Aragis said, "You're not going to send her home." He sounded as if this was the first time he'd imagined that possibility.
Gerin bowed to him. "Lord king, there she is." He pointed to Maeva. "If you think you can order her home and make it stick, go ahead. Me, I don't like to waste orders that won't be obeyed. It weakens every other order I give after that."
"One way to do it would be to forbid her from any future fighting here," Aragis said, "and to post guards around her to make sure she cannot join it."
He was not a fool. He would never have done so well for himself had he been a fool. Maeva's face fell. Gerin could indeed do that. Van saw as much, too. Where his daughter wilted, he beamed. "That's the way, by the gods," he said, and bowed to Aragis. "I thank you, Archer. That's just the way."
"Oh, yes, a splendid suggestion," Dagref said. Had Gerin loosed his own sarcastic tones quite so freely when he was younger? On reflection, he decided he had. No wonder no one had liked him much. Dagref went on, "Not only does it take one proved fighter out of the army, it takes half a dozen or however many more out to watch her and make certain she doesn't do what she's already shown she's good at doing."
Maeva had eyed him with a certain speculation back at Fox Keep. He hadn't noticed then. If he didn't notice now, he was blind. Besides, his education in such things had advanced since then.
But maybe he didn't after all, for Aragis was eyeing him, too. "I am a king, young fellow," the Archer said coldly. "Do you cast scorn on me?"
"On you, lord king? Of course not," Dagref answered. "But a king can spout foolishness like anyone else. If you don't believe me, listen to my father for a while."
Aragis pursed his lips, then turned back to Gerin. "If that one can fight as well as he talks, he will be dangerous-if you let him live."
"Honh!" Van broke in. "We've said the same thing about Ferdulf, close enough. No wonder those two get on pretty well."
Dagref took no notice of that. He spoke to Gerin, who hadn't managed to get a word in edgewise about Aragis' suggestion: "Father, one of the things you always talk about is giving people the chance to do what they're good at. Why else would you have made Carlun your steward?"
"Because you weren't old enough yet to do the job?" the Fox suggested, perhaps a fourth in jest.
His son ignored him. His son was good at ignoring him, and getting better. "Why else do you teach peasants to read and write? If Maeva's good at fighting and wants to do it, why shouldn't she have the chance?"
"You can't get maimed with a pen and a scrap of parchment in your hands, curse it," Van said.
Gerin still hadn't said anything. No matter what he did say, he realized, he was going to make people he cared about unhappy. He hated having to speak in circumstances like that. Too many times, though, he had no choice. This was one of them. Slowly, he said, "Maeva has proved what she can do. That she came south with us proves she wanted to do it. Much as I'd like to, I can't see any justice in sending her back."
"Thank you, lord king," Maeva said quietly. Dagref looked as pleased as if he'd invented her. Van looked like a thunderstorm about to spill over. Maeva went on, "Now I peel this fuzz off my face."
"Were I you, I wouldn't," Gerin said. "With the beard, you look like any other northern warrior, near enough. Without it, the imperials will see you're something out of the ordinary and take special care against you. That's the last thing you ever want on the battlefield. I've got rid of a good many foes who didn't think I was dangerous till too late."
"I don't know," Van said. "I want 'em afraid of me." With his tall-plumed helm, his gleamingly polished corselet of solid bronze, and his great size and bulk, he smashed Gerin's principle to smithereens. He had the strength and skill to get away with it, too.
Dagref said, "A lot of the southerners shave their faces. They might not take Maeva for a woman, just for a northerner who does likewise."
"If you'll remember, son," Gerin said with a certain relish, "I didn't say they were liable to take her for a woman. I said they were liable to take her for something out of the ordinary. A man from north of the High Kirs without a beard is out of the ordinary, too."
"Why, so he is," Dagref said. "You're right, Father." He was not least disconcerting because he had no trouble admitting he was wrong.
Gerin rubbed his own chin. He'd shaved his face when he came back up from the City of Elabon, but harsh, ceaseless teasing had made him-and Rihwin, too-conform in outward appearance, if not in what lay beneath.
