"Maybe I was," he said. "But I've had a good night's sleep now, and I'm completely free of coma and plague, both. What makes you think whatever I'm supposed to be surprised at will gear me up again?"
"I know you."
"What is it that's worrying you so much, anyway?"
"What are all the things that could set you off again, you mean. That's why I want your promise—a real promise—you'll hold yourself down when you go out and see everybody. Don't try to leave here without promising me that! Carolinus warded the Solar so you can't get out, anyhow—before you give me that promise—and I mean it."
"Hell!" cried Jim. He felt he could break most imposed wards, but Carolinus' ward would be…
Tentatively he reached out to feel it and try how strong it was. Yep! It was complete, close around the room—ceiling, floor, walls and door: a massively heavy-feeling ward.
"Well, damn his nerve!"
"Damn him all you want," said Angie. "The ward stays there until I get that promise—your word, your unbreakable word, as knights here call it. As for Carolinus, he's your Master-in-Magick, after all."
"Well," grumped Jim, "you've got my blasted word, then. Let me get up up, wash, shave and dress."
Angie stood up from the bed.
"The Solar is all yours," she said. "And I'm going outside with you. If you start to wobble today, I'll blow the whistle on you—I warn you, Jim—" He looked at her, and to his surprise saw tears in her eyes. "Don't you realize what it would mean to me to lose you?"
He growled inarticulately at her, avoiding her gaze, threw off the covers, got out of bed and headed toward their sneakily modernized bathroom with the unheard-of flush toilet—fed by a cistern on the tower roof—a shower and a marble Roman tub, likewise supplied with water from the cistern.
When he came back out and was dressing, he found a breakfast on the table.
"I don't have time to eat that," he said. "Thank you anyway, but with this late start I want to get going."
"You might as well take time to eat it," said Angie. "I've sent for Brian and Dafydd, and it'll take them a little time to be found and told to come here. Besides, you need food. You've eaten almost nothing for days."
"So that's why these teas have been tasting sweeter than usual. You've been sneaking more sugar into them! Hah!"
"I wouldn't call it sneaking. I've been putting more sugar in to get more calories into you, and hah! Right back at you!"
"What're Brian and Dafydd coming for?"
"To keep you from being pestered. I planned to get some of the healthy men-at-arms we've got left to escort you, too. But most of our neighbor bully knights would just walk right through them. So I got you Brian and Dafydd."
"A few of the neighbors have got here already, then—with the goblins all around us? How'd they do that?"
"Show you when we get up to the roof," she said. "Now eat, before Brian and Dafydd show up."
He ate. Actually, he found he was hungry. But he had been ready to stuff the food down, anyway, if she was determined not to tell him anything until he could see it for himself. It was no good asking.
The usual hearty knock on the door, followed by Brian, immediately walking in without hesitation, followed by Dafydd. Jim hastily swallowed the last of the hard-boiled eggs.
"Well, James!" said Brian. "Better?"
"We hope so. But don't let him be bothered—I'll be with you, too, though," said Angie. "If I say take him down, it means we want him back here right away, no matter what he wants to do."
"Did Carolinus say so?" said Brian sharply, for he did not approve of wives ordering their husbands about, and only put up with Angie seeming to do this from time to time, because Jim seemed to put up with it. Other countries, other ways of course, and both Jim and Angie were not really English, poor people. Besides, he loved them both.
"He did," said Angie. "We had quite a talk about it. He said too much of anything could put him back in bed again."
"Heaven forefend," said Brian, crossed himself, and took hold of Jim's arm.
"I can get out of a chair by myself!" said Jim, as sharply as Brian had queried Angie.
"Do so, then," said Brian, unperturbed.
Jim got to his feet.
"It's good to see you both," he said, looking at Brian and Dafydd with affection. Brian abruptly kissed him on both cheeks. Dafydd gave him one of his usual smiles, more warmly than Jim remembered him ever doing before.
"Let's go then," he said. They went.
