The Unwilling Warlord

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “I can’t do it any more,” he said in a breathy whisper.

  Sterren could see, now, that Hamder had completely exhausted himself. He leaned forward and peered at the distant figure of Emner, drifting helplessly above the enemy armies.

  “Maybe the warlock can fetch him back,” he said.

  Hamder had no breath to reply, but he managed a feeble nod.

  Sterren turned and clambered back down the ladder, then headed for the corner where he had last seen the warlock.

  The black-robed Ethsharite was still there, crouched down and muttering to himself. He did not glance up as Sterren approached.

  “We have a problem,” Sterren said. “Emner’s drifting out there, and Hamder’s exhausted.”

  The warlock shook his head, then winced; it was obvious he had another of his headaches. “Get one of the other witches,” he said. “I’ve been experimenting; I can’t move anything as massive as a person, not even when he’s levitating.”

  “They’re busy; are you sure?”

  The warlock looked up at Sterren, then rose to his feet. “Do you have any string?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sterren replied. “Why?”

  “Because if you did, I might be able to lift one end of it up to him, and he could just pull himself in with it. But I know what I can do, and I can’t move him. You’ll need to get one of the other witches.”

  Sterren sighed, and went to get one of the other witches.

  That trick with the string, though—that might be useful. He wanted to remember that.

  He sighed again, remembering the high hopes he had had for his warlock. The fellow was turning out to be pitifully feeble. He could levitate a few pounds at a time, light small fires, open locks—but that was about it, and he was almost constantly sick with his ferocious headaches.

  The headaches worried Sterren somewhat. He had never heard of warlocks getting headaches. Ordinarily, warlocks were the epitome of health and vigor, able to heal themselves, able to obliterate any diseases that attacked them, drawing strength from the Power—at least, until the nightmares started. Even then they stayed physically healthy, except perhaps for some minor adverse effects of not sleeping.

  The nightmares had stopped for this one, but the mysterious headaches might well be worse than the nightmares. Since the headaches had started the warlock even seemed to have more grey in his hair.

  Sterren had heard of warlocks who fled south when the nightmares began, but he had never heard anything about headaches.

  Shenna was back in trance, but Ederd was taking a break, leaning back against a pile of straw. After all, the excitement was over, the explosion had gone off; Shenna could keep an eye on things by herself for the moment.

  “Ederd,” Sterren said, “you’ll have to take over with Emner; Hamder’s worn out.”

  “Is he all right?” Ederd asked, getting quickly to his feet.

  Sterren was not completely sure whether Ederd meant Emner or Hamder, but it didn’t really make much difference. “I think so,” he replied.

  Ederd was already at the ladder and climbing.

  Sterren looked around the interior of the barn.

  Alder and Dogal were sitting on one side, chatting quietly in Semmat. Lady Kalira and Alar were talking nearby. Shenna was sitting cross-legged in the center of the floor, and the warlock was in his corner, leaning against a wall. Annara was doing something with her belt-dagger and a bucket in another corner. Ederd and Hamder were up in the loft, fetching Emner back from scouting mission.

  It was a shame Emner knew no Semmat, and Sterren could not be sure anyone in the castle spoke Ethsharitic or Emner’s native Lamumese; otherwise, he could have used the wizard to establish contact with the besieged Semmans. Nobody else in the party could levitate that far; the witches could, working together, get one of their number a good way off the ground—but only for a very short time, nowhere near long enough to propel him or her all the way to the castle ramparts. The warlock had been able to fly in Ethshar, but here he was unable to lift himself so much as an inch.

  It occurred to Sterren for the first time that he could send written messages back and forth—even if his own Semmat was limited, especially in writing, Lady Kalira was fluent and literate.

  That was something to keep in mind—but then, what would he say in a message? And Hamder had half-killed himself hauling Emner about on his scouting trip; getting him in and out of the castle would be a major project.

