"But you cannot be suggesting that Sir Mortimor has been less than honest in our bouts," said Brian, staring at Jim. "A knight would not—oh, I know there have been cases, hedge knights and pitiful fellows not fit for a gentleman's table. But for someone like Sir Mortimor who owns this castle and property here… He could not survive without the help of his neighbors; and he would not dare cheat his neighbors for fear that sooner or later it would be discovered; and then all would turn against him."
"You may be right, Brian," said Jim. "But I think you forget something."
"What is that?" Brian was very close to bristling.
"This is a part of the world where taking all you can get from anyone else is the normal way of life. In fact, you know as well as I do it's not the only part of the world where this can happen to a visitor. And I might point out that you're a visitor here, a stranger. That could make you fair game."
"He dare not!" said Brian.
"From what I've seen of him," Jim said, "Sir Mortimor is not slow when it comes to daring things."
Brian sat, slowly adjusting to the idea of Sir Mortimor as someone who would cheat a fellow knight. Gradually his face became more and more grim until the bones of it seemed to push against the skin.
"By God!" he said. "If he has—"
He broke off; and gradually the anger seemed to leak out of him, to be replaced by despair.
"However," he said at last with a sigh, "there is nothing to be done about it. It would be all the more impolite if I were to question his honesty without proof certain—now that I am a heavy loser to him. But game with him I must, if I am to have any hope of regaining my funds. In any case, there is no way to tell whether he plays honestly, or not."
"Maybe not for you," said Jim. He had his magic. But at the moment he could not think how he could use it to check on the honesty of Sir Mortimor's dice playing. There must, however, be a way. "But if he won't object to my sitting and watching while you play… if he doesn't suspect that I'm watching to see if I can tell that in some way or other he's less than honest…"
"He would not suspect the honor of a fellow knight—" Brian broke off. "By St. Giles, James, it just may be that if you are right, he would indeed be suspicious. How to avoid that, I know not."
But Jim's mind was working now.
"What about this, Brian?" he asked. "Would you say that Sir Mortimor was the sort of knight who could be counted on to take up a challenge?"
Brian stared at him.
"Of an absolute certainty!" said Brian. "Courage, he does not lack."
"Then maybe we could get him into a dice match, where his attention would be more on the match itself with you than on any reason I might have for watching. If you challenged him to it, for example, at a moment when things were at risk and two gentlemen would normally not sit down to wine and dice. You could do that?"
"I could, of course," said Brian. "But when? And James—I have only a few pieces of gold left. It may be that I would have to give the appearance of having more. It is a great deal to ask of you, but is it possible—"
"Certainly," Jim interrupted him. "I can give you enough extra money to make him interested. That's no problem."
For that matter, he thought, he could make any amount of money that might be needed, magically. Of course it would turn back into whatever he had made it out of, twenty-four hours later—and also to use such false money to cheat someone would be against the laws of Magickdom—as Carolinus would spell that word. But to use it to catch a cheat ought to be allowable.
"We'll wait until the attack against this castle heats up," he said.
Chapter Ten
Sir Mortimor turned out to be a true prophet, however incorrect might be his play with the dice.
Jim woke in the middle of the night under the impression that the castle was falling apart, and came fully awake only in time to hear the last tremendous thunder of something or other against the wall not six feet from his left ear. The fire had died down in the room's fireplace; there were only a few embers glowing with a dull redness that left everything else in complete darkness.
"It is the pirates, only, trying to drop stones on the castle from the cliff overhead," came Brian's voice out of that darkness, as soon as the thunder had ceased. "As Sir Mortimor said, James, the cliff overhangs enough so that they can do no real damage. You heard the rocks scarcely hitting the forward side of the castle, just grazing it, so that they will only leave scars, which you may see tomorrow by looking down from the battlements."
"Oh," said Jim. He went back to sleep.
