" 'Tis only a question of tactics," Fadecourt confirmed, "and it may be that confronting eight thousand knights and soldiers directly is not the wisest of courses. You will come to the king more quickly by going around his army."
"But we can't leave allies unaided," Matt argued, "and there have to be a lot of soldiers inside, too."
"All that means is that they'll go through their supplies faster!" Narlh snapped.
Fadecourt shook his head. "They have river water to drink, and so vasty a keep could hold provisions for a siege of a year and more."
" 'Could' has a kind of chancy sound to it..."
"Oh, I doubt not they were well enough supplied at the beginning of the siege." Fadecourt frowned down at the churned mud before the walls. "Yet from the condition of that camp, I would conjecture that beginning was many months agone."
"It does explain why the king hasn't been working a little harder at hunting us down, though." Matt scowled at the army. "How much of his force is tied up here, Fadecourt?"
"Most of it, at a guess. He would have a thousand or so to guard Orlequedrille, and another thousand to maintain his will over his barons, as we saw at the duke's castle. But nine-tenths of his army is here."
Matt nodded. "Must be a mighty important enemy in there, to rate so much force." He turned to the glowing ghost mouth. "The Black Knight is in there, isn't he? Sir Guy de Toutarien?"
The rest of the head became visible and nodded.
"You trying to tell us this friend of yours is bigger magic than we know?" Narlh growled.
"Only in war," Puck put in. "Yet in battle, he does indeed have some sort of magic—and it is mighty, very mighty."
The monster glared down at him. "What makes you the expert?"
"Why," the elf said, "this Black Knight is almost as much a part of the land as I."
"We cannot let so great a force for good be slain out of hand," Fadecourt rumbled. "But what can we do, wizard?"
"Not much, out here. Inside, who knows? Maybe a lot, maybe nothing...No, strike that. From what I'm seeing here, Sir Guy hasn't learned how to persuade Max to do his utmost—he didn't really have the basic concepts, you see, thought entropy was a magic word..."
"It is not?"
"Whatever. But if I get in there, at the very least I can show him how to manage Max—or do it myself. The problem is to get inside, where we can join forces." Matt turned to Puck. "All right, I'm asking for another favor. I need something to distract the soldiers, really distract them, while we sneak through their ranks and up to the castle. Think you can do it?"
"I?" Puck looked up, startled. "Unaided? Wizard, you know not what you ask!"
"Sure, I do. I'm asking for, oh, an itching powder. Guaranteed, surefire, likely to drive a man mad if he doesn't scratch—but totally harmless. Think you can make it?"
"I?" Puck's grin was as much disbelief as anything else. "I, make folk to itch? Can an elephant mash grapes? But what use would it be, Wizard?"
"Use?" Matt stared. "It'd get them so busy scratching, they couldn't stop us sneaking past them!"
"For a hundred men, certes. For a thousand, mayhap. For ten thousand? Surely not!" The elf looked at Matt with exasperation. "Canst not see, Wizard?"
"Nay," Fadecourt rumbled. " 'Tis not his function, but mine. He is a mighty wizard, but in the ways of war, he has no more vision than a babe—or than I have in things magical." He stepped up between them. "Among so many knights, Wizard, there will surely be at least a score who will suffer anything for duty."
"Hey, these are evil knights we're talking about—"
"They will sacrifice all, for advantage—and the chevalier who captures you, let alone the lady here, will gain great preference in the king's eyes. Nay, as we wend our way through that host, there will be one at least, and more likely a dozen, who will ignore that itch, though it drive them to the brink of insanity. For they will see that it must needs be a wizard's diversion—and will suffer gladly, to apprehend such strangers as they see going past to the castle." He turned to Puck for confirmation.
The elf nodded. "What you have need of, Wizard, is not a distraction alone, but the army to follow it to advantage—and to clear you a road to that drawbridge."
