by David Drake
"-Lord Tadai would grant that. I made an error of speech. It will not recur." He bowed and sat down again. Sharina nodded. "Well said, Chancellor," she said. "Lord Tadai, I'm fortunate to be able to retain you as head of my civil affairs section when I march with the army."
She gave Waldron a hard smile and added, "As I expect to do shortly.
Rasile, please explain why you believe we must go to Pandah." She hadn't threatened Royhas about what would happen if he-not to put too fine a point on it-insulted her again. He knew, everyone at the table knew what would happen. So did the guards and so did the clerks and the servants and the courtiers watching events through the open sides of the gazebo. Sharina smiled with her lips pressed tight together.
She didn't like being regent, but she hadn't liked emptying chamber pots at the inn, either. Garric depended on her, and she supposed the kingdom did too-though it made her very uncomfortable to think in those terms. Therefore shewould be regent. "The Last are without number," Rasile said. "They do not grow weaker, warrior, any more than the sea is weakened by striking against a cliff. But it wears the cliff down as the Last will wear down Pandah; and while they are doing so, they're fortifying the pool by which they enter this region. If you do not stop them while you can, you will speed their conquest of this world by two years-or perhaps three." The Corl spoke in a mix of clicks and labials, but due to Tenoctris' remarkable feat of wizardry the listening humans understood her perfectly. The thought jerked Sharina's mind to wonder about Tenoctris as she now was-and to concern over what Cashel might be facing to protect the wizard. "I don't see how these Last get into the water," said Lord Hauk, looking at the mass of documents spread on the table before him. "Do they swim here, is that it?" "Rasile?" Sharina said. "Please explain the matter."
She'd asked the wizard the same question, but rather than retail the information she thought she'd let it come from the original source.
Among other things, that might raise Rasile's status in the eyes of the councilors. Royhas certainly wasn't alone in distrusting and disdaining their Coerli allies. "The Last do not touch the water,"
Rasile said. "They cross from reflection to reflection. If you distort the surface of the site they choose, you block them." She coughed and paused. How old is she? How old do Coerli get? "They cannot use every body of water as their mirror," Rasile resumed. "There must be a focus for their art, a dense braiding of power. Save Pandah, you've blocked every such focus already in your portion of this world." The Corl laughed, a bestial sound that probably wasn't meant to be threatening.
"Your Tenoctris is a very great wizard. I am not fit to be her lowliest slave… and yet she chooses to serve your kingdom instead of gaining hegemony over this universe." Her shrug was identical to that of a puzzled human. She laughed again and added, "It is almost as if Tenoctris were me, only vastly more powerful." "I don't understand what the cat means," said the Minister of the Post plaintively to her neighbor, the burly Commandant of the Valles Night Watch. The latter's deep frown didn't suggest to Sharina that he was going to be much help with the question. The Minister of Post felt eyes on her and looked up in horror, then clapped both hands over her mouth. It was a charmingly innocent gesture, but one which reminded Sharina that the lady was a political ally of Chancellor Royhas. Sharina rose to her feet. "What it means," she said, though she knew the minister'd been asking a much more basic question than the one she chose to answer, "is that however difficult it may be to root out the incursion of the Last at Pandah, we must do so in order to buy time till others to deal with the creatures in a permanent fashion. Is there anyone at the table who disagrees with that assessment?" There was silence. They were intelligent people-well, most of them were-and pragmatists. Given the facts, they'd come to the same conclusion she had. "Lord Waldron?" she prodded, looking down at the old soldier. "My men are talking to Master Baumo's men now," Waldron said, nodding toward the tax office clerk. "We'll have an operational plan ready before morning." He smiled grimly and added, "If I'd been looking for an easy life, I wouldn't have been a soldier. And if any of my men had thought it was going to be easy, I'd have run them out or ground them under." Sharina felt a sudden wash of contentment. It was late at night, but the guests' bed linen was clean, the common room had been swept, porridge for the morning was simmering on the kitchen fire- And the chamber pots had been emptied. "Very good, Councilors," Sharina said. "We will do our jobs here so that Prince Garric and Lady Tenoctris can save us by doing theirs." And Cashel can save us, she thought. Before he comes back to save me from lonely darkness. *** Ilna and Temple joined Asion on the limestone ridge, looking down at the land spreading below. The valley behind them was a waste of blowing dust and woody plants sheltering in the lee of outcrops; ahead was tussock grass, not the lushest of vegetation but proof ofsome water. Stretching toward them up the gentle slope were broad fields irrigated from the creek lying at the base of steeper hills across the valley; cottonwoods grew on the banks. Asion turned and signalled to his partner. Karpos was less than a furlong behind, much closer than usual because the landscape they'd just crossed was too barren and dusty to conceal a stalking enemy. "That's odd," said Temple. He pointed toward the southern end of the valley, where the creek spilled down from a notch in the rock wall. "Impressive, at least. That's a dam. If the watercourse on the other side of it flowed naturally, the whole valley would flood." "How do you-" Ilna said, then scowled at her stupidity. She disliked stone so much that it was apparently robbing her of intelligence. "Yes, I see that the dam's high, and that the water spills over the top." She returned her attention to the village on the other side of the creek. The walls were drystone, blocks laid without mortar, and the buildings were thatched with tussock grass. There were more houses than she could count on both hands; but not, she thought, twice that number. The line of shadow from the sun behind her was beginning to darken the tawny roofs as well. "Seventeen huts," said Temple. "I'd judge they were of a size to hold six or eight family members each, wouldn't you guess?"
