The warlock insane (11 page)

"Trolls!" he shouted to his companions. "They're really trolls in disguise!" It was enough for Beaubras. He changed his style of attack on the instant, aiming a ringing blow two feet above the head of the nearest bandit.

The blow rang indeed, and struck sparks, too. The bandit gave a scream and fell back a pace, shocked. As well he might be. Beaubras's magic blade, Coupetou, had carved a gash out of the troll's granite hide. For all that Rod could see, the sword hadn't come anywhere near the bandit—but a gash had opened in
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the air above him, welling bright green ichor, and Beaubras was slashing at it again. Not that Rod had time to look. He had spared a quick glance before he turned to block the next blow, dodging aside from it as he thought Long ! at his dagger. It sprouted amazingly, shooting out like a switchblade.

Behind him, Coupetou rang like an alarm bell, and Modwis underscored its melody with a percussion of dull thuds as he laid about him with an iron club.

Rod thought Hard ! and his sword's edge glittered like a diamond.

In fact, it was diamond, as the next bandit found out when Rod sidestepped and chopped right through his club. The "man" stared at the sheared stub in surprise, and Rod scored a line across the air directly above his head.

The bandit screamed and fell back, but his mate with the sword stepped in—and toppled as Modwis straightened up, holding the bandit's ankle. Rod didn't pause to debate points of chivalry—he chopped while he could. The blade clanged and rebounded, vibrating so hard it stung his hands. Bright green lined the air above it and the bandit screamed like a factory whistle, rolling to his feet and pelting back toward the forest. His mate with the stub of club joined him, and Rod started to run after them, then thought of confronting them on their home territory, and slowed to a halt. He turned back, and saw right away that Beaubras and Modwis had done considerably better than he had. Two bandits lay writhing on the ground; another gave one last shudder, and lay still. All three were growing hazy around the edges, but the dead bandit was the first whose form blurred completely, then re-formed into an eight-foot monster, wide in the shoulders and chest, absurdly short in the legs, that looked somehow like a turnip—with arms five feet long, muscled like steel cables, and hands that had claws, not fingernails. Rod stared, appalled. He had had the temerity to fight a thing like that !

He looked up quickly—and, sure enough, the other two bandits had turned into the same type of monster. They thrashed about on the ground, moaning and howling.

"We must aid them." Beaubras took a flask of brandy from his saddlebag. Modwis nodded, and found a roll of bandage in his own saddlebag.

Rod felt very much at a loss. He disguised it with protest. "Wait a minute! We were just trying to chop these things into pieces!"

"Only for that they sought to injure us, Lord Gallow-glass." Beaubras looked up, then went back to trying to wipe up ichor and pour in brandy.

Rod couldn't help thinking that the brandy would do more good in the creature's mouth—especially since it roared at the burning of the alcohol and slammed a huge fist at the knight, who adroitly stepped back. "I bid thee hold thy peace, poor creature. The brandy doth sting, aye, but 'twill prevent infection." How considerate of Grandfather to construct theland ofGranclarte with a rudimentary, but accurate, knowledge of medicine! "Look, I hate to sound like a heel, but wouldn't it be a bit more practical to put them out of their misery?"

Beaubras stared, appalled. "Only they themselves can do that, Lord Gallowglass, by repenting of their
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evil ways and turning to God."

"Revenge," one of the fallen monsters snarled. "Kill slow!"

"Well, not slowly." Rod fingered his sword. "I have a little mercy, after all." The knight protested, and even Modwis paled. "Thou canst not mean to do it, Lord Gallowglass!"

"No, I can, actually. Look at it this way—these aren't civilized beings you're dealing with, or even ones that can be civilized. They're sadistic monsters who enjoy nothing so much as watching people suffer. Heal 'em, and they'll come right back to attack us—and if not us, then the next traveler who comes down this road."

"We must do our Christian duty," the knight responded sternly, "no matter the cost!"

"With respect, Sir Knight, it won't be us who have to pay that cost."

"If we treat them with mercy, Lord Gallowglass, they may give mercy in their own steads," Modwis explained.

"Fat chance!"

