The Witch Doctor

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I changed my mind the next day. The bureaucrat witches and warlocks started coming out of the hedgerows, quaking with the terror of Hellfire and calling to Friar Ignatius to shrive them. Most of them were sick, too, so I suggested gently that we handle it methodically - he took them in for confession, then sent them on to me for healing. Frisson quickly built up a catalog of verses; all I had to do was describe the visible symptoms, and the shaken but joyful penitent would describe the invisible ones, and Frisson would flip through his booklet of verses, finding the Symptoms and handing me the appropriate poems. Some of them were very odd, but they all worked.

"It's amazing that you can keep coming up with so many verses that exactly fit the situation," I told him during a lull. He shrugged. "When the inspiration seizes me, Master Saul, I write what it will have me scribble; I do not think of its use. Natheless, I cannot help but think that this must be very poor poetry, if it comes so readily, and is so utilitarian."

"You've been listening to the critics too much," I grumbled. "Take a look at your impact instead."

And we started out on the road again, with me wondering who was the really important person in this party.

They came in groups of four and five, and by the second day, they were showing up every four hours or so. In spite of anything Gilbert or I might say, Friar Ignatius always insisted on stopping to hear confession. "Aught else," he told me, "would be to forswear my vows. I must not turn away a single sinner; 'tis a part of my vocation to reconcile them with God."

"My vocation is staying alive, and it's definitely a part of that to dethrone the queen," I retorted. "In the long run, that will save a great number more souls! The more often you stop, the longer it will take us to get to her capital, and the longer she'll have to gather her forces and fortify her castle - not to mention preparing an ambush with overwhelming power!"

Friar Ignatius shook his head serenely. "You still think in terms of this world, Master Saul, and fail to see that this battle will most truly be won in the domain of the spirit."

"That may be, Reverend, but a hail of spears and arrows in this world can very effectively prevent us from joining battle in the next."

"It shall not," he assured me, with amazing authority, "for the strength that underlies those spears and arrows is the power of evil. If we counter that fell force, the spears will never be thrown." I would have argued, but the man had so confounded much charisma that for the life of me, I couldn't think of a comeback. I thought one up ten minutes later, of course, but it didn't do much good then. I saved it for our next argument, but he had a comeback for my comeback, and hit me with one more argument that I couldn't think up an answer to just then. That was the way our exchanges went, all the way to the capital-I was always one answer behind him.

And it was driving me crazy, because our progress was slowing to ten miles a day.

"Is it my mistake," I asked Frisson, "or are we running into the whole harvest of the Gremlin's epidemic of witch diseases?"

"It may be," Frisson said slowly, "or it may be simply that those who are ill and in terror of death and Hellfire have begun to hear of you and have come to seek you out. Those who fell ill would never have thought to attempt to survive, if they had not heard of your work; they would have died in despair, forgetting that they could repent. " I stared. "Come on! Word can't have spread that fast!"

"You underestimate the power of rumor," he returned. "Yet there is another explanation."

"Probably much more believable."

Frisson shrugged. "The witches were bound to Suettay's service by their demonic master, and I would hazard the guess that some of the power that maintained them came from her. Now, though, the land has begun to rise against her, and she has withdrawn the power that upheld them, gathering all her strength unto herself, for her final battle with you."

"Just what I wanted to hear," I muttered, "that she'll be worse than ever, next time I meet her."

"It is a compliment, in its way," Frisson assured me.

"Then I think I could use a few insults. Well, let's move on." We did, but they kept coming. I hadn't really registered the fact that the whole bureaucracy here had been corrupted-or recruited from corrupt individuals, all having sold their souls to Satan. And of course, it took a lot of people to run a completely oppressive totalitarian regime. They came in all shapes and sizes, some of them young, some even young and beautiful, but most middle-aged or just plain aged. Frisson explained it to me.

"Most despair late in life," he told me. "Till the middle of their lives, they cling to the notion that God will give them worldly success of one sort or another - whether they deserve it or not - even if it be nothing more than the kind regard of other folk. But when they do look back on their lives and realize that nothing has come of their attempts to live virtuously, that they have not gained fame or love, many then do turn 'gainst God in bitterness and swear themselves to the Devil's service, if he will give them some advantage over their fellows while they live."

