Elements 03 - Monsters of the Earth

by David Drake

  “You needn’t worry,” First said in a rasping, cheerful voice. “With you as my helper, worshiper, we will amaze them all. Amaze them! Oh, I will drink so much blood!”

  Alphena blushed to hear the bragging. It was like listening to gladiators before a bout.

  “Don’t talk like that,” she said in a low whisper. It was so plebeian! What if Corylus should hear?

  Alphena glanced at her mother, who was walking away from the group. Was she going off to die alone?

  Alphena felt a flash of insight: I’m as much a lady as Hedia is. I don’t want to be a gladiator; I just want to have the right to become a gladiator. I’m a lady of Carce and I should have the right to do anything!

  First’s ugly face twisted upward. The shell eyes were looking at Alphena, and the iron tongue quivered with laughter. “That’s not a very enlightened view, my worshiper. What would your philosopher friend think of it?”

  “I don’t care what Pandareus thinks!” Alphena snapped. As the words came out, she knew that they weren’t true: she respected the scholar, though it would be hard to imagine a human being with whom she had less in common.

  “And anyway, Varus feels the same way I do,” she added, defensively, though with more truth. “He just wants different things. He doesn’t want to plow fields or whatever plebeians do!”

  “You are my worshiper, little one,” First said through gales of grunting laughter. “Why should I care what you do with those who do not worship me? Cut the throats of all of them if you like, so long as you feed me their blood!”

  The nearest Ethiope was still two hundred feet from the point at which Corylus had said he would order the defenders to attack. She risked looking over her shoulder.

  The Daughters were chanting again. This time the words Alphena heard were, “Of all things, Time is the wisest, for it brings everything to light.”

  The old lizardman and Pandareus squatted on their haunches, facing each other. They seemed to be chatting. Varus had walked closer to the Daughters, holding the book that Hedia had given him.

  The Egg was brighter and sharper than Alphena remembered seeing it before, but she still wasn’t sure how far away it was. Even more than before she had the impression that it was spinning very quickly, faster than motes of dust in a windstorm.

  “The Daughters are trying to bring the Egg into the Waking World so that it will hatch,” the idol said. “But they are the Egg’s servants, not magicians. They will not be able to hatch the Egg before its time.”

  “But the Egg will be safe where it is, won’t it?” Alphena said. “The Ethiopes won’t be able to smash it, will they?”

  “The Ethiopes cannot harm the Egg,” First said. “But when it is time for the Egg to hatch, there will be no Earth for it to hatch onto.”

  Then, in a softer, almost wistful voice, First said, “I will drink well today. But when the Worms of the Earth come, I will perish as all things will perish, for the Worms have no blood. But that will be a later time. Now I will feast.”

  “Ready!” Corylus called. Alphena faced around.

  * * *

  VARUS SHADED HIS EYES as he watched the Ethiopes advance from the east. It would be very hot on this shore soon, though he and his companions would probably be dead before the heat became oppressive. He wondered how the Atlantean settlers had dealt with the problem.

  He didn’t know what he ought to be doing. Everyone else appeared to have a purpose. Hedia was walking away from the main group. Varus couldn’t imagine what she had in mind, but he understood his mother too well to doubt that she was planning something.

  Even Pandareus watched the proceedings with bright enthusiasm for new information and new experiences. He was focused on learning: the use of what he learned and the length of time he survived to savor it weren’t his concerns.

  I’m not enough of a scholar myself to take that attitude, Varus thought. The teacher’s greater age was part of the difference but, on reflection, not the whole of it.

  Pandareus was the son of a successful farmer on Melos, an island noted to history only because the Athenians had massacred its entire male population five centuries earlier. By contrast, Varus was the heir of one of the greatest families in Carce, a city that through the drive and determination of its citizens had risen from rural obscurity to rule most of the known world. He and Pandareus were equal in intelligence and in their love of learning, but differing heritages shaped their attitudes.

  The leader of the Singiri, Tassk, wasn’t facing the Ethiopes with his fellows. He approached Pandareus, nodded politely to Varus, and said, “Since both of us are too old to fight, master, I wonder if you would help me with a spell?”

