Warlock’s Last Ride

by Christopher Stasheff

  "Some of us are able-bodied yet," a graybeard growled, and the other grandfathers chorused agreement.

  "That you may be, but you're not of an age to join the queen's army," Rod explained. "Did your sons hide in the deep woods to be sure the soldiers wouldn't try to put them in livery?"

  The silence became distinctly uneasy. Villagers glanced at one another; none met Rod's gaze.

  "Worse than that?" Rod frowned. "Wherever they've gone, they've been chased by lies! Tell me!"

  "She told us how badly our knight was treating us, that Raven," one of the women said, "and railed at our menfolk that they couldn't be worth their salt if they let Sir Aethelred bully them about and live in his big house while we had only cottages."

  "Before that, none ever thought it bullying for Sir Aethelred to tell us what to plant in which field," an old man said sourly.

  "But when Raven said it again and again and again, some of them must have believed her," a white-haired woman said.

  "It was her telling them they had to prove their worth to their wives and sweethearts by marching on Sir Aethelred," another woman said, "and they wouldn't believe us when we denied it."

  "They began to talk of it among themselves," the older woman said, "and when they were sure we were well-settled in the woods here, they went off to brace Sir Aethelred and demand that he share our burdens and we share his wealth!"

  "Even though they knew Raven lied about everything else." Rod shook his head. "Thanks for letting me know, good people." He mounted again.

  "And thank you for bringing back our bits and pieces, squire," an old man said, "but where do you mean to go now?"

  'To finish what I began," Rod said. "I'm going to find your men and tell them Raven's gone and they can go home!"

  In spite of the chorus of protests, he rode off into the trees.

  DIRU STUMBLED; HIS mattock nearly fell off his shoulder. The boy behind him laughed. "Wake up, Diru! Are you still dreaming?"

  Diru shuddered at the reminder. He had slept very little the night before, for whenever he had, he had dreamed of the horrors the minstrel had described—a giant cat with tufted ears and very long, sharp teeth; a shapeless, quivering mound of white jelly that absorbed anything it touched; a giant beaver with teeth like cleavers and maddened burning eyes; and many others, all wheedling, all telling him that no one liked him, but they would be his friends if only they could come to visit. He might have believed them if the minstrel hadn't told the villagers in song what had happened to the ones who had invited the monsters in when last they had been importuning people for an invitation. Every time he had fallen asleep, those dreams had come, until he paced the floor to stay awake, starting at every creak of the old hut and shuddering at the thought of what prowled outside in the night.

  "That minstrel gave us a good time, at least," one young man said.

  "Yes," said an older, "once he was done trying to scare us with his tales of the Mist Monsters."

  Another father nodded sagely. "I've dreamed of such horrors myself, telling me that they're really good neighbors and cajoling me to invite them in."

  "Fat chance, after that minstrel's warning."

  "It's boring," a young woman complained, "always the same warnings over and over. 'Don't invite the monsters in, don't invite the monsters in!'"

  "And don't believe they're nice and friendly, even though they look so horrid," another young woman agreed.

  An older woman frowned. "It's good advice, younglings! If they do come back, we'll be their meat!"

  "Oh, everyone knows that, Auntie," the first girl said impatiently.

  "Yes." Diru shuddered again. "Nobody would be foolish enough to invite horrors like that, in their dreams or awake."

  "Oh, so you know everything, do you, Diru?" the first young woman snapped.

  "Aye, tell us something we don't know, Diru!" the second young man jibed.

  "Sure, Diru knows all about monsters." The first young man grinned. 'Takes one to know one, after all."

  Diru's face burned.

  "Oh look, he's gone all red again," the first young woman said with a giggle.

  Thankfully, the huts rose just ahead. "Good night," Diru mumbled, and went into his.

  His mother looked up from the pot she was stirring by the hearth. "How was the reaping today, dear?"

  "Good enough for everyone else," Diru snapped as he put down his rake.

  "Oh, dear," his mother sighed. "I do wish you could get along with the others your age."