"Thank you, lord king," Maeva said again. "I will do everything I can to show myself a worthy warrior for you."
"I shall have words for you presently, young lady," Van said, and stomped off. Somehow, that particular salutation seemed out of place when aimed at someone in a leather shirt with bronze scales sewn into pockets on it.
"You handled that smoothly," Aragis said to Gerin; the Fox supposed he meant it for a compliment. "I wouldn't have decided as you did, but I can see how and why you did it, which I never would have guessed when I spied… your new warrior." With a nod to Maeva that might have been ironic or might not, he took himself off, too.
Maeva went back toward the rest of the riders. Gerin expected Dagref to follow her, but the youth stayed. "I want to thank you, Father, for keeping Maeva with the army," he said. "If you'd ordered her back to Fox Keep, I would have used the promise I won from you to make you change your mind."
"Would you?" Gerin said, and his son nodded. Half the Fox-maybe more than half-wished he had ordered Maeva back. That would have rid him of the promise at a price he could afford. Now- Who could say what Dagref would come up with now? Gerin eyed his son in a speculative way. "You must think a lot of her, if you'd give up the promise for that."
"She's like a sister to me," Dagref said. Then, a moment later, he turned pink. With characteristic honesty, he corrected himself: "Maybe not quite like a sister." He didn't so much leave as flee. Rubbing his chin once more, Gerin stared after him.
* * *
The next morning, Gerin's men and Aragis' moved south after the imperials. The pursuit went slowly. Gerin had expected it would, but it was even slower than he'd looked for. In their withdrawal, the soldiers of the Elabonian Empire had manhandled boulders onto the Elabon Way and scattered caltrops not only on the road but in the fields to either side of it.
"We may have won a battle, Fox, but we haven't won the war," Aragis the Archer said. "They'll be ready to take us on again before long."
"I thought as much from the way they pulled back," Gerin answered. "I said so, to whoever would listen. Nobody much listened. I wish I'd been wrong."
Every so often, he would roll past wreckage of the army he had beaten: a chariot fallen to pieces; a dead horse; a hastily dug grave, brown against the green of the fields, to mark the final resting place of some imperial trooper who'd died slowly instead of quickly. Every time he spotted a grave, he wondered if Maeva had seen it. That probably didn't matter. No one her age believed anything bad could happen to her. The years taught you otherwise, sooner or later-more often sooner.
A rider came trotting back from around a bend in the road. "Lord king!" he shouted, and then, remembering himself, "Lord kings!"
"What have the imperials gone and done now?" Gerin asked.
"Lord king," the scout answered, seeming relieved to be speaking to a single sovereign, "lord king, there's a wall across the road."
Gerin pictured a barricade of rocks and logs, perhaps with a few dismounted archers behind it to give approaching warriors a greeting less friendly than they might have wanted. "Did you ride around it?" he asked. "Do they have an ambush somewhere back of it?"
"Couldn't ride around it, lord king," the horseman said. "It's too wide to ride around." He stretched out his arms as far as they would go.
"What's he talking about?" Aragis demanded irritably.
"I don't know," the Fox admitted. "Best thing I can think for us to do is go have a look for ourselves." He tapped Dagref on the shoulder. "F
orward. We'd better find out."
As soon as the chariot rounded the bend, he saw the horseman had been telling the truth. His own visualization had been at fault. The wall was of red brick, about ten feet high, and stretched off to east and west as far as the eye could see. Van said, "The imperials couldn't have built that."
"Of course not," Gerin agreed, "or their soldiers couldn't have, anyway. It's sorcerous, without a doubt."
"Maybe it's an illusion," Van said hopefully. "Maybe if we go up to it, we can go right through it."
It looked very solid. Of course, an illusion that didn't look solid wouldn't have been much of an illusion. Gerin jumped down from the chariot. He walked up to the brick wall and slapped it with the palm of his hand. It felt very solid, too. Suddenly suspicious, he closed his eyes and walked forward. He bumped his nose, not too hard, because he wasn't going too fast.
He opened his eyes. He was staring at bricks, up so close they were blurry. He backed away. The bricks became sharp and clear. They didn't disappear, no matter how hard he wished they would.
