Her Majesty's Wizard #1 (38 page)

   The nuns seemed unworried. The bandit-maids had brought their armory with them when they took the cloth, so they had a plentiful supply of bolts and arrows. After all, they'd been under seige for only one night and day, not for three-quarters of a year.

   Thirty nuns triggered their crossbows, then stepped back while thirty more stepped up in their places, to loose and retire, while a third rank in turn shot and stepped back. Then the first rank, cocked and reloaded, came forward.

   "Whosoe'er trained those ladies knew more than a little of warfare," Sir Guy observed.

   The enemy soldiers ran into a steel storm as soon as they were in range. They howled and either died or retreated. A doughty few pressed on another fifty feet before they went down.

   The former bandit-maids shouted their triumph.

   "They may not need our help," Matt said hopefully.

   Sir Guy disagreed. "The battle is scarcely joined, Lord Wizard."

   The enemy took time in getting the next act together. Then a ram-tunnel came worming its way out of the line, forty feet long, with many pairs of feet showing below.

   A big bandit-maid called, "Maud! Let in some light for them!"

   "Certes," a nun called from above the door across the way. "We cannot have a centipede near our house. Turn, sisters, and lower the front a mite."

   They had a small catapult, mounted to swing both horizontally and vertically. "Gently," Sister Maud cautioned. "Aim not where 'tis, but where 'twill be ... Now loose!"

   With a deep thrum, a boulder the size of a basketball leaped out over the field. It arced high, then swung down. The ram-tunnel captain saw it and bawled a command to back pedal. But the wooden centipede barely got into reverse when the stone crashed into the middle of the roof. The tunnel broke into two halves and beat a hasty retreat. Hoots of laughter followed it from the battlements.

   Sir Guy shook his head in admiration. "Thus may we see the strengths of amateurs."

   "Amateurs?" Matt looked up, startled. "I'd say those girls were pretty good."

   "Aye, but they've had small training in defense. They know not that a catapult's only for attacking a castle. They've but heard of it as a siege engine; so they've mounted one on their wall for a siege-and it has succeeded!"

   A cry went up along the wall. "Malvoisin! Malvoisin!"

   A fifty-foot structure loomed darkly in the first rays of the moon, four hundred feet out.

   "It's not moving," Matt noted.

   Sir Guy grinned. "Our doughty ladies have proven the efficacy of their catapult. The enemy dares not bring his engine within range. How then will he deal with this?"

   The answer came quickly as Matt noticed tendrils of fog beginning to curl around the battlements.

   "They wish to shroud us!" the abbess cried, and her hands began to weave symbolic gestures, while she chanted in Latin. Whatever the spell or prayer, the fog lifted before it had fairly started.

   Matt gave a low whistle. "This abbess knows some magic!"

   But it was hardly enough. The enemy tried a dust storm next. It hid the battlements completely before the abbess managed to dispel it. When the air cleared, the malvoisin was well within catapult range. Sister Maud and her girls swung the catapult to bear-and got hit with a plague of gnats.

   Shrieks of distress filled the battlements. Through the dense, buzzing cloud, Matt could just barely make out the abbess, clutching Sayeesa's arm. Dimly he could hear the words of chanting. Sayeesa was using magic again-white magic, this time.

   While they chanted, Alisande ran among the ex-bandits, shouting and exhorting them. Heartened by the princess they were fighting for, the bandit-maids bent to their tasks and peppered the malvoisin with crossbow bolts. The ladies at the catapult drew aim, while the gnats sickened and fell to the ground all about them. Then Sister Maud shouted and the catapult arm lashed out. The stone ball arced high and fell, tearing off the top of the malvoisin. It retreated hastily out of range.

   For a time, the enemy was quiet.

   "They make me nervous when they're still," Matt complained. "What's the hour?"

   Sir Guy looked up at the sickle moon. "Midnight, Lord Matthew. When the forces of Evil are strongest. Now the real battle shall begin."

   It started with an auxiliary army scuttling from the enemy lines toward the walls-cockroaches, three feet long. The battlements filled with oaths of disgust. Bolts riddled the insects, but they kept coming. The first ones began climbing the walls in spite of the chants of the abbess and Sayeesa.

