The Doomfarers of Coramonde (7 page)

The boy looked
from the Prince to Van Duyn and the deCourteneys. At length Andre cleared his
throat and said, “Do as he tells you, Byree. His idea makes sense.”

Byree dashed
off as the wizard turned to Springbuck. “What else can we do?”

Springbuck
showed no sign of hesitance, knowing how important confidence was in a leader.
Other, more vital abilities would come only with painful experience.

“Start some of
the others assembling makeshift mantlets and have them brought up here. And set
out buckets of water and earth or sand in case they loft fire arrows at us.
We’ll need anything we can get as polearms: scythes, flails, pitchforks,
anything.”

“Have you no
orders for me?” Gabrielle asked with heavy sarcasm.

“Yes,” returned
the Prince, “you could gather some help and pull the birds’ nests from the
chimneys.”

The patchwork
command took shape quickly. A room was prepared for any wounded they might
suffer. Springbuck walked among the men of Erub and divided them into
subgroups, selecting those he deemed most alert and aggressive-looking for
leaders.

By this time it
was deep dusk and the cooking fires were burning in the two hearths of the main
hall. Noticing that some of the Erubites appeared to resent his new authority,
Springbuck commanded each subleader to pick two men for sentinel duty, and
announced that he and Andre deCourteney would take first watch. This struck the
peasants as fair—the Prince wondered what his father would have said about
placating farmers—and the wizard raised no objection.

The two began
to pace their circuits of the walls in opposite directions, and though the
Prince would have liked to ask Andre a number of questions, he decided to keep
his own counsel for the time being. Van Duyn was sure that the soldiers would
come no closer to the castle, fearing his rifle and the deCourteneys, and so
far he’d been right. Springbuck hoped that he would continue so; if there were
a major assault now, they’d all be slain unless the outlander’s weapon could
kill many men all at once.

During the
watch he felt the fatigue of the day overtake him. He considered the chain of
events that had begun with Hightower’s death, and pondered his new allies and
their strange self-assurance.

At the end of
the tour he and Andre awakened their relief, for the balance of the band had
toppled into sleep after the exhausting day. He made a final check of
Fire-heel’s accommodations and groped around by a dying fire until he came
across an unfinished bit of sausage and biscuit.

Propped against
a wall, he huddled in his cloak as it became chillier, and heard Andre snoring
loudly nearby. He removed his war mask and gobbled the cold meal quickly,
licking his fingers afterward and wishing that there were more.

Divesting
himself of boots, demisleeves and sword belt, he went to sleep with his head
pillowed on his saddle pad, not considering first that, without his mask, he
would be recognized by those who saw him in the morning light.

On what
wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?

WILLIAM BLAKE,
“The Tyger”

“BREAKFAST, O
Ku-Mor-Mai,”
said
a female voice. But why did it use his father’s title?

He burst to his
feet, cloak flung aside in alarm. He found himself facing Gabrielle, who offered
him a bowl of thick stew, no longer warm, and a succinct nod, even colder, for
the day’s beginning. He knew instantly what had happened and told himself with
some chagrin that it would have happened anyway.

“You sleep like
a dead man,” the sorceress was saying, “long after others are up. But Edward
said to leave it so.”

Rather than
extend the bowl in common hospitality she set it on the ground and turned to
leave.

“Wait,” he
called after her. When she turned back he found himself with nothing to say.

“Ahh, who is
Edward?”

“Edward is Van
Duyn. Do they have to teach you everything fresh each day?”

She left as he
mumbled, “I didn’t know.” He wolfed the stew, watching his new compatriots
bustle around the courtyard, carrying trash and rubble from the interior of the
buildings and bearing arms to the ramparts. His meal downed, he buckled on
demisleeves and pulled on his boots. Taking up mask and sword belt, he searched
out Van Duyn and Andre, who were studying the countryside from the ramparts.

Andre greeted
him with a friendly clap on the shoulder. “In truth,” he declared, “I knew you
as soon as ever I saw you yesterday, though you’ve changed. But what brings the
royal Heir to join us? I’m afraid we must ask.”

