The Oathbound Wizard

CHAPTER 18 Strange Allies

Narlh scrabbled roaring toward the dragon. Sir Guy shouted and jumped into the dracogriff's path, trying to block him, but Narlh hurdled him in a single bound and sailed toward the bigger reptile.

A blast of flame filled the air between them.

Narlh hit the ground, flattened himself against it until the fire had died, then sprang at its source. The dragon leaped back and snapped, "Invader! Interloper! Go, get thee gone! Come not near these good folk!"

"Pretty loud, for a bully! But I'm not a half-grown drakling any more, you pie-eyed prowler!" He pounced, but the dragon leaped high, and people fled to the walls of the courtyard, screaming.

"Oh, yeah? Well, I can fly, too!" Narlh launched himself up, teeth slashing.

"Do you dare, half heart? I bade you go when you did trespass before! I bid you go now, or I'll hurl you o'er the wall!"

"Bade?" Narlh shrieked, outraged. "You did a lot more than bid, snake-face! You gave me a royal roasting, that's what you did! Toast this, you bat-winged belly-crawler!" And he pounced on the dragon like a hawk on a mouse.

Or an alligator, rather. The dragon twisted away from beneath him, all but his tail—and the dracogriff seized the tip with a bite like a vise. The dragon bellowed in anger more than pain—but also in high octane, and the flame swept the wall, just above the heads of the screaming spectators. The fire cut off, and they fled for doorways.

"Separate them, my friend!" Sir Guy cried.

"Darn right I will!" Matt answered.

Not the world's greatest verse, but it worked well enough—huge iron grids suddenly appeared around all six sides of both monsters, clashing shut and dropping them to the courtyard surface with a crash.

"Lemme outa here!" Narlh tore at the bars in frustration. "Whaddaya think you're doing, Wizard?"

"Trying to prevent two of my friends from hurting each other!"

Both monsters froze, staring at Matt. Then, in chorus, they roared, "Friends?"

"He's a bully and a homicidal maniac!" Narlh screeched.

"This abomination is an insult to all Dragondom, and a trespasser besides!" the dragon howled.

"It was my beast of a father who was the abomination, you half-crocked-dile!" Narlh bellowed. "He seduced my mother and flew laughing away! Her, the most beautiful, innocent griffin that ever was! And you have the gall to defend him?"

The dragon froze. Then he said, in glacial tones, "No. And if 'tis true, he will die battling a dozen dragons. His is the right of defense, but ours is the privilege of enforcing our law. Only tell me his name, and I will hale him before the High Council, to answer for his misdeeds with tooth and flame."

"I don't know his name!" Narlh bleated in agony. "He didn't exactly leave us his pedigree and his coat of arms, y'know! All he left was me—and a ravaged soul!"

The dragon crouched, eyes smoldering. At last, he said, "His deed shames me, and all dragonkind. We will seek him out, we will tear him."

"Oh, yeah, sure! The only thing you tear is half-fledged wanderers with dreams in their heads!"

The dragon glowered at him, then said, "None may enter the realm of the Free save themselves alone—or their guests."

Matt decided it was time to jump in—literally. He landed between the two cages, holding up a palm toward the dracogriff. "Hold it, Narlh!"

The monster gulped, then coughed and gasped. "Don't do that, Wizard! You know what it's like to swallow a fireball?"

The dragon stared, then swung his head toward Matt. "He is thy friend, Matthew!"

"Yes," Matt said. "He has saved my life twice, at least."

Narlh stared, frozen. Then, slowly, he turned his head toward Matt, and there was bitterness and blame in every line of his face.

"Don't look at me like that!" Matt held up both hands, beseeching. "There's a reason for it—what Stegoman did to you! He wouldn't do it again for the life of him!"

"Oh?" Narlh's syllable dripped sarcasm. "I suppose a demon made him do it, huh?"

"Of a kind, yes—the demon rum, or its first cousin."

"Doing what?" Sir Guy stepped up, frowning from one beast to the other, his hand on his sword.

"Burned Narlh and chased him out of the air, so badly that he fell, and just barely survived," Matt said, his voice low. "Stegoman was on sentry duty at the border of Dragondom, Sir Guy—and he was drunk."

Narlh stared.

Then he said, "Drunk? A dragon, drunk? What'd he do, drink a brewery?"

"Nay." Stegoman's face set into rocky lines. "Mine own fumes. When I breathed flame, I became giddy and crazed. I was rent for that, monster—my wings were torn in many places; I was condemned to crawl upon the ground for hurting other dragons."

"Oh, sure, dragons! But who cares about a lowly dracogriff, huh?"

"None saw that," Stegoman confessed, "or I might have been taken from the air much sooner."

"Sure. Right. A model of justice, these dragons."

Stegoman's eyes narrowed. "Do not mock."

"Why not?" Narlh blasted. "Who're you trying to feed the big lie, lizard? So you were grounded, huh? Then how'd your wings get healed?"

"By Matthew," Stegoman said simply.

Narlh stared at him. Then, slowly, he turned toward Matt again. "You traitor."

"I hadn't even met you yet! Besides, Narlh, I cured his drunkenness, too! He can breathe enough flame to fire a steam engine for a hundred miles and not even be tipsy! That's why I know he wouldn't fry you now!"

" 'Tis true," Stegoman said "I would summon other dragons and chase thee away from our borders, aye—yet not even that, if thou wert to tell me of thy complaint against one of our number."

"Sure," Narlh said. "Sure." But he didn't bellow this time.

