The Crusading Wizard

by Christopher Stasheff

  “Oh, for a telescope!” Jimena said, and caught his hand. “Quickly, husband! To our laboratory, and the bowl of ink! If we do not have the instruments of our home universe, we shall have to manage with the magic of this!”

  The pool of ink stayed obstinately dark. Saul looked up and shook his head in frustration. “Nothing, Lady Mantrell. Absolutely nothing. If he’s anywhere near a pool or puddle, he’s blithely ignoring me and not looking down. And he’s certainly not pouring his own bowlful and trying to contact me.”

  “So you cannot communicate with him, no.” Jimena bit her lip. “And my own scrying shows no trace of him. In what magical sinkhole is he, that our spells cannot find him?”

  “Probably his own,” Saul opined. “He’s traveling in some pretty dangerous territory, out east where the horde is. He very easily may have cast a spell to shield him from magical spying.”

  “Well, I cannot complain,” Jimena sighed. “When he was small, I always told him to be careful in his travels—to cross at the lights, and not speak to strangers.”

  “I don’t think he has too much choice about the strangers now,” Saul said, “and I’ll bet he’d love to see a traffic light.”

  Footsteps drummed in the hallway and a fist thudded on the door. “Lady Mantrell! Witch Doctor! Lord Mantrell calls! The dukes attack!”

  Jimena was on her feet and halfway to the door, calling, “Ramon has the north wall. You take the east and half the south, and I’ll take the west and the other half!”

  “Sure, if you get there first!” Saul was out the door right behind her, and matched her step for step up the stairs to the battlements.

  There, they each found their soldiers busy pushing over scaling ladders and squaring off against the few enemies who had managed to get onto the battlements before the ladders fell. Saul carne out onto the eastern wall and saw a siege tower rolling toward him. “Captain of the guard!” he called.

  The captain, a knight of advanced years who was beginning to move stiffly with age, turned at his call, frowning.

  Saul hurried over to him. “Sir Chaliko! Good, it ‘s you! What’s the story on that malvoisin?”

  “Story?” The old knight frowned. “We have a ready enough cure for it, Witch Doctor.”

  “Fire arrows?” Saul asked.

  The old knight nodded. “We only await its corning into range.” A sergeant called, “The crossbows can reach it now, Sir Knight!”

  “Then loose!” Sir Chaliko called.

  The sergeant relayed the order, and flaming bolts whizzed through the air to bite deeply into the sides of the boarding tower—and died in puffs of steam.

  Sir Chaliko stared. “What witchcraft is this?”

  “Water.” Saul squinted. “See how the sides sparkle? There’s a continuous waterfall on every side!”

  “How can that engine carry so much water?” the old knight asked, completely at a loss.

  Saul squinted again, trying to see the top of the machine—then froze, staring. “Whatever sort of idiot is that duke using for a magician? The fool has called up an undine just to damp down his siege engine!”

  “Amazing!” Sir Chaliko smiled in sheer admiration. “How else could they guard it against fire?”

  “I can think of half a dozen ways, and this sure wouldn’t be one of them! That amateur can’t possibly know what an undine can do if it gets out of control!”

  “What?” Sir Chaliko demanded, beginning to catch some of Saul’s alarm.

  “Drown half the city!” Saul told him. “And in a battle, there’s almost no chance that it won’t break out of the magician’s power!”

  “I shall send a sally party out to chop through the tower!” Sir Chaliko turned away.

  “No!” Saul reached out and caught his shoulder. “That’ll just put the elemental on the ground, where it can really start pouring out the gallons! Worse, its master is almost sure to lose control of it in the fall!”

  “Then how shall we guard against the malvoisin?” the old knight asked.

  “I’ll think of a way,” Saul said. “Just give me a minute.”

  Sir Chaliko turned to gauge the distance between tower and wall—and its speed. “A minute, Witch Doctor. I do not think we shall have much more than that.”

  The malvoisin rolled closer and closer to them.

