“Perhaps,” Papa said, “but they will find they have much less strength than that to which they have become accustomed.” He told her where the real power behind the throne had been coming from, and how Matt had gone to shut it off.
“We must go to save him!” Mama cried.
But Papa shook his head. “He must have won, or we would not have triumphed here.”
“But so much more time passes here than there!”
“Yes,” Papa said. “A whole night has passed, in this universe—weeks, since I left Matthew. Our son has either won or lost—and if he had lost, I doubt that we could have conquered the Moors’ magic.”
“There is sense in that,” Mama said, frowning.
“Besides,” Papa said, “he had the help of a good woman.” And he told her about Lakshmi.
Mama eyed him sidelong. “Was Matthew the only one with whom this female of the djinn was infatuated?”
“She seemed to feel I would be an acceptable substitute,” Papa admitted, “but I explained her error.”
Mama had seen how Papa had made such explanations in the past. She smiled, feeling very smug, and turned to look out over the battlefield, leaning her head against his shoulder again. “It is amazing how many friends our son has made here. He was never so popular at home.”
“He has found the world that is right for him, my dear,” Papa said, “and perhaps right for us, too.”
“So it would seem,” Mama agreed, “and his friends are such excellent people.”
“Most admirable,” Papa agreed. He beamed down into Mama’s eyes and added, “I think they like us, too.”
The next day, they rode off between Sir Guy and Rinaldo. Back atop the city’s wall, Saul eyed the thousands and thousands of Moorish prisoners roaming their invisible cage restlessly, and wished he hadn’t been quite so cavalier about letting Mama go. “Well, it’s up to you and me now, Sir Gilbert.”
“Indeed it is, Witch Doctor.” The Moncairean didn’t seem at all distressed about it. “Can your magic bring food for this many?”
“Oh, sure,” Saul said, then frowned in thought. “Might have a bad effect on market prices in Morocco, though.”
In the shelter of a low, wide-spreading tree atop a hill, Alisande watched the Mahdi’s troops file out of the mountain pass. She couldn’t see individual people at that distance, of course—just a moving, multicolored stream that glittered in the sun. It would have seemed pretty if she hadn’t known the glitter came from steel, polished by honing and use.
“How long, Majesty?” Lord Gautier asked.
“When their vanguard nears this mount, milord,” Alisande answered. She turned her head a little, listening to horses stamping restlessly in the grove behind the hill. “Tell the squires to be sure their masters’ horses do not neigh as the Moors come nigh.”
Lord Gautier nodded at his own squire, who left to tell the others.
Alisande frowned, raising a hand to shade her eyes and squinting. “What is that flicker of white so high on the mountain above them?”
Matt’s apprentice wizard peered, then shrugged. “It could only be a sorcerer who stands ready to defend them, and I am loath to use magic that might make him aware of our presence.”
“Then do not,” Alisande directed. “Our only strength is in surprise.”
They waited impatiently, suspense building as the Moorish column inched closer. Here and there in the fields, peasants bent double with mattock and hoe, but looked up at the invaders, or at the little hill, then turned back to their work again. A perceptive man might have noticed that there was a tremendous number of peasants tilling the earth in this region, but that person would have had to know both agriculture and this province very well, and the Mahdi had been a shepherd in semi-arid hill country. Besides, peasants were as much a part of the landscape as bushes or cattle—no one really noticed them except other peasants, and officers rarely listened to troopers.
On the Moors came, and when their vanguard was perhaps two hundred yards from the hill, Alisande snapped, “We ride!” She turned her warhorse to make its way down the back of the hill to her knights. A surge of yearning struck, yearning to have her husband beside her, protecting her with his magic, but she thrust it down.
She reined in before her troops and shouted, “Charge!,” then waved her troops on in one circling movement that ended with spurring her horse. The Percheron turned and rumbled into faster motion, gathering speed as it moved from walk to trot to canter.
Behind her, the phalanx of knights followed, shushing each other.