The three sat
on a make-do bench under the climbing sun while Springbuck told them the tale
of his escape from Earthfast. He found himself irritated by Van Duyn, who was
skeptical throughout, but discovered the wizard to be an amiable fellow and a
cordial listener. Both showed keen interest in the portion of his story dealing
with Eliatim’s remarks. They asked questions, going back over the conversation
almost word by word. By then the sun had grown warm and the Prince was glad to
accept a gourd of water at the conclusion of his narrative. The two listeners
were comparing thoughts on their new information when Gabrielle arrived.

“What
preparations we can make have been made,” she said. “I’d like to speak to you,
Edward.” The two left, arm in arm once more.

“Does your
sister find in me some offense?” the Prince asked Andre. “She seems hostile to
me.”

“Perhaps,” was
the answer. “Or again, perhaps her motives are quite the opposite. Of all the
things beyond my power, reading my sister’s thoughts is foremost.”

He took
Springbuck on a tour of the castle’s defenses. These were none too reassuring,
though one could scarcely hope for better under the circumstances. They
discovered a number of the men drilling awkwardly in the courtyard, and the
Prince was so disgusted by their ineptitude that he took charge and corrected
their more obvious lapses.

Others joined,
and soon he was putting a sizable body of tyros through their paces in such
fashion that one might almost have thought that they knew what they were doing.

With a flash of
inspiration he drew rude diagrams on the wall with a charred stick and showed
them where armor of various types was most vulnerable to arrow, pike or sword.
Andre slipped away as he began to explain the technique of pushing scaling
ladders away from a rampart, undaunted by the fact that he himself had never
done it.

When reliefs
were changed at the walls, those who came off duty were eager to try their
hand, and the practice continued. There was no sign of any activity from the
troops occupying Erub, except that a company of light horse kept watch on the
castle from a nearby rise.

The Prince
began thinking of ways for the lot of them to escape under cover of night. He
stopped his impromptu lessons when the afternoon grew too hot for them, and
once more sought Andre deCourteney, who was thoughtfully gnawing a bit of
jerked meat, sitting on a crenel.

“We cannot
leave tonight,” the wizard said in answer to Springbuck’s ideas. “We can’t
afford to be caught in the open come dawn.”

The son of
Surehand leaned against another crenel and waited.

“Van Duyn,
Gabrielle and I can deal with those soldiers out there if the necessity
arrives. For that matter, the two magicians with them don’t worry us overly.”

“But there’s
Yardiff Bey,” the Prince ventured.

“But there’s
Bey,” Andre agreed. “He can’t touch us directly with spells, because of this.”

From his shirt
he drew forth a chain of some black metal from which depended a shimmering,
chatoyant gem the size of a large grape, set in a simple retainer of silver.
The Prince sensed that he was in the presence of an object of tremendous
consequence.

“Calundronius,”
Andre explained. “Because of it, my sister and I are alive. Because of it, no
one can spend a spell against us directly, or against anyone close to us whom
we choose to protect. But Bey intends to destroy us himself, nevertheless.
Tomorrow, just at dawn, we have learned, he’ll summon a being of the
half-world: Chaffinch, a winged fire-dragon who is proof, like this gemstone,
against enchantments.”

Springbuck
couldn’t frame any remark, and so gulped air and listened.

Andre felt of
his rough face with the back of his hand as he returned Calundronius to its
shaggy resting place. “Well, we think Van Duyn may have the solution here. Bey
will summon Chaffinch in Earthfast or some other place far from here and send
him against us. Van Duyn’s idea is to conjure up a defense.

“Edward, you
see—or, will see—comes from another reality than ours. ‘It’s simple, Andre,’ he
told me once, ‘I just hail from different probabilities than you.’ Don’t let
that sour look fool you; he must have his little jests, that one.

“At any pass,
Edward’s learned a good portion of sorcery from Gabrielle and me since he came
here and contacted us. He has a peculiar, sideways aptitude for it. He says
that there are, in the world he left behind, machines of war that could slay
even Chaffinch. One such is a thing all of metal in which men ride, driven by
some internal motive arrangement, mounting weapons like Van Duyn’s but far
larger. What he proposes is to conjure one of these machines here—and gods
know, the spell will be nearly as dangerous as the jeopardy in which we find
ourselves now. Yes, but it’s either that or die under Chaffinch’s flaming
breath.”