The invaders evidently agreed with Brian, for after the first fall of stones, no more came to wake them; and the following day, Brian, pointing down from the battlements, directed Jim's gaze to the whitish scars on the rounded side of the tower where the falling rocks had scraped it. It was hard to believe in scars that slight, considering the thunder Jim had remembered hearing in the middle of the night.
The next attempt at the castle came several hours later, well past mid-morning, when an unknown number of the Moroccans crept up the steps, carrying a heavy wooden shield over their heads, so that they were able to advance to the very foot of the tower and move around it to a point where they apparently leaned it against the building as a permanent protection, and went to work beneath it.
"They will be attempting to dig down either under the wall, or far enough so that they can loosen and break out a part of the wall, so that the castle itself may sag, or that they can build an entrance through which they can fight their way in," said Sir Mortimor. "But they will be disappointed. This castle is bedded solidly on and in the living rock of the cliff itself, in a circular trench that was cut in that rock when the tower was commenced."
"Still…" said Brian. They were all three, Sir Mortimor, Brian and Jim, looking down over the battlements and listening to the scrape of tools against the building and the other noises of work beneath the shield. None of the castle's fighting men had been ordered to take any action against the diggers. "If they stay with it," Brian went on, "sooner or later they should be able to gnaw through whatever is there to the interior of the castle."
He looked at the tall knight.
"Though I would venture," he added, "to guess it would take more than a few days."
"They will not," said Sir Mortimor. "Such patience you speak of is not theirs. A quick battle, a quick victory is more their way. Now, if this castle were somewhere north of the Mediterranean, far inland, you might have cause to expect such a thing. But not here."
"You have been in the wars on the continent, sir?" asked Brian.
"Some," said Sir Mortimor, briefly; and, turning, he left them to go downstairs into the castle.
But again, it fell out as he had said. As the shadows of the day lengthened, the sounds of labor under the shield became less and less and finally ceased. Finally the shield crept back down the stairs, with stones from the tower-top slingers seeking to find the space between it and the ground; and at least hit the legs of those who carried it. But it made its way back down the stairs and out of range without leaving any wounded or dead behind.
The next night was ominously quiet, except for some singing and noise of voices down in the abandoned village at the foot of the castle.
"I expected them to burn those buildings right away," said Jim, half to himself and half to Brian, looking down at night. The only lights visible around the village were some torches being carried by individuals going from one part of the village to another and a torch or so down by the two ships.
"I believe they have waited because the buildings give them a place of shelter to sleep and eat in," said Brian, beside him, "from what little I understand of such things. How I envy Sir Mortimor with his experience in wars on the continent. I wonder if he was in the low countries, or in France—or maybe he was farther east, possibly fighting against the heathens in the Far East."
Jim turned to look at his friend's face in the meager light of the stars and a half-full m
oon.
"You sound almost as if you admire him, Brian," he said.
"He is a warrior," said Brian. "More so than I, who have never seen—well, have never really taken part in, outside of some small actions in France—pitched battles, sieges, or the real meat of warfare. I may be clever with the lance and possibly with other weapons as well; but I cannot say I have really fought in any true sense of the word."
Since Brian's life had consisted of almost continual fighting, according to Jim's ordinary meaning of the word, from the time of Brian's father's death when he had taken over Castle Smythe at the age of fifteen, Jim found this exaggerated respect for someone who had been in recognized war a little surprising. But he did not think his friend would appreciate his mentioning that fact; so he said nothing aloud.
That night, however, there was an alarm of a different nature. Jim woke to the sound of voices and rushing feet in the castle. The fire in their fireplace blazed up suddenly; and Jim saw Brian turning away from it after throwing extra fuel onto the still-burning embers. His friend was pulling on his hose and shoes and buckling his belt and sword around his waist. In the light from the newly leaping flames in the fireplace, the scars on his naked upper body looked black, as if they had been painted there.
"They are trying to force the door under cover of darkness," Brian said to him briefly. "Best we were up and armed, James. It is past compline."