Out from behind the hill Alisande burst, kicking her horse up to a gallop and leveling her lance.
“The queen rides out by herself!” Lord Gautier cried. “After her, quickly! She must not come to the Moors alone!”
The other knights answered with a shout and spurred their warhorses. They ran flat-out, lances level and unwavering, racing one another to catch up with the queen and protect her with their bodies.
In the fields, the peasants looked up and saw the rider in advance of the others with golden hair flying out from beneath her helmet. They dropped their mattocks and threw off their tunics, then caught up the pikes and halberds they had hidden in the furrows and charged the line of Moors in desperate silence, as their queen had ordered them.
The Moors saw the knights coming—and never thought to look at the peasants in the fields. They set up a wild ululation and kicked their horses into a charge.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Moors, with their lighter armor and more agile horses, tried to swing wide to catch the knights from the sides—but the road fell into a ditch on one side and rose sharply into the hillside on the other. Funneled into staying on the road, lightly armored Moors rode against veritable human tanks, howling with rage at the trick, never thinking to flee or shrink.
Fifty feet from their leader, Alisande shouted her war cry, “For God, St. Moncaire, and St. Iago!”
“St. Moncaire!” the knights echoed.
The Moors called upon Allah to witness their valor and rode harder.
The two armies met with a crash. A few knights fell, but their comrades crushed hundreds of Moors in front of them, up against the hillsides, down into the ditch—where “peasants” coming up from the fields struck down hard with their pikes, and Moorish warriors died screaming with the Name on their lips. The peasants vaulted the ditch and struck into the Moorish army.
Too late, the Moors realized the trap and turned to repel the “peasants”—but they were packed too tightly to fight well; their scimitars needed room. The defenders, though, jabbed and stabbed with their pikes and halberds. Someone began to sing Sir Guy’s war song, and the troopers who came running down the hillside joined in as they struck and struck again, hardened pikes ramming through boiled-leather armor and stabbing unarmored horses:
“Ran! Tan! Terre et ciel!
Terre et ciel, et sang vermeil!
Ran! Tan! Fer et feu!
Fer et feu, et sang impure!
Vive le vin Gaulois!”
“Ran! Tan! Earth and sky!
Vermillion blood, and earth and sky!
Ran! Tan! Iron and fire!
Tainted blood, and iron and fire!
Hail the wine of Gaul!”
Chanting, Alisande’s army hewed its way through the wall of Moors.
At the head of the column, Alisande did the best she could to hew, too, but Lord Gautier and his knights were always there before her. The Moors, who could ordinarily dance rings around the “Franks,” were packed too tightly to do more than try to render blow for blow. The heavier swords and axes of the knights cleaved through the lighter Moorish armor and left a wake of blood as they churned through to the center of the army, and the commander.
Suddenly they were there. Tafas bin Daoud sat waiting on his horse with buckler on one arm and scimitar in the other hand, a comely youth flanked by grizzled, grim veterans. The knights halted, awed by his self-possession, by the sheer cha
risma of the Mahdi.
Alisande rode out between her courtiers and reined in her horse, amazed by her opponent’s youth. She swung up her visor out of courtesy to a gallant foe.
Tafas inclined his head in respect. “Your Majesty, our hour has come.”
“It need not,” Alisande returned, touched and stricken by the thought of having to strike down a man so young. “I am loath to smite you, boy.”
Tafas’ eyes flashed at the term, but he remained all courtesy. “And I am loath to strike a woman, especially one so fair—but it seems I must.”
“Not at all,” Alisande returned. “You may yet withdraw your armies to Morocco.”
But Tafas shook his head and raised his blade in salute. “I am Tafas bin Daoud of the Rif, and I pray that you may surrender to Allah before the life leaves your body.”
“I am Alisande of Merovence,” the queen returned. “I commend my soul to Christ, and pray that He will grant you the grace to believe in Him and seek baptism ere you die, so that He may receive your soul into Heaven this day.”
Tafas inclined his head again. “I thank you for your good wishes, Your Majesty. Now defend yourself!”
