A Wizard In War Read online

  "Hair dye," Gar explained, "though it does look a little odd with that yellow beard. We're going to teach you a new skill, Coll."

  The serf stared up at him. "A skill?"

  "It's called `shaving.' " Dirk unfolded a strange, squareended blade from its hollow wooden handle. "You do it with a razor, like this. Hold still, now-this won't hurt much."

  Which was more or less true, at least compared to being wounded with a spear-but it hurt enough that Coll was dismayed to hear he was going to have to do it every day. When he looked in the mirror again, though, he didn't recognize himself at all. Why, he was bare-faced as any knight! Or at least a squire... "You were right! Even my neighbors would never know me now!"

  "I'm sure they wouldn't," Dirk agreed. "Still, it never hurts to make sure. Which way is your home village, Coll?" Coll pointed to the west. "That way, on Earl Insol's estates."

  "Then we'll go east." Dirk mounted his horse. "What lies that way?"

  "The king's own demesne," Coll answered.

  Dirk and Gar exchanged another glance. "Well," the big man said, as he mounted his tall roan, "no matter who attacks whom, we'll be there to see it. Do they hire extra soldiers, Coll?"

  "Free lances? Yes, and there are many of them riding the roads." Coll frowned. "If they can't find work, they turn bandit-and far more cruel than I've ever been, from what the minstrels sing!"

  Dirk nodded. "That's the kind of work we're looking for. You can still change your mind, Coll. You don't have to come along."

  Coll looked back at his hill and thought of the knight and his men who would be coming to about now and discovering the dead bodies among them. "Thank you for the choice, fine gentleman-but when I think it all through, I find I would just as soon come with you."

  The tunic and hose were made of good stout broadcloth, better than any Coll had ever worn.

  By midafternoon, they had come out of the wastelands and were riding through farmland that had been fruitful sometime in the past. Now, though, the rolling fields were littered with broken spear shafts and wagons, lying on their sides or in pieces, rotted spokes drooping from wheels that no longer had their iron rims. Among them lay the bones of horses and oxen, picked clean-and even, here and there, the bones of men, some with rags of livery still clinging to them, flapping in the breeze. Occasionally they saw a broken spearhead or halberd blade; all other iron was gone, scavenged.

  The wreckage clustered along lines where armies had met and fought, lines that divided the fields in place of the hedges that had been trampled underfoot. Peasants were plowing those fields again, as the needs of life triumphed once more over the profligacy of death.

  "This was a hard battle." Gar gazed out over the fields, his face somber. "Who fought whom?"

  Yes, they were outlanders. "Count Ekhain and Earl Insol," Coll told them. "The wasteland is Count Ekhain's; the little river that borders it also borders these rich lands of Earl Insol's-or lands that were rich, once."

  "So Count Ekhain tried to take them, and Earl Insol fought him off," Gar interpreted. "Did Ekhain have any excuse?"

  "Excuse?" Coll stared. "Why would he need an excuse?"

  "Why indeed?" Gar murmured.

  "Some sort of justification, maybe?" Dirk prodded. Coll shrugged. "What justice could there be in war?"

  "That plowman." Gar nodded toward the nearest field, where a grey-headed man with a white beard wrestled with a share. A boy ran along beside the beast's head with a switch, shouting at the animal now and again to keep it in a straight line. "Isn't he a little old to be cutting a furrow?"

  "Yes, but what choice has he?" Coll replied. "All the young men and the fathers are away at war. Who is left to guide the plow but the grandfathers?"

  Gar shuddered. "Let's hope the war will be over soon!"

  "What matter?" Coll shrugged again. "There will be another one in a few months."

  Gar turned to stare at him. "Always?"

  "For as long as I can remember, at least," Coll told him, "and my father before me." Really, he was beginning to think these men weren't just strangers-they must be simpletons, too, not to see something so obvious. Wars end? How could wars ever end?

  Of course, they might not have been simpletons, but simply from very far away indeed. For a moment, excitement stirred in Coll's breast. Could there actually be places where wars did end? Where a whole county or duchy might find ten or twenty years of peace? But he shrugged off the notion almost as soon as it came. Fairies and elves were real-everyone knew that, even though they had never seen them-but a land without war? Impossible!

