“Assuredly,” Tuan agreed. “Nay, I hope only that, when they know Mughorck is ta’en, they’ll not hesitate to lay down their arms.”
“I have a notion that most of them will be too busy cheering to think about objecting.”
“ ‘Tis well. Now…” Tuan leaned forward, eyes glittering. “How can we be sure of taking Mughorck?”
“An we wish a quick ending to this battle,” Brom explained, “we cannot fight through the whole mass of beast-men to reach him.”
“Ah—now we come back to my original plan.” Yorick grinned. “I was waiting for you guys to get around to talking invasion. Because if you do, you see, and if you sneak me into the jungles a week or two ahead, I’m sure my boys and I can find enough dissenters to weld into an attack force. Then, when your army attacks from the front, I can bring my gorillas…”
“You mean guerrillas.”
“That, too. Anyway, I can bring ‘em over the cliffs and down to the High Cave.”
“ The High Cave‘?” Tuan frowned. “What is that?”
“Just the highest cave in the cliff-wall. When we first arrived we all camped out in caves, and Eagle took the highest one so he could see the whole picture of what was going on. When the rank and file moved out into huts, he stayed there—so Mughorck will have to have moved in there, to use the symbol of possession to reinforce his power.”
“Well reasoned,” Brom rumbled, “but how if thou’rt mistaken?”
Yorick shrugged. “Then we keep looking till we find him. We shouldn’t have too much trouble; I very much doubt that he’d be at the front line.”
Tuan’s smile soured with contempt.
“He’s the actual power,” Yorick went on, “but the clincher’ll be the Kobold. When we take the idol, that should really tell the troops that the war’s lost.”
“And you expect it’ll be in the High Cave too,” Rod amplified.
“Not a doubt of it,” Yorick confirmed. “You haven’t seen this thing, milord. You sure as hell wouldn’t want it in your living room.”
“Somehow I don’t doubt that one bit.”
“Nor I,” Tuan agreed. He glanced at his wife and his two ministers. “Are we agreed, then?”
Reluctantly, they nodded.
“Then, ‘tis done.” Tuan clapped his hands. “I will give orders straightaway, Master Yorick, for a merchantman to bear thee and thy fellows to the jungles south of thy village. Then, when all’s in readiness, a warlock will come to tell thee the day and hour of our invasion.”
“Great!” Yorick grinned with relief: then, suddenly, he frowned. “But wait a minute. How’ll your warlock find us?”
“Just stare at a fire and try to blank your mind every evening for a few hours,” Rod explained, “and think something abstract—the sound of one hand clapping, or some such, over and over again. The warlock’ll home in on your mind.”
Yorick looked up, startled. “You mean your telepaths can read our minds?”
“Sort of,” Rod admitted. “At least, they can tell you’re there, and where you are.”
Yorick smiled, relieved. “Well. No wonder you knew where the raiders were going to land next.”
“After the first strike, yes.” Rod smiled. “Of course, we can’t understand your language.”
“Thanks for the tip.” Yorick raised a forefinger. “I’ll make sure I don’t think in English.”
Rod wasn’t sure he could, but he didn’t say so.
Yorick turned back to the King and Queen. “If you don’t mind, I’ll toddle along now, Your Majesties.” He bowed. “I’d like to go tell my men it’s time to move out.”
“Do, then,” Tuan said regally, “and inform thy men that they may trust in us as deeply as we may trust in them.”
Yorick paused at the door and looked back, raising one eyebrow. “You sure about that?”
Tuan nodded firmly.
Yorick grinned again. “I think you just said more than you knew. Godspeed, Majesties.” He bowed again and opened the door; the sentry ushered him out.
Catharine was the first to heave a huge sigh of relief. “Well! ‘Tis done.” She eyed her husband. “How shall we know if the greatest part of his bargain’s fulfilled, ere thy battle?”
“Well, I wasn’t quite candid with him,” Rod admitted. He stepped over to the wall and lifted the edge of a tapestry. “What do you think, dear? Can we trust him?”
Gwen nodded as she stepped out into the room. “Aye, my lord. There was not even the smallest hint of duplicity in his thoughts.”
“He was thinking in English,” Rod explained to the startled King and Queen. “He had to; he was talking to us.”
Tuan’s face broke into a broad grin. “So that was thy meaning when thou didst speak of ‘eavesdroppers’!”
“Well, not entirely. But I did kind of have Gwen in mind.”
“Yet may he not have been thinking in his own tongue, beneath the thoughts he spoke to us?” Catharine demanded.
Gwen cast an approving glance at her. Rod read it and agreed; though Catharine tended to flare into anger if you mentioned her own psi powers to her, she was obviously progressing well in their use, to have come across the idea of submerged thoughts.
“Mayhap, Majesty,” Gwen agreed. “Yet, beneath those thoughts in his own tongue there are the root-thoughts that give rise to words, but which themselves are without words. They are naked flashes of idea, as yet unclothed. Even there, as deeply as I could read him, there was no hint of treachery.”
“But just to be sure, we’ll have Toby check out his camp right before the invasion,” Rod explained. “He’s learned enough to be able to dig beneath the camouflage of surface thoughts, if there is any.”
The door opened, and the sentry stepped in to announce, “Sir Maris doth request audience, Majesties.”
“Aye, indeed!” Tuan turned to face the door, delighted. “Mayhap he doth bring word from our sentries who have kept watch to be certain the beastmen do not turn back, to attempt one last surprise. Assuredly, present him!”
The sentry stepped aside, and the seneschal limped into the chamber, leaning heavily on his staff, but with a grin that stretched from ear to ear.
“Welcome, good Sir Maris!” Tuan cried. “What news?”
“ ‘Twas even as thou hadst thought, Majesty.” Sir Maris paused in front of Tuan for a sketchy bow, then straightened up, and his grin turned wolfish. “Three ships did curve and seek to sail into the mouth of a smaller river that runs athwart the Fleuve.”
“They were repulsed?” Glints danced in Tuan’s eyes.
“Aye, my liege! Our archers filled their ships with fire, the whiles our soldiers slung a weighty chain across the river. When they ground against it and found they could sail no further, they sought to come ashore; but our men-at-arms presented them a hedge of pikes. Nay, they turned and fled.” He turned to Rod. “Our thanks, Lord Warlock, for thy good aid in this endeavor!”
Rod started, staring, and Gwen caught his arm and her breath; but Sir Maris whirled back to the King, fairly crowing, “He did seem to be everywhere, first on this bank, then on that, amongst the archers, then amongst the pikemen, everywhere urging them on to feats of greater valor. Nay, they’ll not believe that they can lose now.”
Gwen looked up, but Rod stood frozen.
“Yet, withal,” said the old knight, frowning, “why hadst thou assigned command to me? If the High Warlock were there to lead, he should have had command as well!”
“But,” said Tuan, turning to Rod, “thou wast ever here in Runnymede, with ourselves, the whiles this raid was foiled!”
“I noticed,” Rod croaked.
“My lord, not all things that hap here are impossible,” Gwen sighed.
“Oh, yes, they are. Take you, for example—that someone as wonderful as you could even exist is highly improbable. But that you could not only exist but also fall in love with someone like me—well, that’s flatly impossible.”
Gwen gave him a radiant smile. “Thou wilt ever undervalue thyself, Rod Gallowglass, and overvalue me—and thus hath made a cold world turn warm for me.”