Why hadn't he thought to ward Hob?
The thought stuck with him. The easiest answer was a purely personal one. He had never really planned to send the hobs into this battle at all, sure that they would inevitably be slaughtered like helpless baby animals. He had been wrong. But admitting that to himself didn't let him off the hook, nor did the fact that he could never have asked Carolinus, let alone gotten from him enough wards, to protect all the hobs. But his hob, who had created this hob army, could and should have been protected, if only for the possibility that Jim might have needed him, somehow, out here on the battlefield…
It began to dawn on Jim that he had covered a good deal of ground out here by this time, and suddenly a new, ugly thought gripped him. He should by this time have seen the small form he searched for. Could he have passed by Hob, lying dead or badly wounded, and simply not recognized him? All hobs looked much like sculptured duplicates of each other.
Or did they?
He stopped to look at a dead hob, who had taken a spear through his throat that was still there, though there was no sign of the goblin who had killed him. A terrible, choking death, but the hob's face was not contorted, but serene. Facial muscles relaxed, Jim told himself, but, no, there was something more there than that. A look almost of satisfaction, of something successfully done—it was not the face of his hob… he reminded himself, that was what he had stopped to look for. He leaned his head down, close to the dead face.
It was definitely not Hob's face. Suddenly he realized he would have known that at a glance. But what made it not Hob's?
He studied it.
It was broader in the chin than Hob's, and perhaps the face itself was a bit longer than Hob's. He remembered now that Tiverton hob had given the impression of being slightly more burly all over than Hob, and his face had matched that appearance, being more square. It came to Jim that over the time they had spent together, he had unconsciously memorized Hob's features, and he would no more have mistaken Hob for some other hob than he would have mistaken Angle's face for that of some other woman.
He went back to his searching. But now, for the first time, he thought the battle seemed to be winding down. The combatants were not so thickly pressed together, and he realized that he could no longer make out the shrilling cry of the goblins. The ululations of the hobs were drowning it out.
Even as he recognized this, he saw a goblin before him doing a strange, weird thing. He was sinking into the earth as if it had no more supporting power than water. As Jim watched, the goblin reached out to seize a nearby goblin corpse, a goblin already dead, and pulled it down out of sight into the earth with him. By the time Jim got to where the two of them had been, they were gone.
Gingerly, with his toe, he tested the bare soil where they had been. It was perfectly solid—ordinary, bare, foot-packed dirt, like all the rest of the cleared area, where before today some rough tufts of grass had been plentiful.
He stretched up to his full human height and looked all around him. The dust and smoke seemed to have cleared to the point where he could see the castle gates and front part of the curtain wall, looming indistinctly like the lower cliffs of some mountainside.
—And the hobs were now streaming back toward the castle, riding wisps of smoke. Those unhurt were carrying some dead hobs, or others only wounded, some with goblin spears or parts of spears sticking in their bodies. They were moving, their ululation more like a song than ever, and proceeding—not towards the great gates that now waited, open, but sailing in smoke over the walls. A few other dead hobs, and the dead of the slain goblins, still were visible, scattered on the field under the thinning smoke, but the last of the living goblins had disappeared into the earth. Some words of Hob came back to him: "—they even eat each other."
In moments, there were none left to be seen alive above on the field, hob or goblin, and the dead goblins left behind were not strewn evenly on the ground, but here and there in little piles or mounds of dead, as if they had gone down after putting themselves back-to-back for a final stand. Their dead faces still stared fiercely up at the now-darkening sky, for the red sun was finally out of sight below the trees beyond.
The smoke had all but cleared, and the dust was settling fast. Jim could sweep the whole battlefield area with a single glance now. Suddenly, it seemed a very small place for so many dead to lie.
The dead hobs still left among them were few. Sweeping his eyes over all, Jim felt suddenly sure that none of the hob dead he could see was his hob. But something very like a superstition would not not let him believe that until he found Hob and was made sure of what had happened to him, beyond all doubt.
He began to investigate the small piles of dead goblins. There was the body of an occasional hob among them, but he had almost exhausted the piles left to be examined when he heard, off to his left, something very like a cross between the sound of a mewling kitten and a string of purely human swear words.
He left the pile he had been examining and started at a run to the one from which the sound came. He reached it in seconds.
At first glance, there was nothing to be seen but dead goblins. Still, the sound came in small bursts from underneath them. He pulled off the goblin bodies, and there was Hob, his eyes closed, with no less than three broken-off spears piercing his body and covered with blood.
Gently, very gently, Jim picked him up in his arms. Hob opened his eyes and looked up into Jim's face.
"They're supposed to be in a ring around me," he said crossly, in a voice hardly above a whisper, "not in a pile like this! Where's my sword?"
Jim found it on the ground, where Hob had been lying. It was also covered with blood. Still holding the light little body, he picked up the small sword and pushed it softly into the scabbard still hanging from the belt at Hob's waist.
"Solar!" he told himself harshly, and spoke with his mind—Carolinus, if you're watching me—
But Carolinus had anticipated the rest of the message, and Jim was at once back in the Solar, with Carolinus still looking at him with no expression on his face at all, while Angie was running towards him, arms reaching out to him and his featherweight burden.
