by David Drake
"Well, he did say it! And I reckon he said it true, as he always said true. And anyhow, who are you to talk who falls asleep with his face in his porridge most nights if his daughter don't grab him quick, hey?" "Fellows, don't bump Lady Tenoctris, if you please," Cashel said, moving forward to crowd the old men away without having to touch them. He rotated his quarterstaff, bringing it across at an angle in front of him to make the same point as his words. "If you're going to argue, it'd be good if you went off a ways to do it." The men scattered like songbirds when a falcon strikes. Hareth and Rebben jumped to the same place, collided, and fell in a tangle with high-pitched cries. Cashel grimaced and put himself between Tenoctris and the men thrashing nearby. He'd been clumsy and almost caused what he'd been trying to prevent: one of the old fellows bumping Tenoctris into the pool. That hadn't happened though. Tenoctris walked past with a pert expression, avoiding the men on the ground with the same careless unconcern as she did the muddy patch from the overflow pipe.
"I'm sure this is the place," the old wizard said cheerfully to Cashel, who followed her back to the circle she'd scribed beside the bank. "All I could tell from the spell I worked back in the palace is that the site would become important. I hope I can learn more now that I'm here." She settled herself cross-legged, facing the figure. She'd written things both inside and outside the circle, but Cashel could no more read the words than Hareth and his friends could've. Tenoctris raised the bamboo sliver. Before she started calling out the spell she glanced back at Cashel with a wry smile. "Of course this may not help either," she said. "I'm simply not a powerful wizard, as I've proved many times in the past." "You've never failed, Tenoctris," Cashel said quietly. "You've always done enough that we're still here. You are and the kingdom is, for all the people who fight evil." The old wizard's smile changed to something softer, more positive. "Yes," she said.
"That's a way to think about it. Thank you, Cashel." She bent over the circle and began, "Stokter neoter," tapping her wand on the written words of power as she spoke them. "Men menippa menoda." Cashel looked away. Wizardry didn't bother him, especially when Tenoctris was doing it, but his job was to look out for her. Watching Tenoctris chant would be as silly as watching sheep crop grass instead of keeping an eye out for danger. And there was always a chance of danger when there was wizardry. Tenoctris said she could see the strands of power that sprang from certain places and twined among themselves. Those powers grew from temples and altars, especially old ones, but they came from graveyards and especially battlefields like this one. More men than Cashel could imagine had died here in blood and terror. Concentrated power attracted those that wanted power more than anything else, and they weren't all human. The local men had gathered by the side of the pool, standing tightly together and all watching Cashel and Tenoctris.
They seemed angry and afraid, though maybe the moonlight exaggerated their expressions. Cashel smiled at them, hoping he seemed friendly, but he couldn't see that did any good. Tenoctris droned on. Sometimes Cashel caught a few syllables… morchella barza… but they didn't mean anything to him. The language a wizard spoke was directed of things-demiurges, Tenoctris called them, but that was gobbledygook to Cashel-that controlled the powers that the cosmos turned on. The bright star in the south continued to rise. The water of the memorial pool was mirror smooth; now it drew the star's reflection into a cold white pathway. Cashel began to wipe his quarterstaff with the wad of raw wool he carried for the purpose; lanolin in the fibers kept the hickory from cracking and brought out the luster of the polished wood.
He'd turned the staff himself from the branch which the farmer who owned the tree had given him as pay for felling it. Cashel'd been little more than a child at the time, but he'd already had a man's strength. Now that he was a man, he had the strength of Cashel or-Kenset. He smiled at the thought. Cashel put the wool away and lifted the staff, his hands spread a little more than the width of his shoulders. He set the hickory spinning slowly in front of him, loosening his muscles. When he was ready, he speeded up each time he crossed his arms till the heavy staff hummed as it cut the air. Still keeping an eye out-he was on watch, after all-Cashel raised the whirling staff overhead. He turned his body under it to face what'd been his back, then forward again. He moved in quick jumps, using the weight of the iron-shod hickory to pull him around. Cashel saw a bluish twinkle in the center of Tenoctris' figure; wizardlight, brought to life by her chanting the way flint strikes sparks from iron. Cashel felt the hair on the back of his neck rise, also a sign of approaching wizardry. The old men watched in amazement, but Cashel wasn't doing this to impress them. He grinned again. He'd impressed much more important people than these old codgers, and some of those people'd been trying to kill him at the time. Ordinarily a little spell of the sort Tenoctris chanted wouldn't have made him tingle as much as this. Was something else…? Where the star had shone on the pool, there was now a man with a shield and drawn sword. The angles were funny; the fellow wasn't reflected-there wasn't anything but empty sky to reflect. It was like he was standing straight upright instead of being on his back in the water. His leg moved forward and he was standing on the stone curb. The water didn't ripple. A second man was standing on its surface. Both were naked except for the belt supporting their scabbards. Their skin was black in the moonlight. The first man stepped forward, raising his sword. Rebben noticed him and shouted. The black man's sword split Rebben's skull like a melon. As the other old men blatted in terror, the swordsman jumped into the midst of them hacking left and right. The second figure was stepping out of the pool.
