Warlock’s Last Ride

by Christopher Stasheff

  Alea could only stare at him, wondering at what he had said, but even more at what he had not.

  "IT'S GOOD TO have you back, sir," the Home Agent for Savoy and Bourbon said with her most winning smile.

  "And a sad thing that I have to be," the Mocker snapped. "A fine mess you amateurs have made of the planet while I've been gone."

  The Home Agent lost her smile for a moment and bit back a retort—that the Mocker hadn't done so well himself, when it had been his job to organize a rebellion against the Crown. Oh, he'd organized it well enough, but when they were almost ready for battle, the Lord Warlock had led a commando raid of three, tied up the Mocker, and let that half-dunce Tuan Loguire steal the Mocker's whole army and turn it against the anarchists—not a bad idea in itself, but considering they'd been trying to overthrow the queen at the time, not the best either. The Mocker also seemed to forget that he had been removed from his command in disgrace, not promoted to a desk job in the coordinating office.

  But she remembered her priorities—ingratiating with senior officers always came first—and forced the smile back into place, making it as dreamy as she could. "There have been a few setbacks," she admitted.

  "Well, let's see about setting them forward," the Mocker said as they went in the door.

  They came into a large panelled room occupied by a long table and decorated with pictures of the great dictators of history. When the Home Agent sat, all the chairs were filled except the one at the head of the table. The Mocker sat and let himself savor the feeling of triumph for a moment, of vindication. What mattered a failure he couldn't have prevented? But now that he knew what he was up against, he would clear it away in days! He would have his revenge!

  Then he thrust down the emotion and turned to assessing the situation. He surveyed the faces around him—some expectant, some clearly hiding worry, some completely bland, more skillfully hiding their emotions.

  He nodded and said, "Understand—for you, it's been thirty years since my last foray against the Gallowglass clan, but for me, it's been scarcely a month."

  "We do understand that," said a portly, middle-aged man. "I was a young recruit in your peasant uprising."

  The Mocker frowned. "Name?"

  "Dalian," the man said.

  The Mocker's face went neutral to hide the shock. "Yes. I remember you."

  Dalian's face turned bitter. "I've toiled in the ranks for the decades you've been gone."

  "And think you should have been appointed Chief, hey? But the job needs perspective, Agent, not just experience— and I toiled in the VETO ranks for thirty years before I was given this post. Would have overthrown the monarchy neatly, too, if it hadn't been for the interference of that backstabber Gallowglass!"

  "It was the coalition he put together that was too much for your army," said a motherly woman in her forties, "mostly that witch Gwendylon."

  "Yes, well, he's lost her now, hasn't he?" the Mocker said with bitter satisfaction. "And lost all the influence she brought with her."

  "He's made some connections of his own," said a man who seemed young until you looked closely.

  "Connections his wife made for him," the motherly woman returned, "who will stand by him out of loyalty to her memory."

  "Let's find out just how far that loyalty goes, shall we?" the Mocker said. "Start by sending out agents disguised as forest outlaws, to circulate in the villages and remind the people how badly they're being exploited."

  "We've tried that," a pretty older woman said. "Whenever we manage to build a movement and gather some steam, Gallowglass sends one of his brats to hypnotize the people into thinking they're well-treated."

  "Gallowglass, or his wife?" the Mocker asked with a sour smile. "Send out the agents and tell them to be ready to fade into the greenwood quickly if Gallowglass does send in his goons—but I don't think he will."

  Dalian frowned. "Why not?"

  "I don't think he'll have the heart," the Mocker said, "not with his wife gone. Who did you lot think was really running this land, anyway?"

  WHEN HE WOKE the next morning, Rod chewed a heel of bread while he cooked the eggs he had found the evening before, and with them the strip of jerky that had been soaking all night. Breakfast done, he saddled Fess and rode down the woodland path. They had not gone far before Fess lifted his head, nostrils spread wide.

  Rod knew the robot-horse didn't have a sense of smell as such—just an ability to analyze air molecules and detect anything that shouldn't be there. "What's wrong?"

  "The smell of blood," Fess said.

