Master of the Cauldron

by David Drake

  "Send the order," Garric said. Liane was already giving the tablet to a waiting courier. "Lord Attaper, when these creatures appeared before, they took Erdin and held it for a year till a wizard drove them underground. I'm hoping we can do better than that, but we don't need civilians getting in our way. Besides, we owe it to give them a warning about what may happen."

  "Which most of them will ignore," noted Carus. "But that's on their own heads, not ours."

  "Lord Lerdain?" Garric said, suddenly aware of his young aide. He'd refused to take Lerdain into the tunnels, so the boy'd been waiting with a pained, put-upon, expression when Garric returned to the surface. "Get to the harbor and cross to Volita. Order Admiral Zettin in my name to bring the whole army across as fast as he can. I want each ship to come as soon as it's loaded. He's not to wait till the whole force is ready."

  "Yes, Prince Garric!" Lerdain said, heading for the palace entrance before he had the words out. He hadn't even taken time to reform his expression from his present sour pout.

  Lerdain had been sulking to indicate his hurt at being denied a chance to do something dangerous under circumstances where his presence wouldn't benefit anybody. Honor might be an empty word, but it drove some men as surely as a love of money drove others.

  "Aye, and honor drives the best men," Carus agreed with a smile. "For all that I'll agree that personal honor shouldn't be the first thing on a king's mind, as it was on mine."

  Garric and the Blood Eagles had just reached the other side of the courtyard. They were entering the passage to the front entrance of the palace when the sky darkened. Scores of terrified people screamed from the rooms around the courtyard, servants and courtiers who hadn't heard the order to evacuate or had chosen to disregard it.

  The cloud frightened them, Garric thought.

  In the artificial shadow, monstrous white creatures with stone and bronze weapons poured out of the Audience Hall and the front of the palace. Their gabbling was as meaningless as the croaking of frogs.

  "Get out of the palace!" Garric shouted as his escort locked shields. "Don't fight them here! We'll cut our way clear!"

  The sword he'd sheathed when he left the tunnels was in his hand again. Carus' instant reflex had drawn it before Garric's conscious mind was aware of the need.

  There isn't time to think about your actions in the middle of a battle. You act reflexively, doing what you're trained to do with no more consciousness than a heliotrope facing toward the sun.

  Carus/Garric's trained reflex was to hit harder and faster than anybody believed could happen. He didn't have a shield, so he drew his long dagger in his left hand.The monsters in the entrance passage were the business of the forty-odd Blood Eagles ahead; he strode into those swarming from the Audience Hall.

  An arm and the curved axe it held sailing off to the side, Garric's blade continuing through the creature's throat. Monster blood was as red and spouted as high as that from a human. Dagger catching a club, sword thrusting quick as an eyeblink; more blood, much more blood. Pivoting, striking right, backhand left, striking right; twisting the dagger and jerking it free of the single eyesocket in the center of dwarf's sloping forehead.

  And back, because the Blood Eagles had cleared a way through the entrance passage and the creatures which'd attacked from the side weren't a threat any more, were a wrack of distorted body parts; and blood, so much blood, sloshed over the stones.

  But they weren't human, weren't human, weren't men.

  And if they had been men, it would've had to be the same for the kingdom's sake....

  "Your highness, in the Lady's name!" Lord Attaper shouted, putting himself between Garric and more corpse-skinned creatures surging from the side of the courtyard. "Out of the palace! Out of the palace!"

  Garric ran into the passage; Attaper and the rearmost squad of bodyguards fell in behind him. A Blood Eagle'd fallen; over his corpse lay the six monsters who'd halted to hack at the victim while other humans slaughtered them in turn. Garric leaped the pile of corpses. Liane waited at the arched doorway, safe for the moment but unwilling to go farther without him.

  "Abandon the palace!" somebody shouted from outside through what must be a speaking trumpet. "Abandon the palace!"

  But when Garric ran out of passage and under the soot-black sky, he could hear human screams coming from the building behind him. Many, many human screams.