He had expected almost anything. The towertop was full of neighbors—not just the handful Jim had expected, but twenty or more of them—gazing out at the goblin horde, arguing or making sage suggestions which were nearly always met with argument. Sir Hubert White, Malencontri's loud-voiced, opinionated, closest neighbor, who, indeed, shared a boundary with Malencontri's lands—as bad luck would have to have it—was the first to spot Jim up there with the rest of them.
"Sir James!" he shouted, and started toward Jim, first of the armed and armored horde.
"Not him," said Angie in a low voice to Brian and Dafydd, and they both moved forward between Jim and Sir Hubert.
"Not now, Hubert," said Brian, "of your courtesy, he must not be spoken with yet, by command of Mage Carolinus."
The words were polite, but Brian's tone left no doubt about the finality of the message. Sir Hubert stopped, necessarily, but there was a sudden clamor of voices behind him.
"Let them come," muttered Jim, in a low voice. "I asked them for help, after all."
"I suppose you have to," Angie said, equally low-voiced. Brian and Dafydd stood aside.
"Over here, gentlemen!" said Jim, raising his voice, and reminding himself to speak as much in fourteenth-century style as possible. Speak formally, with no modern words that would be half-understood, misunderstood, or not understood at all. He tried to remember how politicians he had heard made their points in their speeches.
They came forward, the older ones, the family heads, jostling out their sons and squires, so they could be as close toward the front row as possible. The front row itself consisted of the larger, richer, landowners—which had the bonus side effect of elbowing Sir Hubert toward the back, where he could not try to lead the conversation.
"Quiet, if you please, gentlemen," said Jim. They did not become quiet—only toned down their comments and asides to each other, so as to hear what Jim had to say. Deliberately, he lowered his voice, to force them into a silence general enough so that they would all be able to hear him. They were a rough crowd, a potentially dangerous, individually minded crowd, if they got out of hand. He had to establish a superiority over them at the outset, to keep each of them from constant argument with him.
"Gentlemen!" Jim said again. "I am happy to tell you that in this hap we have a war captain of name and repute to lead us. None other than the Prince of Wales. You will all know of his memorable deeds both as that and in person, fighting against the enemy in the chevauche to the battle of Poitiers. He, with our Lord King, who has ruled battles memorably in his own time, will speak through me to you. There must be no discussion of the orders I carry, therefore."
He paused. To his astonishment they cheered. Time to wind things up quickly while they felt this good.
"Meanwhile, there is much we yet do not know. We are greatly outnumbered, and the enemy uses magic—poisoned spears…" He gave them a short account of the Bishop's party rolling in agony on the ground after being speared.
"But magic is also a strength of mine, as you all know, and the Mage Carolinus is aiding us."
They cheered again.
"Right now, the Mage is discovering whether our Earl of Somerset—provided God has spared his household so that it has not been hit too hard by the plague—is able to send a force of his own fighting men to our aid. There is great hope. But also great work to be done, with or without aid from the Earl."
They cheered once more, a full-throated cheer. Did they never get tired of cheering, Jim asked himself? Th
en he remembered who and what they were. Outnumbered enormously as they were, they still hoped to have the glory of conquest all to themselves.
"That is all for now," he wound up. "I will speak to you all again as soon as more is known and planned."
They roared in approval like a pack of hungry lions—he had been wrong about calling what they did cheering. He stepped back, and Brian and Dafydd, without prompting in any way, stepped before him, to signal his talk was over, and he was no longer open to questions or suggestions.
They would be either all for him, or all against him, thought Jim, unless he kept himself firmly established in command. Just to make sure the effect of his talk would not be spoiled, he moved to the defense wall around the edge of the roof, and looked down at his castle and particularly his courtyard. The knights gave him, Angie, Brian and Dafydd respectful and generous room to look, and even talk, privately.
"Good," said Angie in an undertone. "Let's go downstairs, while the effect lasts."
But Jim, staring at the roofs and courtyard below him, blinked. He had meant the move to the wall just to break off contact with the neighbors. But what he saw he could not believe.
