by David Drake
Sharina looked for a weapon. The hoes had sturdy shafts and wedge-shaped bronze heads that could cut flesh as well as the roots of weeds. If she pretended to be submissive, she might have a chance to grab a hoe and—
The workers paid her no more attention than the corn and the peavines did. They worked forward, intent on their tasks and never looking above the earth they were cultivating. Sharina stepped aside cautiously, feeling the muscles of her abdomen tense. She expected that at any instant one or the other of the men passing her would turn and grab her.
They didn't. They hoed on with no sound except the chk! chk! of their tools and the occasional cling of bronze on a pebble.
A horn trilled a long, silvery note. It seemed to be far in the distance, but Sharina didn't know how sound travelled in this place. She looked at the ring. If she began to read the legend on the bezel, would it take her back to Valles or...?
Sharina slipped the ring onto her left thumb where she wouldn't lose it. "Or," was too likely for her to take the risk just yet. She'd been many places, in the waking world and out of it, since she left Barca's Hamlet. This island wasn't where she wanted to be, but experience had taught her that things could've been worse. Leaping somewhere at random might very well drop her into one of those worse alternatives.
Sharina looked around. From what she'd seen as she descended to the island, most of the surface was more or less the same as her immediate surroundings. Their field ran between a pair of irrigation channels marked by the pale fronds of the weeping willows growing on their margins.
The land wasn't as dead flat as it'd seemed from above. The surface rolled enough that Sharina could see at most a couple furlongs to the right, the direction of the lake and building she'd seen in the center of the island. Her only choices other than the fields were that building or the shore. The latter'd looked like it was lapped by clouds, not a sea of water, but Sharina understood little enough about this island that she wasn't going to jump to conclusions—especially to one that made it more likely that she was trapped.
She smiled as she jogged down the row, passing through the line of workers. They gave her no more notice than they had before. Her being trapped was likely enough already.
At least she wouldn't starve: she snapped off a peapod as she ran and popped it whole into her mouth, the way she'd have done as a child when she was cultivating the inn garden. The peas were ripe and crunched tastily. Pausing—the workers were far behind her already—she gathered a handful and trotted onward, eating them.
The horn called again. It seemed closer this time.
Sharina looked over her shoulder, but all she see were the green billows of the maize. She frowned, going over her choices as she continued to jog through the grain.
The field ended ten strides ahead in an irregular line willows and mimosas, a natural watercourse instead of a man-made canal. The horn sounded, by now in the near distance; another replied from much farther away to Sharina's right.
She reached the creek. Its pebble bottom was clearly visible through the turbulence caused by larger rocks breaking the surface of the water. The banks of the stream were low, though undercut, and the channel was never more than eight feet across.
Instead of leaping the creek and continuing on, Sharina lifted herself into the crotch of a willow and scrambled up one of steeply slanting main branches. It took her thirty feet into the air before it began to wobble dangerously from her weight. Gripping the slick bark with both hands she paused, calming her quick breaths. By craning her neck she found an opening through which she could look back the way she'd come while remaining concealed behind the curtain of fronds hanging from higher branches,.
The laborers continued hoeing their way down the field in as good order as a rank of Garric's pikemen. They seemed to have no more minds than ripples on a pond did: and like the ripples, they moved forward in perfect unison.
The horn called. Sharina slitted her eyes, but there was nothing to see in the direction of the sound. She was about to drop to the ground and resume running when a man wearing a helmet and polished breastplate came over the swell of the earth.
He was mounted on a two-legged lizard with a tail twice the length of the torso to balance its neck and long skull. The beast raised its head and licked the air the way a snake does, scenting prey. Its jaws hung slightly open, baring a saw-edged mouthful of teeth.
The lizard whuffed, then strode forward again. It moved like a grackle, bobbing its head back and forth, but each stride was ten feet long. The man on its back raised a bronze trumpet to his lips and blew another trembling call.
Sharina found her hands gripping the branch tighter than she needed just to hold on. "Lady," she prayed in a whisper, "if it is Your will, help me in this danger."
