by David Drake
He and the warriors beside him turned in unison and started off down a broad trail covered with planks. The local vegetation was too pulpy to make good structures, but by replacing slats when they cracked or wore through the Ersa provided dry footing in the Gulf's sodden expanse. There was nothing like this on the human side of the lagoon.
Garric dropped the wiping rag and sheathed his sword. Liane had given Tenoctris her arm, though the older woman seemed to have regained her normal sprightly animation. It was anybody's guess what another major incantation would do to Tenoctris after the strain of deflecting Lunifra's horror; but they were all doing more than reason said they could.
Liane gestured Garric ahead. There was no need for a rear guard. The humans hadn't pursued directly across the lagoon, so the attack would come from one side or both. Garric nodded to his companions and took long strides to join the warriors. The Ersa in the rear parted to permit Garric to walk alongside their leader.
“If my ancestors had killed the first humans and all other humans who reached the Gulf,” Graz said without turning his head, “then we would be safe now.”
“In Sandrakkan we have a saying,” Liane called from behind them. Her ears were as sharp as those of an owl striking its prey through leaves in a nighted forest. “A man has as many enemies as he has slaves.”
Graz stopped in the middle of the trail, so suddenly that even his warriors were taken by surprise. He turned, holding his spear at the balance.
Garric's face lost all expression. He spread his hands at his side, ready to act if the Ersa raised his weapon to thrust or throw.
“Four of you carry the old female,” Graz said, speaking so the humans would understand at the same time his ears semaphored the command to his fellows. “If the Ersa are to survive beyond this day, it will be through her efforts.”
He resumed walking. His stride was loose and his steps were shorter than those a human of his height would have taken. There was no reason for the party to weary itself running; the distance around the lagoon meant a delay of at least half an hour before the humans could attack.
“Do you think that if my people had treated yours as equals from the start,” Graz said quietly, “that this would not be happening?”
Garric shrugged. “I’d like to say that, but I don't know,” he admitted. “We humans don't have a perfect record, even with our own kind.”
Graz squealed like a rabbit in pain. Garric gripped his sword, then realized the sound was laughter.
“We are not perfect either,” Graz said. “Only death is perfect. Well, we Ersa shall hope to continue living and being imperfect in your world, human.”
The board track passed through the forest and into a field of food plants and other vegetation which the Ersa exploited. Some of the fruits had shapes and colors that Garric hadn't seen on the human side of the lagoon.
“The First Place,” Graz said, pointing ahead of him. Though the track was arrow-straight, the ground's surface even in the Gulf rose and fell enough that Garric's first sight of the twelve bulbous-trunked trees was completely unexpected though the nearest was only a hundred yards away. That didn't surprise him. Often enough he'd seen how a sheep could be concealed on a meadow so flat he'd have guessed even a vole would stand out like a flagpole.
Ersa of all ages were converging on the grove. Some of them spoke, particularly children and their mothers, but in the main the process was much quieter than a gathering of humans in a similar crisis.
Females and the older children carried a wide variety of baskets, chests, and bags made from bark fabric. There was no pottery, though Garric had seen some crude jars in the human community.
The adult males carried only weapons: clubs and spears. Few of the latter were metal-pointed. The mind at the back of Garric's mind noted the lack of projectile weapons. Apparently none of the available wood was springy enough to provide bowstaves, and slings were of little utility without stone, metal, or hard-fired clay for bullets.
“There's so many of the women and children,” Liane said. She'd joined Garric unnoticed when the warriors lifted Tenoctris onto a platform of their spearshafts. “There must be two thousand Ersa, but so few soldiers.”
“Right,” said Garric. “Well, another time I'd wonder how their society works.”
In fact, he didn't wonder. The proportion of adult males to females and offspring was pretty similar to the sheep he'd herded in the borough. With domestic animals the numbers were decided by culling. The owner slaughtered the young rams for meat but saved most of the ewes, which provided milk as well as the next spring's increase. . Garric didn't see any other likely way that the Ersa population remained the way it was. It made him think again about just how light a burden slavery to Ersa masters had really been, for the humans across the lagoon.