"Where's the people?" Karpos said as he joined them. "And where's the goats too? I don't see any." Asion pointed. "There's a door," he said.
"In the rock there." It took Ilna a moment to realize that he wasn't pointing at a rock among the houses but rather to the side of the hill beyond. Therewas a door, braced like a city gate though not nearly as big. The man standing in it was far enough back in the shadow that she hadn't noticed him till he moved, but the hunter had. She smiled slightly. There were many people in the world who had special skills.
Asion and Karpos wouldn't have remained in her company had they not been among those people. She glanced to her side. And Temple had skills as well. Temple very definitely had skills. A different man came out of the door and waved toward them. He cupped his hands into a megaphone and shouted. "He's saying, 'Quickly,'" said Asion, frowning.
He looked at Ilna. "Yes," she said. "There's no point in our staying here." "I'll lead," said Karpos, moving down the slope at a swinging jog. He kept both hands on his bow with the nocked arrow slanting to his left. He didn't seem to hurry, but he covered the ground very quickly. "And we'll move quickly," Ilna said, breaking into a trot.
"Since the fellow calling us knows more about this valley than we do."
She wondered if she'd embarrass herself; running wasn't a skill she'd cultivated. On the other hand, there were worse things than falling on her face in front not only of her companions but also the locals. More of the latter had come out of the cave, a handful and one-six. "Run!" they cried. They were shouting all together now. She could hear the words even over the pounding of her feet on the loose soil. "Run!"
Those worse things might be about to happen. Ilna smiled. That would be all right. She wasn't good at running, but she knew how to stand and fight. She took a handful of yarn out of her sleeve and knotted it as she jogged. It wasn't for a weapon against the unnamedSomething that the locals were concerned about, it was just to occupy her with something she did well and found relax
ing. Ilna's stride fell into a pattern. She no longer worried about tripping or the way the bindle pounded her back. She should've tightened the straps before she started down, but it didn't really matter. The wheat in the fields was flourishing; the soil here must be very good. She supposed that was why the villagers had gone to all the effort of damming the river: the silt that'd settled out of slow water over the years would be far richer than that of valleys that'd been sun-baked and wind-scoured for centuries. She glanced over her shoulder. Temple smiled faintly when he caught her glance. He ran on his toes, holding his shield and scabbard to keep them from swinging. He could obviously keep up this pace-or a quicker one-for a very long time. Well, so could Ilna if she had to, but they'd reached the cottonwoods and Karpos had already crossed the creek. She was glad of the wooden bridge. It wasn't necessary, but fist-sized stones in the streambed might've turned or slipped beneath her if she'd tried to splash across at a run. She didn'tlike stone. The sun was below the horizon. The sky was still bright, but there'd been change. Ilna didn't look back again. There'd be time for that when she reached the cave. She could see the door now, even more massive than she'd thought at a distance. The staples on the inside would hold a bar as thick as her thigh. Karpos had joined the locals. They seemed ordinary farmers, much like the people Ilna'd grown up with on Haft. Their tunics were goat wool rather than sheep's wool, but someone less familiar with fabric wouldn't have noticed the difference. "Inside quick!" cried a burly man with a ginger beard. He held a simple spear. His fellows were armed with similar spears, save for the pair with clubs. Ilna reached the villagers standing outside. Beyond them were women and children watching nervously from well within the cave. Karpos grimaced a question to her. "Quick, before the demons get here!" cried Ginger-beard. Instead of obeying, Ilna turned to see what was pursuing them. Nothing was. The wheat moved only to wisps of breeze that even on the hairs on the back of Ilna's arms couldn't have felt. But another sun was in the sky, a dim, red orb midway toward the western horizon. The air had an unfamiliar texture that wasn't quite a smell.
