ‘em again they were running around in horned helmets and talking about going a-viking—and I don’t think they dreamed that up on their own.”

“So you hit the totalitarian force with everything you had and stole your Neanderthals back. But why couldn’t you have taken them someplace else?”

“Have pity on the poor people, milord! Would you want them to spend their whole existences being balls in a cosmic game of Ping-Pong? No, we figured it was better to let them stay and try to keep them under protection. We mounted a strong guard—but we forgot about infiltration.”

“Mughorck.” Rod’s mouth twisted. “Then he isn’t really a Neanderthal?”

“Oh, he’s the genuine article, all right—just as much as I am!”

Rod stared at Yorick. Then, slowly, he nodded. “I see. They ‘adopted’ him in infancy and raised him to be an agent.”

Yorick nodded. “A farsighted plan, but it paid off. When the fat hit the fire we couldn’t do anything about it. It was either kill the people we’d been trying to civilize, or run—so we ran.” For a moment, he looked miserable. “Sorry we slipped up.”

Rod sighed. “Not much we can do about it now, I suppose.”

“No, not really,” Yorick answered. “ ‘Fraid you’re stuck with ‘em.”

It was the perfect moment for Tuan to come charging into the cave.

He took one look at the Kobold and sawed back on the reins, freezing—just for a moment, of course; the monster was shut down. But it was a sight to give anyone pause.

Behind him, sandals and hooves clattered and Brother Chillde jerked to a halt to stare, paralyzed, at the monster. “My liege.. what…”

Tuan turned to him, frowning, then caught a glimpse of what was behind the monk. He looked again, and stared. “Lord Warlock!”

Rod turned, frowning. “Yes?”

“But how didst thou…” Tuan turned back to him, and whites showed all around his eyes. “But thou wert even now…” He jerked around to stare past Brother Chillde again.

Rod followed his gaze, and saw…

Himself.

A giant self, astride a behemoth of a horse; a handsome self, with the form of a Greek statue.

Brother Chillde stared at the double, then whipped around to stare at Rod, then back to the double, back to Rod—and the double began to shrink, the horse began to dwindle; the doppelganger’s face became more homely, its features more irregular, its muscles less fantastic—and Rod found himself staring at an exact duplicate of himself.

Brother Chillde’s gaze still swiveled back and forth from one to the other like a metronome. “But what… how…”

“By thyself,” Brom rumbled behind him. “It is thou who hath made this co-walker, friar, though thou didst not know it.”

Brother Chillde sighed as his eyes rolled up and his knees buckled. He collapsed in a dead faint.

“He’ll get over it,” Rod assured the company.

“Thy double will not,” Brom snorted as he watched the co-walker blur, sag, and melt into a huge heap of fungus.

A sponge rubber club hit Rod in the back of the neck, and a little voice demanded fretfully, “Gi’y‘up!”

Rod grinned, reached up, and plucked his son off his shoulders.

Magnus’s eyes went round and wide; foreboding entered his face. “Naw’y baby?”

“Not this time.” Rod tried hard to look severe, and failed. “No, good baby. By accident, maybe, but good baby, anyway.” He tickled Magnus’s tummy, and the baby chuckled and squirmed. “But Daddy’s busy just now, and I’ve got a job for you.”

Magnus bobbed his head. “Baby help!”

“Right.” Rod pointed to the heap of witch moss. “Get rid of that for me, will you?”

The baby frowned at the pile, then screwed his face up in intense concentration. The fungus began to twitch, to heave; it separated into fifty or sixty fragments, each of which stretched up, developed arms and legs, helmets, shields, and armor—and an army of toy knights stood waiting at attention.

“Pretty!” Magnus chirped, and drifted up out of Rod’s arms. “March!”

He drifted toward the doorway, calling commands that were frequently incomprehensible as his new model army marched before him out the cave-mouth and down the ramp.

A broomstick swooped in the entrance just before Magnus left it, and an arm reached out and pulled him firmly against a hip. “And where wouldst thou go, my bonny babe?”

“Mommy!” Magnus cried in delight and threw his arms around her neck.

Another broomstick wobbled in beside Gwen’s. Agatha cast a brief smiling glance at the pair, then came in for a landing.