  Dirk nodded at the plowman, his white hair tousled by the wind. "How old is that grandfather? Sixty? Or only fifty?"

  "Fifty!" Coll stared, amazed. "Few serfs indeed live to. that age! No, sir, that man is surely only thirty-five, perhaps forty at the most!"

  Dirk stared, and Coll could see that he was unnerved. "I would age early too, in such a land," Gar said gently. Dirk swallowed thickly and nodded.

  Coll was all the more flabbergasted. Surely they were crazed! Surely there could not truly be a land where plowmen lived to be sixty! A lord might live that long, but surely not a serf-and to still look youthful at thirty-five? Impossible!

  A similar thought seemed to have occurred to Gar, because he turned and asked, "I had thought you were in your thirties, Coll. How old are you?"

  "Thirties?" Coll stared, wondering if he should take of-. fense. "I am twenty, sir!"

  "Indeed." Gar sat gazing at him for a minute, then nodded and turned his face back to the road. "I think we chose the right place, Dirk."

  "I should say we did!" Dirk averred, and came after him.

  Coll followed Dirk, wondering.

  Then he saw the woman sitting by the roadside with a miserable, scrawny child clutched to each side of her, and anxiety stabbed him. How long before Earl Insol warred against the king? How long before the soldiers reached Coll's mother and sister? For surely the knight would already have sent Dicea home grieving ... His blood boiled at the thought, but Dirk's voice distracted him, even though he was speaking in a low voice, to Gar. "How old is the woman?"

  "I would have said fifty," Gar replied, "but judging by what Coll's been telling us, she can't be more than thirty." Coll glanced at the woman and nodded.

  "Are those boys or girls?" Gar's voice was still pitched low. "Or one of each?"

  "Can't say, just by looking," Dirk replied, "but I'd guess they were five years old, both."

  "So skinny. . ." Gar shuddered.

  Coll looked more closely, and felt a stab of pity. These were children who had never known a time without war, without soldiers marching through their village-and never known a day without hunger, or with enough to eat. He wondered if their father still lived, and if so, with which army he marched.

  The woman raised bleary eyes at the sound of the horses' hooves, then pushed herself to her feet with a sudden burst of energy, cupped hands outstretched. "Alms, good sirs! A penny for the children, a heel of bread, a crust! "

  "More than that!" Dirk said with indignation, even a little anger. He pulled a loaf from his saddlebag.

  Gar touched him on the shoulder. "Not too much. They're starving . . ."

  Coll frowned. Surely, if they were starving, that was all the more reason to give them as much as they would take! But it was the knights' food, after all, and if they didn't want to share too much, who could blame them?

  Dirk gave a curt nod, broke off the heel, and handed it to the woman. She took it eagerly and started to break it, but Dirk said, "No. One for each of you."

  The woman froze, staring at him, amazed.

  Dirk broke off another piece, and another, taking up half the loaf, and handed them down. "Here, eat." As they began to gobble the bread, he looked a question at Gar, who nodded, and Dirk turned around to dismount. "Some broth would help." He took a pot and a handful of rods from his saddlebag, and a small box with them. Stepping off the road, he unfolded the rods and set a ring with four s
hort legs on the ground. He kindled a fire beneath it, set the pot on top of it, poured in water from his water bag, took a cube of something dark from the box, and dropped it in. The woman watched him with curious, avid eyes, and as the water began to boil, she sniffed the aroma of beef broth with delight. "It has to boil," Dirk told her, "then coolbut it will be good to drink."

  The children pressed in, half hiding behind their mother, staring at the pot with famished eyes.

  "Are your children boys or girls?" Dirk asked with a gentle smile-but the woman stiffened with alarm, clutching both little ones to her as she rattled, "Boys, sir, both boys!"

  Coll wondered why Dirk seemed so startled. Surely he must know that any girl had to be protected from the lords' soldiers, no matter how young.

  "They're fine young lads of ten and twelve," the mother assured Dirk. Coll understood why the knight seemed so startled, so troubled, for he had heard him guess at their ages.

