by Jack Vance
“So,” growled Huss, panting from his exertion, “you consider yourself superior to the illusion; you sit and smirk at one of Hein Huss’ best efforts.”
“No, no,” cried Sam Salazar, “I mean no disrespect! I want to learn, so I watched you rather than the demons. What could they teach me? Nothing!”
“Ah,” said Huss, mollified. “And what did you learn?”
“Likewise, nothing,” said Sam Salazar, “but at least I do not sit like a fish.”
Comandore’s voice came soft but crackling with wrath. “You see in me the resemblance to a fish?”
“I except you, Jinxman Comandore, naturally,” Sam Salazar explained.
“Please go to my cabinet, Apprentice Salazar, and fetch me the doll that is your likeness. The steward will bring a basin of water, and we shall have some sport. With your knowledge of fish you perhaps can breathe under water. If not—you may suffocate.”
“I prefer not, Jinxman Comandore,” said Sam Salazar. “In fact, with your permission, I now resign your service.”
Comandore motioned to one of his cabalmen. “Fetch me the Salazar doll. Since he is no longer my apprentice, it is likely indeed that he will suffocate.”
“Come now, Comandore,” said Hein Huss gruffly. “Do not torment the lad. He is innocent and a trifle addled. Let this be an occasion of placidity and ease.”
“Certainly, Hein Huss,” said Comandore. “Why not? There is ample time in which to discipline this upstart.”
“Jinxman Huss,” said Sam Salazar, “since I am now relieved of my duties to Jinxman Comandore, perhaps you will accept me into your service.”
Hein Huss made a noise of vast distaste. “You are not my responsibility.”
“There are many futures, Hein Huss,” said Sam Salazar. “You have said as much yourself.”
Hein Huss looked at Sam Salazar with his water-clear eyes. “Yes, there are many futures. And I think that tonight sees the full amplitude of jinxmanship…I think that never again will such power and skill gather at the same table. We shall die one by one and there shall be none to fill our shoes…Yes, Sam Salazar. I will take you as apprentice. Isak Comandore, do you hear? This youth is now of my company.”
“I must be compensated,” growled Comandore.
“You have coveted my doll of Tharon Faide, the only one in existence. It is yours.”
“Ah, ha!” cried Isak Comandore leaping to his feet. “Hein Huss, I salute you! You are generous indeed! I thank you and accept!”
Hein Huss motioned to Sam Salazar. “Move your effects to my wagon. Do not show your face again tonight.”
Sam Salazar bowed with dignity and departed the hall.
The banquet continued, but now something of melancholy filled the room. Presently a messenger from Lord Faide came to warn all to bed, for the party returned to Faide Keep at dawn.
Chapter VII
The victorious Faide troops gathered on the heath before Ballant Keep. As a parting gesture Lord Faide ordered the great gate torn off the hinges, so that ingress could never again be denied him. But even after sixteen hundred years the hinges were proof to all the force the horses could muster, and the gates remained in place.
Lord Faide accepted the fact with good grace and bade farewell to his cousin Renfroy, whom he had appointed bailiff. He climbed into his car, settled himself, snapped the switch. The car groaned and moved forward. Behind came the knights and the foot soldiers, then the baggage train, laden with booty, and finally the wagons of the jinxmen.
Three hours the column marched across the mossy downs. Ballant Keep dwindled behind; ahead appeared North and South Wildwood, darkening all the sweep of the western horizon. Where once the break had existed, the First Folk’s new planting showed a smudge lower and less intense than the old woodlands.
Two miles from the woodlands Lord Faide called a halt and signaled up his knights. Hein Huss laboriously dismounted from his wagon, came forward.
“In the event of resistance,” Lord Faide told the knights, “do not be tempted into the forest. Stay with the column and at all times be on your guard against traps.”
Hein Huss spoke. “You wish me to parley with the First Folk once more?”
“No,” said Lord Faide. “It is ridiculous that I must ask permission of savages to ride over my own land. We return as we came; if they interfere, so much the worse for them.”
“You are rash,” said Huss with simple candor.
Lord Faide glanced down at him with black eyebrows raised. “What damage can they do if we avoid their traps? Blow foam at us?”
