A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

by T. Kingfisher

  The kicks also meant that the owners of those weapons had all just taken a high-velocity barrel to the torso and were mostly out of commission.

  There was a brief pause while the Carex tried to figure out what to do next, while staying out of the way of our archers. A semi-circle of clear ground formed in front of the gate.

  I took the opportunity to slump against the battlements. The magical weight that I seemed to be carrying around got a lot heavier when the fighting started. Even the loss of a couple more bad cookies sometime during the battle couldn’t balance it out. I felt like I was trying to jog uphill carrying a backpack full of rocks.

  Aunt Tabitha felt my forehead. “You’re flushed,” she said accusingly. “And you feel hot.”

  “Aunt Tabitha, we’re having a war. I don’t think I can go have a lie-down.”

  She frowned. “Just don’t hurt yourself, girl. You’re the only niece I’ve got.”

  “I’m the only wizard the city’s got, too.” I pushed myself upright.

  The only wizard, aside from Knackering Molly. I wish she were here. I don’t know if it would help, but…it would be nice not to be the only one.

  And more than anything, I wish Spindle was here. I hope he’s okay.

  A group of Carex carrying bows came through the crowd of their fellows, which was now largely standing around, holding shields over their heads.

  “This is where you see the advantages of military discipline,” said Harold. “Our troops would keep attacking until they brought them down through sheer force of numbers. But none of the mercenaries want to be the first one through the gate.”

  Their archers reached the front lines, knelt, and began shooting at the golems.

  I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. Stab a bunch of toothpicks into a loaf of bread, and you’ve got…I don’t know, an appetizer or something. Not a dead golem, anyhow. Clearly the Carex still had no idea what they were dealing with.

  Our archers had to lean over the edge of the battlements to shoot, but there was a minute where the Carex shot at the golems and our men shot at the Carex and by the end of it there were a lot fewer Carex archers and Red and Black looked like hedgehogs. Blue, who had been mostly shielded by the broken gate, just stood there until a foolish Carex came around the edge of the wall and got a face full of fence-post.

  The archers retreated. There was more hurried discussion on the ground.

  This time when they attacked, they sent twice as many men in. The four golems in back had to do the can-can as well, but after about ten frantic minutes, I had a pounding headache and the Carex hadn’t gotten anywhere. Two or three had managed to get past the golems to the barricades, where they were promptly picked off by archers on the roof.

  I was feeling a grim sort of hope. Even looking over the other side of the wall and seeing just how many Carex remained couldn’t quite squelch it.

  “Blue’s barrel is getting pretty beaten up,” said the Duchess.

  I nodded. “Argonel is supposed to have some spares at the wagons.” I had Blue fall back—White took his place—and walked Blue over to the barricade on the palace road. It was the lowest of the bunch, and Blue was able to step over it somewhat awkwardly.

  Seeing the number of golems diminish, the Carex attacked again. They were beaten back, but more made it through to the barricades, and Black was limping now. A suicidally brave Carex with an axe had actually climbed onto Black’s leg and gotten a couple of solid hacks into his knee before the golem managed to detach him.

  “Can you heal them?” asked the Duchess.

  I chewed on my lower lip. “He needs patching. It’s not a wound, exactly, his leg just won’t hold him up all the way. I’ve got dough, I can fix it, but I need to be down there to make it work.”

  Blue stepped back over the barricade and back into the fray. The Carex retreated again.

  Harold and the Duchess held a brief conference. “Quick,” said the Duchess. “Before there’s another wave. Down onto that roof there, and around the back—Harold knows the way. Hurry!”

  I followed Harold. Aunt Tabitha came down the ladder after us. It took us down to a roof, and then we went down the fire-escape and into the streets.

  It was much scarier down on the ground. You couldn’t see what was going on, you could just hear the dull roar of the army outside the walls. I fretted. If the Carex attacked before we got back, the golems could fight on their own, but if anything unexpected happened—well, bread’s not good at independent thought.

