The Oathbound Wizard-Wiz Rhyme-2 (36 page)

Men were groaning, limbs cut off; other men were helping them, slipping in the sheen of blood that slicked the stone in the scimitar's wake. Matt saw a few dead and cursed himself for his lack of vigilance--then realized that he was seeing it all through a red film. He pulled out a kerchief and wiped his forehead, and the sheen disappeared. He became aware of a dull ache, knew that it would hurt horribly tomorrow--but just kept wiping it for now, as he paced the battlements, trying to see what else to do.

A huge monster was roaring and thrashing about on the ground below, a giant stake driven through it, holding it to the ground.

Matt turned away before his stomach flipped. He didn't know how Tuck had managed that one, and he didn't want to.

Then he realized he was hearing the flapping of leathery wings. Not unusual, considering the enemy--but outside the rules, if it was a genuine devil.

No, it wasn't. It was a horde of huge bats, stooping to claw at the soldiers' chests, needle teeth reaching for their necks. Below there was shouting, and ladders thudded against stone--but the defenders were screaming, flailing at the flying rats, trying to drive them off. They clung, though, and their teeth probed.

One slammed into Matt's chest. Fire erupted across his pectorals as claws dug in, and a foul snout reached for his jugular.

Matt jammed an arm in the way and felt the teeth sink in, but his throat was safe. He tried to ignore the pain, the shifting claws as the monster tried to work its way around his arm, and shouted,

"Eye to eye, and head to head,

(Woe betide thee, bat!)

This shall end when one is dead

(Go and hide thee, bat!)

Darts of wood, match each to each!

Fly like arrows, hearts to reach!

Impale the undead flying leech!

(Never rise thee, bat!)"

Skewers suddenly filled the air, stabbing through the bats' chests and into their hearts. Jaws gaped wide in screams the men couldn't hear, and the flying vermin fell backward, losing their holds and crumpling in death. Matt kicked his attacker out of the way, mopping at two more wounds, but scanning the sky frantically. Will Scarlet and his two score were shooting down along the ladders, knocking over invading soldiers almost as fast as they could clamber onto the rungs, and the pikemen were dealing with the few who came near the tops. Tuck was chanting again, but Matt didn't even want to know what it was about.

Sir Guy reeled up beside him, leaning back against the wall and panting, "We must find some way to take the offensive."

"Name it!" Puck appeared on his shoulder. "Only bid me offend them, and I shall have them thinking their tales of woe and tails indeed!"

"A most excellent notion." Sir Guy grinned. "And whiles you are about it, see that those tails are pulled, and pinched, and stepped on at every turn."

"Turn?" Puck cried "Why, let us have them turn and twine about their owners'

legs!"

"Well thought! See to it!"

The elf disappeared, but the spark flared in his place. "Have you no new task for me?" the humming voice demanded.

Matt was fed up with the enemy--he was running very low on the milk of human compassion and he'd only been fighting for half a night! "Freeze their armor." The Demon hummed in astonishment. "Freeze...? But they will scream with the chill and tear off their plate! What gain then?"

"Plenty, if you freeze it so fast it shrinks!"

"That will choke off their circulation! Their limbs will swell! Their breastplates will crush their ribs! Their helmets--"

"Have you seen what they've been trying to do here? Just make it fast, and it'll be relatively merciful."

"They shall scarce know what hit them," the spark promised, and disappeared. Sir Guy nodded. "It is merited."

A sudden shocked howling broke out below, and all around the castle. Puck appeared again. " 'Tis done; like Rover, they chase their latter ends."

"In more ways than one," Matt muttered.

"What say?"

"What matter?" Sir Guy countered. "Can you befuddle their sorcerers, Robin?" A slow grin spread across the elf's face. "Make them think one another are Matthew and the friar? Or that their commander's tent is the castle? Aye."

"Those," Sir Guy agreed, "but I had more in mind having their thoughts so mixed that, when they wish to summon a demon, they speak of a cabbage!"

"I know just the place," Puck crowed, "within their brains! Nay, they'll speak of chard when they wish a flame!" He was gone.

"You sure that won't get us in worse trouble than we're in?" Matt said nervously.

Carrots began to rain on the battlements.

"What sorcery is this?" Tuck called, amazed.