Perhaps that doubt showed on his face. Liane touched his arm. “We've made our choice,” she said. “Not that the Ersa are holy saints, but that they're the better of the two choices we had.”
“Right,” Garric repeated, smiling grimly. “I guess we should thank Rodoard for making the choice so easy.”
Graz watched them with his left eye, but the Ersa leader didn't speak.
They entered the grove, brushing through silky foliage which hung to the ground in curtains of long strands. The leaves would have been colorless in normal light; here they had the same bilious hue as the sky. The trunks looked like water-filled bladders.
There was a broad track between the shrouding trees and a circular earthen mound higher even than Graz's head. The mound was the only structure Garric had seen on this side of the lagoon. Directly before them was a narrow opening, barely wide enough for Garric to pass without turning sideways. The Ersa females and young drifted through the trees to stand near the wall, but the warriors remained outside.
The warriors carrying Tenoctris set her on her own feet and went back to join their fellows in awaiting the human onslaught. Graz bent and touched the opening's threshold with the palms of both hands.
“Go in, humans,” Graz said. He gave his hideous squealing laugh. “You needn't do reverence to the Hand, since it's the greatest blasphemy for you even to have entered the grove.”
Tenoctris stepped briskly into the enclosure with only a nod to acknowledge Graz's religious scruples. The old woman saw the interplay of forces that others, even other wizards, did not see; but Tenoctris had never seen the Great Gods. Garric respected Tenoctris and understood her position, but he believed in many things which he hadn't yet seen.
Liane looked from Garric to Graz. “I'd better go...?” she murmured.
“Right,” said Garric. He didn't know what was right. Perhaps all they were doing was desecrating the Ersa holy place in the minutes before the whole race was exterminated.
“But we have to try,” he said. He smiled. He wasn't sure whether he or King Carus had directed his tongue into the words, but either way it was the truth.
Graz looked at him straight on. Garric wondered what thoughts were behind the Ersa leader's expression.
Humans shouted in the near distance. Metal clattered on wood, a sound more like that of carpentry than the battle Garric knew it was. “Right,” he said, and drew the sword he'd bought in Erdin.
The blade was good steel. It shimmered even in the changeless light of this sky.
He'd killed a man with it, less than an hour ago.
He remembered turning to see Liane struggling with one of Rodoard's henchmen. The eye and arm of Garric or-Reise—not another man, not even a dead king using Garric's body—had brought the sword around in an arc calculated to miss the girl but to open the thug's skull and let his life out.
He'd done that thing, and not until this moment had the awareness struck him. His knees began to tremble so fiercely that he was afraid he was going to fall.
“Stay with your females,” Graz said with an unreadable expression. “If you're needed, the fight will have to come to you.”
Garric licked his dry lips. He was st
eadier already, due to his own natural resilience and the help of King Carus, whose life had been war.
“I'm not afraid to die,” Garric said. The Ersa leader had already gone through the trees toward the sound of fighting. “I'm not even afraid to kill. I'm afraid of becoming a man who kills men.”
“As well you should be, lad,”whispered a silent voice. “But it's worse to be a man who can't do what has to be done, no matter what it costs him.”
There was still confused shouting beyond the grove, but the battle itself had paused for now. The human vanguard had met the waiting Ersa warriors, had skirmished, and had fallen back to wait for reinforcements to arrive.
Most of the Ersa females faced the curtain of foliage, but the children turned their heads in all directions. One of them came up to Garric and fingered the hem of his woolen tunic. When the mother noticed what was going on, she snatched the child back with clucks of anger.
Tenoctris' voice rose in the rhythms of chanting, though Garric couldn't hear the syllables from where he stood. He looked again in the direction where the fighting had begun, then sheathed his sword. The First Place was a temple, so a drawn sword would be out of place.
