Master of the Cauldron

by David Drake

  "A wizard," Waldron said. He laughed. "And he was no general, that I can tell you, but he probably didn't think he needed to be with the numbers of men he had. He wasn't even with his army, but the prisoners told us later. He didn't have a name, at least to them: he was just the Master."

  He looked at the right bank. Just to the north, the deep green of marsh grasses gave way to squared fields, varied by the type of crops and pasture. "Right there it was," he said, pointing with his right hand. The fingers of his left played with the pommel of his sword. "That's where they met the militia."

  He lowered his arm and breathed deeply. "There was a barricade of sorts, carts with their wheels off mostly, but even so city folk couldn't have held them long. And then we came, Lord Elphic's regiment and Stronghand with us. We rode through the marshes on their flank. We had shepherds to guide us. The People didn't have time to form a shield wall against us, and after the front of their column stopped they were packed too tight to even use their swords. We mowed them down like barley till our swords were blunt. And then the tide came in."

  Waldron slammed his right palm against the left, cracking like a thunderbolt. "They couldn't stand against us!" he said, his voice rising. "The militia slaughtered them at the barricade, and the tide didn't stop. The triremes rowed up and down the banks and swept them under, those our swords hadn't killed. There's never been such a day as the Battle of the Tides!"

  Never for the young Waldron bor-Warriman, Sharina thought. And few enough such days anywhere, this side of Hell. She'd seen war, but it was still hard to imagine death on the scale of the barley harvest: the mud and water both bloody red and rafts of corpses drifting out to sea on the current. Mouths open, eyes staring, bodies already beginning to bloat with the gases of decay. Tens of thousands of corpses....

  "You mentioned talking to prisoners, Lord Waldron," Tenoctris asked. She didn't seem as distressed at Waldron's account as Sharina was. Perhaps at Tenoctris' age, the awareness that everyone dies was so constant a companion that death even in wholesale lots no longer had the horror Sharina felt. "Is it possible that any remain for me to examine?"

  "We captured some," Waldron said, staring far into the past. "It didn't seem like many but there must've been thousands by the end. They were willing to talk, but they really didn't know much. From what I was told, at least. I didn't talk to any of them myself."

  The Star of Valles had entered the Pool, the basin just south of Valles where the current grew sluggish. Here the big freighters unloaded their cargo onto barges for transport the rest of the way to the city. There were naval installations also, and a pair of triremes were exercising in the broad waters. The trumpeter beside Bedrin in the stern blew a signal to the guardships, but the squadron didn't slow.

  Waldron turned away from the rail to face the women for the first time since he'd begun to reminisce. "I had seventeen men in my troop when the battle started," he said in a different tone of voice from the one he'd used during the previous portion of the story. "There were three of us left at the end, and only my standard bearer was still mounted. He'd have given me his horse, but I couldn't have lifted myself into the saddle. I was so tired. I've never in my life else been so tired. They carried me back to Valles in a wagon, and it was a week before I could raise my sword-arm above my shoulder, it'd cramped so badly."

  "And the prisoners?" Tenoctris said. She didn't sound peevish, but she was quietly determined to get an answer.

  "They died," Waldron said. He shrugged and smiled faintly. "Oh, I don't mean we killed them. I don't think anybody who'd been in the fighting had the energy left to do that. But they sort of ran down. They didn't eat, not enough at least, and they even seemed to forget to drink. Mostly they just sat. They'd answer questions, not that they knew much except their Master had sent them to capture Valles and then go on to conquer the whole island. There'd be more of them coming soon, or so they said; but no more did. And in a few weeks they were all dead. Or so I was told."

  Waldron held out his right arm. He repeatedly made a fist, then relaxed it, as if he were working out the swelling and numbness of a long battle.

  "Stronghand's councillors, the ones who survived, summoned the levy," he said, his mind slipping again into the past. "The king himself didn't leave his bed for three months, and he was never the same man again. Even when he was sober, and that was rare. But the People never returned."