Matt threw up his hands. "Great. All I have to do is conjure up ten thousand good soldiers and knights, and I can get us in." He frowned at a sudden thought. "I might be able to manage a thousand and one—but no, they'd be Arabian, and they might not be feeling too kindly toward Europeans just now." He shook his head. "Same kind of problem with any other knights I might conjure up—how long would it take to explain to them what was going on and persuade them to join us? Because, see, I can't make soldiers out of nothing—that's creating, and only God can do that. All I can do is move people from the place where they are to here—and you'll understand that they'd be a little confused when they arrived."
"You do not need so many," Fadecourt protested. "We seek to pass through the army, not crush it. A hundred would suffice—if they were excellent warriors, and fired with a zeal for the good."
"And the just, and the beautiful?" Matt eyed him with skepticism. "And just where am I supposed to find so many excellent and selfless fighters, pray tell?"
He looked from one puzzled, abstracted face to another, feeling a streak of vindication—till he got to Puck, and saw the canary-feather grin on the elf's face. He sighed, feeling vindication slide away. "All right, Puck, I'll owe you—what is it, favor number five? Who's the superwarrior?"
"Who else but my namesake?" Puck spread his hands. "I am Robin Goodfellow, and he is..."
"Oh, no." Matt squeezed his eyes shut. "He didn't happen in this universe, too, did he?"
"Aye," Puck said, "and in every earth in which good folk are oppressed by wicked rulers."
Yverne looked from one to the other, at a loss, but Fadecourt was a little better versed in military lore. "Do you speak of Robin Hood?"
"You have said it!" Puck crowed, pointing at the cyclops. "The very one! Nay, Wizard, how can you deny the truth of it, when even your ally speaks it?"
Matt threw up his hands. "All right, so Robin Hood would be ideal! I can't deny it, if even half of the stunts he pulled against the Sheriff of Nottingham were true. But wouldn't it be a little inconvenient if I tried to bring him here? I mean, Robin Hood's back at the time of Richard Coeur de Lion—or long before, since Scott admitted error."
Puck shrugged. "You may as well say, "long after' if you speak of the man who gave the slip so often to the foresters of Edward III."
"That's still 'the old days,' where we are today. Wouldn't he be a little dead by now?"
"Oh, nay!" Puck laughed. "Brave Robin die? It cannot be. Whene'er the people of England groan under the hand of a tyrant, Robin's spirit will inspire those who fight in opposition. Mind you, he was "Brave Robin' when the Saxons strove against the Danes, and Robert Fitz-Ooth, and Willikin o' the Weald, and many names before even that."
Matt frowned. "You trying to tell me that Robin was always supernatural?"
"Nay, he began as a living man—but when his body should have aged, we elvin folk laid an enchantment on him, and a geas—that he defend the poor for all of England's days. He and his band will never die, though they move from one plane of existence to another."
Matt frowned. If "plane of existence" meant "alternate universe," it made sense—but how could Robin and his merry men move from one world to another?
How had he moved from one to another? He scolded himself; by this time, he should have recognized a quibble when he came to one.
"After all," Puck said, "I allied with bold Robin only...umm, was it a century ago, or two? A band of evil men sought to imprison England under rails of steel, for snorting monsters to scurry o'er. I could not act 'gainst Cold Iron myself, so I found need to call on Robin. He and his men made short work of those iron dragons, I promise you."
Inside, Matt shuddered. The Industrial Revolution, brought to a halt by an outlaw band from the greenwood,
with Puck's magic behind them? He found the notion very easy to believe. After all, as a scholar, he knew that the legend that had grown up around Jesse James owed far more to the Robin Hood ballads than it did to fact. "That's all very well, but how do we get him here?"
Puck shrugged. "Who but now spoke of moving folk from one place to another?"
Matt pressed his lips thin, biting down on words of exasperation. "Look. If I could send people between universes, I would have sent myself back where I came from, a long time
Puck glanced at him keenly. "Would you indeed?"
There it was, that nasty knack other people had for making Matt confront himself. "All right, already! So as long as Alisande is here, I won't go back to my home "plane of existence'!" With emphasis on the "plain," he had to admit—in his home universe, he'd been just one more scholar in a market overstocked with Ph.D.s. Here, he belonged. Maybe even if Alisande hadn't been here...