"That's why I told you in the Solar to brace yourself," said Angie at his elbow. "Not the neighbors. This."
"But there aren't that many hobs in England!" said Jim.
"Apparently there are—and more still coming. You're not looking at a tenth of them," she answered. "The castle's full of them—helping in everything that's being done. Helping and trying to cheer up the sick ones. Some hobs have gone off to get more opium and pipes for all the plague victims. Others have already left on other errands. Some of them have been taking Nursing Room patients brave enough to go for small rides on the smoke—anything to give them heart."
"But—where did they all come from so quickly?"
"Don't underestimate the smoke," said Angie.
"I've got to talk to Hob—our hob," said Jim, turning towards the nearest chimney poking through the tower roof. Then he remembered the crowd around where he was, and checked the move. "You're right. The Solar. Let's go!"
They went back downstairs, unquestioned and unimpeded. The neighbors were already starting to argue among themselves. But as the four of them closed the door behind them and sat down around the table, Jim reflexively threw a ward around the Solar to let them hear any outside talk clearly, but prevent anyone outside from hearing any word of theirs. Just then the alarm gong above them began to sound again—but with a strange, measured beat that Jim had never heard from it before.
Thud, pause, thud, thud, said the gong, continuing to repeat itself. Jim was halfway to his feet, when Brian's words stopped him.
"A dragon coming in to the roof," said Brian briefly.
"A dragon?" said Jim, starting to rise again.
"Sit down, now, Jim!" said Angie. "It's all arranged. The neighbors have already learned to move back to stand with their backs against the embrassures, to clear a landing space."
Jim switched his hearing to make it sensitive enough to pick up the larger noises from the roof, and sure enough, within seconds there was the typical heavy thud and wing-scrape noise of a dragon landing.
"It will doubtless be Secoh, James," said Dafydd calmly. "Full-grown as he is, he is still smaller than most among the young Cliffside recruits to his Dragon Patrol."
"What's going on?" cried Jim. "And how could all these people have gotten here so quickly? You'd think I'd been asleep two nights—not one."
"Three nights, dear Jim," said Angie softly, laying a hand on his arm. "I was hoping for a quiet moment to tell you about it, before this—I knew you'd be upset—but it didn't come in time. You slept like a log for three nights and two days, Carolinus told me not to worry, that you'd thrown off the plague, but not all of the effects of the magic overstrain that may have saved your life, in a way—if Barron was right about it. 'Let him sleep,' said Carolinus, 'as long as he can. It's the best thing to get him back in shape.' "
There were noises from the stairs, scrapings against walls, grunts, a half-stifled woman's scream, and what Jim, at least, recognized as dragon curses, followed at last by a shuffling of heavy feet down the corridor toward them. When these halted, a heavy scraping of great and sharp claws at the door, in what was clearly a too-powerful version of the normal polite scratching that asked for admittance.
"Come!" shouted Angie, and the door opened to admit Secoh, who squeezed in through its opening—that had, happily, been widened to get the Roman bath into the Solar.
"How are you, m'lord?" asked Secoh, squatting on what any other animal might have considered his haunches at one corner of the table, which now seemed decidedly crowded.
"Fine, thanks," said Jim. Abruptly remembering his duty as host, he raised his voice.
"Servant here!" he shouted. One of the women of the castle staff opened the door and took a gingerly step inside. Jim was known to be a sort of blood-brother with this latest visitor—but dragons were still dragons, and once upon a time had pounced upon stray humans for their lunch, as they might have on any other animal.
"Mazers and three pitchers of wine here—and two gallons of wine in the special bucket you'll find in the Serving Room."
"Two gallons, my lord?" The servant blanched.
"Certainly. Two gallons for our dragon guest. Get help if you need, to carry it all at once!"
