Chapter 10

Finally, the King's men began to move after the ground had dried out about the middle of May. It was laughable that there were so many men in the force advancing on us. There were approximately 20,000 men in the army, and they were continually getting in each others' way. There had been no need for such a force of arms in over 50 years, and none of the King's men really knew how to handle that many men. However, they did make a splendid looking force when they finally marched out of King's Home and headed our way.

I thought I would try an experiment and let the army get a day's march from King's Home. They were encamped and settled down for the night before I acted. I simply transported the contents of each supply wagon to Waterfall Keep and stored it in one of the normally unused chambers. None of the King's men were going to find the food and fodder there, so we already had enough supplies to carry us through a long siege. Correspondingly, the King's army had nothing, and I could hardly wait to see what they did about that.

The theft was not discovered until the next morning, and disorder turned into chaos as the officers tried to find the missing supplies. They were only about 10 miles from King's Home, and well within the neighborhood controlled by the King. Well, there was no way that 20,000 men were going hungry in productive farm country, so details were sent out from the column to scavenge for food and fodder. Naturally, the locals objected, and, naturally, there were soon some dead locals.

The details came back to the camp with adequate food and fodder, but the report was that there was nothing left in this sector to confiscate, so the army was going to have to move. Very well, they would move, but where? It would be foolish to continue on their way because they would have to strip the countryside as they traveled, and the King could not stand for that if he wanted to remain as King.

The only other option was to travel back to their base in King's Home and hope that enough food and fodder could be found to keep the soldiers happy. Nobody worried much about the animals, but that was foolishness on the face of it. The army could not move without the draft animals, but it might take days for that to dawn on anybody in authority.

When the word of the theft reached the King, it also reached the wizards. They knew immediately how the supplies had disappeared, and they shook in fear of what that implied. The wizard at Waterfall Keep was growing very strong very fast. Could they destroy him in time? Their only option was to maintain a watch over the column as it moved out this time, and to try to prevent any further theft of the critical supplies.

We had a good laugh at the reactions of the King's men to the theft, but that was the end of it as far as I was concerned. I had played a practical joke that had paid off handsomely for us, but it made very little ultimate difference in the King's plans. I would not steal any more of the King's supplies until the army reached Waterfall Keep. At that point, it would be nearly impossible to resupply the army, and it would probably dissolve as the soldiers got hungry.

I was not worried about Blakeslee Keep because it was practically abandoned. However, there was a problem for Springfeld Keep because my father was operating as he normally did. He had at least 400 people who depended on him, and I was afraid of what would happen when the King's army ran wild. I jumped to Springfeld Keep to discuss the situation with him.

There would be no problem in getting his people to retreat to the Keep, but he had no way to feed that many people. Furthermore, he could not protect that number of people from even 10% of the King's army. A battle of 2,000 against 400, a large proportion of which were children, could go only one way. I offered to transport all of his people temporarily to Waterfall Keep, but Father was not sure of how many would be willing to move. People can be very stupid, even when their lives depend on making the proper choice.

Father asked me if, now that I was a wizard, I could put a fence of some type around Springfeld Keep that would keep the unwanted people out. I said that I did not have an immediate answer, but I would look into it. I asked him what he would do if I could not come up with a suitable barrier. He said that he would move as many people as he could, but he was pretty sure that at least 25% would want to stay where they were. Many people were so wedded to their present homes that he doubted that mere words had a chance of getting them to move. I shook my head in sorrow, but I jumped back to Waterfall Keep without a satisfactory plan.

I talked over the need for a wall with Granny Eltman, but she did not have any useful suggestions. She agreed that a solution should be available, but she did not know what it was. She did propose that I work on the idea whenever I had time, but she had little hope that I could solve the problem in the available time. That was the first time that I really wished for a wizard mentor, but I did not know of a specific thing that I could do about it.

Well, it took a month to get the King's army ready to move again, and it nearly bankrupted the King's treasury. Some of the replacement supplies had to come from great distances, and that drove the prices even higher. Nevertheless, the army was ready at last, and it set out with a little better organization than it had the first time. I guess the practice helped.

Out of curiosity, I investigated what the wizards had done to protect the supplies. When I got fairly close, I found a great dome of some sort of energy over the camp where the supplies were parked. I wanted to know what sort of energy was in that dome, so I transported a rock from the ground to a spot in the air over the dome. I released the rock and let it fall onto the dome.

The rock landed and there was a brilliant white light released the moment it touched the dome. The only forces that I was familiar with were fire, electricity, and cold, so I assumed that it was electricity that was released by the rock when it struck the dome. I could fight electricity, but it was not easy, so I did not push my luck.

I wanted to see how much of a barrier the dome was to my magic, so I tipped over one of the wagons. That was so easy that I did not detect any barrier to my magic. I hoped that was the best that the wizards could do, because, if it were, then I would not have much trouble when it came time to fight them. I did think that the dome was not a very good idea since anything flying through the air would trigger it. At that moment, I saw a bat fly into the dome, and it was destroyed just as the rock had been. Well, that was enough. I went home to bed with my wife.

It occurred to me on my way home that there should be an interesting and amusing display if that dome was ever caught in a rainstorm. That triggered the thought that the dome might be destroyed if enough water was dumped onto it all at once. I will try to remember to discuss that with Granny Eltman in the morning. It did occur to me that the electric dome was really useless against me: I could easily transport things or people in or out of the enclosed area without ever impinging on the dome. Did the wizards know that? I was back to the question of just how smart were those guys? Well their ignorance was a help to me, so I hoped that it continued.

The next morning, I asked Granny Eltman for her opinion about dumping water on the electric dome. As soon as I asked the question, I worried for Granny Eltman's health. She laughed so hard at the thought that I had to catch her before she fell on the floor. She did admit that she did not know the answer to my question, but she would like to see the experiment performed. Well, we would have to save that one for later, if at all.

The King's army made its long, but inexorable, journey toward Waterfall Keep. At first, I thought of attacking the column before it reached us, but I was afraid that might give away too much information about my new abilities. Therefore, I just sat back and waited for the army to come to us.

One possible attack on the column had occurred to me: transporting enough dirt away from under the column so that it would just disappear into a deep trench. I could dump the dirt that came from the hole back in on top of the soldiers and let them suffocate. I really was not very happy with that idea because of the harmless draft animals that would be killed. Any humans with the column were there because they wanted to be, but the animals had no such choice. I set that idea aside until it became my only choice.