“So you ran,” Matt interpreted “Aye, and he roared at them to follow until they caught me, for he knew that what I had done at his own ceremony I might well do at others, many others, and bring his whole charade down in fear and trembling, showing it for the falsehood it was. A dozen times they caught me, a dozen times I disappeared, a dozen times they came shouting after, and as one mob wearied and slowed, another came charging forth from the peasant horde that followed.” He grinned up at Brion. “A spirit of the land has brought them to you, O King, an army of peasants against an army of peasants. What will you do with them?”
“Let them wear themselves out in charges against me,” Brion said, his voice iron, “then loose my hounds upon them!”
Wings thundered above them. Everyone looked up, startled, and the dragon’s great form darkened the sun. “Beware,” Stegoman called down in a voice like thunder, “for half a mile behind those peasants marches a real army of veteran soldiers, and the man at their head wears a crown!”
“John,” Brion hissed. Then his face turned to misery and uncertainty. “How can I slay my own brother?”
“For the good of your people and their land!” snapped Buckeye. “Can mortal folk truly be so blind? He has slain your father and your brother, and would have slain yourself if he could have! What is the punishment for king-slaying, O Monarch?”
“Death.” Brion’s face was still a mask of grief. “But my own brother, the playmate of my youth!”
“If he cheated then as he cheats now, the memories should not be dear,” the bauchan told him, thin-lipped. “Are you a king or not? Oh, a pox upon it! Catch him first and try him later!”
Brion’s face firmed with resolution. “Aye. That I can do.”
“What you will do, do quickly,” Stegoman advised. Then, with an explosive clap of his wings, he was up and away again, riding the ridge’s thermals to gain altitude.
The attacking army saw and slowed, moaning with fear.
“Amateurs!” Sergeant Brock sneered.
The druids shouted at the peasants, upbraiding and insulting them to move forward, but Niobhyte strode ahead, hand upraised to stop them.
Matt braced himself.
“We can have these men slay one another till only a score is left,” Niobhyte called up to Brion, “but in the end it will come to a duel between the Lord Wizard and myself. Why not begin with that, and spare some lives?”
“Beware, Lord Matthew!” Brion said instantly. “This is a maneuver, nothing more. He hopes to best you, and knows if he does, my army is apt to flee!”
“What His Majesty says is true,” Sir Orizhan agreed, “but more to the point, if we stand and fight, we shall likely overcome his rabble, who have nothing but greed and cruelty to push them on.”
“Both true.” Matt’s stomach tied itself in a knot. “But what Niobhyte says is true, too. If I can beat him, his side will surrender without any bloodshed. I have to try.”
“Are you so sure you can win?” Brion challenged.
“No,” Matt said, “but I am sure you can hold your men in place even if I’m beaten—if you start exhorting them now.” Then he stepped forward, and was into the ranks of his own men before Brion could call out a command to stop—and once he would have had to make it loud enough for the men to hear, he couldn’t make it at all.
A pathway opened for Matt as men pulled back, doffing their caps in respect. He strode down from the front ranks to the level ground between the two armies to meet the leader of the false druids at last.
But as he drew closer he recognized the man. He stopped, staring in outrage. “You!”
“Of course, me,” sneered the Man Who Went Out the Window, “and if you’d had an ounce of brains, you would have realized it long ago.”
Matt could, at least, recognize a gambit for destroying his self-confidence. He replied in kind. “A man with any real power wouldn’t have had need for such subterfuge. He would have told me his name straightaway.”
Niobhyte flushed with annoyance, even though he, too, obviously recognized the gambit. “You meddling fool! If you had stayed in your own country, you would not now face your death!”
“Be careful what you say,” Matt told him. “If you really slew Drustan, you should remember that his son sits atop that hill listening.”
“Let him hear then!” Niobhyte shouted. “Drustan was a fool and an incompetent!”
“Meaning that he wouldn’t endorse your so-called religion, and even tried to execute you for it!” Matt matched him decibel for decibel. “Who do you think you are, to sit in judgment upon your own king?”
“I am Niobhyte, heir to the last High Druid!” the sorcerer thundered in anger. “Who are you to dispute my judgment, lowborn oaf?”
That stung. “I am Matthew Mantrell, Lord Wizard of Merovence. So all along it was you who had slain Prince Gaheris!”
“It was not my plan, but it was of my arranging, though not of my hand.” Niobhyte smiled, enjoying himself. “All that I myself did was to steal the prince’s purse while he was distracted with his doxy, then set one of my most ardent acolytes the task of actually shoving his blade in the prince’s back. But I will admit that it was masterfully thought out. It was upon hearing him say it that I first understood King John’s true merit.”
His voice rang off the hillside, and Brion started with surprise, his face turning tragic.
CHAPTER 24
But Matt didn’t even trust Niobhyte to lie straight. “Don’t tell me it was really John’s scheme!”
“Oh, yes,” the chief druid said. “Don’t believe the show of stupidity he puts on. He learned the pretense well while he was a child—it protected him from his brothers’ jealousy, and from ambitious courtiers who thought he might be a threat.”
“And saw other people punished for his crimes, because no one believed he was smart enough to figure out new ways of killing a cat or making dishes fall to the stone floor,” Matt said grimly.
Above on the hillside, Brion’s face turned gray. He began to walk his horse downhill, and the soldiers opened up an avenue for him.
“Ah, you knew of the last?” the chief druid asked.
Matt hadn’t—it had just been an example of a vicious boyhood prank. But he gave a contemptuous shrug, and Niobhyte interpreted it as assent.
“Not only duplicity—he also began to learn magic at a very early age,” the chief druid told him. “He fled into the wood when some courtiers humiliated him during a hunt. There, he found the hut of an old witch-woman. He threatened to bring the hunt down upon her unless she taught him magic, and thus he began. Once he had learned all she had to teach, he found grimoires aplenty—but he slew her so there might be no one to tell what he had learned.”
Matt shuddered. “Nice kid.”
“A lad of great promise, I assure you,” said Niobhyte, with a gleam in his eye. “I heard hints and rumors from other sorcerers, and came looking for this prince who had already devoted himself to evil in order to gain power. I tempted John with the notion of stabbing and poisoning his way to power. He seized the idea like a miser finding a gold coin in the dust—but was concerned that the Church might balk him. ‘Give me protection from the law,’ I told him, ‘and I shall build so strong a following that no Church shall be able to stand against it.’ He gave me a keen glance and said, ‘I had wondered what you expected to gain by helping me,’ and we have understood each other perfectly from that day.”