Secular Wizard

Chapter 23

Greasy smoke poured outward and upward, enveloping the whole top of the steeple. “Gas attack!” Saul managed before he broke off into a bout of coughing that racked his lungs. He stumbled to the side and leaned over the railing, trying to get away from the smoke-but it followed him. Matt stumbled toward the opposite railing, and the smoke tried to follow him, but there was just enough of a breeze to blow it back. A few tendrils did reach him, and the stench was only the precursor-he could feel his innards heaving. He suddenly realized that a person could actually die just from a bad smell-if it was vile enough… He stuck his head over the rail as far as he could and chanted,

He wasn’t sure if throwing a French word in there would work, but nez did rhyme with “away,” at least in its native pronunciation. But work it did; the smoke boiled backward as if it were a genie returning to its lamp, then disappeared with a soft crunching sound. There was only a charred spot in the center of the cupola floor, to show where it had been… And Saul, hanging over the railing, groaning in reverse as he tried to hold his stomach down. Matt called,

Saul straightened up, looking surprised, then turned to Matt with a sigh of relief. “Never thought I’d be glad to hear that jingle.”

“Singing commercials have to rank as one of the curses of civilization,” Matt agreed, “but they work-presumably increasing sales in our home universe, and settling stomachs in this one.”

“Funny, they had just the opposite effect back home,” Saul said. He turned to look out over the condottieri army with a very vengeful look. “Chemical warfare. Full-scale.”

“I can’t say no,” Matt sighed, “since they did it to us. After all, ours won’t be lethal.”

“I’ve smelled enough incense during my time to testify to that,” Saul agreed, “though I will say St. Basil’s nearly smoked me out of my apartment, the one time I tried it.”

“Never trust anything that needs charcoal to keep it going,” Matt agreed, “but we’re out in the open, so the smoke shouldn’t matter-and under the circumstances, I think St. Basil’s is what the doctor ordered.”

Saul snorted. “What doctor?”

“The Doctor of Divinity.”

“Wish we could feed them back their own medicine,” Saul growled. “Sweets to the sweet, after all.”

Matt was watching a small upheaval in the center of the army, right below the main avenue. “We just did, and it didn’t do much. These boys are used to bad smells, and know how to damp them out.”

“Where’d you get that from?”

“They’re Satanists-they must be used to the smell of brimstone by now. Okay, St. Basil’s incense, it is.”

“What else, in the Vatican?” Saul said.

Smoke billowed up everywhere-from the roads right in front of the riders, all long the bottom of the hill, drifting out over the army. Matt could hear the hacking and coughing all the way up to the top of the dome-but the shrieks of agony and cries of disgust took him by surprise. “We’re hurting them!” He raised his hands to start a counterspell, but felt Saul’s hand on his shoulder. “What do you think they were planning to do to us? Don’t worry, they’ll get away from it very fast.”

Sure enough, the whole army was on the move-away from the smoke. Half a dozen horses carrying robed figures burst out of the far side, riding hard. “There go your sorcerers,” Saul said. “Nothing fatal, worse luck.”

“The rest of the army isn’t hanging around, either,” Matt said. “Somehow, though, I wouldn’t call this a rout.”

“No, not when they’re just going home for the night, and home’s only a few blocks away. I can almost hear some of those footmen saying, ‘All in a day’s work.’ ”

“Yeah, and talking about how the officers messed it up again,” Matt agreed. “Don’t enlisted men always? Look at ‘em go!” They watched as the army boiled, moving steadily outward, away from the Vatican. Already, the leading edge was breaking up into units and going into long, low houses that had a very temporary look. Several of them were inside the Colosseum, which explained why the bandits were making it look like a crowd charging into a football stadium with only ten minutes left till game time. There was a huffing and a wheezing, and Arouetto hauled himself into view. “Arouetto!” Matt stepped over to catch his elbow, giving support. “What are you doing here? You’re in no shape for that climb!”

