The Crusading Wizard

by Christopher Stasheff

  The kitten had learned their language, and within the cat-sized head the human brain understood the gist of the words. Her eyes widened and she trembled.

  “Better far for you to ride with the caravan.” Oak took her to the edge of the grove and pointed. “They will be glad to have a cat if they have none already. But you must make friends with them if you wish them to take you far to the west, where these horrible horsemen ride not.”

  Balkis-kitten nodded, but a tear formed at the corner of her eye.

  “I know. We will miss you, too, little one,” Oak said, “but your welfare is more important to us than your company. See, the merchants have stopped and are pitching their tents, for they wish the water in our grove for themselves and their horses! Go catch a mouse who seeks to nibble at their goods, and you will endear yourself to them forever! Or at least until they come to the lands of the Rus. Go now, make your way in the world!” She set the kitten down and gave it a push.

  Hesitantly, and with many a backward glance, the kitten went to prowl around the caravan. Bravely, Oak and her fellow dryads gave her smiles of encouragement, for after all, she would still be near them for the evening.

  ● ● ●

  The caravan drivers looked up at the sound of a sudden yowl. “What is that, so near our packs?” the master asked, frowning.

  “A cat, by the sound of it,” one of the drivers answered.

  “Let us be sure,” said the caravan-master. “Omar, go see!”

  But Omar had scarcely come to his feet when a small golden cat came trotting from the huge panniers full of goods with a mouse in her mouth. She pranced straight up to Omar and dropped the little body at his feet, then looked up at him expectantly.

  Omar stared down. “A mouse! By the stars, she has saved a bolt of cloth at least!”

  “Perhaps even a pound of spices,” the master agreed.

  “But why does she stare at me so, Master Ivan?” Omar asked, completely at a loss, for he was very young.

  “Raised with dogs, were you?” Master Ivan grinned “Why, she seeks her pay, lad! Do you think one small mouse is enough dinner for her?”

  “Oh, is that all!” Omar grinned, sitting down, and broke a piece of meat from his roast fowl to hold out to the kitten. She nipped it from his fingers and swallowed it in two bites, then ran back to the panniers.

  “Well!” said Omar. “Not a thank you, not a backward glance—only gets what she came for and runs!”

  “I’ve done that myself, on occasion,” one of the other drivers said.

  “Yes, we’ve all spoken with your wife, Sandar,” a third driver said, and his fellows burst into ribald laughter, the more so because they knew Sandar had no wife. As the laughter was dying, the little yellow cat came trotting back to the campfire and dropped another mouse, this time at Sandar’s feet. She stood looking up expectantly.

  “Well caught!” he cried, and tossed her a scrap of meat. She pounced on it, gulped it down, and trotted back to the panniers.

  “Why doesn’t she just eat the mice?” the third driver asked.

  “Would you, Menchin?” Master Ivan asked. “Especially if there is fowl to be nibbled?”

  Another laugh answered him. As it lapsed, the cat came trotting back with a third mouse.

  The drivers applauded, and Omar said, “She works as hard as any of us.”

  “We should take her along,” Sandar said.

  “We should indeed,” Master Ivan agreed, and so it was decided.

  As the sun rose the next morning, the drivers finished their breakfasts, drowned their fires, loaded their mules, and drove them onto the road. The little yellow cat clung to the harness-pad on the last mule’s back. As they ambled away, she turned for a last look toward the grove, and the dryads. She gave a plaintive mew of farewell. Only her eyes could pick out the waving forms that were her friends and protectors.

  Unseen by the men, the dryads raised hands in blessing as they chanted protective spells, tears trickling from their eyes—and that is why, if you look closely at the trees that grow in a grove about a pond, you will now and then see drops of water clinging to their trunks as dawn draws nigh.