  The whole project of winning the war was turning out to be more work than he had hoped. His magicians, while willing enough once they got started, seemed unable to think for themselves, and needed to be told what to do almost every step of the way. He had thought at first that he could turn them loose and sit back and wait for victory, but instead he found himself plotting and planning constantly.

  He wondered why he bothered. He had made his gesture; why didn’t he just pack up and go home to Ethshar?

  There was Lady Kalira, of course, and the three soldiers, who might try to stop him, but he thought that he could slip away if he tried, take a horse—or all the horses, to prevent pursuit and give him something to sell in Akalla to pay for passage—and make a dash for it.

  The longer he stayed here, the more likely he was to be captured or killed outright by the invaders. He wasn’t really doing Semma much good; only one enemy soldier dead so far, after two days!

  There were all those people in the castle depending on him, but how much good could he really do them?

  He thought it over, very seriously, and decided he didn’t know why he was staying.

  Maybe he would flee, in a day or two.

  But not yet.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  He had still not fled by the twenty-first of Midwinter, 5220. In two sixnights of war Sterren and his little band had settled down into a calm routine. Each day, Sterren and the magicians would pick away at the enemy, using whatever stunts and devices they could come up with, while the four Semmans would scout out a new hiding place. Sterren did not think it would be safe to stay in the same place two nights running, and it made the Semmans feel useful.

  He still had just the four Semmans with him. None of them had deserted—if it would have been desertion, under the circumstances—and no one else had turned up who cared to join Sterren’s guerrilla band.

  So far as Sterren knew, no one had been able to slip out of the castle, and if anyone had, he might well have other plans, in any case.

  Occasionally a peasant who had fled when the invaders arrived and taken shelter with friends or relatives not too far away would wander by to see if it was safe to go home, but these people always left immediately once they saw that the invading army was still there. None of them ever volunteered to help Sterren and his crew.

  Sterren got the impression from these strays that most of the peasants who had lived in the village and surrounding farms were now lurking quietly just beyond the horizon, waiting for the war to be over and refusing to get involved with a struggle that they saw as being the aristocrats’ affair and none of their business.

  Lady Kalira denounced them as unpatriotic cowards; Sterren and the three soldiers were less condemnatory. After all, what could a few unarmed peasants do?

  Even the three Semman soldiers weren’t doing much. It was the magicians who were waging the war, and the Semmans did nothing but run errands.

  Annara had become quite expert at the Explosive Seal, and had successfully booby-trapped books, tent-flaps, and even a pair of boots. Actually, she had not ensorcelled the tent-flaps themselves, merely the leather ties that laced them shut. The witches had found it very difficult to put the laces back without disturbing the seals.

  She had not managed to do a saddle; the horse had refused to stay sufficiently still.

  The spell had four noticeable drawbacks.

  First, it took half an hour, and any interruption during that time, Annara insisted, could be disastrous. She needed to be left strictly alone
for the full time. That meant that someone had to stand guard over her, and that she could not be moved quickly if an emergency arose. So far, no emergency had arisen, but Sterren worried about it all the same.

  Second, she had to have whatever she was putting the seal on right there in front of her, which meant that somebody had to steal it away from the enemy, and then put it back again later. Emner and the witches had been able to do this, using Emner’s levitation spell or the witches’ little mind-twisters, but it was very risky, especially when cautiously putting sealed tent-ties back in place.

  Third, the spell required a drop of dragon’s blood for each seal, and Annara had only had a tiny vial of the stuff, perhaps a dozen drops in all. Emner was no help; when asked, he said, “I never use the stuff. None of my spells need it, and it’s so expensive!”

  Sterren knew it was expensive, and was amazed that Annara hadn’t sold hers long ago, but she explained, “With it, and my other things, I’m a wizard and I can work magic. Without my supplies, I’m just another charlatan. And besides, if you hadn’t turned up when you did, I would have sold it. I just wasn’t that desperate yet.”

  Fourth, and finally, the seal was visible. It came out either red or black—Annara was unable to explain why it should be one or the other, rather than always the same, but it seemed to vary at random between the two.