Garric slipped through the entrance.
The interior of the roofless enclosure was forty feet in diameter, smaller than Garric had supposed. The mounded walls were a good ten feet thick. The ground had been dug out into a pit as deep as the mound was high, with only a central hub left at the original surface level. That pillar was bound with plaited withies to keep the soil from crumbling away.
On it was a human hand made of or covered with mother-of-pearl. Its luster was brighter than the dim green light of the sky could account for. It was an object of great beauty and great power, and of evil.
“Archedama phochense psensa...”Tenoctris said. She had drawn Old Script characters in the dirt around the pillar. She walked its circuit as she spoke the syllables, marking each accent by twitching a wand made from a length of slender branch. “Rerta thoumison kat huesem-migadon!”
A cylinder of light the color of the glowing Hand was forming above the written symbols. Garric looked upward. He couldn't see the light meet the changeless sky, but neither did it appear to end at any point short of that presumed contact.
Liane watched the wizard, ready to act or speak if called to but otherwise silent. Her visage had the controlled stillness of a frightened person who's too iron-willed to give in to fear.
She met Garric's eyes and smiled. He winked, wondering what his own face looked like, and left the enclosure again. Behind him he heard, “Maarchamma zabarbathouch...”
The battle had been fully joined beyond the grove. Screams and curses from the human attackers and the clacking anger of the defending Ersa formed the background. Against those voices the clatter of weapons rose to a crescendo, fell away, and redoubled, accompanied by a shout from many throats.
Garric reached for his sword hilt.
“Garric!” Liane called. “Garric, it's time! Send them through while, while she can...”
“Come!” Garric said. Heads turned at his cry, but the Ersa stayed where they were. Did these females even speak the human tongue?
Garric seized the nearest female by the shoulder. The bones beneath the light fur were thicker than he'd expected. “Come!” he repeated, waving his right arm high to summon the others. He dragged his—captive? victim?—dragged his example through the entranceway.
Liane had started to mount the flight of wooden steps from the enclosure's floor. Garric pushed the Ersa toward her, not harshly but with an awareness that if he had to carry each one in himself he'd be an old man before he finished.
Liane drew the Ersa toward her by the mere touch of her hands. The cylinder was now a translucent wall. Garric couldn't see the opposite side of the enclosure through it, but the Hand itself glowed like the sun in an empty sky.
“Zadachtoumar didume chicoeis,”Tenoctris said, her face notched by lines of deep fatigue. She continued to walk around the circle of power. The old wizard would keep going until she dropped; but she would drop, perhaps sooner rather than later.
“Go through it now!” Liane said, gesturing the Ersa toward the column of cold radiance. “Quickly!”
The Ersa walked into the translucent surface without hesitation. She vanished through it as if she had fallen into night itself.
Garric turned. More Ersa, females and their children, waited in the narrow entrance which his body blocked. He jumped aside, stifling a curse at his own foolishness. He should have guessed that when the first of this sheep-like race moved, the rest would follow.
One by one the Ersa passed through the wall of the cylinder. The shuffling line blocked the entrance. The walls of the enclosure were low enough to climb, at least if Garric got a running start. He judged the angle, then saw something from the corner of his eye and stopped.
Tenoctris wasn't alone. A nude woman formed of shimmering, nacreous translucence like the cylinder itself walked beside her. Tenoctris appeared unaware of her ghostly companion.
Liane caught Garric's startled expression. She followed the line of his eyes, then looked back at him perturbed. “What's the matter, Garric?” she asked.
The ghost woman smiled lazily and stretched out an arm toward Garric. Her body was perfect and beautiful. Where her eyes should have been, Garric saw pits stretching all the way to Hell. He staggered back, stunned as if by a sudden hammer blow.
“Kill them all!” Rodoard's voice shrilled over the sounds of battle. “Slaughter them like the beasts they are!”