"Yes, m'lord. Immediately." The staff member curtsied and went out, partially reassured. She was not one of the staff who dated back to when Secoh had been in the habit of making excuses to visit the Great Hall in hopes of what Jim had just ordered for him. Secoh had finally, gently, had it made clear to him that such visits should be restricted to times when there was some important reason for a visit. The small marsh-dragon had never intruded unnecessarily again. But his eyes glistened kindly on the servant, following Jim's mention of the bucket of wine. Jim, however, barely noticed this.
"Three nights, two days!" Jim was repeating, shaking his head.
"Be at peace, James," said Brian. "All has gone well while you slept."
Jim looked at him, about to ask if, and how, the Prince might have been sticking his nose into what was going on, with commands that could only tangle matters up, but then he remembered why he had come back to the Solar.
"Hob!" he shouted in the direction of the large Solar fireplace. "Malencontri Hob!"
"Yes, m'lord?" said Hob, appearing out of the fireplace and standing in front of it.
"Come over here and join us."
Hob summoned a small puff of smoke and rode it, sitting cross-legged, to the opposite corner of the table from Secoh—and, as it happened, also at Jim's elbow—ending up level with the heads of everyone there, except Secoh's.
"I'm so glad to see you up, m'lord—and m'lady, and Sir Brian and Master Dafydd… and this dragon." Hob knew perfectly well who Secoh was. Secoh said nothing.
"Since I've been dead to the world for three nights—" Jim was beginning.
"Dead, m'lord?" cried Hob.
Brian looked a little shaken at Jim's choice of words, Secoh unmistakably alarmed, Dafydd unperturbed.
"Just in a manner of speaking!" said Jim. "Actually, I was only asleep. But as I started to say—since I was out of things, I'll have to know what's been happening, and I'd appreciate all of you telling me. To begin with, Hob, how did all the other hobs get here so fast?"
"Oh, I sent out messages on the smoke to all my friends, m'lord. A bit of the smoke can carry a simple message like that. I said, 'Come fight goblins. Bring your own weapon. Tell everyone.' "
"And they came? But how did all these others know to come?"
"Oh, each of my friends sent messages to all their friends—except the ones I'd sent messages to—and those sent messages to their friends… and so it went, very fast. Everybody wanted a chance."
"But how did the neighbors get here? And come to think of it, how about their horses? I suppose a couple of hobs could carry a man in armor and fully a
rmed on the smoke. But what about their horses, all equipped?"
"I can tell you, m'lord,' said Secoh eagerly. "Even one of our young members of the Dragon Patrol can carry fifteen or sixteen hobs. There's nothing much of weight to them, you know. In fact, it isn't even so much their weight, anyhow, as the fact that we can't have them riding on our wings, and such. Not decent. Of course an enormous number of hobs are needed to carry a george's big fighting horse back to Malencontri."
"As a matter of fact," said Hob, cutting in sharply, "as few as fifteen hobs—with the smoke to help—can carry a gentleman's destrier right over the heads of the goblins—out of spear-throw. Of course at least one horsewise hob must talk to the destrier first and explain, so the horse doesn't get scared at being up in the air. But lots of our hobs are very wise that way."
He looked smugly at Secoh, having trumped the dragon with his use of the correct terms for man and horse.
"But how—" Jim turned to Angie. "Do we have pigeons to carry messages to that many neighbors?"
"M'lady and I went on the smoke to each of them first, and each telling us of other neighbors we could ask—"
"Let the Lady Angela answer me, Hob."
"Yes, m'lord. Beg your forgiveness, m'lord."
"Forgiven. But let the person I ask do the talking, or else we'll end up with everyone trying to talk at once—you were going to say, Angie?"
"Oh," said Angie, "we went and I talked to each of them. They were all, even those who had lost a lot of people to the plague, wild to come. Many of the dead were family members, and they're all sure it was the goblins that brought the plague to them. They want revenge."
Revenge, as Jim was quite aware, was almost a duty in this time.
"Are there full armies of goblins around the castles of each of them, then?" Most of the castles mentioned were little more than fortified residences, and Jim had a vision of hundreds of thousands of goblins swarming over all Somerset.