by David Drake
Chalcus had shown himself able to anticipate the knife even if his eyes couldn’t find the wielder; perhaps he and Ilna could back all the way to where they entered this maze. But if they were going to retreat to where they entered, then they might as well have stayed with the Rua or better still in their own world. In this place, there was more than a likelihood of something coming from the other direction to find them if they didn’t move ahead quickly.
Chalcus struck—low this time, aiming at the sexless wizard’s feet but glancing along the stone-hard ice. Stab/clash as sacrificial knife met dagger, but this time the edge stopped close enough to mark Chalcus’ tunic with a line of blood from some other victim’s lungs. He jumped back flat-footed, so Monine’s second stroke cut the air instead of severing his ribs at mid-chest.
The slender wizard seemed tireless. Her smile never faltered, her steps and slashes were as steady as the beat of a millstone driven by the stream’s relentless force. If—
Chalcus laughed and closed his eyes. He stepped forward, his curved sword singing in a short arc.
Monine screamed and collapsed. Ilna thought the sound continued to echo long after the wizard’s severed head had spun and danced to a halt far down the tunnel of ice. Blood spouted, then dribbled from the neck stump. As it soaked into Monine’s rumpled tabard, her corpse took on clearer lines against the floor.
Chalcus toed the knife out of the wizard’s hand. “I’ve seen sickles that’d be less clumsy in a knife fight,” he mused aloud, “and the blade’s heavy enough for a trireme’s ram. But for all that it nearly did for me, did it not?”
“There’s nearly,” said Ilna in a terse voice, “and there’s what she is. Dead. Nearly will do.”
Chalcus jerked a sleeve off Monine’s tunic and wiped his blade clean of her blood. “She could fool my eyes,” he said in the soft lilt that he’d have used to describe Ilna’s hair or the curve of her neck. “But not my hand, I thought; and I was right.”
“What if she’d struck at you when you closed your eyes?” Ilna asked mildly.
Chalcus snorted; he lifted an edge of the tabard with his sword point, then let it flop down again. “Strike?” he said. “When she saw her death coming on my sword edge? No love, not that one.”
He grinned at her. “She’s not you, you see.”
“Apparently not,” Ilna said, looking down the tunnel. Monine’s head had come to rest on the stump of her neck. The shock of decapitation had lifted the corners of her mouth; from a distance the rictus looked like a mocking grin.
“Not yet, at least,” Ilna added. “Come, then. We have a little farther yet to go.”
***
Sharina led the way down the corridor. Franca was on her right, Scoggin on the left. Either man was a little behind her and far enough to the side to be safe when she began to swing the axe. The remainder of the band, eight men and some of them limping along with wounds, spread to either side.
The glowing walls made Sharina feel as though she were walking in a tunnel of light. She’d thought at first she might get used to it, but she’d been wrong. Faint though the glow was, it jabbed into her consciousness like the brush of nettles on her skin; every step, every heartbeat.
The figures at the other end of the tunnel shimmered as if seen across an expanse of sunlit desert, but she could see that there were many of them, far more than her band had killed on entering this realm. The points of their weapons winked like the stars on a winter night.
Beard had been singing softly. Now in a regretful voice he said, “I don’t mind if we kill the ones waiting for us ahead. Not me, not Beard; blood is blood. But you might want to know that those are your friends, mistress.”
Ah. Now that she’d been told, Sharina saw that the shields of the figures ahead were the familiar long ovals of the royal army, and that the ranks showed a degree of order that she’d never seen among the minions of chaos.
“These are friends!” she shouted, turning her head to the right, then left to make eye contact with her men. “I’ll talk to them when we get closer. There’ll be an officer who recognizes me, I’m sure.”
Actually, she wasn’t sure. Nobody in the royal army had seen Princess Sharina dressed in a bearskin over the remnants of her sleeping shift, carrying an axe at the head of a band as ragged as she herself was. And what her hair must look like!
In an undertone she went on, “Thank you, Beard. For telling me they were friends.”