  The horns and trumpets of the whole squadron began to call, waking echoes from the Valles riverfront. A watchman at the naval dock rang his bronze alarm gong in reply.

  "Never...," Lord Waldron whispered.

  "At least until now," said Tenoctris, echoing the words that had formed in Sharina's mind.

  * * *

  Garric awakened; Liane had touched his cheek. When she felt him twitch she whispered, "Quietly. Garric, I see light coming through the wall there." She pointed.

  Garric's swordbelt hung from the head of the bed on his side. He got up in his bare feet and drew the long sword with only the least hiss of the blade's chine on the bronze plate protecting the mouth of the scabbard.

  A three-wick oil lamp hung from a wall bracket, but the only wick lighted when they went to bed had burned to a blue ember. It was dark enough in the bedchamber that Garric should've been able to see light coming from any other source—and he didn't.

  The suite he and Liane shared had been used for storage until only hours before the royal contingent arrived at the Earl's palace. It'd suffered severe water damage some decades ago, very possibly around the time the previous Earl died along with his hopes of kingship at the Stone Wall. The frescoed plaster above the wainscoting had fallen, leaving rough brick walls, and the wood had warped in many places also. The damage hadn't been repaired immediately, so the unused room had attracted unused objects the way silt settles to the bottom of a pond.

  "There, do you see it?" Liane said. She'd pulled on her left slipper. She pointed again with the other, then slid it on also; she hadn't been raised a peasant and gone barefoot eight months of the year. "Just a faint line."

  Garric still didn't see anything, but he didn't seen any reason to say that. He could trust Liane. He stepped to the lamp and filled it from the ewer of oil in the alcove beneath the bracket, being careful not to submerge the ember of wick yet remaining.

  Normally that'd be the job of the servant sleeping in the small room off the bedchamber, but Garric preferred privacy to having somebody perform tasks he could handle perfectly well himself. He'd had plenty of experience in his father's inn, after all.

  As the flame brightened, Garric looked around the room. He found what he needed immediately, as he'd expected he would. The palace servants who'd been told to prepare the room for guests wouldn't have had time to do a careful job even if they'd been willing to make an effort. The skirts of the bed covered a considerable quantity of trash they'd found easier to hide than to bundle up and carry out. One of the objects was a half pike whose shaft had begun to split where the head was riveted onto it.

  Garric sheathed his sword, then buckled it around his waist. Liane had donned an outer tunic over the one she'd slept in. "What should I do?" she asked.

  "Bring the lamp closer," Garric said as he fished out the half pike. Though it was an ornate thing intended for show rather than serious use, it'd do for his purposes. He thrust the point into the wainscoting and struck brick immediately.

  "More to the right," Liane directed, unhooking the lamp from the bracket.

  Garric slammed the pike into the wainscot again. This time the rusty head scrunched through not only the paneling but also structure inside. He twisted, splitting the panel. Behind was a low doorway, blocked with wattle and daub on a frame of poles.

  Garric set down the half pike and wrenched the panel free with his hands. He was as quiet as possible, knowing that if the guards in the hallway outside heard wood tearing they'd be through the door even if they had to smash it down.

  Since Garric became Prince Garric, he spent t
oo much of his life already being protected from the unusual. This was something he'd handle himself until he found some greater threat than a doorway plugged in the distant past. The withies were cracklingly brittle.

  The wattle had shrunk as it dried, and the remains of the clay that'd filled it shook away as Garric wrestled out the plug. There was a draft, faint but cool. He stepped back, dusting his palms against one another, and Liane thrust the lamp into the opening.

  "There's steps going down," she said. "Farther than the light shows."

  Garric squatted beside her to look. He grinned, laid his hand on the half pike, and said, "It looks a little tight for this, don't you think? I think my sword's the better choice."

  He rose and drew his sword again. Liane lifted the half pike at the balance in her left hand and said, "I'll carry the spontoon in case there's something blocking the passage. Though the shaft's split so badly that it probably wouldn't work as a lever on any serious obstacle."

