The Witch Watch (45 page)

“No,” said Simon slowly. “I think you are right. This fatigue is rather sudden. I feel it as well, even though I was hale before the battle.”

Jack coughed. “I’m wounded, so I’m not at all surprised to find myself spent. But you are the picture of health, Alice. The same is true of your friend.” Jack then struggled to his feet with Alice’s help. He found the leg that had been pinned under the horse could not bear any weight. He began picking among the debris in search of something that might be used as a crutch.

“Now that I think of it,” Simon said thoughtfully, “This feels a bit like being inside a feeding circle myself. All those days in the dungeons, trapped in a cage. It was much more intense then, but this feels similar.”

“What do you make of it?” asked Jack.

Simon shrugged. Alice shook her head. Gilbert was busy re-arming himself and gathering supplies from among the fallen.

At length the Major began hobbling around the battlefield, gathering the remaining men and getting them on their feet. “So you’re off to the palace?” he asked as Alice and her friends began to leave.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Perhaps you should see to the Princess Sophie, if you still know her whereabouts.”

“She and Prince Leopold are held at the home of Brooks. The place is guarded by many men. Too many for our small group.” Alice then briefly explained the events of the previous evening.

Jack relented at this and let them go on their way.

“I don’t know!” Alice cried with exasperation. This was the fifth time Gilbert had asked what she planned to do when they reached Buckingham Palace.

They reached the palace at the end of a long road of destruction. Apparently the battle they witnessed was the first of many. They examined the dead as they moved, but it was rare for them to find any enemy casualties. At one point they found a skeleton that had been broken in half but not destroyed, and it had continued to crawl along the ground using its arms. Gilbert sat on it while Simon destroyed it with sorcery. They had to route around one area where firefighters were struggling to contain a blaze, and another street that had been thoroughly barricaded.

“It’s surprising we haven’t seen more fires,” Gilbert remarked.

“I think His Deceased Lordship was serious about wanting to spare the city. He could have burned half of it by now,” Alice replied.

When they arrived, they found a great sea of indecipherable chaos. There were cannons, soldiers, heaps of burning wreckage, and men running in all directions. The battle took place in the open fields directly east of the palace, although it frequently spilled over into the surrounding neighborhoods.

Northeast of the fighting they found a tall building that had been hastily abandoned. They slipped inside and made their way up onto the broad roof to get a better view of the proceedings. They found a safe vantage point among the blackened chimneys and observed in silence.

From above, the battle made much more sense. They could see a great harvest of dead strewn about the field. To the west were rows of Her Majesty’s forces, arrayed to deny access to the palace. These wore uniforms of red and blue, depending on rank and purpose. To the east were Mordaunt and his forces. The size of his retinue of undead soldiers seemed unchanged since they last saw it. To these were added a significant number of living forces. His living soldiers were dressed in grey. Both were greatly outnumbered by the Queen’s forces. In the firelight, it was very difficult to tell the two sides apart, except by how they behaved as they drew near one another.

“Our commanders keep falling for the same tricks again and again,” Gilbert muttered after watching quietly for half an hour. “See how Mordaunt sends in a group to challenge our lines? The men act like they’re bracing for a cavalry charge and form up tightly. As soon as they become a tight cluster, Mordant hurls fire at them. Then Mordaunt’s men… or skeletons… whatever his forces are, they feign to rout. Our men foolishly give chase. The enemy quickly turns to fight, and again our soldiers bunch up and are roasted en masse. These would be foolish tactics, even if we were facing a conventional army.” Gilbert growled bitterly.

Alice rested her chin in her hand, “The Major mentioned that some number of our officers defected. Perhaps this is the fruit of that betrayal. Our forces are left with inexperienced leaders.”

They watched helplessly as the battle dragged on towards morning.

“I feel so exhausted,” Simon said.

“As do I,” Alice agreed. “It’s the same tiredness we felt earlier. It’s unnatural.”

“I’ll bet our soldiers feel it as well,” Gilbert nodded. “That would explain why their movements are so sluggish.”

“And I’m sure this is all connected to our foe and his seemingly limitless supply of magical energy,” Alice said. “He’s found a way to take the might of our bodies and use it to fuel his own wizardry.”

The complexities of warfare were lost on Simon, who had wandered away from the others and was staring into the quiet streets north of the palace. He had said little since they left Major Stanway, and had spent a good bit of his time looking out over the city and muttering to himself.

Over the next hour Gilbert watched as their numerical superiority was eroded. Mordaunt was a patient general. He used wind, fire, and lightning sparingly, but to great effect.

“He’s trying to spare them,” Alice said tiredly. “Given his power, he could certainly rush in and set our forces ablaze in a few moments, just as he did to Jack’s men.”

“Maybe he’s simply trying to spare the palace,” Gilbert suggested.

“Perhaps,” Alice allowed.

Dawn approached, and the dark sky began to relent. A faint glimmer of light appeared in the east. Suddenly Mordaunt’s forces withdrew and gathered around him. The forces at his side and the forces defending the palace were now roughly the same size. Mordaunt strode out from his army, standing alone in the open field.

Some of the Queen’s men saw this opportunity and set to aiming one of their few remaining cannons.

“Don’t be foolish!” Gilbert said aloud.

