The Dragon and the Gnarly King by Gordon R. Dickson
A sudden sense of caution made him pause.
"My Lord Bishop—Excellency—" he said, turning to the cleric, "I need to work some magic now, if you'll permit it. It won't hurt anyone."
"My son," said the Bishop, trying to sound sour, himself, but not succeeding as well as Kineteté had, "unless my own memory has been tampered with, you have already just worked some magic without my permission."
"But my Lord, this is really harmless, to anyone. It's something Mage Carolinus does without hurting anyone, only making them imagine something. Mage Kineteté"—Jim turned to the empty space on the dais where he was pretty sure she was standing—"will you help me explain to my Lord Bishop?"
Kineteté appeared, looking anything but helpful. She and the Bishop both glanced at Carolinus, who continued to slumber in his chair.
She looked back up at the same moment the Bishop did, and spoke to him.
"My Lord Bishop," she said, "you know me. And I have known Mage Carolinus many more years than you have. Ridiculous as it seems, he would approve what his Apprentice is going to do. Carolinus must be allowed to rest now. I will take the responsibility for Jim's Magick upon myself."
The Bishop looked at Jim doubtfully.
"Remember," Kineteté went on, "this young man is only a class C+ Magickian, while I, like Carolinus, am one of only three AAA+ Mages in this world. Where Jim is a hillock in his knowledge of our Art, I am a mountain; and I will be watching him as he works, to prevent his doing anything of the sort you would not wish done."
"I see." The Bishop cleared his throat. "Would you consider then, Mage—bearing in mind the superiority of your rank over his—consider simply ordering him to make no Magick at all?"
"I would not."
"I see. Well, in that case… Mage, I've heard of you, from Carolinus, actually." He turned to Jim.
"I cannot approve anything to which the Church would object, of course," he said; "but provisionally, you may proceed with your magick, my son. But with the utmost care to do no damage to your soul or that of any other son of the Church presently in this Hall."
"I might improve one or more," Jim said. "I certainly won't damage any."
"Then, proceed."
"Thanks, my Lord."
Jim stepped around the dais, and up, to stand beside the Earl, who seemed now almost to be sleeping on his feet. Jim looked at the men-at-arms down below them in the Hall.
He studied them critically. They made a pretty fair small crowd, spread about like that. The two long tables spread them out and divided them up into three groups; which in fact was not too unlike a marketplace, where rows of vendors' stalls would be dividing the customers…
He turned to look at the Earl. He was still standing behind the ward Jim had locked him in, and, from the vague gaze of his eyes, he was also obeying the magic command to forget. Jim removed the ward.
"Now, these next magical commands are for you, alone, my Lord Earl," he said. "You can sit down again."
Jim hesitated. He was aware of Angie, looking doubtful and concerned, and of Dafydd and Brian, watching him with curiosity, but no doubt whatsoever. The Bishop was looking at him with severity. Kineteté had made herself invisible again, but he could feel her eyes on him.
The truth was, he was not planning to do the exact equivalent of making one person—and everyone watching as well—believe that person had been turned into a beetle. What he had in mind was going to be harder than that.
Harder, because Carolinus, making people think someone had been turned into a beetle, had done so with a single, all-encompassing command. But Jim intended to work not only with the Earl, but with the men-at-arms, separately. His commands would have to be detailed and specific.
He would also have to be careful not to include the other people on the dais with him in his magic. He wanted only the Earl to experience what Jim had in mind for him; not any of the others—least of all the Bishop, who might start to think it all had some claim to reality; he had, like many in this century, been seen to get carried away by even a simple play performance, in the past.
Kineteté, of course, could not be kept from seeing and hearing everything Jim did; but there was nothing much he could do about that.
He moved over to stand behind the chair that Cumberland now sat in, and spoke to him in a low voice.
"I'm out of your sight," he said in a low voice. "But you can hear me. You can hear only me. And you can't see anything but the images in your mind, as I tell you about them. Now, you're riding—"
The Earl's left hand reached out a little above the top of the table at which he sat, to gather up invisible reins—
"—and you've got four or five retainers with you, also on horseback, behind you. You know who they are. The group of you are just coming into a marketplace, crowded because it's market day, with common people in every kind of clothing. You can hear the crowd now; you can smell the dust and the other smells of the marketplace. You intend to ride straight through, of course; because you are Cumberland, and they must get out of your way. They do, but grudgingly…"
From here on, Jim intended, there would be little for the others in the Hall to hear. Standing behind the Earl, with his magic he would be looking out through the Earl's eyes, guiding the Earl's own imagination, with occasional manipulation of the men-at-arms before them.
Magic visualization was not for the lazy. To visualize a convincing—which meant a complete—image for someone else's eyes, you had to know what you wanted to visualize. If that was a castle, you had to know how a castle was made and laid out—even what it was made of. Either that, or you had to be able to summon up the image of a castle you had once seen.
If the castle you were envisioning were real to you, it would be real to the one you were causing to see it. Not otherwise. That meant imaginary scenes had to be made up out of bits and pieces of things you had experienced yourself.
