by David Drake
He waded into the water. The Coerli were fully alert now. Ilna thought they'd regroup and attack together, but perhaps they were too angry to think the matter through. Or again, perhaps the nearest warrior didn't see any reason to delay: no ordinary man was a match for the beasts' quickness. Water as deep as his back-bending knees sprayed as the warrior leaped high. It swung a short length of its hooked line to wrap Temple's neck and sword arm from above. The weighted end sailed away instead because Temple's sword was where the beast'd expected a clear path; the cord severed itself on an edge as keen as a beam of light. Temple hadn't responded to the beast's attack: no human was that quick. He'd anticipated it, seeing the pattern of events before they happened and striking at where the beast would be when the blade passed through the place. Just as Chalcus used to do, when he was alive. The Corl twisted, seeing the death he was flinging himself onto, but all four limbs were off the ground so it had nothing to push against. The sword continued its curving stroke, catching the beast in the short ribs and slicing on through as easily as it'd cut the cord a heartbeat earlier. The beast flew apart in a gout of blood and stomach contents. Its mouth was open but silent in one half and the legs pumped wildly in the other. Ilna knew how sharp the bronze blade was, but the strength needed to lop complete through a torso was beyond the dreams of most men. Temple strode forward without slowing. The second warrior lunged low with a wooden poignard in either hand. He scissored them toward Temple's knees like a trap springing, but the swordsman's long arm and long blade had again anticipated the attack: the Corl drove itself onto the sword hard enough to punch the bronze point out through the base of its skull. The third warrior hadn't verbally coordinated with the second, but the pack were experienced killers who'd worked together in the past: he went high because his fellow had attacked low. As he leaped he slanted his spear downward so that the pair of springy wooden points would grip the human's neck with the barbs on their inner surfaces. The thrust glanced from Temple's small shield, rising as part of the same motion as had put the sword into the second beast. It was like watching a dance, but considerably more graceful than any dancers Ilna had seen. The Corl continued on over, landing with a splash in the water behind the swordsman. It dropped its spear and snaked a stone-headed axe from a loop on the crossbelts that were its only garment. Temple was turning, hunching, bringing the shield down and around. He knew what would happen next-Ilnaknew what would happen next-but understanding something wasn't the same as being able to stop it. Temple was quick for a human, but the Coerli were as quick as thought, as quick as the shimmer of water. Motion sparked in the alien sunlight. Whock! The beast leaped straight up, its limbs thrashing. Its head was a bloody ruin. It fell onto its back, then flopped over on its belly and began to drift on the current.
Occasionally a further spasm would stir the water, but generally only one limb at a time. Asion folded the release cord of his sling back against his right palm on the staff. "That was my last bullet," he said sheepishly. "I'm glad I kept it, hey?" Temple let his buckler swing against the strap that held it while not in use. He stepped to Asion and embraced him, carefully keeping the sword away from both of them. He couldn't sheathe the weapon till he'd wiped the bronze clean of blood and filth. "I amvery glad you kept it, Brother Asion," Temple said, stepping back. The torso of the first beast he'd killed lay on the slope above where the water-now slowly receding-had washed. He picked the corpse up by the scruff of the neck and wiped his blade on the brindled fur. Karpos was cutting an arrow from the body of a beast lying in the fresh mud. "I wonder if the farmers have arrows I could use?" he said. "I don't think I'm going to find more than a couple of my own, what with the current." Ilna looked down into the valley. The women had come out of the cave. Several of them were running toward the raft, grounded when the initial head of water had passed. The men were kneeling over several of their fellows who they'd laid out on the ground. One or more warriors must've gotten aboard the raft and done damage before being killed. "They've lost everything," Temple said.
"They'll have to replant their crops as well as rebuilding their houses." Ilna looked at the big man. His face and tone were both without expression. "Peasants have a hard life, soldier," she said sharply. "Thesepeasants, the ones who're still alive, won't have cat beasts preying on them. That's all I can do for them. Or anybody could!" "Yes, Ilna," Temple said. "Now, before that sun sets-" He nodded toward the dim red orb now close above the western horizon.