“I had need to tell you,” the scholar panted, “what you no doubt already know-the condottieri are in retreat! The pope sends his thanks!”

“He’s welcome,” Saul said, “but I think maybe we’d better stay up here for a while and make sure they don’t try to rally again today.”

“Why should they?” Matt shrugged. “They’ve put in their time, and they’ve got some partying coming up. We should come back tomorrow before sunrise, though.”

“Still, Wizard Saul speaks with prudence.” Arouetto found himself a seat on a pile of stone blocks. “We should wait.”

“Then while we’re here,” Saul said, finding another block to sit on, “I’d just like to double-check that history of Reme the pope gave us. You’ll pardon me, scholar, but I’m just automatically suspicious of history as told by a clergyman. Was the pope’s thumbnail history of the empire true?”

“So far as it went, yes,” Arouetto said slowly, “though he did not mention Caesar Decembris, who converted to Christianity and led most of the empire with him, by his example-”

“Only ‘most’?‘

“Aye, he did not insist on converting those who did not wish it. That is why there were so many pagans left for Hardishane to convert. And, of course, there is a great deal that he did not tell you, about what happened after the empire fell.”

“Sounds more like a slow slide than a fall,” Saul said sourly, “but I’ll take what I can get. Let’s start with Hardishane. What was going on in the rest of the world while he was rebuilding the Western empire? Ever hear of a prophet named Mohammed?”

“Of course,” Arouetto said, seeming surprised that they would think he had not. “He arose in Arabia during the last days of the empire, and preached a message from a holy book he wrote himself. It spread among the desert tribes, then became a fire that swept through Asia and North Africa, uniting their peoples in a new belief.”

“Only the Near East and North Africa?” Matt asked. “They never got into Spain-I mean, Ibile?”

“Oh, they tried.” Arouetto smiled. “But Reme would not allow it, and later the Gothic folk who had learned Latrurian civilization and military ways united behind a hero they called ‘the Lord.’ ”

“El Cid,” Saul murmured. “Are those their words for it? They united behind him and drove the Moorish folk back whenever they sought to invade.”

“That explains why the Moorish influence is so much less than it is in our universe,” Matt said to Saul, but the Witch Doctor was already asking, “Did the Moslems set up their own empire?”

“Aye. United in their new religion, they were the first of the southern provinces to break away from the Latrurian empire. Within years, they had founded one of their own.”

“But it was the missionaries who managed the conquest, not the generals?”

“At first, yes. But once Reme fell, the Moslems proclaimed a holy war and conquered what they could-though Heaven knows they had enough already! They battered at the gates of Byzantium itself, but were beaten back. Then, under the conqueror’s sons, they settled down to the wise and enlightened rule of their own Arabian empire.”

“Which hit its peak about the same time Hardishane welded Europe together into a new empire?”

“Aye.” Arouetto frowned. “You really must tell me how you can come from another world that is so like this one, and yet so different!”

“When there’s time, when there’s time,” Matt soothed. “Sounds as if you don’t exactly disapprove of the Moslems.”

“How can I?” Arouetto sighed. “How can I, when they esteem learning and the arts, and it is they who have preserved so many of the Greek and Latin books I so prize?”

“That doesn’t exactly endear you to the Church, does it?”

“I do my best to be discreet,” Arouetto admitted. “After all,” Saul said sourly, “the Latrurian empire may have tolerated all religions, but after Reme fell, the Church didn’t have to be so tolerant, did it?”

“Under Hardishane, the Christian missionaries accomplished great deeds,” Arouetto said evasively. Matt shuddered at the thought of conversion by the sword and hoped Hardishane’s monks hadn’t been quite so brutal-but he didn’t ask. Saul did. “But it was just a matter of good example? It wasn’t forced?”

“Rarely.” But Arouetto wouldn’t meet his gaze. “I will own, though, that some of the conversions may have had more to do with gaining status and wealth than with true faith.”