"And they stop aging."

"Their bodies, aye. Few think to have their lost youth back, and Satan will not give it to most who ask, for he has their souls already; they yearn so strongly for power or wealth that they will sell themselves to him even without the inducement of youth or beauty. But some are tempted by no other lure than that - though once corrupted, they turn to greed for power and wealth quite easily, even to the illusion of strength that comes from deliberate cruelty."

To me, of course, all this was just part of the massive hallucination in which I found myself. But even in my terms, I was beginning to understand that "selling your soul" could be more than a metaphor, or even a literary image; it represented dedicating yourself totally to yourself, to the gratification of your own drives and urges, to getting what you wanted no matter what it took, no matter who you had to hurt or betray or grind down-and no matter who you had to flatter, or whose boots you had to lick. No matter, indeed-you planned on getting back at them when you'd climbed over their dead bodies to get their power. It made me shudder: I knew too many people like that, even in my own world.

Not that any of our successful treatment cases were any great argument for youth culture. There were a few women who must have looked really beautiful before they were hit by the smallpox that brought them to us-or the cancer, or the mild stroke-and there were a few men, too, who still looked so good, even in the grip of tuberculosis or syphilis, that they made me think of Dorian Gray. But after they repented and recanted, they looked more like his picture for a few minutes. Then they aged rapidly, very rapidly. Fortunately, the pretty ones usually made it out of sight before they collapsed. The others just turned to dust right before our eyes. It made me shaky, I can tell you.

Most of them, though, just confessed and came over for healing, which we usually managed before they'd aged too badly. Then they went their way, jubilant if old and ugly. Beauty didn't matter to them much by then-they knew they didn't have long to live and were only interested in making amends.

Gilbert and I started getting very tired of fighting crabs, though fortunately the giant crustaceans didn't get any smarter. Gruesome didn't, either, but he developed quite a taste for crunching shells. He almost developed a taste for shellfish, period, but I managed to stop him in time and get him to realize that whatever the crabs had been doing inside the sick people, they were apt to do inside Gruesome. He started getting really angry at them then, with very salutary results.

Actually, I had to admire the repentant witches for their courage. To haul themselves for a week's stumbling journey, or more, took a lot of determination in itself, even if most of them did use the tatters of their authority to press peasants into giving them rides; some even managed to intimidate the gentry into express trips with horse-drawn vehicles. Some had to come on foot, though, and they did-but no matter how they traveled, they made the journey with their private demons hounding them every inch of the way. It must have taken enormous grit - though the fear of Hellfire may have helped there. The devils never showed themselves to anybody but the remorseful witches, though, after those first few encounters with my guardian angel. They knew that, as soon as one of the Heavenly Host stepped into the picture, they were bound to lose.

So the devils' only real chance of keeping the frightened witches to their contract was to intimidate them into staying away from priests and healers-or to hit them with so much despair that they would figure they couldn't possibly be forgiven, or had no way out of the contract, that they were going to Hell and there was nothing, but nothing, they could do about it. I suppose that worked on quite a few of them, but of course we never saw any. We heard about it, though, from the ones who lasted.

The witches weren't the only ones who showed up. The first non-outlaw volunteer showed up our second morning. All he carried was a flail and a pack of journey rations, but he looked grim and told us he had come to fight the queen. Turned out the local warlock had ruined his family with taxes, debauched his sisters, and driven himself and his parents into living in a shelter that was basically a large basket, working from sunup to sundown to pay the taxes he claimed they still owed - and they didn't dare fight back.

"With you, however, I dare," he told me. "I may die, but I will at least bring down a soldier of evil before I do."

" 'Twas not the fear of death that held your arm, then?" Gilbert demanded.

"Nay, but the thought that my death would accomplish nothing, what have I to live for? But I would die for a purpose!"

"Come with us," Gilbert said.

There were three more waiting at the outskirts of the next village.

By evening, two more groups had joined us.