Then he turned to Matt. "If you're such good buddies, how come he isn't traveling with you anymore?"

"Because," Stegoman said, "Matthew is a wedded man, and cannot go gadding about on a quest—and there's no place at court for a dragon."

"There will always be a place for you at Alisande's court!" Matt protested.

A hint of a smile showed at the corners of the saurian's mouth. "Bless thee for thy fond protestations, Matthew—yet even had I stayed, thou wouldst have had scant time for the company of a confirmed old bachelor like myself. Nay, a wife leaves a man little time for unwed friends."

Sir Guy frowned. "I would not say—"

"Nor would I," Matt cut in, "considering that I didn't marry her."

Stegoman stared. "Not marry..."

Sir Guy looked up, startled "Why, how is this, Matthew?"

"Alisande has this thing about being nobly born." Matt shrugged the issue away. "I developed a certain desire for a higher station in life."

Sir Guy lifted his head slowly, looking more and more worried as he went.

"Desire, yeah." Narlh's jaw lolled open in a grin. "And a big mouth. Tell 'em about your little memory lapse, Wizard."

"Memory lapse?" Stegoman turned to Matt, frowning.

Matt felt his face grow hot. "I, uh...kind of bent the Third Commandment a little..."

"Bent?" Narlh hooted. "He bent it so far it snapped back!"

" 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain'?" Sir Guy turned very somber. "What did you call Him to witness, my friend?"

"I'll, uh, tell you later." Matt forced a sickly grin. "Suffice it to say that it resulted in my undertaking a quest remarkably similar to your own."

"And not entirely voluntarily." Finally, a smile broke through Sir Guy's cloudy mood. "Well, no matter how you are come, you are well come! I thank all the saints for your presence; now I can hope!"

"So can I," Narlh growled. "Hope these bars'll rust! If I have to wait that long to get at that overgrown salamander, it'll be worth it!"

"Salamander? Why, thou knowest not of what thou dost speak, foolish halfling!"

"Halfling?" Narlh leaped forward, slamming into the bars and bumping the whole cage forward a yard. "You take that back, you nettled newt! Or so help me, I'll haul my brass over there and toast you for a mallow!"

"Thy cage is iron, not brass," Stegoman snorted, "and thou hast but half a brain! Half a brain, half a dragon, half a griffin—why, thou art so many things thou art naught of any, least of all a dragon!"

"I've had it!" Narlh bellowed. He threw himself against the bars, bumping his cage closer and closer to Stegoman's. "You high-and-mighty hypocrite! You self-righteous, pompous excuse for a syllabub! You're the kind of flag-waving traitor who'd turn around and lead a hunter to a nest, to kill the hatchlings for their blood!"

"I? Never!" Stegoman roared, outraged—and Narlh had to duck the tip of his flame. "I, stoop to so vile a vengeance? To crawl beneath the lowest of the low? How durst thou accuse me of such! Blood must answer! Wizard, take away these bars, for I am hot for..." He suddenly froze.

Matt looked at the dragon's eyes and made a guess as to what was going on in his mind.

Narlh turned to him, narrow-eyed. "What'd you do to him?"

"Nothing," Matt said, low-voiced. "I think he's just realized how come you would think of such a vile insult."

"Aye." Stegoman gazed at the dracogriff out of hooded eyes. "Thou, too, hast known their horrors, hast thou not? Thou wast not the only egg hatched from thy brood, wast thou?"

Narlh, glared, outraged. Then he whipped his head around to Matt. "You told!"

Matt shook his head. "I didn't know. You never told me. You were here, you heard—I didn't say a word about it."

"Why else wouldst thou have thought of such scum?" Stegoman said. "Why else wouldst thou think that the nadir of life-forms is the hunter who doth seek out hatchlings to drain and sell their blood, even as they destroy those of dragons? Thou must needs have known them, must thou not?"

"Awright awready! So I ran, I flew, I fled! The fiend was towering up into the sky, from where I was! I was only two feet long! I chickened out, all right? I didn't even try to fight! Now you know! Y' happy now?" Then Narlh bowed his head, his voice choked, hushed. "All of 'em! All my brothers and sisters, all five! And I didn't even raise a claw to defend 'em! Well, almost none." His head snapped up, glaring at Stegoman. "I did scratch his face for him! And my sister almost got away! But he..." He choked and turned his face aside.

"None can blame thee," Stegoman said quietly. "Thou didst fight whiles thou couldst, and fled when thou couldst not fight. Nay, I, too, fled, for the wight was far too huge for me."

Narlh looked up, startled. "You...?"

"I was not born vast, no more than thou wert," Stegoman reminded him. "I, too, was hunted by these vile humans, who pander to the more depraved of the sorcerers." He turned to Matt. "Take off these bars, Wizard!"

"Hey, hold on!" Narlh bellowed. "If you let him out, you got to..." He stared as his cage faded away. "I didn't even hear you talk."

"You were kind of loud." Matt was beginning to understand a lot about his monstrous friend.

Stegoman waddled up toward Narlh. The dracogriff braced himself, but the dragon only said, "Come. We must discuss how we will clear the earth of these vile sorcerers, who buy our blood—how we will chase them, as their minions have chased us, and scour them from the land, thou and I."

Narlh stared at him for a few long minutes.

Then he nodded. "Yeah, sure. Awright " He turned his head a little away, eyeing Stegoman narrowly. "Truce?"

"Truce," Stegoman confirmed, "and peace, if thou wilt, for no greater reason than our common friendship with one of the few wizards who doth disdain to feed his power from others' lives. Nay, and if thou dost wish to seek justice for thy mother, I will myself escort you into Dragondom—when this coil is done, and Ibile is cleansed."