“Hail, reverend dame!” Tuan called. “Are all thy witches well?”

“All,” Agatha agreed, hobbling forward. “But then, I’m certain the High Warlock could ha’ told ye as much.”

Tuan cast a questioning glance at Rod, who nodded. “I didn’t really know, you understand—but when the mental fog lifted for the third time, I was pretty sure.” He turned to Agatha. “And how’s your son?”

“Vanished,” Agatha retorted, “and with joy; for when that unholy weight lifted from our minds, Galen’s thoughts blended fully with mine and, from their combination, Harold was able to lift what he required. He’s homeward sped, to wake his body.”

Rod eyed her narrowly. “You don’t exactly seem heart-broken.”

“I am not.” Her eye glinted. “I’ve knowledge of the old stiff stick now; I’ve seen deeply into him, and know what he holds hid.”

Rod frowned, puzzled. “And that’s enough to make you happy?”

“Aye; for now I’ll invade his Tower truly.”

“But he’ll throw you out again!”

“I think not.” Agatha’s smile widened into a grin. “I think that he will not.”

Rod stared at her for a long moment; then he shrugged. “You must know something I don’t know.”

“Aye.” Gwen met Agatha’s eyes with a smile that held back laughter. “I think she doth.”

“Godspeed ye, then.” Tuan inclined his head towards Agatha. “And the thanks of a kingdom go with thee. If thou wilt come to Runnymede in some weeks time, we’ll honor thee as thou shouldst be.”

“I thank thee, Majesty,” Agatha rejoined, “but I hope to be too deeply occupied for such a jaunt.”

Tuan’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, but Agatha only dropped a curtsy, albeit a stiff one, and snapped her fingers. Her broomstick shot up beside her; she leaped astride it and floated up into the air.

“Milords, uncover!” Tuan snapped—entirely unnecessary, since no male present was wearing a hat. But they all dutifully pressed their hands over their hearts in respect as they watched the veteran witch sail out the cave-mouth and up into the night.

Rod turned to Gwen with concern. “That’s a long way to go, all the way back to the mainland—and after all the drain of the battle, too! Is she going to be all right?”

“Fear not, my lord,” Gwen said, with a secretive smile. “I believe she shall fare excellently.”

Rod frowned at her, wondering if he was missing something.

Then he sighed and turned away. “Oh, well, back to the aftermath. What do you think we should do with Brother Chillde, my liege?”

Tuan shrugged. “Tend him when he doth wake; what else is there to do? But why was he so taken at the sight of thy double?” He shuddered, “And, come to that, who did craft it?”

“He did,” Rod answered. “He’s a very powerful projective telepath, but he doesn’t know it—and he watched the battles very intensely, trying to remember everything that happened. But he wasn’t trained as an observer, so he kept getting what he really did see confused with what he wanted to see—and what he wanted to see most was the High Warlock performing feats of valor.” Rod had the grace to blush. “I’m afraid he’s come down with a bad case of hero-worship.”

“I comprehend,” Tuan said drily.

“Well, not completely. For this final battle, I’m afraid we used the poor young fellow. I persuaded Puck to make Brother Chillde temporarily blind and to describe the High Warlock the way Brother Chillde wanted to see him—bigger than life, impossibly perfect. The poor friar was sucked in totally, and unknowingly created a witch-moss High Warlock who helped the troops keep up their courage, and had everybody thinking I was down here so my visit to the High Cave could be a complete surprise. Not that it did much good,“ he answered, with a glance at the Kobold.

“Aye—the monster.” Tuan followed his gaze. “We must make disposition of it, must we not?”

The whole company turned to stare at the false god.

“What is this fell creature?” Tuan breathed.

“A Kobold,” Rod growled, face twisting with disgust and nausea. “Does it need any other name?”

“For you and me, yes,” Yorick growled. “What do you think it was, Lord Warlock? A chimpanzee?”

“Its parents were.” Rod turned away. “I can’t see much in the way of surgical scars, so I’m pretty sure they were; but the normal strain might be quite a few generations back. It’s obviously been genetically restructured; that’s the only way you could get a monster like that.” He turned back to the Kobold. “Of course, I suppose you could say it’s a tectogenetic masterpiece. They doctored the chromosomes to make the poor beast into a converter—feed current into it, DC, I suppose, and out comes psionic energy.” He dropped his gaze to the black box, then looked a question at Yorick.