“Oh, you’d have figured it out before we killed anybody, mistress,” the axe said. He sounded as if he were trying to convince himself. “And anyway, there’ll be more blood for Beard to drink. Much more, don’t you think?”
“I’m sure there will be,” said Sharina. But less sure that she wouldn’t have gone tearing into Garric’s army, oblivious of everything except for the fact that they were in front of her.
“Mistress?” said Beard. “All I think about is what I’m going to get a chance to kill next; that’s the way Beard is, how Beard was made to be. But you humans aren’t supposed to be like that.”
She’d forgotten that the axe heard her thoughts.... “You’re right, Beard,” Sharina said. “And we humans especially shouldn’t become focused on how we’re going to die. It’s good to have friends who warn us when we get off the right road.”
“Humph!” said the axe, a kind of metallic snort. “I drink blood.”
They’d come within a hundred feet of the royal line. One of the men in the front row was a Blood Eagle, but judging from shield facings the other troops were a mixture of two or three regular regiments. Had there been a disaster?
“Ready!” called an officer, slanting his sword forward. The spears of the men in the front ranks came back, ready to throw.
“Wait!” cried Sharina. She gripped Beard just below the head and waved the butt in the air, hoping that looked pacific. The axe was giggling. “Wait, we’re friends!”
A big, barrel-chested man in gold-chased black armor forced his way to the front of the formation. Lord Attaper, and a welcome sight.
“That’s Princess Sharina, you fools!” Attaper cried. “Platt, are you blind or have you gone mad? Lower your spears!”
Sharina trotted forward, wobbling for the first couple steps. She was suddenly aware that she’d almost been killed by her friends. Garric would’ve been very angry when he heard about it.
The axe giggled again; so did she.
“Lord Attaper,” Sharina gasped as she reached the line. Scoggin and Franca were with her, and despite what she’d said the rest of the band was close behind. “These are my friends. We’ve come to kill the wizard who’s destroying this world. Ah, Her.”
The royal troops looked either puzzled or embarrassed. The officer who’d been about to order Sharina killed stood rigid, facing straight ahead so that he wouldn’t have to meet her eyes.
“I’ll get you to the prince,” Attaper said. “He’ll be glad you’re safe.”
“Safe,” echoed Beard. “Safe? Oh, what marvelous jesters these soldiers are! But there’ll be enough blood for everyone, for Beard and these soldiers and more besides than all of us can drink!”
Attaper looked first at Sharina, then down at the axe. His eyes widened; then he looked away, toward the men following her. He gestured with his chin and said, “Is this lot with you, your highness?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice sharper than she’d really intended because of what she heard as an implied insult. These men had followed her here—to Hell!—because she’d asked them to. “These are my companions. They’ll come with me to see my brother.”
“Right,” said Attaper, gesturing with both arms to clear a passage through the close-packed troops. “We need to get them inside so that Captain—”
He looked with hard eyes at the stiff, flushing officer.
“—Platt doesn’t have another brainstorm!”
Sharina turned to her men. “Follow me and keep close!” she ordered.
She clutched Beard to her chest
so she wouldn’t slash somebody as she squeezed between the soldiers. “As if they were going to do anything else,” said the axe. “You’re the only thing in this place that they trust. Why, you’re the only thing in this place they’re not terrified of!”
Attaper led them into a huge domed chamber, larger than any of the similar junctions Sharina and her band had seen on their way through the ice maze. It was full of milling soldiers.
Here and there officers were trying to organize their units, causing greater confusion than there would have been without their efforts. Except for the commander of the Blood Eagles leading them, Sharina didn’t suppose she and her band could possibly have gotten through—even with Garric himself, standing on a pedestal, shouting to them at the top of his lungs.
“It’s not a pedestal,” Beard said. “Your brother’s standing on the shoulders of a man named Cashel or-Kenset. Is this possibly of interest to you, mistress?”
“Cashel!” Sharina cried. “Cashel!”
