The Warlock in Spite of Himself

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.

There was a moment's silence; then a voice called, "What was that?" Then, "Eh, you there! Egbert! Rouse yourself, sot, and have a mind for the stairs you're guarding!"

"Eh? Wot? Wozzat?" muttered a bleary, nearer voice; and, "What fashes ye?" grumbled a deeper, petulant voice from the fireplace. "Must ye wake me for trifles?"

There was a pause; then the first voice said, with a note of obsequiousness, " 'Twas a noise, Captain, a sort of a knock 'mongst the tables."

"A knock, he says!" growled the captain. "A rat, mayhap, after the leavings, nowt more! Do ye wake me for that? Do it more, an' thou'lt hear a loud knock indeed, a blow on thy hollow head." Then the voice grumbled to itself, "A knock, i' faith! A damned knock!"

Then there was silence again, then a muted clang as one of the sentries shifted his weight uneasily.

Rod let out a sigh of relief, slow and silent.

He waited for the sentry to start snoring again.

Then he wormed his way forward again, till at last he lay quiet under the table nearest the stairway.

It seemed he lay there for a very long time.

There was a piercing whistle from the fireplace, and a clatter as Big Tom overturned a stool in his charge.

Rod sprang for his man.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tuan leap upright, his sling a blurred arc; then Rod crashed into the sentry, fist slamming at the midriff, left hand squeezing the throat.