by J. P. Wagner
Another rebel lost his grip and fell with a scream, his pistol skittering across the cage floor. Carrtog grabbed it just before it fell through one of the openings and thrust it into his sash. The glider lurched upward, but the sideways list remained. The crew didn’t do any more shouting, but saved their breath to manhandle the controls. For a moment it seemed they might succeed, then the nose tilted sharply towards the sky and the craft stalled. Carrtog’s stomach climbed into his throat as the glider slipped sidewards in the air and dove towards the ground.
Shrill yells went up, both from people in the cage and those hanging on the outside.
The crew fought the machine all the way down, but Carrtog knew by the prickle of his ring that they hadn’t the height they needed. They were almost straightened out when the lower left wing clipped the trunk of a medium tree, smashing the appendage irretrievably despite its magical strengthening. The glider turned leftward around the pivot of the tree-trunk, then hit the ground still moving, only the right wing scraping across the patchy snow cover and bits of underbrush prevented a tumbling roll.
The men on the outside shook loose with the first and succeeding impacts and the people inside the cage were thrown against the walls.
Carrtog slammed headfirst into one of the bars and lost consciousness…
#
He came back to himself with pain in both his head and his left ankle. He was lying on something soft, which revealed itself to be the princess’ lady-in-waiting…
He pushed himself off almost frantically, then laughed to himself. She was unconscious and couldn’t begin accusing him of taking liberties, though his mind insisted on recalling her warm softness — Stop that, Carrtog!
He investigated his ankle and found it not broken as he had feared, only sprained. Using bits of the smashed cage and a couple of strips of his shirt, he immobilized the joint. He then took the pistol from his sash and considered it. There was a spell, a powder-charged spell, that could cut down on the pain. But it would have to wait, discharging a pistol in these circumstances could cause panic unless everyone knew what he was doing.
He put the pistol back in his sash and began checking the rest of the cage’s occupants where they lay tangled beneath the broken and collapsed wood.
The results were not encouraging. There had been twenty-two of them in the cage; of those, eight were dead, either from wounds received in battle or from injuries sustained in the crash itself. Three more had suffered crushed chests, which were beyond Carrtog’s ability to heal or patch. Others had suffered various fractures rendering them incapable of helping out to any degree. Only four could lend a hand if necessary having suffered cuts or scrapes and bruising.
The princess’ maid was dead, a broken neck, while the princess’ lady-in-waiting had regained consciousness and was seeing to the princess, who apparently had broken her right forearm and was barely aware of the world around her.
The king was still unconscious but didn’t seem in any great danger from his wounds. One of the the King’s Gentlemen had already done what could be done for his royal charge’s hurts.
Carrtog noticed that Captain Gwailants was dead; his face ruined by a pistol ball. Carrtog turned to speak to the nearest of the Gentlemen who seemed to be recovering somewhat from the shock. “Who’s the senior man left to you?”
The man gave a glance at Gwailants, then shook his head. “Don’t rightly know, sir.”
Carrtog gave a mental shudder; he’d been going at doing things just because they needed doing, and now it seemed that this fellow was assuming that he, Carrtog, was a voice of authority.
Well, the worst thing he could do was to stop doing things and wait for someone else to take charge. Though the people who had tried to kidnap the king had been a bit hit or miss regarding some parts of their plan (having the train start moving before the attackers could dismount, for instance) one couldn’t count on similar faults in the rest of their plan. They would probably have people out looking for the glider.
The survivors of the king’s party had to be ready for that.
“Do you, any of you, know healing magic, or at least a pain-killing spell?”
There was silence for a bit, then one man, after looking around at his fellows, answered. “Most of us know how to do bandages and set broken bones, sir. I know how to cast the pain-killing spell with a pistol. The others, if I’m not mistaken, know only bits of combat magic besides.”
Carrtog nodded. “I see. What’s your name and rank?” If he were going to assume command, even temporarily, best try to do it right. He could almost see Yakor shaking his head at him with that ‘you always get yourself into these things’ look.
The fellow straightened, his training taking over. “Trained Private Roisilan Harrad, sir.”
“Right, Private Harrad. You get some reliable people to see to all the bandaging and bone-setting you can manage. Then take one person and see what you can find for weapons on those other fellows. I’d be surprised if they don’t get some people out here looking for us when the glider doesn’t turn up where it’s supposed to. We left my companion behind at the railway station, and I expect him to come looking for us as well, though he might try to find some trustworthy people to bring along. If we bet on the rebels getting here first, though, we can avoid nasty surprises. Any questions?”
“No, sir.”
“Get to it, then.”
As the man went off to carry out his orders, Carrtog inspected his command — such as it was. Several of the worst-hurt had already died and there were several others who would almost certainly do the same without application of more powerful healing magic than anyone present had available.
For the sake of the morale among the sadly battered royal party, it was likely best to keep the obviously dying and the seriously hurt separate from the rest.