  “The top, at least!” Sir Chaliko snapped. “We can shoot at the monster itself! Ho, archers! Drop your shafts into the roof of that bad neighbor!”

  A flight of fire-arrows arched high and landed on the roof of the tower. A score of puffs of steam rose with a muffled roar.

  “We’re just making it angry,” Saul snapped. “Tell them to hold their fire, Sir Chaliko!”

  “Then do something, Witch Doctor!”

  Saul chanted,

  “Fire seven times tries this,

  An exponent of triumph’s bliss.

  So fire shall exponentially

  Really quite intentionally

  And seven to the seventh power

  Assault this undine on its tower!

  If fire should fail as undine’s bane,

  To the seventh power ‘twill try again!”

  Sir Chaliko stared. “Witch Doctor, you chant the oddest spells!”

  “Arcane language,” Saul said offhandedly. “Seven to the seventh power means seven multiplied by itself seven times.”

  “Seven times seven times seven times seven times seven times seven times seven times seven?” Sir Chaliko asked. “Yeah, and if that’s not enough, I ended up with a clause to repeat the whole process.” Saul watched the tower anxiously. “Let’s hope that’s—”

  With a roar, flames leaped up atop the tower. Something else roared back, and the flames died-almost. Suddenly, they flared high again. Water rose in a wave against the flames, then cascaded down the sides of the tower. The flame lowered, then rose again. The undine bellowed, and the tower turned into a torrent.

  “It is in pain!” Sir Chaliko cried. “Agony!”

  “I don’t think so,” Saul said slowly. “I don’t think water can feel pain. But it sure is angry.”

  The flames rose and fell, rose and fell, as the water tumbled forth in an unending cataract. The tower still rolled forward, then lurched and stopped, tilting at an angle.

  “You have stopped it!” Sir Chaliko cried.

  “Not me,” Saul said, “the undine. All that water has turned the ground into a bog.”

  Sure enough, the tower’s wheels were buried in mud. The soldiers inside shouted in panic and jumped for their lives.

  So did the undine.

  Down it fell, a huge amorphous shining mass, a giant iridescent bubble still issuing torrents of water—but the flames fell with it. The firefall followed the elemental and, roaring, the undine began to roll toward the moat.

  “Witch Doctor!” Sir Chaliko cried in a panic. “We cannot have that monster in our moat!”

  “Why not?” Saul grinned. “I’d love to see an enemy try to fill in that ditch now!”

  “But it will flood the castle!”

  “How?” Saul asked practically. “Water seeks its own level, after all. It can’t climb higher than the moat’s banks-it’ll only overflow. Hey, we may be the only castle in Europe to be surrounded by a waterfall!”

  “Will it not wash away the very hill?”

  “If there’s any sign of that, we can find a spell to send the creature back where it came from,” Saul assured the knight. “Maybe I can make it evaporate.”

  The undine tumbled into the moat and, finally, the fire died.

  “Amazingly done!” Sir Chaliko said, awed. “But why did you not simply call up a salamander, a fire elemental?”

  “How would I have banished it when it had taken care of the undine?” Saul replied.

  “I had not thought of that,” Sir Chaliko said slowly.

  On the south wall, Sir Gilbert faced the forces of the Duke of Orlentin, with only Padraig, an Irish apprentice wizard, to support his soldiers. Sir Gilber
t watched as a huge boulder arced through the air to crash against the wall while the teenager made frantic gestures, chanting in Gaelic.

  “It struck with somewhat less force,” Sir Gilbert admitted. “Can you not make that catapult to break, lad?”

  The boy shook his head, wiping his brow, strain in every line of his face. “I do not know enough magic for that, Sir Gilbert—but if you could bid your archers loose a dozen fire-arrows, I could guide them all to the engine without fail.”

  “We shall do what we can,” Sir Gilbert sighed, and called to the archers.

