It was a shame Emner knew no Semmat, and Sterren could not be sure anyone in the castle spoke Ethsharitic or Emner’s native Lamuinese; otherwise, he could have used the wizard to establish contact with the besieged Semmans. Nobody else in the party could levitate that far; the witches could, working together, get one of their number a good way off the ground, but only for a very short time, nowhere near long enough to propel him or her all the way to the castle ramparts. The warlock had been able to fly in Ethshar, but here he was unable to lift himself so much as an inch.
It occurred to Sterren for the first time that he could send written messages back and forth, even if his own Semmat was limited, especially in writing. Lady Kalira was fluent and literate.
That was something to keep in mind, but then, what would he say in a message? And Hamder had half killed himself hauling Emner about on his scouting trip; getting him in and out of the castle would be a major project.
The whole project of winning the war was turning out to be more work than he had hoped. His magicians, while willing enough once they got started, seemed unable to think for themselves and needed to be told what to do almost every step of the way. He had thought at first that he could turn them loose and sit back and wait for victory, but instead he found himself plotting and planning constantly.
He wondered why he bothered. He had made his gesture; why didn’t he just pack up and go home to Ethshar?
There was Lady Kalira, of course, and the three soldiers, who might try to stop him, but he thought that he could slip away if he tried, take a horse, or all the horses, to prevent pursuit and give him something to sell in Akalla to pay for passage, and make a dash for it.
The longer he stayed here, the more likely he was to be captured or killed outright by the invaders. He wasn’t really doing Semma much good; only one enemy soldier dead so far, after two days!
There were all those people in the castle depending on him, but how much good could he really do them?
He thought it over, very seriously, and decided he didn’t know why he was staying.
Maybe he would flee, in a day or two.
But not yet.
CHAPTER 21
He had still not fled by the twenty-first of Midwinter, 5220. In two sixnights of war, Sterren and his little band had settled down into a calm routine. Each day, Sterren and the magicians would pick away at the enemy, using whatever stunts and devices they could come up with, while the four Semmans would scout out a new hiding place. Sterren did not think it would be safe to stay in the same place two nights running, and it made the Semmans feel useful.
He still had just the four Semmans with him. None of them had deserted, if it would have been desertion, under the circumstances, and no one else had turned up who cared to join Sterren’s guerrilla band.
So far as Sterren knew, no one had been able to slip out of the castle; and if anyone had, he might well have other plans, in any case.
Occasionally a peasant who had fled when the invaders arrived and taken shelter with friends or relatives not too far away would wander by to see if it was safe to go home, but these people always left immediately once they saw that the invading army was still there. None of them ever volunteered to help Sterren and his crew.
Sterren got the impression from these strays that most of the peasants who had lived in the village and surrounding farms were now lurking quietly just beyond the horizon, waiting for the war to be over and refusing to get involved with a struggle that they saw as being the aristocrats’ affair and none of their business.
Lady Kalira denounced them as unpatriotic cowards; Sterren and the three soldiers were less condemnatory. After all, what could a few unarmed peasants do?
Even the three Semman soldiers weren’t doing much. It was the magicians who were waging the war, and the Semmans did nothing but run errands. Annara had become quite expert at the Explosive Seal and had successfully booby-trapped books, tent flaps, and even a pair of boots. Actually, she had not ensorcelled the tent flaps themselves, merely the leather ties that laced them shut. The witches had found it very difficult to put the laces back without disturbing the seals.
She had not managed to do a saddle; the horse had refused to stay sufficiently still.
The spell had four noticeable drawbacks.
First, it took half an hour, and any interruption during that time, Annara insisted, could be disastrous. She needed to be left strictly alone for the full time. That meant that someone had to stand guard over her, and that she could not be moved quickly if an emergency arose. So far, no emergency had arisen, but Sterren worried about it all the same.
Second, she had to have whatever she was putting the seal on right there in front of her, which meant that somebody had to steal it away from the enemy, then put it back again later. Emner and the witches had been able to do this, using Emner’s levitation spell or the witches’ little mind-twisters, but it was very risky, especially when cautiously putting sealed tent ties back in place.
Third, the spell required a drop of dragon’s blood for each seal, and Annara had only had a tiny vial of the stuff, perhaps a dozen drops in all. Emner was no help; when asked, he said, “I never use the stuff. None of my spells need it, and it’s so expensive!”
Sterren knew it was expensive, and was amazed that Annara hadn’t sold hers long ago, but she explained, “With it, and my other things, I’m a wizard and I can work magic. Without my supplies, I’m just another charlatan. And besides, if you hadn’t turned up when you did, I would have sold it. I just wasn’t that desperate yet.”
Fourth, and finally, the seal was visible. It came out either red or black, Annara was unable to explain why it should be one or the other, rather than always the same, but it seemed to vary at random between the two.
The seal itself was made of wax, and when Annara used clear beeswax from a supply found in an abandoned kitchen, she was able to enchant the stuff with Eknerwal’s Lesser Invisibility so that the wax could not be seen at all, but even then, the trace of dragon’s blood remained visible, shaped into a strange rune, and nothing could be done to hide it.
That hadn’t helped the owner of the boots, who started to put them on in the dark and lost his right hand and foot. It hadn’t helped the lieutenant who opened the first book, who had taken the rune to be mere ornament, and lost an eye and three fingers, as well as the book. The first enchanted tent flap laid a soldier up with serious burns from shoulder to fingertip.
The owner of the second enchanted tent flap, however, had been more cautious and had carefully not disturbed the rune. He slipped into his tent from the back, crawling in the mud, and had then taken the tent down entirely and moved it well away from camp before poking at the flap with a stick.
The resulting explosion burned the tent to ash, but injured no one.
After that, the enemy knew what to look for, and the use of the Explosive Seal changed somewhat. Annara no longer bothered with the Lesser Invisibility and, instead of seriously trying to injure anyone, she put the seal in places where it would have maximum nuisance value.
For example, with all three witches standing guard, convincing the few late-night passers-by that Annara either wasn’t there or had every right to be there performing her arcane ritual, she sealed the wheel of a water cart to its axle hub. The seal blew the wheel off, terrifying the horses, when it came time to haul the next load.
The warlock pointed out that one of the witches could have done the same damage with a hammer, but Sterren thought the demoralizing effect was worth the special effort.