The Oathbound Wizard

by Christopher Stasheff

  "Speak his name, and he will hear you," Fadecourt corrected him. "Let us speak merely of "the king."

  Matt frowned. "What difference does it make? We know he's found us now, and he can track us with that magic mirror of his."

  "In all likelihood," the cyclops said slowly. "Yet 'tis also to be marked, Lord Matthew, that there be rumors..."

  Matt hated it when people didn't finish sentences. "Rumors of what?"

  "That there do be places into which the king cannot see," Yverne explained.

  Narlh nodded. "Nobody knows where they are, though."

  "Interesting." Matt's gaze drifted as he considered the idea. "Logically, we should have been in one of them last night..."

  "Well, true," Fadecourt admitted. "Evil magic could not probe into holy places—but belike the king saw all around the shrine."

  Matt nodded. "True, true. I mean, if the gargoyles could be there, why not the king's eyes?" He straightened as the implications hit him. "Hey, wait a minute! What's to keep him from having spies, for the places his minor can't see into?"

  "Naught," Fadecourt said grimly, "and sorcerers are reputed to have many such."

  "You mean, besides the men and women they've corrupted for the purpose?"

  "Oh, assuredly." Puck grinned, apparently reveling in the problem. "There are spirits a-plenty who delight in such service—and many more who can be coerced in some manner."

  "Like familiars, you mean?"

  "Aye, though sorcerers' familiars are oft demons disguised, bound to serve the foolish mortals who trade worldly power for eternal torment. Yet there are many who are not of Hell, but who care not who they hurt, or who are malicious by nature."

  Matt stared. "You don't mean elves would work for the king!"

  "Nay, surely not!" Puck dismissed the notion with a toss of his head. "Yet there are kobolds, though they rarely come so far to the west, and they delight in pain and harm—and lamias, and basilisks, and ghouls..."

  "I get the point." Matt nodded, frowning. "Goblins, too, and all manner of cobblies. Which means that our every move will be shadowed, unless I can figure out some way of chasing off any spies that come near us."

  Or unless he found some way to use those spies for his benefit—some way to have them report where he was, when he wasn't really there. He began toying with notions of stocks, artificial images of him and his friends—and doppelgangers, and analogues, and flat-out copies...

  His friends noticed his sudden silence and abstracted gaze. They exchanged glances, finished their lunches, packed up, and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. "Lord Wizard," Yverne said, "we must walk."

  "Huh?" Matt snapped out of his reverie. "Oh! Sure. Sorry, I seem to have drifted off there..."

  But he was no sooner on his feet and trudging westward, than he lapsed back into the daze of thought. His friends took the burden of conversation on themselves—and of keeping watch.

  Toward evening, the road came parallel to a small river. It made sense—agricultural roads frequently followed the rivers, which had done the great service of cutting through the hills for the farmers. Here and there, though, the hills did indeed rise up—and as the sun was setting, they came to a high bluff, with the road rising up beside it, so that there was a steep hillside to the left, and a steeper hillside falling down to the water on their right.

  Fadecourt stopped. "I like this not."

  Matt jolted out of his daze. "Huh? Don't like what?...Oh."

  "Be a great place for an ambush," Narlh rumbled.

  "Aye," Fadecourt agreed. "The slope is too steep for bandits to run down without a great risk of falling—though they might rain arrows upon us."

  "Bad enough."

  "Aye—but what I truly am wary of is the chance of entrapment between a force before us and one behind."

  Matt studied the road, then said, "We have to go through here some time, right?"

  "Well," Narlh said, "we could climb the hillside before we get to the road. Or..."

  Matt didn't make him finish the offer; he didn't particularly want to be in the air, if archers were going to be shooting at him. "We'd be sitting ducks on the hillside, too, wouldn't we?"

  "Surely," Fadecourt agreed.

  "How about flying ducks?" Narlh grunted.

  Yverne turned a beaming smile on her mount. " 'Tis sweet of you to offer! But I would as lief not be a target, afoot or aloft."

  "Flying out of a jam, though," Matt said, "has definite possibilities. So, all in all, our best course of action is to keep going—but carefully."