"Jim! she said. "Are you all right? Give Hob to me!"
"No," said Jim. "The spears are still in him! I don't want to jar him, passing him about. Where can we lay him down?"
"On the bed," said Angie.
"Blood—" said Jim.
"Cold water takes it out! Put him down there!"
Jim lowered Hob to the bed.
"You could give me a hand!" snarled Jim at Carolinus over his shoulder. "These spears—"
"Look," said Carolinus calmly. Jim looked back at Hob and saw that both spears and wounds had vanished.
"I don't know how much blood he's lost. I think—I hope—that's mainly goblin blood all over him," said Jim. "Have you got any way of telling how much he's lost? Knowing that'd give me time to find out what else needs to be done—keep his heart going—or whatever—"
He broke off, suddenly having trouble getting air into his own lungs to speak with. He felt the helpless, almost panicky, feeling he had felt the first time he had experienced the out-of-control magick he had earned at the Loathly Tower. It had been only a few months after that fight, and the magickal energy he had unknowingly earned there had started changing him into dragon shape, whether he wanted that to happen or not.
Abruptly, without warning, he was whirled down and away into unconsciousness.
Chapter Forty-One
Jim blinked his eyes open—almost immediately, it seemed to him.
But he had been undressed and put under the covers of their bed in the Solar. Looking further, he saw a wintry morning light flooding in through his familiar windowpanes.
"M'lady! M'lady!" a familiar, excited, high-pitched voice was calling out, only inches away from his ear, at the edge of the bed. He turned his head to see what he had already guessed. It was Hob, all right.
"Hob," he croaked, with dry vocal chords,
staring at the pointed little face, "you're all right?"
"Oh yes, m'lord. How is m'lord?"
"I'm all right, of course!" In fact, Jim did feel all right. Just very rested and becoming more awake by the minute. "What am I doing in bed here? I've got to get up!"
"No, you don't!" Angie was suddenly beside the bed. "You stay right where you are."
"Why should I stay right where I am? It's a fine day. I couldn't feel better."
"You stay where you are, because you've had another relapse—or lapse, or whatever it is—from overdoing the magick. I warned you. Everybody's been warning you, to take it easy, and instead you go right into the middle of a battle, and for all I know, hacked right and left—"
"Never a hack! I don't think I even drew my sword… well, maybe I did, but just to scare off the goblins."
"Well, the point is, you managed to get yourself all worked up, or this wouldn't have happened."
"What did I do, then, sleep all last night through?"
"You slept three days!"
"Three—" Jim stared at her "—days?"
"That's right. You've lain there like a… well, you've just lain there, not moving. I was thinking we'd have to turn you over every four hours so you wouldn't get bed sores!"
"Bed sores? Don't be ridiculous! In fact, this whole business—what're you so worried about anyway? Three days—"
"Now calm down."
"I am calmed down. I'm cool as a cucumber—"
Carolinus suddenly loomed up beside Angie, looking very stern and tall.
"Jim!" said Carolinus. "You have to start taking this matter seriously, that's all there is to it. Every time you push yourself into collapse, as you've just done once more, you're weakened, and likely to do it again, that much sooner, the next time you let yourself get exited. Stay calm, as Angie says. Rest when necessary, and you'll get over it. It's your magickal energy kicking back at you. You've been told that. You have to train it out of that habit, so that it finally forgets how to do it. It'll take time."
"But—" Jim was beginning.
"No buts! Magick accomplished is NOT reversible. You know that—it's in the copy of the Encyclopedic Necromantic I had you swallow! You somehow stole raw magick from the continuum to get everybody out of Tiverton. Now it's done—and you're stuck with paying off the cost of it! It'll take patience and time."
"How much time?"
"Who knows?" snapped Carolinus. "A year—maybe four? Though the more often you can use your magick without pushing yourself into this sort of collapse, the more you'll strengthen. But do exactly the opposite, and you'll weaken—it's that simple."
"How'm I supposed to know far I can use my magick—"
"I don't know! Never had it myself, though I've seen others with it. Everyone's different. The only thing you can do is err on the side of caution, and try not to get sensitive about things."
"I'm never sensitive!" said Jim.
"He's one of the most sensitive people alive!" said Angie to Carolinus. "People don't know it, but he is."
"People including himself, apparently."
"I am not, repeat, not sensitive—any more than any other man."
"Now there you're wrong," said Carolinus. "Angie's right. In any case, sensitivity is necessary to the use of magick, and in my experience you're definitely sensitive. You won't be able to change that. You'll just have to live with the capacity, and try to keep it under control."
"In this world?" said Jim, before he could stop himself.
Carolinus seemed to swell and stand even taller.
"No doubt it's a far, far better world where you come from!" he said. "No doubt everyone there is as sensitive as you are, and you're used to being handled with soft silk gloves. Well, this isn't your world, and no doubt this one's not a patch on what you're used to. But it's the world we live and die in, and we like it as it is! I'm sorry it can't be changed to suit—"
"I didn't mean that at all!" cried Jim.
