The Fortress Of Glass

by David Drake

  That wasn’t obvious from Lord Waldron’s position in the center of the fortifications further down the slope. A courier left the Waldron’s entourage, obviously heading for the signaller blowing the unauthorized call. The man slipped and stumbled on the hillside; he’d lost at least his helmet in the fighting.

  Sharina took off her cloak and waved it toward Lord Waldron. He wouldn’t understand what she meant, but it might be enough to convince him that there was a good reason for what probably had seemed to him mutiny.

  The cornicene continued the call; other signallers took it up, horns and trumpets both. From where she stood Sharina could see troops abandoning their positions and streaming up the slopes. The men who’d survived this long probably thought the recall was the hand of providence, saving their lives at a time when they were sure they were doomed.

  Many troops hadn’t survived; Sharina could see that too. Close combat with the hellplants was a sentence of death, particularly now that most of the fuel had been burned.

  The soldiers close to where the mirror’s deadly beam struck were already retreating. They were fleeing, more accurately, throwing down weapons and equipment, but it was wizardry that’d panicked them rather than the enemy—even this unnatural enemy.

  The silver bowed and shivered under Double’s chanted commands; its point of focus cut like a fiery razor everywhere it touched. The hellplants’ sodden flesh burst and blackened, leaving behind only masses of stinking compost as the light moved on.

  Twice Sharina saw a fleeing man step into the directed blaze. Neither was at the focus, but they were close enough to it that one died screaming and the other’s steaming flesh oozed through the segments of his armor as his body toppled backward.

  Lady, cover them with the cloak of Your protection. Lady, may their spirits dwell with You.

  The mirror shifted, drawing its light along hellplants bunched at the line of the fortifications. Even when the troops had abandoned their positions, the works delayed the massive, sluggish attackers. The mere touch of the light did as much sudden damage as the heaviest jars of quicklime hurled by the artillery. Waldron must finally have seen what was happening. He and the knot of cavalrymen around him, his personal retainers, backed out of their redoubt with their faces toward the plants; his four signallers joined the general chorus of Recall. The courier, halfway between the command group and Sharina on the northern crest, stopped in puzzlement and looked back toward the army commander.

  Sharina had expected cheering; there was none. The troops who’d been fighting the hellplants were too exhausted for enthusiasm even at a miracle that’d saved their lives for the time being.

  The mirror continued to warp and shimmer. It’d initially faced nearly due south, catching the sun in the southeast. As the sun rose higher and the mirror’s focused light grew even more devastating, Double drew it around the whole smooth curve of the bay. There was no escaping its beam, but the plants didn’t bother trying. They continued to waddle up the slope, oblivious of the shrunken, smoldering carcasses of their fellows.

  The line of fortifications was clear of living plants. Where there was motion, it was a wisp of steam lifted by the breeze or a numbed soldier crawling out of the pile of corpses which had concealed him.

  Double moved his ravening light onto the squadron of hellplants which had come out of the sea since sunrise. The dank miasma that’d half hidden the plain now burned away in swirls. Wet fields steamed, the stubble burning and the soggy furrows crumbling into arid dust as the light swept over them.

  Calf’s Head Bay was again free of the monsters which had swarmed over it. The tide washed in, bringing only the normal wrack of foam and flotsam.

  “Mekisthi!” shouted Double. The film of silver, sun-struck and brilliant, vanished like the dew. A shining track on the rocky soil marked where it’d fallen when the spell suspending it had ceased.

  Sharina looked at her shadow in amazement; it slanted sharply eastward. The battle had gone on from daybreak to well after noon, when she would’ve guessed that less than an hour had passed.

  The stench of burned flesh and rotted vegetable matter had risen even to the hillcrest; a score of fires were burning on the plain. Nothing now moved but the smoke.

  “I am Cervoran!” Double screamed triumphantly; and, screaming, fell backward, drained by the exertion spent in his art.

  “A very powerful wizard,” Tenoctris repeated quietly.