The Neanderthal nodded, nudging the black box with his foot. “Atomic-power pack. Wish I could figure out how to shut this thing off permanently.”

“You mean it’s liable to go on again?”

“Not unless somebody flips the switch.” Yorick eyed the monster warily. “Still, it would be an almighty comfort if that were impossible.” He cocked his head on one side and closed one eye, squinting, looking the Kobold up and down. “I suppose it is a triumph of genetic engineering, if you look at it the right way. That bulging cerebrum can handle one hell of a lot of power. And no forebrain, did you notice that? Lobotomy in the womb. It can’t do anything on its own. No initiative.”

“Just a living gadget,” said Rod grimly.

“Which may be just as well,” Yorick pointed out. “We might conjecture about what it would do if it had a mind of its own…”

Rod shuddered, but growled, “It couldn’t do much. Not with those atrophied limbs. All it can do is just sit there.” He swallowed hard and turned away, looking slightly green. “That forehead… how can you just sit there and look at it?”

“Oh, it’s a fascinating study, from a scientific viewpoint,” Yorick answered, “a real triumph, a great philosophic statement of mind over matter, an enduring monument to man’s ingenuity.” He turned back to Rod. “Put the poor thing out of its misery!”

“Yes,” Rod agreed, turning away, slightly bent over. “Somebody stick a knife in the poor bastardization!”

Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.

Rod frowned, lifted his head. “Didn’t anybody hear me? I said, kill it!”

He sought out Tuan’s eyes. The young King looked away.

Rod bowed his head, biting his lip.

He spun, looking at Yorick.

The Neanderthal looked up at the ceiling, whistling softly.

Rod snarled and bounded up to the dais, dagger in his hand, swinging up fast in an underhand stab.

His arm froze as he looked into the dulled eyes, looked slowly up and down the naked, hairless thing, so obscene, yet so…

He turned away, throwing down his knife, growling low in his throat.

Yorick met his eyes, nodding sympathetically. “It’s such a poor, pitiful thing when the power’s turned off, milord—so weak and defenseless. And men have done it so much dirt already…”

“Dogs!” roared Brom, glaring about at them. “Stoats and weasels! Art thou all so unmanned as to let this thing live?”

He whirled about where he stood on the dais, glowering at the silent throng before him. He snorted, turned about, glaring at them all.

“Aye,” he rumbled, “I see it is even as I have said. There is too much of pity within thee; thou canst not steel thyselves to the doing of it; for there is not enough pity in thee to force thee to this cruel kindness.”

He turned, measuring the Kobold up and down. “Yet must it be done; for this is a fell thing, a foul thing out of nightmare, and therefore must it die. And will no man do it this courtesy?”

No one moved.

Brom looked long and carefully, but found only shame in each glance.

He smiled sourly and shrugged his massive shoulders. “This is my portion, then.”

And, before anyone quite realized what he was doing, the dwarf drew his sword and leaped, plunging his blade up to the hilt in the Kobold’s chest, into its heart.

The monster stiffened, its mouth wrenching open, face contorting in one silent, simian scream; then it slumped where it sat, dead.

The others stared, horrified.

Brom sheathed his sword, touched his forelock in respect where he stood on the arm of the Kobold’s stone chair. “Good lasting sleep, Sir Kobold.”

“ ‘Twas an ill deed,” said Tuan. “It could not defend itself.” But he seemed uncertain.

“Aye, but soulless it was, also,” Brom reminded. “Forget that not, Majesty. Is it dishonor to slaughter a hog? Or to stick a wild boar? Nay, surely not! But this thing ha’ wrought death and was now defenseless; and therefore no man would touch it.”

The cavern was still; the company stood awed by the event.

Yorick broke the silence. “Well, then, my people’s god is dead. Who shall rule them in his stead?”

Tuan looked up, startled. “Why, the Eagle! Say to him that I would fain parley with him that we may draw a treaty.”

But Yorick shook his head. “The Eagle’s gone.”

“Gone?” Tuan said blankly.