"Yeah. Yeah, sure." Narlh nodded, faster and faster. "Yeah, we'll get the wizard to work up the right verses, and tear 'em outa their lairs!...You really think we got a chance?"

"As to that..." Stegoman said, and led the other monster away, chatting quietly, plotting mayhem.

People began to look out of arrow slits and doorways, wondering if the quiet in the courtyard meant anything trustworthy.

Sir Guy blew out a shaky breath. "For an instant, I feared our keep would be tumbled from within! Yet I doubt me not we have strengthened our forces amazingly, by these two monsters' union." He forced a grin and finally managed to clasp Matt's hand, slapping him on the shoulder. "And you do strengthen us tenfold! How good of you to come, Matthew! Yet how did you know we stood in your need?"

"Mostly because I had a friendly ghost trying to lead me somewhere—and when Max showed up beside him for a minute, I knew he was showing me the way toward you." Matt grinned, massaging his hand and trying to ignore the sudden ache in his shoulder. "So how's the quest been? Doesn't look like a total bust."

"Well, we are alive," Sir Guy said, "and that's no small task, after three years' sojourn in this land of evil."

"It's well-nigh impossible! But that was always your kind of job. Was Max any help?"

Sir Guy opened his mouth, but the spark was there, dancing in the air between them and humming, "Not a whit! This great lout of a knight kens no more the use of my powers than he knows of the shape of the earth."

Sir Guy reddened. "The earth is flat, Demon, as all do know!"

"He will not believe 'tis round!" the spark keened in exasperation. "Nay, the best he can think to have me do is to kindle fires in siege engines—a task that he could achieve with an arrow and a bit of tow!"

Matt shook his head in commiseration. "Sounds like a rough three years for both of you." He'd never seen Sir Guy run out of patience before. "Maybe it's a good thing I came."

"Aye, if he will give me back into your direction again!"

"Done!" Sir Guy snapped, with as much relief as anger. "Go you again to your old master..."

"Friend!" Max snapped

"Friend, then." Sir Guy eyed Matt as though he doubted the term. "Let him direct you—and I will cleave to the steel that is my heritage!"

"Shoemaker, stick to thy first." Matt held out a hand, and Max darted up his cuff. He turned back to Sir Guy. "Maybe I can be some help here, after all."

"First?" Sir Guy frowned. "Wherefore should a cobbler adhere to a first?"

"Think about it. In the meantime, though, let me compliment you on three years of amazingly good work." Matt surveyed the tents pitched against the walls, the overflowing stables, and the stalwart peasants who were just now getting back to their evening chores, almost certain the monsters were done fighting.

Sir Guy nodded. "I thank you. And, yes, this is a worthy accomplishment—to gather together these few of Ibile's four estates who as yet live free of corruption."

"All four?" Matt looked up, alert for implications. "Clergy, nobility, commoners, and serfs? You found a few priests still alive?"

"Some dozen, from a proud Archbishop, whom Stegoman and I succored from a siege of evil that would surely have been his death, to a humble trio of nuns—all that was left of their abbey—who did come to us in the guise of beggars, to seek shelter among us. Yet their prayers gave us more strength than they took, 'gainst evil sorcery."

"Nice gleaning," Matt said, amazed. "But how about the nobility? I thought Gord—uh, the king, had been busy kicking out any lords who looked to be virtuous."

"He did, but some few hacked and hewed their way free, and roamed the countryside, defending the poor where they could and eluding his sorcerers and knights as well as they might. One by one, they came to us, estranged and dispossessed, but alive, and still a mighty force in the land."

Matt remembered the link between the land of Merovence and its people, and how the land virtually repelled a usurper—or sickened under his rule. "Well, between them and the common folk, you have a fair amount of strength concentrated here."

"Aye, if we can endure."

"I'd guess you could hold out for years." Matt looked at the fortifications around him. "This castle looks pretty sturdy."

"It is, a valiant maiden. She has guarded this confluence of waterways for three hundred years, never taken. Twice has she withstood siege and emerged victorious—but never against a host so wicked and so powerful as Penaldehyde."

"Penaldehyde?" Matt frowned. "What kind of weapon is that?"

Sir Guy smiled without mirth. "A living weapon, Sir Matthew, and as mighty a one as resides in the king's arsenal. Nay, Penaldehyde is a sorcerer most truly steeped in wickedness, whom the king wields as the sword of his right hand."

"Oh." Matt frowned. "Gord—uh, the gross one's chief assistant?"

"Even so," Sir Guy confirmed. "And he is mighty in magic, and devious. We are hard pressed, Matthew."

"But alive." Matt raised a finger. "Considering the sink of debauchery this kingdom is in, I'd say you haven't done badly."

"Yet not so well as I had thought to do," Sir Guy said with a sardonic smile. "I had wished to ride into Ibile and cleanse it in a month, aided by such doughty companions as the marvelous Demon and Stegoman."

"Even with them in your arsenal, you were outgunned by evil. But how about my idea for having you and Max get along? He was supposed to provide you ideas that you could turn into orders."

"It fizzled like a match with no fuel." The spark was there suddenly, dancing between them in midair. "I had not known that this medieval muscleman knew little of molecules, and less of atoms. Indeed, he knows so little of operations at atomic and subatomic levels that the words mean nothing to him. He thinks that Schrodinger's Cat is a German house pet."