Carrtog knelt by one of the wounded men who was barely conscious and gasping with the pain of broken ribs among other hurts. “Would you allow me to use the pain-killing spell on you?”
He could, and might well if he thought it best, use the spell without the man’s consent, but it was a proven fact that the spell worked better on willing patients.
The man gasped out agreement.
“Then hold still while I work,” Carrtog said.
He spoke the incantation, then aimed the pistol down just next to the man’s battered chest. He squeezed the trigger. The wheel spun shooting a stream of sparks into the priming pan. The pistol fired, and the man settled back, breathing a little easier.
Carrtog leaned forward and extinguished the sparks the discharge had left on the man’s vest. He wished he could do more, but the spell could only be applied once in eight hours or so and the man’s wounds beget more pain than the spell could remove. The best the man could hope for was this amelioration.
A woman’s voice broke into his thoughts. “You killed him?”
Carrtog turned to see the princess’ lady-in-waiting looking at him having just finished bandaging the princess. “No, Lady, just a pain-killing spell. The nearer the discharge is to the patient, in particular to the part giving pain, the more effective the spell is.”
“Do you intend to use this spell on the princess?”
He never claimed to read minds and even his ability to read expressions and tones of voice were limited, but it seemed to him that she was challenging him with the full expectation that his spell was nothing but fakery.
“This sort of spell works best if the patient gives her willing consent. If you will ask her, and she agrees, I willl do it. In the meantime, I will deal with the others who are presently suffering.”
“Hmph.” She snorted. “If it truly does them any good. Go ahead, then.”
Carrtog gave her a quick bow. He had not convinced her, not by any means, but though the fact annoyed him, he was not going to allow her disbelief to affect him.
He went from one wounded man to the next, asking permission to do his spell and carrying it out. When he was done, he looked at the king. He was still unconscious but, from the look of him, he might be coming around any time. Bornival was taller than most of his soldiers and looked to be as hardy as the toughest of them, still he was fortunate that his wounds were not all that bad.
Carrtog checked his supply of powder. He was glad that, though he had turned down the pistol his grandfather had offered, he had accepted the bag of spell-grade gunpowder. It would quickly prove the most useful of his possessions if he were to treat a king.
He glanced back to the princess and the lady-in-waiting. The princess seemed to be having trouble following the lady’s questions, though she was much more aware than before. Carrtog, who had suffered a broken bone from time to time, suspected that her pain was making it difficult to concentrate. It was likely time to intervene.
“Does the princess wish me to do the pain-killing spell on her, Lady?”
The lady raised her chin. “She has given her consent.”
“What of yourself? I am not extremely proficient at the spell, but I can probably ease the pain for up to three people at once.”
She looked at him, startled. “I hadn’t thought—” She let her voice trail away.
He shrugged. “Your choice, Lady. I will force nothing on you.”
She touched a hand to her forehead, then said, “Then I suppose you may try.”
He made his preparations carefully. This time, instead of using ordinary powder, he reached into an inside pocket and pulled out a small pouch of spell-grade powder. Much of its special nature came from the incantations spoken over it at various stages of mixing, caking, and grinding, which increased its ability to carry out spells.
It was possible that by rejecting the possibility of the spell’s effectiveness the lady could prevent it from having its full outcome. Unless her doubt was extreme however, the most she was likely to achieve was a weakening of the spell.
Whether she would allow the spell to have any credit was another matter. From her attitude, he suspected she would claim the amelioration of her pain was due only to her having grown used to the discomfort. Of course, if she decided to be fair about it and took into account the effectiveness of the spell on those soldiers who were conscious, she might just admit that he’d done her some good.
“Now, Lady, if you will please lie down, and remain still. Try not to flinch when I fire the pistol. In order to make the spell more sure, I have to aim close to you, but you will notice that there is no ball in the pistol. On the other hand, sparks of only partially burned powder will land on you, and I will extinguish them as quickly thereafter as I am able.”
She looked at him a little doubtfully, then clenched her teeth. He could almost hear her thinking that she had planned to show this self-declared magician a thing or two, and she would not pull back now.
He pointed the pistol at the ground beside her and squeezed the trigger. Though the spell worked best if the pistol was fired as close as possible to the affected body part, the sensation of firing even a blank round near the head might affect the patient’s ability to accept that the spell had done its good. He had therefore picked a spot about an arm’s length from her head. The pistol fired, and the lady winced despite his warning. Carrtog dropped to a knee and quickly brushed the sparks from her hair before they could do more than singe.
The lady gingerly put a hand to her forehead, then said, “It does feel better. Of course, I may have grown a little inured to the pain.”
Carrtog bobbed his head without speaking. There was little to be gained by arguing with royalty — or the servants of royalty. If the king accepted the spell, she might change her mind, but he wasn’t going to worry over it.