  “A spell?” said Pandareus. “I’m not a magician, I’m afraid. Perhaps you were thinking of my colleague here, Lord Varus?”

  “Lord Varus has more important business than the small things that old men can accomplish,” Tassk said, flicking his forked black tongue toward Varus. I suppose that’s a friendly acknowledgment.

  “I am not a magician, either, merely an old warrior who has learned certain sounds,” Tassk continued. “But if you can repeat sounds after me, our voices may be able to help where our limbs no longer can.”

  “My limbs never could have helped, I’m afraid,” said Pandareus, smiling. “But sounds are another matter. I am pleased to join you, Master Tassk.”

  They squatted facing each other. Tassk began to speak syllables that sounded to Varus like chickens settling in for the night. After he completed a phrase by flicking his little finger, Pandareus repeated it with a skilled orator’s ear for inflection.

  Varus presumed they were speaking words, though not in the Singiri language and not necessarily in the language of any living thing. He grimaced, wondering what Tassk meant by the “important business” that Lord Varus had, since at this moment the most important thing Varus appeared to be doing was casting a shadow on the sand.

  The fog was growing thicker. It was a moment before Varus realized that this was not the sea mist that must drench this coast nightly. He was drifting out of the Waking World into the Sibyl’s realm, while hundreds of murderous half men poured down on him and his companions.

  Varus smiled in his dream vision as he started up the familiar trail. He would do the cause of his friends and humanity just as much good if his soul were here as if it were in his physical body at the moment it was smashed with a stone axe.

  The climb seemed steeper than on some previous occasions, and the shapes half-glimpsed through the fog were threatening even if they were only odd-shaped rocks. He wondered if he would feel pain if his psychic body was devoured by the elephantine creature with the head of a lion that seemed to be watching him as he passed.

  If the situation arises, I will try to be philosophical, he thought, and smiled more broadly. He was sure that his friend Corylus would face such a death with perfect courage, but he might not find as much humor in the prospect as Varus did.

  The Sibyl was sitting on a bench cut from coarse volcanic tuff, much like the seat Varus had seen in what was called the Grotto of the Sibyl in Cumae. He had always suspected that the grotto was of recent construction, but perhaps he did the current priesthood an injustice.

  “Greetings, Lord Magician,” the Sibyl said. He thought she was smiling, but her wrinkled face had any expression the viewer thought he should see.

  “Greetings, Sibyl,” Varus said, looking down the other side of the ridge, toward the half bowl in which his body and his companions waited for death. Foreshortened and viewed from such an apparent distance, the Ethiopes looked like a column of ants swarming from their nest. “You have said that you are a creation of my mind. What will happen to you when my body dies there below?”

  The Sibyl cackled. “Not all men die, Lord Magician,” she said. “Perhaps you will be one of those who never die.”

  “Like Tithonous?” Varus said bitterly, thinking of the wrinkled grub to which the Dawn’s lover had shrunk because she gave him eternal
life but not eternal youth. “That’s a myth.”

  “Or like Herakles, who became a god,” the Sibyl said. “What is myth, Lord Magician? Can there be no truth in myth?”

  “I’m not Herakles,” Varus said curtly. He was embarrassed to have implied that it was a fact that myths were meaningless rather than that he believed they were meaningless. That was bad logic, though he still believed he was correct in his assumption.

  He could see the Egg more clearly than his physical eyes had done in the Waking World. It wasn’t spinning as he had thought, but something was moving inside the translucent shell. It cast sparkles of light like an array of polished jewels.

  The Sibyl gestured toward the mountains forming the alcove. Varus followed her hand.

  The sky changed. Two huge crystal forms, the Worms of the Earth, writhed beyond the black rocks, gnawing at something unseen. The beams of the rising sun passed through them unimpeded, but their bodies blazed with a foul internal light.

  “They are not of the Waking World,” said the Sibyl. “Yet. But the magician Paris will break the barrier soon.”