  Months later the caravan swayed into Novgorod, a city of timber surrounded by a sharpened-log palisade, the facades of its houses ornamented with fanciful carving, all wrought with no tool but an axe. The kitten looked about her wide-eyed, drinking in the wealth of strange sights and sounds and smells—then recoiled as a pack of dogs charged barking at the caravan. Balkis crouched hissing among the rolls of cloth in the pannier, ears laid flat and heart thumping wildly. What were these strange huge beasts with such loud voices and such huge teeth? She decided to stay with the caravan as long as she could.

  As the drivers went to dine in a tavern, Omar held out his hands, clucking softly. Balkis jumped into them, and he tucked her away inside his tunic as he followed his companions into the inn. They called for ale and meat, and Balkis sniffed the air for the rank smell of those huge thunder-voiced beasts. Finding no trace of them, she dared to hop down from Omar’s tunic to scout for fallen morsels under the table.

  As she worried a sliver of tough meat, she heard the merchant and his drivers talking with others of their kind, and her wakening human mind in a maturing kitten’s brain understood at least the gist of their words.

  “Did you have trouble with Tartars, Ivan?” asked a strange voice.

  “They gave us safe-conduct, Michael—for a tax,” Ivan answered, “one bolt of cloth out of every ten, and one pound of each spice out of each twenty.”

  Dark mutterings greeted the news.

  “Do you trust them?” another voice asked.

  “Only so long as they do not ride to conquer Novgorod, Ilya. or any other of our Russian cities,” Ivan answered. “While we were on this journey, their warriors were besieging Tashkent. Their chieftain boasted that their khan has even sent a horde against China, riding into Sinkiang. He assured us that Novgorod’s hour has not come yet.”

  “Yet?” a new voice asked darkly.

  “Yet,” Ivan confirmed.

  The atmosphere was suddenly tense, and Balkis looked up, uneasy and forgetting to swallow.

  “When?” Michael asked.

  “They gave no hint,” Ivan answered, “but for myself, I will lead no more caravans to the east this year.”

  “What profits will you find, then?” Ilya argued.

  “I will sell half my silks and spices here in Novgorod, of course,” Ivan said, “then buy beads of amber and furs of sable. With those, and the rest of my silks and spices, I shall lead a caravan south and west, to Warszawa and Krakow in Poland, then farther west to Praha in Bohemia or north to Sachsburg in Bavaria.”

  Balkis had no idea where those strange-sounding places were, but she grasped the idea that they were farther from the horsemen of the steppes, and resolved that when Master I van’s mules plodded west, she would be riding them.

  It was a long journey through birch forests, and at night she stayed close by the campfire, for the darkness teemed with smells very much like those of the horrid beasts of Novgorod, whom she had learned were called “dogs.” But the woods also teemed with mice and other small rodents, and she was able to lay quite a collection of gifts out for her merchant and drivers every morning. They rewarded her with scraps of many different meats, for they trapped and hunted for their dinners as often as they could; fresh meat was far better than the salt pork they carried with them. Balkis became quite a connoisseur of wildlife. Now and again, though, the traders would camp by a river and sieve the water with nets to catch their dinners. They would lay slivers of fish by Balkis, but at one sniff, something within her revolted against it, and she contented herself with mice, which were, after all, quite tasty, if one happened to be a cat at the moment. There were certainly enough of them.

  There were bandits in those woods, and twice the drivers had to fight them off with staff and steel. Balkis burrowed in between bolts of silk when that happened, but stuck her
head out and watched with wide eyes as axes swung against swords and men fell with arrows sticking in them. One of the drivers was killed and several others wounded, but the bandits fled as soon as they realized the merchant and his men were no easy targets. After all, what were cloth, spices, and furs against one’s own life?

  All in all, Balkis was quite relieved when they came out of the forest into broad plains, which were far nicer, for there were fewer of the doglike smells, but a host of mice coming to gnaw their way through the panniers to the spices within. There were also fewer streams. Somehow Balkis knew that it was wrong for a cat to dislike fish, but there it was, she couldn’t stand the thought of eating one of the scaly aliens, and that was that. She did enjoy watching them, though, as they flashed golden and silver beneath the surface of the water. Now and again she dangled her paw in to play, but they never seemed gamesome when she was about.

