The door opened, and the sentry stepped in to announce, “Sir Maris doth request audience, Majesties.”

“Aye, indeed!” Tuan turned to face the door, delighted. “Mayhap he doth bring word from our sentries who have kept watch to be certain the beastmen do not turn back, to attempt one last surprise. Assuredly, present him!”

The sentry stepped aside, and the seneschal limped into the chamber, leaning heavily on his staff, but with a grin that stretched from ear to ear.

“Welcome, good Sir Maris!” Tuan cried. “What news?”

“ ‘Twas even as thou hadst thought, Majesty.” Sir Maris paused in front of Tuan for a sketchy bow, then straightened up, and his grin turned wolfish. “Three ships did curve and seek to sail into the mouth of a smaller river that runs athwart the Fleuve.”

“They were repulsed?” Glints danced in Tuan’s eyes.

“Aye, my liege! Our archers filled their ships with fire, the whiles our soldiers slung a weighty chain across the river. When they ground against it and found they could sail no further, they sought to come ashore; but our men-at-arms presented them a hedge of pikes. Nay, they turned and fled.” He turned to Rod. “Our thanks, Lord Warlock, for thy good aid in this endeavor!”

Rod started, staring, and Gwen caught his arm and her breath; but Sir Maris whirled back to the King, fairly crowing, “He did seem to be everywhere, first on this bank, then on that, amongst the archers, then amongst the pikemen, everywhere urging them on to feats of greater valor. Nay, they’ll not believe that they can lose now.”

Gwen looked up, but Rod stood frozen.

“Yet, withal,” said the old knight, frowning, “why hadst thou assigned command to me? If the High Warlock were there to lead, he should have had command as well!”

“But,” said Tuan, turning to Rod, “thou wast ever here in Runnymede, with ourselves, the whiles this raid was foiled!”

“I noticed,” Rod croaked.

“My lord, not all things that hap here are impossible,” Gwen sighed.

“Oh, yes, they are. Take you, for example—that someone as wonderful as you could even exist is highly improbable. But that you could not only exist but also fall in love with someone like me—well, that’s flatly impossible.”

Gwen gave him a radiant smile. “Thou wilt ever undervalue thyself, Rod Gallowglass, and overvalue me—and thus hath made a cold world turn warm for me.”

That look in her eyes he couldn’t resist; it pulled him down, and down, into a long, deep kiss that tried to pull him deeper. But eventually Rod remembered that he was on the deck of a ship, and that the crew were no doubt watching. He was tempted to consign them all to the Inferno, but he remembered his responsibilities and pulled out of the kiss with a regretful sigh. “We haven’t been doing enough of that lately.”

“I am well aware of that, my lord.” Gwen fixed him with a glittering eye.

“And I thought the Neanderthals had an ‘Evil Eye’!” Rod breathed, and turned to hook her hand firmly around his elbow as he strolled down the deck. “For now, however, let’s enjoy the Seabreeze and the salt air. After all, this is the closest thing to a pleasure cruise we’re ever apt to get.”

“As thou dost say, my lord,” she said demurely.

“Just so you don’t mistake my doppelganger for me,” Rod amended.

Gwen shook her head firmly. “That could not hap at any distance less than an hundred feet.”

“Well, I hope not—but quite a few people seem to have been making the error.”

“Ah, but how well do they know thee?” Gwen crooned. “If they’ve seen thee at all before, it has been only briefly and from a distance.”

“Yeah, but there’re some who… well, there’s one!” Rod stopped next to a brown-robed form that sat cross-legged on the deck, leaning against the rail with a half-filled inkhorn in his left hand, writing in a careful round hand in a book of huge vellum sheets. “Hail, Brother Chillde!”

The monk looked up, startled. Then a smile of delight spread over his face. “Well met, Lord Warlock! I had hoped to espy thee here!”

Rod shrugged. “Where else would I be? It’s the King’s flagship. But how do you come to be here, Brother Chillde?”

“I am chaplain,” the monk said simply. “And I wish to be near to the King and his councillors as may be, an I am able; for I strive to record what doth occur during this war as well as I may.”

“So your chronicle’s coming well? How far back have you managed to dig?”

“Why, I began four years agone, when the old King died, and have writ down all I’ve seen or heard that has occurred during, first, the reign of Catharine, then during the reign of both our goodly King and Queen.” He beamed up at them. “Yet, in this present crisis I have been fortunate to be in the thick of it, almost from the first. My journal shall be precise, so that folk yet unborn, and many hundreds of years hence, may know how nobly our folk of this present age did acquit themselves.”

“A noble goal.” Rod smiled, though without, perhaps, as much respect as the project deserved. “Be sure what you write is accurate, though, won’t you?”

“Never fear. I’ve asked several folk for their accounts of each event, and thus believe I’ve found somewhat of the truth. Yet, for the greater part, I’ve writ only what I’ve seen myself.”

Rod nodded with approval. “Can’t do better than primary source material. May your endeavor prosper, Brother Chillde.”

“I thank thee, lord.”

And Rod and Gwen strolled on down the deck as the monk bent over his journal again. When they were safely out of ear-shot, Rod murmured to Gwen, “Of course, eyewitness accounts aren’t necessarily what really happened. People’s memories are always colored by what they want to believe.”

“I can well credit it.” Gwen glanced back at the monk. “And he’s so young and filled with the ideals of youth! I doubt me not an Catharine and Tuan seem to him impossibly regal and imposing—and the beastmen immensely vile, and…”

“Mama!”

Gwen recoiled in surprise, then blossomed into a radiant smile as she realized she was suddenly holding an armful of baby. “Magnus, my bonny boy! Hast thou, then, come to wish thy parents well on this their venture?”

Her eyes darkened as the baby nodded, and Rod guessed she was thinking that Mama and Papa might not come home to Baby. She needed a distraction. “What’s he got there—a ball?”

The spheroid was dull and gray, about four inches in diameter—and its surface suddenly rippled. Rod stared.

Gwen saw his look of disgust and said quickly, “Be not concerned, my lord. ‘Tis naught but witch moss with which, I doubt me not, he hath been toying.”

“Oh.” Rod knew the substance well; it was a variety of fungus that had the peculiar property of responding to the thoughts of projective telepaths. Rod had a strong suspicion that it had contributed to the development of elves, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures around the Gramarye landscape. “When did he begin to play with…”

He broke off, because the ball was changing in the child’s hand—and Magnus was staring at it in surprise. It stretched itself up, flattening and dwindling toward the bottom, where it divided in half lengthwise for half its height, and two pieces broke loose at the sides. The top formed itself into a smaller ball, and dents and lines began to define the form.

“What doth he make?” Gwen whispered.

“I’m afraid to guess.” But Rod knew, with a sickening certainty, what he was going to see.

And he was right—for the lump finished its transformation and swung up a wicked-looking war ax, opening a gash of a mouth to reveal canines that would have done credit to a saber-toothed tiger. Its piggy eyes reddened with insane blood-lust, and it began to shamble up Magnus’s arm.

The child shrieked and hurled it as far away from him as he could. It landed on the deck, caving in one side; but that side bulged out into its former form as it pulled itself to its feet and shambled off down the deck, looking for something to ravish.