“What is a ‘nickname’?” The suspicion had faded into doubt.
“Something to call you by, that’s not your real name. For instance, I met a manticore who dogged my tracks for a while, so I nicknamed him ‘Manny.’ “
Balkis’ head snapped around to stare at him.
“There was a bauchan who tried to adopt me for a while,” Matt went on. “His eyes looked like those of a stag, so I called him ‘Buckeye.’ How about I nickname you ‘Rocky’?”
The bird was silent for several wing-beats, then allowed, “That will do. How am I to call you?”
“Just ‘Matthew’ will do.” He didn’t mention the cat, hoping the roc had overlooked her.
“Are you not afeard I will work magic against you?”
“Not really. After all, I haven’t told you my last name, have I?” Matt hadn’t really thought of magical creatures being able to work spells, but if Balkis could do it, why not a roc?
Sir Brock’s bolt sped almost too fast for the eye to follow—straight into the shoulder of the duke, who cried out, dropping his mace and clapping a hand over his wound. His horse turned and led the retreat.
Sir Brock handed the crossbow back to its owner, nodding his head in satisfaction.
“It had to be a knight who loosed that bolt, did it not?” Ramon asked, his voice low.
“It did,” Sir Brock confirmed. “If Perkin had shot, we would have hanged him for it—that is the law. But a knight wounding a knight will receive only praise.”
Ramon forced a smile, very glad that his son had brought him to this world as a nobleman.
● ● ●
The tall, graceful minarets thrust upward from the horizon, and Matt’s eyes shone. “Baghdad! The fabled city of Haroun Al-Raschid, of Omar Khayyam and the Arabian Nights! I can hardly wait!” He tilted his head back and called up, “I think I’m going to want to land here, if you don’t mind!”
“Should you not wait to see the city from a closer distance?” Rocky asked.
“Closer?” Matt looked down and forward—and saw mosques, palaces, the awnings of the bazaar, only half a mile away. “Hey, this bird moves really fast!” He frowned. “But how come there are so many horsemen in the streets? And why are they riding in squadrons …” His voice trailed off.
Balkis dug her claws into the fabric of the rug, daring to look down. “Those horsemen bear lances and wear pointed helmets, wizard.”
Matt stared down at voluminous trousers, long moustaches, and scimitars. They weren’t Tartars, probably Turks or Polovtsi—but that was fierce enough.
Matt’s heart sank. “They’ve taken the city after all! Poor Baghdad!” He looked up at the mass of huge feathers above. “Uh, pilot? I’d like to request a change of destination …”
They were delayed a short while while the bird refueled—with so many horses in their corral, the barbarians wouldn’t miss a couple—but were flying over Tadmur by sundown anyway.
“No army around the city, too many soldiers in the street.” Matt’s stomach sank.
“The gur-khan has conquered far indeed,” Balkis hissed.
“Yes.” For the first time, Matt began to really worry. “Let’s hope they haven’t taken Jerusalem. Rocky, can you fly a bit farther west?”
“In the morning,” the bird said firmly, but kept going until it found another high hill on which to park them. Rocky definitely preferred the heights, and Matt wondered if the roc would be able to take off from level ground. He’d never seen the bird begin a flight, after all—Rocky always picked them up by pouncing.
The journey-rations the villagers gave them had begun to run low, so Balkis supplemented their diet with a little hunting of her own. When she came back to curl up on his stomach, she kneaded it first, as cats do to a prospective resting place, then looked up at Matt with a frown. “You are far more tense than usual, and I have been careful to keep my claws in. What troubles you?”
“The fate of Jerusalem,” Matt told her frankly. “It’s the Holy City of three religions, and if the horde has conquered it, they’ll have weakened the forces of Good very badly.”
“And thereby increased the power of Evil?”
Matt nodded. “I hope we find the city in the hands of the godly.”
“Jews, Christians, or Muslims?”
“That’s right,” Matt said. “Purr a little, will you? Maybe that will help me sleep.”
Balkis turned herself around twice to curl up, then tucked her nose between her paws and began to purr as requested. For a moment Matt remembered that it was really a nubile and beautiful teenager curled up on his stomach, then told himself he was being ridiculous—Balkis was at least as much a cat as a woman. Of course, he could have said that about several other teenagers he’d known during his own adolescence, but that was another matter entirely.
In the morning, Rocky picked them up, rug and all, and flew west again. Matt wondered why rocs weren’t vegetarians, like so many birds, then remembered that if they were, they would never have had time to do anything but eat. No wonder they needed their calories in as dense a form as possible.
In late afternoon they came to Damascus, and found it surrounded by a churning ring of warriors half a mile deep.
Matt heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank Heaven! The Holy City is still holy!”
“Where can I land here?” Rocky asked, fretting.
“No need,” Matt said. “We still have a flying throw rug. Just soar up a mile or so and drop us.”
Balkis yowled protest.
Matt overrode her. “That will give us plenty of time to unroll and start flying before we’re anywhere near the ground. Thanks for the ride, Rocky.”
“You are welcome,” the roc boomed. “This will make a great tale to tell my nestlings, when next I hatch a batch of eggs.”
