Hugh Cook - The wizards and the warriors

'What are those for?' asked Hearst.

'Never you mind,' said Phyphor.

He shook the lead boxes. One rattled: it held the dozens of small red charms on thin chains. Opening it, he ran his fingers through them with an expression close to lust. This was well worth killing for.

'What are the charms for?' said Hearst.

'Can't you guess?'

'I'm a warrior, not a…'

Pox doctor was the term he had in mind. 'Not a wizard,' said Phyphor, finishing his sentence for him.

'Well then,' said Hearst. 'The pair of yellow jewels in the other box, the ones that made everyone go strange when I lifted the lid – what do they do?'

'Can't you guess? They make men insane.'

'Insane?'

'They steal men's wits,' said Phyphor. 'The red charms on the golden chains give protection against the mad-jewels. Now we can kill off the enemy and save our lives, so let's be glad that Blackwood saved yours.'

'Blackwood?'

'Your woodsman friend. We heard you running through water. We knew you'd never reach safety on your own. So when the lopsloss went after you… Blackwood gave the executioner a push.'

Name: Mystrel (wife to Blackwood).

Birthplace: Little Gidding (a hamlet later claimed for ashes by the dragon Zenphos).

Occupation: home executive.

Description: a face which, to Blackwood, is more familiar than his own (since he has no mirror); a voice which he hears in his dreams. Flesh in her flesh lives a life which is not yet entirely its own.

The next morning, the charms were shared out. As there weren't enough to go round, Miphon brewed a sleeping potion to be drunk by all the charmless before the mad-jewels were used against the enemy. Belatedly, Blackwood, who had drunk his share, realised his wife Mystrel had avoided taking the sleeping potion. He took her to Miphon, who still had some left in a cauldron simmering over a low fire. From the cauldron, purple flames rose wraith by wraith.

'I won't drink that,' said Mystrel.

'It only brings sleep,' said Miphon.'It's harmless.'

'For you, maybe. For me, perhaps. But I am with child.'

'This won't harm the unborn,' said Miphon. 'What we do to our bodies doesn't touch them.'

'Really? And when did you last bear a child?'

The challenge was unexpected; Miphon was not used to having his authority questioned by work-faded peasant women.

'I've researched these things,' he said, carefully.

'Yes. You've read about them in your dusty books. And I've felt the flesh kick in my belly. There's a difference. I've lost children before -1 won't risk this one.'

Miphon was amazed at her vehemence.

'My mother taught me of the power that plants draw from the earth,' said Mystrel. 'She taught me sleeping and dreams, the end of pain and the death of fever. She taught.me how to tell when a woman is with child ~ and to be very, very careful.'

'If you're so wise.' said Miphon, 'Why did you lose your other children?'

'Winter was the wolf that took them,' said Mystrel. 'Each time, the snow – we were starving!'

Miphon was shocked by her bitterness. Suddenly he had a vision of what had happened. Pale flesh on dark earth. Flesh formed perfectly, but never breathing. Last words for the dead. A burial. A small mound of earth. Silence under forest boughs. A woman on her knees in the thick wet rot of fallen leaves: weeping. Now he knew her loss. And was ashamed at how he had accused her, purely for the sake of rhetorical victory. Now what was he to do? 'Here,' said Miphon. placing his charm round her neck.

If he hadn't been arrogant enough to try to force her to accept the benefits of his medicine, he would have thought of that simple solution immediately. He had always prided himself on the fact that he was humble enough to put himself at the service of the common people. Now, he realised that he had never cured himself of the main failing of wizards: to treat knowledge as an instrument of force and an extension of power.

Oh well, he had plenty of time to learn.

After all, he had not yet reached his first century.

He dipped a ladle in his wizard brew, and drank.

Blackwood and Mystrel retired to their quarters. Soon Blackwood was asleep. For a while, Mystrel sat by the bed, carding wool. The castle was strangely quiet; usually it echoed with boots, doors slamming, distant shouts, half-heard snatches of song, and, sometimes, hammering from the makeshift forge where Lorford's blacksmith had set up shop to work on weapons and armour.

Suddenly, a horn sounded, brash and brazen. A half-remembered phrase stirred in Mystrel's memory: 'the horn of the victor which echoes the sun.' Yes. She knew the horn was a signal for butchery. The men of the castle were going to slaughter their enemies on the battlements.

The fodden woke from sleep at Mystrel's feet. As it was not human, it could not be affected by the mad-jewels.

'Shlunt?' slurred the fodden.

'No hunt,' said Mystrel. 'Just men, at their games as usual.'

'Oh,' said the fodden, still half-asleep, and sank back into its dreams.

It was still suffering from injuries received when some of Comedo's men had used it for a game of kick the cat. Mystrel was tending it because that was her nature: to care for weak, broken things that could not help themselves.

Blackwood turned in his sleep. Muttered something.

'Peace,' said Mystrel.

And let her hand trail over his cheek, lightly, lightly. Then she bent over him, smiled, and sealed his sleep with a kiss. Both times that Hearst had first opened the box holding the two mad-jewels, she had, to her horror, seen his dead body before her. Knowing what his death would mean to her, she treasured his life.

As the siege dragged on, many of the enemy dispersed. Alish estimated that a thousand of the Collosnon soldiers had died after attacking Castle Vaunting, that a thousand more had marched off elsewhere, and that perhaps three thousand remained.

When the flames of the castle's moat finally died down, allowing the drawbridge to be lowered, the mad-jewels would be used again, and Comedo's soldiers would march out to slaughter the three thousand.

Comedo, it was rumoured, was still eating in luxury. The rest of the castle was rationed, but Phyphor favoured them by releasing urns of siege dust from the tower of Arl, so nobody actually went hungry. Plenty of rain fell, replenishing dungeon cisterns which took the drainage from the vast expanse of the central courtyard, so there was no chance that they would die of thirst.

Miphon, turning his attention to public health, arranged for the water to be filtered and boiled before it was drunk. He brewed up a vermifuge, and dosed everyone in the castle, with the exception of a few pregnant women. He laid out a special poisoned rat bait, with spectacular results. He persuaded Prince Comedo to get rid of most of his corpse collection, and to have the few remaining items embalmed.

The castle's dogs and cats were slaughtered for food. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Miphon got rid of the castle's fleas by having every mat and rug burnt, and by having the stone floors swept regularly. His programme for eradicating lice was not so successful, as- (a) few people were willing to shave their heads and 141 boil their clothes and bedding; and (b) a substantial number of people believed that lack of lice meant that one was so sick that death was just round the corner.

He did much minor surgery. He also had a fair bit of major surgery to do, particularly amputating gangrenous limbs; as only half of his seriously ill patients died, his prestige rose enormously. Gangrene – a consequence of the enemy's failure to sterilise their weapons before using them on human flesh – was usually inevitably fatal, with most attempts at a cure by amputation simply leading to fresh infection.