Carpe Jugulum

pointy hat,” said Piotr. “Did you put a spell on them?”
    “I—I don’t know. I really don’t.” And then natural honesty met witchcraft. One aspect of witchcraft is the craftiness, and it’s seldom unwise to take the credit for unexplained but fortuitous events. “I may have done,” she added.
    “Well, we’re going after them,” said Piotr.
    “Won’t they have got well away?”
    “ We can cut through the woods.”

Blood tinted the rain that ran off the wound on Jason Ogg’s shoulder. He dabbed at it with a cloth.
    “Reckon I’ll be hammerin’ left-handed for a week or two,” he said, wincing.
    “They got very good fields of fire,” said Shawn, who had taken refuge behind the beer barrel used so recently to wet the baby’s head. “I mean, it’s a castle . A frontal attack simply won’t work.”
    He sighed, and shielded his guttering candle to keep the wind from blowing it out. They’re tried a frontal attack nevertheless, and the only reason no one had been killed was that the drink seemed to be flowing freely within the keep. As it was, one or two people would be limping for a while. Then they’d tried what Jason persisted in referring to as a backal attack, but there were arrow slots even over the kitchens. One man creeping up to the walls very slowly—a sidle attack, as Shawn had thought of it—had worked, but since all the doors were very solidly barred this had just meant that he’d stood there feeling like a fool.
    He was trying to find some help in the ancient military journals of General Tacticus, whose intelligent campaigning had been so successful that he’d lent his very name to the detailed prosecution of martial endeavor, and had actually found a section headed What to Do If One Army Occupies a Well-fortified and Superior Ground and the Other Does Not, but since the first sentence read “Endeavor to be the one inside” he’d rather lost heart.
    The rest of the Lancre militia cowered behind buttresses and upturned carts, waiting for him to lead them.
    There was a respectful clang as Big Jim Beef, who was acting as cover for two other part-time soldiers, saluted his commander.
    “I reckon,” he ventured, “dat it we got big fire’s goin’ in frun’ of the doors we could smoke dem out.”
    “Good idea,” said Jason.
    “That’s the King’s door,” Shawn protested. “He’s already been a bit sharp with me for not cleaning the privy pit this week—”
    “He can send Mum the bill.”
    “That’s seditious talk, Jason! I could have you arr—I could arr—Mum would have something to say about you talking like that!”
    “Where is the King, anyway?” said Darren Ogg. “Sittin’ back and lettin’ Mum sort everything out while we get shot at?”
    “You know he’s got a weak chest,” said Shawn. “He does very well considering he—”
    He stopped as a sound rolled out across the countryside. It had a hoarse, primal quality, the sound of an animal who is in pain but who also intends to pass it on as soon as possible. The men looked around nervously.
    Verence came thundering through the gates. Shawn recognized him only by the embroidery on his nightshirt and his fluffy slippers. He held a long sword over his head in both hands and was running straight for the door of the keep, trailing a scream behind him.
    The sword struck the wood. Shawn heard the whole door shudder.
    “He’s gone mad!” shouted Darren. “Let’s grab the poor creature before he gets shot!”
    A couple of them scurried across to the struggling King, who was standing horizontally on the door in an effort to get the sword out.
    “Now, see here, your maj—Aargh!”
    “Ach, tak a faceful o’heid!”
    Darren staggered back, clutching at his face.
    Little shapes swarmed across the courtyard after the King, like some kind of plague.
    “Gibbins!”
    “Fackle!”
    “Nac mac Feegle!”
    There was another scream as Jason, trying to restrain his monarch’s enthusiasm, found that while the touch of a monarch may indeed cure certain scalp conditions, the scalp of a king itself is capable of spreading someone’s nose into an interesting flat shape.
    Arrows thudded into the ground around them.
    Shawn grabbed Big Jim. “They’re all going to get shot, drink or not!” he shouted above the din. “You come with me!”
    “What we gonna do?”
    “Clean the privies!”
    The troll scuttled after him as he edged his way around the keep, to where the Gong Tower loomed against the night in