After that, they came in constantly. At every traffic circle, every milestone, there was another group of three or four, waiting to join us with scythes, flails, and stony expressions. Gilbert cross-examined them while Frisson muttered spells that tested them for truth. We found a few ringers, sent in by Suettay's ministers to infiltrate us, of course. They didn't last long.

"Don't kill him!" I shouted as a dozen peasants fell on the spy.

"You can't fight evil with evil - you'll just be selling out to it!" But the spy pulled out a knife as long as your arm and lunged at the nearest peasant, shouting a spell. The knife took the peasant in the chest, and the spell sent the rest of them writhing on the ground in agony.

Gilbert stepped in and chopped the man's head off. After that, I didn't argue.

The next day, a peasant came in, doffed his cap, and showed us his tonsure. This time it was Friar Ignatius who did the cross examination, including handing the man a crucifix and listening to him say the Apostles' Creed. He passed the test, then helped hear confessions. The next day, another showed up, and by the end of the week, we had six monks. They saw the chance to unseat Suettay and came to add the strength of their prayers to our magic and Gilbert's army. Friar Ignatius assured me that they would multiply our effects tenfold. Given the crazy set of natural laws at work - or should I say, supernatural - I didn't doubt him.

Then a peasant showed up, wild-eyed and white-lipped. "They come, my masters, they come!"

"What do you speak of, man?" Gilbert grasped the man by both shoulders, holding him still. "Who comes?"

"The Army of Evil!" he cried. "Footmen and knights! There are too many to count, and they have two sorcerers to strengthen them!

My ragtag army broke into a hullabaloo - but I didn't see anybody who looked like running. They were all grim, most eager - even a few who were trembling with fear but determined.

There were only a few hundred of them, though.

"How many is 'too many to count' " I asked Gilbert.

"For a peasant?" He shrugged. "It could be a few hundred, or many thousand." He turned back to the man. "Were they on the road"'

"Aye! I heard them coming afar off and hid in the bracken to watch!

They came on and on and on, four abreast! I waited till they passed, counted as high as I could, yet still they came on!" Gilbert nodded. "How long was it till they passed?"

"How long?" The peasant looked startled; he hadn't really thought about it.

"As long as it takes you to go from your hovel to your field' Or as long as a Mass?"

"Between." The peasant's brow furrowed. "Not so long as the Mass, but longer than the journey to my field."

"A thousand at least." Gilbert released him. "You have done well. How have you managed to come to us before them?"

"They go by the road. I know the land and have come across the fields. They march; I ran."

Gilbert nodded. "They will be here within the hour, surely, probably far sooner. You have done well, fellow. Go whet your scythe among the others; we will need it to be sharp ere long."

"I will!" Battle lust gleamed in the youth's eye - enough to make me shudder. He hurried away to join the others.

I stepped into a quick huddle with Frisson, Gilbert, and Friar Ignatius. "We knew this was coming, I suppose."

"Aye," Frisson said, looking as scared as a cat who has used up eight lives. "We set out to march 'gainst the queen, did we not?

"And we knew we would face her army, soon or late," Gilbert said.

"In truth, 'tis amazing they have not come upon us before; I have expected them with each nightfall."

"Nightfall?" I looked around. "Yeah, it's almost sunset, isn't it?"

"Assuredly," Friar Ignatius said. "The Army of Evil is at its strongest in the hours of darkness."

"So we have to hit them hard and fast and roll them up before night." I looked around at our peasant encampment, frowning.

"You have an idea," Frisson stated.

"Well," I said, "if they're being so polite as to come straight down the road, they must be expecting an ambush, mustn't they?"

"They would not fear it," Gilbert said grimly, "not with their numbers."

I nodded. "All the more reason to give them what they're expecting. What's the best kind of ambush you could prepare under the circumstances, Gilbert? "

The squire frowned, thinking for a few minutes, then turned away to the peasants. "Ho! How many among you can strike a bird on the wing with a sling?"

"I," a dozen men said at once, and fifty more were only half a beat behind them. By that time, all the rest caught up, and the word "I" rolled through the whole camp.

Gilbert nodded, satisfied. "So I had thought; small birds are the only game that is not forbidden to a peasant." He raised his voice.