  "I wish they'd try to get along with me! Maybe I'll be better if I can get some sleep." Dim bulled through the curtain that separated his pallet from the rest of the hut and threw himself down, hoping he wouldn't dream.

  He didn't, for he didn't sleep. When he closed his eyes, all he could see was the taunting faces of the other young men and women. All he could feel was anger and shame— and hatred for his tormentors. It was almost enough to make a fellow wish the monsters would come back and gobble them all up!

  THE NEXT DAY, Rod came to the top of a ridge, as the sun was nearing the horizon, and looked down to see a channel between the forest trees that marked a stream. Rivers made for easier travel in forest lands, so he wasn't terribly surprised to see men walking there, or at least the tops of their heads. What did surprise him was their number. This wasn't just the hundred men from one village—it was a thousand at least. Rod frowned. "How many villages did it take to send this many men?"

  "Between five and fifty, Rod."

  "Pretty broad range." Rod dismounted. "Well, if I'm going to talk to them, I'd better not look too affluent." He pulled the flat-folded tunic and leggins out of his saddlebag; he never travelled without a disguise ready. Some of the ideas from his training as a secret agent had stayed with him.

  With Fess shadowing him deeper in the trees, Rod melted in with the mass of men who moved down the forest trail. He asked no questions, only kept his ears open. The other men paid no attention; apparently they were all used to strangers joining them as they marched along. Few of them could have known one another before they had joined this mob.

  As they went, they talked. "I don't know—seems to me the lords ain't all that bad. Our squire wasn't, leastways."

  "If you think that," growled the man next to him, "why be you here?"

  "Seemed like all the other lords were rotten, when that peddler were talkin' 'bout them," the first said. "Once we was on the march with you lot, though, he went off to peddle his wares somewhere else, and it didn't seem so good an idea any more."

  "You're fed, ain't you?" asked another man. "And the wife ain't here to scold or the squire to buckle you into the traces and set you to plowing or hoeing."

  "Well, there's that," the first man admitted. " Tis a holiday, like…"

  "Then take the good while it lasts, and quit whinin'," the second said.

  Rod slowed, falling back to hear similar grumbling from other peasants. He wandered through the crowd, listening for word of the villagers he'd come to find, but hearing only misgivings and doubts. Whenever several men began to share those second thoughts, though, some other man always showed up to remind them of their grievances. Rod realized that there were a hundred agents or more working this crowd, keeping them motivated and on the road.

  Road to where?

  He glanced at the angle of the afternoon sunlight through the leaves and realized their direction—north and east. They were moving toward Runnymede—and rebellion.

  THE SUN WAS setting, and Geordie was striding out toward the forest with his bow in his hand when he heard a voice call his name. Turning, he saw old Will hurrying toward him as quickly as his bad leg would let him. As the man came up, Geordie said with a grin, "Good evening to you, Will."

  "God's e'en to you too, squire," Will wheezed. "And where might you be bound on so fair an evening?"

  Geordie's smile faded. 'To hunt, Will, as you know well."

  "There's others will be hunting you, my lord." Old Will stared him straight
in the eye.

  Geordie's mouth tightened. "I'm not a lord, Will!"

  "I'll use your true title when I tell you not to go into certain danger," the old man told him. "Poachers hang by the neck until dead, my lord. We'll manage somehow. The land and streams will yield us enough to get by."

  But Geordie knew there were very few fish in the rivers this year, because of the previous year's drought. "I'll not see my people starve, Will!" He turned and strode away toward the forest.

  Old Will looked after him, shaking his head and muttering. Then he turned and hobbled back to the village.

  Old Sal looked up and saw him coming. "He wouldn't listen, would he?"

  "Not a word," old Will said.

  "He always was headstrong." Old Sal shook her head.

  "Aye. You'll have to talk to his lady," Old Will advised.

  It was the first really serious fight Geordie had ever had with his wife, and did not a hand's-breadth of good.

  ROD DIDN'T FIND the men from Raven's village until night had fallen and the separate bands had settled down for supper and sleep. They were roasting a haunch of venison, and Rod wondered how much wildlife would be left in this wood after the mob had passed through.