"Evil gone wrong," Sir Guy called back. "I fear the Puck cannot so far transform it as to make evil impulses yield good--yet he has tried valiantly."

"Masterstoke," Matt muttered. "Should have thought of it." Geysers erupted all along the castle wall, heaving huge foaming lances of water against the stone. Where it struck, the char left by past fireballs disappeared.

"What now?" Tuck cried.

"Soap and water, I think," Matt called back. "I'll bet the enemy was trying for acid."

A sound of crunches, with screams quickly cut off, approached from the north, coming nearer and nearer. It peaked right opposite them, then stopped. The dancing spark appeared again. "All who wore armor are dead--or have disrobed and now are clad only in gambesons. What next would you, Wizard?"

"A quantum black hole!" Matt looked up slowly, a grin spreading over his face.

"Are you daft?" the spark keened. "That was a notion guessed at, but proven false! There are none such!"

"You mean you can't make one?"

The spark was still for a second; then Max said, " 'Twill not be easy, for

'tis truly matter organized quite highly--yet 'tis the product of entropy, and yields chaos within its event horizon. Aye, I can craft it."

"Then do--and drag it around the battlefield."

" 'Twill throw them into turmoil!" Max sang. "Ah, I have missed you, Wizard!" And he blinked out.

"What wizardry is this?" Tuck called out.

"Only a little misplaced cosmology," Matt called back. He stepped over to the crenels to watch the show.

For a minute or two, nothing happened. Then a woeful shout went up as a spark of light danced through the army, pulling soldiers together into its wake to slam into the ones coming from the other side. They stumbled, they fell, they were dragged over the ground, but nothing could stop them. The soldiers nearest the wake were stretched and crushed unmercifully, as though by unseen hands. They grabbed at tent pegs and hitching posts, but the pegs and posts were wrenched out of the ground and came tumbling along with them--as did the tripods from the camp fires, and the kettles, and any loose armor or weapons, all jumbled together with a huge clash and clatter--but above it all rose the shouting and moaning of dread, that went on and on as other voices took it up. The line of devastation, a hundred feet wide, began to curve as it reached the outer edge of the besiegers' army, turning back to cut another swath. A sorcerer rose up to bar its way, wand swirling, and Matt hauled out his own wand, beginning to chant--but before he could finish, the sorcerer's head snapped back, as though he'd been flung away. At the same moment, his feet surged forward. Then, suddenly, his body split straight down the middle from top to toe. Matt had a momentary sight of it; then tumbling men and material blocked the sight from him.

He was very glad.

A huge cabbage appeared in front of the spark. It, too, was sliced neatly through.

"What was that?" Sir Guy asked, wide-eyed.

"An enemy sorcerer trying to put some kind of demon in Max's way," Matt answered. "True to Puck's word, he said 'cabbage' when he meant 'devil.'

Artificial encoding error."

A huge asparagus towered up in Max's path. It fell a moment later, like a felled redwood.

"If naught else," Friar Tuck said, "we'll eat vegetable broth enough when this is done."

Two giant knights suddenly appeared, twenty feet tall, barring the path. A second later, they crashed together and were buried under an avalanche of tumbling men.

"There is a strong sorcerer near," Friar Tuck noted. "He did not completely miss his mark."

"Then we'd better give him a little more to worry about." Matt weighed the wand in his hand, shrugged, and whipped it overhand to point eastward.

"When the wind is in the east,

'Tis neither good for man nor beast."

He flourished the wand overhand and snapped it down toward the north.

"When the wind is in the north,

The skilful fisher goes not forth."

Then he swung the wand to each of the other two points of the compass as he recited:

"When the wind is in the south,

It blows the bait in the fish's mouth.

When the wind is in the west,

Then 'tis at the very best."

Then, finally, he swung the wand around in a great circle, chanting,

"When all winds blow in unison,

Our foes do flee our benison!

"Bless them, Tuck!" he shouted.

A look of delight broke over the friar's face. "Why, certes! What could weaken a foe of evil, so much as a blessing?" He turned to face the camp, sketching the Sign of the Cross in the air, and began to chant in Latin, his face softening, turning wistful, almost fond. Matt realized that, no matter how much evil the enemy had done, there was still room in this huge friar's heart to forgive, to understand, for they were God's handiwork, and he believed to the core of his soul that they were redeemable.