She started to slip past Attaper—she could have, slim and strong and because she was female likely to be treated with deference that these nervous armed men would never have given another of their own. But she’d have had to leave behind the band who’d followed her, her men.
Sharina smiled. Cashel could wait a few minutes. He’d understand if anyone alive would understand.
Garric jumped to the ground as Attaper wove Sharina and her companions closer. He vanished for a moment behind the wall of troops, then reappeared in front of Attaper with Cashel at his side. They moved like whales bellying through a sea of armed men. Liane followed closely, and a pair of noncoms trailed her, looking bemused. They were apparently attached to Garric though they weren’t Blood Eagles and Sharina didn’t recall seeing them before.
Sharina hugged Cashel awkwardly because both of them had something in their right hands. He was used to doing things while holding the quarterstaff, but she had to remind herself that Beard had sheared everything he’d touched save the metallic monster Alfdan had fed himself to.
Cashel was a mountain, a tower against everything hostile. Holding him and being held brought order to the cosmos. It was the first peace Sharina had known since the urn in her bedroom had sucked her into the world She ravaged.
She patted Cashel once more between the shoulderblades, then leaned back and broke the embrace. She took a deep breath.
“Garric?” she said, turning to indicate the band who’d come with her. Franca was glaring at Cashel; Scoggin rested his left hand on the youth’s shoulder. The others stood close behind. Some looked ill at ease to be crowded by men in armor, but Neal and Layson in particular stood straight and looked the curious soldiers around them in the eye. “These are my companions. They helped me and fought for me. I’m responsible for them.”
“For that they’ll be honored as they deserve when we have the leisure to do so,” said Garric, glancing about the confusion with a smile that reminded her of the brother she’d grown up with. “Which at present we certainly do not. But—”
“Your highness!” said Lord Lerdain, pushing back through the crowd. “The centipede’s dead or dead enough that we can get by! Lord Escot and Master Ortron are advancing!”
Lerdain had gotten a bang on the side of his face; the present puffiness would become a bad bruise in a few hours. He no longer seemed the pudgy fifteen-year-old he’d been a few months before when he became Prince Garric’s aide.
“Right!” said Garric, turning toward one of the corridors branching off this great junction. “Tell them I’m coming.”
Looking past him Sharina saw the chitinous, pincered leg of an insect large enough that its legs could scrape the high ceiling when it lay on its back. The sight gave her stomach a sudden jolt. But we killed that already! her mind told her; but they hadn’t, not this particular creature nor even one exactly like it. And what else was waiting before they reached Her?
“Sharina,” Cashel said, “I’ve to go with Garric. I’ll be back when, well, you know.”
Garric and his pair of soldiers were already pushing forward; Attaper followed with a set expression and his hand on the ivory hilt of his sword. The bodyguard commander obviously had his own opinion of what was reasonable behavior for his prince, and as obviously he knew to hold his tongue at this juncture.
Sharina hesitated, caught between concern for her ragged followers and her desire to stay with Garric and Cashel now that she’d finally been reunited with them. Though she didn’t suppose she had any business fighting now, since there were soldiers with the training and equipment to—
“Mistress, you must take me to the front!” Beard cried. “Has Beard not been a good servant to you? Will you starve Beard of the blood he deserves?”
“But—” Sharina said. Cashel and Garric were already out of sight beyond the currents of milling soldiers. She couldn’t let her whim and an axe’s bloodlust take her where a girl without armor would only be in the way of men in a hard battle!
“Do you think they can fight what waits for them, mistress?” Beard said, his voice rising in peevish anger. “They can’t, you know. They’ll only die when they face an Elemental! But Beard and his mistress, they can drink even that life. Please, mistress!”
“An Elemental...?” Sharina repeated softly.
“Oh, She’s a great wizard, the greatest of wizards,” the axe crooned. “No one could bind an Elemental! But She bound one and drew it here, and it will swallow all the souls it finds unless Beard drinks its soul instead.”
