The Wizard from Earth

by S. J. Ryan

  Carrot watched him stare at what she knew to be a pop-up window.

  He continued, "Yes, I see the village by the lake. I can't make out Tret or the others, but their home is still there."

  Geth laughed. "Matt, we could use your talents in the Leaf."

  "I don't want to get involved in a war."

  "Wars are very social institutions, I'm afraid,” Archimedes said. “You may not be able to avoid being involved. And I'm sure after your performance in the Coliseum, the Romans won't forget you."

  "Valarion certainly will not,” Carrot said. “You threw dirt in his face.”

  "He might also hold a grudge about the small matter of destroying half the imperial fleet," Archimedes said. "But that's a strike against us all."

  "After we did that," Matt said, "I thought they would know to leave us alone."

  "Romans are very persistent," Geth said. "Especially when humiliated."

  After further discussion, they agreed that Fish Lake was the most optimal landing in Britan. To avoid sighting by Roman ships, they spanned the southern coast of Espin rather than the direct route through the Medinian Straits. Clear of Espin, Geth steered north. Hours later, out of the horizon-clinging mist emerged rocky cliffs that Carrot had last seen from the stern of a ship departing Londa.

  At the sight of her home island, she wept. Her father patted her and said, "There now," but his eyes were moist too.

  They grazed the trees of the Dark Forest. Geth shed ballast and they drifted over the western plains. Matt directed them to a hill north of Fish Lake. It was a clear sunny day, the air warm and still, and they moored with grace. Carrot assisted Archimedes with the rope ladder. Hobbling down the hill, he shunned her aid and put his walking stick to practical use.

  Halfway to the village, they were met by farmers. Tret was at their fore. He took one look at Matt and said, "I thought as much."

  They loaded Archimedes and the scientists onto a donkey cart and Geth and Carrot and Matt followed while being pumped for information. Their greeting at the village was tumultuous. Children danced and men embraced Matt and women decorated him with flowers. They showed him to the house that they had prepared in hope he would return and stay. Inside was a bed, a chair, a table, and a shelf with ten dog-eared books. Carrot thought that if one ignored the beetle scampering across the dirt floor, it was comparable to his accommodation in Rome – where the 'house pet' would have been a cockroach.

  The village still had huts that had been vacated due to plague. The scientists took one and Geth and his daughter took another, until Geth said, "You're old enough to live on your own and perhaps you should start," and had her move to the hut next door.

  An inter-village feast was held that evening and then the fireside storyteller gave his place to Matt before the swollen crowd. After being encouraged to speak louder, Matt described their adventures, though Carrot noticed some critical parts were omitted – such as any reference to Ivan, or Matt's role in dropping a falling star to foil the False Boudica. But such modesty hardly counted, for the villagers were ready to believe any feat from the Wizard from Aereoth, who cured plagues with a touch of his hand and traveled the world in a flying ship.

  "Did you really throw dirt in the Emperor's face?" a little boy asked.

  "That was about all I did," Matt said. "Carrot was the one who fought him."

  "Her?" an older boy asked. "How could she do anything? I know girls make fine archers, but don't they lack the upper body strength to excel at swordsmanship?"

  Precocious brat, Carrot thought.

  "She's a lot stronger than she looks," Matt said.

  All the villagers scrutinized her, and Archimedes, who had during the stopover of their air journey learned of Carrot's strength, said, "Here, Carrot, show them." He pointed his pipe stem at a boulder used as a seat. "Pick that up."

  Carrot looked at her father, who looked elsewhere while attempting to suppress a smirk.

  "I really would rather – "

  "Don't be modest," Archimedes said. "Pick it up. The children want to see."

  One little boy said, "Pick it up!" and then the others chanted, "Pick it up! Pick it up!"

  Carrot wanted to slink into darkness. She could hide among the forest brush, and subsist on nuts and berries . . . .

  Matt's voice spoke inside her head, "Carrot, if you do it they'll leave you alone."