Matt would have answered, but the roc dropped the rug, and for the next few minutes he had his hands full reciting flying spells and trying to dig Balkis’ claws out of his arm. By the time he was again settled cross-legged, with Balkis peering out over his ankles, the bird was only a speck in the eastern sky, leaving Matt to marvel over the only mother he’d ever known with the nickname of “Rocky.”
Matt circled the biggest building he could find, on the theory that it would be either the most important mosque—Jerusalem being currently in Muslim hands—or the local palace. Sure enough, guards on the walls raised the alarm, and archers came running out to shoot at him. Matt wished for the Western clothing he had lost to the pirates, but went on spiraling down to the courtyard, chanting,
“You shoot your arrows into the air.
They fall to earth, I know not where,
Without impaling fabric or flesh
As we descend without a care.”
The arrows leaped up, then turned and darted down, some without reaching the rug, some after arching high overhead. Balkis followed the highest with her gaze. “Was that a long shot?”
“No, Longfellow,” Matt said. “Oh! You mean the arrow? Yes, a long shot indeed, and it’s lucky for us it didn’t payoff.”
Balkis peeked over the edge. “Have you a verse for spearmen?”
“Probably, but I’ll see if I can’t lance the boil of suspicion.” Matt stood up as the rug settled to the ground, his hands up high, and tried the first Arabic phrase he had learned. “Salaam aleikum!” Peace be with you.
The spearman with the biggest turban froze in the act of stabbing and frowned suspiciously. He spoke in Arabic, but the translation spell gave Matt his meaning. “What are you?”
Unfortunately, the spell only worked one way. “Frank,” Matt said, hoping the word was the same in both languages. “Magic.”
“That you have magic, we can easily see!” the big-turbaned man said—probably the captain of the guard. “And yes, you have the pale skin of a Frank. But why are you robed as a Guebre?”
Guebre? What was a Guebre?
A Zoroastrian, obviously. After all, if they dressed like Parsis … “I have recentl
y come from their land.”
The guardsman frowned. “What? Speak in Arabic! I cannot understand you!”
Matt sighed—no help for it but to make the translation spell work both ways.
“What you’ve heard when I have spake,
You shall for your language take …”
The spear jabbed his ribs. “No spells!”
Matt’s mouth hung open in alarm. Without the spell he wouldn’t be able to make himself understood.
A meowing voice recited,
“What you hear’s not what I say …”
A quick glance down showed the cat with her head lowered so the guard wouldn’t see her mouth moving.
The guard looked around, not thinking to look down, on the edge of mayhem. “Are you a voice-thrower?”
Balkis meowed on,
“You hear—but do not listen,
In your mind, let my words glisten—”
She broke off, stumped for a rhyme that would close the verse with the first line.
The guard set his spear against Matt’s throat. “How are you making these sourceless sounds, sorcerer? Reply!”
Inspiration struck Matt. I f the guard couldn ‘t understand, how would the man know that he wasn’t answering? Completing the spell Balkis had last spoken, he said, with an ingratiating smile,
“Let translation work each way!”
Balkis breathed a sigh of relief; the verse was whole.
The guardsman glanced down in surprise, noticing her for the first time, but apparently deciding she was no bother. He looked up to twitch his spear, glaring at Matt. “Tell me your name and business without your magic, or you will lose your life!”
It was only a prick, but it raised a cold sweat. “All right, all right! No need to be so huffy!”
“I assure you there is great need, with our caliph’s life at stake!” The guardsman’s lips curved into a harsh smile. “So you can speak Arabic after all!”
Matt stared, realizing that the man had understood what he’d said. He reminded himself to give Balkis an extra sardine, if he could find one. “What’s a Guebre?”
“A fire-worshiper.” The guardsman frowned. “How can you wear their robes and not know how they are called?”
“Because the people who gave me these robes are called Parsis,” Matt explained. “They’re much farther east than your Guebres, but they’re of the same faith—Mazdaeans, worshipers of Ahura Mazda and followers of the prophet Zoroaster. We were captured by minions of the gur-khan’s high priest, Arjasp, and the Mazdaeans saved us.”
The guard stared. “You know the name of the gur-khan’s high priest?”
“We do now,” Matt said. “As I told you, we had a run-in with his thugs.”
The captain of the guard frowned. “Who are you, Frank?”
“Matthew Mantrell, Lord Wizard of Merovence,” Matt told him, “here in answer to the Caliph’s letter to Queen Alisande.”
“The Frankish queen’s husband?” The captain of the guard lowered his spear, staring in horror as he realized who he’d been threatening.
● ● ●
On the west wall, Jimena faced the Duke of Gurundibyr and a long snaking tunnel of hardened leather that wove its way up the slope to the wall, where the men inside would start digging away at the foundations, possibly even planting a charge of some magical explosive to bring the stones down.
“How would you have us fight that mining engine, Lady Mantrell?” asked Sir Orin, captain of the troops on her wall.
“Will arrows pierce that armor?” Jimena asked.