"He doth speak truth." Beaubras frowned. "Works of charity may ope the hearts of others to God's grace, Lord Gallowglass. Yet whether they do or not, we can but do our part, and be merciful toward fallen foes."

Rod had it on the tip of his tongue, but he bit it back. This was, after all, his grandfather's universe, and a realm of complete fantasy. Here it was quite possible that bloodthirsty monsters could be reformed and recruited. In fact, wasn't there a story, in his childhood, of the giant Blunderthud, who became one of the Four Kings' most ardent supporters?

He sighed and turned away to grope beneath Fess's saddle for the reset switch, then in one of the saddlebags for the medical kit. As he knelt beside a moaning troll, a thought of reality intruded for a moment, and he seemed to see a genuine peasant rolling in agony, not a troll. Then the moment was gone, and the troll was back.

Shaken, Rod sponged up ichor and sprinkled in antiseptic powder. He pressed down firmly as the troll roared and tried to rise, murmuring, "Yes, I know it hurts, but that's the medicine burning up all the nasty little germs that would try to give you gangrene and make your arm fall off. Just hang in there, and the pain will fade."

Suddenly, he was very glad that Beaubras had been such a stickler about chivalry. If his flash of insight was accurate, he was treating a human being, and the troll was only a hallucination. Or was the troll real, and the peasant a hallucination? He went to reset his horse. "Fess?"

"Uhhaaaeee… chadd… uh seizurrre, Rrrrodd?"

"Yeah, you did." He'd have to wait a little while for the truth; it took Fess's perceptions a few minutes to clear.

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When they were back on the road, the moaning trolls staggering to their feet behind them, Rod asked, under his breath, "What did we fight back there, Fess?"

"Five peasants, Rod—though they were remarkably tall and well fed for Gramarye field hands."

"Futurians?" Rod wondered. "What're they doing here?"

"More probably local agents brought up by the Futurians. But high-technology intervention is quite likely—the heads of those halberds were strangely free of the slightest trace of rust, and the shafts were tipped with lenses."

"Lasers?" Rod frowned. "Good thing they didn't get a chance to use them." Then the shocking thought hit—if Beaubras wasn't really there, who had finished off that one bandit, and wounded the other two?

Fortunately, Modwis spoke up before Rod could try to answer that question, and Modwis was real—within limits. "Sir and lord, trolls own little magic, and assuredly cannot change their shapes." Beaubras and Rod were both silent, digesting the point. Then Beaubras said, "Thou speakest sooth, good Modwis. What dost thou infer from this impossibility?''

"Why, that a sorcerer must have aided them."

"The Lady Aggravate?" Rod asked.

"More likely the crazed old sorcerer who set silver snares for me, and caught thee in glamours—the wicked Saltique."

Rod tried that one on for size, and didn't like the fit. "What's he got against us, anyway?"

"Mayhap he doth see the future," Beaubras said slowly, "and doth know that we shall be his bane."

"He doth fear us for some reason, that's certain," Modwis qualified, "and doth seek to prevent our coming to his lair."

Beaubras grinned, with a toss of his head. "Why, then, let us not dispute his sagacity, my companions!

Ride, for the death of sorcerers!" And he kicked his horse into a trot. Modwis and Rod had perforce to hurry to keep up with him.

"Do I detect a certain lack of logic there?" Rod sub-vocalized.

"If you do, your perceptions are fallacious," Fess assured him. "Modwis's logic is correct, the more so since he is careful to state his inference as a hypothesis. It is Beaubras who leaps to the conclusion that what Modwis infers must be fact."

"Yes, Beaubras was never in doubt," Rod said with a sardonic smile. "But you don't think there really is a genuine sorcerer involved here?"

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"In Granclarte, Rod, anything may be real."

"Right. Uh… how about in Gramarye, Fess? Or isn't that an issue, at the moment?"

"The coincidence of both worlds is desirable," Fess admitted. "In Gramarye, there well could be an esper, allied with the Futurians, who is somewhat unbalanced."

"So instead of a mad scientist, we have a mad warlock. Just great. Is he really out to get us, do you think?"

The robot was silent as he plodded ahead.

"Fess?" Rod pressed. "Am I just being paranoid? Or am I really being persecuted?" The horse said, with reluctance, "I do not think your hallucinations were naturally induced, Rod." Rod knew better than to ask him to explain.

