He heard two howls of shocked surprise quite clearly over the din of the fight, as the two knights suddenly found themselves devoid of breastplates, protected only by the thick padding of their gambesons. Matt grinned wickedly. Somehow, he wasn't hearing the knights threatening their men any more—and a few soldiers were developing gleams in their eyes, lowering their pikes.
Matt didn't stay to watch. He ran back to the barricade, blocked a pike but found it was a halberd that cut down at his foot. He hopped back, but the blade caught his leg, and pain seared through. He cried out, but muffled it quickly, shifting his weight as he chopped through the shaft and riposted with a thrust toward the halberdier. The man leaped back with alacrity, and Matt was grimly pleased to note that there wasn't any great push to shove him forward.
Then a halberdier on his right knocked the sword out of his hand.
Matt leaped back from the fight—he knew better than to try to pick up the sword. A quick glance showed him Fadecourt with a captured pike, beating back soldier after soldier, Narlh catching soldiers in his jaws and tossing them away, and Yverne, bleeding from two cuts but fighting with the deftness of an expert and a very pale face.
The sight of her blood made Matt's plasma boil. He caught up a fallen halberd and jumped back into the fray just as a pikeman wriggled through the chevaux-de-frise. Matt slammed a chop at him—but the pikeman blocked the blow and slammed the butt of his pike into Matt's knee. Pain exploded as the knee folded, and Matt sank down before his enemy, whose point was spearing right toward him...
A pike butt whistled around and clipped the pikeman under the chin. The man fell back, and Fadecourt leaped up to stab down. The man screamed, then sprawled loose, and the cyclops jumped back to his own sector, crying, "Desist, Lord Matthew! You are not accustomed to the halberd! Devote yourself to spells for our defense!"
Matt staggered to his feet, trying to ignore the pain in knee and shin. He stepped back from the battle, using the halberd as a staff to support his injured leg. His face burned with shame—at having a woman outdo him with a weapon, but also at his failure to aid his friends by fighting with his strongest weapon—magic.
And he'd better get with it—it was very odd that no junior sorcerers had started magical support for the attackers yet. If he moved fast, maybe he could forestall them...
With a meteor.
A roar split the night. Matt stared, mouth hanging open, last line unfinished, because a towering flame swept toward him. The ranks of attackers split with a huge shout to make room for it, and Matt found himself wondering, Oh, no! Did I do that?
Not with the verse about the meteor, at least—for as it came closer, Matt saw a twelve-foot tree trunk, blazing like a Yule log, stamping up on two legs made by a split in its bottom end. Two fiery knots toward its top glared down at him; a gash below them opened and bellowed, "You! Vile sorcerer! Most evil of magi! Never did I do you hurt! Innocent was I of any wrongdoing! Wherefore did you cast me into the fiery furnace?"
Matt was so startled he could only stare back at it and stutter.
The tree blundered into the barricade, and three stakes caught fire. It glared down at them, then sought out Matt again. "Will you now condemn these poor twigs, also, to the eternal flame? Will you damn them, as you damned me?"
"But—I didn't!" Matt bawled. "I've never seen you before in my life!"
"Of a certainty, you have," the flaming tree bellowed, "though the powers of Hell have magnified me so that I may be the instrument of your destruction! I was the twig you set into the earth as a marker, the poor, unoffending stick that you threw from you with a curse!"
Even through his panic, Matt recognized the reference to Gordogrosso. The sorcerer-king had magnified the little stick he had thrown away with a "Damn you!" and pulled it back from Hell to threaten Matt.
Wait a minute...The torture chamber for damned souls...
"You can't have been damned!" Matt cried. "You didn't have a soul!"
The tree froze in place, its fiery eyes widening in astonishment.
Matt pressed his point. "Hell is only for the souls of the wicked! And no other person can send you to Hell—only yourself, by refusing God's help! Did you ever refuse God?"
"Nay..." the tree admitted.
"And you didn't have a soul to send to Hell in the first place! Material things don't go to Hell—not flesh, or stone, or wood! Only souls!"
"If that is true," the tree said, "I cannot have been damned." Its flames began to shrink.
"Right!" Matt cried. "And if you weren't damned, you can't be on fire!"
"Aye...that is true..." The flames guttered out.
"In fact," Matt shouted, "you can't even be alive! Some idiot sorcerer just made you think you were, so he could give you the tortures of the damned!"
That did it. The last spark of light died from the tree's eyes, and it began to tilt.
"Timber!" Matt shouted, and the smoldering trunk came crashing to the ground.
But it left a hole in the defenses, three broken stakes.
On the other hand, those stakes were burning, and the soldiers were staring at the flames in horror and fascination.
Matt saw his chance. "Quick! Flee! Hide yourselves in the hills and repent! Or you, too, will fall into everlasting hellfire!"
The soldiers howled in despair, turned, and fled. They left two men, clad in the padded jackets of gambesons, waving swords at them and shouting frantically, "Hold! Do not believe this madman! Come back! What is the fury of Hell in the next world, against the rage of King Gordogrosso in this?"
Apparently, the men were suddenly much more aware of the next world's perils, because they didn't come back.
The one unarmored knight turned to the other. "I, at least, fear Gordogrosso more than God! I would rather die in battle than face the king!" And he turned to advance with determination toward the burning stakes.
Reluctantly, the second knight started to advance.
"Stop and think!" Matt held up a hand. "If you die serving Gordogrosso, you'll go right to Hell!"
The second knight hesitated.
"Fool!" the first knight cried. "Will you lose all the manor and lands the king has given you? Not I!" And, with a bellow, he charged, leaping the burning stake and whipping his sword down in a huge cut as he landed.
Fadecourt leaped back from the sword, then leaped in again as soon as it had passed. Before the knight could recover, the cyclops stabbed with the pike. The knight tried to block with the shield that wasn't there, and the pike scored his arm, leaving a gash of blood as its point transfixed his throat. Fadecourt yanked the spear out in some agitation. " 'Tis too slow a death! I'll not leave thee to suffer, enemy or no!" And, as the knight's knees folded, the cyclops drew back the pike for the death-blow.
Yverne touched his arm. "His soul!"
Fadecourt froze. "Do you repent of all your sins?"
The knight managed a feeble nod.
"We can save him!" Matt cried. Then he saw how much blood had already pumped out onto the earth, and said, "No, we can't."
The pike flashed down through the heart and pinned the knight to the earth.
Fadecourt released the shaft and turned slowly to the other knight.
The knight stared at him, white showing all around his irises, gave a cry of despair, and lurched into a stumbling run.