The Undesired Princess

by L. Sprague DeCamp

  The first rank of the musketeers had not finished reloading, so there was a pause. Sanyesh called to Hobart: “You do something damn well quick, Sham! Marathai charge soon . . .”

  Then an idea hit Hobart like a blinding flash. “Kai! Rain on the enemy, quick!”

  He had to repeat it before the medicine-man got the idea; but then the Ikthepel began:

  “Marekula eromanga . . .”

  A fierce little cloud formed over the Marathai line, and down came the rain with a swish. Sanyesh and his officers got the phalanx back into something like its original square. The Marathai turned angry faces up at the sky, right and left; then in response to commands began to advance, pikes first, muskets in the intervals. The phalanx took a few rippling, uncertain steps forward. Around the brush-bristle of pikes Hobart could see irregular, perplexed movements among the musketeers, who were trying, with no success, to shoot muskets whose matches had been rained out!

  Two guns did go off, pop! pop! But that salvo merely encouraged the Parathaians, whose leading ranks saw quite clearly what the matter was. With a self-confident roar the phalanx got into its stride again, and clanked ponderously toward the foe, who, however, did not await its coming. With wet muskets, and pikes alone greatly outnumbered, the Marathai performed the same dissolving act that had previously been exhibited by the Parathaian cavalry. In thirty seconds the whole mass was streaking for the rear, dropping pikes and muskets as they ran, some of them even shedding helmets, cuirasses, and greaves to enable them to run faster.

  When the Marathaian cavalry cantered back up the valley just before sunset, they were singing, waving things plundered from the Parathaian supply train, and feeling pretty good generally. They had chased the hostile force clear out of the lower end of the valley with practically no loss. But when they came to the site of the battle, they found nothing whatever but a few dead and wounded soldiers, and a vast quantity of military equipment, including a couple of thousand muskets, scattered around the valley floor. The Marathai consulted among themselves, came to the same conclusion as to what happened, and quietly departed thence. If your side lost a battle it lost it, and that was that.

  The next day Rollin Hobart, firmly established in the Marathaians’ main tent-city, brought a force down the valley to collect the booty and such of the wounded as had survived the night. Kai came with him, wearing a curious turban. Some of the Parathaian soldiers, after a night of making extremely free with the women of the Marathai, had sent a delegation to Sanyesh to protest the unseemliness of allowing an utterly naked savage to roam the camp. Sanyesh had found an old pair of trousers, which he had instructed Kai to don. The medicine-man, delighted with the gift, had made what seemed to him the best use of them, to wrap around his wide yellow head.

  Kai was watching the interment of the men who had fatally intercepted musket balls, and remarked: “All those good deads going to waste. What bad, wicked people everybody but my people are! I go now, Sham; you call again when you need me. Goodbye!”

  With a swish and a swirl, Kai vanished.

  13

  Rollin Hobart had gone on the sound theory that if he piled enough tasks on old Sanyesh, the counsellor would probably not have time to plot any mischief. That mischief there would sooner or later be, Hobart had no doubt, in view of the fact that Sanyesh, though not particularly friendly, was his only effective point of contact with his alleged subjects. If Sanyesh decided to make himself sham, there was little that Hobart could do to prevent it. If he liquidated Sanyesh he would be in a worse position than he was now.

  His only hope appeared to be to act quickly before any seditions broke out; rescue Argimanda, send her to her father, and then quickly disappear. He’d even forestall any revolts, against him at any rate, by abdicating and putting some other Parathaian in his present hot seat. Otherwise—good lord, if events followed precedent in this continuum, the Marathai might decide that they wanted him as sham also! They might even fight the Parathai for the privilege; or some local solomon would suggest the compromise of slicing Hobart in halves and giving one to each tribe.

  But by then Hobart hoped he would be far away, disguised, and proceeding with his proper business of finding Hoimon and getting back home. Home! Good old New York; dear, respectable, congenial engineering position; kindly, interesting friends—what if some of them did think he was an opinionated old grind? He was not really obstinate—nonsense! He just knew what he wanted . . .