Sir Guy reddened, but said, " 'Tis true. I can comprehend not one word in five of his mystical phrases."

"Not mystical, you dolt! Mysticism, is conjecture about matters not subject to testing! 'Tis of matters physical we speak, not metaphysical!"

"You sure about that?" Matt said. "I mean, considering quantum mechanics and general relativity..."

The spark ceased its usual Brownian movement and hung still in midair. Slowly, its voice hummed, "You may speak more truth than you know..."

"Or can understand," Matt finished. "How about you retire and consider the matter?"

"Well said." The spark of light winked out.

Sir Guy heaved a sigh. " Was well for me that the ghost appeared."

Matt looked up, startled. "Medium-size guy? Hangdog expression? Gray clothes? Kinda dumpy? Head in his hand?"

"Ah," Sir Guy said, "you know him well."

"I do indeed," Matt said. "Had a bit of a communication problem, though. I take it you didn't?"

"Not greatly," Sir Guy said, puzzled. "I did encounter him not long after my advent into Ibile. Near close of day, he did appear—and I own, I was fearful, though I let it not be seen..."

That, Matt could believe—at least, the part about not showing it. He wasn't so sure Sir Guy had really been afraid. Ever.

"Yet it made no threat, but only seemed to wish that we follow—so we did, though ever-wary of traps and snares. The ghost did lead us to a shrine, overgrown and ruined, but intact. We made our devotions; then, upon our outgoing, we were beset by a band of gargoyles."

"You were?" Matt stared. "Must be a local condition, then. Hm! And we thought they were just for us!"

"In truth?" Sir Guy asked, horrified. "Ah, Matthew! I repent I did not battle with them! They must have lurked about the landscape, to your peril!"

"Don't worry about it. But how did you get out?"

"Ah. There, at least, I managed a thought that Max the Demon could twist to some purpose. I but asked him to turn the gargoyles once again to stone, and he did—though he informed me he could not make the condition endure without his presence. That sufficed, of course, because when he had quit their environs, so had Stegoman and I—and I had thought they would disappear, having been summoned only to fight us. My apologies."

"Accepted, and not needed. We finished them off."

"You...?" Sir Guy stared and almost choked. He turned aside to cough, then managed a weak smile. "Nay, surely wizardry accomplished what force of arms could not! Yet how, Matthew? What magic did you work, that could overcome such embodiments of savage urges?"

"Oh, I didn't do it! I just found a new friend."

"A friend?" Sir Guy was instantly wary, eyes flicking to left and right. "What manner of being was this, who could counter such fell foes?"

"A goblin more fell than they." Puck was there suddenly, standing arms akimbo on Matt's shoulder, grin flashing. "I but set them to fighting each to each, and let them chew one another to powder, whiles the wizard did watch and ponder. Then he dispersed the last one, and all was peace."

"He's got an unusual twist of thought," Matt explained. "Puck, meet Sir Guy."

"Nay, this manner of spirit, I can comprehend!" Sir Guy grinned, holding out a forefinger. "Well met, good sprite!"

Puck clasped the forefinger. "I like the look of you, Sir Knight! Say, what mischief might you find for me?"

"He's good at mischief," Matt explained. "In fact, he's the embodiment of it."

"Why, I have as much a liking for a good jest as any," Sir Guy said.

Puck made a face. "Good jests have little of amusement in them, Sir Knight. 'Tis bad jests that do delight—when one does watch his enemy chasing after phantoms, belike, or being mired in the slough of his own cupidity."

"I own to enjoyment of seeing those who care naught for their fellow creatures suffering from the very ruses they used upon their victims. What would you say, Spirit, to making these soldiers of vileness execute the opposite of each command they're given?"

"So that, when their captain sounds the charge, they turn and flee in rout?" Puck's eyes lit with something like respect. He turned to Matt, nodding. "You may have here a mortal with more than half a mind!"

"That's a compliment," Matt explained quickly.

"Aye." Puck made a face. "This man who has called me up has too much of the proper prude in him. He kens not a true amusement."

"Prude?" Matt bleated. "Why, you half-pint harlequin—-"

"Enough!" Sir Guy held up a palm. "One must never give insult to an ally, Matthew, as you well know."

"A pin in the chair, perhaps," Puck suggested.

"Or an unseen hand that pulls at his hair whenever he ceases to expect it," Sir Guy proposed.

Puck's grin widened. "Better and better! Here stands a man of true insight!"

Insight into ways of making other people look foolish. Matt shuddered; he had never suspected that side of Sir Guy's nature before. But, now that he thought of it, to a man of war, it probably was better than having to carve your enemy into scrimshaw. "You were telling me about the ghost. He talks to you?"

"Um? Oh!" Sir Guy came back to the subject from some vision of practical jokes that would have made Matt shudder.

"Nay, he spoke not—but I had little difficulty comprehending the gist of his intent. Therefore, when he appeared before me this morn, and was clearly in a state of great excitement, I understood from his signs and gestures that doughty heroes were nearby and could be gathered into our number—but they could not see him well enough to comprehend."

"No, I couldn't." Matt frowned, unable to understand how Sir Guy could guess the ghost's meaning so easily, when Matt had been stumped.

Unable to understand. That was it—Sir Guy had the referents; he naturally thought the same way the ghost did. Which Matt did not. At all.

Odd. The ghost didn't look like a warrior..."So you decided to help him?"

"Aye. I had understood, from your talk and the Demon's, that seeing had something to do with Max's function; so I asked him to move brightness from the morning into the ghost..."