After midnight—Jim scrambled to his feet and began to dress, with that sinking feeling he always had when his being in actual combat was in prospect. If anything, he was at his best in a melee, where his greater than average weight and size could give him a sheer muscle advantage. But it was in moments like this he was very much aware of how inexpert he was with the sword he was now buckling about his waist.
He and Brian, finally dressed and as fully armed as they could be, left their room and went down toward the source of the most noise, which was on the ground floor.
Sir Mortimor's voice could be heard riding over the tumult by the time they reached the floor just above ground level. It came echoing up the stairwell with force and command.
"No more than thirty men here!" the knight was ordering, one floor down. "Do nothing unless they actually break through the front door. Then, if they do, open this door only long enough for the slingers and bowmen to have at them for a moment, then lock and bar here again. They should not gain through this time. So. Be orderly, be on watch, be ready. The rest of you, beyond the thirty who will stay, fill your arms with straw and up the stairs with you and pile it by battlements above those attacking. The oil in the kettle should already be heating. As soon as I come, we will throw down the straw from the tower-top on those trying to get in, pour oil on top, and throw down lighted torches. Beaupré!"
"Yes, Sir Mortimor." The pockmarked face of Sir Mortimor's second in command came toward the knight from among others in the crowd before the knight.
"Leave just enough slingers here to be effective in the passage when the door is opened for a moment. All other slingers up to the roof with us. Extra bowmen also. Make sure the torches are ready!"
"The torches are already there and lit, Sir Mortimor," said Beaupré, "and most of the other slingers and bowmen also. There are enough here to take care of any attack through the passage. I will take care of all."
Sir Mortimor turned toward the stairs, saw Brian and Jim starting down them and shook his head.
"If you please, messires," he said, "come with me to the roof."
He was up the stairs and past them, crowding them against the stone wall to his left on the stairway, within seconds of having finished speaking. He vanished upward, taking the stairs two steps at a time and leaving them far behind as they turned to follow.
Jim, his legs still stiff from the previous day's stair-climbing in the castle, gazed thoughtfully at the empty steps before him. It did not seem possible that any human being could run up the five stories worth of levels inside the castle, taking two of the eight-to-ten-inch steps of the staircase at each stride; but having seen Sir Mortimor in action, he was now ready to believe that the knight would continue his pace all the way to the roof. Possibly, even now as Jim and Brian were climbing after him, Sir Mortimor was emerging into the open night at the tower's top.
They joined him eventually; and Jim saw, by the light of torches held by men standing well back from the forward facing battlements, where the lights they held could not make them marks for archers from below, a respectable stack of straw already built, ready to be thrown down.
Sir Mortimor stood, legs spread a little bit apart, watching other men bring still more armfuls up and add to the stack. The fire was alight, in fact blazing brightly, underneath the kettle of oil, which had now been rolled on the metal wheels attached to its firebox to the aperture over the passageway ceiling. The kettle itself was held pivoted on a couple of extended metal arms, so that merely by tilting it forward on those pivots it would pour its contents out of a lip in its rim, to fall through the holes overhead in the passageway far below. The heat from the firebox could be felt a dozen feet from it. Jim was astonished to see Sir Mortimor suddenly walk toward the kettle and casually stick his forefinger deep into the liquid it held.
"Warm enough," he said, stepping back. Jim stared at the finger, but there was no sign that it had been in any way cooked, or otherwise marked by heat. A little late, he realized that such a fire would have to burn for some time to get the oil, itself, to an actual boiling point. There was a lot of liquid there to be heated up.
"Fill buckets," said Sir Mortimor. "Line them up close above the entrance and five men stand ready to pour."
A long iron rod was produced, and two men used it to push the top of the kettle forward so that it swung on its gimbals, tilting enough so that the first man to hold a bucket under its lip was able to fill it without a problem. He carried it to the front battlements.