“Thoroughly,” Rod confirmed. “I saw him disappear myself.”

“But… why,” Tuan cried, “when his people were his again?”

“Because they don’t need him any more,” Yorick said practically.

“But… then… wherefore did he remain when he’d been overthrown?”

“To make sure they were freed from Mughorck,” Yorick explained. “After all, he’s the one who really masterminded my end of the invasion, you know.”

“Nay, I did not. Who now shall rule thee?”

Yorick spread his hands. “To the victor go the spoils.” He dropped to one knee. “Hail, my liege and sovereign!”

Tuan stared down at him, horrified.

“Thou canst not well deny him,” Brom said, sotto voce.

“Thus hath it ever been—that the victor governed the vanquished.”

And that, of course, settled it. In a medieval culture, tradition ruled.

“Well, then, I must,” Tuan said, with ill grace—but Rod noticed he stood a little straighter. “Yet how is this to be? I’ve a kingdom already, across the wide sea!”

“Oh, I could run the place for you, I suppose,” Yorick said, carefully casual, “as long as you’re willing to take the final responsibility.”

“That I can accept,” Tuan said slowly, “an ‘tis understood that thou wilt govern in my stead.”

“Glad to, I assure you! For the first year or so, anyway. But don’t worry about what happens after that; I’ve got a very likely-looking lieutenant who should fit the bill perfectly. He’s even learning English…”

The prisoners were assembled beneath the High Cave, all four thousand of them. Four soldiers stood on the ledge, two to either side of the cave-mouth. At some unseen signal, they flourished trumpets and blew a fanfare.

Inside the cave, Rod winced. They were beginning to get the idea that pitch wasn’t just a matter of personal taste, but they had a long way to go.

Four knights rode out of the cave in full armor, raising their lances with pennons at their tips. They sidestepped, leaving the center clear. After them came Yorick—and then, just as the sun rose, Tuan stepped out onto the ledge, gilded by the dawn.

An awed murmur ran through the crowd below.

Yorick stepped up a little in advance of Tuan and to his side, and began to bellow in the Neanderthal language.

“I’ll bet he’s telling them the sad news,” Rod muttered, “that the Eagle’s gone.”

A groan swept the crowd.

Brom nodded. “Thou hast the right of it.”

Yorick started bellowing again.

“Now he’s telling them they’ve got a new king,” Rod muttered.

“Emperor!” Yorick shouted.

Tuan looked up, startled.

Inside the cave, Gwen shrugged. “He is, in all truth—and Catharine’s an empress.”

“Sure,” Rod agreed. “It just hadn’t hit him before.”

A thunderous cheer split the air.

“I’d wager Yorick hath but now told them that he will rule as viceroy,” Brom said drily.

Rod nodded. “Logical guess.”

There was a pause, and they could hear Yorick’s stage whisper: “A speech might be appropriate, my liege.”

The pause lengthened; then Tuan cried out, “I am thy new ruler!” and Yorick bellowed the translation.

The crowd cheered again.

“Now they know it won’t be a real conquest,” Rod murmured.

Tuan went on, with frequent pauses for translation. “I am thy new ruler and will never forsake thee. Yet, since I cannot abide here with thee, I give to you a viceroy to rule in my stead. Thou hast called thyselves the People of the Kobold… and did worship a goblin… calling it thy god. This god was false… and the mark of it was… that it demanded thy worship, which should go to the One True Unseen God only. I shall not demand such worship… only fealty and loyalty. An thou wilt be loyal to me and my viceroy, I shall be true to thee.”

“He does it well, don’t you think?” Rod said softly.

Brom and Gwen nodded. “He ever hath,” said the dwarf. “Yet wilt thou, I wonder?”

Rod frowned. “What do you mean? I don’t have to do any speechifying!”

“Nay,” Brom agreed, “but thou’lt now have to be the mainstay of two nations, the power behind two thrones.”

“Oh.” Rod’s mouth tightened. “Yeah, I know what you mean. But honestly, Brom, I don’t know if I can handle all that.”

“Aye,” Gwen sympathized. “The two lands are more than thirty leagues apart!”

“I know,” Rod said heavily. “And I can’t be in two places at the same time, can I?”