The Witch Watch

by Shamus Young

  “It’s surprising we haven’t seen more fires,” Gilbert remarked.

  “I think His Deceased Lordship was serious about wanting to spare the city. He could have burned half of it by now,” Alice replied.

  When they arrived, they found a great sea of indecipherable chaos. There were cannons, soldiers, heaps of burning wreckage, and men running in all directions. The battle took place in the open fields directly east of the palace, although it frequently spilled over into the surrounding neighborhoods.

  Northeast of the fighting they found a tall building that had been hastily abandoned. They slipped inside and made their way up onto the broad roof to get a better view of the proceedings. They found a safe vantage point among the blackened chimneys and observed in silence.

  From above, the battle made much more sense. They could see a great harvest of dead strewn about the field. To the west were rows of Her Majesty’s forces, arrayed to deny access to the palace. These wore uniforms of red and blue, depending on rank and purpose. To the east were Mordaunt and his forces. The size of his retinue of undead soldiers seemed unchanged since they last saw it. To these were added a significant number of living forces. His living soldiers were dressed in grey. Both were greatly outnumbered by the Queen’s forces. In the firelight, it was very difficult to tell the two sides apart, except by how they behaved as they drew near one another.

  “Our commanders keep falling for the same tricks again and again,” Gilbert muttered after watching quietly for half an hour. “See how Mordaunt sends in a group to challenge our lines? The men act like they’re bracing for a cavalry charge and form up tightly. As soon as they become a tight cluster, Mordant hurls fire at them. Then Mordaunt’s men… or skeletons… whatever his forces are, they feign to rout. Our men foolishly give chase. The enemy quickly turns to fight, and again our soldiers bunch up and are roasted en masse. These would be foolish tactics, even if we were facing a conventional army.” Gilbert growled bitterly.

  Alice rested her chin in her hand, “The Major mentioned that some number of our officers defected. Perhaps this is the fruit of that betrayal. Our forces are left with inexperienced leaders.”

  They watched helplessly as the battle dragged on towards morning.

  “I feel so exhausted,” Simon said.

  “As do I,” Alice agreed. “It’s the same tiredness we felt earlier. It’s unnatural.”

  “I’ll bet our soldiers feel it as well,” Gilbert nodded. “That would explain why their movements are so sluggish.”

  “And I’m sure this is all connected to our foe and his seemingly limitless supply of magical energy,” Alice said. “He’s found a way to take the might of our bodies and use it to fuel his own wizardry.”

  The complexities of warfare were lost on Simon, who had wandered away from the others and was staring into the quiet streets north of the palace. He had said little since they left Major Stanway, and had spent a good bit of his time looking out over the city and muttering to himself.

  Over the next hour Gilbert watched as their numerical superiority was eroded. Mordaunt was a patient general. He used wind, fire, and lightning sparingly, but to great effect.

  “He’s trying to spare them,” Alice said tiredly. “Given his power, he could certainly rush in and set our forces ablaze in a few moments, just as he did to Jack’s men.”

  “Maybe he’s simply trying to spare the palace,” Gilbert suggested.

  “Perhaps,” Alice allowed.

  Dawn approached, and the dark sky began to relent. A faint glimmer of light appeared in the east. Suddenly Mordaunt’s forces withdrew and gathered around him. The forces at his side and the forces defending the palace were now roughly the same size. Mordaunt strode out from his army, standing alone in the open field.

  Some of the Queen’s men saw this opportunity and set to aiming one of their few remaining cannons.

  “Don’t be foolish!” Gilbert said aloud.

  A bolt of lightning struck the device. The men around it fell dead, and the wooden parts were set ablaze.

  “Now my subjects,” Mordaunt spoke. The men shrank away at the sound of his voice, which was strong enough to reach even to Alice and her companions on the roof. “You have fought bravely. You have fought admirably and honorably. But the day is mine. Stand down, and you will be spared. Drop your weapons. Go to your homes. As your new king, I give you my solemn word that your former queen and her family will not be harmed.”

  “He’s broken them,” Gilbert observed, even before the men began dropping their weapons. A few fought among themselves and some small skirmishes took place between the deserters and the steadfast, but these were over quickly.

  “I wouldn’t have thought our own soldiers would surrender so quickly!” Alice said in disbelief.

  “All of the brave men died outside the walls, along with the officers,” Gilbert said sadly. “It’s to their credit they fought as long as they did.”

  “I didn’t expect you to be so forgiving,” Alice said.

  “Being zealous and obstinate is what got me killed,” he said sadly.

  He turned from the battle to see that Simon had shimmied up one of the chimney stacks and was looking out over the city.

  “What are you doing?” Gilbert demanded.

  Simon ignored him and slid back down to the roof. He walked over to a diagram that he’d been drawing on the cement.

  “Three two three one-one” he repeated quietly as he drew three lines, left a gap for two more, drew three more lines, left another gap, and finished it off with another line. This process went on for several minutes.

  Gilbert and Alice stood on either side of the diagram and examined it. The lines formed regular patterns. Some were parallel, some were at right angles, and others twisted about.

