Her Majesty's Wizard #1 (39 page)

   Alisande stood immobile for a moment more, then slowly turned away, head bowed, toward the stairway. Matt stared after her, a typhoon of emotions boiling within him.

   "I would dispatch you also to the chapel," the abbess told him, "save that you would cause more trouble there than here."

   "Yeah, either way I'm not exactly an asset." Decision crystallized in Matt. "Thanks for your hospitality, Reverend Mother, but I think I'd better be moving."

   "You speak nonsense!" the abbess snapped. "Magic rules this battle, Wizard. We cannot do without you!"

   "I think you can. Max!"

   "Here, Wizard!" the Demon hummed beside him. The abbess stared at the dancing spark, paling.

   "Skip around the battlefield," Matt directed. "Speed up the aging rate for every mortal out there. Let every man there be well into senility by morning."

   "I hear and go!" The Demon winked out.

   "Serves them right," Matt growled. "I got the idea from one on their side who threw an aging spell against me. I countered it-but only by using Max. They don't have him to call on, and this should take them days to undo, if they can. I think your ladies can clear the field before then. So you won't need a wizard to help ... What's the matter?"

   "What was that creature?" the abbess whispered.

   Matt hesitated, rephrasing his answer carefully as he saw her face. "An elemental of sorts, dedicated to neither good nor evil, but serving my intentions for the moment."

   "I still mistrust it," she whispered, making the Sign of the Cross, staring at the battlefield where a spark skipped about, glimmering first here, then there.

   "No," Matt agreed. "Don't trust elementals-nor wizards!" He pivoted to the inner wall. "Stegoman!"

   He ran down the rampart until he was right above the dragon, set a hand on the wall, and dropped. Stegoman's head swung up under him. Matt managed to muss a jagged fin tip and landed hard astride the dragon's shoulders. Stegoman flexed his legs, absorbing some of the impact. Matt gasped for breath and rasped out, "Head for the gate!"

   "Hold!" Sir Guy called, running down the stairway. "You'll not desert me, surely!"

   The Black Knight made a prodigious leap and somehow managed to land behind Matt, grunting as he struck. "I've no time for my horse, it seems. But the noble beast will surely be released to find me later. Nay, Lord Wizard, if you must flee to adventure, I'll guard your back."

   "You will not!" the abbess shouted. "You'll not live past fifty paces! Daughters, guard the door!"

   She was too late. Seeing the dragon heading for them, the nuns had yanked the gates open and ducked out of the way.

   "Fools! You ride to your deaths!" the abbess shouted. "Cowards, fearing women's scorn more than lances!"

   Then Stegoman was through the doors and thundering down the passage toward the outer portal. A nun yanked it aside at the last moment. They shot out and down the talus slope, while the gate boomed shut behind them.

   "Ride, brave heroes!" the abbess was shouting. "For your lives, brave fools! And may God go with you!"

   Matt grinned. "I always did like a woman who was on your side, no matter what."

   The first rank of footmen saw them coming and planted their pike butts on the ground, points slanting outward. Stegoman crashed into the line like a steamroller. For the next few minutes, all Matt could hear was the roar of voices and the clash of steel.

   He laid about him like a maniac, slicing through pike shafts, armor, and helmets with fine impartiality. An enemy loomed up with a huge battleaxe swinging down. Matt leaned to the side; the axe hissed by him, and the big soldier stumbled after it, off balance. Matt marked the joint of helmet and back-plate and swung. He didn't look at the effect, but turned to check on Sir Guy. The Black Knight was busy slicing. They hewed away until the enemy drew back, daunted by an animated blowtorch, a monofilament edge, and a human slicing machine.

   Stegoman spotted a reasonably clear lane through the foe and waited not upon the order of his going. His legs pumped furiously, and the distance widened.

   Then a howl rent the air, and the army of sorcery disgorged a pride of monsters-winged serpents dripping poison, long lizard things with crowns on their heads, and a host of vampire bats. At their sides ran four-foot hounds with blazing eyes and steel teeth.