  At last they came to Warszawa, a city like Novgorod in many ways but unlike it in many others. A good number of the buildings were fashioned of brick or stone, for example, and fewer people wore fur or heavy woolen cloth. There were many who spoke a strange guttural language, moreover. Listening under the tables, Balkis learned that those people were called “Allustrians.”

  Master Ivan sold half of his remaining silks and spices, and with the gold he gained, bought so much more of Polish goods that he had to add three more mules to his string. In the taverns the talk was again of buying and selling, and there were a great number of worried questions about the barbarians. Master Ivan was in great demand, and so were his drivers. The other merchants did not seem happy to hear that the barbarians intended to ride west eventually, and there was much speculation as to how close they would venture. Would they come to Warszawa, or even to Sachsburg? No one knew, of course, but everyone guessed the worst, and a sense of doom thickened the atmosphere. All in all, Balkis was relieved when the mules ambled out of the city, and quite happy to be back on the plains again.

  The land sloped upward gradually, until Balkis found herself looking at huge wooded hills ahead of her. They climbed into those hills, and she was greatly surprised to see the hillside shorn away into slabs of rock, cliffs adorned with ivy and creepers, slanting down to a broad river below. They were into wooded country again, and the rank smells of dogs-but worse filled the night once more—but so did the calming calls of tree-spirits, whom the foolish men seemed unable to hear.

  “What creature is that, who fairly glows with the traces of fairy magic?”

  “It is only a cat, sister. Go back to sleep.”

  “Sleep! When her every breath bears the perfume of distant dryads?”

  “It does indeed. Fear not, little one. No wolf shall come near you. We shall protect you.”

  And Balkis dozed through the nights, secure in the love and protection of the magical spirits.

  Only dozed—she was quick to waken at the slightest sound of gnawing, and quicker to pounce. The forest spirits certainly felt no need to protect the mice who gnawed out dens beneath their own roots.

  At last the forest gave way to river-meadow, and there, with steeple and tower gleaming above the waters in the morning sunshine, stood the city of Sachsburg.

  Balkis looked about her with great interest as the caravan trailed through the gate and into the town. There was as much building with stone and brick as in Warszawa, but houses and inns were faced with stucco between the beams that held them up. The streets were cobbled, and though dogs ran barking after the mules as before, there was also the scent of many, many cats, some with a musky overtone that Balkis found exciting, though she could not say why. Still, some wariness within her held her aloof; she did not go out at night to find other felines. Somehow she knew they were not really her own kind. She stayed instead with her drivers and her merchant, and listened under the table.

  “A toast to journey’s end!” cried Master Ivan.

  “Journey’s end!” cried the drivers. Wooden tankards clacked against one another, and men drank deeply.

  “How long shall we stay in Sachsburg?” Omar asked. “A month, I think,” Master Ivan said. “It shall take me some time to discover what Allustrian goods to buy, after all, and we can use the rest.”

  “With our wages in our pockets? Be sure we can!” Sandar said, grinning.

  The other men all roared approval, and Master Ivan grinned through his beard—but when they had quieted a bit, he said, “Remember your wives, my lads.”

  “I shall buy mine a necklace and needles,” Omar avowed, “and some skeins of Flemish wool.”

  “Then home to Novgorod?” asked Menchin.

  Master Ivan nodded. “First to Krakow, I think-but then home, yes.”

  Amidst their feet, Balkis thought of the horse-riding barbarians, and decided that when they left for home, they would leave without her.

  Accordingly, a month later, she perched atop a pannier as the caravan left the city, but as it plunged into the forest again, she hopped down and dashed away among the trees. She watched the last mule sway away down the track with Omar beside it on horseback, and felt a pang of longing, a sudden surge of loneliness.