“It is not my place to advise or to warn,” said Hein Huss. “However, I point out that they exhibit a confidence which does not come from conscious weakness; also, that they carried tubes, apparently hollow grasswood shoots, which imply missiles.”
Lord Faide nodded. “No doubt. However, the knights wear armor, the soldiers carry bucklers. It is not fit that I, Lord Faide of Faide Keep, choose my path to suit the whims of the First Folk. This must be made clear, even if the exercise involves a dozen or so First Folk corpses.”
“Since I am not a fighting man,” remarked Hein Huss, “I will keep well to the rear, and pass only when the way is secure.”
“As you wish.” Lord Faide pulled down the visor of his helmet. “Forward.”
The column moved toward the forest, along the previous track, which showed plain across the moss. Lord Faide rode in the lead, flanked by his brother, Gethwin Faide and his cousin, Mauve Dermont-Faide.
A half-mile passed, and another. The forest was only a mile distant. Overhead the great sun rode at zenith; brightness and heat poured down; the air carried the oily scent of thorn and tarbush. The column moved on, more slowly; the only sound the clanking of armor, the muffled thud of hooves in the moss, the squeal of wagon wheels.
Lord Faide rose up in his car, watching for any sign of hostile preparation. A half-mile from the planting the forms of the First Folk, waiting in the shade along the forest’s verge, became visible. Lord Faide ignored them, held a steady pace along the track they had traveled before.
The half-mile became a quarter-mile. Lord Faide turned to order the troops into single file and was just in time to see a hole open suddenly into the moss and his brother, Gethwin Faide, drop from sight. There was a rattle, a thud, the howling of the impaled horse; Gethwin’s wild calls as the horse kicked and crushed him into the stakes. Mauve Dermont-Faide, riding beside Gethwin, could not control his own horse, which leaped aside from the pit and blundered upon a trigger. Up from the moss burst a tree trunk studded with foot-long thorns. It snapped, quick as a scorpion’s tail; the thorns punctured Mauve Dermont-Faide’s armor, his chest, whisked him from his horse to carry him suspended, writhing and screaming. The tip of the scythe pounded into Lord Faide’s car, splintered against the hull. The car swung groaning through the air. Lord Faide clutched at the windscreen to prevent himself from falling.
The column halted; several men ran to the pit, but Gethwin Faide lay twenty feet below, crushed under his horse. Others took Mauve Dermont-Faide down from the swaying scythe, but he, too, was dead.
Lord Faide’s skin tingled with a gooseflesh of hate and rage. He looked toward the forest. The First Folk stood motionless. He beckoned to Bernard, sergeant of the foot soldiers. “Two men with lances to try out the ground ahead. All others ready with darts. At my signal spit the devils.”
Two men came forward, and marching before Lord Faide’s car, probed at the ground. Lord Faide settled in his seat. “Forward.”
The column moved slowly toward the forest, every man tense and ready. The lances of the two men in the vanguard presently broke through the moss, to disclose a nettle-trap—a pit lined with nettles, each frond ripe with globes of acid. Carefully they probed out a path to the side, and the column filed around, each man walking in the other’s tracks.
At Lord Faide’s side now rode his two nephews, Scolford and Edwin. “Notice,” said Lord Faide in a voice harsh and tigh
t. “These traps were laid since our last passage; an act of malice.”
“But why did they guide us through before?”
Lord Faide smiled bitterly. “They were willing that we should die at Ballant Keep. But we have disappointed them.”
“Notice, they carry tubes,” said Scolford.
“Blowguns possibly,” suggested Edwin.
Scolford disagreed. “They cannot blow through their foam-vents.”
“No doubt we shall soon learn,” said Lord Faide. He rose in his seat, called to the rear. “Ready with the darts!”
The soldiers raised their crossbows. The column advanced slowly, now only a hundred yards from the planting. The white shapes of the First Folk moved uneasily at the forest’s edges. Several of them raised their tubes, seemed to sight along the length. They twitched their great hands.