  "I fear so," Fadecourt growled.

  "Then forward we go." Matt set off. "At least this way we'll find out whether or not the king really is watching us."

  "There must be a better way to get news," Narlh grumbled, but he followed Matt down the road.

  In trepidation, they came up to the crest of the hill. Malt's heart thudded so loudly that he was expecting an accompaniment as they passed the top and started down the other side, but no enemies sprang out at them. Still, he didn't breathe easily until they were all the way down, and fifty yards farther along the road. Then Matt relaxed with a sigh, wiping his brow. "Thank Heaven! Maybe the king can't see us, after—"

  A horn sounded behind them.

  Matt whirled about and saw a man in a robe standing at the crest of the hill road, gesticulating and, presumably, chanting. To either side of him stood men in plate armor, seeming inhuman and certainly impersonal behind their iron helms. As Matt watched, they kicked their horses into motion and started down the slope.

  Then Fadecourt shouted, and Matt spun back to the front just in time to see a phalanx of pikemen spilling out of the woods with an armored knight at their head.

  "You take the ones in front," Narlh growled to Fadecourt. "I'll cover our backsides."

  The cyclops turned, catching up a rock and swinging it. Matt didn't dare take his eyes away from his opposite number, but the crash of stone against steel from behind him was very gratifying.

  "Duck down, damsel," Narlh snapped. "You, too, Wizard—get behind me. I've got a tougher hide than you."

  Matt nodded. "You take care of the knights—and remember, if you can make their armor hot enough, they'll peel out."

  Even as he spoke, the knights began their charge down the hill. Matt took a deep breath and recited,

  "The fierce spirit painfully endured hardship for a time,

  He who dwelt in darkness...

  The grim spirit was called Grendel, a rover of the borders,

  One who held the moors, fen and fastness...

  There came gliding in the black night the walker in darkness,

  From the moor under the mist-hills Grendel came walking,

  Wearing God's anger!"

  Night thickened around them, and Matt took off, following the crashing Narlh was making. On his third step, he slammed into something hard and furry. A roar resounded around him, and a huge, clawed hand reached down through the darkness. Far above, two little red eyes gleamed...Matt howled, ducked around the giant shin, and ran.

  Grendel apparently wasn't about to change course for so small an irritation, because the crashing of boulders being ground into pebbles was going away behind Matt, and he didn't think that was just because he was running so fast. A yell of horror confirmed it, followed by the rattle and clash of suits of armor being jumbled together. Matt slowed and looked back, but all he could see was a black cloud with a horse arcing above it and a sorcerer beyond, sawing the air frantically with his hands. The horse landed on its hooves, by some miracle, and streaked off in a panic—but the sorcerer had to stand his ground and keep trying. Matt didn't think he'd have much luck when he couldn't even tell what the monster was—especially since he didn't think the man knew Old English. Too bad the Dark Age bards hadn't left a few verses with a wider range of applications—but their interests had seemed to be rather narrow.

  Wide enough for current purposes, however. Matt noticed that the crashing seemed to have stopped. S
o did the sorcerer—he was frozen with his arms half-raised, looking uncommonly as though he were surrendering to a Wild West sheriff. Then he whipped about and disappeared back into the pass. The black cloud drifted after him, leaving huge, clawed, vaguely anthropoid footprints.

  Not that he cared about the sorcerer, but Matt couldn't leave a scourge like that to prowl the countryside. He tried to remember how the fight finished, decided to be a little more humane, and improvised a different ending:

  "Grendel must flee from there, mortally sick,

  Seek his joyless home in the fen-slopes.

  He knew the more surely that his life's end had come,

  The full number of his days."

  The black cloud kept moving up toward the pass—but as it moved it thinned, until, by the time it reached the top, it was almost gone. A vague outline hung in the air for a second, huge and gross, like a monstrous parody of the human form—or was it reptilian?—then was gone, so quickly that Matt wondered if he'd really seen it. He sighed and turned away—there had been something heroic about the monster, after all.