   Stegoman leaped into a bone-jarring gallop. They rode pellmell into the foothills, with the howls and chittering growing louder behind them. The Black Knight cast a glance backward. "They are closer, Wizard, and will catch us ere the sun can rise!"

   "What are our chances against them?"

   "Ill. We would wound them sorely, but, being spawn of Hell, they heal instantly. They'll drag us all down to death."

   "Aye," Stegoman growled. "I know these winged snakes. One touch with those fangs and even I must die."

   "We cannot stand against them," Sir Guy asserted. "Now, methinks, 'tis kill or cure, Lord Wizard. The time is past, for mere conjecture."

   "That's what I was afraid of," Matt said. At least this time he had his verse already figured out.

   "Let torn skin grow back apace! Mend this dragon, strut and brace! Yield airfoils, to be extended! Let this dragon's wings be mended!"

   Leather boomed as fifty-foot wings caught the breeze and the dragon soared aloft with a hawk-screech of joy.

   "Free!" Stegoman cried out as he spiraled upward. "Oh, bless a wizard who is mindful of his promise!" He roared out fire in exultation.

   Matt leaned forward as the dragon banked into a swooping upward turn. "Stegoman! Level off!"

   "Wozzhat?" The dragon looked back over his shoulder, pie-eyed.

   "Level off! And don't breathe fire for a while, huh?"

   As Stegoman started to obey, Matt relaxed. Then the knight was clasping his shoulder and pointing. "Look-in front!"

   Ahead of them, dropping down toward them, came a flock of harpies, flapping stubby wings furiously to support their bloated vulture bodies. Matt could just make out stringy blonde hair, wasted women's faces, long, pointed noses, and lips twisted in homicidal grins around pointed teeth. They giggled gleefully as they swooped toward Stegoman.

   The dragon stiffened, staring up in horror, and Matt remembered his blasting an owl and shouting about harpies that attacked hatchlings. Once in battle, spouting flame through the skies, Stegoman's drunken mind would hold no thought for the two who rode him.

   There was no time to weigh Freudian theories. Matt began reciting the second of his prepared dragon-curing spells:

   "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain And, with some sweet, oblivious antidote, Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous dread Which weighs upon the heart? Therein the patient Must minister to himself."

   Stegoman came alive to roar out a ten-foot flame. He soared up in a widening spiral, bellowing his rage. The harpies began screeching in fury, trying to beat their way up the sky to their escaping quarry.

   The quarry leveled off, drew a bead on them, and went into a power dive, roaring and flaming. He swept through the flock of harpies, turning his head- from side to side, sweeping the whole flock with flame. They screamed and whirled, trying to escape. But Stegoman made a second pass, catching the stragglers. Then he was sweeping upward again, leaving a flaming mass behind. Wreckage began to fall apart into separate burning fragments, blazing toward the earth.

   "I have done it!" the dragon cried. He reared his head back and began climbing, gouting out fire as he bellowed, "The hatchling killers are dead! I have purged them from the skies!" He reached the top of his climb, blasting and roaring. "Who thinks he can defeat me, let him come against me! He who thinks he can best my breath and claws, let him rise up to try me!"

   He was wildly euphoric-but he didn't slur a syllable.

   Then, a match flared ahead. It swelled to a torch, became a bonfire-and a creature seemed to stir within the blaze. It was long and serpentine, with stubby legs. The flame seemed to draw back into its body, leaving its outline etched in fire, while flamelets danced around its grinning jaws. "Nay," a thunderous voice rolled forth, "what fool is this who thinks to defy the elements that give him life?"

   Sir Guy's steel fingers bit into Matt's shoulder. "What fell beast is this?"

   "A salamander." Matt felt his hair trying to rise. "An elemental of fire. Someone must have summoned it against us."

   "Small and crawling lizard!" the salamander boomed. "Pit your braggart's might against the true master of that element which fills you!

   "Flee!" Matt urged the dragon. "Fly away! You can't fight that thing. Believe me!"

   Stegoman's answer was to jab his head down, flick his tail up, and dive. Matt wrapped his arms around a fin and hung on.

