And then it happened. Hoggle-Fitz’s knees had hardly touched grass when, with a clap of instant thunder and a dazzling glare, a bolt of lightning struck within ten feet of him… . The great crowd moaned, seeing in this a mark, an omen that perhaps the question of the Pug-Boos and Ormon’s grace did not favor our cause after all. Before this sighing moan had reached its end, however, an equally glaring bolt smashed down within but a few feet of the prince of Kelb.
I smiled. Tit-for-tat Camelot’s magic was indeed much in evidence. And if the power of Om had stood forth to deal the first blow, the power that favored our own—whatever or whoever it was—had matched that blow, exactly. I smiled again. For at that very moment the clouds parted and the sun shone through, touching upon my forty-seven students and my two brave knights. I seized my chance, pressed the ion-beam at my belt, widened its focus so no damage could be done, and directed it full upon the praying Hoggle-Fitz.
What I had hoped would happen, happened. All his armor, and instantly, gave forth a golden glow so that he seemed clothed in an aureole of shining light. If Hoggle-Fitz, with his tedious but pious mouthings, had ever hoped for sainthood, he had found it now. And the hissing gasps of the great multitude—crossing themselves the while for Ormon’s sake—was a thing to hear. The fact that the ion-beam had simply activated the high sulfur content of the steel of Fitz’s armor, causing a glow akin to that of phosphorescence, was something else. My forty-seven knelt; so did the crowds—so did the men from Kelb. And Fitz glowed like the fabled, pious Galahad of Terra, though he knew it not. Indeed of all that gathering he alone was not to know till the game was won. …
With the glowing and sainted Hoggle-Fitz bellowing aves and prayers, I dismounted, too, and walked quickly to kneel by the side of Rawl. I interrupted his mumbled cantos to say softly, “We are much favored, my friend. But ‘tis said that Ormon best helps those who help themselves. Om, too, is strongly at work here. Witness that first lightning bolt. And more of this magic will come, though in what form I know not. But be not afraid and pass the word that all that transpires against us will simultaneously happen to the enemy. If we bear this in mind, we cannot lose.”
Rawl eyed me silently. “Yes,” he said finally. “I know now, indeed, that you are not of Fregis.”
I shrugged. “Ask that of my mother when you meet. She’ll quickly tell you.” Hoggle-Fitz was on his feet again. I rose, too, and so did Rawl. In back of us the forty-seven were up and mounting their dottles. The word I had given Rawl spread quickly down the line. And, when I glanced back at their fresh, eager faces, I knew we had made it. I switched off the ion-beam. Hoggle-Fitz ceased to glow and returned to his place on the right. I must admit that the aves, mumblings, and the drawing of circles upon breasts, on all sides— generated by his short-term halo—had caused him to glow with personal, religious, stigmata that seemed for a brief second to equal that of the sulfur-treated steel… . The great crowd sighed.
And then it was time. The sun had gone. The rain began. And there we were. The trumpets blared a soggy blast and we went hurtling down the green.
One hundred pounding, madly wheeeing dottles; couched lances and shields to the fore—two hundred yards of space. The touch of magic continued so that even as I settled to the job at hand the opposing, oncoming line wavered, grew dim. But I kept my eyes focused on the prince—and saw him hesitate. I knew then that I had been right. We, too, had grown dim to our adversaries. Whatever. It was too late for all concerned. Prince Keilweir’s lance missed me completely.
I caught him squarely upon the shield, my knobbed lance driving him backward with such force as to snap his saddle girth and send him headlong over his dottle’s rump. One down and forty-nine to go. I was conscious of a mighty cheer from the crowd. All down the line it was the same. I had expected, since the exchange of lance thrusts was our weakest area, that we would lose here. But we did not … Amid the crash of splintered shafts, wheeeing, screaming dottles, and cadenced shouts to every saint that Camelot possessed, I could see that a full twenty of the men of Kelb were down, as opposed to but eighteen of ours. Most, on either side, were up again, afoot, blunted swords and maces hacking away in a whirlwind collage of brutal, no-quarter battle which, had the weapons been honed and heavy instead of dull and light, would have brought death to every man who fell. The prince remained prone, out of it Hoggle-Fitz had downed his man, as had Rawl. And now the red and black crests of each were seen as the center of a furious melee.
Lance aside, I, too, used broadsword. And, I must confess, since all went well, that I held back deliberately in the first whirl of swords, light mace, and hammer. But even then it was I who hurled the lord of Ortmund to the ground, breaking his sword arm in two places so that he would not fight again for many months.
The pace grew heavy, cruel. And I now knew how Hoggle-Fitz had fought clear of all the armored strength of Great Ortmund. For with one single charge he cleared the Kelbic saddles of four knights whose surcoats and blazonry proclaimed their worth as equal to the best that Marack could produce. Rawl, as was his fortune, had in the meantime struck the prince’s brawny ambassador to the turf.