In the meantime, here came Private Harrad and the four Gentlemen who, though injured, were still capable of working. From the path they had left through the patchy snow, they had gone straight to where the section holding the crew of the glider lay canted against an evergreen, then made their meandering way back, pausing here and there to pick something up, or to search a body.
They were hauling a litter made of two long poles thrust through the sleeves of two coats, the whole strengthened by a couple of belts. On the litter were piled several more coats with the metal glint of weapons here and there underneath. “We thought it best to bring along more coats, sir. It’s likely we’ll be out overnight, and the cold’s going to be hard on us, particularly the wounded.”
“Good thinking, Private Harrad. Anything else?”
“We brought along whatever scraps of food we could find, sir, though truth to tell, it wasn’t much. We picked up all the weaponry there was, but if those buggers catch up to us our problem is going to be finding hands to wield them.”
“Yes, I’ve been thinking of that. Have any of you had experience with the Grove of Battle?”
The others looked at each other, then Private Harrad looked back at Carrtog. “No, sir. That is, we’ve heard of it, but none of us have done it, nor seen it done.”
“I see. Well, it would have been useful if you could have helped me with it, but I should be able to do a reasonable job of it by myself. Don’t fret yourselves over it, just be ready to do what you can.”
He was still hoping that Yakor would bring a rescue party before the rebels found them, but experience in warfare and life in general had taught him to prepare for the worst.
He began to make preparations for a spell to increase his hearing. He considered calling his available soldiers together and putting the spell on all of them at once, but people experiencing it for the first time often had difficulty with it. If they were out here more than overnight, he would begin training them in using it for brief times. Probably get a survey of what battle-magic they did know, maybe even teach them more.
This spell didn’t require a full shot of powder, burning a small pinch should suffice. While firing the powder in a pistol was more effective in terms of powering spells, some spells were not much weakened by simply tossing a pinch of powder into an open flame.
He called his men to him. He could see that they were all wondering what he had in mind.
“The next thing I intend to do is to increase my hearing temporarily. This will make it more difficult for anyone to sneak up on us. Have any of you had experience with such a spell?”
It turned out that Private Harrad and one other had previous experience under the spell and were willing to undergo it again.
“Don’t any of you agree just because you think you should. We’re likely to be using it for serious this time, and that’s not the best time to be having your first experience with it.”
He recalled back in the late war, the old and battered commander of his grandfather’s troops had expressed the same notion, though there’d been times when it didn’t work out that way. He’d had to deal with the fact or die, and he’d managed to survive without even becoming appreciably magic-shy.
He carried out the spell and watched the changing expressions on the two soldiers’ faces. Satisfying himself that they did not seem to be overly surprised by the increase in their hearing, he nodded, then said, “I will now cast a ward around all of us, to warn us if any enemies come on us in the night.”
He poured a small circle of powder on the ground in front of him, then spoke the words of the incantation, not quietly as most times before, but in a loud voice.
Then he touched off the powder. It flashed in a blue-yellow flame, then died down to a pale yellow gleam expanding out of the camp on all sides.
“It will go out about fifty yards,” he told them, “and it will let us know if an enemy crosses it.”
He had no idea how the spell differentiated between friend and enemy but he was not going to mention that: doubt did not mix well with magic.
“You may be interested to know that the effect of
the expanding ward kills all fleas and lice and the like, so you will find yourself itching less for a time.”
He saw grins on their faces and answered them with a smile. By now, evening was well on its way so he ordered Private Harrad to schedule watches for the night.
He watched as that was done, then oversaw the distribution of what food was available, stretching it with liberal quantities of water derived from melted-down snow.
Following that, Carrtog made the rounds of the camp and discovered that several more of the gravely-hurt had died. He felt those deaths in the pit of his stomach despite the fact that he knew full well that he could not have prevented them. Still, he had taken command of the situation and they had died under his charge.
On the other hand, one of the men Carrtog had considered most likely to die had seemed to rally just about the time he’d established the ward.
That brought to mind the rumor he’d heard about the occasional curative properties of the ward. Some day he would look up a real magician, not just someone who knew various magics involved with war and battles, to pose his questions. For instance, how did it work? And why only one or two occurrences at any time? He shook his head, pulling himself back to the present.
He sat down and forced himself to relax. He looked over at the king who had been drifting in and out of consciousness. What kind of reputation could he gain as the man having taken charge of the party where the king died? Even despite the fact that the king’s death would not be attributable to any action he had taken. It was a worrisome thought.
Then suddenly he was waking up with Private Harrad’s hand at his shoulder, “Pardon, sir, but His Majesty is awake and asking for you.”
Carrtog shook his head to rid himself of the fuzz, and said, “Ah, how is His Majesty doing?”
“About as well as could be expected, sir. That is, one has to step carefully around him.”
Yes, what was supposed to be a simple ceremonial function has ended with uprising and battle with his command cut to pieces and now stranded in unfriendly highlands. He’s likely been brooding.