“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.”
“It can’t be all that hard!”
Rod took a deep breath. “Look—we have to move at least as many men as your whole village.”
“What for—to fight just a lousy thousand?”
“I don’t think you realize just how much of an advantage that Evil Eye gives your men,” Rod said sourly.
“Not all that much. I mean, one man can only freeze one other man. Maybe two, if he pushes it—but not very well.”
Rod stared at him for a moment.
Then he said, “One boatload of your men held a small army of ours totally frozen.”
“What!?”
Rod nodded. “That’d be about, uh, two hands of my men for every one of yours.”
Yorick stared at his outspread fingers and shook his head. “Can’t be. No way. At all.”
Rod gazed at him, then shrugged his shoulders. “Apparently, somebody found a way to do it.” He remembered what Gwen had said about the lightning.
“Then figure out a way to undo it,” Yorick said promptly. “You Flatfaces are good at that kind of thing. We can show you how the Freeze—what’d you call it, the Evil Eye?—we can show you how it works.”
“That might help…”
“Sure it will! You gotta be able to figure out something from that!”
“Oh, I do, do I? How come?”
“Because,” Yorick said, grinning, “you can manipulate symbols.”
Rod opened his mouth to answer—but he couldn’t really think of anything, so he closed it again. That’s what set him apart from ordinary men. He just smiled weakly and said, “Manipulating symbols doesn’t always produce miracles, Yorick.”
“I’ll take a chance on it. You just tell us what we can do, and we’ll do it.”
“Might they not be of some value with our force?” Tuan inquired.
Rod turned to him, frowning. “Fighting side by side with our soldiers? They’d get chopped up in the first battle by our own men.”
“Not if we were to employ them to slip ahead of our main force to reconnoitre the enemy’s forces. Let us train them in the use of longbow, crossbow, and lance, and send them ahead to wreak havoc ere we arrive.”
Rod shook his head. “The nearest knight would charge them in a second. They’re not exactly inconspicuous, you know.” Suddenly his eyes widened; he grinned. “Oh!”
“Oh?” Tuan said warily.
“Yeah. If they stand out too much to do any good here—then we should use them someplace where they won’t!”
Tuan’s face slowly cleared into a beatific smile. “Aye, certes! Train them well, and send them back to Beastland. Then they can attack this Mughorck’s men unbeknownst!”
“Well, not quite. Just because they all look alike to us doesn’t mean they look alike to one another. But they could hide out in the bush and recruit some others from among the disaffected, and…”