  Mother and children were sitting by the roadside, eating a little more bread and drinking the broth from wooden mugs, when harness jingled, and horse hooves sounded on the road.

  "Company," Gar said softly, and Dirk paused in the act of dropping his cooking gear back into his saddlebag, to look up at the armored knight with his dozen men behind him, coming up the road toward them. Dirk mounted his horse as Gar said in a hard, low voice, "Take them into the woods, Coll."

  "Go along with you now!" Coll shooed the mother and children off the road and into the trees. They turned and ran, still holding their mugs. Once behind the screen of leaves, Coll called, "Finish your broth, leave the mugs, then go as quickly and quietly as you may."

  The woman nodded, wide-eyed; the children drank off the rest of their ration, and the mother brought their cups to Coll. He gave her a curt nod, never taking his eyes from the roadway, never turning to watch them lose themselves in the woods. He was far too concerned with watching the knight ride up to Coll's new masters, gesturing to his men to surround them, saying curtly to Gar and Dirk, "I hereby impress you into His Majesty's service!"

  Coll felt as though something were breaking inside him, felt as though the scrap of hope the two men had offered were being snatched away-then felt fear mount in its place as Dirk said, loudly and dryly, "We are not impressed."

  3

  "Say you so, bumpkin? Then have at you!" the knight is cried, and couched his lance.

  "My meat," Gar told Dirk. "You keep the riffraff off my back."

  Dirk only nodded and spurred his horse wide to the side.

  The knight gave a shout and spurred his mount. The huge animal lumbered into motion, then shifted up quickly from trot through canter and into full-fledged gallop. The footmen gave an enthusiastic shout and loped after their master.

  Dirk cut across them, swinging a sword that certainly shouldn't have been sharp enough to cut through their pike shafts-but it did, clipping them off like a scythe through wheat.

  Gar sat his horse calmly, waiting as the knight bore down on him, lance point centered directly on Gar's chest, shouting, "Yield, you fool! Yield, or try to run!"

  "I would almost think you didn't like taking people's lives," Gar called back-then suddenly made his horse leap aside to the left. He caught the shaft of the lance as it went by and pulled. By rights, the knight's momentum should have yanked Gar off of his mount, but horse and rider both set their heels, and the knight whipped about in his saddle as the leverage of the long lance twisted him to his right. He clung to it like a bulldog until pain wrenched his midriff, then dropped the lance with a howl and turned back to his horse just in time to slew it around in a great curve. Gar waited until he had turned and was on his way back before he held up the lance in both hands and, with a sudden heave, broke off the first two yards.

  The knight shouted in anger and spurred his charger. It thundered down on Gar as its master lugged out a broadsword and swung it two-handed at Gar's head-which made it possible for the the giant to duck under the blow, then come up to throw his arms around the knight. With a crash and a clatter, they both shot out of their saddles and hit the ground.

  The footmen slewed to a halt and stared, amazed, at their headless weapons. They looked up at Dirk, an almost superstitious fear coming into their eyes.

  It certainly rose into Coll's heart. What kind of steel was his employer's sword made of, anyway?

  Then one of the soldiers plucked up a bit more courage than the rest and came at Dirk with a shout, swinging his headless shaft like a baseball bat. Dirk grinned, made his horse sidestep at the last second, and chopped another foot off the staff as the soldier blundered by.

  But he had put some heart back into the rest of the menat-arms, who must have realized Dirk couldn't dance away from them all, for they charged the lone horseman with a shout.

  But Dirk had changed weapons-he was spinning a loop of rope over his head. Seeing him without a blade, the soldiers decided he was easy meat, and charged with a gloating cry.

  Dirk rode a dozen feet in front of them, crossing their path; his lasso spun through the air and fell around the shoulders of the soldier in the center. He yanked it tight, and the man slammed into the soldier next to him-who slammed into the man next to him, then back against the one behind as Dirk rode in a circle around the whole dozen of them. They shouted in surprise and dismay as the rope yanked them all together like a sheaf of wheat, staffs knocking one another on the head, jumbled together so tightly they could scarcely breathe. The horse pivoted and threw its weight back, digging its hooves in to keep the rope taut.