  One of the men looked up as Rod came by. "Hope you've something for the pot, if you plan to share in it."

  "Happen I do be looking for a share." Rod swung his pack down, opened a flap, rummaged, and pulled out a dozen hardtack biscuits. "Bread to soak in the soup?"

  Another man eyed the contribution. " 'Tain't no soup."

  "I'll brew some, then." Rod pulled out his field kettle, dropped in all but one biscuit, and set it to catch the dripping from the roast. He broke the last biscuit, tossed one piece away, then dropped the other in with the rest. The villagers stared; one or two of them shuddered and tossed a morsel of his own into the night. They all knew one should always leave a token for the Little People, but had obviously been forgetting.

  "Let the biscuits catch some of the drippings," Rod said, "and I'll add enough water to soften the bread. Though if you'd sooner I go …"

  "How think you, Nicol?" the first man asked. "Send him packing?"

  "Nay, Ruben," Nicol said. "Bread'll be welcome, even hard biscuit." He turned to Rod. "What's your village, gaffer?"

  "Gaffer" was short for "grandfather;" Rod decided to take it as a title of honor. "Maxima be my town." Which was true enough, though it was technically also an asteroid.

  Nicol frowned. "Never heard of no Maxima."

  "It's small," Rod said, which was also very true. "What's your town?"

  "Hardly a town," Ruben said sourly. "Maybe fifty families in Rookery."

  Rod glanced at the fifty men gathered around a dozen campfires. "You've most of the fathers and brothers here, then."

  "All over eighteen and under sixty," Ruben acknowledged. "Seemed like a good idea at the time."

  "Not no more, though?"

  "More than ever, now," Nicol growled. "Mind you, we set out to demand of Sir Aethelred that he treat us like men instead of beasts—but we met up with the men from Loudin Village, on their way to talk to their knight, so we joined with them. Then we met the men from Tilbury, and from Schoon and Dobry, and the more we talked, the more we came to see our quarrel was with the baron, not none of his knights."

  Rod wondered which of them had been the VETO agent. "So you all set out to demand better treatment from the baron. How many of you?"

  Nicol shrugged. "A thousand at a guess. But the next day, our path joined with a road, and we found ourselves marching with another band the same size, and the more we talked, the more we came to see 'twasn't the baron we had argument with, but with his master, Earl Dommen—so we turned our steps toward the castle, and the farther we went, the more bands we met."

  Rod had a vision of five thousand men marching through the greenwood. "Dommen County's a ways behind us."

  Ruben eyed him suspiciously. "Haven't you a like tale to tell?"

  "Hasn't every man here?" Rod countered.

  "Aye," another man grumbled, "and the more we've talked, the more we've come to see 'tisn't the earl who's ground us down, nor the duke neither."

  "Aye; 'tis all of them," Nicol growled. "There oughtn't to be no dukes nor earls, no, nor knights nor squires neither."

  "Nay," said Ruben, "only free men living in their villages, and no castles to overawe them."

  Rod nodded. "But where's the root, hey? The dukes and earls are all branches of the same tree—but where's the root?"

  "You know full well," Nicol snapped. "'Tis in Runnymede. Begin by haling down the queen herself and her lap-dog king, and the tree's uprooted."

  "Then we can go about pruning the branches," Ruben said.

  But there would be men giving orders, Rod knew—the totalitarian agents who had stirred up this discontent in the first place, and if the peasants did succeed in overthrowing the lords, those agents would become the governing officials, each gaining more and more power, until, if the history of other totalitarian revolutions were any guide, the people would labor under masters even harsher, for they would guide their subjects' every step.

  He had a vision of twenty thousand unruly peasants marching on Runnymede and the Crown—and stripping the countryside bare of every shock of grain and cow and piglet on the way.

  "Who's this?"

  Rod looked up to see a face he knew well, and shock held him immobile for a minute.

  "Only a gaffer from another village, Mocker," said Nicol. "He brought biscuit." Then to Rod: "You get confused about where we're going or what we're about, you talk to the Mocker, and he'll set you straight."