  Thus thought Rollin Hobart of Higgins & Hobart as he jogged back to the main tent-city of the Marathai, followed by creaking wagonloads of pikes and muskets.

  When he almost reached the ineffective ditch and rampart, Sanyesh trotted out on a horse, followed by a couple of retainers and a standard-bearer. It was hardly any distance, but as a petty chieftain it was beneath his dignity to walk when he could ride. The old man looked careworn as he reported: “I send man to Logaia, tell Gordius about battle, like you said. Half our cavalry come in, and some Marathai. Say they join us if we give them back families. One of them know about Laus. Speak Logaian good. You want talk?”

  “Yes, right away,” responded Hobart. “And tell these Marathai we’ll gladly give them back their families without obligation, though we’d naturally be glad to have them join us, too.”

  This generous gesture might or might not be good statesmanship; if it were not, Hobart’s successor could worry about the effects thereof.

  The informative Marathaian turned out to be a young chief of a hundred families named Gorvath, on whose neck Hobart felt like falling in his relief at being able to converse fluently for a change.

  Gorvath asserted: “If you are reasonably careful, Sham, you can have all of Marathaia in a month. Khovind and Baramyash have their retainers, but the rest of our army is scattered into fragments all over the country. I do not think Sham Khovind will be able to rally many, for the word has gone out that you have the luck of Zhav with you.”

  “Hm,” said Hobart. “You don’t seem much concerned about the fate of your late commanders.”

  Gorvath shrugged, shrewd, humorous wrinkles springing into his weathered-beaten face. “I, too, think you have the luck of Zhav—or Nois, whichever you prefer.”

  “Just what do you mean by that?”

  “I mean that our supreme lord seems to have picked you for a rapid rise in the affairs of the world—how far, none knows yet.”

  “Literally?”

  Gorvath frowned. “I do not understand. I do not lie, if that is what you mean. So, naturally, being a man of sense, I intend to attach my fortunes to yours as early as possible. I shall not be surprised if Sham Khovind and his son come to the same way of thinking.”

  Oh, yeah? snorted Hobart mentally. They’d have to catch him first. Aloud he said: “What can you tell me about the wizard, Laus?”

  Gorvath chuckled. “Rascals always fall out; they could not be rascals otherwise. Laus flew in here last week on those fearsome wings that turn into a cloak, with King Gordius’ daughter for a hostage. Shortly after, Baramyash appeared, having spent four years in disguise at Gordius’ court. It was learned that their little plot with the Logaian chancellor for the destruction of the royal family and the conquest and looting of the kingdom had miscarried because of the arrival of one Prince Rollin, who, it seems, is now Sham Rollin as well.

  “What happened then is not known to me in detail, but I believe that Baramyash and Sham Khovind, reasoning that a wizard who had just betrayed one master might do likewise with the next, decided to destroy this dangerous ally and use Gordius’ daughter for a hostage themselves. They believed that, between the possession of the princess and that of most of the muskets in Logaia, they would not need Laus’ magic to overcome Gordius.

  “Laus, I suppose, was warned of this by his magical arts, for he speedily put on his wings and flew off with the princess before anything happened to him.”

  Hobart inquired: “Where did the wizard go?”

  “That is not known, though he was flying due
south when last seen.”

  Hobart pondered. Sham Khovind’s routed infantry had mostly fled north and east; his cavalry had dispersed in all directions. Probably a good deal of it had gone south, since this course would take it away from Logaia and Parathaia and also away from the Parathaian army to the east of it. If he went south with a small party he risked running into a larger force of Marathai . . . But if he waited till he had everything under control, events would fasten their claws on him—he didn’t know just how, but they would . . .

  He stood up suddenly, and called: “Fruz, Sanyesh gvakh!” The phrase “Fetch Sanyesh” had become to Hobart an almost automatic reaction to every situation involving barbarians. He added, to Gorvath: “If you want to throw in with me, you can come along right now. We’re going after Laus!”

