The Warlock in Spite of Himself

"There is but one way," murmured Tuan. "Wake him and fight him."

"And let him give the alarm?" Tom stared, horrified. "Nay, nay! Come catpaw behind him, and give him a blow o' the head!"

"That," said Tuan grimly, "lacks honor!"

Tom spat.

"Big Tom's plan is okay," said Rod, "except what happens if he wakes while we're sneaking up? And there's a very good chance of it; that lecherous beggar proved it for us!"

Tom shrugged. "Then a quick rush, and a hope. If we die, then we die."

"And the Queen dies with us," Rod growled. "No good."

Tom pulled out his short sword and balanced it on a finger. "I'll strike him in the throat with this blade at full fifty paces."

Tuan stared, appalled. "A man of your own men, sirrah!"

"One for the good of the cause." Tom shrugged. "What of it?"

Tuan's eyes froze. "That is worse than a stab in the back! We must needs give him lief to defend himself."

"Oh, aye!" Tom snorted. "Lief to defend himself, and to raise the whole House with his cries! Lief to…"

Rod clapped a hand over each mouth, glad that he hadn't brought three men with him. He hissed at Big Tom, "Be patient, will you? He's new to commando work!"

Tom sobered.

Tuan straightened, eyes icy.

Rod put his mouth next to Tom's ear and whispered, "Look, if you hadn't known he was an aristocrat, how would you have judged him?"

"A brave man, and a strong fighter," Tom admitted, "though foolish and young, with too many ideals."

Rod shook a finger at him. "Prejudice, Big Tom! Discrimination! I thought you believed in equality!"

"Well said," Tom growled reluctantly; "I'll bear him. But one more of his pious mouthings and…"

"If we get this job done fast, he won't have a chance to. Now, I've got an idea."

"Then why didst thou ask us?" growled Tom.

" 'Cause I didn't get my idea till you two started haggling. What we need is a compromise solution, right? Tuan won't stand for a knife in the back, or a knife while the guy's sleeping, or for killing a loyal retainer who might make good cannon fodder tomorrow. Right?"

"Aye," Tuan agreed.

"And Big Tom won't stand for him giving the alarm—and neither will I, for that matter we're all good fighters, but just the three of us against the whole Houseful of cutthroats is straining the bonds of fantasy just a little bit far. So, Tom! If that sentry should come running around this corner all of a sudden, will you clobber him lightly?"

"Aye!" Tom grinned.

" Lightly , I said. Does that satisfy honor, Tuan?"

"Aye, since he faces us."

"Good! Now, if we could just get him to chase a mouse around this corner, we'd be all set."

"Aye," Tuan agreed, "but where's the mouse that would so nicely oblige us?"

"The master could make one," Tom growled.

"Make one?" Rod stared. "Sure if I had a machine shop and a…"

"Nay, nay!" Tuan grinned. "I know not those spells; but thou hast the witch-moss, and thou'rt a warlock! What more dost thou need?"

"Huh?" Rod swallowed. "Witches make things out of that stuff?"

"Aye, aye! Dost thou not know? Living things, small things—like mice!"

The missing piece in the puzzle of Gramarye clicked into place in Rod's mind. "Uh, say, how do they work that trick?"

"Why, they have but to look at a lump of the stuff, and it becomes what they wish it!"

Rod nodded slowly. "Very neat, ve-ry neat. The only hitch in the plan is, that's not my style of witchcraft."

Tuan sagged. "Thou craftest not witch-moss? Then how are we to… ? Still, 'tis most strange that thou shouldst not know of it."

"Not so," Tom dissented. "A very poor briefing bureau…"

"Oh, shut up!" Rod growled. "There are other ways to get a mouse." He cupped his hands around his mouth and called softly, "Gwen! Oh, Gwe-en!"

A spider dropped down on a thread right in front of his nose.

Rod jumped. "Ye cats! Don't do that, girl!"

"Vermin!" Tom hissed, and swung his hand back for a swat. Rod poked him in the solar plexus. "Careful, there!

Squash a spider, and you get bad luck, you know— namely, me!"

He cupped the spider in his hand and caressed it very gently with a finger. "Well, at least you didn't choose a black widow. Prettiest spider I ever saw, come to think of it."

The spider danced on his hand.

"Listen, sweetheart, I need a mouse to bring me that sentry. Can you handle it?"

The spider shape blurred, fluxed, and grew into a mouse.

It jumped from his hand and dashed for the corner.

"Oh, no you don't!" Rod sprang, cupped a hand over it, then very carefully picked it up. "Sorry, sweetheart, you might get stepped on—and if anything like that happened to you, I'd be totally crushed."

He kissed its nose, and heard Tom gagging behind him. The mouse wriggled in ecstasy.

"No," said Rod, running a fingertip over its back and pinching the tail, "you've got to make me one instead, out of that blob of witch-moss. Think you can handle it, pet?"

The mouse nodded, turned, and stared at the witch-moss.

Slowly, the blob pulled itself in, extruded a tendril into a tail, grew whiskers at the top end, changed color to brown, and a mouse crept down off the wall.

Tom gulped and crossed himself.

Rod frowned. "Thought you were an atheist."

"Not at times like this, master."

The witch-moss mouse scurried around the corner.

Big Tom lifted his dagger, holding it by the tip, the heavy, weighted handle raised like a club.

The snores around the corner stopped with a grunt.

"Gahhh! Nibble on me, will ya, y' crawlin' fer-leigh?"

The sentry's stool clattered over. He stamped twice, missed both times; then the waiting men heard running footsteps approaching.

