The Witch Doctor

But I was - because the fog suddenly lifted. Only ten feet or so, but that was enough for the soldiers to see where we were and turn to center on us with some very nasty oaths.

If their field sorcerer could disperse my fog, he might be able to trap Angelique! I had to find some way to bust up his party.

"Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen.
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown
That host in the morning lay withered and strown."

A huge unseen hand seemed to slap back and forth in the middle of the raiding party, and troopers went flying. That left only a man in a gray robe and pointed cap, frantically dodging the unseen force. He was going to be confused for a few minutes, and I decided to make it worse.

"I'll chant to him in summertime,
And in the winter, too!
But the only, only thing
That I'll sing for his song is to shroud him
In the foggy, foggy dew!"

The fog came down again, all the way to the ground - and among the moans of the soldiers, I heard a tenor cursing. I grinned; that should keep this junior sorcerer confused for a few minutes.

But he'd pick up the pieces pretty quickly. I needed something a  scare the symbols off his robe - and little more enduring, that would scare his soldiers, too.

And I knew just the thing. I grinned with anticipation as I took a deep breath and recited, with my best attempt at the original pronunciation,

"The fierce spirit painfully endured hardship for a time,
He who dwelt in darkness ...
The grim spirit was called Grendel, a rover of the borders,
One who held the plains, fen and fastness ...
There came gliding in the black night the walker in darkness,
From the plain under the mist-hills Grendel came walking,
Wearing God's anger!"

Night thickened around them, and I took off, following the crashing Gruesome was making. On my third step, I slammed into something hard and furry. A roar resounded around me, and a huge, clawed hand reached down through the darkness toward me. Far above, two little red eyes gleamed. I howled, ducked around the giant shin, and ran.

Grendel apparently wasn't about to change course for so small an irritation, because the crashing of boulders being ground into pebbles behind me, and I didn't think that was just because was going away he was running so fast. A yell of horror confirmed it, followed by the rattle and clash of suits of armor being jumbled together. I slowed and looked back, but all I could see was a black cloud with a horse arcing above it and a sorcerer beyond, sawing the air frantically with his hands. The horse landed on its hooves, by some miracle, and streaked off in a panic - but the sorcerer had to stand his ground and keep trying. I didn't think he'd have much luck when he couldn't even tell what the monster was - especially since I didn't think the man knew Middle English. Too bad the Dark Age bards hadn't left a few verses with a wider range of applications - but their interests had seemed to be rather narrow.

Wide enough for current purposes, however. I noticed that the crashing seemed to have stopped. So did the sorcerer - he was frozen with his arms half-raised, looking uncommonly as if he were surrendering to a Wild West sheriff. Then he whipped about and disappeared back into the pass. The black cloud drifted after him, leaving huge, clawed, vaguely anthropoid footprints.

I didn't really care about the sorcerer, but I couldn't leave a scourge like that to prowl the countryside. I tried to remember how the fight had gone, decided to be a little more humane, and improvised a different ending:

"Grendel must flee from there, mortally sick,
Seek his joyless home in the fen-slopes.
He knew the more surely that his life's end had come,
The full number of his days."

The black cloud kept moving up toward the pass-but as it moved, it thinned until, by the time it reached the top, it was almost gone. A vague outline hung in the air for a second, huge and gross, like a monstrous parody of the human form-or was it reptilian?-then was gone, so quickly that I wondered if I'd really seen it. I sighed and turned away-there had been something heroic about the monster, after all.

Gilbert was glancing warily up toward the hilltop, then back to the place where his opponents had been. There was only a dust cloud there now.

I looked at it, surprised. "What did you do - knock them all the way back to the mountains?"

"Nay. They saw that black fog you raised, and turned tail. They fled, and I came near to fleeing after them."

"Near! If I'd had a clear field, I would've been flying out of here so fast, my backwash would have knocked you over!"

"Me, too!" The troll actually looked shaken. "Goosum go, fast!" I looked up at Gruesome, frowning. "I thought trolls weren't scared of anything."

"One." Gruesome nodded vigorously. "Found it."

"And you banished it, Wizard. Gilbert looked up at me, the whites still showing all around his eyes. "Nay, you have certainly cleared our pathway! Have you disbanded them so quickly, then?"

" 'Dismembered' may be more like it," I answered. "You'll pardon me if I don't go back to check."

"Aye, Certes." Angelique looked down from where she wafted around Gruesome's shoulders, eyes huge. "And what monstrous apparition was that which you did raise against them, Wizard Saul?" Being a ghost, she had a professional interest in the question.

"That's a long story." I sighed. "And a very old one. I'll tell it to you some time - but right now, I think we'd better reset the guarding circle that Gruesome broke when he came out to help me-thanks, old monster .

"Help you?" Angelique looked up, ready to fibrillate.

"That's another story," I said quickly. "I thought you wanted to hear the one about the monster while we wait for daylight."

"Aye, but I pulled out my can of talcum powder."

"Then we'd better get busy" and stepped over to the break in the circle. Angelique drifted after me anxiously, but by the time she caught up, I was deep in, mumbling the spell. When I finished, I looked up brightly and said, "Okay. Anybody want to hear?"

Angelique's protest was drowned out by noisy concurrence from Frisson and Gilbert. I glanced around and saw that even the troll was looking mildly interested. I relaxed and took a deep breath. "Okay. Now, once, long ago and very far away, a hero named Hrothgar built him a hall, hight Heorot . . ."

And they sat up around the camp fire listening for what was left of the night, eyes growing larger and larger as they listened to the wondrous tale of the hero Beowulf.

What with one thing and another, we weren't in the world's greatest shape for traveling when we broke camp and buried our fire the next morning. We made it until noon, but when we saw the gleaming castle in the distance, sitting on top of its mound in the middle of the plain with bright banners flying from its turrets and the midday light glistening off the white stone of its curtain wall, I couldn't resist it.

"Just a little farther," I coaxed my friends. "We'll ask for hospitality there, and if they say yes, we'll be able to rest in peace and security.