He had no idea how it worked. A casual inkling in his mind commanded his muscles to stretch forward, every time, with no sensation of any interaction between cause and effect. The more he tried to study it, the more it became unknowable, like a word repeated too many times until it became gibberish. He wondered if the same was true with power. If King Richard was aware at all of the sequence of events that followed his every command, or if he simply thought things and then waited for the world to inevitably bend.

Richard was in a whimsical mood, despite another day of less-than-whimsical news. Leave it to a king to assume he can do the impossible. They had advanced their camp along with a dozen trebuchets, but they might as well have had none. With each stone thrown, the very earth worked against them—shifting the machine’s trajectory so they could not concentrate on a single point. The city’s walls were thicker and harder than anticipated, while the rocks they launched often shattered harmlessly to dust upon impact. For two weeks straight their strategy had failed miserably, and showed no signs of changing. The only advantage of failure was that they had yet to draw steel even once against the Saracens, which would hopefully give enough time for the replacement weapons to arrive. But the King was not infuriated by any of this, he seemed to find each day’s disappointment to be another chapter in an increasingly hilarious tale that only he could read.

“Alright. You’re the funny one,” William nudged Robin’s ribs, “why is he laughing?”

Robin raised a grim eyebrow. “How am I the funny one?”

“Solid point.” William nodded. “I’ll correct. You’re the one who thinks he’s funny.”

Robin’s head wobbled back and forth in consideration. “Thank you. And I have no idea.”

They watched the King silently for a bit, as he pointed at apparently random positions on a map with his retinue of lords, his fairweather war council. William might normally impose himself into their debate, but he suspected the correct strategy was, as every other army had already discovered, to sulk back home in defeat. So he lingered at the back with Robin, sniping comments under their breath. “He knows he’s not the first person to try to capture this city, yes?”

“I don’t think he knows that, no,” Robin answered.

“Do you suppose he could return to England and just tell everyone he won the war? Do you think anyone’s really going to check?”

“You’re right.” Robin blinked. “I’m the funny one.”

William watched the lords debate and strategize, each far more eager to be heard than to be right. Their ideas were as useless as the swords sitting at the bottom of the Mediterranean. William instead watched Richard, detached, no longer interested in opinions.

“You said those weapons would be here by now,” William whispered.