"A most distasteful ambiguity" Max hummed, hovering between them again. "He seems not even to know the word 'energy,' or to be able to understand it as anything other than a liveliness within his limbs."

Sir Guy glared at the spark, but Puck hooted with laughter. "What have we here? A will-o'-the-wisp that's scarcely hatched?"

"Hatched?" the Demon sang in indignation. "Why, what oaf is this, who mocks even at the powers of the universe!"

"Hoo! So you are the universe, are you, small spark? What is the sun, then, your child? The infant dwarfing ever the sire!"

"What foolishness!" Max snapped. "How could the sun be begotten of me, when I was there to oversee its birth?"

"A midwife to the sun?" Puck cried. "Nay, enough of such vainglorious boasting."

"Of course," Matt murmured. "That's your province."

"Speak with respect, weak mortal! Whiles I do dampen the enthusiasm of this humorless coal!" Puck gestured, and a small rain cloud appeared above the Demon. It contracted in an instant, intensive typhoon.

The drops struck the spark and exploded into steam.

Puck frowned. "Strange."

"What would you expect, foolish sprite?" the Demon seethed. "Know you not Boyle's law?"

"Why, it shall be my law that you shall boil!" Puck started another gesture, but Matt held up a hand. "Don't try to fine-tune it any, will you?" He had a nightmare vision of a duel between the Spirits of Entropy and Mischief. Strange—he would have thought the two would have gotten along famously.

Or notoriously...

In desperation, he guessed the end of Sir Guy's story. "So the ghost left with Max—and I saw them together, and knew he must be leading us to you." Finally, he had a referent for the ghost's motions.

"And thus you are come." Sir Guy grinned. "In good time, Matthew! Shall we chew this host up between us?"

"Say, rather, that you shall grind them 'gainst the grit of your grating wit!" Max keened. "Wizard, you know not what I have endured at his hands! Scarcely one task in a week, and that so simple it could have been done with stone and stick! This enforced idleness has brought me to seethe with impatience!"

"You were free to suggest any course of action you wished," Sir Guy snapped.

"I did, and you comprehended not! Why, Wizard, his grasp of science exceeds a child's—inversely! It rivals an infant's! His notion of experiment is to see how close he can bring the point of his lance to a target! He thinks a field force is an army's bivouac! That relativity is the tracing of his kindred! How could you desert me with such a one?"

"Easy, easy," Matt soothed. "Nobody said you had to stay with him."

"How could I have deserted him, in the face of such foes?"

"Easily," Puck said sourly. "You gave him no gain by your staying."

The Demon emitted a single, high-pitched note that stabbed right through Matt's eardrums and veered up higher. In a panic, he called, "Easy! Easy! Ease off, in fact! Damp your gain! His worldview doesn't encompass science, you know! In fact, he doesn't really have the concept of causality."

The Demon's note cut off in something that sounded remarkably like a gasp of horror. "You jest!"

"Who, him?" Puck said in scorn.

Matt reddened and gave the elf a glare as he told Max, "Not really. Cause-and-effect thinking is a relatively modern idea, you know."

"Modern! In what sense?"

"From the Renaissance on. Well, okay, the classical Greeks had it, and gave it to the Romans—but it died out for almost a thousand years, in anything more subtle than hammering a door with a battering ram to cause it to break. Then Europe relearned geometry, picked up algebra from the Muslims—and scientists like Copernicus and Kepler rediscovered the idea that you could reason back from effects to causes."

"Do you say this knight's teachers did not know enough to learn true science?"

"Not really, no. At this stage, Europe hasn't learned any mathematics beyond arithmetic, and they don't even have the idea of the zero—they're still using Roman numerals."

"What other form is there?" Sir Guy asked, intrigued.

Matt swallowed heavily. "Arabic."

"Saracens!"

"They're good mathematicians," Matt protested. Then he turned back to Max. "Before they can really start thinking scientifically, they'll need geometry. Then Copernicus will be able to realize that the orbits of the planets don't look the way they should if they were revolving around the earth. Kepler will take his idea and try to make it specific—but he'll need Tycho Brahe's observations. With those records, Kepler will find out that the motions of the planets don't fit the shapes of the perfect solids he's been thinking of—but they do fit ovals. Then Galileo will have to build his work on top of theirs, and Newton will have to learn Galileo's ideas and invent his own version of calculus before he'll be able to figure out the law of gravity. Knowledge is built up like a pyramid, you see—and so far, Europe has only laid the foundations."

"Not even that, if what you say about their worldview is true!"

"Oh, the idea of cause-and-effect is implicit in the Judaeo-Christian attitude toward history. It's beginning to assert itself—but at the moment, it's only aborning. "

"Yet what else can there be?" the Demon cried. "When you eliminate causality, what's left?"

"Coincidence," Matt answered. "One event doesn't cause another—they just happen at the same time, more or less. The clouds are there, and so is the lightning and thunder. They go together, but they don't cause each other."

Puck raised an eyebrow. "At last, some sense!"

"Sense?!" the Demon bleated, but Sir Guy nodded. "Even so. If two armies come, there will be a battle. He who is more right, will win."

"Blasphemy!" the Demon keened. "If men think thus, there will never be peace!"

"Well, even in my world people aren't very good at seeing their own behavior in terms of cause and effect," Matt demurred.

"What fools these mortals be." Puck grinned. "Thy race is excellent, mortal—your lives are the very stuff of comedy!"

"We are such things as vaudeville was made of, huh? So you see, Max, even with the best medieval education available—which I'm sure Sir Guy has had; he knows how to read—he can't understand our physics as anything but a metaphor."