  Twelve arrows sailed high in an arch. Padraig chanted feverishly in Gaelic and, slowly, the flight pulled together, forming one coherent ball of flame—but as it fell toward the catapult, the fire went out, and only a clutch of smoking shafts struck the engine.

  “A plague on it!” Sir Gilbert cried. “What befell you, Padraig?”

  “There is a sorcerer countering my spells!” Padraig wailed.

  Sir Gilbert frowned. “Then you must outsmart him.”

  “Outsmart him? How?” the teenager protested. “As soon as he knows what I intend, the duke’s sorcerer will …” His voice trailed off as his eyes widened.

  He looked so comical that Sir Gilbert grinned even in the midst of danger. “What have you thought of, boy? A magical ambush?”

  “Of a sort!” Padraig pushed up the sleeves of the robe that, like the office of battle-wizard, was too big for him. He raised his arms, chanting in Gaelic again.

  On the field, the duke’s men turned the huge crank, and the tongue of the catapult pulled back and back—and broke with a crack like the boom of a cannon.

  “Well done!” Gilbert cried. “How did you that, lad?”

  “I turned its core to peat.” Padraig grinned. “Whatever the duke’s sorcerer may be, he’s never seen an Irish bog!”

  On the north wall, Ramon confronted the troops of the Duke of Soutrenne, but the huge wagon that rolled toward him was roofed with armor plates that protected its passengers from arrows, stones, and anything else the defenders might throw at them—even, to some extent, boiling oil or steaming water.

  “What menace rides within, that they shield it so well?” asked the captain of the north wall, face creased with worry.

  “I do not know, Sir Brock,” Ramon said, “but whatever it is, I do not think we should let it come any closer.”

  “Certainly we should not! It rolls without oxen to pull it, or to push it, either. How can my archers stop a thing like that?”

  “They cannot.” Ramon grinned. “But what magic can propel, more magic can repulse. Let me attempt its halting, Sir Brock.”

  “Echo pomposity—

  Banish velocity!

  Surfeit of synergy

  Kinetic energy!

  At bottom or top,

  Revolution must stop!”

  The war-wagon rolled to a halt.

  Sir Brock stared. “Can you stay them so easily as that, Lord Mantrell?”

  “Easily indeed,” Ramon told him. “Our lord duke has invested his money in his army, not his wizard. He has a journeyman at best, perhaps only an apprentice.”

  The war-wagon began to move again, though slowly.

  “A journeyman,” Sir Brock deduced.

  “It would seem so. I must give him a more lasting denial.” Papa raised his hands again, thinking of them as antennae cupped to beam magic toward the wagon, and recited,

  “Have you heard of the wonderful war machine

  That was built with such a logical sheen

  That it ran twenty hours between

  The time between building and falling apart?

  Nineteen hours since it’s start,

  Fifty-nine minutes in part,

  Sixty seconds till it falls …”

  He counted the seconds off softly by a major American river. With five seconds left he called,

  “No longer it hauls!”

  The pop of something wooden giving way reached them even on the battlements. The war-wagon still moved, but a crack as loud as a gunshot made it list to starboard. Then another report sounded, and another and another. As they watched, the wheels fell off, the axles broke, and the armor plates fell from the roof, exposing a skeleton of heavy beams. From the highest swung a huge iron-headed battering ram.

  Sir Brock looked as though he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Surely they did not think to crack a six-foot-thick wall with that!”

  “They did not.” Ramon scowled. “But our wall contains the postern gate, Sir Knight.”

  “What did they think to do—bridge the moat?”

  “I suspect they did,” Ramon answered. “When this battle is done, Sir Brock, send men out to bring that engine inside. I think you will find that the wagon-bed is really a very stout affair of planks and beams, and is only laid within the frame, not nailed or pegged. A dozen men will be able to shoot it out across the moat, and it will be strong enough to hold that ram as it rolls.”

  Sir Brock squinted, trying to see the ram more clearly. “I don’t doubt it. Is there anything more we can do to confound their plans?”