"Seek out sling-stones, and be sure your pouches are full! Then get you up into the trees on either side of the road, and hide you well!"

The excited murmur rose to a surf roar as the peasants got busy hunting up pebbles.

"Good idea." I nodded. "Put them where the troopers can't come to grips with them."

"Aye," Gilbert said darkly, "but they are sure to have archers. It would take but a volley or two to fell all my men."

"Oh, I think we can provide them some measure of protection. Just have a squad ready to block the road in front of them. That's where it's apt to get messy."

Frisson stared. "What manner of protection can you craft thus?"

"An invisible shield," I said. "Let them batter themselves against it and wear themselves out."

"A good thought!" Gilbert looked surprised. "Whence came that notion, Master Saul,"'

"Oh, just a kind of fable I heard once." I didn't think I should try explaining about television and toothpaste commercials.

"But not for long." Frisson looked disappointed. "Surely their sorcerer will dissolve it."

"Yes," I said, "but we could build a wall within a wall within a wall.

Now Frisson looked startled. "That could hold - yet not long enough for the whole of the battle."

"Yes, but I think it'll keep their sorcerer busy long enough for us to get the drop on them."

Frisson frowned. " 'Get the drop'?"

"Take them by surprise," I said. "Sneak in an extra punch. Gain an advantage. "

"All!" Frisson nodded. "And how shall you do that"'

"Too complicated to explain. I'll have to show you - after we've finished making the shield." I turned away. "So let's get busy - we need to stake out a very long perimeter."

It turned out we had just the boys for the job; somebody ran and borrowed a plow, and Gruesome pulled it - while another fellow guided, following Gilbert. He paced off a line five hundred feet long, which didn't seem like enough for an army that took fifteen minutes to walk past, but he assured me they'd all come cramming in at the first sign of action. When they had plowed up one side of the road and down the other, then across to make an H, I took a verse Frisson had started some time before, but that had stayed in my mind rather oddly - probably because the rhythm of its meter was the kind of thing you can't get out of your mind for an hour, and when you do, it keeps coming back. I had scrounged up six feet of string while they'd been plowing, and now I sat down by the camp fire and wove a cat's cradle while I chanted:

I didn't like working magic myself, mind you, hallucination or not - but these were concepts Frisson just didn't have. He was helping with the weaving, though, so I didn't have to admit it was all my doing.

"I see naught." Gilbert was peering anxiously into the darkness.

"Of a certainty," Frisson said, grinning. "He said it would be invisible, did he not? But look yonder!" He pointed up at the stars.

"See you not how they twinkle?"

"Stars do ever twinkle! They forever have!"

"Aye, but growing larger and smaller? Surely there is something between them, like to the haze that rises from a hot rock in midsummet!

Well, he had the concept, anyway. Call it what you will, a force field is a force field.

"Now comes the tricky part." I put my hands together and dropped the cat's cradle. "Gilbert, send men out to charge the wall and see if it's still there."

Suddenly, the squire looked scared. He turned to the peasants.

"Ho, Willem! Kurt! Baden! Take you each a band of men, and set out for the furrow!"

They did, not asking.

I turned to Frisson. "When did he learn their names?"

"As soon as they came in," Frisson answered. "I do not think he knows them all by name, but he has picked out the leaders, and certainly knows each of them."

I decided the Father-General had sent me a live one. Not bad, for an eighteen-year-old kid.

The peasants went out - and came back real fast, looking spooked. They conferred with Gilbert in low voices. He nodded, satisfied, and came back to me. "The wall holds. Kurt was able to leave it, but not to come back."

"Good," I said. "Send him a hundred men and tell him to send them up into the trees to either side of the road. They'll have to go around behind, of course - the invisible wall is rooted all along the furrow, and if they try to climb in from the road, they'll just bounce back. Get another fifty men in the trees on this side of the crosshar, ready to pick off anybody who gets through. Not that I think anybody will, you understand - but just in case. Keep another fifty ready to charge out between us and them, and the rest hidden in the forest ready to pounce."