A gray gauze began to curtain the ridge from which Ilna and her companions had first seen the valley, and on it was the outline of a door. A Corl warrior, then two more, slipped through that outline like light glancing from polished metal. They raced down the slope, spreading out as the Coerli always did while hunting. They carried the usual weapons: small axes, throwing lines with weighted hooks, and spears with springy double points. Another trio of catmen, then another, raced from the outlined doorway. The red sun was too dim to cast their shadows, but their rippling fur shone as they moved. They were agile as well as quick, sometimes making leaps down slope that no man could've equaled. "We must shut the door!" the ginger-haired local man said desperately. "Come in or we must close you out!" "Not yet," said Ilna as her fingers told the knots in the pattern they'd woven.
"I have to see more." A clot of catmen came from the distant outline, more than the total of the groups who'd come through before. "I'm closing-" the local said, his voice rising. "No," said Temple. He didn't speak loudly, but the syllable could've been chipped out of quartz. "We have to-" "No," Temple repeated. The catmen were coming very swiftly. They were all warriors without the chieftain who'd normally have been leading a band so large. Ilna's fingers worked, searching for the answer her conscious mind wouldn't have been able to arrive at. Therewas an answer, she was sure… "Ilna," said Temple softly. "We will do as you choose we should do. But for myself, I would rather fight the Coerli at a later time." She had it! Ilna stepped inside the doorway. Temple himself slammed the panel closed behind her; it was as massive as the gate of a border fortress.
Ginger-hair and his fellows slid the bar into place, Ilna heard the pattering of the catmen's light axes on the outer door. It was no more dangerous than hail tapping the slate roof of the mill Ilna had grown up in. The catmen shrieked in frustration. "I've found the way to what I'm searching for," Ilna said, speaking to the blurred figures around her. There were lamps farther back in the cave, but it was taking a moment for her eyes to adapt to them. "Finally." "Mistress?" said Karpos. "Which direction is that?" "Through the door that the cat beasts opened to come here," said Ilna. "Of course, we'll have to kill all of them first." She felt her lips tighten like the blade of a curved knife. "But we'd want to do that anyway," she added.
Chapter 11 From the ogre's back Garric could see through the tops of thorn hedges on either side of the rutted red dirt track, but for the most part Kore herself wasn't visible to the peasants working in the fields. They were startled to see a man looking down at them from fourteen feet in the air, but they didn't drop their tools and run screaming. The pair of chattering women who saw Kore as they stepped through a gap in the hedgedid run screaming, tossing away the leaf-wrapped bundles they'd been carrying on their heads. Their bright cotton robes fluttered like parrot wings behind them. Shin sniffed appreciatively. "A paste of chick-peas, potatoes and tomatoes in a wrapper of flatbread," he said. "Verynicely seasoned, including a touch of saffron. But-" He grinned at Garric-or possibly at Kore. "-it would be wrong to deprive hardworking farmers of their dinner." "I suspect you'd be depriving stray dogs of unexpected bounty," said Garric as the ogre trotted on, "but yes, it'd be wrong. We'll purchase dinner in normal fashion when we stop for the night." "And may I hope for a nice haunch of beef, dear master?" said Kore. "This is cattle country, I scent." Calling this 'cattle country' was stretching the point. A few of the farmers were plowing behind a single bullock, obviously adult but no bigger than a young bull of the breed folk in Barca's Hamlet gelded into oxen. Even those were rare: most of the folk Garric saw in the fields were breaking ground for seed with a hoe or a dibble. Kore's comment made him wonder how much of what she said was joking and how much was true. He suspected both were the case: that the ogre whimsically stated things which were in fact true-including that she'd eaten humans in the past and was looking forward to doing so again when she ceased to be under Garric's control. Which in turn made Garric wonder about the morality ofhis position. Could he in good conscience release a ravening monster on the world after he'd completed his embassy to the Yellow King? The king in his mind chuckled grimly. "If you're worried about that, lad," he said,"there's some troops in your army you'd better be worrying about too. And not the worst troops either, when there's hard fighting to do." Shin trotted beside the ogre, occasionally leaping into a somersault to vary his routine. Now he laughed and said, "A more cautious person might've said, "Ifhe completed his embassy.' But you're obviously a sanguine young man as well as a great champion."
"Tsk, Shin, he's merely a logician," Kore protested. "If he's torn to bits or devoured or any of the other likely fatal results of this journey, then his moral quandary vanishes. You should rather worry about how his faithful mount will fare after the probable disaster."