  “But why?” Varus said. “He’ll die too, won’t he? Won’t everyone die?”

  “His Etruscan tribe had its time in the world,” said the Sibyl. “But that time is past. He knows he cannot return his people to greatness, and he chooses to destroy all men and all life rather than accept that reality.”

  She laughed again. “The Etruscans were never as great as he imagines,” she said. “I well remember when their scouts reached the valley of the Tiber and found my kinsman Evander already there. But the destruction he envisages, that is real enough.”

  Paris raised both arms as though praying to the mid-sky. To Varus’ present eyes, a ghost image of the round temple surrounded the Etruscan priest.

  The sky cracked. The Worms, each a river of living crystal, flowed through. Plumes of dust rose from the desert beyond the black rocks as they began to eat their way toward the Egg. In the basin, Corylus was leading his band of defenders into the oncoming Ethiopes.

  “Then I will be with my friends when that happens,” Varus said.

  “Let the blessed man come down from the expanses of Heaven!” cried the Sibyl.

  Varus staggered as his spirit returned to his body. He could already see the glittering backs of the Worms above the surrounding cliffs; the shouts of the fighters came to him over the sea breeze.

  The Daughters were chanting. Suddenly aware of what he should do, Varus walked toward them, holding the Book in his left hand.

  It fluttered open by itself. All sound ceased. The Daughters became faint shadows as though Varus saw them from within a globe of smoky quartz. With him were the Egg, brilliant now, and, across the Egg from Varus, a slender female member of the Singiri.

  “I am Princess of the Singiri,” she said, speaking Latin with perfect inflection. “Your friend the warrior Corylus saved me from torture. If you are willing, Lord Magician, I will help you save him and save your world, though it is no longer our world.”

  “Your help is very welcome, Princess,” Varus said, remembering how Corylus had accepted the help of the Singiri warriors. He raised the Book a little higher.

  The Book thundered words in two separate voices. The world beyond the globe shuddered with their power.

  * * *

  CORYLUS HAD PLANNED to launch his sally when the leading Ethiope reached a particular protea growing about a quarter furlong in front of him. The plant was a clutch of fat green leaves on top of a stem that rose knee-high from the sand: it even looked like a marker flag.

  The straggling Ethiope column plodded forward, reminding Corylus of a line of Sarmatian ox wagons rather than a squadron of cavalry. It was maddeningly slow. He remembered that the Ethiopes had two horny toes like cows, not a horse’s single hoof.

  The leading enemy was still ten feet short of the protea when Corylus shouted, “Ears for Nerthus!” and launched himself toward the enemy. He didn’t want to wear himself out—and wear out his “troops”—before the fight even started, but there was a point at which the cost of watching danger amble closer outweighed the physical exertion of a few extra strides.

  Tassk was the only one of the Singiri who spoke Latin, but that didn’t matter much in the current situation. They were warriors. When their leader charged, they were going to charge right along with him—even if they thought he was shouting, “Run for your lives!”

  And in truth, few regular legionaries would have understood the particular words that Corylus had shouted. The 3d Batavian Cavalry, his father’s command on the Danube, were Germans. Individual soldiers each had his own favorite deity, but the squadron’s scout section as a unit worshiped Nerthus. Their camp was at a little distance from the main squadron fort at Carnuntum, because they generally operated in darkness and needed to avoid noise and bother when they set off for the river and boats that would carry them to the Sarmatian side.

  In the center of the Scouts’ camp was a thick oaken pole—a length of trunk, stripped of bark but not smoothed: it was the shrine of Nerthus. To it were nailed the right ears of enemies whom the Scouts had killed across the river.

  Corylus was ten when his father took command. He had tried to count the trophies when he first saw the pole, but he had given up before long: there were over a thousand ears.

  By the time Corylus was fourteen, he was accompanying the Scouts on raids, without his father’s knowledge, at least at first. Their war cry was a promise, not a boast.

  If I were already in the army, I’d be a junior tribune on the commander’s staff, carrying messages to and from the centurions who led the troops into the fighting, Corylus thought. His experience with the Scouts would have been unimportant. Here, however—

  I know what to do because I’ve done it. Thank Nerthus, or Father Jove, or Good Fortune.