  Nine

  ROD DREW HIS SWORD. "WHAT KIND OF BLOOD?"

  "It is difficult to say when the molecules are so thinly spread," Fess answered, "but I am fairly certain that it is not human."

  "Won't hurt to make sure. Follow your nose."

  "I can scarcely do anything else, Rod, since it is so much farther in front than the rest of me."

  "A point," Rod agreed. "Follow your scents."

  "Technically, Rod, a robot has no sense."

  "Nor do I, half the time," Rod sighed. "At the moment, though, I'll rely on your tracking ability."

  They turned off the beaten track and broke through a screen of brash into a small clearing, where a boar lay on its side, blood spreading from a rip in its abdomen.

  "It would seem we have found the loser in a fight over a female," Fess said.

  But Rod dismounted and knelt beside the boar, inspecting the wound. Then he rose, shaking his head as he remounted.

  "It was no tusk that made that wound, Fess. It was a blade with a serrated edge."

  "Only a boar hunter, then?"

  "If so, he was a very clumsy one—hunters meet a boar's charge head-on, or step aside and stab for the ribs and the heart. This poor beast must have staggered for hundreds of yards before it finally collapsed."

  "Perhaps, then, the hunter is tracking it."

  "Could be—the kill is fresh enough, only beginning to draw flies." Rod started to sheathe his sword, then thought better of it. "If that hunter is coming this way, I'd better be ready to meet him."

  "People who hunt boar, Rod, generally do not hunt people."

  "With some notable exceptions. England's William the Second was killed when he was out hunting, after all."

  "With an arrow, not a boar-spear—and as I recall the incident, he was hunting deer at the time."

  "Yeah, but his nobles were hunting him."

  "It could have been a Saxon peasant who loosed that arrow, Rod."

  "Or a nobleman who wanted it to look like a peasant's work."

  "The peasants did have much to resent, so soon after the conquest," Fess mused.

  "Yeah, but so did the noblemen, even if they were part of the invading force. William Rufus wasn't the wisest or most moderate of rulers."

  So, happily bickering, they went back to the trail and on down it. After a while, Rod decided they must have passed the hunter, if he'd been tracking his prey—and the thought that he hadn't bothered gave Rod a chill; he didn't like men who killed solely for sport.

  To banish the gloom, he took out his harp and plucked out a melody in a minor key as he rode, remembering other such journeys in his bachelor days, when he had been looking for something worth doing, looking for a woman he could fall in love with who would fall in love with him—and knowing he never would, that he was far too unattractive.

  Incredibly, he actually had found such a woman. Even more incredibly, she had actually fallen in love with him. He marvelled how little had changed, for here he was riding down a woodland path alone, searching for her again.

  A cawing broke into his reverie. He frowned, looking up into a tree at its source—and was astonished when the cawing shaped itself into words.

  Three ravens sat high in a tree, where the branches thinned enough to let them survey the forest around them. "RAWK!" croaked the first. "I see a tasty morsel!"

  "And I," cawed the second. "But we must wait for him to die."

 
"How, though, shall we decoy his hound?" a third asked. "Even his horse stands guard over him!"

  Rod frowned. Someone lay dying? Not if he had anything to say about it. "Off to the right, Fess—that's the direction they're looking."

  "As you say, Rod." The robot horse stepped off the path and picked his way between saplings and rotting stumps into a small clearing.

  "CRAWK!" The third raven cried in alarm. "There comes a human doe!"

  "As heavy with child as she may go," the second said in disappointment.

  "Patience, brothers," said the first. "Perhaps the hound will drive her away."

  But Rod came into the clearing in time to see the hound run to the woman, saw her stroke its head with words of praise even as she made her way toward the young man who lay, blood oozing from the shoulder joint of his armor, eyes closed and face pallid.

  The young woman sank heavily to her knees with a cry of distress. She was indeed in the final weeks of pregnancy. "Oh, my Reginald!" she cried. "Live, my love, live! Do not leave me now!"

  The young man's eyelids fluttered; he looked up at her a moment before his eyes closed as though the weight of the lids were too heavy a load for him to bear. The young woman gave a long, keening cry.

