Forward the Mage

by Eric Flint

  Of course, the ragged nature of the construction did pose a challenge—a hopeless one—to what was left of my trousers. And my fancy Ozarine shoes were about the worst possible footwear to use in such a project, even if I hadn't been encumbered by my pack and easel. I was tempted to leave the pack and easel at the foot of the wall. But, after a bit of reflection, I decided that the pack and easel made a better way to carry my rapier and whip than anything else would. I could hardly climb a wall holding them in my hands, after all.

  Needless to say, I picked up several more bruises and cuts on my way up the wall, but the climb itself went quickly enough. By the time I reached the top, my principal struggle was mental, not physical. Of the many lessons my uncles had drummed into me when it came to the matter of mayhem, the first and foremost was: never lose your temper.

  So, I paused for a while—not long—atop the wall, taking the time to regain my composure. By the sounds coming from within the castle, the festivities were still at an early enough stage that I felt no compulsion to rush in. I could hear the girls' voices now, but they seemed raised more in sullen protest than anguish. Clearly enough, abuse was such a normal part of their lives that they simply viewed this latest outrage as something to be endured.

  I used that last thought to steady my nerves and achieve that state of detached murderousness which was one more product of my uncles' rigorous training. Ludovigo's, in particular. Kill as savagely as you can, boy, as long as your blood stays cold.

  Eventually, I decided it was cold enough. I slid off the wall and entered the nearest aperture. I'd call it a "door" except the term would be an insult to doors.

  * * *

  As I made my way through the dank corridors of the castle, I kept a wary eye out for servants. By now, I'd seen enough of the Baronies to realize that the Baron himself and his armed retainers would be entirely engrossed with their entertainment. Gwendolyn had never made any mention of a "servant class" in the Baronies, but I assumed such creatures must exist.

  As it happens, I ran across only one. A stooped and furtive fellow, clad in rags, rushing from somewhere—the kitchen, I presume—carrying a wooden platter laden with meat. I shrank back into a dark alcove in the rough wall and let him pass. He did not notice me; indeed, he never so much as raised his head from the platter. Servants in the Baronies, I had no doubt, soon enough had any sense of alertness beaten out of them.

  His passage did provide me with directions, however. As soon as he was out of sight, I followed him, after depositing the sack and easel in the alcove. I dare say my treads were those of a predator. I certainly hope so. By now, I was pleased to note, my inner soul had achieved my uncles' much-vaunted state of mind. I felt as cold-blooded and deadly as a viper.

  The noise increased with every step I took. Soon enough, light began to appear in the corridor—hitherto illuminated by nothing more than an occasional taper in a sconce. The light was spilling around a bend up ahead, along with the sounds of carousal. The flickering nature of it led me to believe that it emanated from nothing more elaborate than a huge fireplace.

  I peeked around the corner and—sure enough. Below me, down a short flight of stone steps, was the "baronial feasting hall." Insofar as that term can be applied to something which bore a closer resemblance to a bears' den. Off to my left, set into the stone wall, was a very large fireplace. Logs within it were burning lustily.

  The Baron himself, clearly enough, was the man seated in a large wooden chair at the base of the steps. I deduced he was the Baron because his chair was at the head of the table and was the largest of the eight chairs gathered about. It bore a vague resemblance—very vague—to something you might call a "throne." The fact that the servant had stopped by his chair first to proffer the platter of meat added further evidence to my surmise.

  "Table" I said, but the arrangement was actually more complex. Two tables—heavy, clumsy wooden things—had been abutted in an inverted "T" shape. The shorter of the tables made the base of the "T," and it was at the foot of that table that the Baron sat. On either side of that table sat one of his retainers. His chief lieutenants, I assumed. I recognized the man sitting to the Baron's right. He was the one who had led the party which captured the two girls.

  The table which formed the crosspiece of the "T" was longer. Five chairs were positioned at that table, each of them occupied by one of the ruffians who passed as "feudal retainers" in the Baronies. One man sat at each end of the table, the other three positioned along its length facing the Baron.