Chapter 2 Cashel didn't understand why this was happening, but he knew fights and right now that was the main thing. His hands shifted without him having to think about it. The first black man was in the midst of the locals, slashing with skill and amazing strength: an old fellow toppled in two parts, his hips and legs one way and his upper body the other. The victim's mouth was open to scream but the sword'd severed his diaphragm; there was nothing to force the air out of his lungs. Cashel couldn't be sure of a clean stroke in a melee and there wasn't time to chance something that might not work. With his left hand on the shaft and his right on the butt driving it, he rammed his staff toward the chest of the swordsman poised on the curb. The fellow got his round shield between the blow and his body. It was dull metal and no bigger across than the length of Cashel's hand and forearm.
Sparks flew from the staff's iron cap. The shield gave a tinny bang like an ill-cast bell and slammed back into the swordsman's chest, crunching his breastbone and broad ribs. The man's mouth and nostrils spewed blood as he toppled into the pool. The sword'd wobbled pff to splash in the reeds. Cashel didn't have time to worry about the dead man or his gear, though, because he had his eyes on the surviving swordsman. At least four of the old men were down, carved apart. Only three were running away gabbling, but Cashel thought he'd seen Hareth duck behind the stone curb. The tangle of body parts where the black man stood could as easily have added to five as four corpses, not that it mattered now. The fellow shuffled toward Cashel in a wide stance.
His sword was waist-high and close to his body, point a little above the hilt and ready to cut or stab. He held the buckler well out in front of him. Cashel'd hit the other shield hard enough to smash the ribs of the man holding it, but his quarterstaff hadn't made a dent in the round of dull metal. He should've dimpled even a solid ball of iron. Tenoctris continued to chant her spell like nothing was happening behind her. Maybe she didn't know that anythingwas happening; she was somebody who lost herself completely in what she was doing. Cashel wasn't like that himself. It was fine for a wizard to concentrate on just one thing, but a shepherd had to know what every one of his flock was doing at the same time. Otherwise the ones you ignored were toppling over cliffs, drowning in bogs, or killing themselves in other ways only a fool sheep could come up with. Cashel backed a step with his staff slanted crossways before him. His duty was to keep Tenoctris safe, but the best way to do that was to draw the swor
dsman away. If he put himself between the black man and the wizard, he'd get jointed like a chicken. The sword must be of the same metal as the other one's buckler. It'd left a bright notch in the curb after slicing through one of the codgers, but the edge was unmarked.