  She wasn't sure about that, but she wasn't sure about a diet of nuts and berries either. She sighed and picked up the boulder. She counted to three and put it down. There was dead silence.

  I am a freak, she thought.

  Then they all applauded.

  "Could you teach me how to do that?" a very small boy asked.

  "It doesn't really work that way," she said.

  "So, are you a witch?" a girl asked.

  "That is not a precise term. I am actually what is called a mutant."

  Several in unison said, "Ah."

  "What's a mutant?" the very small boy asked.

  No one who had said 'Ah' had an answer.

  An older women said, "Dear, do you have other clothes to wear? I have an old dress and it should fit if I take it in."

  "Is your mattress thick enough?" another woman asked. "I think we have a spare. That is, I assume mutants sleep."

  By the end of evening, Carrot had several dresses and a dresser. Her bed was piled with blankets and her feet had been measured for sandals promised the next day. A boy her age asked if she'd like to go fishing.

  But over the following days, her novelty wore off and so did their attention, while Matt the Healer had a never-ending line of patients. With so much free time, Carrot attempted to corral children into the semblance of a school. However, though eager to be in her company at first, they soon began to find ways to avoid her.

  "I thought I would be good at teaching," she confided to her father one evening, "but the children won't listen to anything I say except when it comes to being a warrior."

  "Talk to Archimedes," Geth said. "He was a teacher."

  When she inquired, Archimedes replied, "You expect your students to like you? Well, I suppose that could work in theory . . . to be honest, I never gave their feelings toward me much weight. Although, I must admit I was somewhat fond of them, until they grew to be senators and such. They become difficult to handle at that stage."

  She decided his experience wasn't applicable.

  Then somehow, she ended up helping the village women with laundry and sweeping and gathering of firewood. Not so bad, she thought. The day is sunny, the work is light, I am with people I enjoy. She also had the pages of a thousand books stored in her photographic memory, which she could finally meditate upon.

  Then one day a group of men came to the village. They wore swords and archer's bows and dark and well-padded clothing, and hard expressions. Their complexions spoke of time in the wild. The villagers responded warily, as if they were brigands, but Carrot immediately recognized them as fighters in the Leaf.

  "We seek the Wizard," their leader said.

  "He's not about at the moment," an elder said. Actually, the villagers all knew that the scientists were with the airship, but even the children understood that was confidential information.

  "Then we'll stay until he is," the leader replied.

  Curious, Carrot set down her basket of laundry and asked, "What is it that you wish to ask of him?"

  The man gave a dismissive glance. "No matter of yours, girl. It concerns a weapon of war."

  "You mean, like a catapult?"

  "Well . . . yes. You know of catapults?"

  “A little. I have been taught by one who knows a great deal about them.”

  They led her to the cart upon which the catapult rested. She immediately saw that a metal joint-piece had been misassembled. She examined their assembly instruction sheet and spotted the copying error and wondered how many other catapults in the Leaf had the same flaw. Nonetheless, it was simple to correct.

  "Just pull out this
peg, reverse the fitting, reinstall. There!"

  They set it on the ground and fired a test load. The leader watched the rock plummet into the brush and said, "Impressive range and power for a weapon, but I question its practicality as it has no accuracy, and has a tendency to break as well."

  "If you don't want the torsion to break you shouldn't wind past this point here. Now shall we trouble-shoot the accuracy?"

  "Trouble-the-what?"

  She watched them load, aim, and launch. "You did not use the charts for range and drift. Do you have them memorized?"

  "The charts for what?" Before she could answer, he poked through the debris in a corner of the cart and produced a filthy and stained sheet of paper. "I was told these numbers were important, but not why. What does it mean by an 'angle of forty-five?' It seems nonsensical to turn forty-five times to right or left, and it does not even say which way."

  With her barely-used school-teacher's pencil, she inscribed a protractor on the back of the sheet, marking the degrees. She explained how to adjust the launch angle for proper range, and to orient the catapult to compensate for wind.