"-we must go through the portal. Our task isn't done yet." "All right," she said. "Asion and Karpos, are you ready?" The hunters got up from the bodies. They moved into line beside her and Temple. All together, Ilna and her companions stepped through the membrane of light. *** "Oh!" said Sharina as she saw the Citadel of Pandah rising out of the plain. "That isn't what I expected." "It's bigger than I thought too, your ladyship," said Trooper Lires. "I'd heard it was a sleepy little place. Ah, not that we couldn't take it in a week or two. Or maybe even faster if you ordered an assault instead of undermining the walls." "I'm not going to order an assault," said Sharina dryly, "or make any other military decisions so long as I have competent officers. But I was on Pandah in the past-before the Change, of course-and itwas a sleepy little island. They grew fruit and garden truck for ships crossing the Inner Sea, and merchants bartered cargoes to local factors." Pandah now-and Sharina supposed in her distant past-had massive stone walls within which rose square towers with arrow slits. Figures moved on the battlements. She couldn't make out details of them, but Lires said, "By the Sister! There's cats there and men both!" He cleared his throat, turned his head away from Sharina in embarrassment, and then forced himself to meet her cool smile again. Rasile continued telling beads in her palanquin, but her eyes were open and seemingly focused on the city coming into view.
"Sorry, milady," the trooper muttered. "I mean, it's no different from us. I don't know why I said that." The leading regiments of the royal army were spreading into battle order as they advanced across the plain. The afternoon air rang with trumpets and horns, insistent and never tuned the same. Sharina supposed that made it easy for soldiers to tell their own call from those of other units, but it was gratingly unpleasant to a civilian. Rasile rose to a squat. Though her palanquin rocked as the bearers paced down the defile to the plain, the wizard balanced on her haunches as easily as a bubble bobs in the air. She pointed to the southwest. "There is the nest the Last have built around the entrance to this world," she said. "Are you able to see the powers which we wizards focus, Princess?" "No," said Sharina, following the line of the Corl's arm. Close to Pandah's western walls-so close they partly hid it-was what she'd taken at first to be a shadow. Closer attention showed it to be a structure of odd bumps and angles, higher than Pandah's walls though some of the towers within the city overtopped it. "Rasile, I haveno talent for wizardry."
Rasile's arms had angles at the wrong points, and her covering of fur-more gray than auburn and worn away in patches-was disturbing. She looked more like a beast in detail than she did when Sharina viewed her as a complete person. The Corl chuckled in her throat. "Seeing the fluxes is not wizardry," she said, "though the best wizards see the matter they work with. In this case-" She'd lowered her arm-her fore-limb. Now she tapped her clawed fingers twice more on the air.
"-I can see the threads of power spun into two great hawsers, scarlet and azure. But I could not affect them myself any more than you could.
The Last are using forces which could not be manipulated by any single wizard; not even by your friend Tenoctris, Princess. Their whole race must possess both the art and the ability to merge their talents the way ants together lift a dead grasshopper." Skirmishers from the head of the column began moving toward the alien fortress, spreading as they advanced. Small groups of the Last had been working in the plain, demolishing all human plantings and structures beyond easy bowshot of the walls. Now the black figures began moving back toward their citadel. "They're running!" Sharina said hopefully. "They're withdrawing until th
ey've judged the strength of the new threat,"
Rasile corrected emotionlessly. "The walls of their citadel are impregnable. Only the open gates can be attacked, and the Last will close them with their bodies where your warriors cannot use their greater numbers. When you fight the Last one against one they will likely win; and if one of them is killed, another will take its place." The leading regiments of heavy infantry followed the skirmishers at a measured pace. Horns and trumpets skirled with cheerful enthusiasm. "Call back your warriors, Princess," the Corl said. "They will die to no purpose. Call them back." "Captain Ascor!"Sharina said to the commander of her guard contingent. She wasn't going to tell her military officers how to fight, but she would-shemust in good conscience-pass on important information which she'd gotten from other advisors. "Summon Lord Waldron to me, if you will!" The Corl wizard continued to squat on her haunches, telling a string of pink coral beads. Her long face was turned toward the black citadel, but her eyes were unfocused. "Rasile?" Sharina said. "If we're not to attack the Last, then how are we to drive them out?"
"I'll study the matter now that I've seen their nest," Rasile said.