“Of course-if you want to climb to the top, you have to be the same religion as the guys who’re already up there,” Saul said with a wry smile. “Still, it’s not exactly coercion. But once nearly everybody was Christian, that seed of corruption took root and flowered, didn’t it?”

“A rather noxious flower,” Arouetto admitted. “In truth, it did-and yielded a harvest of intolerance. Then the Emperor of Byzantium-so he styled himself, though his empire had shrunk to the size of a kingdom-began to fear a new breed of Moslems who had come out of the East, the Turks, and called on Hardishane’s heirs to join them in recapturing the Holy Land from the Infidels…”

“The Crusades.” Saul’s gaze was riveted to Arouetto. “So they are called. We must admit, in all charity, that they did keep the Turks from overrunning Europe; they still have not taken Byzantium.”

“Oh,” Matt said. “You don’t think too highly of the Crusaders?”

Arouetto sighed. “Some acted out of true religious fervor, but most went on Crusade for reasons of their own-greed for booty, or the lust for power, carving out a kingdom of their own in the East. Hardishane’s grandsons fell to squabbling over the spoils, and Christian kingdom was pitted against Christian kingdom. Evil was thus given a door through which to enter, and did-and one by one the Christian kingdoms were subverted or seduced to the rule of the sorcerer-kings under the dominion of Evil.”

“Such as Boncorro’s grandfather.” Matt turned to look out over the condottieri. “Or did he usurp from a usurper who-hey!”

“Horses?‘

Saul came to his feet, following Matt’s gaze. “I thought this army was supposed to stay off duty till morning!”

“Do the condottieri march again?” Arouetto was on his feet, face pale. “They do,” Matt said. “Apparently they’re really getting serious about this-and we’re the reason why.” He turned to Saul.“Maybe we should just get out of here, quick as we can.”

Saul shook his head. “That won’t stop them now. Up till now, they’ve only been putting up a token effort to justify their pay and keep the pope hemmed in-but now that they’re making a real push, why not go on and finish the job, whether we’re there or not?”

“If we take off running, maybe they’ll follow us.”

“The whole army?” Saul shook his head. “Not unless we can get to another fortress before their pursuit band catches us.”

Arouetto gasped. “How can we defend ourselves?”

“By bringing in the guys who got me into this in the first place.” Saul fished a bauble out of his shirt and pressed a nubbin on its side. “Witch Doctor to Black Knight! Come in, Sir Guy! Come in, and come on! I got your wizard out of stir for you- now come get us out of the crunch!”

The whole army drew to a halt as Sir Guy pulled the amulet out of his armor. “Black Knight to Witch Doctor. I hear you, Wizard Saul. In what manner of difficulty do you find yourself?”

“We’re surrounded by an army,” Saul said, “and it’s not enough to break through and escape-we have to get rid of them! Any ideas, Sir Guy?”

“Many, but they require my being with you. What did you have in mind?”

“An aerial assault,” Matt’s voice said, and Alisande’s heart leaped. He was alive and well, then, and in this world-he must be, to speak through that magical device! And there was nothing in his voice to suggest any hurt or weakness.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“Where are you?” Sir Guy asked.

“In the Vatican,” Saul answered. “Surely they must be well-protected there!” Alisande cried with relief. “Surely the Holy Father’s power must protect you,” Sir Guy said. “Other way around, actually. They were content to keep him penned in, until we showed up-but now they’re out to break through. We think they have orders to come and get us.”

“Majesty,” said Sir Guy, “I am loath to leave you, but I believe it is vital to their welfare that Stegoman and I fly to their aid.”

Alisande felt a chill at the thought of being without the support of the Black Knight and the dragon, but she felt a greater chill at the thought of losing her husband. “Go, then,” she said. “Great One, will you come?” Sir Guy asked. “Aye,” the dragon rumbled. “I could wish Matthew had not been so great a fool as to go wandering without me in the first place!”

