Wizard Of Rentoro

By Serana's orders, Duke Efrim's body was placed on one of the new stone-throwers and hurled over the walls, to tell the Wolves that Morina was no longer vulnerable to treachery. His head was cut off and stuck on a spike over the main gate of the palace.

Blade was increasingly glad he would not be staying in Morina after the end of the fighting. Serana was a lovely and gifted woman, but there was a bloodthirsty streak in her that Blade was coming to like less and less. He didn't blame her for having it, not after all she'd been through, but he didn't want to find himself in its path either.

Count Drago Bossir had an arrow wound in his thigh, which was almost a relief to Blade. The wound wouldn't kill the old man, but it would keep him out of the rest of the fighting. Blade found himself increasingly determined that Count Drago should live to see the breaking of the Wizard's power and the destruction of the Wolves who had done so much to him.

Zemun Bossir, on the other hand, had come through all the fighting unwounded, covering himself with glory and other people's blood. If Serana was laying any plots against him, she hadn't been able to do anything. Perhaps that would discourage her.

When all the bodies were counted up, there were more than six hundred dead Wolves, a third of them leaders. That was a loss the Wolves could not afford. There were also more than two thousand dead Morinans, a loss the city couldn't afford. The battle had been a bloody mess; the next battle would be even worse.

Morina would get no reinforcements, but neither would the Wolves. Blade learned that from the Wolf prisoners. The armies of cities friendly to Morina would never break through the Wolves, but they were keeping the armies of cities friendly to the Wizard from coming to join the siege.

Even better news from the prisoners was that the Wizard himself was not with the army. He'd sent two-thirds of his Wolves-four thousand of them-against Morina, but as far as anyone knew he hadn't left his castle since the rebellion began.

Blade was relieved. Now there was no danger of the Wizard's mental powers sowing panic and terror in Morina. He could send messages to individual men over great distances, but not terrorize thirty-five thousand people.

Almost as important, his own job would be easier, once the Wolves were defeated. Behind the walls of his castle, the Wizard was safe from the Rentorans, who would gladly cut him into small pieces with dull knives. Whether he would consider returning to Home Dimension with Blade, after Blade had led the Rentorans in smashing his power, was another question. At least the Wizard would be alive for Blade to ask him, and that was something. Blade wasn't particularly optimistic about getting the Wizard back to Home Dimension alive and sane, but he knew he had to try.

Freeing Rentoro from the Wizard's grip was a great accomplishment, but it could not do as much for Britain as the Wizard's secrets.

Chapter 22

Now all at once it was summer. One blazing hot day followed another. The moat with its load of dead Wolves, the garbage heaps in the back streets of Morina, the latrine pits in the enemy's camp-all sent up into the windless air a smell that grew worse with each passing day.

The smell itself didn't worry Blade. What did worry him was the possibility of disease that smell implied. Thirty-five thousand people were now crammed inside walls that normally held twenty thousand. The wells and streams provided barely enough water for drinking, none at all for washing. Filth and garbage normally carted off to fertilize nearby fields was piling higher and higher. The Wolves could not break the spirit of Morina's defenders but a plague might.

Of course a plague could also sweep through the ranks of the Wolves. But the Wolves could ride away if they had to, seeking clean air and water, leaving behind their own filth. The Morinans had nowhere to go.

Blade had other worries beside the growing risk of plague. Count Drago was not recovering from his wound. Instead he grew weaker and weaker each day, the flesh melting from his already lean frame. An infection that Rentoro's medicine could not handle was eating him away from within.

The count didn't lack the will to live-in fact, he would have insisted on being carried to the walls each day on a litter if Blade hadn't forbidden it. It was his strength that faded steadily, and the hot, foul air of Morina didn't help. Blade had the count established in the best-ventilated room of the late Duke Efrim's palace, but that was all he could do for the old man.

The count might still live to see the final battle against the Wolves. They were hard at work in their camp, night and day, preparing for the all-out attack on the walls of Morina. Some people in Morina were allowing themselves to hope the Wolves had lost their old spirit and the attack would be feeble. It was true that without the Wizard's leadership, they were under a great handicap. The failure of the night attack through the palace had killed off too many of the best Wolves and given the rest an unpleasant shock. They were suffering from the heat, from lack of food, and from lack of experience in camping out.

None of these things kept the Wolves from working like galley slaves. They built rams, they built massive stonethrowers, they built two tall siege towers. They piled up tons of brush to fill the moat and long planks to cross it. By night they dug trenches close to the moat, so their archers could fire from cover at the men on the walls.

The attack would come and there would be nothing feeble about it when it came. The Wolves might have the supplies and equipment for only one attack, but they would put everything they had into that one. Morina might destroy the Wolves, but it might be destroyed itself in the process, burying its enemies under its own ruins and under the piled bodies of its own people.

Blade would have won some other way if he could, but now there might be no other way.

Even Serana seemed to be caught up in the tension. For days on end she never mentioned Zemun Bossir. She cut her hair short, so that it would fit under a helmet and practiced with a sword several hours each day. She lost weight and the dark circles grew under her eyes until she looked the same as when she'd been the Wizard's prisoner.

Blade awoke in the darkness, knowing that something was wrong without being sure quite how he knew. He slipped out of bed without waking the sleeping Serana and went to the window.

It gave him a view toward the Wolves' siege camp. It lay almost invisible in the night, silent and u

The campfires were out! The Wolves had darkened their camp, and they could only be doing that to conceal something. Blade ran back to the bed and shook Serana awake. She sat up, naked and still half asleep, rubbing her eyes.

«Get up and get dressed,» he said briskly. «The Wolves have darkened their camp. They may not be attacking tonight, but something's up!»

Serana hurried to the window to look for herself. As she did, Blade heard the tramping of feet in the street below. He wasn't the only man in Morina who thought the Wolves might be up to something.

They were pulling on their armor when Blade heard several new sounds, in a ragged chorus. There was a creaking, a groaning, and a squealing, all of it faint and wavering, as though it came from far away-beyond the walls of Morina. As Blade was buckling on his boots, fists pounded on the door, Serana drew the bolt, and one of Zemun's officers practically fell into the room.

«Lord Zemun wishes you to come to the east wall, my lord and lady,» he gasped. «The Wolves are moving up their siege machines. He also says the watchers on the bell tower have seen the fires of another camp, far to the north.»