  "Mayhap she will die with him," the first raven called hopefully.

  Rod rode toward them, and the second raven saw and gave a loud, long caw of anger. "Brothers! A vital one comes within!"

  "CLOSE THE DOOR," Durer said.

  Aethel stepped through and shut the portal. The three other agents exchanged a glance, wondering why the rest of the cadre was shut out.

  'Too many people make a discussion too cumbersome," Durer told them. "Everyone wants to say something, and nobody wants to listen. The five of us should be able to come up with a useful idea."

  "An idea for what, Chief?" Aethel sat down with the others.

  "A rebellion, of course! A coup to thrust that little snip off the throne and put our man on!"

  Again the others exchanged a glance; the "little snip" was in her fifties.

  "Not a chance of succeeding without one of the twelve great lords to lead it," Stan said, "and they're all too willful to let us guide them."

  "Except the king's brother," Durer countered.

  The others sat very still. Anselm Loguire had been the figurehead for Durer's last rebellion against Queen Catharine. The agents didn't even have to look at one another; they knew they were all thinking the same thing: How long will it take him to stop living in the past?

  "Anselm Loguire isn't a lord any more," Orin said. "He's attainted—stripped of his title and estates."

  "I know, and that witch Catharine gave them to her younger son," Durer snapped, "but the other lords all know that Anselm is really the rightful Duke Loguire and heir to all its estates."

  "Maybe," said Aethel, "but they all know what happened to him, and that it was only because King Tuan counselled mercy that Anselm is still alive."

  "Alive—and bitter," Durer pointed out. "He's probably long over his gratitude at being left alive and in charge of a small estate. He'll be angry with his brother and the queen—angry and wanting revenge."

  "And wealth." Stan knew it didn't pay to argue with the boss for long.

  "For his son," Aethel added.

  Durer nodded, pleased to see them falling into line. "But we need something to push him, something to turn bitterness into action, something so strong that he won't care whether he lives or dies as long as he has a chance of bringing down the monarchy."

  Everyone was quiet, each glancing at the others. Then Aethel hazarded, "A threat to his son?"

  "LET US HOPE it is the knight's enemy," the first raven said.

  "Aye, and that he will slay the fellow, then drive off his hound and take his horse," said the second.

  "No such luck," Rod called back to them and hoped the young woman couldn't understand their words. He dismounted even as Fess stopped beside the fallen knight.

  The young woman looked up in terror, then leaned across her husband to protect him, crying, "If you have come back to finish what you have begun, know you shall have to slay me, too!"

  The hound crouched, baring its teeth and growling, and the horse stamped its hooves and neighed a warning.

  "I did not begin this," Rod assured the young woman, "and I have some knowledge of healing. May I come near?"

  Wild hope filled her eyes, and she struggled to straighten up. "If you can staunch the flow of his blood, aye!" She stroked the back of the hound's head, crooning, "Aye, you are a brave guardian, but, I hope, not needed now. Let the good man approach, Voyaunt, let him come nigh."

  The hound sank to the ground; its growl receded deep into its throat, but it watched Rod with suspicious eyes.

  Rod took his first-aid kit from his saddlebag and went to kneel on the other side of the knight. He unbuckled the shoulder-piece, asking, "What is his name, young woman, and your own?"

  "He … he is Reginald de Versey, goodman, and I am his wife, Elise."

  "I am Sir Rodney." Rod flashed her a smile. "No, I don't look like a knight, not in these travelling clothes, but I am one nonetheless." He pulled out his dagger.

  The hound's growl rose as it did, rising ready to pounce.

  "Easy, fellow," Rod crooned. "I draw the blade to save your master, not to slay him. Dame Elise, reassure him, if you will—I must cut away the cloth beneath to find the wound."

  "Gently, Voyaunt, gently." Elise stroked the hound's neck but didn't sound too sure herself.

  Fess stirred, and his words filled Rod's head through the implanted earphone. If the hound springs, Rod, I shall block his way before he can reach you.