   Stegoman streaked toward the earth at a sixty-degree angle. Behind him, a huge laugh shook the sky, and a streak of fire followed him. The ground shot up, and Matt heard the Black Knight singing a dirge behind him. Then they were slamming to a braking halt over water. Stegoman slewed and rolled over on his side five feet above the surface, bellowing, "Leap!"

   Matt leaped. Water slammed into him and shot up around him. He went under, kicked out in a breast stroke, and broke to the surface just in time to hear the splash as Sir Guy's armor went in. Armor! The knight could never swim in all that weight. Matt dived again as leather wings boomed above him and the dragon shot skyward. Then the water all around turned orange as the salamander dropped down into the space the dragon had just vacated. Matt kicked hard, diving deep, feeling the water grow warm behind him. His hand brushed a metal arm; he seized it, hung on, and began exerting all his efforts to drag the knight with him. Sir Guy helped some-his thrashing was at least directional. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, they moved back toward the surface.

   Matt's feet struck ooze. He sank in up to his ankles-but it was a place to stand, something to push against. He waded through the stuff and realized, with a surge of relief, that he was toiling upward, hauling some three-hundred-odd pounds with him. His back creaked and his arms screamed pain at his shoulders-then his head broke through the water. He sucked in one long, rasping breath as he shoved hard, taking a giant step-and the weight suddenly went off his hands. A moment later, Sir Guy's helmet broke water with an exploding gasp like a whale blowing. Matt dropped the arm, caught at a shoulder, and hoisted the Black Knight upright. "Okay, now?"

   Sir Guy nodded, blowing and sneezing. "I ... let me die, but ... never by water."

   "Me, too ... How's Stegoman doing?" Matt craned his neck back, peering up anxiously.

   The salamander had shrunk to a flaring point of light again, bright against the night's last darkness. Stegoman had disappeared.

   Then a pencil of fire licked out, as the dragon dove at the salamander. His flame hit the beast, and the salamander brightened a little as its huge laughter rumbled through the night. Stegoman's flame winked out; Matt could just barely see him by the salamander's light, shearing off. But the salamander lashed out with its fiery tail, and Stegoman bellowed in pain.

   "Wizard, to your left!" Sir Guy shouted, and Matt turned to see a huge rubbery tentacle swinging down at him. He whipped out his sword and chopped through it in one quick swipe; but two more poised in the air above him.

   "Lord Matthew!" choked a muffled voice, and Matt pivoted to see a tentacle wrapped around Sir Guy's helmet. He leaped forward with an overhand swing; the tip of his sword scored through the, rubbery arm, and it fell loose from the knight; but Matt felt a horrible, slimy coldness wrap itself around his leg, sucking, while a rope slapped itself around his waist. He howled, chopping at his foot, slicing through the tentacle. It loosened, green slime pumping out of it into the river; but the one on his waist yanked him off his feet, dragging him toward deep water. Matt shouted, flailing about him; then the pulling stopped, dumping him unceremoniously into the water as the tentacle fell off, dripping ichor. He looked up at, Sir Guy, who stood with his sword at the ready, gasping. A thin green line of slime coated the edge of the blade.

   "Thanks for keeping me around." Matt struggled to his feet with an anxious glance at the sky, just in time to see the pencil of flame dart down at the salamander again. It hit, and the salamander puffed out into a fireball, engulfing the dragon. Matt heard a shriek of pain, then the salamander's booming laughter. "I've gotta help him!"

   "Help yourself!" Sir Guy snapped. "You're afire!"

   Matt looked down, startled, and saw a coal glowing through the fabric of the purse hung from his belt. Hope surged, and he yanked the purse open.

   "Wizard," said the dot of light inside, "your wish is filled: the sorcerer's army ages apace. The youngest of them now is fifty, and still they age."

   "Max!" Matt almost crumbled with relief. "Thank Heaven! Another job for you, quick! Get up there into the sky, and cool that salamander's ardor!"

   "Salamander?" the Demon sang with delight. "Eons has it been since I have seen one. Well did I choose when I began my travels with you!" Max sprang into the air like a skyrocket.