"How can physics be a metaphor?"

"Well, the Church thought that the sun revolving around the earth was proof that human life was the most important part of creation—after all, we were made in God's image. And they thought that building tall towers had to be a sign of arrogance, because God lived above the sky. They didn't quite realize that an apple falling to earth was like the human soul wishing to be closer to God—but they would have loved it."

"What nonsense! What has this to do with physics?"

Matt sighed. "Think of it as analogies. They see the world as being suspended between Heaven and Hell, and everything surrounding the earth was made solely for its benefit, because it's the most important part of creation."

"What nonsense! When you are only a small planet, far out on the tip of one arm of a quite ordinary galaxy? Wherefore should your world be more important than any other?"

Now it was Sir Guy who muttered, "Blasphemy!"

"Because human beings live on it," Matt said simply.

"How primitive a notion!"

"I told you we have a long way to go. So to them, see, the world is an analogue of the Church, because it's the most important part of society..."

"By whose reckoning?"

"The scholars."

"And whence come these "scholars'?"

"From the Church. And the sun is analogous to the king, because it controls the seasons."

Max hummed without words for a minute, then said, "The knight would thus understand entropy only as analogous to a lack of government."

"You've got it!"

"But then all my works, to him, would be..."

"Incomprehensible." Matt nodded. "Fortunately, European culture has a mental structure for dealing with things it doesn't understand—it calls them magic, and lets it go at that."

"Then they shall never approach true understanding of their world!"

"No," Puck said, "but they may understand one another—as well as human folk can be understood."

Matt threw up his hands. "What can I say? Chaucer understood people as well as anyone did, before we discovered biochemistry and neurology."

"Faugh!" Puck made a face. "These are but words. One might as well speak of the elf shot and the mad."

"See what I mean?"

"Aye, and 'tis unbearable! Wizard, you cannot leave me shackled to one whose skull holds such a vacuum!"

Sir Guy's scowl turned dangerous. "What is a `vacuum'?"

"Something for making things pure—or cleaner, anyway," Matt improvised.—"I know how you feel, Max—I'm currently dogged with a companion who rubs me the wrong way, too."

"Be rid of him, then!"

Puck grinned. "Let him try!"

"See what I mean?" Matt sighed "You don't suppose you could counteract him, do you?"

"This sprite?" Max hummed, drifting closer to Puck.

The elf scowled. "Do not even consider..."

His voice ran down the scale, and his movements slowed. His features began working themselves toward an expression of alarm, and one hand began to move in a strange, but very slow, gesture.

"No, Max!" Matt cried. "I didn't mean..."

"Leave the elf be!" Sir Guy loosened his broadsword in its scabbard.

But Puck's hand had completed the gesture, and suddenly an icicle appeared in the air—a glowing icicle, with the Demon trapped inside it.

Or maybe not trapped—the ice immediately began to melt. Puck's voice soared upscale, finishing the phrase. "...any spell against me! Nay, since you have, deal with this!" He pointed at the ice-coated spark with fingers stiffened into a sort of cylinder, and a jet of darkness sped from his hand to enfold the Demon, shrouding him in a small sphere of night so total as to be absolute.

Light flared within it, banishing the darkness, and the Demon sang, "Know that I have power over entropy, foolish elf! Do you dare beard me in my own realm?"

"Foolish indeed," Puck admitted, rolling one hand around another and tossing something invisible at the Demon. He suddenly grew a white beard, shooting down from the spark, longer and longer.

"What do you do?" Max screeched, just before he took off like a rocket.

Puck met Matt's accusing glare with a shrug. "Make him a bearded star, and Nature will hurl him back to the firmament, where he belongs."

The "bearded star" turned into a falling star, and the miniature meteorite spat, "As a comet resembles a meteor, foolish spirit, so can I return unto you! But know that, in embodying entropy, I am also the Spirit of Perversity!" And Puck suddenly grew long ears, his nose stretched out and thickened, and he stood before them wearing a miniature ass's head. He brayed in alarm.

"There will be no ending to this," Sir Guy confided to Matt, "unless we provide it."

Matt nodded. "Let's sort this out the way it should be."

"Aye," Sir Guy said. "Do you take the Demon in hand, whiles I speak with the elf."

One step ahead of Puck's gesture, Matt chanted,

Puck's head suddenly reverted to normal—with a look of fury. "I asked not for aid, Wizard!"

"You have abetted mine enemy!" the spark keened. "Are you a traitor?"

"No, and he's not your enemy." Matt cupped a hand around the spark and, as he turned away, noticed that Sir Guy was doing some pretty fast talking with Puck. "We're both fighting the evil king, after all—"

" 'Tis no contest of mine!"

"Okay, then—you're free. I can't ask you to fight in a cause you don't believe in."

"Ask?" The spark hopped in astonishment. "But the Black Knight—"

"Fully relinquishes any claim he might have upon you," Matt said firmly. "You're free to go back to the void if you want to."

"But how boring! Wizard, imagine eternity with no tasks to accomplish, none save to supervise the smooth, even progress of entropy!"

"Well, of course, if you want to...Heaven knows I'd appreciate your help..."

" 'Tis done!" The spark snapped. "I am free of Toutarien and bonded to you—till I wish to sever the bond, at least!"

"You were always free to. But you must understand what you're getting yourself into."

"Dost truly think this kinglet you fight can do damage to me?" Max said in scorn.

"No—but Sir Guy is over there trying to talk Puck into staying with the team. Just annexed to Sir Guy, is all."