  Chapter 12

  These look like grapes,” said Ilna doubtfully, using her left thumb and forefinger to pluck one of a bunch of purple fruit. It hung from the large-leafed vine which wound about the Osage orange forming a stretch of the hedge on their right side. “They are grapes, Ilna,” Merota said in surprise.

  “Indeed, dear heart,” said Chalcus. “What else is it that they would be?”

  “Oh,” said Ilna, squeezing the fruit against the roof of her mouth with her tongue. “I thought grapes grew one by one; the ones I’ve seen in the borough. These are in bunches.”

  “Oh, muscadines,” said Merota dismissively. “These are much better!”

  And perhaps they were. At any rate, the skin wasn’t as thick as what Ilna was used to and the juicy pulp was even sweeter than she’d expected. She’d have willingly accepted a tart mouthful to’ve avoided being embarrassed by not knowing something that “everybody knew”. Everybody knew but Ilna os-Kenset, the peasant from Haft.

  “Wild grapes are tasty things, to be sure,” said Chalcus, twisting off a small bunch with his left hand alone. “These are the kind they grow for wine in great plantations, good as well. And it’s no surprise that they’d be the planted sort here rather than the wild, not so?”

  “We drank beer in Barca’s Hamlet,” Ilna said, her voice expressionless. “Bitter beer at that, since we brewed it with germander instead of hops.”

  If she’d never left home, she wouldn’t have been constantly embarrassed by her own ignorance. She’d—The anger swirling in her mind—but only her mind—subsided. If she’d never left home, she wouldn’t have met Chalcus and Merota. It was hard to remember how life had felt before they’d come into it, because the only details in that gray expanse were the frequent flashes of blazing, frustrated fury.

  “We’ve got our pick of fruits and nuts, surely,” Ilna said aloud. “Perhaps if we continue searching we’ll find a field of barley? I’d say ‘wheat,’ but as you know, I’m not an optimist.”

  “Or we could see what roast chimaera tastes like,” said Chalcus. “Assuming we can build a fire, as I trust we could manage.”

  Ilna smiled faintly. The sailor was probably joking as she’d been joking—more or less—but the question of food did concern her. She didn’t need meat—she’d almost never eaten it as a child—but bread or at least porridge would be good. Exploring the entire maze on their own would take months or years if it was even possible. The little folk who lived here should know its ins and outs…

  While her companions ate grapes and talked with the ease of long acquaintance, Ilna’s fingers worked. She could feel eyes on her, though she knew from experience that if she snapped her head around she’d see only a blur before the watchers vanished. One of the little folk was staring at her from the holly to her left at this very moment.

  Ilna turned slightly to the right. “Chalcus?” she said in a calm, pleasant tone. “Merota; I want you both to close your eyes now.”

  “Why—” Merota said. The child must’ve seen the cold anger on Chalcus’ face—not at her, but at what she’d done—because she instantly screwed her eyes shut.

  Ilna used both hands to spread her knotted pattern toward the holly. There was a tiny squeal and a thrashing within the hard leaves.

  “All right,” she said to her companions, hiding the fabric in her sleeve without taking the time to unpick it. She stepped quickly to the hedge. “You can look now.”

  She paused for a moment, then reached through the tangled branches with her left hand and pulled out the little man wh
om her pattern had paralyzed. He was as wiry as a squirrel; even Chalcus, the most tightly muscular man Ilna had ever seen, carried more fat under his skin.

  The little man—Ilna refused to call them the Prey, though she didn’t doubt that was their place in the garden’s society—was as wide-eyed as a hooked bass; he’d been caught with his mouth half open. Ilna laid him on the ground and quickly trussed his arms behind his back with her noose.

  She gave the free end of the silken rope to Chalcus. “I’m going to wake him up now,” she explained. She brought the fabric out of her sleeve and undid several knots in a precise sequence. “He may try to run.”

  “There’s never been such a wizard as you, dear heart,” the sailor said; half jesting, but only half.

