by David Drake
The horn continued its long, hooting calls. Sharina knew where the settlement was, but the sound echoed from the opposite headland to reach her. If she hadn't seen the huts and palisade from the air, she'd have turned in the wrong direction to reach the settlement.
Though of course she wasn't making much headway in the right direction.
She entered the forest, skirting the bamboo. To her surprise, she found that it was easier to walk among the trees than it had been along the shoreline where the vegetation wove densely among itself.
Sharina didn't recognize any of the trees by species, but they seemed ordinary enough hardwoods. Vines swathed many of them, but there was less undergrowth than she'd have expected in the woods back home. The bamboo was a light green mass thrusting into the blacks and darker greens of the great trees, but so long as she kept outside of that she made good progress.
She smiled again. Not that it was progress in the direction she'd wanted to go.
A trail wound its way along the northern edge of the bamboo thicket. Sharina hesitated only an instant before turning onto it. This wasn't merely a track worn through the forest by the hooves of wild hogs, though it might have started that way. Axes had improved the passage. Saplings lay beside their hacked-off stumps, and in one place they'd cut through the trunk of fallen tree so that the path could continue without diversion.
Sharina now heard only the lowest notes of the horn. It had no direction at all. With the sun out of sight above the canopy, she wasn't sure where she was going. The path must lead to the settlement, though--unless it led away.
There were animals in the foliage, because sometimes she found piled droppings that were too large for birds--or at least birds of a size to fly within the tight confines of this forest. The chirps and hooting from above her could have anything--birds or squirrels or lizards, and perhaps some other creatures still. Maybe fish climbed trees in this place.
Sharina touched the hilt of her Pewle knife. She didn't expect to meet anything in the forest as dangerous as she could be herself. Not until she reached the settlement, at least. The folk there might be nervous about a stranger, even a lone woman, but Sharina didn't see any choice but to join them.
Perhaps they could tell her where she was. It wasn't likely that they could tell her how to get back home, though.
Sharina rounded an oak which so dwarfed all those nearby that its spreading limbs had opened a clearing at ground level. Another path joined the one she was following. Three women chattering in friendly nervousness were coming down it. They stopped wide-eyed.
Sharina turned her hands out to her sides. "Hello?" she said. Her voice was friendly, but it caught in the middle of the short word.
The women screamed and ran, dropping some of their tools and equipment. The path wasn't straight. They vanished up it, their voices fading almost as quickly in the vegetation as sight of them did.
Sharina swallowed. She hadn't expected that. Had they seen the knife? Even if they had, she'd been careful to keep her hands away from the hilt. Nobody could have taken her greeting as hostile unless they were already badly frightened.
She looked at one of the fallen tools. It was a digger made from a length of stout sapling with a flint blade lashed by withies into the split end. Another of the women had dropped a basket of bark cloth. It held bamboo shoots, severed by a tool with a serrated edge. One of the women had a chopper thrust through her sash, a section of gnarled root to which shark teeth had been cemented.
Sharina continued up the path. She wanted to run, but that would look as though she were chasing them. Were they afraid of the bird that brought her here? Or was there something more that she didn't know about?
That she didn't know about yet.
The horn calls had stopped. Sharina walked on, keeping her hand away from her knife by conscious effort.
The ground gradually rose and became rockier underfoot. The forest changed slightly; there were conifers among the hardwoods, though again no varieties that Sharina could name precisely.
She came out into an area cleared by ringing the bark of the trees. The trunks still stood, but the leafless branches let through enough sunlight to sprout the barley planted among the sprawling roots. Swathes of bark hung from the dead gray boles like the hair of corpses.
The palisaded community was on the high ground beyond. Picking her way among the dead trees, Sharina made her way toward the gateway.
The grain-plots hadn't been plowed: the soil was too stony and root-laced for that. The farmers had planted kernals in individual holes prodded into the earth with a pointed stick. The barley didn't look healthy to Sharina, but she might be wrong in estimating that the season here was late summer. All she knew for sure was that the great bird had taken her a very long way from her world and her friends.