She slid back down the tree, making her plans. Whether or not the Great Gods helped her, she'd be helping herself to the best of her ability.
CHAPTER 15
"Ma'am?" Cashel said, meeting Mab's eyes. Softly crimson wizardlight wrapped her, like a tree in deep fog silhouetted against the sunrise. She looked like a middle-aged woman, pudgy but not fat. Her expression was coldly cynical like Ilna's on a bad day; which for Ilna had been more days than not.
"Wake them, Cashel," Mab said. "That's what you were told to do, isn't it?"
"Yeah," he said. He glanced at the equipment along the back wall, facing the door. "And to tell them to put on the armor there."
The Sons slept more soundly than people sprawled on a stone floor ought to do. Cashel guessed something was going on with them besides just being tired and sleeping. Maybe they were having the sort of meeting he'd had with the Heroes, but he kinda doubted that.
In the Sons' minds, the Heroes were the next thing to Gods. Cashel knew enough about people to understand that real heroes were more apt to be men like Ilna's friend Chalcus than they were to be saints. These boys hadn't been out in the world enough to know that, and it might discourage them to meet those six hard men.
"Rise and shine!" Cashel said in a loud voice. The Sons stirred, but they didn't open their eyes.
Cashel frowned. He banged his quarterstaff against the inside of the door, noting with surprise that the ferrule struck sparks of blue wizardlight from the bronze.
"Wakey, wakey!" he said. He only by a heartbeat kept from adding, "You'll get no breakfast, you lazy woollies!" as he'd have done with a flock of sheep slow to leave their byre in the morning.
The Sons were alert now, sitting up or at least rolling to one arm. "How long have I been sleeping?" Enfero asked plaintively.
Cashel took out his wad of raw wool and began polishing his quarterstaff. People asked a lot of questions that didn't make any difference. That was all right, he supposed, but it didn't mean he needed to answer them.
Rubbing down the staff was more than just filling time. Cashel hadn't really done anything with the staff during the journey, just spun it through the air in much the fashion he did most days for exercise. The air he was spinning it in was something he didn't like the memory of, though. If he cleaned nothing but the surface of his mind with the wool, then it was a good thing to've done.
Orly got to his feet, slowly and carefully. "We're up, Master Cashel," he said. "What do we do now?"
"We were supposed to wake the Heroes," said Stasslin. His voice started accusingly, but the peevish tone bled away as his eyes moved from Mab to Cashel, then settled between them. "There's nobody here to wake. Unless that's them."
He gestured. "The bones."
"You're to put the armor on," Cashel said. "And the swords, I guess."
He looked at the equipment, which hadn't interested him a lot until now. He'd never worn armor nor had any truck with weapons beyond a quarterstaff. The knife he'd carried all the years he could remember was a tool for trimming leather or picking a stone from the hoof of a plow-ox, not something he'd ever thought of stabbing somebody with.
This was fancy stuff, though. Cashel didn't see much point in the engraving and go
ld inlays, but the quality showed in the falling-water sheen of the swordblades and the way the axe heads were shrunk onto the helves instead of just being wedged in place.
"It won't fit us," Herron said. He glanced down at the swordbelt he'd unbuckled when he curled up on the floor to sleep, then looked again to Cashel. "Will it, Master Cashel?"
"It will fit you," Mab said. "Well enough. Put the armor on, Sons of the Heroes. "
Orly looked at her with an expression Cashel couldn't read. "Yes," he said. "It's what we came here for. Isn't it, milady?"
"You came here to save Ronn from the King and his creatures," said Mab. "For that you must put on the armor."
"I thought we came to wake the Heroes," Athan objected with a whine, but he stepped to the set of equipment on the right end of the line and began to examine it.
The gear varied in style and decoration. Each place had a helmet, but these ranged from the simple iron pot that Herron set carefully on his head to the ornately chased and gilded pair that Enfero and Manza chose.
Cashel stood uncertain as the Sons armed themselves. He glanced at Mab. She crooked a finger to bring him silently to her side, then laid her free hand in the crook of his elbow as they watched together.