"And what of the sorcerer, Master Saul?" Frisson asked.

"You saw that sculpture I was just making with the string?"

"Aye, though I would not term it art." Frisson frowned.

"Make up your mind whether you're an artist or a critic, will you? Okay, we'll call it a model. Have you ever played the two-person version? "

"Aye, when I was a child."

"Well then, let's get childish." I picked up the string and started weaving. "Here's how it goes"

The army came marching down the road, singing a deep baritone chant that somehow reeked of menace. We sat in the road ahead of them, our hearts in our mouths, Frisson taking the cat's cradle from me with trembling fingers. Gilbert stood behind us, ostensibly watching the road, actually ready to signal his stingers. He was nervous, too, but he had said he was more worried about some hothead striking too early than about his own safety.

The vanguard saw us, raised a shout, and came running. Gilbert waited until they were only fifty feet away from the furrow lowed across the road, the pounding of their boots filling the night, before he signaled.

A hail of stones shot out of the trees to each side of the road. Then fifty peasants pounded out into the road between us and the oncoming soldiers, and started slinging.

Howls of anger and pain erupted from the army, but the soldiers in front bellowed in rage and charged down on our bodyguard. Their halberds swung down ...

... and bounced off a surface they couldn't see.

They bounced hard; most of the weapons struck their owners, or the men behind. They bellowed again, but this time, there was as much fear as anger in the sound.

Their mates, back along the road, loosed a volley of arrows at the trees along each shoulder. The arrows darted up ...

... and bounced.

They fell back, but they fell hard, with almost as much velocity as they'd had when they hit; it was a resilient invisible wall. So the points scratched and pierced soldiers, not peasants. The soldiers howled in surprise and alarm - and another hail of sling-stones fell on them, striking on foreheads and temples, denting helmets and breaking collarbones. Soldiers fell with shouts of pain. More of them fell in total silence, out cold.

The sorcerer reared up in their middle, shouting a chant and making passes.

I took the cat's cradle from Frisson. He stuck his thumb up in the middle, and I chanted,

As I finished the last line, I pulled the strings tight, imprisoning Frisson's thumb.

The sorcerer's chant ended in a frantic yell, as something invisible pinned his arms to his sides. He struggled to free himself, tripped over a fallen soldier, and rolled on the ground, squalling and bellowing, inarticulate.

"Why can he not chant?" Frisson asked, huge-eyed.

"Because I paralyzed his tongue," I answered. "Hear how his yelling keeps making vowels sounds? He's trying to chant a spell, but he just can't form the consonants."

I kept the pressure on Frisson's thumb, only letting up a little when it started turning blue. I waited, grinding my teeth, till the yelling and rattle and clatter had diminished and turned into groaning.

"They are all down," Gilbert told me. "Shall I send men among them to kill those who still live?"

Still live! I hadn't stopped to think that those sling-stones had probably killed a fair number, not just knocked them out. "No," I said, then cleared my throat to stop my voice shaking. "No, it's more important that we get to the capital. Besides, most of them are just peasant boys who were pressed into the army against their wills. They will probably be more than glad to run on home if they have the chance."

"Like enough," Gilbert agreed, "but to have that chance, the sorcerer must die."

The words hit my stomach hard enough to make it sink to my boots, but I knew he was right. Leave the man alive, and he'd just rally the remains of his army to strike at our backs. "Couldn't we give him a chance to repent?"

"Aye, but even so, we must kill him then. If we do not, he will likely renew his bargain with Satan as soon as we are out of sight."

I knew he was right, but I still hated to give the go-ahead. "If we kill in cold blood, we've started selling our own souls to Satan."

"That is true of slaying the peasant soldiers," Gilbert said inexorably, "but it is not true of their master. The knight and the sorcerer must die, or they may find a way to murder us all."

"Yeah, I know you're right." I sighed. "Take Friar Ignatius and a dozen men to guard him. And pass the word when you've got the sorcerer hog-tied, so I can let up on Frisson's thumb."

Gilbert stared at the imprisoned digit, then said, "You are truly amazing, Master Saul, and Master Frisson, too."

