Rod’s stomach sank as he realized she was right. Not that it would hurt Fess, of course—he remembered that antigravity plate in the robot’s belly. But it wouldn’t keep the peasants out, either.
“What is this ‘Fess’ thou dost speak of?” Agatha demanded.
“My, uh, horse,” Rod explained. “Not exactly… a horse. I mean, he looks like a horse, and he sounds like a horse, but…”
“If it doth appear to be an horse, and doth sound like to an horse, then it must needs be an horse,” Agatha said with asperity, “and I would not have it die. Bring it hither, within the cave. If it doth not impede them, they will not slay it.”
Loose rock clattered, and hooves echoed on stone as Fess walked into the cave. Behind Rod’s ear his voice murmured, “Simple discretion, Rod.”
“He’s got very good hearing,” Rod explained.
“And doth understand readily too, I wot,” Agatha said, giving Fess a jaundiced glance. Then her eye glittered and she looked up, fairly beaming. “Well-a-day! We are quite cozy, are we not? And wilt thou, then, accompany me to my grave?”
Gwen froze. Then her shoulders straightened, and her chin lifted. “If we must, we will.” She turned to Rod. “Shall we not, husband?”
Rod stared at her for a second. Even in the crisis, he couldn’t help noticing that he had been demoted from “my lord” to “husband.” Then his mouth twisted. “Not if I can help it.” He stepped over to the black horse and fumbled in a saddlebag. “Fess and I have a few gimmicks here…” He pulled out a small compact cylinder. “We’ll just put up a curtain of fire halfway back in the cave, between us and them. Oughta scare ‘em outa their buskins…”
“It will not hold them long!” Agatha began to tremble. “Yet, I see thou dost mean it. Fool! Idiot! Thou wilt but madden them further! They will break through thy flames; they will tear thee, they will rend thee!”
“I think not.” Gwen turned to face the cave-mouth. “I will respect thy wishes and not hurl them from the ledge; yet, I can fill the air with a rain of small stones. I doubt me not an that will afright them.”
“An thou dost afright them, they will flee! And in their flight, they will knock one another from the ledge, a thousand feet and more down to their deaths!” Agatha cried, agonized. “Nay, lass! Do not seek to guard me! Fly! Thou’rt young, and a-love! Thou hast a bairn and a husband! Thou hast many years left to thee, and they will be sweet, though many bands like to this come against thee!”
Gwen glanced longingly at her broomstick, then looked up at Rod. He met her gaze with a somber face.
“Fly, fly!” Agatha’s face twisted with contempt. “Thou canst not aid a sour old woman in the midst of her death throes, lass! Thy death here with me would serve me not at all! Indeed, it would deepen the guilt that my soul is steeped in!”
Rod dropped to one knee behind a large boulder and leveled his laser at the cave-mouth. Gwen nodded and stepped behind a rocky pillar. Pebbles began to stir on the floor of the cave.
“Nay!” Agatha screeched. “Thou must needs be away from this place, and right quickly!” Turning, she seized a broomstick and slammed it into Gwen’s hands; her feet lifted off the floor. Rod felt something pick him up and throw him toward Gwen. He shouted in anger and tried to swerve aside, but he landed on the broomstick anyway. It pushed up underneath him, then hurtled the two of them toward the cave-mouth—and slammed into an invisible wall that gave under them, slowed them, stopped them, then tossed them back toward old Agatha. They jarred into each other and tumbled to the floor.
“Will you make up your mind!” Rod clambered to his feet, rubbing his bruises. “Do you want us out, or don’t…” His voice trailed off as he saw the look on the old witch’s face. She stared past his shoulder toward the cave-mouth. Frowning, he turned to follow her gaze.
The air at the cave-mouth shimmered.
The old witch’s face darkened with anger. “Harold! Begone! Withdraw from the cave-mouth, and quickly; this lass must be away!”
The shimmering intensified like a heat haze.
A huge boulder just outside the cave-mouth stirred.
