Her Majesty's Wizard #1 (32 page)

   "Two days' ride," Alisande answered.

   "What now is our order?" Sayeesa demanded. "Can we go around them?"

   "We can," Sir Guy said judiciously. "But if we do, night will catch us far from any habitation."

   "No." Matt shook his head sharply. "We might not find a convenient Stonehenge this time; and I somehow suspect Malingo hasn't run out of hellhounds."

   "We go in, then." Alisande's sword hissed out of its sheath. "Come, gentles. We shall hew a way to those walls, or die with our swords reaping a harvest of evil about us."

   "Very commendable." Matt touched a restraining hand to Alisande's hilt. "But personally, I'd prefer not to die. There's a better way. Max!"

   "Aye, Wizard." The dot of arc light hovered in the air before him. Sir Guy and Alisande pulled back involuntarily, and the stallion shifted restlessly. Matt ignored them. "Does your power extend to time, Max?"

   "Things move in time as in space. Thus there is energy spent; and where it is spent, I can hoard. 'Tis in my province."

   Matt took a deep breath, sure of his words this time.

   "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time."

   The dot of light winked out. Matt swallowed and settled in the saddle, motioning the others forward.

   They rode down the hill at a trot and came to the rear of an army strangely stalled; all about them, soldiers and animals stood frozen in mid-movement.

   "What has happened, Lord Wizard?" Alisande's voice was hushed. "Have you and this Demon of yours frozen this whole army in death?"

   "No, Highness. They are not dead, but frozen in time, so that it might take a day for one to blink his eyes." Matt looked around him, trying to suppress a shudder. "But do not touch them. They move so slowly that each must seem as immovable as a whole mountain of granite."

   They went through the army at a crawl, moving very carefully. It was slow going. Finding ways for the horses to move through the bunched soldiers was difficult, and they often had to backtrack and try another way. But they persevered and were almost to the wall when the men about them began to move again, very slowly, but getting faster.

   "The spell's broken!" Matt bellowed. "Ride, and don't count the bumps!"

   Horses lurched into a run as a midnight-blue figure thrust up above the crowd, its hands weaving an unseen pattern.

   "Faster!" Matt called. "There's a sorcerer with a whammy back there!"

   But the footmen were coming alive, with groans that rose to howls. Pikes thrust up at them from all sides. Sir Guy shouted and plowed ahead, bowling them out in a bow-wave; but the more adroit soldiers sprang back, then leaped in again, thrusting. Matt whipped out his sword and parried a pike, slicing its haft in the process. On the far side, Sir Guy dished out death, cut-and-parry.

   The sorcerer's arm swung down in an arc, forefinger stabbing out at the company.

   "Fight!" Alisande cried. "They are no longer helpless!"

   Matt turned toward her, startled. Her voice had deepened, grown husky. Her body had thickened; laugh lines cupped her mouth. As he watched, crow's-feet sprouted, and silver salted her hair.

   "You're aging!" Matt cried, and turned to Sir Guy. The knight was hewing and hacking, but more slowly now, and his hair was grizzled. Matt yanked his hand up in front of his eyes and felt his joints resist the movement. The hand was blue-veined and wrinkled. "He's hexed us! We're aging a year every second! Max!"

   "Aye, Wizard?" The Demon danced before him.

   "Make us younger, fast! Back to our natural ages! The sorcerer over there has speeded our time up!"

   "Then I shall reverse it," the Demon chuckled. "What words will you give me?"

   "Forward to yesterday! `Turn back the hands of time!' 'I have a mandate from the people!' And while you're at it, drain that sorcerer's power!"

   "I go, I go!" the Demon sang, and exploded into a sheet of flame, to clear some working space. Soldiers sprang back, screaming and beating their clothes. Matt felt his joints loosen and saw Sir Guy and Alisande quicken their movements as the wrinkles faded from their faces.

   A despairing shriek rose over the battle; Matt yanked his head around in time to see the sorcerer collapse. Max had drained the magician's power-all of it.

   A pike jabbed up at Matt's eyes. He flinched, pulling back, and it grazed his shoulder instead. Matt bellowed as pain seared him, and thrust with his sword. The pike head went flying, but two more jabbed in, and more soldiers were following from Matt's blind side. He swung his monofilament-edged sword like a scythe, reaping pike heads. "Your Highness! Get the gate open!"