The only way to fight a weapon like that was to have plenty of room to dodge. Fight with a quarterstaff, anyhow. If there'd been a pile of fist-sized rocks handy, Cashel figured he could throw them quick enough that one'd find a spot the fellow hadn't covered in time with his shield. When Cashel threw, a solid hit anywhere from scalp to ankle would put his target down sure as sure. But there weren't any rocks. And a sword that cut through a thigh bone, even an old man's thigh, would do the same for the quarterstaff. As Cashel continued his slow dance away, he kept the pool in the corner of his eye so he'd see if another swordsman was coming out of it. He didn't know what he'd do then-probably die, trapped between the pair of them because hewouldn't run off and leave Tenoctris-but nothing seemed to be happening there since he'd killed the second man. The water was dark with swirls of blood, spreading slowly. The corpse floated on its face; its legs and arms hung down, but the broad torso curved above the surface like the back of a whale. The black skin gleamed in the moonlight. Cashel prodded his staff toward the swordsman with his left hand leading. He meant it for a feint unless the black man stepped in to meet it with his shield. If that'd happened, Cashel would've put his back and shoulders into the stroke, figuring to hit hard enough to up-end the fellow before he had a chance to use his sword. Instead the swordsman crouched low and came on like a crab, the buckler forward but a little out to his left side while the blade in his right remained low and ready. Cashel eased away but the fellow movedquick, sword swinging as part of the lunge, he was good and his blade could cut stone and the only way this would go was- "Eulamo!" Tenoctris cried in a cracked squeal. A sparkling azure filament, thin as spider web, twined about the black man's ankles. He pitched forward soundlessly, driving his sword hilt-deep in the turf with the suddenness of his fall. The glitter bound the swordsman only for an instant before scattering into dust motes, but that was long enough. Cashel punched with his staff instead of swinging it: the leading ferrule drove the top of the bald skull down onto the fellow's back teeth. The arms and legs thrashed, but that was no more than a chicken kicking when you snap its neck.
Whoever these black men were, they were too dangerous to take chances with. Cashel stepped back, breathing hard as he looked around for something else to fight. Nothing moved for a moment; then Hareth poked his head up from the other side of the pool and ducked down again.
Cashel bent to the man he'd just killed, then remembered that the fellow wasn't wearing a tunic that'd serve as a rag. He took out his wool again and wiped blood and brains from the end of his staff. He hadn't expected Tenoctris to throw a loop of wizardlight around the swordsman's ankles, but this wasn't the first fight where being able to react the right way to an unexpected opportunity was the reason Cashel was standing at the end. That reminded him of Tenoctris.
Dropping the bloody wool on the body, he stepped quickly to her. She'd collapsed when she shouted the final word of her incantation but she was trying to get up again. Cashel knelt and put his left arm under her torso. He wasn't going to lift unless she asked him to, but he'd make sure he was there to give her support for whatever she wanted.
"Cashel, cover the fountain," she said in a raspy voice. "Let me be.
Make sure that starlight doesn't fall on the fountain." Cashel pursed his lips. He withdrew his arm carefully and walked to the pool. He held the quarterstaff slanted in both hands again; excitement had washed the recent fatigue out of his blood. The pool wasn't very big or deep either one; the body, slowly revolving, didn't leave much room. Peering in, Cashel saw the round outline of the buckler that the dying man'd dropped when his muscles spasmed for the last time. As for covering the rest of the surface… Cashel looked down at the bodies of the old men. The ground'd been damp from the first; now it was sticky with congealing blood. A shepherd doesn't get picky about what he puts feet in, but Cashel'd tried just out of courtesy to the dead not to step on the bigger pieces. Courtesy was fine, but sentiment didn't come before need. Rebben was wearing a short cloak; the night wasn't cold, but old men's blood gets thin. Cashel removed it-it'd been pinned with a thorn-and draped it part on the floating body and part on the curb. If he'd laid it on open water, it'd have sunk when it got waterlogged. There was still a rim of surface gleaming on the other side; moonlight rippled and condensed as the corpse rocked gently. The tunic of the fellow who'd been cut in half was in sections, the jerkin on his torso and the skirt below. Cashel jerked both parts away from the body and covered the rest of the pool.
Rebben's body gave a sudden jerk. Cashel poised the quarterstaff, but that was just a body cooling. I'm sorry, old man. I'll make an offering to Duzi for you when I get a chance. Cashel believed in the Great Gods, the Lady and the Shepherd and the Sister, but in the way he'd believed in cities like Carcosa when he was growing up in Barca's Hamlet. They were real, no doubt, and people said they were important-but they didn't touch him. Cashel and other shepherds gave their offerings to Duzi, the figure scratched on a boulder in the pasture south of the hamlet. He went back to Tenoctris. She was sitting, but she wouldn't be able to walk unaided back to the gig.