  “Now, I’m not completely sure of these ones, Simon said, pointing to the far side of the map. I had to draw those from memory based on what we saw last night, and it was kind of hard to keep it straight in the confusion.”

  “I take it these are streets?” Alice asked after some examination.

  Simon seemed pleased by this. “Almost. This is all of the places where there are streetlights. You can see they’re not just in poor neighborhoods, or old neighborhoods, or near residences, or any other pattern that might make some kind of sense. Look what they form instead!”

  “It’s just a bunch of lines,” Gilbert said flatly. “If Alice hadn’t said they were streets I would have guessed it was just random nonsense.”

  “I don’t see a pattern either, I’m afraid,” she admitted.

  “Come over to this side and look at it right-side up. You’re looking at it from the north,” Simon suggested.

  “No. Still nonsense,” Gilbert said, slightly annoyed that he seemed to be missing the joke.

  Alice shook her head.

  “Maybe this will help,” Simon grinned, and he began to draw faint dashed lines to connect groups of streets. Eventually Gilbert became bored with the exercise and began to pace.

  “A feeding circle!” Alice shouted. “I see it now!”

  Gilbert returned and looked at the diagram, which had begun to look like one of those creepy summoning circles. “So they built a sorcery thing with streetlights?” He asked impatiently.

  “Not the streetlights. It’s made of copper cables. The streetlights were just an excuse to bury the cables,” Alice whispered in amazement.

  “So Mordaunt will lose his powers when you turn the lights off?” Gilbert asked hopefully.

  Alice sighed. “No. The lights and electricity are irrelevant. This circle is like any other, except it’s written in copper.”

  “And the size of a city,” Gilbert said.

  “And that,” she agreed.

  “So there’s a circle around the whole city, and all of us are in it?”

  Simon nodded.

  “So why haven’t we all shriveled up? Or why haven’t you, since I seem to be immune?”

  Alice made a grand gestu
re over the city, “Because there are over three million people in the city. He’s only taking a little bit from each of us.”

  “I guess that explains why he would want to avoid casualties. The more people there are, the stronger he is,” Simon exclaimed.

  “So then we need to find a pickaxe?” suggested Gilbert.

  Alice and Simon looked at each other and thought for a moment. “That would take a lot of digging, wouldn’t it?” said Simon.

  “Yes,” agreed Alice. Then she explained to Gilbert, “Once a circle is established – once it’s doing whatever it was designed to do – the magic is fairly stable. You can’t stop it by just erasing a couple of corners from a letter.”

  “You would need to remove several letters,” Simon said firmly. “We did experiments specifically to test just how much of a circle you must erase before it’s nullified. I suppose those experiments were part of this plan, even all those years ago.”

  “I’m sure this plan goes back longer than that. This plot is probably older than any of us.”

  Gilbert looked at Simon’s map. “So to break this thing we would need to dig up a mile or so of London streets?”

  “Without being discovered by anyone loyal to the new king,” added Alice.

  “What if we removed them by tunneling?” Gilbert asked in a voice that indicated that he thought he was being clever.

  “Tunneling that distance, at such a shallow depth? Without giving yourself away to anyone on the surface? That endeavor would take ages, and I’m sure someone would notice that the lights were out before you made much headway.”

  Gilbert let out a slow breath, the kind that always gave Simon the shivers. “This is absurd! The most dangerous wizard in history is held in power by a length of copper cable?”

  “A copper cable that was installed by hundreds of men over the course of several years,” Alice reminded him.

  “This means Mordaunt will be powerless outside the city!” Simon exclaimed.

  “That’s a good point,” Alice said. “Although I doubt he was planning on leaving the city to begin with. He has London. What would we do? Evacuate three million people and move them to another city?”

  They fell quiet at this, each of them trying to imagine various scenarios and how their enemy might respond.

  XII

  “Lord Moxley?” Alice said nervously. The door to the apartment was hanging open, and some of his papers had blown out into the street.

  A man was kneeling in the middle of the floor, amidst a mess of strewn papers and overthrown furniture.

  “Mr. Byron,” Alice said.

  “This is your fault!” the man sobbed. “They took him! Because of you! You people and your notes and papers and messages!”

  Alice did her best to unravel what had happened, but Byron was irrational, emotional, and not terribly sharp. All she was able to tell was that Lord Moxley had been arrested at some point during the night.

  Alice held up her newspaper. “The coronation is tonight,” she said. She showed the headline to Gilbert and Simon. WIZARD CLAIMS THRONE, it declared boldly.

  It was now morning. They had spent the previous twenty-four hours in a doss-house near the Thames. The proprietor had at first refused Alice entry on account of her womanhood, but he relented when it was pointed out that he didn’t have much in the way of boarders to begin with, and that Alice was willing to pay him double.

  “Amazing that the papers know about it, and are willing to report it,” Simon said curiously.

  “The report makes no mention of the new king being a lich. Either that is unknown, or Mordaunt has control of the papers,” Alice said.

  “I can’t believe how everyone seems to be going on as if this was nothing unusual,” Gilbert said while gesturing at all of the Londoners who were going about their business. “The citizens aren’t banding together. They’re not fighting. They’re not fleeing the city. They’re just ignoring it.”