There were more dottles with empty saddles now than full; knights from both sides were being pulled from the saddle to the ground. It was then I noted that the dottles, wise in the ways of humanoids, when lightened of their load would run off to the side. There with their fellows, they formed a great circle around us to watch the remainder of the battle. Being amused at the dottles I was suddenly taken unawares; many hands seized me from the rear, and a sudden blow against the side of my helm caused the world to ring and to disappear in a .wall of blackness.
I awoke to find myself ringed with greaved legs and a cadenced shouting of “The Collin! The Collin!” from a dozen lusty student throats. I seized a leg and pulled myself up, helped further to my feet by willing hands. Then with no shield, but with a great two-handed sword tendered me by some unknown student hand, I laid about me and picked up the cry, “The Collin! The Collin!” Where my small group had been ringed around, we now ringed them. And the clash of sword and mace against suit armor and shield was such as to deafen all. Three men went down before my Kelbian sword in just three strokes; each with a broken rib or limb, or both; one man with a broken head—and time passed.
The rain fell hard while we strove mightily against those seasoned warriors. We were three knots of swirling blades, wet turf, and mud. All around us lay the fallen. There remained but thirty of ours to twenty of theirs, and no man was rider now. Through it all, where one would confront a foe in a panting, heaving, sweating, streaming exchange of blood and bruises, that foe might suddenly disappear, to be seen seconds later at another spot a few feet removed from the original. And, too, if one observed the expressions of one’s opponent, he would note that in that same opponent’s eyes he, likewise, had disappeared.
The remaining knights of Kelb fought desperately. And I thought as I stood back and leaned upon my sword that those already prone around us were the better off, since no man standing—ours or theirs—remained unscathed.
I sought to end it. I had eleven mud-covered, panting students; Hoggle-Fitz, eight; and Rawl, ten. Rawl’s helmet was off, one arm hung limp, and blood bathed his face from a deep gash above his left eye.
Though they fought bravely, despairing of victory, four more of the Kelbian knights were down ere the king’s heralds moved forward to blow the finish. Before this could happen, however, we had, perforce, as was our plan, to cripple more. Reluctantly then, for I would not harm good men were it not necessary, I signaled Hoggle-Fitz and Rawl for one last effort. We charged their bloody circle of sixteen knights from three sides. The blunted swords and lightened maces swung, blindly in some cases, on friend and foe alike, the rain and mud obscuring shields and blazonry. And our cheers and their screams of defiance were hoarse and wild. When the king’s trumpets sounded there were but six of Kelb left standing, and twenty-two of ours… .
So there were twenty-two of
us to stand before the king and all the pomp of Marack; twenty-four, actually, since two student-warriors with a broken leg apiece were held up and brought along by their comrades.
King Caronne then announced in the most formal of court language that we had won; therefore our cause had been proved just and our charges correct. He offered us the thanks of all Marack for our services to his crown and to his daughter. And on all sides there were cheers of admiration for the Collin, for Lord Breen Hoggle-Fitz, who though from Great Ortmund had still fought well for Marack, and for young Rawl Fergis, cousin to the princess Murie Nigaard. It was understood that a number of the student-warriors would be heggled as a result of their valor, and that Rawl and I and Fitz would name these men.
The six knights of Kelb, representing the wounded and the remaining fifty—for they alone had fought—were given the order for banishment from Marack with all their entourage: Until such time as Pug-Boos came back to Kelb and Ortmund; and this proved by those countries’ kings.
Small gain, I thought as we mounted our dottles and retired from the field. Of the knights of Kelb, at least sixteen were dead; of our students, twelve. Of the remainder of both sides, the bruises, scars, and badly mended limbs would long remind the participants of the Onset of Fifties at the great tournament of Glagmaron.
Like Rawl, I, too, bled from ear and nose. Indeed, I wanted nothing now but warm water, a soft bed, some food at a later hour—and to see Murie. Great Flimpls, I thought, as we wended our way back to the castle, how one does take up with the color and the substance of the country!
Halfway to the drawbridge I felt an odd persistent buzzing at the base of my skull and I wondered if the blow I had received had caused concussion. But nol I pressed the stud upon my belt to activate the circuit… .
“Well!” I said mentally. “Well, it’s about time! It’s damned well about time.”
“Look who’s talking!” Ragan’s voice came from the node at the base of my skull. “You’ve been damped out, Buby. No fault of ours. We’ve tried. Great whoozits, we’ve tried. But you should have known. You should have … Look! Here we are. There you are. We’ve contacted a Watcher and got some information that all is not well; that things are, in fact, pretty damned bad. Brief us, Buby.”
“Well,” I began slowly, as my dottle cantered along, “it’s like this. …”
And I told them everything, including the mental picnic with Hooli the Pug-Boo; about the maelstrom into which we had inadvertently descended; about Camelot magic, generally —and I gave my summation.
“It seems obvious to me,” I said, “that what we assumed to be simple growing pains—with a singular twist which we could control or influence accordingly—is nothing of the kind. As a matter of fact, the stage is set here for one last dramatic act sans the deus ex machina. The curtain’s coming down. The imagery the Pug-Boo creates—world destruction and whatever—really happened somewhere. I’m guessing it was on one of Fomalhaut II’s three planets. I’m guessing that it can happen again.