"Only because we don't do things the way we're supposed to," I told him. "It throws everybody off stride - and makes 'em madder 'n Hell when it works. Go send somebody to Purgatory, Gilbert." He did.

That wasn't the last army we faced, of course, but it was the easiest.

The next army got crafty and surrounded us on all four sides before it marched in chopping. But we had the best intelligence in the country - a couple of dozen local peasants I who knew the terrain as well as they knew their dinner bowls. They came in unbidden, with exact details of troop placement and strength - so when the army swooped in on our camp, all they hit were a couple of hundred simulacra that turned back into sticks of wood at the first sword-stroke.

Then our tree-top peasants cut loose with their stings, and the archers barely got off one volley before they were all felled by flying pebbles. Of course, their sorcerers had dispelled my invisible shield before they even charged, so we did lose a dozen men - but they lost two thousand.

The third army tried to draw us into a trap by having a dozen pretty maidens doing a fertility dance involving taking off their clothes in the moonlight, but Friar Ignatius and his fellow monks went through the camp quickly, telling the peasants in no uncertain terms that in this case, at least, feminine pulchritude really was a wile of the Devil. Our men kept ranks and marched on by, to the great indignation of the young ladies, who yelled catcalls and insults after them - until Frisson and I finally managed a spell that showed them as they really were, without the demonic cosmetic spells.

When our peasant boys got a sight of the naked, withered old hags and young but very ugly girls they really were, they all shuddered, looked away, and praised Friar Ignatius at the tops of their voices. The army charged out in pursuit, of course, but they weren't really trying - they knew they didn't have a chance. They were right, too - Frisson and I changed the ground in front of them to bog, and they all floundered down in the mire. Their sorcerers firmed the ground up fast, of course, but they forgot to pull their men out first, and most of them were trapped hip-deep in hardpan. A few unlucky ones were completely underground, but I think their mates dug them out. They didn't have anything better to do, after all - our army was long gone. Besides, we were two thousand strong by that time, with more coming in every night - and older peasants constantly bringing in baskets of provisions. I was having nightmares, remembering the peasants of the First Crusade and all the burglaries they had committed on the way to Constantinople, trying to keep themselves fed. I talked to Gilbert about it, and he understood immediately. He set up a system of command ranks, making each officer or NCO responsible for the conduct of his men. Then he appointed a few MPs, to patrol the perimeter of the vast mob and check to see if anyone was getting out of line. A few did; he expelled them from the troop and left them to the tender mercies of the peasants they'd robbed.

Because a mob it was, even with Gilbert's impromptu chain of command. There wasn't time to drill them, but he did manage to get across the idea of marching in order, teaching his officers a few marching songs to help. Frisson grew very thoughtful, was seized with inspiration, and dashed off a few poems that he then proceeded to sing to Gilbert. Gilbert loved them, gave them to the officers, and we marched along singing. They could hear us a mile away, but we weren't exactly any big secret, anyway.

After the second day of orderly marching, Gilbert was beginning to look worried. I took him aside and asked why.

"They have not attacked again," he told me. "Surely the Army of Evil does not intend to let us pass unchallenged!"

"Haven't you heard what your men are singing?" I asked. He frowned. "Aye, but what has that . . ." There he broke off, turning to stare out at his army as they marched past, singing:

"Why, they dispel attack!" Gilbert cried.

I nodded. "It would take an awful lot of black magic to squelch that much enthusiastic spell casting. On top of which, they're giving themselves constant energy input, and keeping themselves in order."

"Amazing, Wizard!"

"Yes, isn't he?" I nodded at Frisson. "But don't try to convince him of it; he thinks he's just writing what comes to him." Still, I worried. Two thousand enthusiastic peasants were good protection on the march and could be very useful for general brawling, but they weren't going to stand a chance against disciplined, professional troops.

Which was exactly what we saw, when we came up to the top of the ridge that overlooked the capital. There it lay, a half-mile-wide town with a river flowing through it and a huge castle on the hill in its center. It had a high, thick wall all around it, and between the wall and us, a solid band of troops a hundred yards thick.

We stared, appalled, and I whispered, "How are we going to get through this?