  * * *

  The gate wasn't like the other parts of Ronn that Cashel had seen, even down in the fungus-blighted lower levels. It was tall and broad enough for six people to walk through together, but it had no decoration unless you wanted to say the heads of the rivets holding the iron cross-braces onto the iron leaves. The metal showed a dusting of rust, and it didn't look like anybody'd been here in a long time.

  At the hair-fine join of the gate leaves stood the woman who'd spoken for the Council of the Wise since the older man collapsed. She looked hopeless but resigned to it, like a ewe who knows she's going to be slaughtered and doesn't have the spirit to fight.

  That happened a lot of the time—with sheep. Cashel knew it happened with people too, but not with people he thought there was any profit in knowing.

  "Nobody's walked through this gate in a hundred and fifty years," Mab said, glancing at Cashel without expression. "In the days just after Valeri's last great victory, citizens came down the stairs outside the walls and played in the gardens for the day; but not for many years, and even then they didn't go out through the gate. It reminded them of things they thought were better forgotten."

  Cashel didn't much like the look of the gate or the bare, sheer-walled passage that led to it. Unlike most of Ronn except the roof terraces, this was open to the sky. The walls were living rock for half the way up and above that crystal as gray as the winter sea. You could tell where the one stopped and the other began by the sheen of their surface, but the color was all the same.

  Virdin was leading the citizens massed behind this central gate; he glanced at Mab. "They'd have done better to have remembered and to have finished the job," he said, speaking with no more emotion than a shopkeeper counting out change. "Of course that was true in my day too. I led the people out three times; but never all the way to the end, as if nine steps were enough when safety was ten steps away."

  Behind Cashel, Mab, and Virdin waited as many men as you could fit into the passage without squeezing to the point they couldn't breathe. They weren't talking in real conversations, but the mutters and prayers and the clink of armor touching armor were as loud as the rattle of leaves when a storm sweeps through woodland.

  "You were at fault," Mab said calmly. "And those who followed you were at fault as well; and most of all, the Queen was at fault. The fault will end this day; in victory I hope, but end regardless."

  Women and children looked down from the parapet. Those on the highest terrace were so far away that Cashel couldn't see figures, just the shimmer of movement as hands waved scarves. They were trying to be encouraging, he knew, supporting the grown males of the city who had the muscles to swing the swords and bear the armor; but it was also desperate prayer.

  Virdin laughed, deep in his throat. He looked at Cashel. "What do you figure to do, kid?" he said.

  "I'll stay with Mab," Cashel said. "I'll keep her clear of trouble the best I can."

  He'd heard the challenge in the Hero's tone, but he didn't let it bother him. Virdin was pushing a little because pretty quick other things were going to push a lot harder. You needed to know how the people beside you would behave before the trouble started, not after.

  "I guess you will at that," Virdin said. He quirked a smile at Cashel. Maybe he'd have clasped arms if it weren't for the weapons. Virdin held his shield and bare sword, and Cashel had the quarterstaff in both hands. To Mab he added, "Are the others ready?"

  "Your fellows are," Mab said, smiling in much the same way as the Heroes smiled at one another. "Whether anybody else is besides them and ourselves, that I won't swear to."

&nb
sp; "We'll learn soon enough," Virdin said. Then in a loud voice he called, "Open the gates!"

  A trumpeter in the crowd, the mob—not the army, nothing like what Cashel knew an army looked like—blew two notes, descending and rising. A trumpet answered from the distant roof of Ronn; then, very faintly, came the notes of another, a second, and finally a handful of trumpets.

  The Councillor raised her wand and mumbled words of power. Her tongue caught in the middle of the incantation, bringing her to a stumbling halt. Mab frowned, her eyes glinting like the sun on frozen lakes, but the Councillor recovered enough to finish with forceful strokes of her wand.

  Ruby light crackled up the joint in the middle of the door; the valves creaked inward. For an instant the Councillor stood in the opening, still beating the wand though her tongue was silent. Beyond her, covering the plain like white scale on a leper's hands, were the Made Men. In their midst, on a litter of human bones, hunched the King himself.

