“You’ll let him if I say so,” snapped Raymon. His voice grew shrewd. “But while we can change the law easily enough, can we change our men? Your followers from the last time have spread enough horrible stories about the City. Have we any warriors that would go there now?”
“I think many would,” said Lenard thoughtfully. “First we should hold a great magical ceremony to arm us against all spells. Then we can take a large troop; there’s confidence in numbers. And if we dangle all the wealth of the City before their noses, they’ll follow me gladly enough. It must be stuffed with riches.”
“No,” wailed Gervish. He threw himself prostrate. “No, great sirs! We never meant that! The City is our home, and we are poor people with no other place to go.”
“Be still or I’ll have you run through!” snarled Raymon.
Gervish’s howls died to a tearful whimper.
“Hm-m-m.” Junti stroked his chin. “I’m not too frightened of having people go there. As you said, Lenard, it doesn’t seem to have hurt these Dale boys. But bringing things back—that’s another matter. There’s nothing understood about all this. You might be taking back the old plagues, or the glowing death, or—anything! No, no, I can’t agree to your using the powers of the vault yourself.”
“But it’s a threat otherwise,” protested Lenard. “There’ll always be a chance of someone like Carl going there and prowling about and turning the magic against us.”
“Not if you destroy the vault.”
“What? How?”
“Simple. Burn the books. Smash the machines. Fill the place with earth and stones.” Junti nodded. “It’d be a worthy deed too. You’d be scotching the last seed of the Doom.”
“Well—” Lenard hesitated. “I hadn’t wanted to. I’d thought—”
“Enough,” said Raymon. “It’s a good plan. We’re well enough off without risking new and unknown ways. Let it be thus, then. Tomorrow you Doctors hold a great devil-laying and spell-turning rite, and we’ll call for about a thousand bold volunteers to ride with you to the City, Lenard. That should be enough to handle a score of DalesmenI After you’ve taken care of them and wrecked that vault thoroughly, your boys can sack the place to their heart’s content. Drag back whatever you find that can be used for siege-engines and the like—I understand the witches used to manufacture such for the tribes. If it’s enough, we’ll storm the town and bum it around the Dalesmen’s ears and finish this war.”
Kuthay shuddered but was silent. Gervish, weeping, opened his mouth to protest again, saw the spearhead against his ribs, and closed trembling lips. Lenard scowled briefly, then his face cleared and he laughed, a hard, short bark of triumph.
In the morning, folk in the beleaguered town were wakened by the roll of drums and crash of gongs. Men snatched weapons, cursing, deathly afraid that the long-awaited Lann assault was on them, and sped to their assigned posts. But Ralph, mounting one of the towers to peer over the valley, saw that it was not a summons to battle.
“What’s going on, sir?” asked the guard beside him. “What are they doing out there?”
“I don’t know.” The Dale Chief had grown curt and grim since his son’s flight. His eyes were haggard with sleeplessness as he stared at his foes.
The whole great army was massed about Raymon’s tent, chanting and striking swords against shields in a clangor that drowned voices. A giant bonfire had been kindled and the red-robed Lann Doctors danced and drummed around it. As Ralph watched, he saw horses and cattle led up to the fire and saw a figure—he thought it was Raymon, but couldn’t be sure—slash the throat of each sacrifice. Blood gushed into a bowl, from which the leader sprinkled it hot and red on the pressing warriors. Meat was hacked from the carcasses and thrown on the blaze, whose smoke mounted black and greasy toward heaven.
“It’s some kind of rite,” decided the Dale Chief. “They’re preparing to do something. Storm us? No, I think not. The Lann never needed special ceremonies for a battle. I wonder—”
Afterward, Lenard harangued them from horseback. Slowly, a shout rose, swords waved in the air, spears were shaken fiercely and men roared. Some, Ralph saw, were edging away, silent, not liking whatever was being urged. But most howled approval.
It was near noon before the ceremony was finished. Ralph pondered the wisdom of a quick sally against that disordered throng. But no—with a half-mile of open ground to cover, the Lann would have plenty of time to meet him. Best to see what was brewing.
Lenard forced his steed through the mob, pointing to man after man, and each that he singled out, hurried away to get horses and war gear. Before long, a host of cavalry was assembled—nearly a thousand men, Ralph guessed dizzily. And their swift, sure readiness meant that they were of the best Lann troops, the trained warriors who had turned the tide against him at the last clash.
The division shook lances in air and hailed Lenard with a shout as he rode to the front. The rumble of hoofs drifted back to Ralph as they wheeled about together and trotted northward.
North!
“Where are they going?” wondered the guardsman. “What’s their plan?”
Ralph turned away. His shoulders were suddenly bent, and horror was in his eyes.
“Carl,” he groaned. “Carl.”
The vault was dim, even with a dozen candles flickering about the Uttered workbench. The dank air, full of a harsh smell, made Carl’s head ache. He looked past the great mixing kettle to Ronwy, who was scooping up the last grains of powder and stuffing them into a crudely fashioned metal canister.
“That’s the last,” said the old man. “There is no more sulfur.”
Carl nodded wearily. “Perhaps a dozen bombs,” he said. “No—fifteen, to be exact. I should know! Is that all we can do?”
“It’s all the gunpowder we can make,” shrugged Ronwy. He put a fuse in the canister, forcing it through a hole in the lid he had placed on the top, and tamped down clay to hold it. Carl took a pair of tongs and squeezed the container until it bent slightly, holding the lid in place.
It was fortunate, he thought, that the witch-folk had known sulfur. They bought it from traders and used it to smoke rats and mice from their storerooms. The bluff which had frightened away the Lann had used all the real gunpowder left in the vault, but an old book had described a way of making it. Saltpeter was another ingredient that had been in a small barrel here in the vault, and charcoal, which the Dalesmen themselves had prepared, was the third. The powders were weighed out on a scale, mixed wet, dried, and put into containers hammered from sheet metal dug out of the ruins.
Fifteen bombs—crude and weak, not even tested— all that the past six days of work had yielded. But there had been so desperately much to do: the formula had to be located in a stack of books Ronwy had once read but not remembered very well, a painful groping through many pages where half the words meant nothing; the powder had to be made, the metal found and beaten into shape. Carl’s high-flying dreams had faded as he realized how heartbreakingly slow and difficult it would be to recreate the vanished past.
“Maybe that will be for the best,” Ronwy had remarked. “We can’t gain everything back overnight. We aren’t ready for it. We should go slowly, take many generations on the task, so that we can learn the proper use of each new power before getting the next.”
But—fifteen bombs!
“And now what can we do?” asked Carl. “It would take rare luck for this little bit of weaponry to decide a battle.”
“I don’t know.” Ronwy sighed. “Make a balloon, perhaps. We would need a great deal of oiled cloth or fine leather, carefully sewed into a bag, and a large basket to hang from it, and some means of filling the sack with hot air—”