“Me, too,” Derk agreed. “No regrets even about these grapes. But it’s nothing you can pin down. Let’s see if Prince Talithan’s noticed anything. He’s doing the besieging. He must have been and talked to them, too.”
“How do you get hold of him to ask him?” said Blade.
“He’s an elf, and he’s sworn allegiance,” Derk said. “He should come when I call him. I hope.” He stood still in the dusty rutted road between the vines and called out, “Talithan! Prince Talithan, I need you!”
After a short while, during which Blade was certain Derk was just making a fool of himself, a blue-green misty light swung toward them in the road like a door opening, and Prince Talithan stood there bowing. “Forgive me, my lord. I was far to the south, discussing the siege of Serata.”
“That’s all right,” said Derk. “If you’re on Serata, you must have been to Chell and made all the arrangements here already.”
“A week ago, lord,” Talithan said. “All seems in order, I have my list of expendables, and my elves are armed and ready. We shall sack each city between the battles at your side in Umru’s land.”
“Er—you’ll find the battlefield is actually about fifty miles south of where it should be,” Derk said. “But how was Chell? Did everything strike you as in order here?”
“I found nothing wrong.” Talithan was clearly puzzled to be asked. “Methought the duke seemed depressed, but that I understood. He was about to lose a city and a good vintage.”
“Ah, well,” said Derk. “It was worth a try. See if you can save these vines if you can.”
Talithan bowed. “I had that thought myself, Lord.”
When Prince Talithan had retreated away through his misty door, Derk shrugged. “Maybe that man from Chell was an alarmist. Back to camp, Blade.”
They returned to chillier, grayer climate and a great deal of bustle. High Priest Umru had made them a thank-you present of a set of tents. Don was galloping about showing the young priests who brought them exactly where each tent should be set up. Very priestly tents, they were, white and embroidered with the emblems of Anscher.
“Not exactly right for a Dark Lord,” Derk said, “but I won’t grumble.”
Inside the magic dome on the hill, the battle spells now seemed to be working. The men in black were exercising, doing sword practice, or marching off to the cookhouse, almost as if they were real soldiers. Derk nodded to Barnabas, who nodded cheerfully back.
The main activity, however, was around Kit. Kit was in his element. He had maps, plans, and lists spread out and pinned down with flat stones near the river, and he was surrounded by people, all listening to him attentively. “Your fanatics are lined up here,” Kit was saying to a priest. “Keep them back in the trees until midday.” Blade saw King Luther and Titus and the werewolf among Kit’s listeners, but there were many others he did not know, including some elves, several dwarfs, a sturdy man holding a helmet who was probably a mercenary, a group of strange white-faced people almost as skinny as Old George, and numbers of men in gold earrings wearing a fur draped across one shoulder. Around them, less important people came and went as Kit sent them off on errands. A mercenary came in at a run as Blade watched.
“That stream does run north and south.”
“Damn,” said Kit, and made a note on a map. “Someone—you in the fur—go and find out all the places it can be crossed. I don’t want to waste strength defending fords. The legionaries may have to dig it deeper.”
“They can do that,” said Titus. “But what’s the timing of my attack on the Dark Elves?”
Derk watched with a broad smile. Kit’s eyes were bright, and his neck eagerly arched. “You know,” Derk said to Blade, “I think getting Kit to plan the battles may have been an inspiration. How’s Shona?”
Shona could not have been more of a contrast to Kit. She was still sitting staring at nothing. She did not seem to notice Callette crouching protectively beside her, nor did she look up when Pretty scampered past, showering them both with gravel as he played tag with the dogs. Blade went over to her, but she did not look at him either. He sat down beside Callette.
“Who are the people with the white faces?”
“Vampires,” said Callette. “I don’t like them. They look at your forelegs and say, ‘Juicy wrists.’”
“Whose side are they on?” Blade asked.
“Ours, I think,” said Callette. “They look quite wicked.”
SEVENTEEN
FROM THEN ON IT was all bustle, preparing for the first of the battles. Blade could not understand how his father found time to make drawings and calculations for carrier pigeons in the midst of it all.
“It keeps me sane,” Derk said mildly. Or drives me mad another way, he added secretly. The trouble with pigeons was that they had no brains to speak of and no room to add any. Derk experimented, in between crises, with putting an extra brain somewhere in the middle of the pigeon, but that seemed to mean that the poor creatures would have even more trouble getting airborne than Lydda did. Perhaps they should fly by magic, somewhat in the way dragons did, he thought, as Scales flew in to report that he had moved the purple dragon six miles and one furlong to the southeast, and then took off again to search for dwarfs and missing soldiers.
At dawn, two days before the battle, Talithan revolved abruptly out of his misty doorway, looking pale and distressed, and crunched hurriedly to Derk’s priestly tent. Pretty careered over to him, whinnying with pleasure, but Talithan put him gently aside. “Lord, I have failed you over Chell,” he said as Derk came to the tent flap.
Derk was in the middle of shaving and not wholly awake. “Lost the grape harvest, did you?” he said. “Not to worry.”
“No, no. We saved the grapes. Indeed,” said Talithan, “the city of Chell stands in every way whole and entire, save for its people. That is my failure.”