  As for the girls themselves, the older one was standing in the middle of the long table at the end, engaged in what you might call a "striptease" if the term weren't too repulsive for the event. She was practically nude by now, her face tight with fear and resentment, being rowdily encouraged by the men at her table.

  The younger sister's state of disapparel I could not determine. She was perched on the Baron's lap, most of her form hidden from me by the back of the chair and the Baron's own figure.

  I couldn't see the Baron's face, a fact which mattered to me not in the least. I was far too busy gauging the position of the Baron himself, his armed retainers, and their state of inebriation. One man against eight called for a battle plan of some sort.

  In my favor were three things: the fact that the men in the feasting hall were not expecting to be attacked, were seated and thus not in good position to resist an attack, and were obviously well on their way toward a drunken stupor. So far along, in fact, that I was sorely tempted to wait until they were comatose from liquor. But . . . before they reached that state, the girls would have been badly abused.

  Against me were also three facts: first, that the men were all armed; second, that however crude they might be, they were accustomed to physical mayhem; and, finally, that I was not too well armed myself and had no armor of any kind.

  By the time I finished my assessment, the servant had placed the platter of meat on the table and was returning toward the hallway in which I lay waiting. I decided to begin with that happy circumstance, and moved silently back along the stone corridor and into the alcove. There I waited, in full shadow.

  The servant scuttled past, his head down and paying little attention. As soon as he moved around the next bend in the hallway, I emerged from the alcove and hoisted the sack and easel back onto my shoulders. Then, I followed him around the bend in the hallway. I would call it a "corner" except that the term would be somewhat ridiculous. Whoever had designed and built that castle, centuries earlier, had obviously never heard of either a plumb bob or a level, much less a T square.

  He was not hard to follow. His crude footwork—wooden clogs held onto his feet with leather strips—made quite a racket clumping along the rough stone floor.

  Soon enough, I found myself looking into the castle's kitchen. The servant was there, digging some more meat out of a great kettle on a crude stove while a heavyset female cook clucked at him to hurry up. There was no one else in the room.

  I examined the kettle and decided I was strong enough to carry it fairly easily. I thought a big pot full of boiling hot water would even the odds quite a bit. The decision made, I reached over my shoulder, drew the rapier from its hidden sheath in the easel, and strode into the kitchen.

  The servant and the cook, as dull-witted as grinding menial labor usually makes people, didn't even notice me until the point of the rapier was at the man's throat.

  "Silence," I commanded.

  The servant's face grew pale, that of the cook grew red.

  "'E's come to kill th'Baron," croaked the servant.

  "Kin I watch?" asked the woman eagerly.

  Well. That settled one question—whether the Baron's servants would attempt to protect their lord and master. Settled it, at least, so far as the woman was concerned. The man's face seemed to grow even paler, almost ashen, as if the prospect of the Baron's death brought him no pleasure at all.

  "Stupid woman," he hissed. "We'll be blamed, wife!"

  His word
s immediately erased the glee in the cook's expression. Her face became as pale as the man's.

  I had not foreseen that complication. "Why would they blame you?" I asked.

  The servant swallowed, his eyes riveted on the rapier. I withdrew the blade a few inches from his throat. After swallowing, he croaked: "Allus blame th'servants, when somethin' goes wrong. Th'other Barons'll say we's done it. Kill us both. Kill half th'peasants on the Barony, too."

  Damnation.

  Something of my chagrin must have shown. The cook examined me more closely. "Yer not from th'Baronies, sir," she whispered. "Me husband's got th'right of it."

  My mind raced, trying to find a way out of the impasse. A thought came to me.

  "What happened when Greyboar the Strangler did for the Comte de l'Abbatoir and his Knights Companion?" I demanded. "Were the Comte's servants and peasants slain afterward?"

  The servant and his wife ogled me as if I were an imbecile.

