The djinna turned to her in fury. “Are you his wife, then? You seem too old!”
“Old enough to be his mother,” Jimena said, with anger of her own. “I am his mother indeed, and quite proud of it!”
“Proud!” Lakshmi cried, and the battlements trembled. “Proud of a kidnapper, of a thief in the night?”
“My son, a kidnapper?” Jimena stared in outrage. “You lie!”
“No, she is mistaken.” Ramon held up a hand to forestall his wife. “Matthew is not here, O Fairest of the Djinn. He is gone to the Holy Land, to help in fighting off the forces of Evil that seek to seize all the East. He has been gone more than a month. Why would you think him to be a kidnapper, and of which children?”
Lakshmi still glared at him, but there was uncertainty in her eyes. “No matter where he lies, he could still steal my babes from me!”
“Babes?” Ramon stared. “More than one? How wonderful for yourself and your prince! But Highness, you did not tell us!”
“Your son found out nonetheless! Two babes have I borne, twin darlings, and when I came to their cradle this morning to give them suck, both were gone! Vanished! Their cradle was empty, and who but a wizard could have stolen a child of the djinn from its father’s palace?”
“They charge the wall!” a sentry cried.
The night was cool, the stars filled the firmament, mocking the torches that stood along the walls of Damascus—but the shrilling of the barbarian horde drove all peace from their light and brought the Arabs to the walls, to bend their bows and fire at random.
Alisande leaned from her horse to kiss Matt. “If I die in battle,” she said, “I shall have that to have lived for!”
“You won’t die in battle.” Matt fastened her helmet into place. “I want more kisses, a lifetime more. You’ll have to come back.”
Her eyes flashed with amusement, but not with desire she knew well that he spoke of more afternoons like the one they had shared that day, not only of the kisses that had adorned it. “Guard me well!” she told him, then turned her horse and spurred toward the eastern gate. With a shout, her knights rode after. Their footmen followed at a run.
The Caliph watched her go, then gave Matt a critical gaze. “How can you let a woman go in your place?”
“It’s her place, not mine,” Matt corrected. “She’s the queen by birth and inheritance. But if you mean why aren’t I riding beside her to protect her, the answer is that I could, I’m a knight, but I’m also a wizard, and I can ward her better from the wall.” He shrugged. “It galls me, but it’s the course of wisdom.”
The Caliph smiled. “It seems odd, when you Franks make such goddesses of your women.”
“It seems odd to me, too,” Matt told him, “but I’m getting used to it … There they go!”
The gates swung wide, and the barbarians shouted with joy and surged toward them. Alisande let them cover half the ground before she kicked her charger into motion and thundered toward the invaders, lowering her lance.
The Asians were excellent horsemen who could literally ride rings around the knights—but they were hemmed in by their own men, all crowding toward the open gate. There was scant room to maneuver, and their ponies were much smaller than the Europeans’ Clydesdales and Percherons. The knights plowed into them, and the lances did the least damage—they could only skewer one barbarian each—for the great warhorses literally trampled the barbarians underfoot. Those who veered to the side and swung their spears high fell at the hammer-blow of heavy shields; those who came at the knights from the right met blows of heavy swords. Some spears did reach past both shield and sword, but the points only glanced off the European armor.
The “Franks” plowed deep into the mass of barbarians before they ground to a halt, their momentum blunted by the sheer numbers of their opponents. Thousands more barbarians started to close in on them from behind.
Then came the Arab cavalry, as light and maneuverable as the barbarians, their horses taller, their spears as sharp. Their own battle-cry ululated above the barbarians’ as their scimitars met the Asians’ steel. Here and there a barbarian fell, and Alisande’s infantry were upon him even as he scrambled to his feet. Other infantrymen were experimenting with tactics for separating riders from horses. Two-man teams worked together, one planting his spear-butt to absorb the shock as the horse ran onto the point, the other raising a long shield to protect them both from Tartar blows.
As they did, the knights turned their horses and, hacking with broadsword and battle-axe, carved their way out of the horde in a broad arc. Clear of the press, Alisande turned her juggernaut as squires came running with fresh lances. Couching the huge spears, the knights followed their queen in another smashing charge into the barbarian line.
There was this to be said against the horde’s encircling the city—they couldn’t get out of the way of the knights.
Atop the wall, Matt was sweating profusely, chanting himself hoarse as he countered first a spell to soften the ground under the knights’ feet, another to make their armor rust, a third to weaken their horses, a fourth to make their lances overly heavy, and a fifth and a sixth and a seventh. The Arab wizard gestured and chanted beside him, equally frazzled.
There was a lull of a few minutes as the knights regrouped for another charge and no more Asian spells were in evidence. Matt lowered his arms and panted, “Any of these spells terribly strong?”
“Not a one,” the Arab wheezed. “Elementary, every one of them, even clumsy. But there are so many of them!”
Incredibly, the barbarians began to retreat from the city so the horde could break into smaller, more maneuverable groups.
“Now!” Matt called. “Multiplication spell! Make it look as though there’re a hundred knights for every real one!”
He and the Arab chanted in tandem, and suddenly the city was surrounded by a ring of European knights charging down at the separate clumps of barbarian cavalry. If anyone had read the coats of arms on those knights’ shields, of course, they would have realized that there were a hundred of each—but the Asians weren’t skilled in Western heraldry. Deep-toned trumpets blew, and the barbarian host, exhausted, retreated from the walls of Jerusalem.
Alisande drew up and turned her equally exhausted knights back toward the walls of the city and the gate that opened before them—but their illusion clones rode on, chasing the barbarians over the hills and far away.
Jimena watched her husband out of the corner of her eye, feeling the first seed of suspicion sprout within her, a seed that could grow into a choking vine named “jealousy.” Of course, she had heard Matt’s story about the luscious djinna Lakshmi, who had saved him in his travels between this world and New Jersey—but seeing her was quite another matter, and Ramon’s courtly flattery didn’t help at all.
“I am amazed that even Matthew could conjure a djinn child from its cradle,” Ramon said. “I am sure he would not, but those who oppose him might. Tell me the manner of it.”
“The manner? There was no manner! I washed them and let them play in a sea of cushions while I left the chamber to hang the washcloths on their rack. I could not have been gone a minute, surely only seconds, but when I returned, they were gone!” Tears filled the huge eyes, and Lakshmi pulled from her bodice a slipper the size of a small boat. “Only this remained, this tiny slipper that I had myself embroidered with such care! All else was gone, trousers, vests, and slippers all—and the children with them!”
“Oh, you poor dear!” Jimena cried, her heart aching with sympathy for a soul who shared her own plight but felt it even more sharply, being not grandmother, but mother.