“Wisdom and forethought are not always numbered among his virtues.” Sir Guy turned back to the amulet. “We will fly to Reme and stoop upon the enemy, Wizard Saul. We shall hail you through this amulet when we are in sight of the city.”

“Thanks, guys! Talk again when you’re near! Over and out!”

“Tell Alisande I love her,” Matt’s voice called; in fact, he didn’t quite finish the last word before the spell ceased.

“Your Majesty, I regret that we must leave you.” Sir Guy bowed in the saddle before dismounting his charger.

“Needs must, Sir Guy. Needs must.” And Alisande knew she needs must hold back the tears that suddenly welled up, tears of joy to hear Matthew’s dear voice saying he loved her. How silly she was! She had never been so subject to womanly weaknesses before. Well, rarely… But he was alive! And she was going to find him! “If you are in Venarra when we come there, Sir Guy, we shall stop. If you are not, we shall ride on to Reme.”

“Would you and all your army could go there as quickly as we!” Sir Guy sighed. “Since you cannot, though, Stegoman and I shall have to suffice. I pray you care well for my steed.”

“Be assured that we shall,” Alisande told him. “Go release the wizards!”

“Black Knight to Witch Doctor.” Sir Guy’s voice sounded awkward and stilted as it came through the amulet.

“At last!” The sweat stood on Matt’s brow. The power coming to him through the clergy who were praying in the cathedral thrummed through him as if he were a high-voltage cable, but it drained from him as quickly as it came, as he recited the same verses over and over again, manufacturing more robots to replace the ones smashed by the condottieri’s maces and catapults, and short-circuited by their iron crossbow bolts.

It had given them a nasty surprise when they had seen a squadron of metal men come clanking out to block their way, and the retreat had been a real delight to watch. It had taken them a whole half hour to regroup and work themselves up to march again-but once begun, they found that the robots were vulnerable after all, though not very. A score of dead foot soldiers and six dead horsemen testified to the effectiveness of the automatons; it had taken that many deaths before the bandits had learned to stay back and lob in missiles. Since Matt’s robot barricade kept being renewed, the bandits probably didn’t know how effective their own strikes were. Matt just hoped they wore down before he did. It would have to be soon.

Even with the well of spiritual energy worn the chapel to draw on, the sheer energy of the struggle was sapping him, not to mention the guilt of seeing all those dead bodies. He tried consoling himself by remembering how much suffering those men had probably caused as they looted and pillaged, but that reminded him that they had died without confession, dragged down by the weight of all their sins. He kept fighting doggedly.

Behind him, Saul blocked the other two main avenues with Roman legionnaires-suggested by Arouetto-and howling barbarian Visigoths. The ‘ghosts’ had sent the condotierri running at first, but they had plucked up their courage and marched back again, assuring themselves that ghosts couldn’t hurt them. The first dozen casualties had convinced them otherwise, and they had retired to work out a new battle plan. Now they were content to stand back and shoot arrows-probably not trusting the pavement, since the roadway surfaces had all turned shiny black. Matt suspected their sorcerers hadn’t figured out why. He wished them luck-Marco Polo hadn’t published, in this universe. “They’re still sending commandoes in through the back streets,” Saul reported. “Still?” Matt was beyond surprise. “I thought those debugging programs you invented were running them down.”

“They are, each one shaped like the Hound of the Baskervilles. I’m surprised the captains can still find anybody brave enough to face them.”

“The hound? I thought you started with wolves.”

“I did, but I have to keep changing them, or they’ll work up their nerve to face them. I’m going to try yetis next.”

“Good idea. Me, I’m thinking of switching to tanks.”

“Hey, no fair using gunpowder! You got any idea how much havoc you could create if these guys get to thinking about things that go boom in the night?”

“I know, that’s all that stops me. I’m thinking of a giant cross-bow instead of a cannon.”

