Wizards (23 page)

Chapter Eleven
: Witches of Barren

I
t was late afternoon on the day of Wickers Eve. Here in Wales it was nothing of the sort, but it was the last chance I had to rescue the children staked out in a corral in Barren's town square. I looked critically at my image in the mirror.

Jenny had been to the theatrical store in town and found me clothes that would be inconspicuous in Barren. Over the last two days, we had visited the outskirts of the town several times and spied from the same hill where I left Tyden to fend for himself. Against my better judgment, but at the strong insistence of Jenny, I had brought Bronwyn with us.

Using Jenny's father's field glasses, we discovered that each of those imprisoned in the corral were chained to iron spikes driven deep into the ground. The prisoners had just enough chain to reach the trough set out for them to relive themselves and to drink from a bucket of water next to it. Bronwyn vomited when she saw how the children were treated. This was where she would have ended up if we hadn't rescued her.

The chains the children wore were going to cause me problems. I needed to free the children before I could hop them to Salice. There were significant limits on my ability to transport people across the multiverse and I couldn't bring along the ground they were standing on.

An added problem was the sheer number of children to rescue. When I first looked, there were less than a dozen young people in the corral. There had been enough room between them for me to mistake them for piles of clothes. I could never have made that mistake now because the corral was crowded with prisoners. They were impossible to count from our position on the hill, but there couldn't have been less than thirty children in the corral. It was possible there were forty or fifty.

I'd been practicing my ability to create a shield, basing it on the one Wizard Plath used. I used it once before when I shielded myself from arrows. That was easy to create as the shield only existed in one direction and there was nothing in the way.

Back in Wales, I found it difficult to put a circular shield around me and still be able to move. I kept walking into the damned thing and squashing my nose. I didn't want to trap the witches I was trying to save, so I practiced creating the shield with precision. I was beginning to appreciate why Plath made the damned thing glow. It allowed him to see where it was.

Jenny was highly critical of my plan and I knew she had a point. The trouble was I couldn't think of anything better. In essence, I was going to hop into the corral to free the witches by magically cutting their chains. When I freed as many of them as I could hop at one time, I was going to hop them to Salice and then go back to rescue some more.

With a little luck, the people of Barren would be too busy feasting and shouting 'death to witches' to notice what was going on until I had most of the children away. When they noticed, they would try and stop me. Most of the men carried bows as well as swords and knives, which is why I needed to get my shield working.

"What's to stop them killing the girl's you don't rescue on the first trip?" Bronwyn asked.

"They're going to kill them anyway if I don't rescue them. At least this way they have a chance," I said. Truth was, that was a weak answer and I saw contempt in Bronwyn's eyes.

We talked about other possibilities, such as me putting everyone in the town to sleep. I just didn't believe I had the power to do it. After a lot of pointless discussion in which I repeatedly told Jenny she wasn't coming with me, she suggested I should cast a spell to get the crowd to ignore what was going on in the corral. Some of my powers act like hypnosis and there was no doubt this was a brilliant idea. Sending a calming message to those in the corral before I started to free them was also a sensible suggestion. It was Bronwyn who thought of that one.

There was no point in putting things off any longer, so I hopped to the hill outside Barren. Barren was a little ahead of Wales in terms of time of day and it was nearly dark there. The town square was lit with torches and packed with people. The stage had men gesticulating on it. Even from the hill, I heard the ugly sound of shouted words of hate, echoed by the frightening rumble of voices that comes from a mob stirred into lusting for blood.

I must admit I gulped and found myself having second and even third thoughts. How could I have thought I was going to get away with it? The whole plan was little better than insane. Somehow I managed to quell my doubts enough to act.

I hopped to an alley just outside the square and joined the mob. Slowly but surely I pushed and shoved my way to the corral. My initial idea had been to hop to the witches, but as the numbers of prisoners increased that became a bad idea.

"The witches will be cleansed in flame!" the man on the platform screamed. I could feel the power in his voice. This was a man who believed in his mission with holy fervor. "Their cries of pain will enrich our souls and destroy their evil. For is there not evil in every female heart and even more to be found between their lusting legs? We men are not made of stone and we must do what is right whatever the cost. This is for these demons’ own good."

"Yeah, right," I muttered to myself. I didn't see any of these men volunteering to be burnt along with their children. Then I remembered there was something else I should be doing. I started to chant under my breath. "Nothing is happening in the corral" over and over.

The guard with the sword didn't notice me as I climbed over the small wooden fence into the corral. He looked straight at me and I saw the mist in his eyes. My chant seemed to be working for the moment. I made the decision to start from the back of the prisoners and I changed the chant slightly, "Be calm, trust the stranger," in between "Nothing is happening in the corral". It was a bit like singing different parts in a choir and that skill is built into every Welsh boy's genes.

Despite my chants, the first girl I freed stared at me in terror. I put my finger to my lips and indicated she should follow me. Her face was thin with starvation and her eyes black rimmed from lack of sleep. Feed her up and let her sleep and she would be indistinguishable from any child in Wales. She couldn't have been more than twelve years old.

Breaking the chains required a lot of magical power and I felt myself begin to weaken as I cut chain after chain. I remembered an English lesson where the teacher read a story where magic was no good against iron. Whoever wrote that had probably met a real wizard. I should have brought a pair of bolt cutters with me, but that lesson would have to wait for another day and another battlefield.