"Ah, butI am not a philosopher," Shin said. "In such an event, my first concern must be to avoid becoming your next meal." "A good point!" Kore said. "Now that you call my mind to the matter, I don't believe Ihave as yet tasted aegipan. Indeed, I'll keep that in mind for the future." Surely they're joking… Garric cleared his throat and said aloud, "There's forest not far ahead. Hardwoods, and some of them pretty tall." "There are men waiting for us where the road enters that forest," the ogre said, snuffling deeply. Her nose was flat, little more than a ridge with two vertical slits, but it was obviously very sensitive. "I think twelve… Yes, twelve men, one of them wearing what I believe is patchouli. The others smell mostly of muck and their own sweat." "A squad of soldiers under an officer,"
Carus said. "I don't imagine they'll be much in the way of troops, but twelve's still a good number. And I'd guess they have bows." "We'll hope for the best," said Garric equably. "And we'll keep our sword loose in the scabbard, I trust," Carus said, but his image was grinning. It'd take more courage-and bloody-mindedness-than Garric or his ancestor either one expected from local militiamen to start a fight with a swordsman on an ogre. They passed beyond the las
t field.
With no hedges to block the view, Garric saw a belt of scrub a furlong wide and then the trees themselves. Some rose nearly two hundred feet in the air. "Teak," said Carus with the satisfaction of a man sure of an identification. "I ran into it on Sirimat. A bloody hard wood for a stockade, and it didn't burn the way I'd expected. We had to go over the walls." A soldier wearing the same clothing as the farmers in the fields-a straw hat, a loincloth, and a loose cotton vest-stood at the base of one of the nearer trees. He shouted with excitement and grabbed what Garric thought was a crooked bamboo spear leaning against the bole of the tree. It was a bow taller than he was, and the stone-pointed arrow he nocked was five feet long. More men, as like the first as so many peas, jumped up from where they'd been sitting or sleeping in the shade. Some did have spears, but there were several more bows. The weapons were crude, but as Carus had noted-there were a lot of them. "Greetings, friends!" Garric called, waving cheerfully with his left hand. His right wasn'ton the sword hilt, but he could get it there in a hurry if he needed to. "Please pardon my mount.
She's harmless! We're merely travellers passing through your country and ready to pay for food and lodging." "Harmless!" the ogre sniffed, but she kept her voice down. She even slowed to an amble, though even that pace wasn't enough to quell the soldiers' nervousness. One half-drew his bow, then slacked it. Garric wondered what the range of the long arrows might be. The officer stood. He must've been putting on his breastplate, an arrangement of shiny disks on chains. It struck even Garric as useless; Carus burst out laughing. It was sparkly, though, and that was obviously all the fellow had in mind. "Stop!" the officer cried in a high-pitched voice. He had a moustache so thin it might've been drawn with a brush; the ends stuck straight up in the air like the horns of the local bullocks. "You must not come closer or my men will assuredly destroy you!" To demonstrate his determination, he drew his curved sword-on the second try, and then only after gripping the scabbard with his left hand. When it came out, Garric saw that the blade had rusted to the mouth of the scabbard. "Do not come closer!" Garric pulled back lightly on the straps; if Kore'd been a horse he'd have been sawing on the reins, but all the ogre required was a hint. Assuming she was willing to obey, of course; which fortunately she was in this instance. Garric wondered if he ought to dismount. He said, "Your worship, we're peaceful travellers." "That's rather a stretch to believe from a man on ogre-back, wouldn't you say?" Shin commented cheerfully. "If they weren't afraid, they'd be dangerous," Carus said, looking out through his descendant's eyes with cold contempt. "If you were a trader leading a pack mule, they'd rob you. And if you were travelling with your wife, so much the worse for her. Oh, I know this sort." "You must not come closer!" the officer shouted, spraying spittle. He was terrified. "You must not!" "Hold up," Garric murmured to Kore, fifty feet from the squad. If he continued to approach, it was a toss-up whether the soldiers'd scatter like sparrows or if they'd blindly attack. Maybe the choice really was to draw his sword and charge, hoping to push them toward flight… "Let's see what a little mummery can do, shall we?" the aegipan said. He picked up a handful of the red dust and minced toward the men calling, "Who wishes to see marvels? I'm a great wizard! I'll open to you secrets undreamt by mortal men!" He tossed the dust into the still air. Instead of settling back, it formed into the image of a big-hipped, buxom woman. He continued forward while the image danced above him, gyrating violently and sometimes bending backward so that her head was at the level of her ankles. That can't be possible!