   "Aye; 'tis my task," Alisande cried, turning her horse. The Demon blasted some space for her as she rode to the fore, leaving Sayeesa sandwiched between Sir Guy and Matt.

   Alisande cupped a hand around her mouth and called out, "Open to friends! Open the gate!"

   Matt heard a shouted command above, and a torrent of crossbow bolts plummeted down all around them. Soldiers screamed and fell back, and few seemed disposed to replace them. A knight swore in the background, swatting at his men with the flat of his sword; but they pressed back away from the company, for the crossbow bolts continued to fall in a drizzle.

   "Who cries for entry?" a basso voice bawled above.

   Alisande's mouth hardened. "Alisande, Princess of Merovence, commands you to open!"

   The basso swore a startled, but very pious, oath, and the huge doors bowed outward on the instant, swinging wide. The besiegers howled and surged forward. But bolts hailed down, slowing them. Alisande galloped in through the gate with Sayeesa behind her, and Sir Guy tuned his horse, facing outward, pulling in against Matt's side, retreating toward the gate while he hacked and slew about him. Matt admired his endurance; his own arm was ready to fall off.

   They backed toward the gate. Within the archway, Sir Guy tuned and galloped in. Matt slewed about, blocking the door. He clipped three pike heads with one last weary chop before he cried, "Max! Flambea!"

   The Demon blasted a ten-foot half circle of charred earth clear around the gate. While the enemy was trying to rally, the rear ranks trying to shove through the huddle of moaning men in front, Matt pivoted and lurched into the monastery.

   A moment later, the huge doors boomed shut behind him, and the foot-thick bar crashed home to hold them. Something huge and heavy slammed against them, rattling the bar; then howls of frustration filled the air outside the wall. Matt went limp in the saddle. Let them bring up a battering ram, now; his party was safe.

   "Where's she that does claim to be Princess of Merovence?" the stern basso voice cried out above them. A tall, heavy figure in full plate armor clanked down the steps from the battlement, his breastplate embossed with a bright green cross. A cloak of the same green, with a gold border, snapped in the wind behind him.

   "My Lord Abbot!" Sir Guy cried cheerily, saluting with his sword. "Well met in a dark hour!"

   "Who speaks so?" The tall knight rumbled, lifting his visor to disclose a glowering face with a bush of moustache.

   Sir Guy threw up his own visor, and the abbot's stern face broke to a slight smile, a warm glow in his eyes. "Sir Guy Losobal! It is long since I beheld your countenance. Have you come, to strive by our sides in our hour of need?"

   "Nay, Lord Abbot-we have come to cry sanctuary from a house of God! And as to her whom we guard, look and see-can you hold doubt of her lineage?"

   The abbot turned, frowning down at Alisande. His eyes widened slightly. "Nay-I cannot," he breathed. "Her parentage is written in her features."

   Matt was amazed that so huge a man could move so quickly. He was at the bottom of the stairs in an instant, kneeling by Alisande's horse. "You honor our house, Highness, and have come to give heart to your most loyal liegemen in the darkest of hours! Forgive my rash doubts of your person!"

   "Your caution was well-founded, Lord Abbot." Alisande sat straight in the saddle, royalty enfolding her like great, closing wings. "The thanks and praise of a princess, for all you and yours, who have held out 'gainst all hope."

   "Thus we have ever done; thus we shall ever do," the abbot responded, rising. "Yet we fought with little heart, for we thought our cause doomed. But we know, now, that you live and are free! Nay, let them batter our gates! With their own swords, we shall dig them their graves!"

   Alisande beamed, basking in the glow of his homage. "I am greatly blessed to have such vassals! Yet I err in etiquette. Lord Abbot, may I present my worthy companions." She indicated Sayeesa. "A penitent bound for the convent of Saint Cynestria."

   The abbot bent an armored glance on Sayeesa. "Women are forbidden within these precincts; yet any attendant upon her Highness is welcome. Still must I bid you to the guest house in the eastern tower, milady."

   "I cry grace for your courtesy." Sayeesa bowed her head. "Yet you have no need of such chivalry; I am lowborn."