  Gar helped the knight to his feet, then picked up his sword and handed it to him. "Fool!" the knight snarled, and swung the blade high, two-handed. Gar retreated, drawing his own weapon.

  But Coll saw a lone soldier rise up from the grass and run to catch up the cutoff end of the knight's lance. It was six feet long, and he leveled it as a spear, charging at Dirk's back in silence.

  "Behind you!" Coll shouted, then ran to catch the fellow even as Dirk turned to look. He saw the lance coming just in time and leaned to the side; it skimmed past his ribs, tearing cloth. Then Dirk caught the shaft and pulled. The soldiers stumbled, off balance, and Coll swung his staff, knocking a very solid blow into the man's skull.

  "Well struck!" Dirk said with a grin. The knot of soldiers cried out, protesting; even through the attack, Dirk and his pony had kept the tension on the rope. One soldier fumbled his belt knife out and tried to reach up to saw at the cordage, but it held his forearm pinned, and he could only curse as the knife slipped from his fingers.

  Coll glanced at Gar, and saw him dancing in and out, avoiding the knight's sword chops, while the man of metal lumbered after him, panting like his own horse. Coll could hear the harsh rasping of breath even through the visorGar was breathing hard, too, but certainly not with any pain; he was even grinning! Striped here and there with blood where he had moved almost quickly enough, but grinning nonetheless ...

  The knight blundered forward with one more slash that had all the deftness and skill of a Clydesdale hauling a broken beer wagon. Gar sidestepped, then pivoted in close, his dagger flashing. The knight shouted and stepped back, stumbled, wavered, but kept his footing-and his breastplate swung open, the straps on the left side cut! Gar lunged across the man's body, then riposted before that huge cleaver of a sword could catch him-and the right shoulder of the breastplate fell down, leaving the knight's torso exposed, but with the armor shell still hanging at his hip to foul his movements. He shouted in rage, lunging at Gar and swinging down hard. The giant gave a shout of glee, sidestepped and parried the blade down so that it struck into the ground, then thrust with his own sword. It came away with blood on the tip, and crimson stained the knight's gambeson. He stared down at it in disbelief.

  "Only a flesh wound," Gar said, "unless there is less meat on your chest than I think."

  The knight threw himself at Gar with a roar. The big man sidestepped; the knight blundered past, stumbled, and fell. Gar reached down, caught a shou
lder, and turned him over. He didn't even have to raise his sword; the knight held up both hands, crying, "I yield me! I yield me!"

  "Why, then, there shall be peace between us," Gar said slowly, though he did not sheathe his sword. He did lean down, though, to catch one of the knight's arms and haul him to his feet.

  "If that's how you fight without armor," the knight asked, "what could you do if you wore a proper harness!"

  "A good deal less," Gar replied frankly, "for it would slow me down and restrict my movements greatly. I must admit, though, that I do favor a chain-mail shirt in battle." Coll watched with bitterness. It was all a sort of game to them, these knights safe in their iron shells-and if that game went wrong, they could end it by surrender. Not so for a poor serf hounded into lawlessness-or even a serf pressed into an army for battle. For him, the fight went on and on to the death.

  "Throw down your weapons," the knight called to his men, "for it is knights that we fight, not merchants or villeins!"

  Reluctantly, the men-at-arms dropped their staves-all that was left of their pikes. "Go find your steel," Dirk told them, and let go of the rope. They thrashed and pushed their way out of the knot of men, then spread out to find and pick up their spearheads and halberd blades.

  The knight turned back to Gar. "I am Hildebrandt de Bourse. Whom have I had the honor of fighting?"

  "Gar Pike," the giant said, with a small bow, "and I am honored indeed to have crossed swords with so doughty a warrior as yourself, Sir Hildebrandt."

  Sir Hildebrandt returned the bow, apparently not realizing the humor in the name Gar gave-but Coll did, and had difficulty throttling a laugh. Gar Pike, indeed! And a most amazing fish he was, too!

  "So you know us for what we are," Gar said, amused. "Is it only because I know how to duel?"

  "That," Sir Hildebrandt agreed, "but I know you also by your chivalry; you could have slain me by nothing more than a thrust that cut deeper by inches, but you chose not to-then honored my surrender, and even set me on my feet."