“Without a sail or oars, it must’ve been.” Rod noted silently that the Eagle, whether or not he was a wizard, obviously knew the odd bit about science—which he should have, if he’d been running a time machine. It seemed that he knew about the Beastland-Gramarye current. “Did he tell you where’d you’d land?”
“Yeah—the Land of the Flatfaces. But he told us not to worry about it, because these Flatfaces were good people, like him.” He clapped his hand over his mouth, eyes wide.
The slip, Rod decided, had been a little too obvious. “Didn’t you want me to know he was good?”
“Uh… yeah.” Yorick took his hand away, bobbing his head eagerly, grinning. “Yeah, sure. That he was good, that’s all.”
“Thought so. I mean, you couldn’t’ve been worried about letting me know he was a Flatface—that’s been pretty obvious all along.”
“Oh.” Yorick’s face fell. “You guys are good at manipulating symbols, aren’t you?”
But how could a Neanderthal realize that words were symbols? His education was showing again. “So you built your raft and paddled out into the ocean—and the current brought you here.”
“Yeah.” Yorick eyed the wall of spearpoints that hedged him in. “And I don’t mind telling you that, for a while there, we thought maybe the Eagle had been wrong about you.”
Rod shrugged. “Can you blame them? Some of these men are locals; and your boys hit a village not far from here a few days ago. They turned it into toothpicks and meatloaf—and some of my soldiers had relatives there.”
“They what?” Yorick stared at him in stark horror. Then he whirled to his own men, pouring out a furious cascade of gutturals and barks. His companions’ heads came up; they stared in horror. Then their faces darkened with anger. They answered Yorick in growls of rage. He turned back to Rod. “I don’t mean to sound callous, milord—but are you sure about this?”
Rod nodded, fighting to keep his face expressionless. Yorick and his men were either actually surprised and shocked by the news—or very good actors. “They hit a village up north, too. I was there; I saw it. Most of the villagers got away, but they carved up my soldiers like hams at a family reunion.”
Yorick’s face worked for a moment; then he turned his head and spat. “That skinny, catbait Mughorck! He’s got to be behind it somehow!”
“Didst thou, then, know nothing of this?” Tuan demanded.
Yorick shook his head. “No one in the village did.”
“There were five score of men at least aboard that long ship,” Tuan said. “Many in your village must have known of it.”
“If they did, they did a real good job of keeping the secret,” Yorick growled. Then he pursed his lips. “ ‘Course, nobody really would’ve noticed, with that epidemic going on.”
“Epidemic?” Rod perked up his ears. “What kind?”
“Oh, nothing really serious, you understand—but enough so that people had to take to their beds for a week or two with chills and fever. You’ll understand we were a little preoccupied.”
“I’ll understand they were goldbricking,” Rod snapped. “This fever didn’t happen to affect only single men, did it?”
Yorick gazed off into space. “Now that you mention…”
“Simple, but effective,” Rod said to Tuan. “If anybody came knocking and didn’t get any answer, they’d figure the guy was sleeping, or too sick to want to be bothered.” He turned back to Yorick. “Nobody thought to stop in to check and see if they wanted anything, I suppose?”
Yorick shrugged. “Thought, yes—but you don’t go into somebody’s house without being invited. We left food at the door every night, though—and it was always gone the next morning.”
“I’ll bet it was—and your shaman’s friends had extra rations.”
“You’ve got a point.” Yorick’s face was darkening. “But we never thought to check on the sick ones—we trusted each other. You don’t know how great it is, when you’ve been alone all your life, to suddenly have a whole bunch of people like yourself. And we wouldn’t stop in just to say hello when we were pretty sure the person was feeling rotten; nobody wanted to catch it.”
Rod nodded grimly. “Simple. Despicable, but simple.” He turned back to Tuan. “So we got hit with private enterprise—a bunch of buckoes out for their own good, without regard to how much harm it might do their neighbors.”
“So that louse Mughorck was sending out secret commando raids to get you Flatfaces angry,” Yorick growled. “No wonder you sent a spy.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Rod countered. His eyes narrowed. “Come to think of it, maybe you have.”
“Who, us?” Yorick stared, appalled. “Make sense, milord! This is like walking in on a hibernating cave bear and kicking him awake! Do you think we’d take a chance like this if we had any choice?”
“Yes,” Rod said slowly. “I don’t think you’re short on courage. But you wouldn’t be dumb enough to come walking in without a disguise, either—especially since at least one of you speaks good Terran English.”
Beside him, Tuan nodded heavily. “I think they are what they seem, Lord Warlock—good men who flee an evil one.”
“I’m afraid I’d have to say so too,” Rod sighed. “But speaking of good men—what happened to the Eagle?”
Yorick shrugged. “All he said was that he was going to hide.”
“And take his gadgets with him, I hope,” Rod said grimly. “The enemy has entirely too many time machines already.”
“ ‘Enemy’?” Tuan turned to him, frowning. “There is naught here but an upstart hungry for power, Lord Gallowglass.”
“Yeah, one who thinks Gramarye looks like a delicious dessert! If that’s not ‘the enemy,’ what is?”
“The futurian totalitarian,” Fess murmured through the earphone implanted in Rod’s mastoid, right behind his ear, “and the futurian anarchists.”
“But you know my devious mind,” Rod went on, ostensibly to Tuan. “I always have to wonder if there’s a villain behind the villain.”
Tuan smiled, almost fondly. “If this suspicion will aid thee to guard us as thou hast in the past, why, mayst thou ever see a bear behind each bush!”
“Well, not a bear—but I usually do see trouble bruin.”
“Optimists have more fun, milord,” Yorick reminded him.
“Yeah, because pessimists have made things safe for ‘em. And how do we make things safe when we never know where the enemy’s gonna strike next?”
Yorick shrugged. “Mughorck can only field a thousand men. Just put five hundred soldiers every place they might hit.”
“Every place?” Rod asked with a sardonic smile. “We’ve got three thousand miles of coastline, and we’d need those five hundred soldiers at least every ten miles. Besides, five hundred wouldn’t do it—not when the enemy can freeze ‘em in their tracks. We’d need at least a couple of thousand at each station.”
Yorick shrugged. “So, what’s the problem?”
Rod felt anger rise, then remembered that Neanderthals couldn’t manipulate symbols—including simple multiplication. “That’d be about six hundred thousand men, and we’ve…”
Yorick stopped him with a raised palm. “Uh… I have a little trouble with anything more than twenty. If it goes past my fingers and toes…”
“Just take my word for it; it’s a lot more men than we have available. Medieval technology doesn’t exactly encourage massive populations.”
“Oh.” Yorick seemed crestfallen. Then he brightened. “But you could post sentries.”
“Sure—and we did. But there’s still the problem of getting the army to where the raiders are in time to meet them.”