Matt's head stopped hurting.
He looked up at the rotund priest, amazed. Of course, it could be prayer—and in this universe, the power of prayer could be greater than antibiotics were in his home world, maybe much greater. But somehow, Matt didn't think that was what the friar was doing. Knowingly or not, Tuck was working magic—and Matt suspected it was knowingly. Unfortunately, he didn't know enough Latin to be sure.
Either way, his arm had stopped hurting, and his chest. He yanked up his sleeve and watched as the wounds closed, then smoothed as neatly as if they had never been there. Matt found himself wondering if they had.
Then he bent his arm, and decided they'd been real. He'd have to use that arm delicately for an hour or two—and take shallow breaths.
He glanced at Tuck. The color had returned to the friar's face, and he was breathing more easily. "Praise Heaven!" He sighed. "We are well again."
Matt glanced out over the courtyard and saw a few men picking themselves up, looking amazed and making the Sign of the Cross. Apparently Tuck's spell had been broadcast; Matt wondered how many of the enemy's wounded the friar had healed, too. That wasn't so good—they could have hundreds more enemies to fight, all over again...
He leaped up, winced, and climbed up to the battlements—stiffly, but without much more than a set of aches. He looked out over the slope and saw all the enemy wounded still lying where they lay, calling out for help.
"I can only aid those who are in a state of Grace, or wish to be."
Matt turned around to see that Friar Tuck had come up behind him. "I should think," he said slowly, "that they're in great shape to realize the error of their ways."
"Some, no doubt—mayhap most, now that they are removed from the influence of their army's sorcerer."
"Or now that he has removed himself from them," Matt demurred.
"Even so. But there be those in whom hatred for all things good and Godly has grown so strong that they will not even now repent."
That struck a false note. Matt looked at him narrowly. "Not trying to come up with excuses ahead of time, are you?"
"Never!" Tuck looked up at him in indignation.
"Sorry, I didn't really mean it," Matt said quickly. "Just habit. I owe you an awful lot of thanks, Friar."
"Then aid me with these enemy wounded." Tuck turned away. "Come with me; I must visit the sick."
Matt frowned, wondering why the friar wanted him along. Then he remembered that he could heal the bodies as soon as Tuck had healed the soul, and followed after.
They joined the soldiers who were collecting fallen weapons and stray arrows. They also gathered up the extra crossbow bolts and other munitions that had been stored away, plus any hardware the army had left in its flight. Then they filed back into the castle, much more slowly than they had gone out, for Friar Tuck checked every load to be sure that nothing under an evil spell was being brought back into the castle. A few items did indeed grate on him, apparently having been put to some rather gruesome uses; Tuck even drew away, repulsed, by one or two. The soldiers threw them back among their dead owners. The incident set Matt to thinking of Trojan horses, and being very glad Friar Tuck was there.
The checking would have been even slower if Puck hadn't been screening the peasants before they got to the friar. He rode unseen within Sir Guy's helmet, murmuring to him as he walked among the peasants and soldiers. Ostensibly, the Black Knight was keeping up morale that had never been higher, congratulating the defenders and thanking them for their loyalty and faithfulness.
Matt, however, had adamantly refused to help out. He knew his own limitations and had no illusions about the amount of goodness in his soul. He knew himself to be secretly vengeful, with a repressed streak of cruelty. It never occurred to him that Tuck might have had similar failings, kept in check only by stern self-control. Matt had not quite yet realized that morality is not an inborn trait and does not come naturally.
"We can't stay here, though," he told Sir Guy, when all the peasants and soldiers were back in, and the gates had been closed with the drawbridge up. "We're sitting ducks."
Sir Guy nodded. "It was needful to seek refuge within this castle when the Army of Evil was hot on our heels; but now that they are gone, we may sally forth once more and carry the battle to them."
Matt felt cold inside at the thought of deliberately confronting that army again—but he nodded anyway. "That's what we came here to do, isn't it? Besides, if we let our soldiers disperse and go back to their homes, they'll be overwhelmed by local sorcerers and their henchmen."
"In unity there is strength," Sir Guy agreed, "though there is no safety for good folk in this land—and none for evil folk, either, if they only knew it."
"Yes. It's just a question of how soon the wolves will turn on each other, isn't it?"
"Not whiles we do move, I fear. Nay, we must band together, no matter where we go. As an army, we have at least some chance of survival."
Matt didn't bother mentioning that, in the position they were in, survival depended on winning. It went without saying.
So they gave everyone a chance to catch up on eating and sleeping—though they still rationed the food, at Matt's insistence; he knew what gorging could do to people who'd been on a bare subsistence diet for so long. Between snoozes, the peasants packed food, and the soldiers packed weapons—Sir Guy made it very clear that personal possessions would have to stay behind.
So it was, a long triple file that flowed out across the drawbridge, in the early morning light two days later—an inner file of peasants, many driving carts filled with provisions, with soldiers pacing them on either side. Robin and his band led the way, right behind Sir Guy and Matt.
"So why don't I get to carry the knight?" Narlh growled. "Too low-class, huh?"
"Now, Narlh, you know 'tis naught of the sort," Yverne soothed him. " 'Tis only that Sir Guy is accustomed to the dragon—and I most surely am not." She shuddered.
Narlh immediately softened. "Oh, all right, lady. Yeah, you need to ride just as much as any of the other women—and I wouldn't trust you to that big lunk of lizard. And I suppose the knight shouldn't do much walking, in all that tin he's wearing."
"It would overtax him sorely," Yverne agreed.
Matt reflected that they were in the right country for over-taxing.
The day was bright and clear when they set out—but it clouded up fast. About noon, with the clouds lowering about them, Matt began to feel a thickening in the air—not really the atmosphere, of course, but his own personal ambiance. He stepped over next to Stegoman and called upward toward the knight. "Sir Guy?"
"Aye, Lord Wizard?"
"I'm feeling magic thickening about me. Not much, yet, you understand, just the first traces."
The knight frowned and glanced back at Friar Tuck. The clergyman was marching along with a strained face. "Our holy man must sense it, too," Sir Guy said. "He is telling his beads."
Matt looked behind, startled. Sure enough, Friar Tuck had hauled out a rosary large enough to qualify as a minor weapon and was mumbling the old, simple prayers as he fingered the beads.
"What ill do our sorcerous enemies brew for us?" the Black Knight demanded.
Matt shook his head. "I don't know—too early to tell. But tell everybody to brace themselves for an attack."
"Whence could it come?" Sir Guy waved an arm at the wide plain all about them. The land stretched away to the horizon, golden with ripening grain—except for the swath of waste where the fleeing army had trampled it. They were marching down the middle of that swath, for it spread twenty yards on either side of the road, reminding Matt that they were marching toward their enemy—who might have pulled his men together by now. The notion didn't exactly improve Matt's state of mind.