Matt's blood turned cold, but he nodded, tried to grin, and followed Sir Guy toward the battlements. Marian accompanied them—and, after five paces, Matt realized Robin Hood had joined her.
Now that the fuss of arrival was over, he had time to take a longer and more thorough look about him.
The place was a mess. The reek that had been nudging at his consciousness all along finally sank in—maybe it was the relatively clean air at the top of the stairs that made him realize how badly the courtyard stank. Over against the juncture of curtain wall and keep, he saw a maze of crosses, cobbled out of scraps of lumber and not even painted. Bodies lay wrapped in shrouds, piled up along the edges of the little cemetery—they had run out of burial room.
Looking at the faces of the sentries around him, Matt realized that what he had mistaken for grim purpose was at least partly malnutrition. They weren't starving, but they were very lean—like Sir Guy himself, Matt now realized; he hadn't just hardened from campaigning. There wasn't an ounce of fat on his bones. His cheeks were hollow with hunger as much as stress, and the circles under his eyes came from vitamin deficiency, not lack of steep. Though there might have been something of that, too—and, as Matt watched him, he thought the Black Knight's gaiety was a bit forced. Now and then, for just a moment, a grim desperation showed through.
Matt shuddered at the implications. What manner of deviltry was he going to see tonight?
Looking down at the courtyard below, he realized that the masses against the walls were trash dumps. The peasants who moved so silently below were thin as whipcord under their smocks—and filthy. Not that body odor was terribly unusual in medieval society, but they had taken it to new heights here.
Of course. Water from the river or no, they were rationing. Everyone had enough to drink, but they portioned out the baths.
Matt resolved to speak to Sir Guy about it. Lack of sanitation could kill them just as quickly as poor nutrition.
But there wasn't a murmur of protest or of discontent. Matt looked at people stretched almost to the breaking point, and marveled at the grim purpose that kept them moving. He wondered at the events that had brought them here, and if there were a soul in the castle who didn't have a harrowing tale to tell of cruelty and viciousness. Lean as it was, beleaguered as it was, this castle must have seemed a sanctuary to those who had suffered from Gordogrosso—and his imitators.
"This is a dirty war," he muttered.
"Aye." Robin nodded beside him, hard-faced—and Matt was startled; he hadn't realized he had spoken aloud.
"It is indeed," Sir Guy agreed, "and no quarter is given, or asked for."
Matt shrugged. "That was always the way of it, with the army of a sorcerer."
Sir Guy shook his head. "These lice of Ibile are far worse than those forced soldiers we fought in Merovence, Sir Matthew. There, the greater number of the soldiers were impressed into service and would take any chance to escape their own ranks. Here, though, even the lowliest soldier is thoroughly and completely dedicated to evil, in the anticipation of the power and preferment his lord may grant him. There's not a one of our besiegers but wishes to be here, not a one that would not delight to see us expire in torment."
Matt turned to look out at the enemy, surrounding them for as far to each side as he could see, and half a mile deep. The sun had set, and the dusk was hurrying on toward night. A strange, growling sound, half mutter and half chant, was rising from the churning mass before him.
Suddenly, a crimson ball shot up from the circling army, arcing toward the castle. A half-dozen others followed it, all along the walls.
"It begins," Sir Guy said grimly.
Surprisingly, Alisande did sleep, though her slumber was interrupted. First had come the attack of the fire snakes, but they were gone by the time she came out of her tent; Sauvignon, prompted by the apprentice wizard they had brought along, had simply told the men to throw snowballs. There followed the plague of rats, to be scared off by the young wizard's quick summoning of a hundred terriers. Finally, near dawn, Alisande was up, feeling moderately rested, and she sent Sauvignon back to bed just before she had to greet the flaming skeletons that came stalking up over the lip of the plateau. The snowballs worked again, of course, and the bones stayed scattered, but it did take her a little while to overcome her footmen's terror enough to get them all to pitch in.
And their yelling woke the sleepers again. That was the bad part.
So, all in all, it was a rather creaky army that finally greeted the sun that morning. Alisande paced through the camp, eyeing her soldiers like a worried mother, and murmured to Sauvignon, "Perhaps we should bid them sleep this day, then watch through the night."
"They would then be weary in the morning," the young nobleman pointed out, and a grizzled veteran looked up to agree. " 'Tis true, Majesty. Lead us out against them, that we may send them packing. 'Tis the only road to a sound night's sleep for us, now."
"You have the right of it, Sergeant." Alisande sighed and turned to give the orders to pack up.
CHAPTER 19
The Siege Perilous
Matt nodded. "Your wizards are ready to quench those fireballs, aren't they?
"Our wizards all are dead," Sir Guy said, his voice flat. "The last of them, a monk, died yestereen when an evil spell overcame his ward, in a moment of distraction. 'Twas a foul thing, a liquid that burned—as are these, I doubt not. There was little enough left of him to stack up with the dead. Now we are left without benefit of clergy—for he was also our last priest, and though there are two nuns left us, they cannot consecrate the Host, nor say Mass."
"Best argument I ever heard for female ordination." Matt stared at the crimson globes, watching them arc closer, then realized he was hearing a voice chanting a low, sonorous Latin to his left. He looked up, startled—and saw Tuck, his hands folded in prayer, his eyes on the crimson globes.
"Praise Heaven!" Sir Guy cried. "You have brought a friar! But ward him, wizard—it was such a globe as one of these that burned our monk to death!"
Matt jolted out of his trance, his mind kicking into overdrive. A liquid that burned? An acid, or a base—or some magical thing that was neither! He readied an all-purpose spell against fire.
Tuck shouted the last phrase aloud, hands snapping out, spread wide—and Matt realized he'd been reciting the Dies Irae. What good could that do?
One of the globes veered toward them, then suddenly puckered and gushed, like a bubble of water pricked, the surface tension that was holding it suddenly gone. Liquid fire ran from it, cascading down over the battlements.
Naphtha! Matt thought. It had to be a petroleum derivative—one of the sorcerers had gotten hold of the formula for Greek fire. But even as he was starting to chant the counterspell, he saw the fire arc away, running over an invisible curve to course down the outer battlements. For a moment, it masked their sight; then it was gone. Matt glanced quickly along the battlements and saw that the other streams of fire had similarly been shed without hurting anyone. He whirled to Tuck incredulous.
"I asked Him to shield us," Tuck explained, "and He did."
"You're a wizard!" Matt pointed the accusing finger.
Tuck shrank in on himself, shaking his head. "Only a friar, Lord Matthew—only a poor, humble sinner of a friar. Nay, I can pray, but not conjure."
There was no time to debate the topic, for roaring filled the night. Whirling, Matt sprang to the crenels and saw a semicircle of lions advancing on the castle. But what lions! Their manes were fire, and their teeth glinted like daggers. Their tails were tipped with stings, and their coats glowed with an unwholesome radioactive sheen.