  “Perhaps.” Ramon grinned and recited,

  “Ninety times without stumbling,

  Swing to, swing fro!

  Its life’s seconds numbering,

  Swing to, swing fro!

  Then shoot far, and farther swings forsake,

  When the ram ‘s ropes break!”

  The ram began to swing. Wider and wider it swung, until the soldiers near it shouted with alarm and began to crowd away.

  CHAPTER 12

  “The frame is beginning to tremble!” Sir Brock cried with delight.

  The trembles turned into shaking and quaking, the beams jerking and jolting as each swing of the ram became harder and harder.

  “If it keeps that up,” Sir Brock cried, “the ram will break loose from the—”

  They could hear the double snapping all the way up to the top of the battlements. The ram shot back into the center of its own army, trailing broken tethers. The jolt of breaking was enough to bring the framework crashing down on the wagon-bed.

  “As you guessed,” Sir Brock said, “the wagon-bed is strong enough to hold the ram—or its roof, at least.”

  Daunted by the magical collapse of their secret weapon, the soldiers began to retreat, but the knights roared at them, flailing with the fiats of their swords, and the soldiers turned to go back toward the castle, very reluctantly.

  “Archers, draw them a line!” Sir Brock called. “Loose!”

  Crossbow bolts and clothyard arrows rained down a yard in front of the duke’s soldiers. A few missed, striking feet or legs. Their owners howled with pain and fell. Their luckier comrades retreated, and most of the knights let them go—but the duke himself rode out, roaring with anger and swinging a mace at his luckless infantry.

  “Perkin! Your arbalest!” Sir Brock called.

  Perkin looked up in surprise, then ran to hand his crossbow to his commander. Sir Brock took the cocked and loaded instrument, sighted, and pulled the trigger.

  ● ● ●

  Samarkand was a collection of white blocks and towering minarets, adorned with mosaics, and geometrical patterns in colored brick, which made it appear bedecked with jewels. Matt caught his breath as he looked down on the fabled city, telling himself he must be imagining the aroma of exotic spices-after all, he was five hundred feet above the rooftops. He was tempted to land, since the only life he saw outside the city was a caravan winding toward the gates—but as they flew over the city itself, he saw squads of bald-headed horsemen on small shaggy ponies riding down the streets.

  “This space is taken,” he called up to the roc. “Let’s try Baghdad.”

  “In the morning,” the great bird rumbled. “For now I grow hungry and weary.”

  “Uh, yes,” Matt said. “Definitely time to camp for the night.”

  The roc flew on a mile or two, then spiraled down to a hilltop. Hovering, he dropped the rug,
saying, “I shall come for you in the morning. Sleep well.”

  “Not with the thought of that coming back for me at daylight.” Balkis stared at the winged form dwindling above them.

  Suddenly, the roc folded its wings and plummeted toward the ground. They saw it skim the surface, then beat its way back into the air with something in its claws.

  “What has it taken?” Balkis asked, wide-eyed.

  “I don’t think I want to know.” Matt turned away, shuddering. “But now I see why the bird left us on our own for the night. I don’t think we’d approve of its table manners. Come on, let’s scrounge up some kindling and build a fire.”

  Dawn woke them. They ate a hurried breakfast, then rolled up in the rug, to be ready when the roc came back. They waited an hour, and Matt’s patience was beginning to fray when the huge bird appeared. Of course, Matt realized—it had needed to wait for the world to begin heating up, so it would have thermals to ride. It stooped, seized the rug in its claws, and beat its way back into the sky while they were still yelping with shock. By the time the roc reached cruising altitude, though, Matt had recovered enough composure to ask, “Do you have a name?”

  “Why do you wish to know?” the roc answered, with instant suspicion.

  “Just so I don’t have to keep calling you ‘Bird,’ ” Matt said quickly. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to use your name to work magic against you. Tell you what, instead of your real name, how about a nickname?”