The spark danced in midair, humming to itself a while. Then it sang, "I can endure his company, if I need not speak to him save with the strongest of causes."

"Done." Matt nodded. " In fact, I recommend that if he talks to you, you don't answer."

"Oh, be assured that I shall!" The singing turned flat and harsh. "And long will he regret it!"

"Friends, remember," Matt cautioned, "or at least allies.. But at the moment, it would be politic if you got out of sight."

"A point," the spark agreed, and vanished.

Matt noticed that his wallet warmed up at his belt, and felt reassured. He turned to Sir Guy. "Any luck?"

"He is my man," Puck answered, grinning, "and I shall ride on his shoulder. Think naught of such favors as you owe me, Wizard—I shall be too busy brewing mischief with this knight to concern myself with you."

"Very generous of you," Matt murmured. "Sir Guy, you sure you know what you're doing?"

"Aye." The Black Knight grinned. "And if you will excuse me, Sir Matthew, we have already begun to brew a coil for the army that sits without our gate." He turned away, holding Puck in a palm and chatting like an old friend.

Matt gazed after, heaving a sigh of relief, but having a hard time accepting it all.

"Why do you stand amazed, Lord Wizard? Are you so surprised at your own peacemaking?"

Matt looked up and was astonished to see Marian standing beside him. For a split second, he was lost in the dazzle of her beauty; then the memory of how she had dented heads with a quarterstaff came to mind, and he managed to pull back to a safe emotional distance. From that vantage point, he noticed that Robin was conducting his band to places around the great fire pit near an inner wall and detailing a few to join the guard on the walls. The net result was that, for the moment, Matt was alone with Marian.

It wasn't the world's most comfortable feeling. What do you say to a legend? Especially one who had turned out to be rather intimidating? "Uh...don't you get a bit lonely, being the only woman in the band?"

"Oh, but I am not." The smile dazzled him again. "There are Allan-a-Dale's wife, and Will Scarlet's leman, and the wives of most of the other men of the band, save those who are too young."

"Families?" Matt stared, amazed. "But...but...you're a military unit! A guerrilla band!"

"Guerrilla?" Maid Marian frowned, puzzled; then her face cleared. "Ah! 'Tis a Spanish word, is't not?"

"Why, yes. I think it means `little war.' " Matt was surprised that the woman showed evidence of education; it hadn't been common for anyone in the Middle Ages.

But then, Marian was a gentlewoman, a lady—only a generation or two from minor aristocracy. "l, uh—don't see any other women around."

"Nay. They wait in Sherwood, with the older men and striplings, where they bide in safety. I have not yet a child, so I am free to come venturing."

At a guess, she and Robin were finally married—but it would be difficult to think of her as anything but "Maid" Marian. "I take it you won't have any difficulty going back to your home, uh, world."

"Returning, no. Coming..." Marion shrugged. "We must know where there's need of us, ere we can march. But once having traveled the route, 'tis easy enough to go back."

Matt hadn't realized Robin Hood was himself magical. He should have, of course. "Do you still, uh...serve King Richard, though in his absence?"

"Ah! You know our tale well, I see. Aye, we served the Lionheart long, and aided in gathering pennies from the poor for his ransom—and jewels from the wealthy. So we labored, and guarded his people, till he was finally returned to England and put down his usurping regent John."

So. Scott had written better than he knew. But why not? With an infinity of universes, anything Scott had imagined must have really happened, somewhere. "So you all would have been happy to retire, as long as Richard lived?"

A shadow crossed Marian's face. "Oh, he rewarded my Robin amply, with restoration of his family's estates and two others that were taken from men who leagued with John. But the sheriff of Nottingham he would not punish, claiming he had only been obedient to his lord, as he should."

"A little shortsighted of him."

"He was in so many things. Within a few months, we saw he truly held no love for England; he was already dunning his noblemen for more gold, to take him adventuring again. In a year's time he was gone from England, and his brother was regent again."

"I know." Matt shook his head. "Rights of succession aside, he still should have known better."

"He did not truly care." Marian's voice hardened. "And John set the sheriff once again to plaguing my Robin, with boundary disputes and taxes on every excuse—yet he could be no more to him than a nuisance. But he could throw Robin's men into prison on the slightest pretext, and he seized upon the first who poached, to put him to death."

"Robin didn't let him get away with that, did he?"

Marian shook her head. "He rode against the sheriff in force, and in armor, and wrested his man from the Nottingham gaol. Then did John pronounce him once again outlaw, in that he had moved against the king's law—and Robin and I were off to the greenwood once more, with all our household, and our estates confiscated. But Robin's old band came, one by one, to find him in the forest, and we set ourselves to plague the sheriff as in days of old. Then Richard died."

Matt nodded. "In a pointless fight, by a virtual accident—but he was good at getting into pointless fights."

"A parfit gentil knight—but a very poor king," Marian agreed. "England was naught but a treasure house to him. Yet by the time of his death, he had taken all the treasure and left us only the house. And John became king."

"And you decided to stay in the greenwood," Matt supplied.

"We have." Marian turned merry again. "We plagued John till he died. Robin carried word of each nobleman's discontent to his peers, so that all knew that few would side with John, if he sought to move against any one of them—and they made him sign a great charter acknowledging their rights. It was Robin's proudest moment."

"The Magna Carta," Matt murmured. "I'll bet it was. Not that John felt bound to honor it, though."

Marian waved the objection away, irritated. "John honored naught but force, no matter how often he saw the folly of his efforts to tyrannize his peers. But he died at last, and his heir would have restored Robin's estates."