The marketplace Jim was envisioning was based on a small town he had himself ridden through, in the Cheddar district of Somerset. With the men-at-arms placed in its image, garbed in the clothes that both Jim and the Earl often saw on common folk, it would do as an imaginary marketplace in just about any town in the southern part of England.
He looked now, through the Earl's eyes. The Earl knew well what it felt like to ride a horse, and immediately Jim felt as if he were himself bouncing along in the saddle of a trotting horse. He had a view of the Earl from the back, just behind his head, as they entered a marketplace. Before them were the men-at-arms, but the Earl's imagination saw them as typical country people, of the sort to be found in any marketplace in the country…
Chapter Thirty-Seven
A muttering began in the marketplace crowd and grew to a clamor of angry voices. The Earl rode on, erect in his saddle, his face as unchanged as if he were crossing an empty plain on horseback. Those riding behind him lifted their reins and moved their horses closer to him.
The voices rose to a roar of combined shouting. The Earl went on, neither changing his expression nor increasing the easy motion of his horse. A few dozen more yards would see him past the market…
Something that winked black against the glare of the sunlight overhead arced through the air. It hit his chest and stuck there for a second before falling away. It was a half-decayed fish about a foot long, and it left a dark stain on the burgundy-colored cote-hardie he was wearing.
He still showed no emotion, moving steadily toward the trees that closed thickly about the road just beyond. But the crowd had found a single word in common, finally, and they were now chanting at him in unison…
"Witch! Witch! Witch!"
The voices drowned out the sound of galloping hoofbeats until a man on a lathered horse, dressed in livery of the Earl's colors and moving at such speed that he had to rein his animal back on its haunches to keep from riding directly into the peer, burst out of the woods.
Wordlessly, he offered the Earl a piece of brown parchment, folded and bound by a black ribbon. The Earl
My Lord,
The Lady Agatha Falon hath confessed under Question, after having been taken up at the King's orders, and admitted to being a witch, herself. She does say that she was enticed into witchery by your Lordship and that you have been a witch more years than she has had life. But that your intent has been to drive our Sovran King into madness and death and desired her help in this, therefore induced her into the foul practise to which you both then belonged.
Some of the northern lords, and others, put small faith in her confession, saying it is most likely to have come out so because of the wishes of her Questioners and the rigor of the Questioning. They suggest you might wish to go north to your own shire and there find friends and force to face whatever army those at court who wish you ill may be able to raise.
Long life and good fortune to your Lordship, and my prayer that you may be safe and remember I was able, at hard risk to myself, to send you this word, herein.
The market crowd had grown silent with curiosity, seeing the messenger arrive.
The Earl read without changing expression, folded the letter up again, and thrust it under his cote-hardie.
"We go north," he said over his shoulder to those now sitting their restless horses behind him.
He looked forward and put his horse in motion again. The others rode after him. In the sudden gloom of the treetops overarching the road, after the bright sunlight of the marketplace, they were momentarily blind—
—The greyish-white tent walls were open to let in light and air; and outside them could be seen a large clearing hemmed in by forest. A score of men moved about the clearing, mostly younger knights, squires, and men-at-arms. Some were looking in the direction of the tent, while holding the reins of horses. Others—the older ones—were watching the woods.
Inside the tent, a table had been set up, simple boards laid atop trestles; and, even here and now—such were fourteenth-century manners—covered with a tablecloth, white as any wedding gown, if somewhat wrinkled by the creases where it had been folded for carrying.
There was wine on the table, in silver pitchers and mazers.
Six people were seated about the table with the Earl, all richly dressed. It was a cool day up here, hard by the Scottish border, and a strong breeze was stealing whatever heat their bodies brought to the tent.
The Earl knew the faces of these men. He knew the way they talked.
Right now, he was merely listening, with the same sort of bulldog look he had worn after reading the letter.
One large man, in early middle-age and wearing a red-dyed fur cloak, spoke in a baritone voice that slipped up into the tenor register when excitement took him. As it had, for he had been trying to outshout the others, and was finally winding up.
"—And I can bring you a hundred knights, my Lord, along with their armsmen!" he said, with a high-pitched, triumphant note.
"Can you have them here, ready to fight, by tomorrow se'ennight?" The Earl's voice overrode the others around the table, as each tried to get control of the conversation.
There was a sudden silence in the tent. The six all stared at the Earl.
"Why—why no, my Lord," said the man in the red-dyed cloak. "I must rouse the countryside, speaking to all the gentlemen who are my near neighbors. They will all be eager to come in their strengths, once they hear from me. Say a month at the earliest, if all would go well."
"Yes," said the Earl, looking at them each in turn, savagely, "and did any of you others come prepared with the numbers you could bring in one week?"
The silence continued.
"My Lords," said the Earl, in a tone that verged on sneering, "you are all my good friends, come to help me in my trouble—and for which help both I and you know you will have cause to gain in the long run. But in anything of war, you are babes, with the milk still wet upon your mouths! Now, listen to me!"