  “It’s no more wizardry than what I’ve seen you do with your sword,” Ilna said sharply. She didn’t like talking about her skills, in part because talk reminded her that she’d gained them in Hell. It would’ve been closer to the truth to call her a demon than a wizard…

  She spread the revised pattern before the little man’s staring eyes. He gave a convulsive leap before he even blinked. In mid air, halfway to the holly, the rope snapped tight and jerked him down to the grass with a thump.

  “Sister take him!” Chalcus shouted, quickly wrapping the silk around his left hand. He’d been holding it with his fingers alone. If he’d been even slightly less quick or less strong, the little man would’ve jerked free and escaped into the hedge with the rope.

  The little man jumped again, this time in the opposite direction. Chalcus threw his right arm in front of his face, expecting the captive to go for his eyes or throat. His sword winked in the unchanging sunlight, point upward where it wouldn’t spit the little fellow by accident. Instead he sailed over Chalcus’ shoulder, trying to escape to the Osage orange.

  Again the noose snubbed him up. When he hit the ground this time he curled into a ball and lay there. His breath hissed, and small bubbles of foam formed between his lips.

  “I had him, dear one,” Chalcus said with a hint of reproach. “You needn’t have done that.”

  “I did nothing!” Ilna snapped, unreasonably angry at the situation. “Did he hit himself too hard on the ground?”

  Merota knelt by the little man and stroked his cheek. “He’s afraid, Ilna,” she said. “He’s shivering here! Feel him.”

  The little man’s eyes were open but there was no more mind within them than in a pair of oysters. “We aren’t going to hurt you,” Ilna said, more harshly than she’d intended. “We just want to ask you some questions.”

  The little man didn’t speak or even move, unless you counted his violent trembling as movement. Voices chittered in the hedges on both sides.

  “Please,” Merota said. “He’s really frightened. Can’t we let him go, please?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Ilna, bending over the little form. Standing he wouldn’t come up to more than her waist. She was furious—at the little man, at herself, and at life.

  Mostly at herself, of course; as usual. She’d used her skills to throw a harmless creature into numb terror for no benefit to herself. That was the kind of monster that she was.

  When Ilna’d loosed the bonds she straightened and looped the rope back around her waist. The little man stayed where he was, still trembling.

  “You can go now, sir,” Merota said in a tone of stilted formality. He trembled.

  Ilna’s cheeks were stiff with disgust and rage. The part of her that’d grown up with normal people wanted to damn the little man to the Underworld for making her feel this way—And the other part of her was sick, knowing that by trapping him that way she had sent him to a Hell which’d consumed him as completely as the place a misstep had taken Ilna os-Kenset. She hadn’t meant to do that to him any more than she’d meant to do it to herself; but she had, and the consequences were her responsibility.

  Ilna picked up the little man in both hands and carried him back to the hedge from which she’d taken him. This time the holly jabbed her because she wasn’t trying to avoid the sharp leaves. She needed to be punished.

  “There,” she said, turning to her companions. “Let’s get on from here, shall we?”

  She’d left her former captive in a crotch among the scaly branches, his head higher than his feet. He’d come around in his own time or he wouldn’t; she’d done what he could.

  There was a scrabbling in the hedge; Ilna looked back. The holly twitched and the little man was gone.

  If I could believe in the Great Gods, I would thank them now.

  “Aye, there’s nothing here to hold us,” Chalcus said easily. “Is there a direction in particular—”

  “They let Dee go,” peeped a tiny voice. Then, in a chorus like frogs in springtime, “They let Dee go!”

  Little faces were staring from the hedges on both sides. There were more than Ilna could count on both hands.

  Chalcus lowered the point of his sword to the ground. Merota put her right hand in Ilna’s left and edged closer.

  “Princes?” said the little woman peering from the place in the holly where Ilna had snatched her captive. “I am Auta. Have you come to save us?”

  “Get the firewood up here!” Donria shouted. “We’re going to burn down the gates!”

  “I don’t think we’ll need that, lad,” said the ghost in Garric’s mind. “The gate leaves don’t close so tightly. You can get your axe through and lift the bar if they were in too big a hurry to pin it.”