  He had been running parallel to the course of the Ethiope column, a little to the right. Ethiopes who had spread to the sides were moving back inward at a heavy lope. One of those turned and raised her spear overhead like a harpoon. She didn’t carry a shield.

  Corylus hunched down and stopped in a spray of sand, bracing his right foot against a block of crystal sticking up from the ground. His cleats sparked on the stone. If he’d tried to remain upright, he would have pitched forward on his face.

  The Ethiope stabbed downward like a battering ram. Her spearhead shattered into flint needles: she must have struck another fragment of ruin just under the surface. Even without a point, the shaft would have crushed through a human body in its path.

  Corylus rose, thrusting past the quivering spear and through the Ethiope’s diaphragm. She doubled up and slid slowly down the spear shaft, which she still held in both hands.

  Two more Ethiopes were approaching from twenty feet away to Corylus’ right, but he ignored them and ducked toward the main column. An Ethiope with his shield raised was facing in the opposite direction. Corylus stabbed him through the kidneys. The Ethiope’s huge body followed his spear. He had been jabbing toward a Singiri warrior who easily avoided it.

  The next Ethiope was turning toward Corylus when the Singiri lopped through his knee. The warriors’ bronze swords must be extremely sharp. The joints were cartilaginous, but a quick cut at an angle like that must have clipped solid bone both above and below.

  And the Singiri must be extremely strong despite their slender limbs. That wouldn’t change the outcome of a battle at odds of fifty to one—and rising every time another Ethiope stepped into the Waking World—but it would help humanity survive longer, if only by a matter of minutes.

  Ignoring the falling Ethiope—he would bleed out before he could crawl to the Daughters on three limbs—Corylus thrust for the ankle of the next. His sword crunched home, but the Ethiope’s axe was already swinging down. Corylus lifted his borrowed shield to meet it, knowing the Ethiopes’ strength and wincing mentally before the physical shock.

  The axe only ticked the rim of his shield and sailed off into
the sand. Even so, Corylus’ left hand quivered on the handles—it was a buckler, not a larger target supported by loops for his left forearm. Alphena had slashed through the Ethiope’s wrist so that only inertia guided the climax of the stroke.

  “Behind you!” she said. The flanking Ethiopes whom Corylus had bypassed in the initial rush were closing like bulls charging in the arena.

  Farther down the line, half a dozen Ethiopes were on the sand. Some thrashed, some merely bled, and some had already bled out: the Singiri warriors knew their business. None of the enemy was close enough to be a threat as Corylus turned to meet the flankers.

  Alphena shifted left, away from Corylus. The nearer Ethiope angled to follow her, crossing the path of his fellow. Corylus was on his left side, but the Ethiope held his shield low and Corylus’ long sword licked over it.

  The high, pointed ear flew into the air in a spray of blood. The Ethiope bellowed, twisting as he fell sideways. The stroke had cut deeply enough into the skull to stun, but it wasn’t immediately fatal.

  The following Ethiope jumped his sprawling fellow. Alphena lunged, stabbing him through the groin while he was still extended in the air. The idol in her left hand blocked the flint knife with which the Ethiope on the sand tried to stab her.

  Corylus chopped through the base of the fallen Ethiope’s spine, as high as he could reach while he was off-balance. The Ethiope’s legs went limp, but his arms and torso spasmed, throwing Alphena clear.

  Hercules! Alphena’s ugly carved idol hadn’t blocked the knife thrust, it was gripping the flint blade. It cackled with high-pitched laughter as it threw the knife aside. Its iron tongue was licking off the blood that had spewed from Alphena’s disemboweling stroke.

  I’m the commander. Corylus glanced across the battlefield. His vision blurred and he thought for a moment that he might vomit. His stomach and eyes settled.

  The Ethiopes were now charging toward the fight, throwing up plumes of dust. Because of their great weight, they plunged deep into the sand when they ran, making their advance much more tiring than their previous stolid walk had been.