“Let us see,” Sir Orin said. He turned to his archers and called, “Spit me that worm! Loose!”
Bows thrummed, and arrows sailed down to thud into the tunnel for half its length.
Sir Orin shook his head. “See how high the feathers stand, my lady! The heads have pierced that armor and stuck in it. Perhaps a sally party might chop it up—or perhaps not, too.”
“Then we shall have to summon a greater force.” Jimena drew her wand, waved it at the heavens, and chanted,
“Like the eagle of the rock,
Who in his beak a serpent held,
And showed the Aztecs where to build,
Let some great raptor, taking stock,
Think this leather worm his size
And pounce upon it where it lies!”
A shadow darkened all the castle and most of the army around it. Men looked up, then recoiled, arms up to protect their heads, cursing and crying out in terror.
Jimena looked up, too, and saw a hawk shape silhouetted against the sky, already covering half the vault and growing bigger.
“Lady, what have you done?” Sir Orin called in fear.
The first blast of wind from those huge wings struck, and he held fast to a merlon to steady himself. Jimena stumbled, and he stretched out the other hand to steady her.
“I—I may have summoned more than I knew,” Jimena admitted, staring upward wide-eyed.
Then the feathers of the bird’s belly covered the whole sky, and claws the size of wagons reached down and clamped around the tunnel. Up the bird rose, shaking men out of the timber and leather contraption as it went. Before it was twenty feet in the air, the empty structure crumpled in the huge talons and fell back to earth in scraps.
Soldiers howled and ran about, trying to dodge, for some of those scraps were ten feet long and a foot wide.
“Cheat!” a huge basso voice bellowed. “Where is the food you promised me? This was nothing but a decoy!”
“What horrendous noises it makes!” Sir Orin groaned, still holding fast to the merlon. “It is like the thunder!”
“It is speech,” Jimena exclaimed in wonder. “The huge bird is talking!”
“What language could it be?”
“Arabic,” Jimena answered. “At least, it is close enough to that of the Mahdi’s Moors that I can make it out.” She shouted up to the gargantuan hawk, “Your pardon, O Mighty One! I had not thought so great a creature as you would answer my little plea!”
“There is something familiar about your speech,” the vast avian rumbled.
“Familiar?” Jimena stared up at it blankly. What could be familiar, when she had never seen anything like this before?
Then she pulled her wits together; what mattered was to keep the bird talking. “I marvel that your speech is of a pitch high enough for folk as small as we to understand!”
“A wizard far to the east taught me to speak in so high and thready a voice as this, so that you grubs can hear it as words,” the monster boomed.
Grubs? Jimena had to get its mind off food! “This wizard … was he brown-haired, a little taller than this man beside me?”
“He was! Now I know the sound of your accent, of your manner! It is like his!”
“Then you have seen my son!” Jimena cried. “Tell me, is he well?”
“Well, and making the airways unsafe by shooting about on a flying carpet,” the roc answered. “I left him at Jerusalem. He gave me a nickname—Rocky!”
Jimena winced. “Yes, that would be my Matthew.”
“But he did not yank me out of my sky and halfway across the world with a spell!” the giant bird thundered. “He did not promise me food!”
“Oh, as to that, there is a village a few hundred miles to the northwest that is plagued with a giant worm growing in the village well,” Mama answered.
“The Laidly Worm!” Sir Orin gasped in shock.
“The villagers are worried that it will escape,” Jimena explained to Rocky, “for it is already forty feet long, and still growing.”
“A toothsome morsel! If it is as good a meal as you say, I shall feast and go my way!” Rocky rumbled. “If it is not, I shall come back and take whatever lives! Farewell, mother of mayhem!” Then with wing-beats that made the castle shake, the great bird lifted up and away.
As she diminished in the sky, light flooded in where her shadow had been, showing the armies of all three dukes streaming away from t
he castle and toward the hills, overcome by superstitious fear. Their lords rode before all of them, leading as good lords should.
“Praise Heaven!” Jimena’s face glowed as she watched the rout. “We are saved, and the siege is lifted!”
“But the bird, our rescuer!” Sir Orin protested. “That ‘worm’ she seeks is a dragon, nay, something worse, if report holds true. All that will save the feathered one is the worm’s youth—it has not yet grown wings! Have you sent this high hawk to its death?”
“I think not, Sir Orin,” Jimena said, perfectly composed. “At the worst, though, I have set one problem to cure another.”
A crafty look came over Sir Orin’s face. “Do you intend, then, for the bird to die?”
“I do not,” Jimena said. “If the worm is a threat of any kind, it is far more likely to give Rocky indigestion than wounds.” She shook her head. “Rocky indeed! How like my son!”
“The bird’s anger lessened when you spoke of him,” Sir Orin pointed out. “Can the Lord Wizard have aided us even at so great a distance?”
“It would seem so, though I doubt he intended it,” Jimena said.
Then strong arms swept her up in an embrace that crushed the breath from her lungs. “Mi corazon, I feared so when I saw that huge bird plummet toward your wall! Thank Heaven you are safe!” Ramon set her down, gazing deeply into her eyes. “But how did you send the monster away?”
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