More and more of the army came round the bend in the road. Gerin heard the exclamations of surprise that rose from his men and Aragis'. Some were just exclamations of surprise. He could deal with those. He was surprised himself. Others, though, ones that came mostly from his men, were full of confidence that he could get rid of the wall in short order.
Van had his own ideas about how to do that. Saying, "Don't be shy with the cursed thing," he shouted for a hammer. When he got one-a stout bronze-headed tool that looked about as deadly as the mace he carried-he slammed it into the wall with all his strength. Nothing happened, except that he grunted in pain and rubbed at his shoulder. "Didn't even dent it," he said in disgust.
"You wouldn't," Gerin said. "It's magical."
"Really?" Van said, packing enough sarcasm into the word to prove he'd lived a good many years in Fox Keep.
Aragis the Archer said, "This is why I wanted you with me, Fox, not against me."
Gerin glared at him. "Why? So I can look like an idiot in front of your men and mine both?" Aragis' expression was one of stolid incomprehension. He was convinced Gerin was a marvelous mage. Nothing would unconvince him except watching the Fox fail. In that case, he was liable to get unconvinced in a hurry. Hoping to sidestep the issue, Gerin looked around and shouted, "Ferdulf!"
"What do you want?" the little demigod demanded. He was back to being surly. Most of the time, Gerin wouldn't have let that bother him. Now he would have been glad for a little of the grudging gratitude Ferdulf had shown right after the battle against the Empire.
Since he didn't have it, he went ahead without: "Can you fly up over the wall and tell us what's on the other side of it?"
"Grass," Ferdulf said. "Trees. Cows. Elabonians. Go far enough and there are mountains. I don't need to fly over it to tell you that."
Gerin exhaled through his nose. I will not let the little divine bastard get my goat, he thought. With as much patience as he could, he said, "Knowing exactly where the imperials are might be good for us. We'll probably fight them again once we get past the wall, you know."
"Oh, all right," Ferdulf said sulkily, and hopped up into the air. What happened next made everyone who saw it exclaim in surprise and alarm. As Ferdulf rose, so did the wall in front of him.
He exclaimed, too-angrily. He didn't much care about obeying Gerin. Having the Elabonian Empire thwart him was something else again. But as fast as he flew, as high as he flew, whichever way from side to side he flew, the wall rose to keep him from passing over it. When he flew lower, it shrank, as if it, or the wizard in charge of it, could sense exactly how high he was at any given moment.
When he returned to the ground, the wall went back to being what it had been before he started flying: ten feet high, and very solid-looking. Gerin rubbed his nose. It felt as solid as it looked.
"You ought to knock it down," Ferdulf said. "A wall like that has no business existing in the first place."
"Van didn't have much luck. And if it's magical, I'm not sure we can knock it down," Gerin said. "For instance, how thick is it?"
"I don't know," Ferdulf answered. "I think you're pretty thick yourself, though, if you stand here and let it baffle you."
Rihwin the Fox came riding over to Gerin. "Nice piece of work, isn't it?" he said with the tones of one admiring a fellow professional's achievement even when that achievement inconvenienced him. He'd studied sorcery down in the City of Elabon till a jape played on a senior wizard got him expelled from the Sorcerers' Collegium. Despite that expulsion, he'd been a better mage than Gerin up to the moment when Mavrix took away his sorcerous powers. He still knew magic well, even if he couldn't work it any more.
"I'd like it better if it weren't so nice," Gerin said.
"Oh, but it's as pretty a use of the law of similarity as I've ever seen," Rihwin protested, "not only in building the wall, but also in making detection of the keystone-or rather, in this case, the key brick-as difficult as possible."
"What nonsense is he spouting now?" Aragis demanded irritably.
Gerin took no notice of his fellow king. "Father Dyaus," he whispered. "I do believe you're right."
"Of course I'm right," Rihwin said. "When have you ever known me to be mistaken, pray tell?"