Andre got up,
wiping fingers on thighs. He checked the sun’s declination and said, “Come with
me; it’s nigh time.”

They set off
together, entering the once-respectable main hall to climb a winding,
spiderwebbed staircase and walk down a dusty corridor. They came to a musty
suite of rooms uppermost in the castle. There, a hasty sanctum had been set up.

Van Duyn and
Gabrielle were already there, and when the other two entered, they both looked
strangely at the Prince, and Springbuck had the impression that they’d been
arguing.

He perched on a
stool while Andre drew obscure diagrams on the floor over a pentagrammic
inscription and Gabrielle read in an inflectionless tongue from a codex of unguessable
origin.

Van Duyn was
charging the braziers which were placed in each corner of the room; seeing the
Prince, he asked, “Well, boy, do you want to stay on with us? I intend to see
Yardiff Bey thrown down. I owe him that.”

Springbuck
answered haughtily, not liking Van Duyn or his tone of address. “I will—accept
your aid in regaining my throne, if that is what you’re offering.”

Gabrielle
laughed again, but this time the outlander was the butt of it and he colored
with fury.

“Stupid brat!
The days of throne and crowns are over here! D’you think we’re toppling your
brainless brother just to replace him with you, you spineless coward?”

Springbuck
restrained himself no longer. He lurched forward and grabbed a fistful of the
scholar’s shirt with his left hand, preparatory to striking him; but before he
could, the man seized his left wrist with surprising strength and in some
clever, rapid manner twisted it so that Surehand’s son was forced to his knees,
wrist painfully doubled over and in real danger of breaking. The Prince cried
aloud in shock.

The
deCourteneys were both watching now. “You must be quiet,” Andre reproved. “We
dare weighty things here; we must concentrate to the fullest. Edward, please
take your place.”

The outlander
unwillingly released the Prince, who locked eyes with him in mutual agreement
that the issue wasn’t settled and resisted the impulse to cut him down on the
spot. The scholar and the deCourteneys stepped to various prearranged locations
among the occult designs on the floor.

Springbuck held
his throbbing wrist to his chest and flushed with shame. He was sure that he
had lost face among them irredeemably, and regretted most that Gabrielle had
seen it. Then his gaze met with hers, and he read a rare message there, a soft
and feminine one of sorrow that he had been hurt and worsted. He tried to fit
this with what he knew of her already and made his first dim start at
understanding the enigma that was Gabrielle deCourteney.

“Your Grace,”
she said softly, “please stand there—yes, there in that circle of protection,
that any powers liberated here work no harm upon you.”

He stepped into
it, a small circle picked out in dust that looked like crushed emerald. Flexing
his fingers, he decided that his wrist had not been badly sprained. Van Duyn,
white-faced, set the braziers to burning.

Springbuck
noticed with curiosity the contrast between Andre and his sister: he with broad
torso, bowed legs and fat, jiggling belly and buttocks and she mystically
lovely. She posed unconsciously, weight on one firm leg, the firelight sending
ruby combers breaking across her hair. Springbuck felt a desire rising in him,
one he’d not wished to acknowledge.

Old Van Duyn,
now, was an angular sort of fellow whose muscles had begun to show the slack of
age, but with considerable sinew about him, as the Prince now knew to his
discomfort, and moved with the ease of fitness.

As the unusual
trio—unusual foursome, he amended, for surely he was as oddly met as they—moved
to their tasks, Andre took the lavaliere from his neck and took his sword from
its scabbard. Unscrewing the pommel knob, he dropped the chain and Calundronius
into the hollow there, then replaced the cap.

“Within this
container Calundronius is itself nullified for a time,” he explained, laying
the sword in a corner.

He took his
place again and he, Gabrielle and Van Duyn began a unified chanting in some
monotonous language, unlike that of the codex and somehow much more
disquieting.