Garric took two strides along the inside of the enclosure, then leaped to the top of the mound. He drew his sword. He knew he was as much running from something he didn't understand as entering the fight on the side of those he'd joined, but he was needed in the fight as well.
The line of Ersa warriors had been forced back to the inner curtain of foliage. Carus' practiced eye judged that the Ersa had lost nearly half their original number. The survivors screened the females and children in a perimeter that shrank as the last of the noncombatants passed through the narrow entrance.
The human attack was disorganized but ferocious. A man nearly Cashel's size carried a heavy club in either hand; he had red tattoos on his right arm and blue on his left. Bellowing, he charged, swinging both clubs simultaneously.
The Ersa warriors moved to either side as smoothly as water parting before a dropped stone. Graz stabbed the tattooed man as he rushed past. The man continued forward, his clubs battering the Ersa females.
Garric jumped down in front of the man, who raised one club for a vertical blow. He held the other in front of his body on guard. Garric thrust, stabbing the hand holding the lower club. He'd used the trick a score of times in quarterstaff bouts during festivals in the borough: rather than stretching to reach your opponent's body, strike the hand holding his weapon and then strike the undefended body.
The tattooed man cried out in surprise and pain, dropping the club from his wounded hand. He stepped back and his eyes rolled up. Blood sprayed from his nostrils as he fell facedown like a toppling tree. Graz's thrust to his lung and heart had finally taken effect.
Garric was alone between the lines. The human attackers had fallen back for a moment; the Ersa females were all within the enclosure, and the warriors had taken a position on top of the mound. Garric backed quickly to stand in the entrance.
More humans came through the curtain of foliage. A party of eight Gulf-born men carried a litter on which Rodoard sat. Bandages of red silk tied off the king's lower legs.
“Kill them all!” Rodoard cried, pointing his demi-guisarme. “Charge!”
His bearers broke into a shambling run toward Garric. Josfred was the lead bearer on the right side. His ratlike face glistened with sweat and fear.
“Garric!” Liane called desperately.
Garric glanced around. The Ersa warriors had jumped down within the enclosure, moving in silent unison. Garric, unable to see to the s
ide or to read ear movements as speech, was alone again.
Three burly sailors came toward him with spears made by lashing knives onto poles. They had shields of cross-pegged boards, not very durable but sufficient against the light weapons of the Ersa. Other humans were starting to climb the enclosure to either side.
Garric backed through the entrance, hoping that the sailors would try to follow him carrying their shields. That would slow them long enough for him and his companions to escape through the circle.
“Kill them all!” Rodoard squealed.
Graz flung himself into the cylinder of light, vanishing as though he never was. He had been the last of the Ersa. Liane held Tenoctris around the waist and by one arm; the younger woman was helping the older continue her circle. Tenoctris' lips moved, but Garric couldn't hear the words of power anymore.
The Hand blazed with a fierce internal light. The object was the very sun to look at, but it neither cast shadows nor brightened the walls of the enclosure.
Garric jumped down to the floor of the pit. The woman of pearly translucence stood beside him. She caressed his cheek with fingers as soft as a butterfly's wing.
Garric jerked back in shock. The ghost woman laughed like chimes of crystal, pure and as cold as village charity.
“Garric!” Liane said. “What are you waiting for?”
Garric stepped toward her. Men had reached the top of the mound and were calling to their fellows to join them before they committed themselves by jumping down.
The woman of pearl took Liane's throat in both hands. Liane's weary frustration changed suddenly to horror. She let go of Tenoctris and tried to grasp the thing choking her. Her fingers met nothing.
Garric swept the pommel of his sword through the creature's head. Her form parted like smoke at the blow—and, like smoke, swirled together uninjured. She laughed as her grip tightened on Liane's throat. Liane's face was turning blue. Tenoctris staggered on, speaking the incantation by rote; perhaps she was unaware of what was happening around her.
The first of the sailors came through the entrance above Garric. Other men slid down the inner slope of the mound, their faces set and their weapons ready.