The Excalibur Alternative

"Very well," Sir George said again. "Let's be on our way."

"It's a pity they can't use those things to fight, My Lord," Sir Anthony grumbled. "If we can't hurt them, then neither could the four-arms, and a score of archers shooting from that sort of cover could have decided this whole thing in an hour!"

The other knight sounded thoroughly disgusted, and Sir George had to nod in agreement.

The pallid sun of this dimly lit world was settling into the west, and the crackle and smoke of the Thoolaas village's burning palisades rose into the darkening sky. Most of his men, Sir George knew, would have preferred to torch the entire village, not just its defensive works, but his orders had been firm. The senior surviving Thoolaas war chief had surrendered what remained of his warriors on the condition that their village be spared, and the object was to compel the locals to accept the terms of the demon-jester's guild. That would be far easier to do if the natives had reason to believe acceptance could buy mercy or at least leniency... and that promises of leniency would be honored. Besides, he thought cynically, the rest of the village would undoubtedly be destroyed soon enough. He and his men had killed or wounded at least ninety percent of the tribe's warriors. It wouldn't take long for one or another of their rivals to finish off anything the English left intact.

But that reflection floated below the surface of his thoughts as he and Sir Anthony watched the demon-jester's mechanical servitors sweeping over the plain around the village. Some of them were much like the demon-jester's own "air car," only much larger, and even as Sir George watched, one of those descended briefly to a landing, then rose once more.

"A horse, that time, I think," Father Timothy said quietly.

The priest had come forward to join Sir George as soon as it was safe. Indeed, he had arrived rather too quickly for Sir George's peace of mind. The baron knew Timothy's faith had made him as close to fearless as any mere mortal was ever likely to be, just as he knew that the priest's many years as a soldier had imbued him with both an appreciation of the dangers of any battlefield and the prudence to avoid them. Despite that, the thought of what losing his old friend, confessor, and irreplaceable spiritual guide for his people would cost had brought a sharp rebuke to his lips when the Dominican arrived.

"There were no wounded among the archers," the priest had replied reasonably, "but there were hurt and dying men here, in need of shriving."

That had silenced Sir George's objections, even if it hadn't done much about the emotions which had sparked them in the first place. He could scarcely complain about Timothy's determination to discharge his priestly duties, but he made a quiet mental note to set Matilda to work upon the old man. If anyone could convince him of his irreplaceability, it would be she... and Sir George knew from intimate personal experience just how unscrupulous she could be in framing her arguments when she knew she was right.

His mouth had twitched in a smile at the thought, but that smile had vanished instantly as he recalled that Matilda and Edward remained in stasis, sleeping hostages for the satisfactory discharge of his master's commands.

Now he watched the rising vehicle with the priest at his shoulder and frowned.

"What do you think they want with them?" he asked, and Father Timothy shrugged.

"I have no idea, My Lord," he admitted, his eyes troubled. "Those same... vehicles collected all of our wounded immediately after the battle. Why they should also collect the dead, and especially dead animals, rather than leave them for us to provide decent burial to is beyond me. I'm more than half afraid I would dislike the reason if I knew it, though."

"You and I both, Father," Sir Anthony grunted with a nod, and Sir Richard added his own agreement as he walked up to the baron.

"Why we should like anything about this cursed `guild' is a mystery to me," Maynton observed. The other knight had been supervising the burning of the palisades, and from the look of his armor and the singed spots on his surcoat, he'd gotten a bit too close to his work. Indeed, he was still slapping at a smoldering ember on the chest of his surcoat as he reached the baron.

"Aside from the fact that so far most of us are still alive, I would be inclined to agree with you," Sir George told him, reaching out a gauntleted hand to help slap out the ember. "On the other hand, I suppose it might be argued that the fact that we are alive is your question's best answer."

"Aye," Sir Richard admitted. The last stubborn trace of smoke died, and he nodded his thanks to his liege. "There is that, My Lord," he went on. "Although it seems plain enough to me that it's you we owe the most of our survival to."

"There's truth in that, My Lord," Sir Anthony rumbled in his deep voice. "I've seen a fight or two in my time, and I'll not say these... Thoolaas—" he pronounced the alien word carefully (and poorly) "—were the best organized army I've ever seen. But they're not so bad as all of that. Aye, I've seen Scots and even French who were more poorly led, and these have to be the toughest bastards I've ever faced! However it may seem now, beating their arses like this was nowhere near so easy as you made it look."

"I suppose that's true enough," Sir George agreed, "but it was you and Sir Richard and the other lads, and especially Rolf's bowmen, who made any plans of mine work. And however `easy' it may have looked, the fact remains that we've lost at least fifteen men, and that's assuming none of the wounded die."

"Fifteen men for a victory like this is a miraculously low price, My Lord," Sir Richard pointed out, while the four of them watched one of the oxen-sized mobile water fountains land beside a clump of dismounted cavalry. The horses pulled uneasily at their picket pins as the vehicle landed, but the troopers crowded around it eagerly, and the fountain of cold, crystal-clear water leaping and bubbling from its top sang musically as it spilled into the wide catcher basin below. The men took turns, drinking deeply and burying their sweaty faces in the cleansing water, and then three of them began hauling water to the waiting horses in their helmets.

"Fifteen men is a low price," Sir George conceded. "Or it would be in Scotland, or even France. But here, where there will never be any replacement of our losses, even one man is a high price to pay."

"There's more than a little truth in that, I'm afraid," Father Timothy agreed, and all three of the knights knew it was the old soldier in him as much as the man of God who spoke. "On the other hand, there's no saying that every foe you face will be as formidable as these Thoolaas were."

He did a much better job of pronouncing the alien word than Sir Anthony had managed, and Sir George smiled tiredly.

"Of course there isn't, Timothy. But there's no saying the opposite is true, either, now is there? Suppose these Thoolaas had had proper steel instead of bronze. Or that they'd been armored as well as our lads are. Or that they'd had a proper mix of dart-throwers to axemen. Who's to say that the next enemy we face won't have those things?"

"We can only put our faith in God and pray that they won't," the priest replied after a moment, and this time Sir George surprised himself with a laugh.

"Oh, I'll certainly add my prayers to that one, Timothy!" he chuckled. "Still and all, though, I expect God probably listens a little more closely to you than to me, so I'll ask you to see to that part of it. My job will be to balance the problems of sustaining the `Commander's' faith in us as the `resource' his guild needs most in all the world while keeping him from assuming that we can do this—" the baron swung an arm at the burning palisades behind them and then out across the darkening field of battle "—no matter who he sends us up against."