  The seal itself was made of wax, and when Annara used clear beeswax from a supply found in an abandoned kitchen, she was able to enchant the stuff with Eknerwal’s Lesser Invisibility so that the wax could not be seen at all—but even then, the trace of dragon’s blood remained visible, shaped into a strange rune, and nothing could be done to hide it.

  That hadn’t helped the owner of the boots, who started to put them on in the dark and lost his right hand and foot. It hadn’t helped the lieutenant who opened the first book, who had taken the rune to be mere ornament and lost an eye and three fingers, as well as the book. The first enchanted tent-flap laid a soldier up with serious burns from shoulder to fingertip.

  The owner of the second enchanted tent-flap, however, had been more cautious, and had carefully not disturbed the rune. He slipped into his tent from the back, crawling in the mud, and had then taken the tent down entirely and moved it well away from camp before poking at the flap with a stick.

  The resulting explosion burned the tent to ash, but injured no one.

  After that, the enemy knew what to look for, and the use of the Explosive Seal changed somewhat. Annara no longer bothered with the Lesser Invisibility, and instead of seriously trying to injure anyone, she put the seal in places where it would have maximum nuisance value.

  For example, with all three witches standing guard, convincing the few late-night passersby that Annara either wasn’t there or had every right to be there performing her arcane ritual, she sealed the wheel of a water-cart to its axle hub. The seal blew the wheel off, terrifying the horses, when it came time to haul the next load.

  The warlock pointed out that one of the witches could have done the same damage with a hammer, but Sterren thought the demoralizing effect was worth the special effort.

  He took the hint, though, and later sent the witches around breaking spokes and cutting ropes.

  The Ksinallionese army’s financial records were found with a seal on them, and a messenger was sent home to fetch another copy, since no way could be found to open them without incinerating them.

  Two more tents were sealed and had to be taken down and detonated.

  All in all, Annara was earning her keep. So were the witches who helped her.

  Emner, with his levitation spell, had provided excellent scouting reports, locating the enemy’s headquarters tents and counting the soldiers present (which turned out to be about three hundred, not the full four hundred and fifty). He had stunned a few sentries when the witches needed a distraction, and had made life miserable for a few of the enemy for several hours by enchanting a cockroach to sing “Spices in the Hold,” an old sea chanty, loudly and off-key for hours on end. That had only stopped when one of the soldiers, more by luck than skill, stamped on the roach.

  That the roach was dead, Emner explained, made no difference, as far as Galger’s Singing Spell was concerned, but a hard tap on the enchanted object was the signal to stop. If somebody happened to step on the dead insect again later, it would start singing again.

  Unfortunately, nobody happened to step on the dead roach.

  In addition to helping the wizards, the witches had pulled off several little tricks of their own. Shenna had spoiled a hundredweight of meat and a wagonload of vegetables, so that at least for a few days the besiegers ate less than the besieged. Sentries had acquired the habit of disappearing, and turning up dead in entirely the wrong place—so much so that for the last three nights there had been no sentries at all.

  Only one water-cart’s load had been poisoned; Shenna found it to be far more difficult than she had thought. Furthermore, the result had a discernable odor and a nasty taste, so that no one would take more than a tiny sip before spitting the stuff out.

  The warlock had not worked closely with the others. He preferred to slip away by himself and pick off random enemy soldiers. He did not need them to be nearby and isolated, as the witches did. Also, where the witches’ victims turned up strangled or stabbed, the warlock’s simply fell over dead, without warning, without a mark on them, in the midst of their friends and companions.

  This had created a good deal of near-panic. The witches reported picking up snatches of conversations about curses and demons.

  Unfortunately, the enemy officers had not allowed this to get out of hand. They had even launched a counter-propaganda campaign, arguing that this demonic activity indicated that the evil Semman king had joined forces with powers of darkness and had to be stopped, now, before he became more powerful.