They didn't stop for lunch, but for some reason, Rod didn't miss it. He was growing a mite peckish, however, as the sun declined toward teatime, and asked Modwis, "Are we apt to come to an inn before nightfall?"

"Nay," the dwarf replied. "We have taken the road less traveled by, Lord Gallowglass, and come into lands rarely visited. There is not even a keep 'twixt here and High Dudgeon." Rod sighed. "We get to rough it, then. How romantic."

Both Beaubras and Modwis frowned at him as though he'd said a very strange word and, all things considered, he was just as glad the opportunity to explain himself vanished with the appearance of another pair of travelers.

"Hail!" cried Beaubras. "Wilt thou break a lance with me?"

"Gladly," came the muffled reply, and the other knight spurred his great golden war-horse into a gallop, leveling his lance as he did. He wore gleaming silver armor, but his helmet winked golden in the rays of the setting sun. Rod strained to make out the device on his shield, but couldn't. Beaubras, of course, had taken the position of disadvantage, and had to ride with the sun in his eyes. He kicked his mount into a gallop, and the two juggernauts rode down on each other with all the grace and deftness of a matched pair of tanks.

Rod pressed his hands over his ears.

Even so, he could hear the crash as the knights slammed into each other—and, sure enough, the stranger's lance broke. He reeled in his saddle, then regained his seat, and was almost to Rod as he reined in and turned his horse. "A brave joust!" he cried, unshipping his sword. "Wilt thou do me the honor of measuring thy blade against mine, good knight?"

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"I thank thee," Beaubras answered, riding up, "yet must I decline; for I must save my steel to deflect the spells of an evil sorceress."

"A sorceress!" The knight lifted the visor of his golden helmet, revealing a gaunt face with white eyebrows and moustaches, lined by the cares of years. Yet there was fire in those farseeing eyes, and a zeal for living that lit his whole countenance. "How marvelous an adventure! Assuredly, thou wilt not be so pinch-fisted as to hold all chance of glory to thyself alone!"

"Why, nay." Beaubras looked as though he would have liked to do just that, but chivalry forbade such selfishness. "Wilt thou join with us in this gallant battle, Sir Knight?"

"That will I gladly!" cried the Knight of the Golden Helmet. "Ho, squire of mine! Glory awaits!" His squire approached, a short, compact man with a smile, riding on a donkey and carrying a spare spear. He proffered it, but the knight waved him away. "Nay, nay! One passage at arms must suffice; we have true foes to conquer now!" And he took his squire aside to explain the new mission. Beaubras turned to Rod, his eyes alight, his voice low with suppressed excitement. "He is the paladin Rinaldo, grown old!"

"One of Charlemagne's heroes?" Rod looked after the old man, frowning. "What makes you think that?"

"He wears the golden helmet of Mambrino!" Beaubras whispered to Rod. "Only to Rinaldo was that enchanted helm given!"

"No," Rod said slowly, "I can think of another who wore it, eight hundred years after. Except that he didn't really have it, actually, he only thought he did…"

And he ran down. Who was he, to criticize someone else's delusions?

Beaubras turned away, opening his helmet, and fell into an animated discussion with the old knight, comparing notes about weapons and monsters. From the occasional scrap of conversation that floated his way, Rod gathered that they were taking turns telling of their adventures, each one eagerly prompting the other. The stranger's squire looked up at him with a smile and a shrug, but he didn't really seem to mind at all.

Nor did Modwis. He rode leaning forward a little, eyes bright, ears straining, and began to edge closer and closer to the two knights, hanging on their every word.

The other squire kicked his feet, leaned back in the saddle, and began whistling a little tune. Rod rode after them all in a daze, wondering into what sort of world he'd ridden. Or perhaps what sorts of worlds.

However, some compromise with reality was necessary, especially after the sun went down and the two knights kept riding blissfully through the gloaming, still rattling on with shop talk. "Enough is enough," Rod muttered, and kicked Fess into a trot. The robot-horse swerved around in front of the two armored ones, and Rod said, "O valorous knights, I blush to intrude upon your lofty conversation, but I really do think we might do well to rest through the hours of darkness."
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