  If the Carex broke through the barricades while we were on the ground, then we were going to get overrun by angry people with swords. That would be exciting, for about thirty seconds, but not in a good way.

  It seemed to take a lot longer to go around the square than it had to cross it, even though we ran. The cobblestones were the rounded ones that look like sweet buns, and we had to be careful, because those always get a bit slippery underfoot.

  When we finally rounded the corner and saw Argonel and the barrels, I let out a cheer.

  Argonel whipped around and very nearly cracked Harold over the head with his smith’s hammer before he realized who it was. “Oh, it’s you! Wiz—Mona, the golems are doing much better than we hoped.” He grinned. “But what are you doing down from the walls?”

  “It’s Black,” I said, grabbing the black-marked dough ball and ordering him to come back over the barricades. “He’s going to lose a leg in a minute if I don’t fix him.”

  Argonel nodded. We all scattered to the walls as Black’s foot came down. He wavered for a moment—that knee was definitely going—then caught his balance.

  I grabbed a glob of dough out of one of the barrels and crammed it into the wedge the axe had cut in Black’s leg. (I had to climb up the barrel to do it. The Carex axe-man had been a lot taller than I was.) Aunt Tabitha came up behind me and handed me several more handfuls, until we’d managed to fill in the gap.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s see if this works.” I put my hands on either side of the raw dough and thought hard about how it wanted to fuse with the bread around it, seal up the gap, become part of the golem.

  It was hard. The magic of sympathy was working against me here—this dough wasn’t part of the same batch and hadn’t been baked together. I was already feeling magically exhausted, and for a minute or two, nothing seemed to be happening.

  C’mon…c’mon…you can do it…

  There was a yell from the barricade. I jerked my head up and saw that the Carex had taken advantage of the gap in the line to charge again, and this time they kept coming. And climbing. Men on the barricades were stabbing with spears to try and fend them off, but as I watched, two helmeted heads popped up over the top.

  Argonel and Harold rushed to help.

  The first two Carex were knocked back down, but now three more were coming up on the sides, and one was—

  Oh sweet Lady of Sorrowful Angels, one was actually over the barricade and coming this way—

  Aunt Tabitha yanked a hammer from the fingers of an apprentice, who had turned sort of green, and charged the enemy, whooping.

  I grabbed the dough in front of me and thought, You play nice and be a patch on this golem RIGHT NOW!

  Black grunted. The patch of dough oozed into position and hardened into a floury crust. I scrambled down, just in time to see Aunt Tabitha reach the Carex.

  The enemy warrior clearly had no idea what to make of the berserk woman charging at him, with her housedress flapping madly over her jingling armor. He gaped at her. Aunt Tabitha whacked him with the hammer so hard that his helmet got knocked halfway around his head, and he fell down. She kicked him a few times. Aunt Tabitha had very definite opinions about people who tried to invade her city.

  Standing up made my head spin, and for a minute I very nearly fell down myself. The magic was draining out of me in a steady drip-drip-drip like an untreated wound.

  But if Aunt Tabitha was fighting the Carex, I didn’t have time to faint. I bit m
y lip hard and thought You stop that! and the world stabilized and stopped going fuzzy and gray around the edges.

  I exhaled. Time to get Black back into the fray…I turned to pat him on the leg. “Back you go, there’s a good golem—”

  That pat saved my life.

  The Spring Green Man’s knife hit my shoulder at an angle, instead of the back of my neck, and the point skittered off the armored jerkin.

  I yelped. I wanted to scream, but a thin little yell was all that came out. Harold and Argonel and Aunt Tabitha were busy on the barricades and there were Carex coming up over the sides and Black was knocking them down but some had still gotten over and the Spring Green Man was lifting his knife for another blow and that familiar, heavy sweet smell was all around us and he bared his teeth at me like an animal.

  “Third time pays for all, little bread wizard,” he hissed, and I knew that my luck had finally run out.

  Thirty-Four

  There was something stuck in his teeth. Here I was about to die, stabbed to death by a deranged wizard, and that was what I noticed—there was something green stuck in his teeth.