"But the Last are very powerful, Princess. Perhaps we should attack their impregnable walls until they have killed us all." She laughed again. Sharina stared at the fortress. Her face felt frozen, and the knuckles of her right hand were mottled where she gripped the Pewle knife.
Chapter 13 Though the moon was well risen, Leel took a stick with a ball of tar on the end and lit it from a firepot. "Come along, then," he said to Garric unhappily. "Though you could find it yourself if you weren't blind." The remainder of Holm's guards had retreated swiftly to a pavilion. The sound of a drinking party came through the velvet sides. Garric didn't respond. Leel was unhappy at being ordered to lead them, but he was doing the job. Snarling at him- "Or knocking him flat," Carus interjected with a rueful laugh. "As I might well've done." -wasn't going to make that job go quicker. "What is it that you think a torch will chase away, Master Leel?" asked Shin in a mocking tone. "Not the thing that haunts this lake, I assure you." Leel muttered something and spat-though away from the aegipan and his companions. He pulled his torch back from the pot, rotating the tar ball slowly to spread the growing red flames across its surface.
"Mount, master," Kore said. She knelt beside Garric, holding the looped 'stirrups' open with her clawed hands. Garric glanced at her, then scuffed the ground. This gravel strand was as firm as a cobblestone street, but he wasn't sure what the causeway would be like. He opened his mouth to say he'd walk, then closed it. He'd far better learn whether the surface'd bear him mounted on the ogre now than later when other things might be happening. Particularly since the 'other things' were uncertain but certainly threatening. He set his left foot in the loop and gripped the ogre's shoulders to swing himself aboard. "Tell me, Master Shin," Kore said. "Am I correct in supposing that most warhorses have better sense than the noble heroes riding them? Or is my judgment warped by special circumstances?" The aegipan laughed. Garric grinned and said, "The epics don't generally discuss the matter, but the figurehead of the hero Klon's ship is said to have given him advice. When I return to Valles, I'll ask Liane to institute a search of the major temple libraries for more information on the question." Leel stared from Kore to Garric, then down to the aegipan. "Are you crazy?" he demanded. "Perhaps," said Garric, suddenly cheerful. Shin and Kore were not only companions but friends.
"It seems to help, though." Leel led them through the camp of the laborers, shanties of leaves lashed to twig frameworks. The small dark men watched in nervous silence as they passed. The laborers didn't carry weapons, not even the stones or asphalt torches that were available to anyone here. That must be the decision of Lord Holm and his guards. Eyes caught by torchlight gleamed from doorways, but Garric only once saw an adult woman. A naked brown child suddenly sprinted on chubby legs from a hut, gurgling laughter. His mother-who didn't look any older than fifteen herself-ran after him, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and began to spank him into screams with her slipper even before she got him back into the hut. She kept her eyes turned away from Garric and his companions, as if by ignoring the strangers she could prevent them from harming her. "Shin?" Garric said. "Do you know how wide this land is? I can smell salt water." "A furlong wide here, where Lord Holm has moved his household," said the aegipan. "It narrows to half that to the east and west where it finally joins the mainland to enclose the tar lake." "It's not wide enough," Leel muttered. "If we get a storm from the south, it'll wash clear over this little spit. That's happened three times since I been with Milord, only it didn't matter because we were a mile out in the lake so the sea didn't even wet the foundations of the fort." He cleared his throat and corrected himself, "The palace, we're supposed to call it. The palace." A vagrant breeze drove in from the sea, thinning a wedge of mist. The full moon blazed through the clear air, throwing a line of blacker shadow the length of the raised walkway stretching out into the lake. "All right," said Leel, pointing with the torch. "There's the causeway. It runs straight to the palace. Just follow it out and you can't go wrong." Kore drew up at the base of the causeway. In Ornifal men cut ice on the River Beltis in winter. Packed into pits with sawdust between the layers, the blocks remained to chill the drinks of the wealthy at the height of summer. The causeway was built with asphalt cut in the same fashion from the surface of the tar lake and stacked several layers high to form a road. The top layer of bitumen was mixed with dust and gravel blown onto the lake over the years, so that it became a type of concrete in which tar rather than lime was the binding agent. The ogre stepped onto the causeway, lowering her weight carefully. Her clawed foot didn't sink in. She paused, cocking an eye toward her rider for direction. "And in the morning, Lord Holm will carry us across the salt water in his barge?"