   "Your speech denies it," the abbot said, frowning. "Naetheless, you are welcome to such sanctuary as we can offer." He turned away, studying Matt. "And this, your Highness."

   "This is Matthew, Lord Wizard of Merovence." Alisande's voice rang out.

   The abbot stared, taken aback. "Lord Wizard! You dare to proclaim this, with the usurper's foul sorcerer claiming the title?"

   "I do," Matt said grimly. "I have an ace up my sleeve."

   "An ace?" The abbot turned to the princess with a frown. "What is this he speaks of?"

   "I have not heard the term," she answered. "He is a rare scholar, Lord Abbot, and much that he speaks is quite strange. Yet I think that he speaks of the small bit of light which he term--" She hesitated. "-a Demon."

   "But be assured, Lord Abbot-he's not of the Hell-crew," Matt added quickly.

   "How could that be?" the abbot growled. "A Demon, and not of Hell?"

   "Well, that's just a label fastened on him from the outside, mostly, I think, because he wasn't human and produced heat."

   "Nay, that cannot be!" the abbot said sternly. "None but God can create!"

   "You're right! But you can take what heat is available and concentrate it in one place. That's really all you do when you boil water, isn't it?"

   "Aye, in a manner of speaking." The abbot still frowned. "Is it thus your familiar does its work?"

   "Not all that familiar," Matt said judiciously. "But yes, he does-and he sticks with me because I understand how men are basically self-defeating."

   "Ah." The abbot nodded, his face clearing. "That the fault is not in Creation, but in man. Yes, I see-and if your spirit declares that, it could not be of the Hell-breed." He took a deep breath, his shoulders lifting. "Well, then-what would you say to hot meat and good wine?"

   For the first fifteen minutes, they were rapt in total silence, broken only by the clink of knife on plate-the kind of silence which was the hungry man's highest tribute to good cooking.

   After two pounds of beef, some scallions, and a glass of wine that out-burgundied Burgundy, the abbot heaved a satisfied sigh and set down his glass. "Tell me what you have seen as you rode from the East."

   "Banditry and lawlessness," Alisande said darkly. "Poor folk striving still to be good, but with sad moral weakness come upon them." She looked up at the abbot. "Which should be little surprise to you-for I see many coats, other than those of your monks, here in your monastery, Lord Abbot."

   It was a monastery, Matt had to admit-he'd found that out as they came through the inner gate. Suddenly it had been spread out before him-a collection of low-lying buildings, dormitories, cloisters, common hall, chapel, brewery, bakery, armory-all the buildings of a medieval monastery, with a few martial additions. Even an orchard, and a large truck garden. But the whole thing was enclosed by the great curtain-wall, turreted and battlemented. The House of Moncaire was a strange hybrid between monastery and fortress. It said a lot about its inhabitants.

   "Aye, many liveries, Highness," the abbot answered. "The Duke of Tranorr is here, and the Duke of Lachaise. Earl Cormann has come, and Earl Lanell and Earl Morhaisse. Beneath them are Barons Purlaine, Margonne, Sorraie -- the list is long, Highness."

   "Tranorr, Mochaisse, Purlaine ... those estates are near to Bordestang." The princess frowned.

   The abbot nodded. "When the usurper's armies closed about them, they could choose only death or flight. They fled, that they might fight again for your cause. They came here, where the power of God strengthens the power of arms. Here, too, have come peasants made homeless by banditry, or by wars between barons men who live now only to strike down the emissaries of Evil. We have footmen aplenty, and knights; those whose lords died in the war have come to us, masterless, seeking a suzerain, for they disdained to serve the usurper."

   "Then your numbers are adequate?" Alisande inquired.

   "They have been, till now." The abbot's face darkened. "Your presence here is a blessing, Highness-yet 'tis also cause for concern. Many of our men have fallen to wounds, and more than a few to vice. Our arrows and bolts are spent faster than our fletchers and smiths can renew our stock. We are weakened, in truth; for we've been here besieged nigh onto a twelvemonth. Till now, the usurper and his sorcerer have had to fight in many places at once; the troops before our walls are, therefore, a moiety of their force. Yet with your Highness here guesting, I doubt not they'll bring all their horses and men to this place and strike us with all their weight here this night."