"Only when you open your mouth," Gerin replied, which reduced Rihwin to irate splutters. Gerin ignored those, too. He walked up to the wall and examined it brick by brick. Sure enough, each brick was identical to all its neighbors: not just similar to them, but identical. Each one had a chip near the center, each had a scratch at the upper left-hand corner, and each, over to the right, had embedded in it a tiny crystal or flake of mica that sparkled when the light caught it at the right angle. "Isn't that interesting?" he murmured.
"Now you're the one full of drivel," Aragis complained. "Tell me at once what's going on."
"One of their wizards took a brick and sorcerously duplicated it about as many times as there are drops of water in the Niffet," Gerin answered. "If I could find out which brick is the real one, I wouldn't have any trouble-well, not much trouble-making the wall disappear."
"Ah," Aragis said, and then, "All right. I was beginning to wonder whether you were able to talk sense or not. I see you are. Good. As I told you, I wanted you on my side because of the wizardry you know. Now-find that brick and get rid of it."
Rihwin had the grace to give Gerin a sympathetic look. "It's not quite so easy as that, I'm afraid," Gerin said. "One of these bricks along the bottom row is sure to be the brick, but which one? Go ahead, lord king-you tell me which one it is."
"You're the wizard," Aragis said. "You're the one who's supposed to know things like that. Now get to work, curse it." He might have been ordering a lazy serf to spread manure over a field.
"I can't tell which brick it is by looking, any more than you can," Gerin said. "That means I've got a couple of thousand to choose from. And that's liable to mean we'll be here for a while."
"Can we go around the bloody thing?" Aragis asked.
"Maybe," Gerin said, "but I wouldn't bet anything I cared to lose on it. My guess is that, if the wall can go up and down to keep Ferdulf from flying over it, it'll go from side to side to keep us from getting by it."
"That makes more sense than I wish it did," Aragis said. "How do you go about finding out which brick is the brick, then?"
"You have not put forward an easy question, lord king," Rihwin the Fox said. "The essence of the law of similarity centering on resemblance, distinguishing between prototype and likeness is by its nature a daunting task."
"If it were easy, the cursed imperials wouldn't have bothered running up the wall in the first place," Aragis retorted. He folded his arms across his chest and looked over toward Gerin. "Well?"
"Well, my fellow king, much as I hate to disappoint you-and to disappoint myself, I might add-I haven't the faintest idea which one is the brick," Gerin answered. "I told you that once already. Maybe I can fig
ure out some sort of sorcerous test, though the gods only know how long that'll take or whether it'll work. You'd need a god to tell you which one brick out of thousands is the real one and…" His voice trailed away. "You'd need a god-or maybe a demigod. How about it, Ferdulf?"
"You want something more from me?" Ferdulf said indignantly. His sigh declared that he was put upon far beyond anything his powers might have made acceptable. "There are times when I wonder why the gods ever bothered creating mortals in the first place."
"Some Sithonian philosophers wonder whether mortals didn't create gods instead of the other way round," Gerin said, which made Ferdulf, despite being descended from a Sithonian deity, give him a horrible look. He wished he'd kept his mouth shut. Since he hadn't, he went on in smoothly ingratiating tones: "Be that as it may, can you use your own great powers to see what we cannot? It would give you another chance to have a go at the Elabonian Empire, and embarrass the imperial wizard who put up the wall thinking it would stop us so easily."
"Oh, all right." Even in agreement, Ferdulf was petulant. In that, he took after his father. He floated up a foot or so into the air and drifted along to the west a couple of hundred yards. "It's this one right here." He didn't raise his voice-or Gerin didn't think he did-but it came as clear as if he'd been standing by the Fox. A helpful soldier ran forward and set his hand on the brick after Ferdulf left it.
Gerin trotted over to it, ignoring the weight of his bronze-and-leather armor. To look at, it was just another brick in the wall. He'd expected nothing different. He turned to Van, who'd followed him. "Will you do the honors?"
"I will, and gladly," the outlander answered. He smashed at the brick with the bronze-headed hammer. When a chip flew from it, chips flew from all the others along the wall. Soldiers cheered. Van hit the brick again and again, till it cracked in three places. The rest of the bricks cracked, too. Van pushed at one of the pieces with his foot. It came away from the rest of the brick-and the wall vanished.
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