Garric said. "Is that correct, Master Leel?" "Milord said he would, didn't he?" the guard growled. He didn't look up to meet Garric's eye.
"Anyway, why not? We don't have any cargo since the grubbies won't go out to the islands any more. We may as well carry you and your beasts." "All right, let's go across," Garric said. He felt a grudging sympathy for Leel, who obviously didn't trust his master but who was unwilling to lie for him. "If the fog covers the moon again, we're going to have to feel our way." Shin gave a rippling, golden chuckle and made a motion with his hands. A ball of azure wizardlight swelled to the size of a cantaloupe just ahead of him. It was bright enough to show the seams between the blocks of asphalt. The aegipan danced onto the causeway, singing, "He who would valiant be, 'gainst all disaster…" Kore followed at a measured pace. Her claws and the aegipan's hooves clicked on pebbles in the causeway's surface. Garric glanced over his shoulder. For a brief time he could see Leel's torch as a dull red spark moving west across the neck of land, but then the mist swept in at full thickness and swallowed everything beyond the glow of Shin's ball of light. "-and follow the Master," the aegipan sang, then broke off into fresh laughter. The night was thick but not silent. The asphalt surface groaned, and occasionally a bubble plopped hollowly. Such humid warmth made Garric expect frogs and insects, but nothing living made a sound. Kore paced forward easily. They were silent for some time. "Can either of you see the palace?" Garric said at last. "As best I can judge, we should be getting close to-" The air grew noticeably cooler, though Garric didn't feel the breeze that must've driven the change. The sky was clear; stars jabbed down around a moon which was within an hour of zenith. The black bulk of Lord Holm's palace rose a few double paces ahead. The aegipan made another gesture with his delicate hands, rather like crumpling parchment into a ball and throwing it away; the globe of wizardlight vanished. Useful as the illumination had been, it gave objects an unclean cast when combined with natural moonlight. Mind, the palace was sufficiently unclean even in the moon's pale purity. Like the causeway, it was constructed of blocks sawn from the lake's surface. That they'd been carefully dressed and carved with pilasters and crude swags made the effect even more grot
esque. Kore knelt without being told to so that Garric could dismount. The windows were tall with pointed arches; the glass set into the openings in leaded frames may've been colored, but Garric couldn't be sure in this light. The double door was of heavy oak and iron-strapped, but both valves stood open. Torches like the one Leel had carried waited in sconces to either side of the recessed doorway, ready to be lighted. Shin lifted one, stared at it critically, and made a pass over the ball of tar with his cupped left hand. A red spark flashed and the tar began to burn with deep, smoky flames. Shin offered Garric the butt of the torch, adding with a curl of his tongue, "Or would you prefer to treat me as your servant, Prince Garric? Shall I bear the torch for you?" "You're not my servant," Garric said, taking the torch. He extended his arm slightly so that the acrid fumes were downwind of all of them. "And I'm capable of carrying this." "So long as you keep it in your left hand," said Carus. He chuckled. "I wouldn't like this place even if we hadn't been told we were being sent because nobody else had the balls to come."
"Foul though I find the odor of this hell-pit…," said the ogre.
She bent almost double to step through the doorway. "I would know if there were anything alive inside. There is not." "I would find that more reassuring," said the aegipan as he followed, "if I thought the living were the only or even the greatest danger we might face here."
Garric paused in the doorway to peer at a blotch in the carved molding; it was the discolored knuckle of a bone from an ox or something even bigger. Of course animals-and no doubt men-would've fallen into the tar over the centuries that the asphalt lake had existed. The larger the beast, the more likely that its weight would break through the crust, especially if a skin of rainwater hid it. He walked into the building. There was no anteroom, just a hall which rose to the height of three normal stories. The domed roof had a large oculus in the center. Moonlight streamed through that round window and painted the west side of the hall. Tapestries showing horsemen hunting strange beasts across a mountainous landscape covered the bitumen wall; it would otherwise have absorbed the light almost completely.