"What's he talking about?" Narlh demanded. "Can you make people go back and forth between worlds, or something?"
"That's what it boils down to." Matt heaved a sigh. "But if I have to admit that, I have to admit that I really wanted to come to this universe, Puck. And the corollary is that you can't move anyone out of his own universe against his will. What're the chances that Robin would be willing to come?"
"Do you jest?" Puck demanded. "When there is, here, a ruler who not only is wicked in word and deed, but has fully dedicated himself to evil? A ruler who does encourage his soldiers and vassals to rapine, plunder, and murder of the common folk? A ruler who grinds all into squalor and hunger? Tell that to Robin, and see if you can prevent his coming!"
"I think the forces separating the universes would do that. Okay, so he'll want to come if I tell him what's going on. How do we get word to him?"
"Sing of him," Puck suggested. "That will show me the way to him, where he bides at a moment corresponding to this, and I shall go to him and tell to him the plight that we are in. Then do you summon him, and be ready."
"All right, let's see how much of the Robin Hood ballads I can remember..."
The companions grew silent while Matt pondered. Then he began to intone a low chant:
"Once more the knights to battle go
With sword and spear and lance,
Till once, once more the baleful foe
Will face new circumstance,
For Robin and his Merry Men
Will turn the tide of chance."
"I have it!" Puck cried, and disappeared.
So much for step one. Matt took a deep breath, trying to ignore his trepidation, and waved his companions back as he recited,
"In summer time, when leaves grow greene,
And flowers are fresh and gay,
Then Robin Hood he deckt his men
Each one in brave array.
When they were in Lincoln greene,Save Will Scarlet in red,They took their bows and arrows keen,And to Ibile they sped."
The air along the trail thickened with more than dusk. Matt began to notice an earthy aroma, compounded of fallen leaves and late-flowering plants, of small animals and musky deer...
"He has come," Puck's voice said in his ear.
And he had. The thickening air coalesced, and a whole troop of bowmen filled the trackway. Feathered arrows lanced up from quivers, feathers adorned hats, hoods shielded faces. A few rows back, one lithe young man clothed in glaring red leaned upon a quarterstaff; farther on, a slender, handsome blond man had a bow on his back, but carried a lute before him. Near the front was a short, round man in a monk's robe. He might have had a tonsure, but Matt couldn't tell, because he was wearing a leather cap reinforced by steel cross-straps—and that staff he was carrying could have been a pilgrim's staff, but Matt suspected he knew how to use it as something else.
And in the front stood a woman as tall as Matt was, whose demure tan gown and brown bodice and kirtle couldn't hide the bulging muscles underneath.
Matt felt an eldritch prickling creep over his shoulders and up the back of his head. Could that be Maid Marian?
It had to be, because the man next to her exuded a magnetism, a charisma, that instantly drew Matt's attention and made him want to ask for orders on the spot. Somehow, he had instant, total faith in this man and knew that, with him leading, they couldn't possibly lose.
By twentieth-century standards, Robin Hood was a short, round-faced man with a mustache, maybe five-feet-four-inches tall—but he was broad-shouldered, deep-chested, and muscular, and the eyes in that round face were glowing with the joy of life and anticipation of battle. And his mild smile expanded into a reckless grin.
Behind him, the "giant" towering over the rest of the band wasn't much over six feet—Little John? Matt felt the prickle renew itself—but he still stood a head taller than the rest, most of whom were only five and a half feet high.
"Good e'en," said the man with the mustache. "Are you the wizard Matthew?"
"Uh—yes, I am." Could he actually be talking with Robin Hood? "These are my companions—Fadecourt, and the Lady Yverne—and don't let the big one fool you, he may look ferocious, but he's on our side, his name's Narlh..." Matt realized he was running off at the mouth and stopped.
Robin bowed in response to Fadecourt's bow and Yverne's curtsy. Matt, meanwhile, was noticing that Marian had a face of stunning beauty, no matter what her physique...He wrenched himself back to the matter at hand. "And I think you know Puck..."
"Aye, but not by that name." Robin Hood winked at Robin Goodfellow. "He is a staunch ally, and a merry one."