   It was definitely time for some technological aid. Matt began reciting:

   "Out of the moat, let fog arise, One to insure insect demise; Poisonous gas to soak inside. Pure aerosol insecticide."

   A mist sprang up where the wall met the earth of the moat. The upcoming cockroaches keeled over, kicking, then stilling. But some of the first ones had already climbed up onto the battlements.

   Most of the nuns were backing away from the giant insects, shrieking. Some were lifting their skirts and seeking heights away from the horrors.

   "You do not flee such creatures," Alisande shouted. "You slay them!" She whacked at a thorax for emphasis. A few of the bandit-maids with stronger stomachs leaped to help her.

   "Down to the battle!" Sir Guy ordered. "We must aid!"

   Matt spun to the door, chanting:

   "By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.

   Bolts release and open locks. Making way for him who knocks."

   He knocked. The lock groaned, and the door clanked open. Matt barreled through with Sir Guy a foot behind.

   They clanged out onto the battlements. The Black Knight gave a joyful shout as he laid about him with his sword. Matt leaped for a roach just before it sank its mandibles into the habit of a nun, and performed a quick vivisection on it. "Slay them!" he shouted. "They're only flesh!"

   The matter was debatable. At that size, their armor was almost as good as Sir Guy's. But a monofilament edge worked wonders, and Matt knew where to probe for weak places. He and Sir Guy sliced up cockroaches right and left.

   "See how they fare!" Alisande cried. "Will you let mere males outdo you, then?"

   With a roar of expletive negatives, the nuns waded in. A few were bitten; but in a few minutes, the roaches were dead. Matt joined Sir Guy in the disgusting task of shoveling the corpses over the wall. He finished and turned to confront a basilisk-faced abbess.

   "This was your work, was it not? The fog that banished most of the monsters?"

   Matt swallowed, feeling like a schoolboy caught writing on the wall. "Yeah. It seemed like a good idea."

   "It was, indeed," she 'said grimly. "Though I mind having bidden you to the gate tower. Nay, then. Abide here amongst us this night. We will be glad of your aid. Yet stay apart from my daughters, insofar as you are able."

   Matt nodded in relief at his dismissal and turned to where Sir Guy and Alisande were trying to repulse men who had sneaked up with scaling ladders while the roaches distracted those within. For a time, it was hot work, but no more magical manifestations appeared.

   He stepped back at last, wiping sweat from his brow and catching his breath. Beyond the walls, a thick fog had appeared, but now was clearing.

   A shout went up. Matt turned to see the malvoisin again emerging from the thinning fog. A hundred pale, fish-belly-colored bodies slogged ahead, pulling it along, plodding like machines and looking at nothing.

   Thirty crossbows hummed with a single voice. Leather-vaned bolts sprouted in the pallid chests, but the marchers kept coming.

   "Zombies!" Matt shouted. "The walking dead! Max!"

   "Aye, Wizard?" The spark hummed beside him.

   "Fire," Matt directed. "Burn them. They're long overdue for a funeral pyre!"

   "I go," the spark sang, and winked out. A moment later, a sheet of flame erupted around the zombies. The stink of charred flesh drifted to the battlements. Each zombie was a living candle, but they kept moving until they fell as burned skeletons and the bones broke apart. The malvoisin caught fire and began burning fiercely. The abbess began a prayer for the dead, and voices joined in, until the whole parapet was filled with Latin.

   Matt blew out a long, shaky breath. "Reverend Mother, how many hours till dawn?"

   "Two," the abbess called back.

   Matt nodded. "And probably the worst still to come." He looked up at Sir Guy. "What will they try next?"

   The knight shrugged. "They may attempt anything, Lord Matthew. If 'tis foul or fell, they'll essay it."

   Fifteen minutes went by without any sign of action. Matt brooded. His foreboding must have been contagious, because the warrior maids began to stir and mutter restlessly.

   Then it appeared, fifty yards out and glowing-a naked incubus in a somewhat locally exaggerated form of Father Brunel.