  The success of this argument was in doubt, but as yet the invading army seemed to be holding up. Sterren had no reports of desertion or mutiny.

  There were certainly casualties, though. All in all, Sterren counted forty-one dead and seven injured among the enemy as a direct result of the magicians’ efforts, and in addition they had created considerable disorder. He was pleased. Forty-eight men were a significant part of the besieging army—and Sterren had not lost a single person! His people had been spotted, on occasion, but so far they had always escaped.

  He had managed to establish communication with the inhabitants of Semma Castle, too. Although the warlock could not lift or push a person that far, and the witches could only do so by utterly exhausting their reserves, the warlock could, and did, send messages written on parchment sailing over the enemy’s encirclement and into the castle, to drop into the courtyard there.

  In reply, the people in the castle would run a green banner up on the west ramparts, and hang their own message beneath it on a string. The warlock could usually retrieve this without too much trouble.

  Thus, Sterren knew that the castle’s inhabitants were far from comfortable. They were horribly overcrowded, as over a hundred peasants had taken shelter within the walls when the invaders arrived, in addition to the usual dense population—and those peasants also added heavily to the food consumption, of course, since none of them had brought any significant amounts of food with them.

  Fortunately, the winter stores had been safely inside the walls when the invaders came. Even with all the additional mouths to feed, the castle had plenty of food and water, enough for at least another month.

  In addition to the crowding and worry attendant upon any siege, the attackers had siege machines in use that dropped flaming bundles into the castle every so often, and at other times hurled heavy stones through windows or even through roofs. The stable in the western courtyard had been burned to the ground one night when a watchman dozed off at his post. A dozen windows had been smashed, and holes punched through three roofs. Five people had been killed outright, a score injured, and a great many were ill—overcrowding made isolati
on impractical and hygiene more difficult, and diseases of various sorts were getting out of hand. Lice were a nuisance, too.

  Sterren’s three officers were apparently unable to organize a very coherent defense, and any thought of a sortie was abandoned when they could not agree on who would lead it.

  That, somehow, did not surprise Sterren in the least.

  And finally, the enemy was trying to undermine the castle walls, and the defenders could not agree on what to do about it. A few hastily-trained Semman archers had forced the attackers to stay under shelter, but that was easy enough, given the village outside the gate; crude galleries had been built connecting some of the houses and shops, so that enemy sappers could approach without exposing themselves to arrows.

  With all this in mind, on this particular day, the twenty-first of Midwinter, Sterren had resolved that it was time to do something about the siege machines. The sappers were a more serious problem in the long term, but the siege machines would be easier to get at, and were doing more harm to the morale of the besieged.

  Their shelter, at the moment, was a partially-burned farmhouse to the northeast of the castle, and it was there, on the morning of the twenty-first, that Sterren gathered his entire band into a circle on the floor of the main room.

  “Emner,” he said, “tell me about their siege machines.”

  Emner shrugged. “What can I tell you? They’re siege machines.”

  Sterren glared. “How many are there? What kinds? Where are they?”

  Emner coughed, embarrassed. “Oh,” he said. “Well, I’d say they have about half a dozen in all, mostly trebuchet catapults, but also a mounted ram. The ram’s in the village; the others are arranged in a ring around the castle, spaced out pretty evenly.”

  “What’s a trebuchet?” Annara asked. Sterren was pleased—partly because it meant she was paying attention, but mostly because now he didn’t need to ask himself, and show how little he knew.

  “Well, it’s like a big lever on a frame; there’s a heavy weight on one end, usually a big box filled with rocks, and on the other end is a sling. There’s a rope attached to the sling end, and the rope winds around a drum at the bottom of the frame. You wind the rope around the drum, and it pulls the sling down and the weight-box up. You load whatever you want to throw into the sling, release the rope, the weight falls, and whap, the sling flies up and throws whatever you put in it. Depending on what weight you use, it can toss up to, oh, three hundred pounds, I’d say, over a castle wall from safely outside archery range. Anything heavier than that and the frame’s likely to break.”