  Alice lowered the newspaper. “There is very little the common man can do. Fight? Our foe has already defeated the entire city garrison in a single night, with only minimal losses to himself. Flee? Where would the shoemaker go? The blacksmith? The tailor? Uproot their family and flee into the wilderness and wait to starve?”

  “Don’t we have more soldiers?” Simon asked. “Surely the British Empire has more than a few thousand men?”

  Gilbert nodded, “Yes!”

  “And what will they do?” Alice chided. “Invade the city? Mordaunt was cunning to keep the royal family alive. It makes him appear merciful, while at the same time gives him a selection of very valuable hostages. Nobody could lay siege to the palace without the risk of killing the Royal Family. The army may converge here on the city, but their leadership is divided. It will be easier for most people to accept this new king as legitimate than to undertake a large, destructive, and possibly hopeless fight that would only result in the death of Her Majesty.”

  Gilbert sat down on the street corner beside Alice. “This has depressed me.”

  “So we must stop him ourselves,” Simon said nervously.

  The other two regarded him with surprise.

  “Or are we giving up?” he asked in response to their silence.

  “No. You are right. I was only surprised to hear you so eager for danger,” Alice said with raised eyebrows.

  “I am not afflicted with eagerness for danger, I assure you!” Simon said. “Willingness, perhaps.”

  Alice closed the newspaper and began rubbing her hands together to warm them. “Well, we must do what we can. It’s the purpose of the ministry, which you two seemed to have inadvertently joined. We are the only ones able to oppose him with magic of our own, which is probably the only thing capable of defeating him.”

  Gilbert turned to Simon. “I was considering this when the two of you were sleeping. What about that spell you used on me, at Ravenstead? I remember I collapsed the moment I stepped into the circle. That would give us the victory without a fight, assuming it would work on him.”

  Simon scratched his head thoughtfully, “The circle used to retrieve vigor from the reanimated? It’s complex.”

  “Do you need a book?” Alice asked.

  “That’s not what I mean,” Simon replied. “I remember it well enough, but it takes time to draw. Gilbert blundered into it because he didn’t know anything about magic.”

  “I didn’t blunder,” Gilbert protested.

  “However you came to enter the circle, we won’t have that advantage against my old master. Even if we did manage to draw one where he might enter it, he would know to step back out.”

  “I lost control of my body the moment I entered the circle,” Gilbert countered. “Even if I had understood, I was helpless to escape it.”

  “That’s one part of the puzzle,” said Alice said hopefully. “Now we just need a way to make an incredibly elaborate sorcery circle and arrange for him to enter it unaware.” She handed the newspaper to Gilbert and rubbed her temples.

  “The coronation seems like it would be the time to attempt it,” Gilbert said, looking at the paper. “He will be in public, commoners will be allowed near, and we know where he will be. Much easier than trying to enter the Palace ourselves.”

  “I’m still hungry,” Simon muttered.

  “Take it,” Alice said, handing him the last of the bread she’d purchased. “And savor it. That bread was bought with the last of the funds given to me by Lord Moxley. We are now homeless, penniless, and without support.”

  Simon chewed the bread slowly and looked downcast.

  “I might be able to raise some money if I were to sell some of my weapons,” Gilbert suggested. “This rifle should fetch money enough to keep the two of you fed for a bit longer.”

  “I’m unsure about the legality of taking and selling gear recovered from our own soldiers. In either case, don’t sell it yet. We may need it tonight.”

  Simon spoke around a mouthful of bread, “I suppose we shouldn’t worry about money
just yet. I mean, anything could happen tonight. One of us might die.”

  “One of us already has,” Gilbert replied. Alice answered him with a gentle kick.

  The coronation was being held in the garden just west of Buckingham Palace, and was open to the public. According to the papers, there would also be a speech given by the newly-crowned king. The area east of the palace was more traditionally used for official gatherings and interactions with the public, but this was still scorched and the dead were still being carried away.

  The three of them stood on the edge of the grassy clearing, which was quickly being decorated for the coming event. Colorful flags were being hung and gas lamps were being set in place. Several men were completing the construction of a wooden stage roughly the same dimensions as a railway boarding platform.

  “Now we know where the man will stand, but how do we get a sorcery circle there? And then how do we conceal it?” Alice wondered.

  “What if we made it very small?” Gilbert suggested.

  Simon pushed his glasses up and considered this. “If the circle were very small, then he might tumble back out of it when the magic took hold. Besides, this is a detailed circle and I’m going to have to do this in chalk. I don’t think I could manage to make it as small as a dinner plate. And even that would be obvious.”

  “Perhaps you could draw it, and then we could put a bit of carpet over it?” Alice said, thinking out loud.

  “That’s a possibility. Although, I can’t imagine how I could draw the circle without someone noticing. There are so many people around, and it is very hard to conceal oneself on an empty public stage.”

  “Just as well,” she said. “We have no carpet, and no money to buy one.”

  “I know!” Simon shouted so loud that a few bystanders looked their way. Lowering his voice, he continued, “What if I could write it on the underside of the platform?”