Sharina shuddered as she remembered diving into the fjord to bring up the Key of Reyazel. Her mind had been numb then, so focused on the brutal strain of the dive that the horror of the things guarding the key had slid off her like filth from a wall of ice. Thinking back on the event forced her to understand exactly how foul the things had been—and how unutterably awful it would have been to be engulfed by one of them.
“Neal,” Sharina said sharply. “Take charge till I return. Hold the men here. Stay together and don’t get in the way of the, the soldiers with better equipment.”
“But mistress!” Layson begged.
“Stay here!” she snarled. “Franca, you and Scoggin too!”
“You didn’t dive into the fjord with her,” said Beard in a piercing, sneering tone. “If you come now you’ll die the same way, the very same way, and your souls will die forever!”
Sharina’s eyes met Liane’s; Liane nodded. Sharina turned sharply. “Neal,” she said, “obey Lady Liane here as though she were me. She’ll take care of you!”
She turned again and slipped off through the crowd, holding the axe over her head. Behind her, her former companions stood like scarecrows with gaping mouths. They eyed Liane and clutched their weapons like shipwrecked sailors holding spars.
“Make way for Princess Sharina!” Beard cried; his ringing voice cut through the clamor, jerking startled men about and opening gaps that a slim, determined woman could stride through. “Make way for Beard’s mistress!”
I’m not abandoning Franca and the rest. I’m giving them a chance to live, which they wouldn’t have had if they came with me now. The fact that Sharina knew her litany was objectively true didn’t keep her from feeling sick to her stomach at having left behind frightened men who depended on her.
Beard gave a metallic titter. “My mistress doesn’t fear anything, of course,” the axe said. “She knows that Beard’ll drink himself fat on blood before she dies. Oh, fortunate mistress to have such a servant as Beard!”
Which was also objectively true, and Sharina’s laughter at that thought washed away her empty queasiness at the way she’d treated her companions. Anyway, she didn’t have any choice but to go. She knew her brother and Cashel would fight the Elemental if she wasn’t there, and she didn’t doubt Beard’s claim that it would devour them.
“We will kill it as we killed its sibling in the deeps,” Beard caroled in response. “As we drank the soul of something that’d swallowed a thousand souls. Oh, m
istress, Beard will chant your praise till the sun dies!”
The Old Kingdom poet Celondre had claimed his work was more lasting than bronze. Beard was going to outlast Celondre, at least in this place, so Sharina supposed she’d achieved immortality of a sort....
She laughed, wondering if she was becoming hysterical. The axe laughed with her.
She reached the archway where the corridor joined the great rotunda. Here the troops were packed so tightly that even she couldn’t squeeze through. “Make way for Princess Sharina!” Beard cried shrilly.
That didn’t change anything directly, but a Blood Eagle in the crowd ahead of her looked over his shoulder. Sharina found his face vaguely familiar; he’d probably been in her guard detachment at some point.
“Say, that is the princess!” he said. “Say! Don’t crowd her highness, you dogs! Have you lost all honor?”
Between shouting and prying with the butt of his spear, the Blood Eagle opened a space for her to join him. “Let the princess through!” he bellowed as he started pushing forward through the ruck. “Pass the word up there that Princess Sharina’s coming through!”
The Blood Eagle cocked his head toward her again. He was an older man whose nose had been broken at least twice.
“File Closer Gondor, your highness,” he said in a respectful voice. “I don’t suppose you remember, but—”
“I do indeed, Gondor,” Sharina said. That was half a lie, but this wasn’t a time for pleasantries. “Carry on.”
Which Gondor did, using the side of his shield like a plowshare to carve a furrow through the crowd. Sharina’s name alone hadn’t been enough to make a path, but her name and brute force succeeded.
“Brute force, oh yes,” said Beard. “Brute force, but especially Beard’s fine edge to drink their blood!”
The corridor was half blocked—more than half—by the twisted body of the segmented, many-legged monster. The gigantic corpse still twitched. Its movements and the sulfurous, stomach-roiling stench of the blood leaking from the creature’s wounds made even veteran soldiers pause as they reached it, delaying the advance more than the constriction itself did.