Geoffrey glowered back up at her, then said reluctantly, “Nay. Thou hast the right of it, Mama.”

“Doesn’t she always,” Rod muttered; but nobody seemed to hear him.

She turned to him. “We shall go, husband—even as thou dost wish.”

“But Papa won’t be safe!” Cordelia whirled to throw her arms around his midriff.

Rod hugged her to him, but shook his head. “I’ve faced danger without you before, children. There was even a time when I didn’t have your mother along to protect me.”

Magnus shook his head, eyes wide with alarm. “Never such danger as this, Papa. A vile, evil sorcerer, with a whole army of witches behind him!”

“I’ve gone into the middle of an army before—and I only had a dagger against all their swords, and worse. Much worse.”

“Yet these are witches!”

“Yes—and I’ve got more than a mental dagger, to use against them.” Rod held his son’s eyes with a grave stare. “I think I can match their sorcerer, spell for spell and power for power—and pull a few tricks he hasn’t even dreamed of, since he was a child.” He hauled Magnus in against him, too. “No, don’t worry about me this time. Some day, I’ll probably meet that enemy who’s just a little too much stronger than I am—but Alfar isn’t it. For all his powers and all his nastiness, he doesn’t really worry me that much.”

“Nor should he.”

Rod looked up to see his youngest son sitting cross-legged, apart from the huddle. “I think thou hast the right of it, Papa. I think this sorcerer’s arm is thickened more with fear, than with strength.”

“An that is so,” said Geoffrey, “thou must needs match him and, aye, e’en o’ermatch him, Papa.”

“Well.” Rod inclined his head gravely. “Thank you, my sons. Hearing you say it, makes me feel a lot better.” And, illogically, it did—and not just because his children had, when last came to last, become his cheering section. He had a strange respect for his two younger sons. He wondered if that was a good thing.

Apparently, Cordelia and Magnus felt the same way. They pried themselves away from Rod, and the eldest nodded. “If Gregory doth not foresee thy doom, Papa, it hath yet to run.”

“Yes.” Rod nodded. “Alfar’s not my Nemesis.” He turned back to Gregory. “What is?”

The child gazed off into space for a minute, his eyes losing focus. Then he looked at his father again, and answered, with total certainty, “Dreams.”

 

8

The Duchess slapped the horses with the reins, and the coach creaked into motion as they plodded forward. They quickened to a trot, and the coach rolled away. Gwen turned back from her seat beside the Duchess, and waved. Four smaller hands sprouted up from the coach roof, and waved frantically too.

Rod returned the wave until they were out of sight, feeling the hollowness grow within him. Slowly, he turned back toward the North, and watched the soldiers moving away, bearing their wounded knight on a horse-litter. They had decided to go back into the sorcerer’s army, disguised as loyal automatons. Gwen had told them how to hide their true thoughts with a surface of simulated hypnosis—thinking the standardized thoughts that all Alfar’s army shared. She had also made clear their danger; Alfar would not look kindly on traitors. They understood her fully, every single man jack of them; but their guilt feelings ruled them, and they welcomed the danger as expiation. Rod watched them go, hoping he wouldn’t meet any of them again until the whole rebellion had been squelched.

Somehow, he was certain that it would be. It was asinine to place faith in the pronouncements of a three-year-old—but his little Gregory was uncanny, and very perceptive.

Acting on the basis of his predictions would be idiocy—but he could let himself feel heartened by them. After all, Gregory wasn’t your average preschooler.

On the other hand, just because he had a ten-year-old’s vocabulary, didn’t mean he had a general’s grasp of the situation. Rod took his opinions the way he took a palm reading—emotionally satisfying, but not much use for helping decide what to do next. He turned to Fess, stuck a foot in the stirrup, and mounted. “Come on, Alloy Animal! Northward ho!”

Fess moved away after the departing squadron. “Where are we bound, Rod?”

“To Alfar, of course. But for the immediate future, find a large farmstead, would you?”

“A farmstead? What do you seek there, Rod?”

“The final touch in our disguise.” But Rod wasn’t really paying attention. His whole being was focused on the devastating, terrifying sensation of being alone, for the first time in twelve years. Oh, he’d been on his own before during that time—but never for very long, only a day or two, and he’d been too busy to think about it. But he had the time now—and he was appalled to realize how much he’d come to depend on his family’s presence. He felt shorn; he felt as though he’d been cut off from his trunk and roots, like a lopped branch. There seemed to be a knot in his chest, and a numbing fear of the world about him. For the first time in twelve years, he faced that world alone, without Gwen’s massive support, or the gaiety of his children—not to mention the very considerable aid of their powers.

The prospect was thoroughly daunting.

He tried to shake off the mood, throwing his shoulders back and lifting his chin. “This is ridiculous, Fess. I’m the lone wolf; I’m the man who penetrated the Prudential Network and overthrew its Foreman! I’m the knife in the dark, the vicious secret agent who brings down empires!”

“If you say so, Rod.”

“I do say so, damn it! I’m me, Rod Gallowglass—not just a father and a husband!… No, damn it, I’m Rodney d’Armand! That ‘Gallowglass’ is just an alias I took when I came here, to help me look like a native! And Rodney d’Armand managed without Gwen and the kids for twenty-nine years!”

“True,” Fess agreed. “Of course, you lived in your father’s house for nineteen of them.”

“All right, so I was only on my own for ten years! But that’s almost as long as I’ve been married, isn’t it?”

“Of course.”

“Yes.” Rod frowned. “On the other hand, it’s only as long—isn’t it?”

“That, too, is true.”

“Yeah.” Rod scowled. “Habit-forming little creatures, aren’t they?”

“There, perhaps, you have touched the nub of it,” the robot agreed. “Most people live their lives by habit patterns, Rod.”

“Yeah—but they’re just habits.” Rod squared his shoulders again. “And you can always change your habits.”

“Do you truly want to, Rod?”

“So when I get home, I’ll change them back! But for the time being, I can’t have them with me—so I’d better get used to it again. I can manage without them—and I will.”

“Of course you will, Rod.”

Rod caught the undertone in Fess’s voice and glared at the back of his metal skull. “What’s the ‘but’ I hear in there, Fess?”

“Merely that you will not be happy about it…”

 

“Rod, no! This is intolerable!”

“Oh, shut up and reverse your gears.”

The robot heaved a martyred blast of white noise and stepped back a pace or two. Rod lifted the shafts of the cart and buckled them into the harness he’d strapped onto Fess in place of a saddle.

“This is a severe debasement of a thoroughbred, Rod.”

“Oh, come off it!” Rod climbed up to the single-board seat and picked up the reins. “You used to pilot a spaceship, Fess. That’s the same basic concept as pulling a cart.”

“No—it is analogous to driving a cart. And your statement is otherwise as accurate as claiming that a diamond embodies the same concept as a piece of cut plastic.”

“Hairsplitting,” Rod said airily, and slapped Fess’s back with the reins.

The robot plodded forward, sighing, “My factory did not manufacture me to be a cart horse.”