Tom tensed himself.

The mouse streaked around the corner.

The sentry came right behind it, cursing. His feet slipped on the turn. He looked up, saw Tom, and had just time enough to begin to look horrified before Tom's knife-hilt caught him at the base of the skull with a very solid thunk.

Rod let out a sigh of relief. "At last!"

The sentry folded nicely into Tuan's waiting arms. The young nobleman looked at Rod, grinning.

"Who fights by the side of a warlock," he said, "wins."

"Still, it was a pretty ratty trick," said Rod sheepishly.

Tom winced and pulled a length of black thread from his pouch.

"Nay, that will not hold him," Tuan protested.

Tom's only answer was a grin.

"Fishline?" Rod lifted an eyebrow.

"Better," said Big Tom, kneeling, beginning to wrap up the sentry. "Braided synthetic spider silk."

"And we owe it all to you," said Rod, petting the mouse in his hand.

It wriggled its nose, then dove between the buttons on his doublet.

Rod stifled a snicker, cupped a hand over the lump on his belly. "Hey, watch it! That tickles!"

Tom had the sentry nicely cocooned, with a rag jammed in his mouth and held in place by a few twists of thread.

"Where shall we hide him?" Tuan whispered.

"There's nary a place close to hand," Tom mut-tered, tongue between his teeth as he tied a Gordion knot.

"Hey!" Rod clapped a cupped hand over a lump moving south of his belt buckle. "Cut that out!"

"There's a torch-sconce on this wall," saidTuan, pointing.

"The very thing," Tom growled. He heaved the inert sentry up, hooked one of the spider-thread loops over the sconce.

Rod shook his head. "Suppose someone comes by this way? We can't have him hanging around like that."

He reached in his doublet and hauled the mouse away from its exploratory tour of his thorax. "Listen, baby, you know what a dimensional warp is?"

The mouse rolled its eyes up and twitched its whiskers. Then it shook its head firmly.

"How about a uh, time-pocket?"

The mouse nodded eagerly; then the little rodent face twisted up in concentration… and the sentry disappeared.

Tuan goggled, mouth gaping open.

Big Tom pursed his lips, then said briskly, "Ah… yes! Well, let's get on with it, then."

Rod grinned, put the mouse on the floor, turned it around, gave it a pat on the backside.

"Get lost, you bewitching beast. But stay close; I might need you."

The mouse scampered off with a last squeak over her shoulder.

"The Mocker will be sleeping in what was Tuan's chamber, I doubt not," Tom muttered, "and his lieutenants, we may hope, will not be far off."

"May not one of them be wakeful?" whispered Tuan. "Or might one be set Master of the Watch?"

Tom turned slowly, eyeing Tuan with a strange look on his face. He raised an eyebrow at Rod. "A good man," he admitted, "and a good guess." Then, "Follow," and he turned away.

They were able to bypass the only other sentry between themselves and the common room.

The room itself, cavernous and slipshod as ever, was lit only by the smoky glow from the great fireplace, and a few smoldering torches. It was enough, however, to make out the great stone staircase that curved its way up the far wall with a grace that belied its worn treads and broken balustrade.

A gallery jutted out into the hall at the top of the stair. The doors opening off it gave onto private rooms.

A broad-shouldered, hatchet-faced man sat sprawled and snoring in a huge chair by the side of the vast fireplace. A sentry stood guard at the foot of the great staircase, blinking and yawning. Two more guards slouched at either side of the door in the center of the balcony.

"Here's a pretty mess," said Big Tom, ducking back into the hallway. "There's one more of them than there are of us, and they be so far between that two must surely take alarm as we disable two others."

"To say nothing of that wasteland of lighted floor that we have to cross to get to any of them," Rod added.

"We might creep up through the tables and stools," Tuan suggested, "and he at the foot of the stairs must surely nod himself asleep ere long."

"That takes care of the two on the ground floor," Rod agreed, "but how about the pair on the balcony?"

"To that," said Tuan,' T have some small skill at the shepherd's bow."

He drew out a patch of leather with two rawhide thongs wrapped about it.

"How didst thou leam the craft of that?" Tom growled as Tuan unwound the strings. " Tis a peasant's weapon, not a lordling's toy."

There was a touch of contempt in the glance Tuan threw Tom. "A knight must be schooled in all weapons, Big Tom."

Rod frowned. "I didn't know that was part of the standard code."

"It is not," Tuan admitted. "But 'tis my father's chivalry, and mine, as you shall see. Both yon knaves shall measure their length on cold stone ere they could know what has struck them."

"I don't doubt it," Rod agreed grimly. "Okay, let's go. I'll take the one by the fireplace."

"Thou'lt not," Big Tom corrected him. "Thou'lt take him by the stairway."

"Oh? Any particular reason?"

"Aye." Tom grinned wolfishly. "He in the great chair is the lieutenant that Tuan foresaw—and one among those who ha' jailed me. 'Tis my meat, master."

Rod looked at Tom's eyes and felt an eerie chill wind blow up along his spine.

"All right, butcher," he muttered. "Just remember, the lady's not for carving, yet."

" 'Let each man pile his dead according to his own taste and fashion,' " Tom quoted. "Go tend your corpses, master, and leave me to mine."

They dropped to their bellies and crawled, each to his own opponent.

To Rod, it was an eternity of table-legs and stool-feet, with plenty of dropped food scraps between, and the constant fear that one of the others might reach his station first and get bored.

There was a loud, echoing clunk.

Rod froze. One of the others had missed his footing.