Lyndon Hardy - Master of the five Magics

The Queen Besieged

ALODAR closed his mind to the pounding of the huge stones against the lower walls of the keep. He ignored the growl of his stomach and tried to concentrate on the spinning disk. Forty-one days of siege, he thought, and the last five on half rations. Half rations for himself and the other craftsmen, while the men at arms still received full shares.

"Faster, Morwin, faster until it buzzes like an angry hive," Alodar listened as the apprentice pushed against the two-hand crank and the giant flywheel slowly increased its speed. After several minutes, a faint tone from the serrated edge mixed with the crash of rock and cry of pain below. Morwin stepped back from the rough wooden frame which supported the rotating wheel and sat panting on the smooth floor of the bartizan.

"Make the rest of your preparations, journeyman," the big man in mail next to Alodar barked. "You two may rest if this air gondola proves its worth, but not before."

Alodar disregarded the harsh tone. He squinted up at the sun midway between the east and overhead. "They will have to look directly into the glare to see us," he said evenly. "Your men can begin."

"They begin when I tell them," the sergeant said, pushing his thumb at his chest. "You may have once been the son of Alodun, lord of the buttes, and had the right to command, but now you are no more than the wheelwright. I owe you only what I would give any tradesman."

Alodar spilled the air out of his nostrils in a long sigh. "My father struggled six years for the justice due him and went to his grave alone and brokenhearted. The anguish to carry on was too great a price to pay and I buried my feelings with him. I am a journeyman at an honest craft and accept my lot. I desire no empty formality that stirs up the dying embers of the past."

He stopped and stared into the big man's eyes. "And I ask no more than what you should show any man who labors in our common defense, regardless of his station." For a long moment their eyes remained locked, but finally the sergeant shrugged and turned to the group of men crouching within the archway into the keep. "To your positions, then," he ordered.

The men rose, and two edged out to the crenelations which framed a deep cut in the hills to the west. The third, the smallest of the three, climbed into a waist-high wicker basket which stood by the spinning disk.

Alodar stepped to the woven box, withdrew a chisel from one of the pockets in his cape, and hacked a fresh splinter from it. His cowl was thrown back over his shoulders, revealing a narrow face topped with fine yellow-brown hair. His nose and mouth were drawn with an economy of line, plain and straight, with nothing to mark him as either handsome or uncomely. Only his eyes removed him from the nondescript; they were bright and alive, darting like dragonflies, missing no detail of what happened around him. His face held the smoothness of youth, now marked only by two short furrows above his nose as he concentrated on the task before him.

Standing scarcely taller than the basket's occupant, he stepped back from the box, holding the scrap of wood at waist level, glanced again at the position of the sun, and began the incantation.

He spoke with skill; the words came quickly but with the sharpness necessary for success. His tone was even and the rhythm smooth. The two words of power sounded with a lack of distinction. They fitted unnoticed into the stream of improvised nonsense which surrounded them. In a moment he was done.

Alodar nodded a warning to the man-at-arms facing him and slowly began to raise the splinter upward. Simultaneously the basket lurched and cleared the stonework of the platform. The splinter rose with almost imperceptible slowness but the gondola with its passenger climbed at a rapid rate.

The big man returned to Alodar's side. "Can you not go faster? They will spy him before he lines with the sun."

"No, sergeant," Alodar said, not turning to nod in reply but keeping his attention on the sliver he held in his hand. "This splinter is about one part in a thousand of the basket as a whole. For each palm I raise it, your man climbs another forty rods. Were I to move faster, we might use too much of the wheel's spin just in fighting the wind we would make with our haste. I do not yet wear the cape of a master, but I understand enough of thaumaturgy to do what is proper for this task."

The sergeant grunted and Alodar continued to raise the splinter upward. Several minutes passed and the basket rose to become but a speck in the sky.

"High enough," one of the men shouted while sighting through his sextant. Alodar glanced at the wheel. The crank now turned lazy circles about the axle with no hint of the blurring speed it had possessed moments ago. The sergeant followed his gaze and looked back at Alodar.

"If there is but little wind," Alodar explained, "there is enough spin left to keep the gondola properly positioned for some time. It takes far less energy to resist a sideward thrust than to fight the earth for height."

While he spoke, Alodar began to step in the direction of the hills. The platform far above moved in proportion. The two observers darted their instruments about, sighting first the sun, then the basket, and finally the crags themselves. Alodar made but two slow steps and part of another before one of the observers called him to stop.

"A little more forward now. Hold it an instant. Now to the left a palm. Freeze it in place," he directed as Alodar shifted the splinter back and forth.

Morwin jumped from his inactivity beside the slowly turning disk and ran through the archway to the chamber beyond. He fetched a tripod with a small clamp attached and returned to where Alodar stood with the splinter still at arm's length. After a few moments of adjustment, the clamp was in position to secure the scrap of wood firmly, and Alodar relinquished his grip. Massaging his now numb arm, he moved quickly to the edge of the bartizan to see the results of his effort.

He whisked a telescope out from his cape and sighted the basket. It now stood fixed firmly in the sky, suspended directly in front of one of the sheer cliffs that was their target.

"Luck be with him soon," the sergeant muttered as he watched with his own glass. "If he does not find a ledge wide enough for the catapult within the hour, we will strike no blow for ourselves this day. And tomorrow may be too late for any scheme, sound or foolish, to prevent a breach."

Alodar turned from watching the rider scramble onto the face of the cliff and looked at the plain below.

"They will be in the bailey within two days for certain," the sergeant continued. "And even if help did appear, how could it get through all that?"

Alodar followed the sweep of the mailed arm, and the sick feeling returned to his empty stomach.

The gray hills in the west stretched from horizon to horizon, stark and unbroken except for the one deep and wide notch, like a missing tooth, directly facing him about half a mile distant. The walls on the right rose tall and sheer, unbroken monoliths, smooth and inaccessible. The slopes on the left were as steep but cracked with fissures, chimneys, and ledges, and upon these clambered the man Alodar had transported there. Between the two faces, a train of wagons and carts, piled with baggage and arrayed with no pattern, hid the floor of the pass from view. Alodar could make out a motley collection of tents rising in its midst, and from the pinnacles of each flew a blue and silver banner.

Much closer stood an orderly array of artillery, drawn out in a precise circle that Alodar knew completely surrounded the stronghold. With drilled exactness, their crews would load and fire in unison. The great bows of the ballistas hurled their rock hard and flat against the battered outer walls, while the mangonels sent theirs high and lofted to rain down on the foundation of the keep and the surrounding courtyard. Lighter but more accurate trebuchets blasted at the spots already weakened by the heavier siegecraft.