  Fortunately, the rest of my body knew what was important. My knees decided to throw me sideways without bothering to consult my brain.

  I caught myself and took off at a run, sliding on the cobbles. If I could get back to the wall, surely Joshua and the Duchess could defend me, or we could knock him off the ladder or something. He couldn’t climb the ladder with a knife in his hand, could he?

  Right away, I realized that I was in trouble. The weight of magic was still with me, even if I was running for my life. It was like trying to run with concrete blocks strapped to my ankles. I dropped the rest of the bad cookies ruthlessly, and got a little bit back, but I didn’t dare cut off the golems. The golems were the only thing standing between the Carex and the city.

  Oh god oh god I’m going to die…

  I could hear Elgar’s footsteps pounding behind me. Where were the archers? Couldn’t one look this way and see what was happening and shoot him? And the jerkin, which had saved my life before, might kill me now. It was so hot and so heavy and I couldn’t seem to breathe right with it pressing down on me and that horrible spicy smell was filling my lungs and making it even harder to breathe.

  Is this the street that goes back to the wall? I think this is the street. There’s the building at the end, the red brick one, with the fire-escape—

  The Spring Green Man grabbed my shoulder, wrenched me around, and slammed me into the wall of the nearby alley.

  Guess it doesn’t matter now.

  Elgar grabbed my wrists in one hand. (It is completely and utterly unfair that when you are a fourteen-year-old girl, even if you have amazing forearms, your wrists are still small enough for somebody else to hold with one hand.) I flailed, and I think he was surprised at how strong I was, but I didn’t go anywhere except back against the brick wall, hard. Blood thudded in my ears.

  He lifted the knife. The blade gleamed. The sun was shining down into the alley, and that meant that it was nearly noon. We’d held out until noon. That was pretty good, wasn’t it?

  “You’re not getting away from me again,” Elgar said. “I wasn’t leaving this city until I saw you dead.” I could hardly hear him over the pounding of blood in my ears and the shouting of the battle a few yards away, but I got the gist.

  “Would have—thought—you’d be with Oberon—” I panted.

  Elgar spat. “That idiot. Once he took the city, I was going to kill him anyway. A wizard-emperor! Just think of it!”

  I guess really bad people all think they’re using each other and being really clever about it. And they all want to be in charge. You never see them stabbing each other over who gets to be the baker.

  And because I was really going to die, right this minute, and it didn’t much matter anymore, I said, “You’ve got something stuck in your teeth.”

  He blinked. I guess this is not the sort of thing that people say when you’re about to stab them. “What?”

  “In your teeth. Um. Sort of green—”

  “What is wrong with you?”

  This was an excellent question. I was sort of wondering that myself.

  The Spring Green Man lifted the knife higher, and then something happened very fast and something made of rag and bone sang past my face and Elgar was flung halfway down the alley because Nag had just kicked his head in.

  Apparently, that thudding noise had not been my heart pounding in my ears after all.

  “Oh yeah!” yelled Spindle, scrambling down from behind Molly, as Nag’s hooves landed back on the cobbles. “Oh yeah! That’s for Tibbie, you green monster! I ’ope you rot!”

  Nag, being dead himself, did not object to Spindle jumping off his back, nor did he seem to notice when I threw my arms around one of his back legs and hugged him furiously. Knackering Molly snorted.

  “Seems like I keep finding you in trouble, baker girl.”

  “I’m alive!” I moaned into Nag’s hipbone. “Molly—Nag—Spindle—”

  Spindle looked up from Elgar’s limp body. “What?”

  “You’re alive! I’m alive!” I started giggling hysterically, because otherwise I was going to sit down and sob right there in the alley. “We’re all alive! Except Nag! We’re all—urrgh—”

  My stomach clenched. I went down to my knees and last night’s dinner came back up.

  “Ewww,” said Spindle, who had left off kicking the late Elgar and was going through his pockets.