  As he got ready, his mind clicked off plans and alternatives: They’d take an escort of about a hundred, with the fastest horses available. He’d whistle up Kai—no, better wait till they located Laus; the savage had probably never ridden a horse and would balk at trying. If they were chased they’d simply outrun their pursuers. By now Hobart was, if not an expert rider, at least not a conspicuously bad one. How would they find the wizard? Simple: Hobart remembered a remark to the effect that animals were disturbed by the presence of magic.

  Sanyesh, when he had his orders, went off shaking his head at the eccentricities of the new sham, but in two hours—that is—shortly before sunset—he had the hundred light cavalrymen with horses in duplicate. Hobart left the elder to hold down the lid in the camp and took Gorvath for guide and interpreter. Theiax padded along expectantly. Suppose the Marathaian led them into a trap, or got them lost, or suppose Laus had not flown this way at all . . . Hobart did not care. He was willing to take almost any risk to get this next and last task out of his way; and, judging from his experiences so far, he could afford to take pretty steep ones . . .

  They crawled along, steered by the stars, at a slow walk. Hobart estimated that they had covered about thirty miles when the sun popped up. It was pure guesswork, but it seemed likely that Laus had flown farther than this from the tent-city before alighting. He gave orders for spreading out over a front of several miles, with instructions to the men to report to him any signs of uneasiness on the part of their mounts. The horses, after being up all night, looked as if it would take something out of the ordinary to rouse them.

  They presently left the savannah they had been traversing and entered a stretch of hill-country. Each hill was low and rounded exactly like the next, even to the clump of dry shrubs on its top. The only animal life was an occasional bird or lizard; there was no sign of Marathaian soldiery.

  Hobart yawned with fatigue and boredom. Every piece of this land fitted into such an exact and limited pattern: there were certain number of types of topography, conical mountains, dome-shaped hills, flat plains, and so on; a certain number of types of cover, jungle, grass, or nothing, as the case might be; and a limited number of combinations of these. He had not seen all the possible combinations yet, but he was sure he could imagine them, so what was the use of touring the world to see them? All he asked was a chance to snatch up Argimanda with one quick pounce; to see her safely packed off to her father, and . . . Such questions as who should be sham of this or that tribe and what should be done with the Logaian muskets did not interest him.

  Thus he mused as hour crawled up the back of dull hour. It was nearly noon when a horseman cantered up and threw an unintelligible string of sounds at him. “He says,” explained Gorvath, arriving next, “that the horses out on the right wing are balking. Is that what you wanted?”

  “Yep; round ’em up,” snapped Hobart. Let Laus turn him into a small black cinder; anything would be better than eternally crawling around this loathsome world!

  The Parathai quickly guessed the cause of the horses’ unease, and themselves showed no eagerness to come to close quarters with the wizard. Hobart supposed he could have roused them to excitement with the right sort of pep talk, but he had never given a pep talk in his life and did not propose to begin now. He told them to spread out as far as possible around the circle of magical influence. Then he dismounted and tied his horse to a bush. Neither nags nor barbarians were likely to be of much help.

  He grasped the rodent skull and called: “Kai!”

  There was an opacity in the air, as of a whirl of dust, and a swishing sound; then the medicine-man stood before him. As Hobart explained what they had to do, Kai’s broad saffron face got longer and longer.

  “I am not good magician!” he wailed. “I just know a few little spells, keep my people from harm!”

  “Anything’s better than nothing,” continued Hobart implacably. “What could you do to ward off or neutralize Laus’ spells?”

  “Well—let me see—I can make—ouf! Please stop you lion from sniffing my leg, Sham; it makes me n-nervous!”

  The thing that Kai claimed he could make was a sort of shield which would deflect all but the strongest spells. It was made of twigs and fish skins. Twigs could be had from any bush, but fish were something else.

  “Conjure ’em up,” said Hobart.

  “No water,” mourned Kai, spreading his hands.