Five of the sets included shields. The last had instead two short-hafted axes; that had been Hrandis' equipment, Cashel supposed. Stasslin lifted Hrandis' cuirass of riveted iron bands from the rack on which it hung, muttering, "This'll never fit any of us...."
He closed the piece around him and it did fit, fit the way a scabbard fits the sword it was made for. Something had changed, but Cashel couldn't swear whether the difference was in the armor or the body of the man wearing it.
"Somebody help me with these laces," Athan said. His cuirass had a sleeve of mail to cover the right arm. He was trying to do something with it one-handed and of course failing. "Dasborn, help me, will you?"
Cashel started forward. Mab gripped his arm to prevent him.
"Come on, Dasborn!" Athan said, but it wasn't Athan's voice. "I didn't come back so I could die of old age."
"What would you know about dying of old age, Valeri?" Enfero—or was it Manza?—said.
"Maybe he's been talking to Virdin," said... said his brother. Neither man was Enfero or Manza now.
Orly had slid on a coat of mail with a silver wash that made it shimmer like a moonlit lake. He finished buckling the crossed shoulder belts that held his long sword and dagger, then walked over to the man who used to be Athan.
"You'd be in a hurry on the way to your execution, Valeri," he said, taking his companion's sleeve in one hand and reeving a thong through the rings above, then below, the elbow. He'd gathered the metal fabric so that it wouldn't bind if the man wearing it swung his sword violently.
"We all were, weren't we?" said Stasslin, wearing Hrandis' black armor. "What else did we ever get from being Heroes?"
"We got the eyes of every man in Ronn," said one of the twins.
"And especially every woman in Ronn!" said his brother. "Oh, those were the days, weren't they?"
"We did our duty," said Herron's body speaking in Virdin's calm, reasonable voice. "There isn't any pay for that—not the honor, not any of the rest. It was our job and we did it. And we'll do it again."
The swords were racked apart from their belts and scabbards. Athan held Valeri's blade up in the shimmering light for examination, then sheathed it with the absently smooth motion Cashel had seen skilled swordsmen like Garric and Chalcus display.
Athan couldn't have handled a sword like that if he'd practiced all his life. It took more than work: you had to have the sort of understanding of what you were doing that Cashel did with his quarterstaff. The Sons of the Heroes were... gone, maybe dead; Cashel didn't know where the boys were now or if they'd ever come back. These men in armor were the Heroes themselves.
"So," said one of the twins to Mab. "Who are you?"
"You know who she is," Hrandis said. "Who else could she be in this place?"
"I've never seen her look like this," the other twin said. He walked a few steps to the side.
"It doesn't matter what I look like," Mab said, smiling faintly as she turned, keeping her face toward the twin who was trying to view her profile. "It doesn't even matter who I am, Menon. What matters—"
She swept the whole band with her glance. She'd been playing before. Now each word came out like the thump of a door closing, without music or doubt: "What matters is that none of you is a wizard, and Ronn will need a wizard's help as well as your own if the city is to survive."
Dasborn laughed. "The citizens thought I was hard," he said, looking around his fellows. "It must've been the same for all of you in your day. But they didn't know what hard really was, because they only saw surfaces."
He bowed to Mab and went on, "We didn't serve you, milady, we served Ronn and her people. But it was an honor to serve with you, and I'm pleased to be doing that again."
"He speaks for all of us, I think," Virdin said. "Anybody disagree?"
"We're here, aren't we?" Valeri snapped. He hunched, settling his cuirass to ride more comfortably on his shoulders. "Let's get on with it."
"One thing first," Virdin said, turning to Cashel. The Hero's features were those of Herron, but nobody could've mistaken the boy from sunlit Ronn for the man who faced Cashel now.
"You're a stranger, Master Cashel," Virdin said. "You've done a man's duty to come to this place to wake us, but you have no business with what comes next. Go home with our thanks and the thanks of the city."
"I've come this far," Cashel said, facing the men in armor. "I guess I'll go the rest of the way with you."