Behind him, he heard the squawk of a tinny voice coming through Saul’s amulet.

“Yeah, Sir Guy!” Saul said, relief in every syllable. “You can see them? Great! Just strafe their ranks-you know, dive on them with all Stegoman’s flame, then back up and dive again… No, the diving will scare them a lot more than just flying over burning everybody; they’ll run faster if they think they stand a chance of escape. Besides, that’ll make it harder for the sorcerers to hit you with fireballs or something… What? Stegoman says the fireballs would make a nice light snack? Well, tell him we’ll feed him high-grade charcoal as soon as this is over!”

Matt felt relief make him weak inside, but pulled himself together. “Okay. Now we pull out all the stops, right?”

“You got it,” Saul agreed. “As soon as we see him dive, sing out!”

Matt glanced back and forth from the northern sky to his robotic roadblocks on the south and west. He saw the dot growing bigger, saw it develop wings, saw it angle downward toward the condottieri… “Now!” Saul cried, and together they chanted,

The main roads exploded into flame, fire that roared downward onto the bandit army just as Stegoman’s torch shot out to sear the first battalion. A massive howl of fear rose up, and the condottieri turned as a man, fleeing back down toward the barracks. But the dragon dove again, and the vanguard kept on running, past the barracks and toward the city limits. “Get ready to counter their sorcerers!” Matt snapped. “I’m ready,” Saul said, “but I don’t think they’ll be doing anything for a while. They were all clustered together, and Sir Guy must have seen them. They were Stegoman’s first target.”

“They’ll recover.” Matt hoped he was wrong: “Anyway, even if they do all run, we’ll have a lot of repair work to do.”

“Look,” Saul argued, “we can wait till tomorrow to fix the roads.”

“‘I suppose so,” Matt sighed. “Thus is it proved that coal does not make a good surface for traffic. You don’t suppose this could happen to the tar in blacktop streets, do you?”

“If you had a dragon’s torch to get it started? Could be. Remind me to go back to New York and try the experiment sometime.”

“No, I think not.” Matt stared out. “I can’t believe it-they’re still running! Their new slum at the foot of the hill looks to be all cleaned out! I just hope they get all the people evacuated in time.”

“Look, we can kill the flames before they get that far.”

“I know, but Stegoman is lining up to dive-bomb headquarters. How’re they doing on your side?”

“Oh, just fine,” said Saul. “Nobody’s hitting the four minute mile yet, but I think some of them are doing very well, considering the light armor they’re wearing.”

“Have they passed their personal slum yet?”

“The last ones are just going through right now. I think we’d better call Stegoman back before the sorcerers regroup and find an antidragon spell.”

Saul fingered the amulet. “So how are we going to keep them moving?”

“By conjuring up your random group of legionnaires, or my odd number of robots-and, of course, the occasional fire geyser right behind them. Keep your hounds roaming the city, too. I know it’s wearing, but I think we can get the last of them out of here by nightfall.”

This time it was a formal audience, and the pope was wearing his robes of state with the cardinals gathered behind him, glorious red behind dazzling white. Saul was very patient-he managed to keep it down to mere fidgeting through the ritual and the singing. Matt and Sir Guy were the only ones to kneel to receive the pope’s personal blessing, though-Saul the skeptic and cynic had his limits. Besides, the religion he had dropped out of was Protestant. Nonetheless, the Holy Father insisted on turning to bless him, too. Later, in his solar, he told them, “I regret that I have no worldly power to give you in thanks.”

“That’s all right-the Church is better off that way,” Saul said, and the pope cast him a quick, suspicious glance. Matt said quickly, “Your blessing has already increased the power of our magic, your Holiness-I can feel it. Maybe it will be enough to cut through the magical inertia that seems to pervade Latruria-we can’t have you folks always there as our ammo dump, you know.”

The pope frowned. “I know not what an ‘ammo dump’ is, but we shall pray for you perpetually.”