  "You also must compensate for the slope of the ground." She unraveled a thread from her dress, tied a pebble to the end, and demonstrated how to use it as a plumb-bob.

  The leader broke into a broad smile. "You are quite amazing, young lady! By the way, I am called Norian – and what is your name?"

  "People call me Carrot."

  "Carrot? Why is that?"

  "Well . . . they just do."

  "And what do you do here?"

  "At the moment, the laundry."

  "You should join the Leaf, with that head on your shoulders!"

  "Carrot, Carrot," one of the men said. "Wasn't there a story of a woman in the Eastlands who had orange hair and so was called Carrot, who fought in the Leaf over there? They said she was equal to three men in battle."

  "Do you see any orange in this lady's hair?" Norian asked. "Besides, that woman would have to be a hulking giantess to accomplish the strenuations attributed to her, while this girl here is indeed almost as slender as a carrot!"

  Carrot decided she liked Norian.

  "Besides," Norian added, "after Boudica, haven't we learned? If Britan needs any kind of queen, it's not one of brute strength. We need a queen who can think!"

  "About catapults," his fellow said.

  "Exactly." Norian laughed and slapped Carrot lightly on the back. "We need a Queen of Catapults!"

  They had a pleasant conversation and the men departed cheerfully, and Carrot assumed that was that and went back to laundry. The next day she was bringing kindling from the woods into the village center when another group of serious-looking, well-weaponed men wandered from the road.

  "The Wizard is not available," the elder said.

  "Wizard?" the leader asked. "We seek a woman named 'Carrot.'"

  The copying error had propagated, and she showed how to correct. She gave the same tutorial on how to aim. Before she could stop them, however, in their excitement they had over-wound the torsion and snapped it in half.

  "The women of our village cut their hair for that," the leader said. "Now how are we to find a replacement?"

  "That won't be necessary," Carrot said. She grasped the split ends in both hands and squeezed tight. When she released, the strands were made whole.

  "Well!" The leader tilted his head. "They called you a queen of catapults and so you are!"

  The next day, another catapult team arrived, and then another. On the third, the leader said, "We're looking for your queen."

  "Our village has no queen," the elder said. "This isn't the Eastlands, we don't go in for that royalty nonsense."

  "I was told to seek here a Queen Catapulta."

  Carrot stopped sweeping. "You have a problem with a catapult?"

  "Are you Queen Catapulta?"

  "No, my name is Carrot."

  "So you are Queen Carrot?"

  "I. Am. Not. A. Queen."

  But she examined their catapult just the same. Before she finished, another cart arrived, and then another. Then it was dusk, and they couldn't practice shooting any longer and so they set camp by the road. By then, a lantern from the meadow signaled the return of Matt and the scientists.

  "What's this about?" Archimedes asked.

  "They want instruction on how to operate their catapults," she said.

  "Ah." He circled the nearest catapult, tugging on joints and running his hand along the beams. "Rather well constructed. Yet how did small farming villages acquire the resources to – ah, I think I see where my retirement funds were invested."

  "I will pay you back," Carrot said. "I don't know how, but I will."

  "Dear, have I borne any grudge? You have already more than paid me back in the form of endless entertainment."

  Chuckling, Archimedes casually tossed his staff into the air. He caught it roughly, and by accident the trigger snagged on his cuff and the barrel discharged. The boom echoed and the camp silenced. At the limit of the bonfire's light, a branch fell from a tree, revealing a fresh hole.

  A catapulter pointed to the still-smoking tip of the staff and said, "Can you make us some of those?"

  "Most certainly not," Archimedes said.

  Matt stepped forward and said, "Carrot, I – "

  "Lady Carrot! We request your insight!" one of the team leaders called and took her arm and tugged her toward a group of others.

  Carrot looked back helplessly and Matt looked on stonily.