"This is Ronn's business," Hrandis said, his eyes on Mab. "Ours and the citizens. He doesn't belong."
"He belongs," Mab said. "He's said he's willing to accompany us, and he doesn't say things he doesn't mean."
Cashel smiled. "No ma'am," he said, his voice husky. "I don't."
"I want Cashel with me," Mab said. "He's made it his business. He belongs with me, and with us."
"All right," said Valeri. "We've talked enough."
He turned and touched the great bronze door where the valves met in the middle. It opened with the soundless majesty of sunrise. Drawing their swords and Hrandis lifting his two axes, the Heroes stepped from the temple.
Darkness fled before them.
* * *
Sharina knelt and picked up one of the larger stream-washed stones. It was some dense pinkish rock, about the size of her both fists clenched.
The lizard was hunting her by smell. She wasn't sure she'd gain by walking downwind with the stream, but it was something she could do. The water wasn't deep but the bottom was dangerously slick, especially when cold water had numbed the soles of her feet. She'd like to have run, but that wasn't possible.
Sharina's silken inner tunic had long sleeves. As she paced over the smooth, algae-haired stones, she ripped the right one off at the shoulder seam to create a fabric tube. She knotted the wrist end into a bag, then dropped the stone into it. That gave her a mace of sorts, easier to hold than the bare stone and much harder-hitting.
She continued on. The nearest horn called, followed at intervals by horns at a greater distance to either side.
The willows and mimosas were a good screen against anybody looking this way from the fields, but they wouldn't hide Sharina if the rider reached the creek and chose to follow it. That's what he would do almost certainly, if his mount lost the scent. The lizard's long legs could in a few minutes go farther up and down stream than Sharina could walk before the hunter arrived.
She glanced through the mimosa stems toward the cultivated field. She'd reached the edge where an irrigation channel separated the maize and beans from a field of dark green rape. The rider wasn't in sight yet, but he would be soon.
The builders had stubbed the irrigation channel off just short of the creek so that the measured water didn't drain away. Trees must sprout along the channel's margin, b
ut they'd been trimmed away; cattails grew from the muddy bottom, however. Without hesitating Sharina scrambled out of the creek and across the short stretch of waste ground, then threw herself into the channel. It was shallow, but she could wriggle down into the soft bottom to conceal herself among the cattails. The standing water was blood-warm and opaque with mud.
Sharina lay down full length and settled a mat of leaves from last years growth over her head. She hoped she'd covered her blond hair completely, but she'd decided that she had to keep her eyes above water so that she could see. Settling her breathing again, she waited.
What would Cashel do if he were here with her? Hide in the ditch, she supposed, just as she was doing. There was no other choice, not against the band of hunters coursing her. She could hear the horn calls coming closer. She might escape the nearest rider, but she didn't see how she could get off the island without using the ring and taking her chances with where it sent her. Nothing Cashel could do would change that.
But she'd feel better with Cashel beside her. Things were never hopeless if Cashel was there with you.
Sharina grinned, the way Cashel'd expect her to do. She shifted to grip her mace's silken shaft with both hands. Things weren't hopeless now, either.
The horn sounded from where she'd entered the stream. After a brief pause, Sharina heard loud splashes mixed with the clack of stones being knocked together by the weight of the great lizard. Chance or instinct had caused the hunter to turn downstream, the correct direction.
Well, Sharina couldn't do anything until he'd come past her. That made his choice her good luck, didn't it?
And perhaps it did, but she wouldn't pretend that she really felt that way about it.
The hunter came closer, though Sharina still couldn't see him. There was a Braaaa! from the lizard's throat, a startled, "Ho! Ho!" from the rider, and then a sloshing like a waterfall. The beast had slipped.
"Up!" the rider called. "Come, come up!"
The scene was wrong, but it took Sharina a moment to understand how. She was expecting a torrent of shouted curses. She'd never met a human, no matter how saintly, who wouldn't have reacted excitedly to that dangerous fall. The People appeared to have no more emotions than dung beetles did.