King Kobold revived-Warlock-2.5 (30 page)

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

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

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

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

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

‘eavesdroppers’!”

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

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

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

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

“But just to be sure, we’ll have Toby check out his camp right before the inva-sion,” Rod explained.

“He’s learned enough to be able to dig beneath the camou-flage of surface thoughts, if there is any.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gwen looked up, but Rod stood frozen.

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

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

“I noticed,” Rod croaked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Just so you don’t mistake my doppelganger for me,” Rod amended. Gwen shook her head firmly. “That could not hap at any distance less than an hundred feet.”

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

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

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

The monk looked up, startled. Then a smile of delight spread over his face. “Well met, Lord Warlock! I had hoped to espy thee here!”

Rod shrugged. “Where else would I be? It’s the King’s flagship. But how do you come to be here, Brother Chillde?”

“I am chaplain,” the monk said simply. “And I wish to be near to the King and his councillors as may be, an I am able; for I strive to record what doth occur during this war as well as I may.”

“So your chronicle’s coming well? How far back have you managed to dig?”

“Why, I began four years agone, when the old King died, and have writ down all I’ve seen or heard that has occurred during, first, the reign of Catharine, then during the reign of both our goodly King and Queen.” He beamed up at them. “Yet, in this present crisis I have been fortunate to be in the thick of it, almost from the first. My journal shall be precise, so that folk yet unborn, and many hundreds of years hence, may know how nobly our folk of this present age did acquit themselves.”

“A noble goal.” Rod smiled, though without, perhaps, as much respect as the project deserved. “Be sure what you write is accurate, though, won’t you?”

“Never fear. I’ve asked several folk for their accounts of each event, and thus believe I’ve found somewhat of the truth. Yet, for the greater part, I’ve writ only what I’ve seen myself.”

Rod nodded with approval. “Can’t do better than primary source material. May your endeavor prosper, Brother Chillde.”

“I thank thee, lord.”

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And Rod and Gwen strolled on down the deck as the monk bent over his journal again. When they were safely out of ear-shot, Rod murmured to Gwen, “Of course, eyewitness accounts aren’t necessarily what really happened. Peo-ple’s memories are always colored by what they want to believe.”

“I can well credit it.” Gwen glanced back at the monk. “And he’s so young and filled with the ideals of youth! I doubt me not an Catharine and Tuan seem to him impossibly regal and imposing—and the beastmen immensely vile, and…”

“Mama!”

Gwen recoiled in surprise, then blossomed into a radiant smile as she realized she was suddenly holding an armful of baby. “Magnus, my bonny boy! Hast thou, then, come to wish thy parents well on this their venture?”

Her eyes darkened as the baby nodded, and Rod guessed she was thinking that Mama and Papa might not come home to Baby. She needed a distraction. “What’s he got there—a ball?”

The spheroid was dull and gray, about four inches in diameter—and its sur-face suddenly rippled. Rod stared.

Gwen saw his look of disgust and said quickly, “Be not concerned, my lord. ‘Tis naught but witch moss with which, I doubt me not, he hath been toying.”

“Oh.” Rod knew the substance well; it was a variety of fungus that had the peculiar property of responding to the thoughts of projective telepaths. Rod had a strong suspicion that it had contributed to the development of elves, were-wolves, and other supernatural creatures around the Gramarye landscape. “When did he begin to play with…”

He broke off, because the ball was changing in the child’s hand—and Magnus was staring at it in surprise. It stretched itself up, flattening and dwindling to-ward the bottom, where it divided in half lengthwise for half its height, and two pieces broke loose at the sides. The top formed itself into a smaller ball, and dents and lines began to define the form.

“What doth he make?” Gwen whispered.

“I’m afraid to guess.” But Rod knew, with a sickening certainty, what he was going to see. And he was right—for the lump finished its transformation and swung up a wicked-looking war ax, opening a gash of a mouth to reveal canines that would have done credit to a saber-toothed tiger. Its piggy eyes reddened with insane blood-lust, and it began to shamble up Magnus’s arm. The child shrieked and hurled it as far away from him as he could. It landed on the deck, caving in one side; but that side bulged out into its former form as it pulled itself to its feet and shambled off down the deck, looking for something to ravish.