A bolt of lightning struck the device. The men around it fell dead, and the wooden parts were set ablaze.

“Now my subjects,” Mordaunt spoke. The men shrank away at the sound of his voice, which was strong enough to reach even to Alice and her companions on the roof. “You have fought bravely. You have fought admirably and honorably. But the day is mine. Stand down, and you will be spared. Drop your weapons. Go to your homes. As your new king, I give you my solemn word that your former queen and her family will not be harmed.”

“He’s broken them,” Gilbert observed, even before the men began dropping their weapons. A few fought among themselves and some small skirmishes took place between the deserters and the steadfast, but these were over quickly.

“I wouldn’t have thought our own soldiers would surrender so quickly!” Alice said in disbelief.

“All of the brave men died outside the walls, along with the officers,” Gilbert said sadly. “It’s to their credit they fought as long as they did.”

“I didn’t expect you to be so forgiving,” Alice said.

“Being zealous and obstinate is what got me killed,” he said sadly.

He turned from the battle to see that Simon had shimmied up one of the chimney stacks and was looking out over the city.

“What are you doing?” Gilbert demanded.

Simon ignored him and slid back down to the roof. He walked over to a diagram that he’d been drawing on the cement.

“Three two three one-one” he repeated quietly as he drew three lines, left a gap for two more, drew three more lines, left another gap, and finished it off with another line. This process went on for several minutes.

Gilbert and Alice stood on either side of the diagram and examined it. The lines formed regular patterns. Some were parallel, some were at right angles, and others twisted about.

“Now, I’m not completely sure of these ones, Simon said, pointing to the far side of the map. I had to draw those from memory based on what we saw last night, and it was kind of hard to keep it straight in the confusion.”

“I take it these are streets?” Alice asked after some examination.

Simon seemed pleased by this. “Almost. This is all of the places where there are streetlights. You can see they’re not just in poor neighborhoods, or old neighborhoods, or near residences, or any other pattern that might make some kind of sense. Look what they form instead!”

“It’s just a bunch of lines,” Gilbert said flatly. “If Alice hadn’t said they were streets I would have guessed it was just random nonsense.”

“I don’t see a pattern either, I’m afraid,” she admitted.

“Come over to this side and look at it right-side up. You’re looking at it from the north,” Simon suggested.

“No. Still nonsense,” Gilbert said, slightly annoyed that he seemed to be missing the joke.

Alice shook her head.

“Maybe this will help,” Simon grinned, and he began to draw faint dashed lines to connect groups of streets. Eventually Gilbert became bored with the exercise and began to pace.

“A feeding circle!” Alice shouted. “I see it now!”

Gilbert returned and looked at the diagram, which had begun to look like one of those creepy summoning circles. “So they built a sorcery thing with streetlights?” He asked impatiently.

“Not the streetlights. It’s made of copper cables. The streetlights were just an excuse to bury the cables,” Alice whispered in amazement.

“So Mordaunt will lose his powers when you turn the lights off?” Gilbert asked hopefully.

Alice sighed. “No. The lights and electricity are irrelevant. This circle is like any other, except it’s written in copper.”

“And the size of a city,” Gilbert said.

“And that,” she agreed.

“So there’s a circle around the whole city, and all of us are in it?”

Simon nodded.

“So why haven’t we all shriveled up? Or why haven’t you, since I seem to be immune?”

Alice made a grand gesture over the city, “Because there are over three million people in the city. He’s only taking a little bit from each of us.”

“I guess that explains why he would want to avoid casualties. The more people there are, the stronger he is,” Simon exclaimed.

“So then we need to find a pickaxe?” suggested Gilbert.

Alice and Simon looked at each other and thought for a moment. “That would take a lot of digging, wouldn’t it?” said Simon.

“Yes,” agreed Alice. Then she explained to Gilbert, “Once a circle is established – once it’s doing whatever it was designed to do – the magic is fairly stable. You can’t stop it by just erasing a couple of corners from a letter.”

“You would need to remove
several
letters,” Simon said firmly. “We did experiments specifically to test just how much of a circle you must erase before it’s nullified. I suppose those experiments were part of this plan, even all those years ago.”

“I’m sure this plan goes back longer than that. This plot is probably older than any of us.”

Gilbert looked at Simon’s map. “So to break this thing we would need to dig up a mile or so of London streets?”

“Without being discovered by anyone loyal to the new king,” added Alice.

“What if we removed them by tunneling?” Gilbert asked in a voice that indicated that he thought he was being clever.

“Tunneling that distance, at such a shallow depth? Without giving yourself away to anyone on the surface? That endeavor would take ages, and I’m sure someone would notice that the lights were out before you made much headway.”

Gilbert let out a slow breath, the kind that always gave Simon the shivers. “This is absurd! The most dangerous wizard in history is held in power by a length of copper cable?”

“A copper cable that was installed by hundreds of men over the course of several years,” Alice reminded him.

“This means Mordaunt will be powerless outside the city!” Simon exclaimed.

“That’s a good point,” Alice said. “Although I doubt he was planning on leaving the city to begin with. He has London. What would we do? Evacuate three million people and move them to another city?”

They fell quiet at this, each of them trying to imagine various scenarios and how their enemy might respond.