  “It happens,” said Knackering Molly firmly. “Takes everybody differently, so don’t you go making fun, Spindle.”

  Spindle rolled his eyes.

  I wiped at my mouth and felt somebody pull my hair back. When I looked, my gingerbread man was standing on my shoulder. He waved.

  You can’t really hug a cookie, but I leaned my cheek against him, feeling deep relief.

  “What happened to you?” I asked. “I’ve been worried sick! I thought the Carex got you!”

  Spindle rolled his eyes. “They may be good with their swords an’ all, but they ain’t got the least idea how to catch a sneak. I got in and got out, and last I saw, those nasty little gingerbread mites were cuttin’ up the ropes on one of the supply tents. No, the problem was getting back in.” He spat on the cobbles. “That stupid thief Slug caught me and started tellin’ people I was a spy and not to let me back in the city. Thought it was funny as anything, the great lump.”

  “Lucky for him, I came along and convinced Slug otherwise,” said Molly mildly. She slapped at Nag’s shoulder. “Figured I should bring him up here on my own, though. City’s lost its mind now there’s a battle on.”

  I exhaled. My stomach stayed quiet. My cookie was fine. Spindle was fine. Everybody was—

  A golem winked out like a dying star.

  “The golems!” I shot upright. There wasn’t anything left in my stomach anyway, but even if there had been, I didn’t have time to be sick. I had to get back to the golems, now.

  I ran back down the alley. Spindle cursed and ran after me. I could hear Nag’s irregular hoofbeats following.

  I shot out of the mouth of the alley and practically into the arms of Aunt Tabitha.

  “Mona! We thought something happened—”

  “Something did happen! Elgar tried to stab me and Nag saved me and—oh, it doesn’t matter now! We’ve lost a golem!”

  “Two,” said Aunt Tabitha grimly, and before she’d finished speaking, I felt another one fail. “They’ve figured out to knock them over, and then they can’t get back up again.”

  We rushed back to the barricade. I grabbed for my bowl of dough, but it was too late. A third golem teetered and fell down like a great tree, and Carex jumped on it, hacking and sawing with sword, like blind men trying to slice bread.

  There were mercenaries coming up the barricades now. Ours was the lowest and least built-up of the walls, and they clearly knew it. If they could get over our barricade and tear it down, they wo
uldn’t have to scale any of the others—they’d have a straight shot into the city and could come up behind the defenders on the other streets.

  I ordered the four remaining golems into a wedge defending our barricade. That would buy us time, but time for what?

  There was still dough left. When they unloaded the wagon, they’d left a half dozen barrels in neat lines on either side of the street, and that ridiculous coffin from the Church of Sorrowful Angels was laid on top of them.

  Argonel and Harold stepped back from the barricades. The golems were keeping enough of the Carex back that the regular guards could handle it.

  Harold said, “Mona, we have to get you away from here, they’re going to break through—”

  “No,” I said. My plan was crystalizing inside my head. It wasn’t a good plan, but what else was new? “No, help me empty these barrels. I need as much dough as we can get.”

  “But—”

  Argonel shoved him aside, grabbed a barrel and shoved it on its side. Dough glorped stickily into the street. It wasn’t right for bread dough. There was more sugar and dark brown lumps floated on the surface.

  “Chocolate-chip cookie dough?” asked Aunt Tabitha blankly. “Who went to all the trouble of making cookie dough?”

  The name on the side of the barrel was one of the most exclusive pastry shops in the city. We dumped out four more barrels, and three of them were chocolate chip.

  Well. Okay. Chocolate-chip cookie dough. I can do this. It shouldn’t be any different than bread, just…raw.

  Another golem went down. The roar of triumph from the Carex crashed over the barrier.

  I shoved both my hands up to the elbow in the pile of dough and tried to think. Aunt Tabitha and Argonel continued dumping dough around me. It made a pile on the street as high as my knees. Not a gingerbread man. Standing upright wasn’t going to be much help, and anyway, I would have needed a rolling pin as big as a tree trunk. Something lower and legless and oozy…