“I need it if anyone does,” Matt sighed, and Saul developed whooping cough. Matt talked fast to cover him up. “Besides, we more or less brought this on ourselves-I’m sure the king wouldn’t have told the condottieri to get serious about taking the Vatican if we hadn’t been here.”

“It is not the sort of policy I have come to expect from Boncorro,” the pope admitted. “I was even surprised that he hemmed me in so tightly, when he had ceased his persecution of the priests and the faithful. I had supposed he felt the need to make a show of opposing me, since his grandfather had-but this…”

“I have my doubts that the king himself is behind it all,” Matt told him. “After all, his chancellor is a bona fide sorcerer and servant of Evil, and everybody would assume any order he gave came from the king.”

“But would not the king be angered when he learned of it?”

“Sure, but all information goes through the chancellor’s hands. He can keep any info he wants from the king-unless Boncorro has been wise enough to set up his own spy network, separate from his chancellor’s.”

“They say he trusts the Lord Chancellor as much as he trusts any man,” the pope said slowly. “But that’s not saying much, is it? Okay, I’ll admit he probably does have his own spies, checking up on the chancellor-but they can’t be everywhere at once.” He rose. “Speaking of spies, I think we’d better take our leave, now-before the king’s agents can track us.”

“Go, and with my blessing.” But the pope frowned. “This King Boncorro may not be a force for Evil, Lord Wizard, but he is also not a force for Good, and he cannot balance between them; simply by failing to do good, he advances the cause of Evil. Can you not help me in overthrowing him? He is the grandson of a usurper, after all.”

“And what alternative can you offer?” Matt said. He wondered why Sir Guy glanced at Arouetto and away, but didn’t mention it. “Getting rid of a neutral king isn’t too smart, if the only available replacement is definitely evil. If you don’t mind, Holy Father, I think it would be better to try to subvert King Boncorro and sway him toward the side of the angels than to try to assassinate him.”

“I had not meant to murder him-only to dethrone him!”

“It doesn’t work that way.” Matt shook his head. “Kick a king off his throne, and he’ll come back with an army-and if you beat him again, he’ll just come back again. Again and again-until you finally kill him anyway. No, your Holiness, we would be much better advised to make the best of Boncorro-or try to make him the best.”

“You have given me your advice,” the pope said slowly, “and I shall now give you mine-for your own best interests, not that of the Church. It is this: leave Latruria.”

“Good of you, I’m sure,” Matt said, “but you know we can’t.”

“We are sworn to a vocation, too, your Holiness,” Sir Guy said gently. “We cannot turn back unless we are beaten.”

The pope sighed. “Well, I have given you my best rede, though I cannot say I regret your ignoring it.”

As they were going out of the papal palace, Matt said to Arouetto, “How come he didn’t include you in the blessing? Or the advice, for that matter.”

“His Holiness does not completely trust me,” Arouetto answered with a small smile. “He has not said it, but I believe he sees me as a threat.”

“But can’t say why, huh?” Saul asked. “If he could, he’d clap you in irons.”

“Or a monk’s cell, I suppose,” Arouetto agreed. “Not that I would mind a life sentence to a library.”

“Yes you would,” Matt said, “if the only art and music around you were religious.”

“There are worse fates,” Arouetto replied. “Still, you are right-I would prefer to remain free, able to contemplate the beauties of Classical art and the works of my inspired contemporaries.”

A handful of Swiss guards marched up and stamped to a halt, leading four well-groomed horses. The leader saluted the companions with his halberd and said, “His Holiness insists that you accept at least this much of a gift from him.”

Sir Guy grinned. “This we will take, and gladly! Thank his Holiness for us! ”Yes, thanks indeed.“ Matt turned to the dragon, who lay waiting by the wall. ”You don’t mind, do you, Stegoman?“

“Mind?” the dragon snorted. “It is I who shall thank his Holiness most of all!”