Everything had a raw look. The trees hadn't been dead for even a year. The bare soil was orangish and unhealthy, gullied by recent rains.
The trees nearest the settlement had been cut down for use, leaving ragged stumps. For the most part, though, the wood was being wasted in a fashion that Sharina found as shocking as she would a human sacrifice.
Did they practice human sacrifice here?
Somebody must have been watching from between the logs of the palisade, because a warning cry sounded moments after Sharina came out of the uncut forest. She heard a babble of voices but she couldn't make out the words. She wasn't even sure they were speaking a familiar language, though the rhythms seemed normal enough.
A shark's head was impaled as a standard on the peak of the timber gateway. It was the real thing and badly preserved. Sharina was approaching from downwind. Her nose wrinkled, but the heavy effluvium of the dead fish wasn't really worse than the sourness of human waste coming more generally from the settlement.
Three men wearing full armor stepped into the gateway, filling it with their great bull-hide shields. Each wore a bronze helmet with a plume, eagle feathers dyed red for the men on either side and a spray of peacock tail-feathers for the man in the center. They were barefoot but bronze greaves covered their shins; those of the man in the center were molded with demon heads. The metal had been recently polished, so sunlight winked from it.
They lowered their bronze spearheads and began advancing on Sharina. The man in the center took longer strides than the other two and drew slightly ahead.
More people came out of the palisade behind the warriors. Some of the men had crude bows, but most carried sticks or tools--stone-headed axes and hoes, dibbles, and even threshing flails. The women had stone knives or held rocks to throw. There were a dozen children in a crowd that totalled about eighty. They were a hundred yards away from Sharina, beyond range of a flung rock and probably even bows of that quality; but they were coming closer.
Sharina stopped and raised her right hand, palm forward. "I'm a stranger who would be your friend," she called in a clear voice. "You needn't be afraid!"
Why were they afraid? She was a lone woman.
The group--the mob--coming toward her was dressed mostly in coarse bark cloth, but some of the folk wore furs and there were a number of garments made from more finished textiles. The cloak of the leading warrior was of excellent wool but dyed a muddy russet color.
One of the women Sharina had seen on the path raised her shark-tooth chopper. "Dragonspawn!" she shrieked in a thick accent.
The woman behind her, the one who'd lost the basket of bamboo shoots, threw a rock. It bounced back from a dead trunk and almost hit a warrior, anonymous in a helmet whose flaring cheek panels left only a T-shaped slot for him to see and breathe through.
The three warriors clashed their spear-blades against their mottled shields and called a muffled warcry. They raised the spears overarm and began to stump forward, shouting each time their left feet hit the ground.
The rest of the community followed, spreading to either side. Stones flew and a number of arrows wobbled in Sharina's direction. There was a mixed bellow of, "Kill!' and "Die!" an
d especially, "Dragonspawn!"
Sharina turned and ran, making for the track the settlers had cut. Plunging into the forest proper would be suicide, an invitation to anyone following to find her gripped in brambles or facing another wall of impenetrable bamboo.
She glanced over her shoulder. They were pursuing, all of them, emboldened by their own numbers and the fact their prey was fleeing. The unencumbered civilians left the warriors behind.
"Dragonspawn!"
They'd connected her with the great reptilian bird, of that there was no question. Was there more to the settlers' fear?
Sharina ran with the long-limbed grace that had been hers since early childhood. No one in the borough could chase her down if she got a bit of a lead, not even her brother. Certainly none of the stocky, dirty folk pursuing her now.
But she didn't know how far they'd follow. And though the settlement had been a poor hope for helping Sharina to get home, it was the only hope she had.
