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 all its odiferous splendor. It was the bane of Shawn’s life. All the keep’s garderobes discharged into it. One of his jobs was to clean it out and take the contents to the pits in the gardens where Verence’s efforts at composting were gradually turning them into, well, Lancre.* But now that the castle was a lot busier than it used to be his weekly efforts with shovel and wheelbarrow weren’t the peaceful and solitary interludes they had been. Of course he’d let the job sort of…pile up these last few weeks, but did they expect him to do everything?

He waved Big Jim toward the door at the bottom of the tower. Fortunately, trolls have not much interest in organic odors, although they can easily distinguish types of limestone by smell.

“I want you to open it when I say,” he said, tearing a strip off his shirt and wrapping it around an arrow. He searched his pockets for a match. “And when you’ve opened the door,” he went on, as the cloth caught, “I want you to run away very, very fast, right? Okay…open the door!”

Big Jim pulled at the handle. There was a very faint whoosh as the door swung back.

“Run!” Shawn shouted. He drew back the bowstring, and fired through the doorway.

The flaming arrow vanished into the noisome darkness. There was a pause of a few heartbeats. Then the tower exploded.

It happened quite slowly. The green-blue light mushroomed up from story to story in an almost leisurely way, blowing out stones at every level to give the tower a nice sparkling effect. The roofing leads opened up like a daisy. A faint flame speared the clouds. Then time, sound and motion came back with a thump.

After a few seconds the main doors burst open and the soldiers ran out. The first one was smacked between the eyes by a ballistic king.

Shawn had just started to run back to the fight when someone landed on his shoulders, bearing him to the ground.

“Well, well, one of the toy soldiers,” sneered Corporal Svitz, leaping up and drawing his sword.

As he raised it Shawn rolled and struck upward with the Lancrastian Peace-time Army Knife. He might have had time to select the Device for DFissecting Paradoxes, or the Appli-ance for Detecting Small Grains of Hope, or the Spiral Thing for Ascertaining the Reality of Being, but as it happened it was the Instrument for Ending Arguments Very Quickly that won the day.

Presently, there came a short sharp shower of soft rain.

Well…certainly a shower.

Definitely soft, anyway.