  She resolved that she would only be a minute, but the conversation with the Leaf leaders delved into how to integrate catapults into general tactics, and then they discussed general tactics in general, and she had a rapt audience as she knew details of Roman soldiery better than most Roman soldiers. By the time she broke free, Matt had gone on to the village. So she went back to the bonfire and resumed the discourse.

  Late that evening, Carrot returned to the privacy of her hut. As she flopped onto the bed, she heard the laughter of a woman coming from her father's hut, and sighed. I'll never fall asleep with that going on, she thought, but she did.

  In the morning, Carrot barely had time to bathe and comb her hair in the reflection of the lake, and more catapulters arrived. She formulated a lesson plan for a multi-day training seminar. Over the next days, still more catapulters arrived, and then volunteers from seemingly all West Britan poured in, lacking catapults but eager to learn whatever might help in waylaying Roman tax collector squads, of which there had been a recent spate. Carrot gave up on holding classes herself with all the comers, and chose a more free-style form of instruction that involved training subordinates in specific tasks, in which they would then train others.

  Though she had never witnessed personally, she had heard of training contests in the Coliseum between legions, and decided to try the same. She organized contests between catapult crews for speed, range, and accuracy, and Carrot was drafted into judging and disbursing laurels, because when anyone else did so it seemed to lead to a fight.

  It's like a harvest festival, she thought one day as she observed the multitude of men and boys (and all too few women) in the camp engaged in the contest trials. Her informal school had formed precisely because the villagers had time between harvests. She might still be sweeping her porch otherwise.

  Then during a break by the field, she sensed his presence and turned.

  "Carrot," Matt said.

  "I'm so sorry about the other day," Carrot said. "I'm suddenly so busy, I don't know how to handle it, I should have come and spoken to you – "

  "That's not what I'm here about," he said. "I'll need to show you."

  He held out his hand. She stared for a moment, then bowed and closed her eyes. He touched her forehead, and then they were standing together, looking down from orbit upon the road entering the Dark Forest from the east.

  The winding, crawling thread was pretty from a distance: banners fluttering, armor flashing.

  "How many?
" she asked.

  "Five hundred regular soldiers," Ivan said. "That doesn't include logistical support."

  "They'll be here tomorrow," Matt said. "Archimedes has informed Prin and Andra, the plan is we'll fly the ship farther west – "

  "No," Carrot said. She removed his hand and looked at him directly. "No. We stay."

  "Carrot, you're doing great work here, but those are professional soldiers. They've trained for years. Don't even think of fighting them."

  Carrot faced to the northeast and said, "We won't fight them. We will instruct them."

  She summoned the training team leaders and gathered them in a circle. With a stick, she traced in the dirt what she had seen in sky view. "The Romans are vulnerable in the Dark Forest because they are confined to the road and must march in file. If we surround on both sides while in the woods, they can be attacked while we remain in safety."

  A leader said, "Then we will move in and slaughter!"

  "We would be the ones slaughtered. These are well-schooled veterans and we are no match yet. Yes, we will engage them, but only to bloody their noses. We shall lead them to think they are facing a much larger force, and once they have gained that erroneous wisdom, we will allow them to retreat, and it should be some time before they seek to again enter the Westlands."

  Carrot organized teams into squads, and squads into 'legions,' with leaders correspondingly 'promoted' to provisional ranks of captains, majors, and colonels. No one asked her rank. They worked a set of signals and packed to march.

  By then, Matt returned with Geth.

  "Arcadia," Geth said softly.

  She stood very still. She wished he had yelled at her, then she might have been able to resist.

  "You don't think this will work," she said.

  "I have no opinion yet. You have not briefed me. Do you even take advice?"

  Her face became hot. Her ideas had come in a flash, had seemed so sure, she hadn't even thought to solicit advice.

  She summoned the legion commanders and with her father watching, she reviewed the plan and asked for advice. Only her father spoke. "I would stage the attack here, on these ridges, rather than in the forest."