Branches whipped her. At every pumping stroke of her arms, her fingertips brushed the black horn hilt of the Pewle knife. If they did catch her--outrun her, trap her, circle her while she slept, as at some time she'd have to sleep... if they did, they'd learn that the business wasn't over yet.
Cashel watched the world spin about him, wondering when the business would be over. He was standing still. He knew that, as surely as he knew his own name. Everything around him changed in a series of eyeblinks.
His friends rotated and vanished. A blue haze congealed, then vanished like dew in the sunshine. Cashel stood at the base of the same bluff as before, but the vegetation twisted along the ground and had a maroon tinge. Shallow water that was choked with bluish algae stood where the street had been. A pair of eyes looked up from the water's surface, but the thing's body remained a vast dark mass which the algae mottled.
Everything shifted again. The water swung vertical; the bluff behind Cashel was a flat plain for the instant before a hard, ruby glare encompassed him and everything vanished.
Cashel was under the pale green sea. A fish faced him, hanging in place with quivering motions of its pectoral fins. The pressure of forty feet of water squeezed Cashel and started to lift him.
He twisted, wondering if he'd drown before he reached the surface. The bluff behind him was covered with sponges and soft corals whose fans waved in the current.
A red light enveloped Cashel again. He breathed hot, dry air and his staff was firmly planted on stony soil. His skin and clothes were sopping, and he could taste salt water on his lips.
Three figures goggled at him. They looked like toads standing on their hind legs, their broad lipless mouths gaping white. They wore copper bangles around their wrists, ankles, and the thickening beneath their heads that would have been the neck in a human being. The toads carried no tools or weapons, but one had a whisk of something that might have a beast's tail, grass, or even some fibrous mineral.
The blue glare wrapped Cashel, then opened to release him. He stood in a forest glade, beneath the same rocky hillside as in every other scene. This time he stumbled and thrust out his staff to catch himself.
In the side of the bluff was a thirty-foot gateway framed by pillars of pinkish-gray granite like no stone Cashel had seen in Valles. He looked up. From his steep angle he couldn't be sure about the scene on the triangular pediment above him, but it looked like a montage of men and demons battling or perhaps just torturing one another. The figures were sculpted from the same dense stone; the job must have been almost as difficult as carving crystal on the same scale.
The door in the gateway was bronze and stood ajar. Its surface was chased with writing in the sweeping letters that Cashel knew to call the Old Script. He couldn't read himself and could barely write his name in modern letters, but he'd seen the script often enough in the recent past. It was the form which wizards used to write their spells before they spoke them.
Cashel took a deep breath. The woods around him looked ordinary, though he hadn't been in this particular place before. There were oaks, beeches, and hickories; where the light was good enough, hornbeams formed a lower story. The air had the heavy natural smell of decay, the scent of late summer when growth has stopped and the leaves of dogwoods and sweetgums have already begun to turn.
Cashel spun his staff, using one hand and then both. He was loosening his muscles and making sure everything--his body as well as the hickory--was in balance.
A squirrel chattered above him. Cashel let the staff swish to a halt and called back with his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Startled, the squirrel fell silent.
Cashel pursed his lips and looked around him. It was nice to be out of the city again, though he preferred meadow to woodland. If your sheep got into the woods, they usually got in trouble. Of course, they got in trouble in open meadows too--if there was a sillier animal than a sheep, Cashel hadn't met it--but in open country you could get to them easier before they managed to drown or hang themselves in the crotch of a sapling.
He grinned. He knew about sheep, but he couldn't say he missed being around them all the time since he'd left the borough.
Cashel figured he was where Tenoctris meant him to come, but he didn't see any sign of Landure. The open bronze door was one way he could go, and there were three trails through the forest converging here.
The cave breathed out the way caves do when the open air is cooler than that in their depths. The forest wasn't that cool, Cashel would have thought, and he didn't like the sulphur tinge from below.
His nose wrinkled. He guessed he'd try one of the trails.
