“Bad enough for him to attack, but worse for him to win!” Trangray fumed, pacing the room. “His grandfather tried it when he first came to the throne. Every monarch tries it when first he rises! The crown seems to infect them with this ridiculous notion that simply because they wear jeweled gold on their heads, they have the right to command the rest of us! But my father beat his grandfather home and left him to rule only his own estates all his life, and I shall whip his son in similar fashion!”
The players were all asleep, and the campfire burned low, almost as low as Gar’s and Dirk’s voices—but Coll was still able to hear them, and the nonsense they were talking was troubling enough to keep him awake. Still he tried to sleep—he kept his eyes closed and strove to relax, to ignore their words—but found he couldn’t.
“Traveling with these players is an excellent way of setting up an underground,” Gar said, “but how are we going to keep the separate cells in touch with one another?”
“It’s a puzzler,” Dirk agreed. “It’s one thing in a city, where the different cells are so close together that no one has any problem arranging a way to bump into his contactor even in a forest, where there isn’t going to be too much worry about secret police watching when Banhael sends a messenger to each of the smaller bands. But how do you bring it off when there’re twenty miles of open country between villages, and lords’ soldiers all over the place?”
“We could have Herkimer run up a hundred transceivers,” Gar suggested.
“Isn’t that getting a little obvious?” Dirk asked. “The lords are bound to notice a cultural intrusion of that magnitude.”
Gar nodded. “More importantly, so will the Dominion Police, if they happen to have an agent touring the planet at the moment.”
“You can never tell with those guys,” Dirk sighed. “They might be there or they might not. Give ‘em their due—their disguises are foolproof.”
“And we’re no fools.”
“Just lucky they weren’t around when you stirred up our little revolution on Mélange.”
“It was scarcely ‘little,’ ” Gar said stiffly, “and the Dominion Police couldn’t have done anything about it even if they had discovered it—it was all being engineered by people who’d been born on the planet!”
“Except for a certain very tall party who just happened to be the focus of the whole thing.”
Gar shrugged. “Even then, I was just assuming a role your dead genius had prepared for me five hundred years earlier—and I was just the trigger.”
“True,” Dirk said judiciously, “and since the lords already had radio transceivers and all sorts of high-tech gadgets, there wasn’t really any worry about upsetting the cultural applecart.”
“Here, though, it could be a very different matter,” Gar pointed out.
“Yeah.” Dirk made a wry face. “They don’t even remember what an electron is!”
Gar nodded. “If we taught them to use radios, some of the bright ones would start wondering how they worked, and within a generation, they’d have begun to suspect the answer.”
“And in three, they’d have electrical power stations, radios, three-dimensional television, and microwave networks, all grafted onto a medieval culture…”
“…And the monarchy would become a hereditary totalitarian dictatorship,” Gar pointed out, “with a vastness of oppression which would dwarf the slavery we’re trying to curb now!”
“Maybe not.” A new light gleamed in Dirk’s eye. “If they don’t remember any technology higher than a hammer, anything we do bring in, they’ll dub magic. What’s the matter with that, in a medieval culture?”
“A point,” Gar sighed, “and if technological magic can work, we might just as well call in the Wizard.”
“Of course!” Dirk slapped the side of his head. “I keep forgetting there’s more to you than there seems! Yeah, call him in!”
More to him than there seemed? Coll looked up and down the giant’s frame. If there were more to Gar than that, it must be mighty indeed!
“Let me think it over, while we contact more malcontents and outlaw bands.” Gar rose to his feet. “It’s not one of those things that I do lightly, Dirk.”
“Yes, I’ve come to realize that.” Dirk rose, too. “It is a bit of a strain on you, isn’t it?”
“There is that,” Gar admitted, “but I can bear it. What really bothers me is that it always seems to be taking unfair advantage.”
“Unfair advantage?” Dirk stared at him. “You’ve got knights in full plate armor massacring unarmed civilians and sending their soldiers out to burn down villages, and you worry about unfair advantages?”
“Yes, that’s why I’ve resorted to it a few times,” Gar sighed, “and probably will again. But this time I had hoped not to.”
“How else are two guys from out of town going to turn over the whole social-stratification heap?” Dirk demanded. “There probably is no way,” Gar admitted. “Still, it bespeaks a lack of skill. I can’t rid myself of the notion that I ought to be able to do it all by strategy.”
“Oh, fine! You scheme, while more serf-soldiers get wiped out in another skirmish between dukes! And you had the gall to talk about noblesse oblige!”
“True,” Gar said, looking as though he had just bitten into a bad nut. “Let me sleep on it, Dirk.”
“Good idea.” Dirk turned toward his blanket roll. “I could do with a few winks, too. After all, we need to contact more outlaw bands before we do anything.”
“Yes, and many more malcontents,” Gar agreed. “I do have a little time, don’t I?”
So they went to bed, but Coll lay awake another hour or more, excitement thrilling through his blood. Not only were they actually trying to throttle the lords—they really had done it before! He had no idea where Mélange was, but if they said they had brought about this “revolution,” this turning of the wheel there, told it to each other when they thought no one else was listening, why, then, surely they had! And they had magic for the doing of it! A wizard to call upon! Was he the “Herkimer” they kept mentioning? And would they really call upon him to work this miracle?
Coll didn’t pray often, but he prayed that night—and, by praying, finally managed to fall asleep.
“Away with you, fellow!” The guard pulled back his hand to slap the bent old beggar, but the man straightened up suddenly, and his eyes flashed with anger. He spoke with the air of authority, the unquestioned assumption that he would be obeyed. “Tell the duke I am come.”
The guard hesitated, hand still pulled back; the man’s very voice, his accent, bespoke him to be of the gentry at least. On the other hand, he could be an impostor. The guard studied the face before him carefully, and stiffened, seeing a hint of someone he knew under the thatch of white hair and beard. “Who … who shall I say is here?”
“That is not for you to know, villein! Send word to your master, and conduct me to his audience chamber!”
The guard had always lived by the rule of passing any problem out of the ordinary on to his officer. He capitulated and led the beggar in to the captain of the guard. The Duke of Trangray was infuriated by the virtual summons, but the captain of the guard seemed so certain of the importance of the old beggar that the duke came to the audience chamber. “What is your wish?” he demanded. The old beggar turned to face the duke, stepping forward so the guard and the captain were behind him, then pulled the false beard from his face. The duke stared for a full minute. Then he turned to the captain and said, “Leave us.”