When the ground got too soft for wheels they'd left the horse, still harnessed, on a feeding peg. It could easily pull up the stake and wander off, but generally it'd just walk in a circle cropping the sedges. "The pool's covered, Tenoctris," Cashel said, squatting beside the old woman. She looked as gray as last night's corpse; partly that was moonlight, probably. "What should I do next?" Tenoctris'd scratched a figure with five sides on the ground beside the circle she'd used for the spell she'd come to cast. The new mark was under where she'd fallen so he hadn't seen it before. It made sense that she'd have to do something completely different to tie up the swordsman, but Cashel hadn't thought about it till now. No wonder she looked gray, having worked a second spell! "We have to get back to the palace at once," Tenoctris whispered. She closed her eyes, opened them briefly, then squeezed them firmly shut. "Cashel, I'm afraid I won't be able to drive. You'll have to." "Ma'am, I can't drive a horse,"
Cashel said simply. "Here, I'll help you to the gig." Folks brought up with horses-like Tenoctris, who was a lady by birth even though she said her family hadn't had much money-didn't realize that most folk farmed with oxen and got where they were going on their own legs.
Horses were for nobles and their servants. "I can't drive!" Tenoctris said, exhausted and frustrated. "I'm sorry, Cashel, I really can't."
Mind, put a nobleman to plowing behind a yoke of oxen and you'd be lucky if the furrows stayed in the same field as they started. Still, that was neither here nor there. Nobody needed a field plowed or sheep watched or a tree cut so it fell within a hand's breadth of where it was supposed to. Nobody wanted Cashel to do any of the things he'd learned to do in the eighteen years before he left the borough.
"That's all right, ma'am," Cashel said in the calm tone he'd have used to settle sheep for the night. "I'll lead the horse. We'll get there."
He lifted Tenoctris in the crook of his right arm, holding the staff at the balance in the same hand. There were things he'd liked about the life he lived in the borough, but he hadn't had Sharina then and he hadn't dreamed he ever would. This was better. And if it meant he kept trouble away from folks like Tenoctris and Sharina who weren't strong enough to handle it themselves-well, that was better than watching sheep, wasn't it? The gig was only built for two, but that gave Cashel another idea. He'd have called Hareth to help him, but he saw the old man hoofing it away in the direction the other survivors had taken. Well, that was probably as well. Cashel squatted by the man whose brains he'd battered in, gripped him by the back of the sword belt, and threw him over his left shoulder. The fellow was stiff as a statue; that could happen when you killed a sheep with a hammer, too, though mostly folks in
the borough slit its throat with a knife instead. This time the stiffness was handy because the fellow's hands had frozen on his sword and the double grips of his buckler. People at the palace, especially the soldiers, would want to see those for whatever metal they were made from. Waddling slightly-the weight wasn't a problem, but it took some juggling to carry two people and make sure the sword in the corpse's hand didn't slice Tenoctris' ear off-Cashel reached the gig. The mare snorted at the smell of blood, but she didn't bolt the way he suddenly realized she might've done. He tossed the corpse into the far seat, then braced Tenoctris as she climbed off his arm. "It's five miles," she murmured doubtfully. She opened her eyes but couldn't keep them that way. "That's fine," said Cashel, taking the reins in his left hand and guiding the horse's head back in the direction of the metalled road. "We'll get there fine, ma'am." He clucked to the animal, wondering what he'd do if it tried to fight him. Pull it till it gave up, he supposed, but the mare didn't make any trouble. Ambling along-he was used to following sheep, and though he mended his pace for this purpose the horse didn't have any trouble in following-Cashel broke into a broad smile. He'd be seeing Sharina soon. *** Garric stood with his arms out at his sides while aides-the son of the Count of Blaise and a great-nephew of Lord Waldron, commander of the royal army-dressed him in helmet, gilded and engraved body armor, and his belted sword. Normally he'd have done that himself, but the fight had left him wobbly with reaction. If the Coerli suddenly attacked, Garric'd be lucky to continue standing while the army fought around him. King Carus snorted. Garric grinned. "Sir?" said Lerdain, the Count's son and a husky fifteen-year-old. He wore a hook-bladed sword, the traditional weapon of a Blaise armsman, and it wasn't just for show. "I was just thinking that I've never really been too tired for a fight," Garric said, giving a real answer instead of putting the boy off with, "Oh, nothing," or a similarly uninformative response. "Though I've sure felt that way before it started-as I do now." "You were magnificent, your highness!" said Lord Wardway as he cinched the sword belt into place. He was taller but much slimmer than Lerdain. "I'll have you back on my brother's estate if you don't learn to hold your tongue till you're a man, Wardway!" Lord Waldron snapped.