Sir Guy frowned. "What use were these invocations?" But Friar Tuck caught his shoulder, eyes alight, grinning. "Hark! Do you not hear?"

Sir Guy bent his head, listening carefully.

Faintly at first, then louder and louder, a whistling came toward them, building into a how!. Sleeves and robes began to stir, then to whip in the wind.

"Grab something solid!" Matt yelled, and the word was relayed all along the battlements. Knights and men-at-arms grabbed at crenels, arrow loops, doorways--and just in time, before the storm hit.

It was a hurricane. It was a whirlwind. It was a tornado, and the castle was in the center. The wind screamed around the walls, tearing at the stone and howling in frustration. It careened off looking for less-guarded targets--and found the enemy's camp. There, it roared in glee, plucking up tents and horses and men and juggling them with a fine disregard for class or dignity. But only outside.

Along the ramparts, the wind whipped and tugged at clothes and men--but only in passing, only as an afterthought--and within the courtyard, there wasn't even a breeze, though men and women crouched in hiding, fearful of the tempest. Matt let it run, fifteen minutes, an hour, while he and Friar Tuck took turns, one watching for attempts at retaliation while the other tried to explain things to Sir Guy. But there was no reaction--neither from the sorcerers, who were too busy trying to cope with both the black hole and the wind, nor from Sir Guy, who could only understand the effects of the magic and was beginning to be bored with the causes.

Then, finally, as the sky lightened with false dawn, Matt called out,

"A rushing noise he had not heard of !ate,

A rushing sound of wind, and stream, and flame,

In short, a roar of things extremely great,

Which would have made aught save a saint exclaim-And when the tumult dwindled to a calm, I left him practicing the Hundredth Psalm."

As suddenly as they had come, the four winds sped away. The moaning faded off into the distance, like an express train leaving. Trees on the horizon, just barely visible in the predawn light, whipped about crazily for a minute or two, then were still.

They listened. The only sound from outside the walls was a low and constant moaning. They stepped up to the crenels and the arrow slits to look out--and saw a scene of utter devastation, broken tents and overturned carts, dead and wounded in winnows showing Max's trail--and the remnants of the Army of Evil, just pulling themselves together as they set out toward the east in a ragged double column.

The shouts of victory began along Matt's wall and spread all around the battlements, then down into the courtyard. Men and women laughed and shouted for joy, hugging one another and dancing--and, palely seen in the dawn light, a ghost appeared atop the gate house, now brighter, now dimmer. From what they could tell when he was visible, he was dancing a jig.

"Wizard," said the Demon, suddenly appearing before him, "shall we attempt some other device to confound the enemy?"

"Uh, no," Matt said. "I think that'll be enough for the moment."

Guerrillas in the Mist

Sir Guy kept sentries posted, and a complement of men-at-arms within the castle, in case the rout had really been a ruse. But he threw open the castle gates and lowered the drawbridge, and the peasants streamed out to bring in all the provisions the king's army had left behind--salted meat, hardtack, grain, and even some fresh meat and fruits that the officers and sorcerers had kept for themselves. Squadrons of soldiers fanned out to both sides of the looting party, keeping pace with them to guard against any sudden reappearance by the besiegers--but the foraging went smoothly.

Not that Matt was up to participating. His head hurt, his chest hurt, and his arm hurt. More accurately, it felt as if slow fire streaked his scalp and his arm, while he was having a double heart attack. He gritted his teeth against the pain. Unfortunately, this made it very hard to chant a healing spell. Friar Tuck saw and, in spite of his own wounds, tottered over to lay a reassuring hand on Matt's shoulder--gently, of course. "Be of good heart, Lord Wizard," he gasped. "I'll have us hale and sound directly." He sat down beside Matt, muttering in Latin.

Matt's head stopped hurting.

He looked up at the rotund priest, amazed. Of course, it could be prayer--and in this universe, the power of prayer could be greater than antibiotics were in his home world, maybe much greater. But somehow, Matt didn't think that was what the friar was doing. Knowingly or not, Tuck was working magic--and Matt suspected it was knowingly. Unfortunately, he didn't know enough Latin to be sure.