While he was packing, and on the walk to the castle, he asked the herald more questions, and got more of an explanation of just what was going on.
It seems that the exact reason for the invasion was not entirely clear to the Mreghonians, but it appeared to have something to do with an insult the Mreghonian king, Kelder the First, had unintentionally directed at the king of Lassuron, a surly fellow by the name of Bardec who had a reputation for turning every little incident into a war, and who had thus enlarged Lassuron considerably at the expense of its neighbors — such as tiny Mreghon.
Although the insult was completely inadvertent, King Bardec had chosen to take umbrage — he had probably been looking for an excuse. He had led an army of some four hundred men into Mreghon, marching them through the peaceful countryside, burning farmhouses and trampling crops and in general making life very unpleasant for the citizenry.
The year had already been a bad one for the Mreghonians, as the wizard well knew. Some quirk of the weather had cursed the kingdom with a veritable plague of gnats and mosquitoes, the crops had been poor, several wells had gone dry at midsummer, and then a few sixnights later heavy rains had caused flooding along the little river that trickled through Mreghon on its way to the Gulf of the East.
After all this, most people were not really surprised by the attack. As everyone knows, bad luck often comes in streaks. Some people had wondered if they had offended some god or other, but most just put it down to chance and accepted it as another nuisance to be tolerated.
To some, it was rather more than just a nuisance. Naturally, King Kelder was quite upset by the invasion. The kingdom had been at peace for years, and the minuscule standing army was out of shape, out of practice — and out building levees against the floods.
Even in the best of times, the Mreghonian army was probably no match for King Bardec’s force, and as it stood, defeat had appeared certain. From King Kelder’s point of view that was completely unacceptable; King Bardec had announced that his honor had been impugned by poor Kelder, and that only a direct personal duel to the death between the two monarchs would satisfy him. As Bardec was young, fit, and famous for his skill with a broadsword, while Kelder was aging, fat, lazy, and inept, this was the same as stating that he intended to kill the Mreghonian king.
Ordinarily, the Small Kingdoms being as small as they are, King Bardec and his army could have reached King Kelder’s castle in a few hours’ march, and the war would have been over within a day. In this particular case, however, Mreghon was blessed with an ally. Serem of Fileia was the father of the current queen of Mreghon, and did not care to see his daughter widowed. He had distracted King Bardec with elaborate diplomatic maneuvers that had been ultimately unfruitful, but which had gotten the Lassuronian army marched off in entirely the wrong direction for a day or two as an honor guard for the ceremonies.
King Kelder had taken this respite as an opportunity to review his situation, and to realize just how pitiful his defenses were. He saw plainly that if he wanted to survive, he had to find some way to defeat King Bardec without an army. Obviously, that would take a miracle — and that meant magic.
Accordingly, King Kelder had sent messengers out, and posted proclamations, and did everything he could to locate and gather every magician in Mreghon. When they had been located, he summoned one and all, however powerful or puny, to his castle.
And that, of course, included this frog wizard.
The wizard had been staying inside lately, because of the mosquitoes, and had missed all news of the invasion — until now.
He really did not want to be involved in a war, but he did not see any practical way to back out, so he went along with the herald without any serious argument.
It was a beautiful sunny day, and the worst of the summer’s heat had passed, leaving a gentle breeze that blew the clouds about like gamboling sheep, but the frog wizard was unable to enjoy any of it while worrying about what lay ahead.
Soon enough they reached the royal castle, and hurried across the drawbridge into the great hall, where the wizard was introduced around, checked off a long list of magicians who were expected, and then generally made welcome by the castle staff.
He wanted none of this welcome. He promptly found a quiet corner and did his best to stay there, out of the way, while the messengers and heralds brought in magician after magician — witches, sorcerers, wizards, magicians of every sort.
The frog wizard recognized several of them, while others were total strangers, but he said nothing to any of them. He just sat and watched them arrive — and they kept on coming, and coming, and coming.
He was quite amazed. Really, he had had no idea that there were so
Throughout that two days the frog wizard generally stayed in his corner, trying hard to be inconspicuous, and succeeding, for the most part. He slept on a mat in a magicians’ barracks that had been improvised in a gallery, and he ate the bread and cheese and ale that the castle servants distributed three times a day, but other than that he simply sat quietly and watched and waited.
On the third day the magicians stopped coming. Instead, the invaders appeared and surrounded the castle.
By this time, though, the castle was full of magicians, dozens of magicians, magicians of every description, marching about and boasting of their prowess.
King Bardec’s army arrived at the castle about midday and, as expected, found the drawbridge up and the battlements manned — they had no way of knowing that the defenders were the castle servants, rather than soldiers, nor that the place was crammed with magicians.
The invaders spread out and settled in for a proper siege, setting up tents and pavilions, bringing up a battering ram, and so forth.
Meanwhile, inside the castle, the magicians were milling about, unsure just what was expected of them. After the initial round of silly boasting, most of them found they had little to say to one another, and nothing at all to do.
Around sunset King Kelder finally appeared in the great hall, in his best royal robes and wearing his crown, and announced to the gathered magicians that they were to use whatever magic they had at their disposal to destroy the besieging forces.
“When?” someone called from the crowd.
“Right now,” the king replied, smiling. He waved a dismissal, and retreated to his apartments.
The magicians looked at each other, shrugged, and began making magic, each after his or her own fashion.
The noted sorceress Rudhira the Red, for example, brewed up lightning in a kitchen cauldron, balls of crackling blue-white lightning that hissed and spattered sparks across the floor while they waited to be flung at a target.
The demonologist Kirame of the Blue Hand etched a pentagram on an anteroom floor with blue chalk, and set about summoning a few cooperative demons.
A wizard named Kalthen the Fat found his way up the the battlements, where he began chanting a long, complicated spell intended to draw the floodwaters up from the river and wash the invaders away in a great wave.
Another wizard, Sancha the Foul, collected assorted leavings from the kitchen midden, sat down in the courtyard, and began assembling and animating homunculi, nasty little man-shaped creatures the size of your hand that he said would sneak out of the castle and torment the enemy with poisoned hatpins and whispered curses.
And all the various others set about their various fearsome magicks, while the poor little frog wizard just sat there in his corner, looking scared and nervous.
Amid all that terrible magic, it certainly looked as if King Bardec’s army were doomed. The frog wizard saw no need to get involved.
But then things began to go wrong.
Kalthen’s great wave swept up from the river just as Rudhira’s lightnings spilled out of the castle, and the two collided with a great hissing roar; the water put out the fire, while the fire boiled the water away into steam,