"Gladly—gladly indeed will we listen to you, my Lord," said the other man, quickly, "who are so well-known as a great and successful Captain. But—"
"Then do so!" The Earl's voice rose to a volume that had been used before this on troops lined up facing the enemy. "I want numbers of the men you can have ready to fight in a week; because in a week we will be fighting!"
He stared at their suddenly stiff and paling faces.
"You none of you understand, do you?" he demanded. "So let me tell you there will be not one battle, but at least two—at the very least, two! Have none of you realized that Chandos will have known of that letter I received at least a day before it found me? Indeed, he may have taken the letter as soon as it was written, and then had his choice whether to keep it—which could do me no great harm—or send it on, to trap not only me, but the rest of you, in active talk of treason against the King."
The faces listening had forgotten how to pale years since—for one thing, they all had healthy coats of weather-beaten tan—but they had now acquired a remarkable rigidity.
"Only his honor—which, with his wits, must be credited him—would keep him from using it to condemn, rather than merely set a trap for me. But in any case, be sure he has known we were to meet for some time. He knows these woods, too, and he will have sent a force to take us. When we meet them, that will be our first battle. They may be less in numbers than we are, but they will be seasoned warriors, perhaps with mounted archers in company."
The Earl stopped talking. None of the others ventured to say anything. He smiled at them, his lips tight together.
"That understood, then," he said, "how many knights, squires—and, 'fore God, I'd rather have a squire who is knowledgeable in war to back me at any time, than a knight who is not—and so on down all degrees of armsmen. But how many can each of you gather in six days—so we may honestly reckon up our strength?"
There was a certain amount of hemming and hawing. Only one of them, a short, spare young man with a cap of curly brown hair and a long, livid scar above his right eyebrow, spoke up promptly.
"Eight knights and eleven squires, my Lord," he said, "by tomorrow if necessary. All of my own family. But beyond that, who knows how many or how swiftly found? I will raise and bring what I can, but my neighbors do not leap at my bidding, as those of my Lord of Athernockie—" he glanced across the table at the man in the red-dyed cloak—"seem to do. Of armsmen, perhaps as many as thirty, given time; but how much time I cannot say, for hope of heaven."
The cross-talk at the table began to quiet down as the Earl sat waiting. Finally, they arrived at a tentative figure of sixty to eighty knights and squires, plus a hundred or more men-at-arms and no more than twenty crossbowmen. Local archers would be hardly worth bringing, since those Chandos brought would have a vast advantage in range.
"Very well," said the Earl, finally. "As soon as I think we have gathered anything like the number needed, we move to meet Chandos. All of you should send to discover any talk of his men approaching."
"One more word, my Lord," said a square-faced older man sitting closest of them all to the Earl. "Beyond the knights, squires, and armsmen, do you want country people?"
He was referring, Jim realized, out of what was now developing into a blinding headache, to the local common people, who would come with any kind of weapon they could make or find—often simply a farm tool—in hopes of some excitement in their lives—if not plunder. Jim had not thought of this himself; the Earl's own experience was already feeding this illusion…
"… If they stay from underfoot when the fighting begins, I have no objection. It never does any harm to let the foe think you more numerous than you are. But now about supplies, extra riding and baggage beasts…"
"—My Lords, my Lords," the Earl interrupted them later, "it is useless to consider how you are going to fight the enemy until you know his strength, disposition upon the ground, the look of the ground itself, and how eager he is to fight—to say nothing of the way the weather is shaping, and many other things. Cease discussion
—A platter of small cakes was just being set down in the center of the table by a thin man in green-and-red livery. He took away with him several platters and bowls that had been emptied.
"That brings me to mind," the Earl said, "—what will you tell these neighbors of yours about my reasons for being here in the north now? These gentlemanly neighbors you are hoping will join us?"
He held a cake in mid-air, again smiling his close-lipped, tigerish smile.
"Why, my Lord," said Athernockie, "we will tell them the glorious truth. That, sickened with the heavy blight of Crown taxes upon us, and corruption in the Court, you have finally reached the point where you must take a stand and strike out boldly—possibly for the Throne itself, if that is God's will."
"I counsel all of you that you say no such thing for your own safety," said the Earl. "By those words you announce yourself to all men as being of the intent to commit treason." He looked at them squarely.
"Rather," he went on, "tell them what is the true truth: that the word I have received recently is the last fardel I choose to bear. I feel myself foully insulted by the apparent belief at Court in the confession wrung from Agatha Falon under cruel questioning, which would indeed bring any man or woman to confess whatever her questioners wanted. Say that as a result, I have withdrawn to my shire—only to find that I am in danger of attack by some at Court, who seem to hope for personal gain by bringing me back a prisoner."
His smile broadened, making him look more like a tiger than ever.
"Such as the good Sir John Chandos, when he finally meets us," he said.
There was a prolonged moment of silence around the table.
"Indeed, my Lord Earl," said the brown-haired, younger man, "your words are far better than any we could make. Well do you deserve to be known as you are for your wits in matters such as these."