He was succeeded immediately by another man with an empty bucket, and the process continued until at least a dozen buckets were lined up just below the crenellations of the battlements.
Another man ran up from below.
"Sir Mortimor," he panted, "Beaupré sends to say that he does not think they will get through the outer door in any time soon. Their battering ram strikes all over the surface of the door rather than repeatedly at one place on it. He ventures to guess, with your permission, Sir Mortimor, that they are finding their footing uncertain on the steps in the darkness."
"Good," grunted Sir Mortimor. He waved the man away. "We will furnish them light to work by. Tell Beaupré that."
He looked back at the activity on the roof.
"That's enough straw!" he said. "Be ready to throw it over. Get it as close as possible before the door, itself. It will spread and scatter enough falling down. Bucket-men, and all. Throw the straw!"
He took two enormous strides forward himself, scooped up a huge armful of it in his long arms and tossed it over. All around him everyone was doing the same, including the men who had been standing sentinel by the battlements around the back part of the castle. Within less than two minutes, all the straw was over.
"Oil!" snapped Sir Mortimor.
The men who had been appointed to handle the buckets seized them and began dumping their contents over the side, crowding each other as they did so to get as directly above the doorway as possible.
"Now," said Sir Mortimor, when the last bucket had been poured. "Torches!"
The torches around the roof were seized and carried to the same point from which everything else had been thrown and dropped. Jim and Brian crowded close to the battlements a little off to one side and saw light suddenly blossom in front of the castle doorway—not at the door itself, but at least one or two steps down. The straw had taken fire immediately and the oil was feeding its flames.
"Slingers!" Those on the roof who were slingers had already dropped their straw and filled their slings with missiles. They were whirling their slings ready to throw. Now they stepped f
orward to the battlements, and as yells and screams came up from below they launched the missiles downward.
An almost equal roar of excitement rose among those at the top of the tower, with a single voice shouting out above the rest.
"They run!" cried a voice.
"Let none escape!" trumpeted Sir Mortimor. "Slingers, see to it!"
Watching, Jim saw the last two flaming figures scrambling down the steps to fall and lie still. In front of the door, but not too close to it, the straw still burned brightly, with dark areas here and there among it where a body had fallen on the flames. The dropped battering ram they had been using—a squared-off piece of timber, with the bottom edge of its striking face slanted back from top to bottom to compensate for the fact that they were ramming it upward because of the slope of the steps—was outlined by fire.
"More oil on that stick of theirs," said Sir Brian. "More straw too, if necessary. It must burn."
He looked around for the man who had brought him the message from below earlier, and found him now, hovering almost at his elbow. "Tell Beaupré to send any extra slingers and archers he has up here. Tell him he may keep half a dozen of them only."
"Yes, m'lord."
The man went downstairs at a run.
A swelling hubbub could be heard from the buildings of the village where the rest of the attackers were; but none of them stepped outside the structures to where they might be in view of slingers from the tower.
"Well, gentlemen," said Sir Mortimor, looking over to Brian and Jim. "Shall we indulge ourselves with a drop of wine?"
Brian and Jim both murmured polite formulas of acceptance and followed him down the stairs to the floor below—Jim still a little dazed, in spite of his several years now of medieval experience, by the ruthless killing of the battering ram's handlers. He pushed it from his mind as Brian and he arrived at the floor below. It was probably that extremely carrying voice of Sir Mortimor's, he decided, that caused things to start being prepared as if by magic; but servants were already putting out three mazers filled with wine on the table by the time they reached their floor level behind Sir Mortimor. And just then another servant came with cheese, bread and cold meat from the kitchen level farther down. Enclosed here, it seemed to Jim strangely stuffy after being on top of the tower. It had been a cool night, up out in the open, but not unpleasantly so. It was probably the tension and the sudden change to indoors, to say nothing of the clothing and armor he had put on, that gave him the feeling.