   Total silence fell as the nuns stared, shocked. Then they erupted into clamor.

   "Sorcerer, appear!" the biggest bandit-maid shouted. "You who summoned this vile form, show yourself that I may sally out to skewer you through your entrails!"

   There were no takers. The sorcerer might have been vile, but he wasn't that stupid-though he'd been a fool to think the sight of such a naked male would weaken this garrison. All he'd done was to get the women fighting mad.

   Wait a minute ... Anger...

   "Hold your tongues!" The abbess's voice cut through the uproar, and the clamor lessened. "Check your anger! Hold it in abeyance, or Evil will gain some measure of power o'er you and weaken the strength of your bolts!"

   "But Reverend Mother," the big nun cried, "how can we suffer-"

   "You need not. Fire at the enemy-but loose your bolts in self-defense, not wrath. And let each bolt sink home!"

   The abbess had countered the sorcerer's plan neatly; as long as the nuns felt themselves to be defending themselves, all their curdled, pent-up feelings were cleared for use.

   Here and there, one still raged, mouthing insults and loosing bolts as fast as she could. The abbess came up behind one of them and coldly put her hand on the nun's shoulder. The nun whirled, staring up at her, then fell silent.

   "Get you to the chapel," the abbess said, sternly but kindly. "Pray there for us."

   The nun laid down her bow and turned toward the stairway, hands clasped, head bent, while the abbess moved to the next berserker.

   Altogether, a dozen or so retreated to the chapel-the biggest loss they had suffered that night.

   "See the price of anger, child," the abbess said to Sayeesa. "Let not--" She broke off, staring at the ex-witch.

   Sayeesa stood frozen, her hands clenched tightly until the knuckles showed white, and her lips trembled.

   "It has the semblance of one she knows," Matt explained.

   "Aye, I know him!" Sayeesa fell to her knees, burying her face in her hands. "To my shame! Brunel, can I never be free of you?"

   The abbess's face was a dam against anguish. "This, then, was the weakness I sensed. Nay, child, be not shamed. Each of us has failings. Get you to the chapel, there to pray with all your heart and soul!"

   As Sayeesa turned away, the abbess's head swung about. "We are not yet cleared! Someone here hides a weakness fully as grave! Daughters, search your souls! Whosoever harbors faults that sight of men can raise, get hence, ere you weaken us in time of crisis! Go now to the chapel!"

   But each nun stood fast, glancing at her neighbor out of the corners of her eyes. None moved to the stairway.

   Then the incubus was gone-but another walked in its place, its movements fluid, sensuous. Something glimmered near it and grew into a pulsing shape that coalesced to a succubus, dancing with the incubus, moving its body in a rhythm that left little to the imagination. As the figures turned, Matt stiffened in horror. The incubus wore his face! And the succubus's hair was long and blond!

   "How dare they!" Alisande shrieked. "What arrogance is this?" Her words whipped the nuns into action. Bolts leaped from the battlements, each nun firing with anger chilled to a sense of mission.

   Alisande raved on. "This comes near blasphemy, to see my form in such a show! This pairing's past obscene. It is--"

   "Enough!" The abbess touched her shoulder, and Alisande stilled, her eyes widening. The abbess spoke with full censure. "You knew this weakness lay within you, yet you remained here with us, imperiling all. Such overweening pride's unworthy of a peasant; how much more demeaning is it in a princess! What would you, Lady-that your people all succumb to Evil, through the braggart's pride you show in your sureness of your soul's power?"

   Abruptly, the abbess swung to Matt, who was staring in disbelief. "Do you stare like the mouse that sees the snake? Then must I think her Highness is not alone in this. I should have chained you in the tower, Wizard." She turned back to Alisande. "Nay, methinks there's no sin, but there's occasion of it. You harbor desires that could lead to sinful action, but will not acknowledge them, even to yourselves. You and your wizard must pledge your love or end it; for until you do, 'twill weaken you and all about you. To the chapel, Lady, and pray for guidance, that God send you understanding of this hot surge within your blood, and the course of action you must take."