"—your own particular wishes and feelings. It's a different world, a hard world in many ways, and if you want to live here, you've got to take its hard parts like everyone else and adjust to them, not expecting it and everyone in it to adjust to you!"
"That isn't what I meant, Carolinus—Mage!" Jim almost shouted.
"Carolinus, now you're getting him worked up," said Angie.
Carolinus lowered his voice. "I suppose so."
Jim lowered his. "I know," he said earnestly, "that it's up to me to do the adjusting—I've known from the start. I think your world is one hell of a fine world. It's just that people, Naturals and animals all think differently here. I'm trying to fit in. I'll keep trying. And I'll do my best to keep my—" he winced internally at the word "—sensitivity under control, if that's what it's got to be."
"Believe me, it is." Carolinus turned away and paced up and down the Solar a couple of times. When he came back to Jim, he was almost smiling.
"Well," he said, "I think maybe you ought to get up, now that you clearly understand. No point in keeping him in bed, Angie. He'll never recover lying there and stewing. He's got to get up and go out around other people to test his limits with them."
"Good!" said Jim, throwing off his covers and standing up. He had been in Carolinus's world long enough to pick up some of the general indifference about casual nakedness—and to understand its balancing concern with being dressed exactly right for certain necessary occasions. He looked down at Hob, cross-legged on the floor by his bed, then at Carolinus. "Hob's really all right, then?"
"And there you go, first crack out of the box!" said Angie.
"Oh, I think concern like that's not dangerous, Angie," said Carolinus. "It's normal—up to a certain point. Watch Brian, Jim. He takes everything in stride, while saving his strength for the moment it's needed. Yes, Jim. Hob lost some blood, as you noted, but no serious amount. These hobs recover quickly—don't know how they do it without rest and food, though, and Hob doesn't know either."
"It just happens, Mage," said Hob in an apologetic voice.
"All right, then," said Angie. "Jim needs food—after three days without—and some clothes. And I'll make you some tea while you're dressing, Jim." She lifted her voice so it would carry through the door. "Servant here!"
"Yes, m'lady?" said the servant, nipping immediately into the Solar.
"What do you want, Jim?"
"A meat pie!" said Jim, suddenly ravenous. "A whole meat pie, but one without all those extra crazy spices—" he glanced at Carolinus and might have blushed if he had been capable of it—"though if they don't have a plain one handy in the Serving Room, a seasoned one will do."
"Don't worry," said Angie. "Plyseth knows your tastes. See to it," she added to the servant, who nipped out again, in her hurry not quite closing the door behind her. They could hear her feet pattering away around the curve of the corridor to the stairs leading below.
"So, Jim," said Carolinus, not moving from where he was as Jim went to the wardrobe to get his clothes and begin dressing. "That's that, and you needn't worry about the Accounting Office. After the victory and your saving the King, there'll be enough left over from reimbursing the Collegiate members so you'll have a fair supply of magick left in your account."
"Good. Do you think they might be back?"
"The King and his entourage? Highly unlikely, though he praises young Edward and you for winning."
"It was the hobs who won," Jim said.
"He—the King—knows it like everybody else. But the garlands go to Edward—and you, more to Edward, naturally."
"Naturally," said Jim. A small, sour note crept into his voice. But that was only momentary. "What I wanted to ask, though, is will the goblins be back?"
"That I doubt very much, at least in your lifetime—and possibly mine as well. Like most primitives—and primitives they are, in spite of their magic, though why there should be any reason primitive Naturals, or any other kind of primitive people, should have any less access to magic than the rest of
us, even if that access does stop at the animal level. But that's because of the innocence of animals—I mentioned that to you. No, I don't expect them back, any more than I expect to find one of them qualifying for membership in the Collegiate."
"Would they take in a goblin?" called Angie from the fireplace.
"Certainly!" said Carolinus in a surprised tone, half turning to her. "Why not?"
"Well," said Angie, "as you say, they're Naturals, for one thing, and for another they hardly sound as if they could subscribe to the Collegiate ideas of using magick only for defense. I could probably think of a lot more reasons, but those two should be enough to start with."
"What sort of other reasons?" asked Jim.
"They'd have to become civilized, and kindly, of course, and show other developments," said Carolinus. "I only meant to say that their simply being Naturals wouldn't bar them from membership, since they clearly, with their poison spears, are already working deliberately with magic, not just invoking it by instinct."
"So you really think it might happen?"
"Possibly, under the conditions I just mentioned. Not in the immediate future, of course." Casting a thoughtful eye on Hob, still seated cross-legged by the bed and watching them, he went on, "—but that's hardly a reason for considering such things at this stage of history. And now I must go."
He did.
Well," said Jim, a small time later, finishing up an unusual amount of only mildly overseasoned meat pie, hurried for once to the Solar while it was still hot, not merely lukewarm, "that hit the spot."
He wiped his lips with a snowy napkin, and took a good-sized swallow of mingled wine and their special boiled-and-cooled water to wash it down, and sat there, feeling a flash of gratitude toward the castle's unfailing inside well.
"Ready to go back to bed?" said Angie.
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