One of the tubes was pointed toward Lord Faide. He saw a small black object leave the opening, flit forward, gathering speed. He heard a hum, waxing to a rasping, clicking flutter. He ducked behind the windscreen; the projectile swooped in pursuit, struck the windscreen like a thrown stone. It fell crippled upon the forward deck of the car—a heavy black insect like a wasp, its broken proboscis oozing ocher liquid, horny wings beating feebly, eyes like dumbbells fixed on Lord Faide. With his mailed fist, he crushed the creature.
Behind him other wasps struck knights and men; Corex Faide-Battaro took the prong through his visor into the eye, but the armor of the other knights defeated the wasps. The foot soldiers, however, lacked protection; the wasps half-buried themselves in flesh. The soldiers called out in pain, clawed away the wasps, squeezed the wounds. Corex Faide-Battaro toppled from his horse, ran blindly out over the heath, and after fifty feet fell into a trap. The stricken soldiers began to twitch, then fell on the moss, thrashed, leaped up to run with flapping arms, threw themselves in wild somersaults, forward, backward, foaming and thrashing.
In the forest, the First Folk raised their tubes again. Lord Faide bellowed, “Spit the creatures! Bowmen, launch your darts!”
There came the twang of crossbows, darts snapped at the quiet white shapes. A few staggered and wandered aimlessly away; most, however, plucked out the darts or ignored them. They took capsules from small sacks, put them to the end of their tubes.
“Beware the wasps!” cried Lord Faide. “Strike with your bucklers! Kill the cursed things in flight!”
The rasp of horny wings came again; certain of the soldiers found courage enough to follow Lord Faide’s orders, and battered down the wasps. Others struck home as before; behind came another flight. The column became a tangle of struggling, crouching men.
“Footmen, retreat!” called Lord Faide furiously. “Footmen back! Knights to me!”
The soldiers fled back along the track, taking refuge behind the baggage wagons. Thirty of their number lay dying, or dead, on the moss.
Lord Faide cried out to his knights in a voice like a bugle. “Dismount, follow slow after me! Turn your helmets, keep the wasps from your eyes! One step at a time, behind the car! Edwin, into the car beside me, test the footing with your lance. Once in the forest there are no traps! Then attack!”
The knights formed themselves into a line behind the car. Lord Faide drove slowly forward, his kinsman Edwin prodding the ground ahead. The First Folk sent out a dozen more wasps, which dashed themselves vainly against the armor. Then there was silence…cessation of sound, activity. The First Folk watched impassively as the knights approached, step by step.
Edwin’s lance found a trap, the column moved to the side. Another trap—and the column was diverted from the planting toward the forest. Step by step, yard by yard—another trap, another detour, and now the column was only a hundred feet from the forest. A trap to the left, a trap to the right: the safe path led directly toward an enormous heavy-branched tree. Seventy feet, fifty feet, then Lord Faide drew his sword.
“Prepare to charge, kill till your arms tire!”
From the forest came a crackling sound. The branches of the great tree trembled and swayed. The knights stared, for a moment frozen into place. The tree toppled forward, the knights madly tried to flee—to the rear, to the sides. Traps opened; the knights dropped upon sharp stakes. The tree fell; boughs cracked armored bodies like nuts; there was the hoarse yelling of pinned men, screams from the traps, the crackling subsidence of breaking branches. Lord Faide had been battered down into the car, and the car had been pressed groaning into the moss. His first instinctive act was to press the switch to rest position; then he staggered erect, clambered up through the boughs. A pale unhuman face peered at him; he swung his fist, crushed the faceted eye-bulge, and roaring with rage scrambled through the branches. Others of his knights were working themselves free, although almost a third were either crushed or impaled.
The First Folk came scrambling forward, armed with enormous thorns, long as swords. But now Lord Faide could reach them at close quarters. Hissing with vindictive joy he sprang into their midst, swinging his sword with both hands, as if demon-possessed. The surviving knights joined him and the ground became littered with dismembered First Folk. They drew back slowly, without excitement. Lord Faide reluctantly called back his knights. “We must succor those still pinned, as many as still are alive.”
