Then a peasant showed up, wild-eyed and white-lipped. "They come, my masters, they come!"
"What do you speak of, man?" Gilbert grasped the man by both shoulders, holding him still. "Who comes?"
"The Army of Evil!" he cried. "Footmen and knights! There are too many to count, and they have two sorcerers to strengthen them!
My ragtag army broke into a hullabaloo - but I didn't see anybody who looked like running. They were all grim, most eager - even a few who were trembling with fear but determined.
There were only a few hundred of them, though.
"How many is 'too many to count' " I asked Gilbert.
"For a peasant?" He shrugged. "It could be a few hundred, or many thousand." He turned back to the man. "Were they on the road"'
"Aye! I heard them coming afar off and hid in the bracken to watch!
They came on and on and on, four abreast! I waited till they passed, counted as high as I could, yet still they came on!" Gilbert nodded. "How long was it till they passed?"
"How long?" The peasant looked startled; he hadn't really thought about it.
"As long as it takes you to go from your hovel to your field' Or as long as a Mass?"
"Between." The peasant's brow furrowed. "Not so long as the Mass, but longer than the journey to my field."
"A thousand at least." Gilbert released him. "You have done well. How have you managed to come to us before them?"
"They go by the road. I know the land and have come across the fields. They march; I ran."
Gilbert nodded. "They will be here within the hour, surely, probably far sooner. You have done well, fellow. Go whet your scythe among the others; we will need it to be sharp ere long."
"I will!" Battle lust gleamed in the youth's eye - enough to make me shudder. He hurried away to join the others.
I stepped into a quick huddle with Frisson, Gilbert, and Friar Ignatius. "We knew this was coming, I suppose."
"Aye," Frisson said, looking as scared as a cat who has used up eight lives. "We set out to march 'gainst the queen, did we not?
"And we knew we would face her army, soon or late," Gilbert said.
"In truth, 'tis amazing they have not come upon us before; I have expected them with each nightfall."
"Nightfall?" I looked around. "Yeah, it's almost sunset, isn't it?"
"Assuredly," Friar Ignatius said. "The Army of Evil is at its strongest in the hours of darkness."
"So we have to hit them hard and fast and roll them up before night." I looked around at our peasant encampment, frowning.
"You have an idea," Frisson stated.
"Well," I said, "if they're being so polite as to come straight down the road, they must be expecting an ambush, mustn't they?"
"They would not fear it," Gilbert said grimly, "not with their numbers."
I nodded. "All the more reason to give them what they're expecting. What's the best kind of ambush you could prepare under the circumstances, Gilbert? "
The squire frowned, thinking for a few minutes, then turned away to the peasants. "Ho! How many among you can strike a bird on the wing with a sling?"
"I," a dozen men said at once, and fifty more were only half a beat behind them. By that time, all the rest caught up, and the word "I" rolled through the whole camp.
Gilbert nodded, satisfied. "So I had thought; small birds are the only game that is not forbidden to a peasant." He raised his voice.
"Seek out sling-stones, and be sure your pouches are full! Then get you up into the trees on either side of the road, and hide you well!"
The excited murmur rose to a surf roar as the peasants got busy hunting up pebbles.
"Good idea." I nodded. "Put them where the troopers can't come to grips with them."
"Aye," Gilbert said darkly, "but they are sure to have archers. It would take but a volley or two to fell all my men."
"Oh, I think we can provide them some measure of protection. Just have a squad ready to block the road in front of them. That's where it's apt to get messy."
Frisson stared. "What manner of protection can you craft thus?"
"An invisible shield," I said. "Let them batter themselves against it and wear themselves out."
"A good thought!" Gilbert looked surprised. "Whence came that notion, Master Saul,"'
"Oh, just a kind of fable I heard once." I didn't think I should try explaining about television and toothpaste commercials.
"But not for long." Frisson looked disappointed. "Surely their sorcerer will dissolve it."
"Yes," I said, "but we could build a wall within a wall within a wall.
Now Frisson looked startled. "That could hold - yet not long enough for the whole of the battle."
"Yes, but I think it'll keep their sorcerer busy long enough for us to get the drop on them."
Frisson frowned. " 'Get the drop'?"
"Take them by surprise," I said. "Sneak in an extra punch. Gain an advantage. "
"All!" Frisson nodded. "And how shall you do that"'
"Too complicated to explain. I'll have to show you - after we've finished making the shield." I turned away. "So let's get busy - we need to stake out a very long perimeter."
It turned out we had just the boys for the job; somebody ran and borrowed a plow, and Gruesome pulled it - while another fellow guided, following Gilbert. He paced off a line five hundred feet long, which didn't seem like enough for an army that took fifteen minutes to walk past, but he assured me they'd all come cramming in at the first sign of action. When they had plowed up one side of the road and down the other, then across to make an H, I took a verse Frisson had started some time before, but that had stayed in my mind rather oddly - probably because the rhythm of its meter was the kind of thing you can't get out of your mind for an hour, and when you do, it keeps coming back. I had scrounged up six feet of string while they'd been plowing, and now I sat down by the camp fire and wove a cat's cradle while I chanted:
I didn't like working magic myself, mind you, hallucination or not - but these were concepts Frisson just didn't have. He was helping with the weaving, though, so I didn't have to admit it was all my doing.
"I see naught." Gilbert was peering anxiously into the darkness.
"Of a certainty," Frisson said, grinning. "He said it would be invisible, did he not? But look yonder!" He pointed up at the stars.
"See you not how they twinkle?"
"Stars do ever twinkle! They forever have!"
"Aye, but growing larger and smaller? Surely there is something between them, like to the haze that rises from a hot rock in midsummet!
Well, he had the concept, anyway. Call it what you will, a force field is a force field.
"Now comes the tricky part." I put my hands together and dropped the cat's cradle. "Gilbert, send men out to charge the wall and see if it's still there."
Suddenly, the squire looked scared. He turned to the peasants.
"Ho, Willem! Kurt! Baden! Take you each a band of men, and set out for the furrow!"
They did, not asking.
I turned to Frisson. "When did he learn their names?"
"As soon as they came in," Frisson answered. "I do not think he knows them all by name, but he has picked out the leaders, and certainly knows each of them."