  "Well, o' course not!" choked the servant. "The great Grey—uh, the vile strangler—slew 'em all, you know, most flamboyant like. Couldna possibly been done by no servants. Nor no peasants, neither."

  "Tied they necks into knots, 'e did!" gurgled his wife, glee returning to her face.

  I thought on the problem a moment more. This time, with the mind of an artist rather than a swordsman. The solution came almost at once.

  "Flamboyance, is it?" I said gaily. "I dare say I can manage that."

  I lowered the rapier. Clearly enough, there was no longer any need to threaten them. I glanced around the kitchen, seeing several large and crudely made cabinets. "Do you have flour?" I asked the cook.

  She nodded mutely. "Lots of it?" Again, she nodded.

  "Excellent. Get it out." I eased the sack off my shoulders and rummaged in it for a moment, before withdrawing the bullwhip. Then, I began removing my blouse.

  The husband was gaping at me. "I assume the Baron had enemies," I stated confidently.

  The servant seemed to have been struck dumb. But his wife, returning from a cabinet with a barrel in her arms, chuckled harshly. "Plenty!"

  "Did he kill any of them? Especially, any that were of approximately my height and build?"

  She set the barrel of flour down on a nearby bench, straightened, and examined me closely. "None so purty as you. But Sieur Henri de Pouilleux were as tall, iff'n no so broad-shouldered."

  "He'll do. How did the Baron kill him?"

  "Stabt 'im inna back, 'ow else? Th'sword went clean t'rough 'im."

  "How else, indeed," I agreed cheerfully. "Clean through him, you say? Better and better!"

  By now I was bare from the waist up. I seized the husband by the scruff of the neck and shook him a bit, to clear his head. "Come to your senses, damn you! I mean you no harm." I motioned toward the barrel with my hand. "Start smearing that flour all over me. Everything except my hair."

  His jaw snapped shut. A moment later, he hastened to obey. While he did so, I turned back to the cook.

  "Some meat paste. Cold—lukewarm at least—not hot." Fortunately, she was either quicker-witted than her husband or less confused, so I was not forced to shake her as well. By the time her husband was halfway through the process of coating me with flour, the cook had returned with some greasy meat paste on a wooden spatula.

  By then, my plans were made. "Smear it here, and here," I commanded, pointing to a spot just above my kidney and on the corresponding side of my stomach, just opposite. "I rather doubt that's exactly where the Baron stabbed the Sieur, but it hardly matters. I dare say the surviving eyewitness will not remember the fine details."

  She smeared the meat paste over the spots indicated. I couldn't see the result on my back, but the one on my belly made quite a gruesome-looking imitation of a wound. In dim lighting, at least—which was all there was in that misbegotten castle.

  "And that's it!" I exclaimed softly. "The scene is set."

  The cook and the servant were back to ogling me. I gave them a cheerful smile—it must have looked ghastly, my face covered with flour—and dug into my pack again. This time, retrieving a poignard in a sheath which I thrust into my belt.

  I gestured at my sack and easel, lying on the floor. "Do watch over them, would you? And I'd suggest you clean up the evidence while I'm gone. This shouldn't take long."

  I spun and bounded into the hallway leading back to the feasting hall. I saw no reason for any further delay.

  I paused briefly, at the entrance to the feasting, simply to assure myself that no great change had taken place. The girl doing the striptease on the table was now completely nude; the sister in the Baron's lap seemed even more unhappy than ever; the retainers drunker. But other than that, the scene remained essentially the same.

  All of which, I was delighted to see, came together quite perfectly. I took but a moment to assess the rest of the enterprise, and was then bounding down the stairs. I would say "gleefully," but I assure you I maintained my cold blood throughout. Even my uncles would have approved.

  "Revenge!" I bellowed. "Face me, Baron! The Sieur Henri has returned!"