In the mountains behind them, the sorcerer in white gestured and chanted, then cried out in anger as the power he sought to command deserted him.
Tafas howled his ululating war cry and spurred his horse into a gallop, scimitar swinging high.
Someone pressed a lance into Alisande’s hand. She kicked her horse into motion, crying, “For Merovence and Ibile!”
She charged at Tafas, lance level, a ton of force focused on that point—but the Moor danced aside at the last second, chopping down at her lance arm with a blade of Toledo steel. It glanced off the finest armor Merovence could boast and chopped into the lance itself instead. Tafas wrenched it out, almost pulled off his horse by Alisande’s momentum, and the queen reined in. Moors scattered before her, but not one sought to interfere between Queen and Mahdi, nor did a single one of her knights. All understood that this must be a battle of the two commanders.
Tafas rode madly at Alisande’s back, but she managed to turn her horse in time—as he had planned, for his stroke slashed down even as her gaze fell upon him. But Alisande had turned her horse counterclockwise, so that it was her shield at which he swung. The Moorish blade slid off it. Tafas recovered and swung his blade high again, but Alisande’s own sword flashed out, and the Mahdi had to abort his own stroke to turn and take her blow on his buckler.
For a moment, they circled one another, swords raised, each seeking an opening. Then Alisande struck, and sword rang on scimitar, blows rained on shield and helmet. At last the two opponents drew back, both breathing heavily, both wary and watching for the slightest opening—but neither bleeding from even the slightest wound.
The knights and Moors shouted with joy. Slowly, the footmen stopped their slaughter, turning to watch.
Tafas slashed at Alisande’s waist, and her shield moved too slowly; one hip plate fell, its thongs cut through. The Moors shouted at this sign of victory, and Tafas galloped around Alisande’s horse with blinding speed. She tried to turn with him, to keep her shield between them, but he came up on her right, feinted high, then struck low, at the joint exposed by the lost plate. Alisande dropped her point as quickly as he slashed, though, parrying, then stabbing at him so quickly that he couldn’t lean aside fast enough, and a trail of blood gleamed on his cheek.
The knights of Merovence roared approval; the cavalry of Morocco shouted in rage.
Tafas drew back, face darkening in anger, but he knew the score was even again—his cut was equal to Alisande’s lost plate. Then he leaped his horse forward, blade slashing and circling too fast for eye to follow, until it stabbed straight at Alisande’s eye-slits. But the queen ducked at the last moment and the scimitar glanced ringing off her helmet. She came up stabbing, and Tafas barely managed to drop his buckler in time to deflect her sword—but it scored a long groove in his breastplate.
Both sides were shouting so constantly now that neither Mahdi nor queen could hear their own strokes. They circled each other, gasping in hoarse gulps and wearying, each seeking an opening, neither finding any.
Then Tafas shouted, “O Nirobus! Grant me power now, I pray, that I may strike down this enemy of Islam!” He held his scimitar high, waiting.
Alisande stared, spellbound by the action, dread creeping over her as she waited for magic to strike. Then she recovered, realizing what an opportunity Tafas had given her, and struck at his undefended side.
Tafas swept his scimitar down with a cry of dismay, barely managing to parry. “Nirobus! Why do you desert me now?”
He was meat for her cleaving, Alisande realized, weakened by fatigue and now by despair—and if she could just summon the energy to strike, she could finish him with one blow.
She tried to lift her arm, but she was just too weary.
On the road half a mile away, Mama suddenly straightened in her saddle. “Ramón! She needs us!”
“Sir Guy!” Papa cried. “We must race!”
“No!” Mama held up her hand, then caught his. “We will come too late! It is energy she needs now, not an army!” Her eyes glazed and she chanted in Spanish, then went limp.
So did Papa. He felt suddenly weary. He hoped his strength had saved his daughter-in-law.
Energy suddenly gushed through her. Alisande swung her sword up with a cry of triumph and slashed at the Mahdi. The scimitar went flying from his hand.