Magnus plowed his head into Gwen’s bosom, wailing in terror. “There, love—‘tis gone,” she assured him, “or will be in a moment…” And she glared at the diminutive monster, eyes narrowing. It took one step, and its leg turned into mush.

“It’s a beastman,” Rod whispered, “a vicious parody of a Neanderthal.”

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Another step, and the model beastman turned into a ball again.

“But the kid didn’t see any of the battles!” Rod protested. “How could he…”

“My lord,” Gwen grated, “it will not hold its shape unless I force it. Another mind fights me for the forming of it.”

“Then, get rid of it—fast! You never know, it might find another one like it, and breed true!”

“Done,” Gwen snapped.

The witch moss turned into a ball so smooth that it gleamed, then shot off the deck and far, far away, heading for the horizon.

Gwen turned her attention back to Magnus. “There, there, child! ‘Twas no fault of thine; ‘twas some mean and heartless person who crafted thy ball thus, to afright a babe!” She looked up at Rod with murder in her eyes. “Who would ha’ done such a thing?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” Rod was feeling in a mayhem mood himself. He glanced quickly about the decks, even up into the rigging, trying to find any-one gazing at them—but there were only two sailors in sight, and neither was even looking in their direction.

But Brother Chillde still scribbled in his book.

Rod stared. No. It couldn’t be.

But…

He stepped over to Brother Chillde again, lightly, almost on tiptoe, and craned his neck to peer over the monk’s shoulder at the words he was writing.

“… Huge they were,” the manuscript read, “with arms that hung down to their knees, and fangs that sank below their chins. Their eyes were maddened bits of red, more suited to a swine than a man, in a head like unto a ball, but too small for so great a body. Their sole weapon was a huge and murderous ax, and with it they quested always, seeking for living things to slay.”

“Thou knowest not what thou dost ask,” Puck cried. “Ever was I made for battle, Rod Gallowglass!

Hast thou any comprehension of the opportunities for mischief that occur when men do war?”

“Very much,” Rod answered grimly. “Look, I know it’s a hardship to stay out of the fighting—but you’ve got to think of the good of the whole of Gramarye, not just of your own excitement.”

“Who says I must?” the elf demanded with a truculent scowl.

“I,” answered Brom O’Berin; and Puck took one look at his sovereign’s face and shrank back.

“Well, then, so I must,” he sighed. “But wherefore must it be I? Are there no other elves who can execute so simple a task?”

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“None,” Rod said with absolute certainty. “It only seems simple to you. I can think of a few other elves who might be able to bring it off—but you’re the only one I’m sure of.”

Puck visibly swelled with self-importance.

“You’re the only one,” Rod pressed on, “who has the imagination, and the gift of gab, to pull this off.”

“Thou wilt do it,” Brom commanded sternly, “else thou wilt answer to me, hobgoblin, when the battle’s ended.”

“Ah, then, I shall,” Puck sighed—but preened himself, too. “E’en so, War-lock—I ken not why the monk will need one to detail to him what doth occur when he hath two eyes to see with.”

“Yes, well, that’s the first thing you’ll have to arrange, isn’t it? Some way of making his eyes unusable for the duration of the battle. Nothing permanent,” Rod added hastily, seeing the gleam in Puck’s eye.

“Well-a-day,” the elf sighed, “so be it. We shall benight him only for an hour or two. But what purpose doth that serve, when I am but to tell to him what doth occur?”

“But you’re not,” Rod contradicted. “You’re supposed to tell him what isn’t happening.”

“What word is this?” Puck stared. “Do I hear aright? 1 am to say, ‘Nay, be of good cheer! It doth not rain, nor doth the moon shine! The soldiers do not shake the beastmen’s hands in friendship, nor do they lose a foot of land!’ What foolery is this?”