  And what’s the chance of that? Garric thought, but that was just a gasp of exhausted despair. Nothing seemed very practical at the moment, but that wasn’t going to keep him from trying. He knew—he remembered—that Carus had won a good number of his battles by pressing in just this fashion, for the opportunity that the enemy shouldn’t have given him—but had regardless, because people make mistakes and frightened people make even more mistakes.

  “Come on,” he muttered to Metz. Duzi! but his right shoulder hurt, hurt like fire! There was nothing better for the wound than using it, though, and there wasn’t any choice besides.

  Garric stepped into the bog. He sank to his knees as expected but slogged on. It wasn’t but ten feet—two double paces—to the gate, though he’d often run a mile with less effort than this took him.

  “What are we doing?” Metz asked, wheezing between the words. He was at Garric’s side, moving a little more easily than Garric did since he was more used to this accursed swamp.

  “We’re going to open the gate,” Garric said. Then he added, “The ground’s solid inside but we’ve got to get there.”

  Metz’ uncles had followed also. One’d been badly bloodied on the right side of the head and his ear was in tatters, apparently from a Corl’s teeth. He saw the surprise in Garric’s expression and grinned broadly. “That was before I broke his back!” he said proudly.

  They were supposed to be watching the rear, Garric remembered.

  “Don’t worry about what’s behind you,” Carus said with a grin full of murderous delight. “If Torag knew how to fight a battle, you wouldn’t have gotten this far.”

  The ghost laughed and added, “Says the man who lost his life and his fleet because he underestimated his enemy. But not this time, lad. Not this time.”

  Garric reached the gate. Each leaf was a mat of wickerwork, folded vertically to double it. The interwoven fibers would’ve been harder to cut through than boards of the same thickness even if he’d had a steel axe, but Carus had correctly seen that the crossbar was the weak point.

  Garric reversed his axe, stuck the butt end into the crack between the gate leaves, and shoved upward with all his strength. Duzi it hurts!

  The bar didn’t move. A warrior thrust his spear through the gap; Garric ducked away, warned by the shadow moving inside. Metz grabbed the shaft just below the delicate flint head and jerked the weapon out, though his uncle Abay’s return thrust was vain also.

  A troupe of eight women including Donria were half carry
ing, half pushing a raft of brushwood. It was already burning. Somebody—“Donria or I’m a priest!” said Carus. “By the Lady, what I could’ve done with her beside me!”

  —had realized that it it’d be much easier to get the fire going on the relatively firm matting than in the mire at the base of the wall. The women shoved the mass hard against the stockade at the right edge of the gate and staggered away. Already the hard, oily stems were crackling and stretching their flames higher.

  Metz put a hand on Garric’s left arm. “Not so close,” he said, tugging gently. “When a house burns in the village it’ll sometimes light the next one just by heat, without even sparks touching. This wall if it gets going…”

  “Right, back to the mat,” Garric mumbled. He was suddenly so tired he could barely get the words out. If the Coerli sallied now…

  “If they sally now, we’ll deal with them,” said Carus, smiling like a torturer. “But they won’t, lad. Their world’s turned upside down, and they’re not the folk to roll back onto the top of it.”

  Light glittered in the clouds overhead. Lightning, Garric thought, but the flash was a vivid red: wizardlight. The gray mass of sky, paler this morning than generally in Garric’s experience of this sodden land, began to swirl widdershins. As it turned, it thickened like butter forming in cream.

  A raindrop smacked Garric; it was the size of his thumbnail. More drops slammed down, sending up high spouts from the bog. The fire which’d been roaring toward full life began to splutter gouts of black ash.

  Garric paused, looking from the struggling fire toward the sky. Sirawhil, of course. Torag and his warriors had lost their heads in the disaster, but she had not. If she could keep the humans from winning by daylight, darkness and the pause to regroup would give the battle to the Coerli.

  Give the humans over to slaughter by the Coerli.

  “…semimenaeus damasilam laikam…”

  Sirawhil chanting—but it couldn’t be, it was from behind.