  The Councillor squealed and pressed herself against the side of the passage where the folded-back door leaves provided a little concealment. The King swung his bone athame forward, and the creatures he commanded began to advance as a mass of purulent flesh.

  "We mustn't be late to the party," muttered Virdin. He lifted his sword at a slant and shouted, "Charge!" as he strode through the gateway.

  Cashel glanced over his shoulder as he and Mab followed. The mass of citizens in the passage behind were lurching forward too. The ones in the lead looked frightened, and the words they were shouting weren't always the sorts of things Cashel liked to hear from the folks fighting on the same side as him—"Mama!" was one of them, and some of the crowd kept saying, "God help us! God save us!" Still, they were coming, and that was more of a relief than Cashel'd have figured before the feeling rushed over him.

  Mab looked calm and businesslike. As she walked, her fingernails traced brilliant patterns in the air. Cashel didn't know what she was doing until a dazzling blue thunderbolt shot toward them from the King's athame. It vanished with an earthquake crack! midway between the armies.

  Mab rocked back like she'd walked into a tree while she was thinking about other things. Cashel put out a hand to steady her, but she'd already got her balance and was walking on.

  The King flopped onto his back in the litter, flailing the air with his athame. He looked like an overturned beetle kicking. Cashel grinned. He was just here to help, but it felt good to be proud of the lady he was helping.

  Men with swords and shiny armor were coming out of Ronn's other gates to left and right. Cashel could only see the ones closest to where he was, but he guessed each of the Heroes was leading the men of a district just like they'd planned.

  Cashel had seen flocks of sheep keep better step and look more soldierly, but the citizens of Ronn were trying. From the roof and the terraces lower down, silks and shining metal gauze were waving, and the men were down here on the plain—scared half to death and like enough to die in all truth. They were doing all they could; and Cashel was proud to stand with them, too.

  The Made Men called out in a burbling gabble as they shambled along. The sound less resembled words than they did gulps of liquid leaking from a week-dead corpse.

  Cashel stepped to the side for a little room and spun his quarterstaff overhead. Duzi, those white monsters weren't in any better formation than the citizens were, and besides that they didn't have shields or armor. If the people of Ronn kept their faces to the enemy, this might turn out all right after all!

  The ground stepped downward from the city in a series of wide terraces. They'd been decorated with hedges and terra cotta tubs, though by now everything was pretty well overgrown. Farther to the north the land started rising again into the black hills and gorges from which still more Made Men poured.

  Virdin strode down the slope to the second terrace, carrying the boldest of the citizens with him. Mab halted well short of the break and drew in the air with her hands. Cashel took one pace forward and crossed his staff before him, putting himself a little to Mab's left. He wanted to keep her in the corner of his eye. With two mobs like these mixing, there was no telling what direction trouble'd come in.

  A Made Man, slight-bodied but with spider-thin limbs so long that he was much taller than Cashel, charged Virdin gobbling. The creature swung a curved bronze sword far out to the side, then brought it around to strike the back of the Hero's skull.

  Virdin lopped the Made Man's arm off at the elbow. The forearm and blade together spun away like an elm seed. The Hero punched the boss of his shield into the creature's chest, crushing ribs and flinging the body back into the faces of other oncoming creatures.

  The straggling front of armored citizens hit the straggling front of Made Men, both sides hacking furiously. Cashel waited, his legs spread into a good stance. His instinct when he saw a fight was to get into it. Not that he liked to fight, exactly, but the emotions that seeing a fight roused in him made him want to do something instead of just stand there.

  But standing here was the right thing just now, so Cashel did it. He was used to doing hard things, even when that meant doing nothing till the right time came.

  The lines of men and Made Men fighting didn't move much after the first contact midway down the second terrace. Neither side was any good at what it was doing. If the citizens'd been chopping trees, they'd have turned them all to wood chips instead of timber. For their part, the Made Men moved in great leaps and slashes like they were dancing for an audience instead of closing with enemies.