  Fadecourt was glancing warily up toward the hilltop, then back to the place where his targets had been. There was only a dust cloud there now.

  Matt looked at it, surprised. "What did you do—knock them all the way back to the mountains?"

  "Nay. They saw that black cloud you raised, and turned tail. They fled, and I came near to fleeing after them."

  "Near!" the dracogriff snorted. "If I'd had a clear field, I would've been flying out of here so fast my backwash would have knocked you over!"

  Matt looked up at Narlh, frowning. "I thought you hated flying."

  "Some things I'm scared of more, Wizard. You found one."

  "And you did banish it, also." Fadecourt looked up at Matt, white still showing around his eyes. "Nay, you have certainly cleared our pathway! Have you disbanded them so quickly, then?"

  " 'Dismembered' may be more like it," Matt answered. "You'll pardon me if I don't go back to check."

  "Aye, certes." Yverne looked out from behind Narlh's back, eyes huge. "How have you routed them so quickly, Lord Matthew? And what monstrous apparition was that which you did raise against them?"

  "That's an old story," Matt said, "and a reasonably long one. I'll tell it to you, some time—but right now, I think we'd better get as far away as we can before we run out of daylight and have to camp."

  "Surely we may hearken as we speed!"

  Matt glanced around and saw that even the dracogriff was looking mildly interested. He relaxed and took a deep breath. "Well...okay. Once, long ago and very far away, a hero named Hrothgar built him a hall, hight Heorot..."

  And they set off down the road, eyes growing larger and larger, as they listened to the wondrous tale of the hero Beowulf.

  Alisande crested the mountain pass, with her army glancing up nervously behind her. She couldn't blame them—there were a great many boulders up there, poised as though balanced, ready to fall, and she doubted that the presence of such stones was due simply to nature. Still, they had not had the slightest difficulty from the mountain folk—nor the slightest sign of them, either.

  "May we not see the enemy from this height, Majesty?" Sauvignon shivered, in spite of the sable-lined cloak wrapped tightly about him. Most of the other horsemen were shivering, too, except for Alisande. She wondered why she felt no colder than on a brisk autumn day. Perhaps for the same reason that the infantry did; they were not shivering, though they had wound mufflers close around their faces. On the other hand, it could be because toiling up the slope had raised their body temperatures.

  "We should," she agreed. "Mayhap the scouts..."

  Running footsteps crunched in the snow, and a pair of scouts rounded a boulder and skidded to a halt in front of their queen. "Majesty" the first puffed, sketching a salute, "the Army of Evil is drawn up below us, on the plain!"

  "Battle!" Sauvignon's eye gleamed; his basal temperature must have risen.

  "We shall see them," Alisande decided "Lead on."

  They followed the sentries back around the boulder—and stopped, staring.

  The mountainside sloped away below them, too steep for a horse, though a man could have had a wonderful time with a toboggan; and, far below them, a black line of men straggled across a bowl near the foot of the mountain, interspersed with the orange buttons of camp fires.

  "Majesty" Sauvignon said, "they are not..."

  "On a plain." Alisande nodded. "Indeed they are not, good Marquis. They have drawn a battle line across a lower valley, and they have taken the high ground."

  "May we not simply pass..." Sauvignon saw the jagged rock field that filled the valley just to the south of the one Gordogrosso's army had taken, saw also the sheer cliff face that fell a thousand feet into the valley to the north, and interrupted himself. "Nay. Of course we cannot."

  "There is no passage," Alisande agreed. "We are not through the pass yet, milord. Satan's general but holds its lower reaches."

  "I see that there is a reason for the course of a road," Sauvignon sighed. "Even in these mountains."

  Alisande let the soldiers rest for a day, on the plateau just above the valley held by the Ibilian army. They weren't about to let her men rest in peace, of course—not if they could help it; her pickets and outriders had a glorious time actually crossing swords with the enemy. She had to pick and choose among the volunteers for guard and scout duty, and cautioned them all not to judge their enemy by the little sortie parties they encountered—most of them were coming very unwillingly to battle.

  "Yet will not all their mates come so unwillingly, Majesty?" one footman asked in surprise.

