Matt frowned and came closer, peering through the darkness, wary of traps and ambushes, but very curious about the man. At the very least, he wanted a good look at his face. “I take it you don’t like your king.”
“Who could?” the man returned. “His soldiers are everywhere!”
“Yes, I expect it’s gotten so a man can’t pull off a decent rape or burglary without some oaf in a uniform interfering,” Matt said dryly. He stepped to the side, but the fellow was standing in shadow, indistinct and menacing, his face invisible.
“The day will come when those soldiers will answer to me!” the man snapped. “Milksop kings have reigned too long over Bretanglia! It is time for a monarch with hot blood in his veins!”
If Drustan was a milksop, Matt surely didn’t want to see a tyrant “What makes for being wishy-washy? Putting down bandits and punishing murderers and thieves?”
“Oppressing strong and lusty men, and letting courts and juries say who shall be punished and who not!” the man declared.
“Oh?” Matt realized he might be able to work him up to such an emotional pitch that the man wouldn’t think about what he, the pursuer, was doing. “How would you decide who’s right and who’s wrong?”
“The old ways—trial by combat, and trial by ordeal!”
“So that the man who’s stronger and has a higher pain threshold will always go free to beat up his neighbors, eh?”
“Have not the stronger the right to thrive?” the man demanded, his voice rising. “Have not the…”
Matt let him rave while he muttered,
Light burst between the man’s feet, and Matt had half a second to study the face—square and blocky, mature, a little gone to fat, with a tawny jawline beard and close-cropped moustache. Bushy brows cast shadows over deep-set eyes.
Then he shouted, leaping back into the shadows—shouted a singsong verse in a language Matt didn’t know, and the fire died. The courtyard seemed much darker, for Matt’s eyes had started to adjust to the sudden glare. He could scarcely see his opponent at all. Alarm shot through him—his fugitive was a sorcerer!
“Aren’t we clever now, managing a bit of light to see my face?” the man snarled. “You’ll wish you hadn’t, my bawcock!” And he rapped out another verse.
Matt hated not knowing what spell he had to counter until it happened. On general principles, he chanted,
Something slammed into the earth beside him. Shaken, Matt spared it a quick glance; it was a fallen gargoyle.
The stranger shouted another verse. Fire burst from the ground. Some sixth sense gave Matt just enough warning; he was already leaping back as the flame roared upward. Even so, he howled as it singed the side of his leg before he landed on the far side of the stony monster. But the gargoyle gave him an idea; he chanted,
With a grinding of granite joints, the half-human, half-draconian sculpture rose to its hind feet and spread its wings.
The stranger leaped back, arm snapping down to point at the gargoyle as he shouted a verse.
Matt was ready for him this time, though—the man couldn’t aim a verse at him when he had to stop the gargoyle. Matt had the precious moments he needed to seize the offensive. He pointed at his enemy and shouted another verse.
The gargoyle froze, its eyes glazing as it turned to stone again—but the sorcerer screamed as he shrank, his body transforming. Those screams turned into a chant, though, in that strange musical foreign language, and he stopped shrinking, two feet tall and with paws instead of hands thrashing their way out of sleeves three times too long for his arms—or front legs. His face bulged into a muzzle with a sharp nose, but his tongue was still human enough to intone another verse in a high, squeaky voice as he pointed upward.
The picture he presented was so ludicrous that Matt couldn’t help but laugh. He was still laughing as the end of the hayloft broke off from the stables and buried him under several hundred pounds of wooden beams.
The invisible envelope of his first spell kept the boards from hitting Matt, but they knocked him to the ground anyway—hard, since the beaten earth of the innyard hadn’t been trying to do him any harm. He landed on his back, pain shooting through his abdomen, and he fought to breathe, but his diaphragm wasn’t cooperating. He heard a howling battle cry with a Bretanglian accent, but it was cut short. Then Sir Orizhan shouted in anger, but the sorcerer shouted back in his own language, and Sir Orizhan’s voice cried out in pain before it fell silent.
Matt struggled for breath, but couldn’t pull in enough to speak.
Footsteps came near, and the enemy sorcerer’s voice said, “I know you are alive and whole in there, for you spoke a spell that told anything falling not to strike your body. Listen well, Lord Wizard. I know who you are, but you do not know me. You will, though, be sure of that—for King Drustan will declare war on Merovence now, in revenge for the death of his son. He has wanted to battle Alisande for some time, for he seeks to rule both Bretanglia and Merovence. Now he has an excuse, and will defy you to find a way to keep him from it.” There was a sound of gloating in his tone as he went on. “Try to stop this war, and you will find yourself fighting me at every turn. Let the war run, and you shall meet me on the battlefield. In either case, we shall meet again, and fight. I cannot kill you now because you have cobbled up some sort of spell to defend yourself, but I shall be ready to counter it when we meet again.”
Matt caught his breath and shouted,
“Aroint thee!” the enemy sorcerer cried, and chanted a couplet in his flowing language. A soft explosion sounded, and Matt ended his verse with a curse, knowing his enemy had escaped and thereby won the fight.
Matt resolved the man wouldn’t win the war. He tried crawling forward, and beams bounced off the unseen bubble that protected him. At the edge of the pile Matt shoved himself to his feet, and boards fell around him. He stepped out into the moonlight, gratefully drawing a breath of clean air and looking about him.
He saw Sergeant Brock lying facedown in the dirt, and ten feet across from him, Sir Orizhan, on his back and unconscious with his sword by his hand.
Matt stared in alarm, then ran to the sergeant first, to flip him over and make sure he had clear breathing. He did, so Matt checked for a pulse, found it, then went over to Sir Orizhan, still concerned—but as he came close, the knight sat up suddenly, shaking his head. “What… where…” He looked about, then shoved himself up, catching his sword as he looked about wild-eyed. “Where did he go?”