  The difference was in the shields and armor the humans wore. The Made Men didn't have the skill to pick apart armored men the way Cashel'd seen Garric and Chalcus do when they faced better-equipped enemies. The citizens couldn't have landed two blows on the same spot if their lives'd depended on it—but one blow was enough every time, shearing through white skin and pale flesh. The sprays of blood were as red as what ran in the veins of real men.

  Rows of Made Men went down. More citizens joined the line, taking the place of men whose arms were already weary with unfamiliar exercise, or whose stomachs were churning to see how the inside of a body looks when the heart's still beating and the guts spill out in writhing coils.

  Ronn was a city. City folk don't know the things that every peasant child sees in the Fall when the flock's thinned so that there's fodder enough to take the survivors through to new growth in Spring.

  But the citizens went on and fought—or anyway hacked at their enemies. Some of the strokes were so wild that Cashel suspected the fellows were swinging their swords with their eyes shut, but they weren't running away.

  They weren't advancing much either. By now enough of them had come out of the gates, this one and the ones to either side, that there was a solid line of citizens chopping at the King's cavorting monsters. More humans came from the city, but many more Made Men swarmed out of the distant hills. Cashel thought of soldiers facing the sea with their swords—and the tide sweeping on regardless, as the tide always will....

  Three lances of red wizardlight stabbed from the King toward Mab, as quickly as heartbeats. Two exploded midway, a blast and a blast, pushing the fighters away from each other for a moment. Cashel rode the shocks the way he'd have ridden gusts of wind at the start of a storm.

  Instead of exploding, the third bolt vanished a hand's breadth from Mab's forehead, then lashed back at the King. A fireball lit the walls of Ronn and the slopes of the barren hills. The bone litter flew apart. The creatures carrying it flattened, and the King dropped out of sight behind the wall of his minions.

  For a moment Cashel thought Mab had killed her city's enemy, but nearby Made Men threw down their weapons and lifted the King again on their bare shoulders. He'd been scotched but not finished. Well, that'd been a lot to hope; and anyway, the sky seemed brighter than it'd been before the exchange of bolts.

  Because Cashel stood two double-paces above the battle, he had a good view. The whole width of Ronn was lined with men in polished armor, wit
h the Heroes each advanced slightly beyond the ordinary citizens.

  Virdin had laid an arc of bodies before him and was building it into a wall with every further stroke or jab with his shield. Cashel was impressed by his skill, all the more remarkable for the clumsy butchery going on to his right and left. Virdin worked like an expert shearer stripping the wool from a sheep without wasting a motion.

  Mab's face was raised. Her hands wove patterns and her lips moved, but Cashel couldn't hear what she was saying. The shouts and crash of battle were deafeningly loud, but Cashel had the feeling that she wasn't really talking with her mouth.

  The sky grew steadily brighter. The Made Men were giving way, not quickly but being pushed back nonetheless. Men were down—many men were down, when you looked both ways along the line of battle—but the King's creatures had fallen the way wheat does before the scythe.

  Darkness swelled together in the sky like fog beading on cold glass, then dived at Mab on black wings. Cashel moved without thinking, bringing his quarterstaff up and around. His ferrule smashed into the attacker where its neck met the wings.

  The blue flash more than the impact flung the creature up and back; it vanished as suddenly as it'd appeared. It'd been a crow the size of an ox, literally a thing of night whose destruction made the sky lighter.

  Another image formed and sprang, a cat this time with its claws spread and its fanged mouth open wide enough to swallow Mab's head and shoulders. Cashel shifted, stepping across Mab's front to meet the attack with the other butt of his staff. Iron crunched beneath the cat's eyesocket. Blue wizardlight flashed across the whole huge form, lighting the sky and devouring the cat as though it'd never existed.

  Cashel's hands were numb. He flexed them on his staff, knowing he might need them again shortly.

  The sky continued to brighten. A spot appeared in the high sky, a white blur like the sun showing through overcast. Darkness ripped back like fabric tearing, turning the whole sky bright. It wasn't daytime any more than the shadow the King cast was true night; this was the opposite of black.