  She slipped through the opening, using the pikeshaft to support her as she dropped nearly her full height to where the steps started. A foundation wall for the present palace rested on what would've been the upper portion of an ancient staircase.

  "Hey!" said Garric in surprise. "I'll lead, and I'll take the lamp too."

  "No," said Liane. "This leaves you free to deal with anything waiting around a landing or a corner."

  Garric made a sour face but followed as Liane started down the steps. The staircase was wide enough for two, but only barely. If he were attacked unexpectedly, the lamp would be a serious hindrance; though he didn't like to think of killing an enemy whose weapon was stuck in Liane either.

  In his mind Carus, who'd watched silently to that moment, murmured, "Some times there's no really good way to do it. It's just that simple."

  "This building's built over one that was destroyed a thousand years ago," Garric said. "We must be in part of the cellars of the earlier palace that didn't completely collapse. I don't see how there can be light here that you saw, though."

  "Neither do I," said Liane quietly. Her voice whispered an accompaniment to itself between the narrow walls of the passage. "Unless fungus glows on the walls, but it doesn't seem...."

  The steps ended on a concrete floor which hadn't been finished or even properly leveled. They'd reached the sub-cellars of the original palace.

  Storage jars had been placed upright along the section of wall opposite, their narrow bases sunk in a stone-curbed sandbox. All but one had broken in the violence that brought down all the building to their right. Liane raised the lamp, but it could only hint at the thoroughness of the destruction.

  Garric heard water dripping; it seemed to come from below where he stood. He frowned, turning slowly and letting his other senses tell him what his eyes couldn't in this gloom. The hairs fringing the shell of his ears felt an air current too faint to be called a breeze.

  He walked slowly toward the corner to the right. It was a shadowed mass of rubble by the flickering lamplight. His shadow shifted around him as Liane stepped to his side with the lamp high. At the end of the vast room the debris sloped not only inward but to the side as well: the shock had dropped part of a foundation wall into a natural cave.

  "How far do you suppose...," Garric said, then swallowed the rest of the question. It was one of those silly things you said—or caught yourself before you said, if you kept control of your tongue—when you wanted to make noise because you were afraid.

  Liane had no better way than he did of telling how deep the cave might be. The faint air current suggested it went on some distance, but a crack too tight for a mouse would still let air through.

  "Well, we can go a little...," Liane said. She stepped onto a broken chunk of concrete, planting the butt of the pikestaff farther down the slope like a walking stick. The block shifted under her weight and slid, gathering lesser debris and sending a cloud of dust up the scree. Liane twisted after it.

  Garric grabbed her shoulder with his left hand. The lamp flew from her grasp and shattered. Its wick faded into a blue spark far down the slope of rubble, then went out.

  Garric hugged her to him. "Love," he said. "Love. Is your ankle all right? I can carry you if you've turned it."

  "I'm fine," Liane said, but she held him tightly for a long moment. "I'm a fool not to have brought rushlights instead of the lamp! They'd still burn if I dropped one."

  "I think we've seen enough for one night," Garric said, pleased in his heart that he had an excuse for not going farther with what was either a pointless exercise or a very dangerous one. "Here, give me the pike and I'll feel our way back to the stairs."

  In the morning—later in the morning, he supposed—he might send a squad of soldiers here to explore with pine torches or rushlights as Liane suggested, dried fennel stalks whose spongy pith had been soaked with tallow. This jaunt had been enough to satisfy his desire to do something real instead of talking interminably and 'looking regal,' whatever that meant.

  "I'll guide us," Liane said. "You keep your sword out. Anyway, it shouldn't be difficult. The floor was clear enough."

  She walked briskly with Garric's left hand on her shoulder, tapping the staff but obviously following her instincts rather than needing the help. She had as good a sense of direction within buildings as Garric did in the woods. At the stairs she continued to lead, but without Garric to boost her she'd have had a difficult time getting through an opening at the height of her head.

  As Liane scrambled back into their room, Garric turned and listened. Somewhere in the distance water dripped, or perhaps he was imagining that it did.

