“All thanks, my liege!” Rod called back. He ducked down, lying flat on Fess’s back. “Now, Steel Steed! Head for the low scrub!”

The robot-horse leaped into a gallop, heading for the brush and low trees at the edge of the beach. “Rod, this subterfuge is scarcely needed! My thoughts were not even growing fuzzy yet!”

“For once, I’m not worried about you having a seizure in the middle of a battle.”

“Then, why this retreat?” Fess slowed and halted behind a screen of brush.

“Just wait. Trust me.” Rod parted the bushes and peeked out toward the beach. The battle was raging nicely, he noticed. But that wasn’t his prime concern. He scanned the beach—more especially, the brush. It was very dark, so of course he couldn’t be sure. The Gramarye soldiers had lighted torches to see their enemy by, and the light spilled over, dimly illuminating the edges of the beach; he thought he could just barely make out some dim, amorphous mass, bulging very slowly, and growing larger—but he couldn’t be sure.

The second wave of soldiers had carried the charge almost into the Neanderthal camp before sheer reflex had made individual beastmen begin seeking out the eyes of single opponents. Power flowed into the beastmen; their eyes burned more brightly. The Gramarye line slowed to a grinding halt.

In the flagship’s cabin, Agatha and Gwen squeezed the hands of the witches to each side of them and shut their eyes, bowing their heads.

Pikes, spears, and swords began to move again, slowly, gathering force to block the beastmen’s swings.

The beastmen chopped hysterically in the desperation born of superstitious fear—but wildly, too, dropping their guards. The pikes drove in, and blood flowed out.

Coming down the gangplank, Brother Chillde tripped, stumbled, and fell, sprawling on the sand with a howl of dismay.

Puck chuckled, tossed aside the stick he’d jabbed between the monk’s feet, and scurried to his side, moving his hands in arcane, symbolic gestures, and chanting under his breath,

“Chronicler, whose zeal doth blind thee To the truth’t‘which sight should bind thee, Be thou bound in falsehood’s prison! For an hour, lose thy vision!”

“What… what doth hap?” Brother Chillde cried, pushing himself up out of the sand. He glanced about him, then squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head, and opened them again. “What! Is the night become so dark? Is there no light at all?” Then his face twisted into a mask of terror as the truth hit him. “I am blinded! Heaven forgive me—my sight is lost!”

“Here, now, fellow,” Puck growled in a deep and throaty voice as he strode up to Brother Chillde, “what ails thee? Eh, thou’rt o’ the cloth!”

“Oh, kind sir!” Brother Chillde flailed about him, caught Puck’s shoulder, and grasped it. “Have pity on me, for I’m struck blind!”

“What sins are these,” Puck rumbled, “that must needs meet such desperate punishment?”

“I cannot say.” Brother Chillde bowed his head. “Pride, mayhap—that I should dare to scribble down all that did hap within this war…” His head snapped up, sightless eyes staring. “The battle! Oh, stranger, take pity! I have labored all these months to record in writing each separate event of this war! I cannot miss the knowledge of the final battle! Pray, have mercy! Stay, and speak what thou dost see! Tell me the course of the day!”

“I should be gone,” Puck growled, “to aid in tending other wounded.”

“Hast thou hurt, then?” Brother Chillde was suddenly all solicitousness, groping about him. “Nay, let me find it! I shall bandage…”

“Spare thy trouble,” Puck said quickly, “for the flow already hath been stanched. Yet I’ll own I have no occupation now…”

“Then, stay,” Brother Chillde implored, “and speak to me of all that thou mayst see.”

“Well, I will, then,” Puck sighed. “Attend thou, then, and hear, for thus it doth occur.”

“May Heaven bless thee!” Brother Chillde cried.

Puck took a deep breath, recalling the main thrust of Rod’s prompting. “The beastmen and our brave soldiers are drawn up in lines that do oppose. They grapple, they struggle; battle axes flail; pikes hover and descend. The clank of arms doth fill the air, and soldiers’ groans and horses’ neighs—eh, but that thou canst hear of thine own.”

“Aye, but now I ken the meaning of the sounds!” Brother Chillde clutched Puck’s shoulder again. “But the High Warlock! What of the High Warlock?”

“Why, there he rides,” Puck cried, pointing at empty air. “He doth rise up on’s huge black horse, a figure strong and manly, with a face that doth shine like unto the sun!” He grinned, delighted with his own cleverness. “Nay, his arms are corded cables, his shoulders a bulwark! He fairly gleams within the starlight, and his piercing eye doth daunt all who do behold him! Now rides he against the center of the line; now doth it bend and break! Now do his soldiers rush to widen the breach that he hath made!”

In the scrub brush, Rod eyed the heaving lump of jelly apprehensively. He’d watched smaller lumps of fungus ooze over to merge with it; the whole mass had grown amazingly. Now it was bulging very strangely, stretching upward, higher and higher, coalescing into a giant double lump. It thrust out a pseudopod that began to take on the shape of a horsehead, and the top narrowed from front to back and broadened from side to side. A piece split off on each side to assume the shapes of arms; a lump on top modeled itself into a head.

“I can scarcely believe it,” Rod hissed.

“Nor I.” Fess’s voice wavered. “I know of the fungus locally termed witch moss, and its link to projective telepaths—but I never suspected anything on this scale.”

Neither had Rod—for he was staring at himself. Himself the way he’d always wanted to be, too—seven feet tall, powerful as Hercules, handsome as Apollo! It was his face; but with all the crags and roughness gone, it was a face that could have dazzled a thousand Helens.

“Terre et ciel!” the figure roared, hauling out a sword the size of a small girder, and charged off into the battle on a ten-foot war-horse.

“Brother Chillde,” Rod sighed, “is one hell of a projective!”

“He is indeed,” Fess agreed. “Do you truly believe he does not know it?”

“Thoroughly.” Rod nodded. “Can you really see the Abbot letting him out into the world if he knew what Brother Chillde was?” He turned Fess’s head away. “Enough of the sideshow. He’ll keep the beastmen busy—and anybody who’s looking for me will see me.”

“Such as Yorick?” Fess murmured.

“Or the Eagle. Or our own soldiers, come to that—‘my’ presence there will sure lend them courage—especially when I look like that!” He sort of hoped Gwen didn’t get a close look at his doppelganger; she might never be satisfied with reality again. “Now we can get on with the real work of the night—and be completely unsuspected, too. To the cliff-face, Fess—let’s go.”

The robot-horse trotted through the starlight, probing the brush with infrared to see the path. “Is this truly necessary, Rod? Surely Yorick has an adequate force.”

“Maybe,” Rod said with a harsh smile, “but I’d like to give him a little backup, just in case.”

“You do not truly trust him, do you?”

Rod shrugged. “How can you really trust anybody who’s always so cheerful?”

 

On the beach, Brother Chillde cried, “Why dost thou pause? Tell me!”

But Puck stared, stupefied, at the giant shining Rod Gallowglass who galloped into the fray.

“The High Warlock!” Brother Chillde chattered, “The High Warlock! Tell me, what doth he?”

“Why… he doth well,” Puck said. “He doth very well indeed.”

“Then he doth lead the soldiers on to victory?”

“Nay… now, hold!” Puck frowned. “The soldiers do begin to slow!”

“ ‘Tis the Evil Eye!” Brother Chillde groaned, “and that fell power that doth bolster it!”

It did seem to be. The soldiers ground to a virtual halt. The beastmen stared a moment in disbelief, then shouted (more with relief than with bloodlust) and started chopping.