The Miracle Workers by Jack Vance

Author:Jack Vance
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Astounding Science Fiction, July 1958
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Lord Faide ordered a muster. Of the original war party, less than two-thirds remained. Lord Faide shook his head bitterly. Galling to think how easily he had been led into a trap! He swung on his heel, strode to the rear of the column, to the wagons of the magicians. The jinxmen sat around a small fire, drinking tea. “Which of you will hoodoo these white forest vermin? I want them dead—stricken with sickness, cramps, blindness, the most painful afflictions you can contrive!”

There was general silence. The jinxmen sipped their tea.

“Well?” demanded Lord Faide. “Have you no answer? Do I not make myself plain?”

Hein Huss cleared his throat, spat into the blaze. “Your wishes are plain. Unfortunately we cannot hoodoo the First Folk.”

“And why?”

“There are technical reasons.”

Lord Faide knew the futility of argument. “Must we slink home around the forest? If you cannot hoodoo the First Folk, then bring out your demons! I will march on the forest and chop out a path with my sword!”

“It is not for me to suggest tactics,” grumbled Hein Huss.

“Go on, speak! I will listen.”

“A suggestion has been put to me, which I will pass to you. Neither I nor the other jinxmen associate ourselves with it, since it recommends the crudest of physical principles.”

“I await the suggestion,” said Lord Faide.

“It is merely this. One of my apprentices tampered with your car, as you may remember.”

“Yes, and I will see he gets the hiding he deserves.”

“By some freak he caused the car to rise high into the air. The suggestion is this: that we load the car with as much oil as the baggage train affords, that we send the car aloft and let it drift over the planting. At a suitable moment, the occupant of the car will pour the oil over the trees, then hurl down a torch. The forest will burn. The First Folk will be at least discomfited; at best a large number will be destroyed.”

Lord Faide slapped his hands together. “Excellent! Quickly, to work!” He called a dozen soldiers, gave them orders; four kegs of cooking oil, three buckets of pitch, six demijohns of spirit were brought and lifted into the car. The engines grated and protested, and the car sagged almost to the moss.

Lord Faide shook his head sadly. “A rude use of the relic, but all in good purpose. Now, where is that apprentice? He must indicate which switches and which buttons he turned.”

“I suggest,” said Hein Huss, “that Sam Salazar be sent up with the car.”

Lord Faide looked sidewise at Sam Salazar’s round, bland countenance. “An efficient hand is needed, a seasoned judgment. I wonder if he can be trusted?”

“I would think so,” said Hein Huss, “inasmuch as it was Sam Salazar who evolved the scheme in the first place.”

“Very well. In with you, Apprentice! Treat my car with reverence! The wind blows away from us; fire this edge of the forest, in as long a strip as you can manage. The torch, where is the torch?”

The torch was brought and secured to the side of the car.

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