“Nay, Harold!” Agatha screeched. “Thou shalt not! There ha’ been too much bloodshed already!”
The boulder lifted slowly, clear of the ledge.
“Harold!” Agatha screamed, and fell silent.
For, instead of dropping down onto the toiling peasants below, the boulder lifted out and away, rising swiftly into the sky.
It was twenty feet away from the cave when a swarm of arrows spat out from the cliff above, struck the boulder, and rebounded, falling away into the valley below.
The old witch stood frozen a long moment, staring at the heat haze and the boulder arcing away into the forest.
“Harold,” she whispered, “arrows…”
She shook her head, coming back to herself. “Thou must not leave now.”
“He ha’ saved our lives.” said Gwen, round-eyed.
“Aye, that he hath; there be archers above us, awaiting the flight of a witch. Mayhap they thought I would fly; but I never have, I ha’ always stayed here and fought them. It would seem they know thou’rt with me. A yard from that ledge now, and thou wouldst most truly resemble two hedgehogs.”
Agatha turned away, dragging Gwen with her toward the back of the cave. “Thou, at least, must not die here! We shall brew witchcraft, thou and I, for a storm of magic such as hath never been witnessed in this land! Harold!” she called over her shoulder to the heat haze. “Guard the door!”
Rod started to follow, then clenched his fists, feeling useless.
Agatha hauled a small iron pot from the shelf and gasped as its weight plunged against her hands. She heaved, thrusting with her whole body to throw it up onto a small tripod that stood on the rough table. “I grow old,” she growled as she hooked the pot onto the tripod, “old and weak. Long years it ha’ been since I last stewed men’s fates in this.”
“Men’s fates…?” Gwen was at her elbow. “What dost thou, Agatha?”
“Why, a small cooking, child.” The old witch grinned. “Did I not say we would brew great magic here?”
She turned away and began pulling stone jars from the shelf. “Kindle me a fire, child. We shall live, lass, for we must; this land hath not yet given us dismissal.”
A spark fell from Gwen’s flint and steel into the tinder. Gwen breathed on the resulting coal till small flames danced in the kindling. As she fed it larger and larger wood scraps, she ventured, “Thou art strangely joyous for a witch who ha’ been deprived of that which she wanted, old Agatha.”
The old witch cackled and rubbed her thin, bony hands. “It is the joy of a craftsman, child, that doth his work well, and sees a great task before him, a greater task than ever his trade yet ha’ brought him. I shall live, and more joyous and hearty than ever before; for there is great need of old Agatha, and great deeds a-doing. The undoing of this war thou hast told me of will be old Agatha’s greatest work.”
She took a measure from the shelf and began ladling powders from the various jars into the pot, then took a small paddle and began stirring the brew.
Gwen flinched at the stench that arose from the heating-pot. “What is this hideous porridge, Agatha? I have never known a witch to use such a manner of bringing magic, save in child’s tales.”
Agatha paused in her stirring to fasten a pensive eye on Gwen. “Thou art yet young, child, and know only half-truths of witchery.”
She turned back to stirring the pot. “It is true that our powers be of the mind, and only of the mind. Yet true it also is that thou hast never used but a small part of thy power, child. Thou knowest not the breadth and the width of it, the color and the warp and the woof of it. There be deep, unseen parts of thy soul thou hast never uncovered; and this deep power thou canst not call up at will. It lies too far buried, beyond thy call. Thou must needs trick it into coming out, direct it by ruse and gin, not by will.” She peered into the smoking, bubbling pot. “And this thou must do with a bubbling brew compounded of things which stand for the powers thou doth wish to evoke from thy heart of hearts and the breadth of thy brain. Hummingbird’s feathers, for strength, speed, and flight; bees, for their stings; poppyseed, for the dulling of wits; lampblack, for the stealth and silence of night; woodbine, to bind it to the stone of the cliffs; hearth-ash, for the wish to return to the home.”