In the Palace of the King: A Love Story of Old Madrid by F. Marion Crawford (read my book .TXT) 📕

she was a creature of unsurpassed loveliness. But her existence, as anything but a creation of his own imagination, he had begun to doubt.

      Lost intermittently in these problems, Valdemar continued his pacing, circling the small campfire on an irregular path, the Sword of Wisdom naked in his right hand, a battle-hatchet belonging to some fallen warrior stuck in his farmer’s belt.

      At the moment his half-distracted mind presented Wayfinder with a new inquiry for the benefit of himself and the sleeping three: “Which way to go to foil our enemies? Which way to go—”

      This time the Sword returned him a firm answer; generally northeast, the direction of their daytime travel.

      Then Valdemar stopped, listening to himself. Actually, of course, neither he nor any of his three companions wanted to go anywhere at the moment—right now they all wanted to get some rest.

      But how hard it was, thought Valdemar as he paced on again, for a man to know consistently what, beyond the physical necessities of the moment, he really wanted to do, to achieve. The world held so many kinds of things to want.

      Anticipating the first rays of dawn, the young man found it impossible to keep his mind with absolute consistency upon the camp’s defense. Then he would silently upbraid himself, and once more stalk about in his random pattern holding the Sword, and murmur: “I seek the safety of this camp. I seek the safety of this—”

      Receiving no answer to what was not really a question, he would shake his head and mutter: “No need to keep repeating things like that. No need to keep repeating things…”

      An hour passed. All continued quiet, and nothing untoward occurred.

      And, as nothing in particular seemed to be happening, other questions, other urges, drifted as subtly as growing vines into control of Valdemar’s mind.

* * *

      Thus it was that the pacing, dreaming sentry was granted no warning whatsoever. One moment he and his sleeping companions were, as far as he knew, all safe, all at peace, save for the faint animal noises of the nocturnal wasteland, sounds more reassuring than disturbing.

      And in the next moment they were being overwhelmed.

      The onslaught, as Valdemar came later to understand, was well-coordinated, and consisted of an airborne magical component as well as a force of more mundane attackers on the ground. Somewhere over the young man’s head there came a beating of great unseen wings, sounding far larger than those of any flying creature Valdemar had ever seen or heard before; simultaneously he heard a prosaic thunder of approaching hoofbeats on the ground.

      Letting out a hoarse cry Valdemar whirled about, brandishing his Sword, unable for the first moment of the attack to see anything out of the ordinary at all. Then suddenly the sentry found himself confronted by a live man standing where a moment earlier there had been no one at all. The figure was that of a warrior, sword upraised, garbed in the same Blue Temple colors worn by half of yesterday’s fallen.

      For just a moment Valdemar was frozen by his own imagination, by the terrible image of all those bodies he had helped to rob of food and shoes and weapons, of those dead risen now to claim some kind of vengeance…

      For a moment only. Then a second swordsman and a third materialized behind the first out of darkness and the desert, and the young man understood that his attackers were only too full of mundane life. He let out a hoarse shout of alarm, realizing even as he did so that his warning must now be too late.

      But his companions were reacting very quickly. Around him, friends and foes were scrambling in the darkness.

      The first attacker recoiled from the camp’s sentry, out of respect for the Sword that Valdemar was holding, if not for his gigantic figure. But now others were coming at him from the sides—and now a gossamer net, more magic than material, came dropping softly toward him from a great blurred form in the softly moonlit sky.

      Barely in time he twisted out from under the net, sensing its enchantment. Drawn steel, Valdemar had heard, was the most effective countermeasure an ordinary man could take against a wizard’s onslaught, and perhaps the Sword in his right hand, the battle-hatchet now drawn in his left, exerted some measure of protection.

      The Lady Yambu, who had been the closest of the other three to Valdemar when the enemy appeared, now rose up at his side, hands spread in a magician’s gesture, joining him in his hopeless though spirited defense of the camp.

      Part of his mind noted that the Lady did not have Woundhealer—of course, that Sword had been with Zoltan.

      “Fight!” she snapped at Valdemar. “We must not let ourselves be taken alive! Not by these—”

      Valdemar, with no time to think, only grunted something in return. Brandishing the battle-hatchet in one hand and Wayfinder in the other, and confident in his own strength though mindful of his lack of skill, he faced the enemy soldiers as what looked like a crowd of them came at him.

      The young giant wielded both hatchet and Sword with ferocious energy, and by sheer strength he succeeded in chopping down at least one of his attackers.

      To his surprise, the others fell back momentarily. The Silver Queen had become a shadow gliding at Valdemar’s side, and afforded him some unexpected but very welcome magical assistance.

      Still, the odds in favor of the enemy were overwhelming, and they were returning to the attack.

* * * * * *

      Zoltan had come wide awake, alerted by some subliminal perception, two or three heartbeats before the attack actually fell on the camp. He was fully conscious and active in an instant, and aware of Ben beside him also springing to his feet. Both were veterans, who needed only a momentary glimpse of the assailants surrounding Yambu and Valdemar, the latter fighting with the Sword of Wisdom, to convince them that the odds were hopeless. But so far Zoltan and Ben were not surrounded; rather,