  Bullfighting is, of course, a popular sport in Ozarae. And while my uncles disapprove of the pastime, they did not fail to train me a bit in that art as well. I dare say my rapier went right through the back of the Baron's neck and severed his spine as neatly as any matador could have done.

  That splendid enterprise having been achieved, I moved on to the next. Being as I am right-handed, the choice was obvious. Two quick steps brought me past the Baron's skewered form, gushing blood onto his platter. I now stood on open floor to his left. The girl, I was pleased to note, sprang off his lap immediately. The lieutenant seated just in front of me was gaping drunkenly at the Baron's throat, from which a good foot of my blade protruded. The man across from him—the girls' original captor—was staring at me as if he was looking at a ghost.

  Which, of course, he was.

  "And you as well!" I bellowed. "Vengeance is mine!" I had no idea, of course, if the lieutenant had played any part in the Sieur de Pouilleux's demise. But it hardly seemed to matter. In the Baronies, I was quite certain, revenge was a sloppy affair.

  The lieutenant's mouth opened and he began to squall in terror. The squall was cut short by the tip of my whip, coiling around his neck like a boa. I seized the handle with both hands and, with a great and titanic heave, jerked him right out of his chair and sprawled both him and the table onto the man seated before me. The whole lot ended up in a very nice and tidy jumble.

  I am quite a powerful man, as I believe I've mentioned. As the captor more or less sailed across the table, I heard his neck break as cleanly as even my uncle Larue could have asked.

  Three down—two, at least, and the third was tangled up—five to go. The problem now, of course, was disentangling the whip. Normally I can accomplish that with a flick of the wrist, but in this instance the whip was enmeshed with two bodies, one of which was writhing on the floor with a corpse and a table on top of him.

  I gave a quick glance at the five men at the other table and decided I had time to kill two birds with one stone. As it were. All five retainers at the far table were still seated, like so many statues. Their eyes were wide, their mouths agape, their faces pale. Clearly enough, they had no doubt at all that the ghost of the Sieur was present. If they even noticed the fine spray of flour I was shedding all about, they were too dull-witted to understand what it signified. Or mistook the flour mist, in the flickering light from the fireplace, as a ghostly aura.

  I dropped the handle of the whip, knelt, and smote the other lieutenant a mighty blow of my fist. I suspect I broke his jaw. Even if I hadn't, he'd play no role in the ensuing events—other than being a witness when the servants needed one.

  That done, it was the work of only a few seconds to retrieve the whip. By the time I advanced upon the remaining five men, they were finally scrambling to their feet. As I had counted on, their state of drunkenness was impeding their reactions as well as compounding th
eir superstitious horror. One of them, I saw with delight—no, two!—had urinated in their trousers.

  There seemed no purpose to varying a successful tune. "Revenge is mine!" I cried, springing toward them. "The Sieur Henri!"

  The one closest to me, at my end of the long table, spilled his chair in rising. "Have mercy!" he shrieked, fumbling at his sword.

  By then, I had the whip handle in my left hand and the poignard in my right—held by the blade, ready for throwing. For an instant, I hesitated. The man's throat was unprotected, but made a chancy target. The chest—

  I decided that his mangy "armor"—lacquered leather strips, with only a scrap of iron here and there—would pose no obstacle to my heavy and finely-made poignard. Neither would the sternum beyond. Not for someone like me, trained by my uncles.

  Nor did it. The poignard's blade went right through the lot as neatly as you could ask, piercing the heart and not stopping until the hilt struck what was left of the armor. The impact knocked the man flat on his posterior. He sat there, staring at me in shock for a moment. Then, coughed a great deal of blood and collapsed altogether.

  Four down, four to go. From here, of course, the enterprise ascended in difficulty. The four survivors were now on their feet, swords in hand. All of them were bellowing with fear, true, but men such as those will react with violence to almost anything. I was counting on their superstitious terror to lessen the odds, and the liquor they'd consumed to dull their alertness—which, judging from the large amounts of said liquids spilling all over the table and floor from upended flagons, was none too "alert."