  Rod was sure he would. The Mocker had been the chief VETO agent when Rod had first come to Gramarye—one of the enemies Rod had overthrown to keep the land and its telepaths from being conquered and trained to become weapons for a totalitarian government. The idea of a dictator being able to know what secrets people hid in their own minds gave Rod as bad a chill now as it had then—but the Mocker didn't look a day older than when Rod had seen him last. For a moment, the unfairness of it bit his soul— that he should have aged so, but the Mocker not!

  On the other hand, the Mocker had looked ancient when Rod had first known him.

  The Mocker stooped, peering into Rod's face and frowning. "I know you."

  "You've never looked on this face before," Rod told him.

  The Mocker's eyes widened. "Yes I have, though there were no wrinkles on it then, and the hair above it was black!" He spun toward the villagers. " 'Tis the Lord Warlock come among you! Seize him! Bear him down! Let your tearing of the lords begin here!"

  Seventeen

  THE VILLAGE MEN STARED AT ROD, THUNDER-struck; then they began to mutter fearfully to one another.

  "What are you waiting for?" the Mocker cried. "Seize him! Tie him up! Hang him high!"

  "He's a warlock," one of the villagers explained. "He'll freeze us with the Evil Eye, he'll turn us into toads!"

  "He's only a man, like any of you!" the Mocker shrilled. "They may call him a warlock, but he's nothing of the sort—only a treacherous backstabbing spy!" He spun, lashing a kick at Rod.

  Rod pushed himself up, but only enough so that the kick caught his shoulder instead of his head. Pain shot through his left arm, but he forced himself to his feet and blocked the next kick with his right, then countered with a feint to the head and a quick jab to the diaphragm. The Mocker fell back, clutching his belly but managing to cough out, "If he had magic, I'd be a toad, not a punching bag! He has no magic!"

  "You're a little behind the times," Rod informed him, and projected a blast of pure mental energy at the man. The Mocker shrieked, seizing his temples and falling.

  Rod let up as the tall black warhorse seemed to materialize out of the night. The villagers fell back with cries of superstitious fear. Rod mounted and turned Fess, looking into each one's eyes as he said, "Raven's gone from your village—I chased her away. She had magic of her own but couldn't stand against mi
ne. I found your wives and children and parents and told them they could go back. Home with you, for I promised I'd find you and send you! Home with you, before some of you fall in battle with the Queen's soldiers and the rest rot in prison!"

  "But… but the lords' tyranny …" the man who said it stared at the Mocker, limp and unconscious on the ground, and swallowed thickly.

  "The Queen keeps the lords from abusing you," Rod explained, "but the lords have their council where they keep her from becoming a tyrant. Home with you, lads—this may be the Mocker's fight, but it isn't yours."

  "What of all the rest of the men marching here?" Nicol asked with a dark frown.

  "They don't care about you," Rod answered, "not the Mocker nor any of his men—-they care only about breaking the Crown and taking the throne for themselves. They disguise it as the people's battle, but it's really a fight to see who will govern you. Stay out of it, lads. Go home." Then he turned Fess and rode off into the night.

  GEORDIE BROUGHT HOME one deer after another, keeping the peasants busy dressing and smoking the meat, which they did even though they were worried for his safety. After the third one, Geordie didn't even bother skinning and disguising what he carried—he brought the carcasses home over his shoulders and left them for the peasants to skin and dress out, which they did—and again, after the third deer, they gave up trying to talk him out of it. No one could turn him from his course, and the meat should not go to waste.

  But his wife worried. "You must stop this, Geordie! The keepers will catch you, and, squire or not, they'll arrest you—or bring the shire-reeve himself to do it!"

  "Don't fret yourself, sweet chuck—I know how to hide my trail." Geordie reached out to touch her cheek in reassurance.

  Rowena struck his hand away. "This is no jest, Geordie! I've not even born a babe yet, and here you'd leave me a widow! I've no wish to lose my husband!"

  "Darling, darling, don't fret!" Geordie held out his arms. "None will find me, none will catch me!"

  "The keepers can track as well as you can hide your trail, Geordie! You must give this over! We'll find other ways to feed our peasant folk!"