"It's the Gallowglasses!" the Mocker hissed. "Why haven't they teleported south to fight the monsters?"
"I thank you, Sir Geoffrey!" Alain called out. "I had need of a squire. Will you unbuckle my armor, then?"
Geoffrey looked at the angry faces around him and swallowed. "Your highness, I shall."
Men pressed back to leave room as the knight slid down from his horse's back. He took a step or two away, then lifted his vizor to look at them impatiently. "Well, will none of you help me doff my own armor? How can I assist my prince with this weight of tin about me?"
The peasants stared in surprise. Then ten willing hands reached to help him unbuckle.
"Do not trust him!" a voice shrilled. "He is a warlock! He shall fell you with a thought!"
"I shall do no such thing!" Geoffrey shouted back in indignation. "I would be disgraced if I interfered in a duel!"
"If not him, the prince's wife!" another voice cried. "The High Warlock's daughter, the Princess Cordelia! Surely she shall not stand patiently to watch her husband slain!"
Geoffrey frowned, stilling, his gaze unfocused, and the men unbuckling him paused, staring in alarm at his face. Then his eyes came alive again; he gave them a curt not. "She gives her pledge that she too will withhold her power. She rages at me, but she will abide."
"You cannot trust him!" the voice screeched. "You cannot trust any lord."
Geoffrey stilled again, only his legs now armored. "Let him who would call me a liar come forth to meet me man to man, with our hands bare!"
The crowd was still, waiting expectantly, but the owner of the voice was silent. Geoffrey nodded and leaned down to unbuckle his greaves. Then, clad in only shirt and hose, he went to help Alain.
A few minutes later, Alain, too, stood in only shirt and hose. He looked about him, calling, "Who will lend me a staff?"
A dozen poles thrust at him. He tested one after another, nodding, and chose a stick of dark dense wood and inclined his head courteously to its owner. "I thank you." Then he stepped forward toward the big man with the seven-foot staff.
Geoffrey swallowed and remembered his word.
"THERE IS NO cause yet!" Allouette insisted. "I know it looks as though there is, but trust me, sister, this is truly a battle for men's minds, not their bodies—and your husband fights it like the expert he is!"
"How would you know?" Cordelia asked through clenched teeth.
"Because I was trained for this! Because I worked at it for five years! Trust me, sister—and trust him!"
Watching the woman he loved, Gregory marvelled. She didn't seem to realize the contradiction—that Cordelia should trust her because she had been trained to be a sub-verter—but she was right.
"If they harm one hair of his head," Cordelia said, "I shall burn their minds out where they stand!"
"Wait for more than one hair," Gregory advised.
"It is true." Allouette nodded. "He must let the big peasant strike him once, twice, or more, to win their respect!"
"How shall I know when he is truly in danger?" Cordelia cried.
"If they strike him down and he does not rally," Allouette explained. "So long as he rises again, he has them under his spell."
"You know a lot about spells, do you not?" Cordelia snapped, and instantly regretted it.
But Allouette seemed to take it as a mere statement of fact. "I do, so trust me in this. Withhold your might!"
FAR TO THE south, a telepathic sentry stood atop a cliff and saw a score of monsters burst from the morning mist over the river. They bounded straight for the young man who had called them. The sentry was only a telepath; she had no other mental powers to help protect the poor idiot who had trusted the monsters' promises and invited them.
She turned away with a shudder and, with all her strength, the mental alarm north to the rest of the Royal Witchforce.
The monsters have broken out of the mist! The monsters are loose!
IN RUNNYMEDE, CORDELIA stiffened with a gasp— and so did Allouette and Gregory.
"I dare not go!" Cordelia wailed. "Not while my love is in danger!"
"We dare not go either," Gregory said grimly, "while the Crown may need us. Pray the monsters do no harm before this is ended!"
None of them believed that for an instant—but they v they had to stay and watch.
ON THE FIELD below, Geoffrey stiffened with alarm, but knew even better than his siblings that he dared not disappear—especially among a crowd who feared witches.
High in the tower, though, Magnus's eyes widened. So did Alea's, the alarm blasting through her mind, too. Then Magnus's eyes lost focus, and she cried, "Not without me!" She seized his hand, wrapped his arm about her, and tucked hers as far about his waist as she could. His arm tightened about her, lifting; then an explosion echoed and the world disappeared in a sickening slide of colors that churned all about her. An instant later, the earth jarred my against her feet, and she clung to Magnus until the dizziness passed, sure that she would never again envy his ability to teleport.
Then she looked up and saw the monsters bearing down on them.
THE BIG PEASANT jeered, "Will you stand there and wait all day, princeling? Have you the courage to strike the first blow?"
"Marry, that I have," Alain answered, "for I will not have it said that you attacked your prince. Still, I admire the courage of any peasant who dares fight a belted knight, and would know the name of so valiant a fellow."
"I am called Bjorn," the peasant returned, "and I must honor the courage of any man so little as you who dares stand against me!"
Alain took a step closer, smiling up at the man who stood a head taller than he and outweighed him by eighty pounds of muscle. "We fight with respect, then. Defend yourself!" He swung his staff like a baseball bat, up high and down at Bjorn's head.
Bjorn laughed and swung his own staff to block. Alain's cracked against it and, on the rebound, swung at Bjorn's ankles. He dropped it to block, then chopped down in a short hard blow that glanced off the side of Alain's head.
At the city gates, Catharine screamed.
Alain staggered backward, shaking his head, and Bjorn followed, tight-lipped and plainly disliking his work, but swinging at Alain anyway.
Somehow, the prince leaned aside at just the right moment, and the staff whistled past him. He gave his head one last shake and leaped high to swing a roundhouse blow at Bjorn.
Too late, Bjorn recovered and lifted his staff, but Alain's blow cracked on his collarbone. He howled in pain and swung the butt of his staff at the prince's belly. Alain blocked both that and the next blow at his head, then gave ground, blocking every blow as Bjorn grew more and more angry, then swung a two-handed blow at his head. Alain ducked and, before Bjorn could recover, advanced on him with three-strike combinations. Now it was Bjorn who fell back, trying frantically to block—until he missed, and one swing connected. Alain's staff cracked squarely against Bjorn's skull, and the big man's eyes glazed.
Alain leaped back.
Bjorn began to lean from side to side, dazed but managing to hold his balance—barely. Alain could have struck him down with impunity. Instead, he thrust with the staff as though it were a lance and struck Bjorn's breastbone. The big man overbalanced and fell like a tree. He slammed into the ground, and Alain was at his side in an instant, dropping to one knee to feel for the pulse in the man's throat.
The peasants held their breath.
Then Alain looked up grinning. "He lives!"
The peasants cheered and lifted him up bodily.
Geoffrey forgot his pledge and dashed forward. Then he saw that Alain was sitting on the broad shoulders of two peasants, while the others danced about him, cheering and waving their flails and scythes in triumph. They bore the victor back to his parents, chanting a war song.