  Then a barky hand touched her with a feather-light caress.

  CHAPTER 2

  Balkis tensed beneath that touch, but a melodious voice said, “Fear not, little one. You have the aura of dryad-magic all about you, and that is reason enough to take you to our hearts.”

  Balkis mewed her thanks as she looked up into a brown and resin-painted face beneath a crown of green needles, and knew that wherever she roamed, she would always be home.

  The Allustrian tree-spirits made much of her, petting her and crooning to her and watching her playas they trailed their branches temptingly for her to pounce at and miss, and sometimes catch. When she grew hungry, they showed her where small creatures burrowed, termites that might eat of their wood. At night, by herself, she found the mice. The forest was also filled with scents that frightened her, but she stayed near the trees and knew they would protect her. In fact, the tree-spirits taught her to climb up to their limbs for safety-then gently and with much reassurance and coaxing, taught her to climb down again.

  At last, though, one dryad sighed and told her sisters, “She is not meant to be our pet, no matter how much we enjoy it.”

  “True, Sister Pine,” another said. “She is more than she seems.”

  They all knew what.

  “Come, then, little one,” said Fir, “follow my needles.” She trailed a branch along the ground, and pounce by pounce Balkis followed.

  “Here, little one, come here,” Cedar called, and her needles took up at the limit of Fir’s reach.

  Thus they led her, tree by tree, deeper and deeper into the wood, until the boughs opened out into a broad clearing. In its center stood a cottage with a thatched roof. Half the clearing was a vegetable garden, and a gray-haired woman plied her hoe there, in wooden shoes and long woolen skirts with a blouse of homespun.

  “There is only one human word you need know,” the last dryad told Balkis, “and that is ‘Mama.’ ” Then she touched the little cat on her forehead and intoned,

  “You must be as you were born.

  Blood will tell, and Nature show.

  Kith and kind have made your form.

  As human henceforth you will go.”

  A wave of dizziness passed through Balkis. She shook it off and moved forward tentatively—but how clumsy she suddenly seemed! Looking down, she was appalled to see fat little arms where her legs should have been, and chubby hands instead of paws!

  “Do not let it fret you, little sister,” the dryad said, voice tender with sympathy. “You shall become used to it quickly, and be as deft and agile as ever you were.”

  Balkis mewed protest—but it came out as a wail.

  In the garden, the old woman looked up in surprise and concern.

  “Go now to that woman,” the dryad said. “She will surely give you comfort and nurturing, for never has she had a child of her own
, though dearly she has wished for one.” She gave the baby a pat on the rump.

  Confused and awkward, Balkis crawled from the underbrush toward the garden, crying.

  The old woman dropped her hoe and came running. She found an eighteen-month-old baby with a golden blanket wrapped about her hips and torso, crawling toward her-for of course, at a year and a half a cat is fairly grown, but a human is still a baby.

  “Oh, you poor little thing!” the old woman cried, and knelt down, holding out her arms.

  Balkis looked up, blinking, and if the tilt of the eyes in that pale little face seemed odd to the old woman, she certainly did not say so. The rosebud mouth opened and spoke a single word: “Mama?”

  The old woman’s heart turned within her, making her all the more greedy to pick up the child and cradle it in her arms. “No, alas, I’m not your mother, pretty babe, but I shall find out who is. Come, come back to my cottage now, and I shall feed you warm milk and soft bread until my husband comes home. He shall spread the word throughout the wood and find your mother for you.”

  Old Ludwig was as delighted as his Greta to see the baby. Still, he dutifully went from cottage to cottage among the widespread, loose-knit community of forest dwellers, asking who had lost a girl-child. None had, and he and his wife exulted. Sooner or later, they knew, her parents would come looking for her, though they had heard of children being taken to the forest and abandoned. They kept her and hoped, and Greta held her to her heart. “I shall call you Leisel,” she told the child.