“You have stopped it!” Sir Chaliko cried.
“Not me,” Saul said, “the undine. All that water has turned the ground into a bog.”
Sure enough, the tower’s wheels were buried in mud. The soldiers inside shouted in panic and jumped for their lives.
So did the undine.
Down it fell, a huge amorphous shining mass, a giant iridescent bubble still issuing torrents of water—but the flames fell with it. The firefall followed the elemental and, roaring, the undine began to roll toward the moat.
“Witch Doctor!” Sir Chaliko cried in a panic. “We cannot have that monster in our moat!”
“Why not?” Saul grinned. “I’d love to see an enemy try to fill in that ditch now!”
“But it will flood the castle!”
“How?” Saul asked practically. “Water seeks its own level, after all. It can’t climb higher than the moat’s banks-it’ll only overflow. Hey, we may be the only castle in Europe to be surrounded by a waterfall!”
“Will it not wash away the very hill?”
“If there’s any sign of that, we can find a spell to send the creature back where it came from,” Saul assured the knight. “Maybe I can make it evaporate.”
The undine tumbled into the moat and, finally, the fire died.
“Amazingly done!” Sir Chaliko said, awed. “But why did you not simply call up a salamander, a fire elemental?”
“How would I have banished it when it had taken care of the undine?” Saul replied.
“I had not thought of that,” Sir Chaliko said slowly.
On the south wall, Sir Gilbert faced the forces of the Duke of Orlentin, with only Padraig, an Irish apprentice wizard, to support his soldiers. Sir Gilbert watched as a huge boulder arced through the air to crash against the wall while the teenager made frantic gestures, chanting in Gaelic.
“It struck with somewhat less force,” Sir Gilbert admitted. “Can you not make that catapult to break, lad?”
The boy shook his head, wiping his brow, strain in every line of his face. “I do not know enough magic for that, Sir Gilbert—but if you could bid your archers loose a dozen fire-arrows, I could guide them all to the engine without fail.”
“We shall do what we can,” Sir Gilbert sighed, and called to the archers.
Twelve arrows sailed high in an arch. Padraig chanted feverishly in Gaelic and, slowly, the flight pulled together, forming one coherent ball of flame—but as it fell toward the catapult, the fire went out, and only a clutch of smoking shafts struck the engine.
“A plague on it!” Sir Gilbert cried. “What befell you, Padraig?”
“There is a sorcerer countering my spells!” Padraig wailed.
Sir Gilbert frowned. “Then you must outsmart him.”
“Outsmart him? How?” the teenager protested. “As soon as he knows what I intend, the duke’s sorcerer will …” His voice trailed off as his eyes widened.
He looked so comical that Sir Gilbert grinned even in the midst of danger. “What have you thought of, boy? A magical ambush?”
“Of a sort!” Padraig pushed up the sleeves of the robe that, like the office of battle-wizard, was too big for him. He raised his arms, chanting in Gaelic again.
On the field, the duke’s men turned the huge crank, and the tongue of the catapult pulled back and back—and broke with a crack like the boom of a cannon.
“Well done!” Gilbert cried. “How did you that, lad?”
“I turned its core to peat.” Padraig grinned. “Whatever the duke’s sorcerer may be, he’s never seen an Irish bog!”
On the north wall, Ramon confronted the troops of the Duke of Soutrenne, but the huge wagon that rolled toward him was roofed with armor plates that protected its passengers from arrows, stones, and anything else the defenders might throw at them—even, to some extent, boiling oil or steaming water.
“What menace rides within, that they shield it so well?” asked the captain of the north wall, face creased with worry.
“I do not know, Sir Brock,” Ramon said, “but whatever it is, I do not think we should let it come any closer.”
“Certainly we should not! It rolls without oxen to pull it, or to push it, either. How can my archers stop a thing like that?”
“They cannot.” Ramon grinned. “But what magic can propel, more magic can repulse. Let me attempt its halting, Sir Brock.”
The war-wagon rolled to a halt.
Sir Brock stared. “Can you stay them so easily as that, Lord Mantrell?”
“Easily indeed,” Ramon told him. “Our lord duke has invested his money in his army, not his wizard. He has a journeyman at best, perhaps only an apprentice.”
The war-wagon began to move again, though slowly.
“A journeyman,” Sir Brock deduced.
“It would seem so. I must give him a more lasting denial.” Papa raised his hands again, thinking of them as antennae cupped to beam magic toward the wagon, and recited,
He counted the seconds off softly by a major American river. With five seconds left he called,
“No longer it hauls!”
The pop of something wooden giving way reached them even on the battlements. The war-wagon still moved, but a crack as loud as a gunshot made it list to starboard. Then another report sounded, and another and another. As they watched, the wheels fell off, the axles broke, and the armor plates fell from the roof, exposing a skeleton of heavy beams. From the highest swung a huge iron-headed battering ram.
Sir Brock looked as though he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Surely they did not think to crack a six-foot-thick wall with that!”
“They did not.” Ramon scowled. “But our wall contains the postern gate, Sir Knight.”
“What did they think to do—bridge the moat?”
“I suspect they did,” Ramon answered. “When this battle is done, Sir Brock, send men out to bring that engine inside. I think you will find that the wagon-bed is really a very stout affair of planks and beams, and is only laid within the frame, not nailed or pegged. A dozen men will be able to shoot it out across the moat, and it will be strong enough to hold that ram as it rolls.”
Sir Brock squinted, trying to see the ram more clearly. “I don’t doubt it. Is there anything more we can do to confound their plans?”
“Perhaps.” Ramon grinned and recited,
The ram began to swing. Wider and wider it swung, until the soldiers near it shouted with alarm and began to crowd away.
CHAPTER 12
“The frame is beginning to tremble!” Sir Brock cried with delight.
The trembles turned into shaking and quaking, the beams jerking and jolting as each swing of the ram became harder and harder.