  Alisande was caught. "Belike they will, footman," she answered. "Yet when they charge, or wade as one into the fray, the turmoil of the battle will seize them, and the presence of their comrades will shame them, so that they will fall to their work with a will, emboldened by the many who surround them."

  "There will be evil spells to catch them up in the stir of the moment, Majesty, will there not?" Sauvignon rumbled.

  "There will," she answered, pleased by his support, and turned to the footman again. "Therefore, be not overbold."

  "As Your Majesty will have it," he answered with a bow, and went off to tell his mates that the lbilians were craven.

  "What shall we do with them, Sauvignon?" The queen sighed. "We cannot bid them lose heart!"

  "Remind them that they encounter sorcery," the marquis answered.

  "The very thing," Alisande murmured, for the words sent a chill down her own back. The man was not, she noticed, always the best of company.

  The skirmishes stopped about noon, and her soldiers prowled the perimeter line growling, restless as wolves for the remainder of the day, frustrated by the lack of prey. But when the night came, they remembered the enemy's sorcery and drew in around the fires.

  "They may send monsters against you," Sauvignon counseled. "Be of stout heart natheless, and strike with your pikes and swords. Whatever its form, no beast can do much if it's cut in two."

  The soldiers took heart at the notion, and just in time, too, for the swarm of giant bats that pounced on the encampment would have daunted the most courageous heart. But Alisande shouted her challenge at them and threshed with her sword, and her troops followed her example. Leathery wings and fanged heads fell to the ground, and the few left whole flapped away into the night with cries of woe. Rattled, the soldiers pulled themselves together and watched the night, fingering their blades with apprehension.

  "There is no virtue in this," Sauvignon pointed out. "They will greet the dawn with grainy eyes, and in the fight, their arms will weigh like lead."

  "Which is the sorcerer's plan," Alisande answered. "Let some guard others, that the most may sleep. Set a quarter of them to the first watch."

  She had to quarrel with Sauvignon about who should stay awake to command, but won by the simple expedient of commanding him to sleep. He went off to his tent, disgruntle
d, and she prowled the perimeter, with a word of encouragement here and a spot inspection there, boosting morale by her sheer presence.

  So the men weren't completely unprepared when the dead wolves hit.

  They were horrible things, some only scraps of hide over bones, some half-rotted corpses, some only skeletons, and the men at first pulled back with cries of superstitious terror. But Alisande waded in with the cry of "Poor things! Put them out from their misery!" and demonstrated amply that a dead wolf cut apart can't attack any more than a live one—though there was a head that dragged itself after her on two forepaws before she cut through its neck. And, once scattered, the bones did not pull themselves back together again. The sentries took heart and cut the hundred corpses to pieces. When nothing moved under the moon except people, Alisande congratulated them all, praising them to the skies, and watched them inflate visibly as she did. Then she turned away to wake Sauvignon, gratified to hear behind her, "He must be a fool, the Lord Wizard, to leave such a one as her!"

  The glow was enough to make her gentle when she found Sauvignon with sword in hand. He confessed, guiltily, that he had awakened at the noise and come running out to get in on the skirmish. There was no point in scolding him—half the camp had done the same—so Alisande only thanked him, turned over the watch to him, and went into her own tent to lie down.

  Not that she expected to sleep.

  It was going to be a long night.

  CHAPTER 17

  The Guiding Ghost

  Caught up in the epic, Matt scarcely noticed that the sun was dropping toward the west. He wrapped up the tale, though not in its original verse, and his companions exclaimed with delight. Even Narlh gave an approving grunt. Then Fadecourt said, "Mayhap, now you've told the tale, we should seek a site for—"

  Yverne gave a little cry of alarm, quickly strangled. Fadecourt whirled, and Matt looked up, straight ahead.

  The ghost was there again, quite clear in the evening dusk. His plump, antique tunic and robe even had a tinge of color—purple and gold—and his round face no longer looked quite so threatening, with the bald head and wide eyes, even if those eyes were empty hollows. But there was a feeling of asking about him, almost of imploring.