“The indication is that the Holocaust was but one single event in the total strategy of an antagonist who remains unknown—whose ultimate goal, for that very reason, may be something other than just Camelot-Fregis. I saw the destruction of the planet, remember? I saw it through the Pug-Boo’s eyes. Only a force equaling, or superior to the Foundation, itself, could wield such power.”
Kriloy’s voice came softly, soothing, and palliative to my intensity. I mentally pictured him and Ragan in the Deneb 3’s “Foundation Center,” as apart from the ship itself: Ragan, tall, graying, with the touch of cynicism to his voice and person that display all who have been with the Foundation for any length of time; Kriloy, dark, slender, ebullient, a facsimile of myself in that he, too, was alive to “the wonder of it all.”
The starship would be positioned directly above Glagmaron city, orbiting with Camelot’s axial spin. But how long had it been there? Somehow, though long-sought contact had been made, it gave me no comfort. How many times had they tried and failed? And why had they failed? It was quite possible that they served no purpose now at all; that that which was about to happen was beyond their ability to influence; that essentially, their very presence created a great and unnecessary danger for Camelot—and perhaps themselves.
Kriloy was saying: “We’ve not found the reason why you’ve been impossible to contact. We’ve been in touch with the Watchers of Klimpinge, but they’ve added nothing to their previous report, except that a deadly peril seems now to vibrate in the very air. We don’t even know why we’ve been able to reach you now.”
“Whatever,” I said. “I’m as much in the dark as you.”
“Sheee!” Kriloy’s exclamation was sarcastic.
“All right!” I said. “But now that we’ve made contact, you’ll agree that I’m in the soup, and that I need some answers, bad. Have you been scanning?”
“Off and on.”
“What’s happening? What’s in the southern hemisphere— the good old land of Om? How’s the traffic on the roads? The seas? The seaports? What have you seen?”
“No ‘ghost’ armies, only real ones. And no hallucinating cloud banks or dark wizardry—at least from an altitude of two hundred miles. To the south of the river-sea, as you know, it’s mostly jungle and savannah until the rise of the highlands. From there on it’s early winter—rain, sleet, snow. The Dark Lands are no longer dark. At the moment they are covered with fog, clouds, snow, the works. Across the savannahs, through the jungles, and into all the ports, there is troop movement, cavalry hordes of between five and ten thousand men: double that in men-at-arms, archers, and the like. Your Yorns, as you call them, are some kind of mutants; they live mostly in savannah areas. The men, inland, seacoast, wherever, are simply rounded up, given weapons, drilled in their use for a few days, and then marched down to the boats. Other than Om’s elite, the majority are poorly trained and led.
“We suspect that the port cities are full to bursting, though many ships have already sailed north, to your area. The total figure is somewhere between two hundred thousand and two hundred and fifty thousand warriors, which suggests that you are, indeed, ‘in the soup.’”
“Good God,” I said.
Ragan laughed. “A few hundred thousand, more or less, shouldn’t upset the mighty Collin… . We watched you, you know, in your little melee. I won fifty credits on you, Buby.”
“You mean there was someone to bet against me?”
“We drew straws. The longs got the prince of Kelb—we know who he is now—and the shorts got you and that senior, student crew with the buster-brown haircuts.”
“Skip it,” I said flatly. Their cavalier attitude concerning my bones and my future left me a little cold. “To get back to the south: It’s my opinion that things are going to get worse before they get better. We need someone badly down there.”
“Are you suggesting a Watcher?”
“Why not?”
“From what you’ve told us, it would be much too late to help you.”
“Fine! So put one there to help you.”
“You’re a little testy, you know,” Ragan said softly. “Looks like the situation’s getting to you. Sure you don’t want to be withdrawn?”
“No,” I said tersely.
“You sound much too involved, and that’s not good.”
I controlled an instant anger, derived of the fact that he was reaching me because he was right The last thing I wanted now was to risk withdrawal. “Shove it,” I said bluntly. “I’m on top of it, and I’ve no intention of leaving now.”
. Ragan laughed, dissolving the tension. “We’ve kept a close eye on you. The vibes from you and that pussycat princess are something to feel. On the scope, it’s like colorama.”
I cursed them for a couple of double-damned voyeurs. “Look!” I said strongly. “I’m still the assigned Adjuster, which means that I’m in charge. That being the case, from this moment on no scanning, no orbiting! You’ll warp in and out of the Fomalhaut-F
regis matrix every sixth hour, for exactly two minutes. I’ll turn full on to catch you. We’ll exchange bons mots. Meanwhile, play games. One of them being that you check out Fomalhaut’s binary and its three-planet
system. That’s an order! And you’ll handle this search-and-peek job with discretion—like your next trip to Camelot-Fregis, in and out, with all detection systems given but two minutes of exposure.”
“You’re playing it pretty damn close.” Ragan’s voice held a note of anger now.
“I got a sterling hunch, children; like it’s quite possible that we are being scanned right now.”
“You think so?”
“Considering what happened to the Pug-Boo’s planet, yeah.”
“You through?”
“I sure am,” I said. “Fade now!”
“Now fade,” Ragan echoed reluctantly.
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