Matt frowned. "Robin didn't accept?"

"Nay, for he saw the poor folk would prosper under Edward. Then the elvin folk offered him life till Doom's Trump should sound, and work to keep him busied all his days."

Matt shook his head. "Tough choice—family versus career."

"Ah, but the elves promised lasting life to all his band." Marian raised a finger. "Not one of us has died since, though we've been wounded sore, and have endured great pain till the elves could heal us. Yet all become fit again and are ever filled with zeal to protect the common folk."

"But I thought the elves left England in the Dymchurch Flit."

"What of it? There are other Englands—so many, in fact, that they are beyond counting. Nay, somewhere there will ever be a Sherwood, and elves and merry men to fill it"

Matt grinned. "Comforting to know—especially now."

"Aye, now." Sir Guy came up to them, wearing a jaunty grin and an elfin shoulder ornament. "Night approaches and, with it, the assault of sorcery. Will it please you to come watch their feints and spells? Then, on the morrow, we can plot their overthrow."

Matt's blood turned cold, but he nodded, tried to grin, and followed Sir Guy toward the battlements. Marian accompanied them—and, after five paces, Matt realized Robin Hood had joined her.

Now that the fuss of arrival was over, he had time to take a longer and more thorough look about him.

The place was a mess. The reek that had been nudging at his consciousness all along finally sank in—maybe it was the relatively clean air at the top of the stairs that made him realize how badly the courtyard stank. Over against the juncture of curtain wall and keep, he saw a maze of crosses, cobbled out of scraps of lumber and not even painted. Bodies lay wrapped in shrouds, piled up along the edges of the little cemetery—they had run out of burial room.

Looking at the faces of the sentries around him, Matt realized that what he had mistaken for grim purpose was at least partly malnutrition. They weren't starving, but they were very lean—like Sir Guy himself, Matt now realized; he hadn't just hardened from campaigning. There wasn't an ounce of fat on his bones. His cheeks were hollow with hunger as much as stress, and the circles under his eyes came from vitamin deficiency, not lack of steep. Though there might have been something of that, too—and, as Matt watched him, he thought the Black Knight's gaiety was a bit forced. Now and then, for just a moment, a grim desperation showed through.

Matt shuddered at the implications. What manner of deviltry was he going to see tonight?

Looking down at the courtyard below, he realized that the masses against the walls were trash dumps. The peasants who moved so silently below were thin as whipcord under their smocks—and filthy. Not that body odor was terribly unusual in medieval society, but they had taken it to new heights here.

Of course. Water from the river or no, they were rationing. Everyone had enough to drink, but they portioned out the baths.

Matt resolved to speak to Sir Guy about it. Lack of sanitation could kill them just as quickly as poor nutrition.

But there wasn't a murmur of protest or of discontent. Matt looked at people stretched almost to the breaking point, and marveled at the grim purpose that kept them moving. He wondered at the events that had brought them here, and if there were a soul in the castle who didn't have a harrowing tale to tell of cruelty and viciousness. Lean as it was, beleaguered as it was, this castle must have seemed a sanctuary to those who had suffered from Gordogrosso—and his imitators.

"This is a dirty war," he muttered.

"Aye." Robin nodded beside him, hard-faced—and Matt was startled; he hadn't realized he had spoken aloud.

"It is indeed," Sir Guy agreed, "and no quarter is given, or asked for."

Matt shrugged. "That was always the way of it, with the army of a sorcerer."

Sir Guy shook his head. "These lice of Ibile are far worse than those forced soldiers we fought in Merovence, Sir Matthew. There, the greater number of the soldiers were impressed into service and would take any chance to escape their own ranks. Here, though, even the lowliest soldier is thoroughly and completely dedicated to evil, in the anticipation of the power and preferment his lord may grant him. There's not a one of our besiegers but wishes to be here, not a one that would not delight to see us expire in torment."

Matt turned to look out at the enemy, surrounding them for as far to each side as he could see, and half a mile deep. The sun had set, and the dusk was hurrying on toward night. A strange, growling sound, half mutter and half chant, was rising from the churning mass before him.

Suddenly, a crimson ball shot up from the circling army, arcing toward the castle. A half-dozen others followed it, all along the walls.

"It begins," Sir Guy said grimly.

Surprisingly, Alisande did sleep, though her slumber was interrupted. First had come the attack of the fire snakes, but they were gone by the time she came out of her tent; Sauvignon, prompted by the apprentice wizard they had brought along, had simply told the men to throw snowballs. There followed the plague of rats, to be scared off by the young wizard's quick summoning of a hundred terriers. Finally, near dawn, Alisande was up, feeling moderately rested, and she sent Sauvignon back to bed just before she had to greet the flaming skeletons that came stalking up over the lip of the plateau. The snowballs worked again, of course, and the bones stayed scattered, but it did take her a little while to overcome her footmen's terror enough to get them all to pitch in.

And their yelling woke the sleepers again. That was the bad part.

So, all in all, it was a rather creaky army that finally greeted the sun that morning. Alisande paced through the camp, eyeing her soldiers like a worried mother, and murmured to Sauvignon, "Perhaps we should bid them sleep this day, then watch through the night."

"They would then be weary in the morning," the young nobleman pointed out, and a grizzled veteran looked up to agree. " 'Tis true, Majesty. Lead us out against them, that we may send them packing. 'Tis the only road to a sound night's sleep for us, now."

"You have the right of it, Sergeant." Alisande sighed and turned to give the orders to pack up.