The Moorish knights shouted in anger and started to move in—then froze as they saw the queen’s sword, unwavering, fixed directly before the Mahdi’s eyes.
“I charge you yield, my lord,” Alisande panted, “and all your army with you.”
“I cannot,” Tafas said, pale and taut. “Strike.”
A shout went up, Merovencian troopers pointing out across the fields. Alisande spared a quick glance and saw men in European livery running across the furrows toward the rear of the Moorish army.
“It is the King of Ibile!” Lord Gautier cried. “King Rinaldo rides!”
“Your army is half of what it was, my lord,” Alisande panted, “between those you have sent to Bordestang, and those we have slain this day. Now another army charges down upon you, and they have little cause for chivalry. I charge you yield, not you alone or for yourself alone, but for all your men, that they may live!”
“Any soldier of Allah who dies in war wakes in Paradise,” Tafas said through stiff lips.
Alisande could have screamed in frustration. How could she show mercy if the Moors would not surrender?
Then inspiration struck. “But who will defend Morocco, my lord? The knights of Ibile shall lead their army across the Strait, and Islam shall lose a province! I charge you yield, for the sake of your faith.”
Tafas’ glance was full of bitterness and anger, but he opened his mouth...
And a dust-devil boiled up between their horses, boiled up to the shoulders of their mounts, pulled in on itself, and was gone—but Matt stood there, dressed in strange loose clothing, looking about him in surprise with a strange little man, similarly dressed, clinging to him and moaning, and another fellow, even more outlandishly dressed, at his feet. For a split second, Alisande thought she saw a strangely dressed woman behind them, arms about their shoulders, but it must have been a trick of the light. In joy, she cried “Matthew!” even as she fought her horse, which tried to rear in panic.
So did Tafas’ mount, but he reined it in, snatching his dagger from his belt and crying, “Islam!” But the dagger fell—he was too exhausted to hold it up.
Matt looked up, smiling in sympathy. “Tired? I’m afraid there won’t be any extra energy flowing into you—I just closed off its source.” Then he blew his wife a kiss, but instantly turned back to keep his eye on the enemy.
Alisande fought to keep her sword still—that one kiss threatened to turn her to jelly inside. Matthew was beside her after all!
“Lord Wizard,” the
little man said, “she brought Groldor with us!”
Matt looked down, then caught the fallen man by the collar with a cry of satisfaction. He scanned the line of Moors for a moment, then strode off purposefully toward a man in a purple turban, dragging Groldor behind him. Alisande cried out in alarm, but Matt only threw Groldor at the other’s feet. “So you’re the chief battle-sorcerer, huh? How’s the magic working lately?”
The Moor stared at him in speechless fury.
“Not too well, huh?” Matt said sympathetically. “Recognize this one?”
The Moor looked down and his face went pale. “It is...” Then he clamped his jaw shut.
“It’s Groldor, the sorcerer who was supposed to feed you the life energy of young men and young women he ensnared with his drug of enchanted salt,” Matt snapped. “There won’t be any more deliveries. I canceled his spell, and him with it.”
The Moor raised his arm, trembling with anger and shouting a verse in Arabic, then snapped his forefinger down to point at Matt.
Nothing happened.
“A cockroach?” Tafas cried, astonished. “Why would you wish to turn him into a cockroach?”
“The easier to crush, my lord,” Matt said, gaze still on the sorcerer.
Alisande fought down a surge of fear for her husband—after all, the danger had passed before she’d known what it was—and glared at Tafas, raising her sword again. “Once more I charge you yield, my lord, not out of fear or despair, but in the sure knowledge that your strength is gone.”
“She’s right,” Matt said, “and it’s because you’re fighting against people who are devoted to goodness.”
“We of Islam are even more certainly devoted to Good!”
“You are,” Matt agreed, “and you thought you fought with the might of the Lord to strengthen your arm—but I have learned that you were deceived, my lord, most grievously deceived, and all your people with you.”
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