  There was a glow, though, from the sub-cellar or perhaps from beyond it. It was fainter than starlight, but he could make out the flat arch over the bottom of the stairs.

  "Here," said Liane. She set the pike crosswise in the opening, braced against the wall on either side. Garric gripped the shaft with his free hand and tugged to make sure it would hold. Then he shot his sword back into its scabbard and pulled himself up by the strength of both arms and the soles of his feet on the wall.

  The moon had risen since they'd started down the opening; Garric's eyes, adapted to pitch darkness, gave him a good view of the unfamiliar room. He lifted the clothes press which held his regalia and straddle-walked to the opening, where he set it down with as quietly as he could.

  "There," he said, stepping back to view his handiwork. "Now I think we can get some sleep."

  "Will it hold?" Liane said doubtfully.

  Garric laughed. "Not against a serious threat," he said, "but it'll make a good deal of noise if somebody slides it back. And if that happens—"

  He drew his sword with a sring! and an arc of shimmering moonlight.

  "—I'll have something to say about it even before the guards get here."

  Still chuckling, he led Liane to the bed. Suddenly getting some more sleep wasn't the first thing on his mind.

  * * *

  Cashel'd always had a good head for heights, so the view at night from Ronn's north parapet thrilled rather than frightening him. He bent over the edge, feeling the force of the wind that rushed up the wall's slope. It brought with it dry odors and hinted mystery.

  A patchwork of lights gleamed at every level of the city, the suites of residents still awake. The outside stairs were pastel zigzags against the general darkness.

  He turned; Mab was watching him with an amused expression. The night was moonless, but drifting glows like those he'd seen on the terraces over the diamond lake were enough to keep the scattered strollers here on the topmost plaza from walking into one another.

  Mab was shorter than she'd been when they left the terrace. Though he couldn't be sure in this light, he thought her hair'd changed color too.

  She pointed to the nearest of the lights; it floated obediently closer. "They'll brighten enough for you to read by," she said.

  Cashel smiled. "Well, not me, ma'am," he said. "But if I could read, I'm sure they would."

&nb
sp; For the first time since he'd met her, Mab lost her self-composure. "I didn't...," she said with a look of shocked surprise. Instead of finishing whatever she'd started to say, she went on, "You've had a hard life, haven't you, Cashel?"

  He thought about the question instead of just blurting an answer, but it came out the same way anyhow. "No, ma'am," he said. "I don't guess I have. Not for me, I mean."

  Mab quirked a smile at him. "No?" she said. "Well, perhaps you haven't, then. I believe your mother would've wished things had been otherwise for you; though a more learned upbringing might've left you less able to aid Ronn in her present plight."

  Cashel laughed. "Oh, mistress!" he said. "You wouldn't say that if you'd met my friend Garric! He can read and write like any city-bred scholar, but he can knock any man in the borough silly with a quarterstaff. Besides me, of course."

  Cashel had room here, so purely for the joy of it he stepped clear of the woman and started a series of exercises with his staff. He made slow circles at first, in front of him and overhead; then he crossed his grip to reverse direction, spinning the heavy hickory faster.

  Only when Cashel was sure he had the rhythm and he'd warmed the kinks out of his muscles, did he start doing fancy tricks. He fed the staff around his body sunwise, then widdershins, and when he had it around in front of him again he spun it between his legs and caught it over his head. That was one where you could do yourself a world of hurt if your timing was just the least hair off.

  There were more people coming over to watch him now. Mab had brought a yellow light to hover overhead, brighter than the others drifting over the plaza. If Cashel hadn't already gotten into the feel of the thing the spectators would've embarrassed him, but as it was he was kinda glad for their eyes. He was good at this, better than any man in the borough and any man he'd met since leaving the borough. He wasn't going to pretend that wasn't so.

  Cashel capped the show with the things that were more than just tricks—the moves you made in a bout or a fight for real, if you were good enough. He spun the staff overhead. When the smooth hickory was a blur of soft light, he jumped beneath it and let it pull him so that he was facing the other way, then jumped again and returned to the way he'd been standing before.