It was the middle of the night by the time the whole of the little army was landed. Then, without waiting for sunrise, King Rinaldo gave the order to march. Slowly and with muffled curses, his men picked their way through the dark until they found a river road. Then, with many glances over their shoulders, wary of ghosts and other night walkers, they marched on down the road in the moonlight.
King Rinaldo hoped nobody was watching.
The sentry skidded to a halt by Saul’s chamber door, crying, “Witch Doctor, come quickly!”
“Why?” Saul bolted to his feet, leaving the ancient text he’d been trying to puzzle out. “What is it? More djinn?”
“No, my lord! It is the battlements themselves, the very stone! It has begun to flake and chip and fall away… and the mortar is loosening and trickling out!”
Saul gave an antiseptic curse and followed.
On the battlements, he found Mama already at work with a spell that was more of a song than a chant.
As Saul came up, she finished and said, “I have bound their spells at least a little… the stone flakes more slowly. Can you think of a counterspell?”
“You stay with the competitive stuff,” Saul told her. “I’m better at being constructive.” He whipped a piece of string out of his pocket, tied the ends, and began to rig a cat’s cradle while he chanted,
Sir Gilbert stared. “Why do you play a child’s game as you cast your spell?”
“Because a cat’s cradle is a model of a crystal lattice,” Saul explained. “Each of the fingers is a molecule, see, and the string connecting them is an energy bond… Oh, never mind.”
“I see again why I have not attempted to learn magic,” Gilbert said, awed.
“You’d see it fast enough if I had time to start from the beginning.” Saul was piqued at his failure as a teacher. “If I could tell you what a molecule of salt is, and how it can bond to several others, but only at angles… “
“When we have won this war, then,” Sir Gilbert said hastily. “For now, it is enough to know that your strings hold the blocks of stone in place.”
“Too bad they didn’t do much for the cat,” Saul said.
Sir Gilbert frowned. “Which cat, Witch Doctor?”
“The one that wasn’t there,” Saul explained, “but that wasn’t the point, was it?”
Sir Gilbert asked, thoroughly confused, “Then what was?”
“That there was no cradle,” Saul answered. “In fact, nothing really existed except the uncountable molecules in a handful of dust… all the rest was energy.”
“Ah!” Sir Gilbert managed to get his chin above the depths long enough to catch a breath. “You mean that the Creator made everything from nothing, and made Man from dust! Moreover, that religion holds people together as with invisible bonds, to form a community!”
“That isn’t quite what I had in mind,” Saul said slowly, “but you’ve got the basic idea.” He turned away to the stones of the ramparts, feeling the need of a change of topic. “How’re we holding?”
“Quite well, now that you are done with your philosophical discourse,” Mama said. Her brow was bedewed with perspiration. “But look you, the Moors march!”
Saul turned to stare out beyond the walls of the city and, sure enough, the enemy army was pressing in from every side. Sir Guy was down on the city wall with a handful of junior knights, directing the defense. As they watched, soldiers wound a small catapult… but half-cocked, it suddenly fell apart. A cry of distress went up from a company of archers.
“I’d better get down there fast and see what’s going on,” Saul said.
There was a horse waiting, and the citizens had the good sense to get out of his way… very far out; they were already running for their houses to take cover. Saul reined in at the foot of the stair up to the ramparts of the city wall, threw the reins to a waiting soldier, and ran up two steps at a time. He grabbed a sergeant and demanded, “What’s going on?”
“This!” The sergeant lowered his pike and pointed to the head. It was freckled with spots of rust that multiplied even as Saul watched. “It spreads like rot in summer! The catapults fall apart as their fittings break; the arrows lose their heads!”
“I think I’ll let that one pass,” Saul muttered, then began to mime forging and dipping, chanting,
A cheer went up from the archers. “I think you have succeeded, Witch Doctor,” the sergeant said.
“I’ll take what I can get,” Saul told him. “Tell the artillerymen they can start lobbing rocks again.”
Then a roar engulfed them, scaling ladders slammed against the wall, and the wave of Moors washed over them.
Saul, who never carried a sword, on general principles… the principle being that if he had one, he might use it… was very busy for a few minutes, repelling invaders with every karate technique he had ever learned and wishing he’d studied longer. He ducked a sword cut and winced as it hit another Moor, who howled and turned to slash at Saul.
“Hey, not me!” Saul cried. “Your buddy threw that cut!” He ducked another slash, then came up inside the Moor’s guard to hit him hard and fast in the solar plexus. The chain mail hurt like the very devil, but the Moor doubled over in silent agony, and Saul turned to kick another assailant out of the way long enough to whirl back and chop at the first attacker’s neck. The man fell, unconscious, and Saul yanked the light shield off his arm.
Someone struck him in the back.
He fell forward, struggling for breath and furious at the foul blow, then pushed himself over and up to swing the shield up just in time to deflect another sword cut, then caught his breath and pushed himself to his feet, shoving the edge of the shield into the attacker’s belly. The man doubled over, eyes bulging, mouth gaping in a scream that was lost in the melee, and fell. Saul saw a broken spear on the pavement, scooped up the butt, and jabbed it into the belly of an oncoming Moor, then knocked him aside with the shield and stepped forward.
Suddenly, there was the edge of the wall, pitted and scarred, a scaling ladder leaning on it. Saul set his spear half against the top rung and pushed just as another conical helmet poked above the rim of the stone. The Moor’s eyes were coming into sight as the ladder shot away from the wall, paused in balance a moment, then fell.
All along the wall, other defenders had managed to reach the ladders; they fell back one by one, with two or three Moorish soldiers on each, falling with howls and hideous curses… at least, Saul assumed they were hideous; he didn’t speak Arabic or Berber. He had a notion he was going to learn, though, and fast.
The battlements were clearing quickly as groups of three and four defenders closed on single Moors.
The attackers fought valiantly but fell with Frankish steel in their ribs, or fell unconscious, fit to be tied.
Saul winced and turned away from the sight.