At least this was a better place to be than any of the ones he'd flashed through in coming here. The toadmen hadn't looked unfriendly, exactly, but the sea would've been a real problem for somebody who didn't swim any better than Cashel did. Though he guessed he'd have managed.
He started up the trail that led through a bed of galax for no reason beyond his needing to pick one path or another. He hadn't taken the second step when a woman with a hand over her bleeding thigh came running toward him past a stand of yellow birches.
She saw Cashel the same time he saw her. "Help please!" she cried desperately. "He means to kill me!"
She was about as pretty as any woman Cashel had ever met. Her hair was black and long, but she wore it in twin braids bound on top of her head like a turban. Her skin was white except for her lips, and the nails of her fingers and bare toes must have been painted with something to give them such a metallic red color.
The wound can't have been too bad, though it had soaked the lower right side of the linen tunic that was all the clothes the woman wore. If it'd been deep enough to get the artery, she'd have been dead as quick as if her throat was slit, and she ran too well for any big muscles to be cut.
Cashel dropped his staff crossways in front of him. "Keep back of me," he said, his voice suddenly husky. He didn't know what was going on, but this wasn't something he was going to walk away from. Finding Landure and then Sharina could wait a bit.
The woman gave him a grateful look and obediently swung herself behind Cashel's solid form. He hoped she'd know to keep well back, because a seven-foot quarterstaff takes up a lot of room when it's being used for serious work. He couldn't waste time worrying about her now, though; a man with a long bloody sword in his hand came through the birches in pursuit.
"Hello there!" Cashel said, his legs braced and his hands spread about the center point of the staff, ready to spin or strike. "What is it you plan to do here?"
The man stopped. His expression changed from momentary amazement to mottled fury. He was a tall fellow with a full black beard and shoulder-length hair. He wore a headband of red leather with symbols drawn on it in gold, and some sort red apron over his tunic, also embroidered in gold. On the middle finger of the man's left hand was a ring with a purple-black stone, nearly opaque but larger than a walnut.
The man looked Cashel over. "Don't meddle in matters that are none of your business, boy," he said. His
words seemed to echo from the open gateway behind Cashel.
He pointed his left index finger toward the cowering woman. "Get down there, Colva," he ordered, "or I'll treat you as you deserve!"
"If you take another step with that sword...," Cashel said. He had to force the words; his anger was like a mouthful of pebbles, choking him. "Then you'll make it my business."
"May the Lady preserve me from fools!" the man snapped. He closed his left fist and held it toward Cashel as though the big ring was a buckler for protection. "Strike him down!" he said.
A bubble of red light swelled from the sapphire like sap dripping from a wounded pine. It grew to the size of a brood sow, flame-shot and still expanding to fill the distance between Cashel and the stranger who thrust it at him.
Cashel stabbed with his quarterstaff, leading with his right hand. The blow was intinctive. The ferrule met the bubble with a blue flash that jolted him as though he'd slammed his staff into a boulder.
The bubble vanished. The wizard--no doubt about that now--flew over on his back, even though he'd been a good ten feet from the quarterstaff when Cashel struck.
"Bad idea, master!" cried a piping voice Cashel couldn't identify. "A really bad idea! Get down on your knees and beg, that's what you need to do now!"
The wizard paid as little attention to the disembodied voice as Cashel himself did. He got to his feet with the smooth, slow care of a man who's letting caution temper his obvious rage. "Will you, do you think?" he said to Cashel in a hoarse voice. "By the Lady, you will not!"
He stepped forward and cut overhand at Cashel. Cashel brought the staff around again, left ferrule leading this time, and caught the sword in mid-stroke.
The blade rang on the iron butt cap. The wizard kept his grip on the humming weapon, but the shock spun him face-down on the ground.
"Not used to fighting people who fight back, are you?" Cashel growled in a voice he wouldn't have recognized as his own if he'd had leisure to think about it. "Go on about your business, fellow. And I don't mean your business with this lady!"