The ranting on the stage continued on as I cut the tenth chain and got the freed children to place a hand on my body and their other hand on the person to their left. Then I hopped them to Salice.

Nine girls and one boy fell to the grass in the courtyard. I joined them a moment later. Apparently, hopping large amounts of iron also takes it out of you and I'd been cutting the children's chains close to the spikes. I'd know better next time.

"Is this all of them?" Esmeralda asked. She must have been waiting in the courtyard to get to me so fast.

"Less than a third of them. Move this lot away when I leave so I can bring the next group into the same place."

"You look exhausted, Jake."

"Cutting and hopping iron," I muttered in explanation.

"Idiot!" was her less than sympathetic reply. I couldn't think why she was so determined to marry me, given she never had a positive word to say about me.

I hopped back into the corral and promptly fell over one of the girls. Those in the pen had realized I was rescuing them in stages and spread out to make it look less obvious. However, despite their best efforts somebody must have noticed something, because the ranting from the stage had stopped.

"They're trying to escape. Kill them!" the same ugly voice that had been spewing hate shouted.

I concentrated and a ring of light formed around the corral. It was like a massive halo a couple of feet thick and it rose vertically to form a cylinder thirty or forty feet high. Two guards got caught in the light and I watched them stiffen. I created the shield in the nick of time as I saw arrow after arrow become embedded in it.

"I need to free you all quickly," I shouted at the panicked children. "You must hold out your leg so I can see the chain clearly."

Some of the children fell over in their eagerness to stick their feet out. The chains were fastened at their ankles. Most of the ankles I saw dripped with blood and were badly bruised from chaffing against the crude iron bracelets the chains were linked to.

This time I broke the chains at the link and the bracelets fell away. This took much less power than breaking the much thicker link at the other end. I felt like a moron for not having thought of doing it that way earlier.

The crowd surged against my barrier of light, smashing their swords and knives against it repeatedly.

"Get a battering ram. We must force them to use up their demonic power."

The voice was that of Mr. Religious-Nut, as I'd christened the raving lunatic on the stage. It seemed he actually knew something about magic, because that technique would work, given time. I had to make sure they didn't get the time.

It seemed to take hours to remove the chains. One or two of the children were too weak with hunger to move, and I walked carefully around the corral making sure that every single child was free. I explained to the children we were going to hop as a group out to a place where they would be cared for and where nobody ever burnt witches. Many of them looked at me dubiously, but they went along with it. After all, what choice did they have?

The children formed a circle around me. Those too weak to stand were placed on the ground by my feet and I pulled up my trousers so that they could touch my legs. I'd done a head count and there were twenty-six of them in total.

"Hold on," I shouted and tried to hop. We stayed exactly where we were. There were too many of them. I couldn't take them all in one hop.

The effort of trying to hop them left me dripping with sweat. I told the children to let go for now, as I tried to think what to do next. I felt a blow like someone hit me in the stomach and lifted my eyes to see a massive battering-ram had just hit my shield.

The ram was a tree trunk eighteen inches in diameter and yards long with what looked like leather straps on both sides. At least fifty people wielded it. They retreated and charged at the barrier. I was prepared for the impact the second time and it didn't wind me. It still hurt though.

For the first time since I put up the barrier I looked at the two guards I had trapped within it. Blue black faces with tongues sticking out and empty staring eyes greeted me. I had killed them, probably by making it impossible for them to breathe. They still stood in position though. Unable to fall to the ground while my barrier held them, their eyes fixed accusingly on me, for all they were dead.

If I only took some of the children with me we could hop away. However, the barrier would collapse the instant I left and these madmen would kill the rest of them. If I waited too long, the ram would exhaust my power and I'd die along with the children. I had little magical power left. I knew I didn't have the power to turn the ground to marsh as I did in Salice.

"Are we going to die?" a little girl asked. I looked up and saw a sea of anxious eyes looking at me, waiting to hear my answer.

Before I could think of an answer, one of the girls saved me the trouble.

"He cannot take us all with him at once."

"I can probably take half of you," I admitted reluctantly. These were not words I wanted to say to the desperate faces around me. "As soon as I go the shield will vanish."

The girl who spoke looked around and picked up a length of chain lying on the ground. She swung it experimentally, the iron manacle on its end whistled through the air. Despite the fact the chain was tied to the stake, there was enough of it available to make a formidable weapon.

"The older ones will stay. Take the young ones and the ones too weak to fight back. These men will suffer for those they kill."

"I'll come back as quickly as possible. My name's Jake, by the way."

"I am Urda," the girl said. She looked to be about fifteen and fifty at the same time if you know what I mean. I admired her courage. If I'd been in the same position, I'm sure I would have been begging to be saved rather than getting ready to fight.

Urda picked out the girls with some fight still left in them and stood them in a line in front of us, giving each a length of chain. The girls swung the chains experimentally, getting the feel of them.

The men outside the barrier were lining up for yet another charge with the battering ram. I had already decided I would stay until they hit the barrier again. What we needed was some kind of diversion.

As if in answer to my unspoken prayer, an explosion of flame came from the far side of the square. One of the buildings was ablaze with fire shooting out of its windows. The men wielding the battering ram faltered and the crowd turned to see what was happening. A second explosion followed the first and a building three away from the one burning went up like a torch. It lit up the square.