  “Oh my God, rain some!” barked Hobart. The fact that Kai knew some real honest-to-gosh magic did not necessarily imply that the savage was any genius. With Theiax’s help they scooped out a depression two feet across, and Kai’s spell beginning “Marekula eromanga” brought down a downpour a yard in diameter, which soon filled the hole. Another spell filled the water with squirming fish. Here Kai’s thinking processes broke down again; Hobart had to suggest to the rattled necromancer that he could conjure up his magic bone skinning knife to complete the operation.

  The shield was of the general size and appearance of a child’s homemade kite, with fish skin instead of paper. Kai explained: “You hold it in front of you like a real shield. Careful; it is not strong like real one.”

  Hobart asked Kai what else he knew in the way of spells. Kai seriously counted them off on his fingers; the only one that was at all promising was a hornet conjure.

  “Okay,” sighed Hobart. “Come on.”

  “What? Oh, no, not me! I could not stand against great Laus; I never went to college of magic; just poor fish-eater—”

  “Come on,” roared Hobart, “if you want to save your people from something really nasty!”

  They trudged cautiously among the low hills, until Theiax halted with one forefoot raised, laid back his ears, and gave an infinitesimal growl. Hobart peered and sighted a small projection on the top of the farthest hill within their field of vision.

  Hobart lit the match of his musket. He explained in a low voice: “I’m going to try to sneak up for a shot. If that doesn’t work we’ll rush him. I’ll hold the shield up until I’m close enough to get at him with the sword; you two stay behind me so it’ll protect you, too.”

  Theiax objected: “Suppose he flies away?”

  “That’s so.” Hobart fingered his chin. “What sort of wings does that robe of his develop “

  “Vulture, I think,” said Theiax.

  “Fine! Kai, if he starts to fly, you rain on him, hard! If you can soak his feathers it ought to bring him down.”

  When there was but a single hill between them and the one on which Laus’ tower stood, they crept slowly up to the top and looked through the bushes. Hobart heard a sharp intake of breath from Theiax; he looked again and caught sight of a human figure on top of the tower, in a gauzy garment—Argimanda.

  “Where’s Laus?” whispered Hobart.

  “I can feel his presence,” muttered the lion. “Ah, there, around base of tower!”

  The tower itself was a ruinous old structure, practically a simple cylinder with a single opening—the doorway. This entrance was partly blocked by the heads and necks of two enormous snakes, lying one over the other, with bodies extended out of sight around the base of the structure.

  “Amphisbaena,” rumble
d Theiax.

  “What’s that?”

  “Snake with two heads, one each end. Alaxius says Laus could be one, but I never see it done.”

  “Ready everybody?” murmured Hobart. He propped the shield up in front of him and extended the musket through the bushes. He should be able to hit one of the heads at this distance—but which one? Did Laus’ human intelligence reside in one, or both, and if the former how was one to know?

  Get it over with, he thought, heart pounding. He sighted and squeezed. Boom! The butt kicked his shoulder; by moving his head quickly to get the puff of smoke out of his line of vision, he was able to catch a spurt of dust, twenty feet short of the reptilian heads and to the right. Hell, he should have remembered that a smoothbore matchlock wasn’t a Winchester automatic.

  “Rain!” he barked over his shoulder to Kai.

  Kai began at once. The snake heads had reared at the shot. One of them swung slowly, like a man panoraming a movie camera; the other darted about aimlessly. Then the slow-moving head ducked into the tower door; the whole monstrous creature flowed after it. The other head disappeared around the tower and presently reappeared on the other side, bringing up the rear.

  The rain cloud boiled and dropped its contents. When a few seconds later Laus, in his usual dark gown and conical hat, came out on the roof, it was into a miniature cloudburst. The two small figures on the tower-top twinkled about, dark chasing light.

  Hobart thrust the hot musket barrel into Kai’s hands. “Use this for a club!” he shouted. “Come on!”

  They burst out of the shrubbery and pounded down the hill they were on, Hobart drawing his sword and holding the little kite stiffly in front of him.