  "Nice to be able to concentrate on my work without worry," Rod muttered. "With luck, the wound won't have begun to, with thanks, Fess-ter."

  "Pray not!" Elise said with a shudder.

  Only my duty, Rod, the horse assured him.

  Rod laid aside the padding and the blood-soaked linen shirt beneath. The rip was long and ugly. Rod frowned. "It was no sword that made this wound, Dame Elise, unless it had a serrated edge. Who did this knight come to confront?"

  "He … he said he merely wished to patrol the park, Sir Rodney, for he thought there might have been poachers about."

  "And he went against them without his game wardens?" Rod shook his head as he pulled out a cloth and a small bottle that looked as though it contained brandy but really held iodine. He poured some on the cloth and pressed it into the wound as he said, "A knight wouldn't wear armor to brace a few poachers."

  "So I thought, but he said he must not become too accustomed to riding without the weight of steel plate." Elise's voice quavered. The hound growled at her anxiety, but she stroked it to calmness.

  "If he meant to exercise, he would have gone to the tilt-yard." Rod placed over the wound a cloth that had been impregnated with antiseptic and clotting agent, then began to wind a bandage around it. "We'll take him home, and when I'm sure the flow has slackened, I'll stitch him up."

  "Stitch?" Elise asked, wide-eyed.

  Rod nodded. "Just as you would a torn garment." He realized that the young woman had been watching him carefully not just out of fear that he might harm her husband, but also to study how he cured the wound. He began to unbuckle the rest of the armor. "However, it won't help him to be carried back with this weight on him."

  "Ahhh! He shells the sweetmeat for us!" cawed a voice high in a tree.

  Rod cawed back, projecting thoughts with the sound. "Yes, but then I'm stealing him from you, greedy ones. Go seek a dead polecat for dinner!"

  "Faugh! How unmannerly of you, to insult us so!"

  "Oh, all right," Rod said, relenting. "I passed a dead boar half a mile back. Go stuff yourselves with pork." Even as he said it, he wondered if the same blade that had killed the boar had also wounded this knight.

  "Ah! Many thanks for this kind information, human!" The ravens raised their wings.

  "Wait!" Rod called. "A favor for a f
avor, information for information! Do you know the road to Tir Nan Og?"

  "Tir Nan Og?" The third raven turned a blank stare to his mates.

  "I have heard of it," the second said. " 'Tis the Land of Youth, the place the Wingless Ones think they go when they die."

  "Fools! They come only to us." The first clacked his beak in contempt.

  "Aren't ravens supposed to know everything that moves in Middle Earth?" Rod called.

  "Belike, for there are ravens in every county," the third replied, "but how are we to know what a raven a thousand miles distant has seen?"

  "He speaks of fable," the first said, and turned to Rod. " 'Tis not ravens you seek, bare-skin, but crows."

  "Aye, two crows!" the second agreed. "Their names are Hugi and Munin, and they sit on the shoulders of the All-Father Odin."

  "No, those aren't quite the feathered wizards I had in mind," Rod said with a smile. "Well, let me know if you do learn of that road from one of your friends."

  "We shall, but we see them rarely," the first raven told him. "Where shall we find you, soft one?"

  "Prithee let him be," said the second, "for with nonsense like his, he shall come to us soon enough."

  "Or we to him," the third agreed. "Go your way, human, and be assured we shall find you when the time has come."

  Rod managed to keep the smile in place. "Better make sure no one beats you to that boar, hadn't you?"

  "Indeed!" All three ravens leaped into the air, beating their wings to rise above the treetops, then coasting down the wind toward the dead boar.

  Shaking his head in disbelief, Rod turned back to the knight and his wife to find her staring at him in amazement. "I could almost have thought, sir, that you spoke to those birds!"

  "I'm good at bird-calls," Rod told her, "and it worked— I got them to go away."

  The lady shuddered. "I am right glad you did, for they are truly birds of ill omen!"

  "Just creatures trying to make a living, like the rest of us." Rod inspected the bandage around the knight's shoulder. "His wound has clotted enough to make it safe to move him. Let's finish taking his armor off."