"I'd have to agree, even if he does insist on having his favors paid back."
"Paid back?" Robin frowned, and might have said more if he hadn't noticed Puck's shushing motions. Instead, he said, "He tells me that you are sworn to overthrow a brutal monarch who does grind his people into the dirt."
Matt might have known Puck would state it in a very colorful style. "Yes, though I should have realized what I was getting myself into. And at the moment, most of the king's forces are besieging that castle down there. They have a good friend of mine, who's a very powerful fighter, penned up in there, and I think that we can break him out—but only if I'm on the inside with him."
Robin was nodding. "Much as Puck did say. And you do think that, with us to aid you, you can cut through that force?" He indicated the army in the valley below with a negligent toss of his head.
"Yes—if Puck does his part." Matt noticed that Maid Marian and Yverne were already chatting like old pals and wondered about it—but they did come from similar backgrounds..."Does that seem, uh, a little unrealistic to you? I mean, altogether, we can't number more than a hundred or so..."
"An hundred twenty-three, with you and your friends. It will suffice." Robin grinned.
"Suffice? Look, at a guess, there are ten thousand men down there...
"Only a thousand of whom will be anywhere near us—and the Goodfellow assures me that most of those will be mad with itching. Fear not, Lord Wizard—our bows are strung, and our quivers are full."
"Well, yes—but are you sure they won't be empty before you come to the drawbridge?"
Robin seemed to become more serious, but his eyes still gleamed with amusement. "Our quivers are ever full, no matter how many arrows we shoot." He clapped a hand on Matt's shoulder. "Be of good heart, Lord Wizard—we shall prevail." He looked straight into Matt's eyes, and somehow, Matt was totally certain they'd come through to the castle intact.
Then Robin turned away, and the conviction faded a bit. "Always full?" Matt muttered. "I thought magicians had a monopoly on magic in this universe!"
"Not on the magic that is inherent in the being," Puck countered. "Could yon dracogriff fly in your world? Could he even exist?"
"Well, no," Matt admitted, "not a hybrid between a bird and a reptile, no..."
"Yet in this world, 'tis possible—but even in being, it is magical. Thus you may be sure that Robin and his men have quivers ever full, no matter how many arrows t
hey may loose. After all, have you ever heard of their running out?"
"Now that you mention it..."
"Or of their fletching more arrows?"
"Not really. But what if a bowstring snaps?"
Puck dismissed the notion with a wave. "An unlikely thing—yet were it to hap, there would ever be fresh strings in their pouches."
"Fantastic!"
"Is it not? But then, do they not draw their strength from the fantasies of the common folk?"
"I don't know," Matt muttered. "Do they?"
Robin came back up to Matt. "We are ready, Lord Wizard."
Matt's stomach sank. To ignore it, he said, "Uh...Puck assures me you really do never run out of arrows, or bowstrings..."
" 'Tis even so." The glint of amusement showed in Robin Hood's eye again.
"How do you manage that? I mean, is there a spell you say just before action, or...
Robin Hood cut him off with a shrug. "I ken not, Lord Wizard, though I doubt not your interest. Yet for me and mine—why ask? That is simply the way of it. Come now, to battle."
"Uh—right" Matt looked around. "I'm afraid I didn't come properly prepared for this expedition. Would you have an extra quarterstaff?"
"Do not heed him," Fadecourt said to Robin Hood, then turned to Matt. "And do not heed yourself. Do you think there will be no sorcerers there, who seek to undo Puck's spell? Do you think there will be no wicked magi, 'gainst whose spells we would be as children?"
"All right, all right." Matt sighed "I'll stick to my last." He whipped the wand out of his belt "En garde! Away, 'gainst the Army of Evil!"
Dusk was fading into night as Puck, standing on a boulder, made a few gestures reminiscent of small life-forms with many legs, scuttling and climbing about, as he chanted something in a language Matt couldn't understand; it seemed to be mostly squeaking and squealing. But it was very effective; Matt could almost see invisible creepies crawling about, just beyond Puck's fingertips. Maybe he had a closer association with them than Matt knew.
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