As well as possible branches were cut away, injured knights drawn forth. In some cases the soft moss had cushioned the impact of the tree. Six knights were dead, another four crushed beyond hope of recovery. To these Lord Faide himself gave the coup de grâce. Ten minutes further hacking and chopping freed Lord Faide’s car, while the First Folk watched incuriously from the forest. The knights wished to charge once more, but Lord Faide ordered retreat. Without interference they returned the way they had come, back to the baggage train.
Lord Faide ordered a muster. Of the original war party, less than two-thirds remained. Lord Faide shook his head bitterly. Galling to think how easily he had been led into a trap! He swung on his heel, strode to the rear of the column, to the wagons of the magicians. The jinxmen sat around a small fire, drinking tea. “Which of you will hoodoo these white forest vermin? I want them dead—stricken with sickness, cramps, blindness, the most painful afflictions you can contrive!”
There was general silence. The jinxmen sipped their tea.
“Well?” demanded Lord Faide. “Have you no answer? Do I not make myself plain?”
Hein Huss cleared his throat, spat into the blaze. “Your wishes are plain. Unfortunately we cannot hoodoo the First Folk.”
“And why?”
“There are technical reasons.”
Lord Faide knew the futility of argument. “Must we slink home around the forest? If you cannot hoodoo the First Folk, then bring out your demons! I will march on the forest and chop out a path with my sword!”
“It is not for me to suggest tactics,” grumbled Hein Huss.
“Go on, speak! I will listen.”
“A suggestion has been put to me, which I will pass to you. Neither I nor the other jinxmen associate ourselves with it, since it recommends the crudest of physical principles.”
“I await the suggestion,” said Lord Faide.
“It is merely this. One of my apprentices tampered with your car, as you may remember.”
“Yes, and I will see he gets the hiding he deserves.”
“By some freak he caused the car to rise high into the air. The suggestion is this: that we load the car with as much oil as the baggage train affords, that we send the car aloft and let it drift over the planting. At a suitable moment, the occupant of the car will pour the oil over the trees, then hurl down a torch. The forest will burn. The First Folk will be at least discomfited; at best a large number will be destroyed.”
Lord Faide slapped his hands together. “Excellent! Quickly, to work!” He called a dozen soldiers, gave them orders; four kegs of cooking oil, three buckets of pitch, six demijohns of spirit were brought and lifted into the car. The engines grated and protested, and the car sagged almost to t
he moss.
Lord Faide shook his head sadly. “A rude use of the relic, but all in good purpose. Now, where is that apprentice? He must indicate which switches and which buttons he turned.”
“I suggest,” said Hein Huss, “that Sam Salazar be sent up with the car.”
Lord Faide looked sidewise at Sam Salazar’s round, bland countenance. “An efficient hand is needed, a seasoned judgment. I wonder if he can be trusted?”
“I would think so,” said Hein Huss, “inasmuch as it was Sam Salazar who evolved the scheme in the first place.”
“Very well. In with you, Apprentice! Treat my car with reverence! The wind blows away from us; fire this edge of the forest, in as long a strip as you can manage. The torch, where is the torch?”
The torch was brought and secured to the side of the car.
“One more matter,” said Sam Salazar. “I would like to borrow the armor of some obliging knight, to protect myself from the wasps. Otherwise—”
“Armor!” bawled Lord Faide. “Bring armor!”
At last, fully accoutered and with visor down, Sam Salazar climbed into the car. He seated himself, peered intently at the buttons and switches. In truth he was not precisely certain as to which he had manipulated before…He considered, reached forward, pushed, turned. The motors roared and screamed; the car shuddered, sluggishly rose into the air. Higher, higher, twenty feet, forty feet, sixty feet—a hundred, two hundred. The wind eased the car toward the forest; in the shade the First Folk watched. Several of them raised tubes, opened the shutters. The onlookers saw the wasps dart through the air to dash against Sam Salazar’s armor.
The car drifted over the trees; Sam Salazar began ladling out the oil. Below, the First Folk stirred uneasily. The wind carried the car too far over the forest; Sam Salazar worked the controls, succeeded in guiding himself back. One keg was empty, and another; he tossed them out, presently emptied the remaining two, and the buckets of pitch. He soaked a rag in spirit, ignited it, threw it over the side, poured the spirit after.
