by David Drake
He guessed this was Erdin; he'd been here a year ago. Duzi! but it was in a bad way, though.
A whole herd of creatures bubbled from the crater and came on down the street toward the waiting soldiers. They were white like the Made Men and their weapons were pretty much the ones the Made Men carried, but none ofthese things could pass for human. Some were even legless, with flipper hands sticking out below their snarling faces. They used the whole length of their slimy bodies to swing their weapons.
Bolts of red and blue ripped from between Mab's weaving hands to strike the overcast. They slashed it like swords through dirty burlap.
Thunder slammed twice. Bright, clean sunlight flooded from the uncovered sky. Where it fell across the white creatures, they writhed like slugs on a griddle.
The monsters must be making the high keening Cashel heard. The human defenders who'd been falling back now steadied and hacked their squirming opponents to death.
The black sky closed again over the sunlight. More of the white monsters lifted from the crater, moving toward the line of soldiers. Two humans had gone down in the attack just finished. Soldiers lay on the pavement in ones and twos, all the way back to the edge of the pit.
The barrier was growing thinner. Cashel could see companies of monsters setting off in all directions, not just toward the men directly in front of him. A few human reinforcements were moving up the road from the harbor, but only a very few.
The man on the far end of the line knelt, bowing his head. The smaller figure beside him, a slim spearman who wasn't wearing armor, lifted the first man's helmet to let the cold breeze cool his scalp.
Mab's hands moved together with the whirling precision of hawks mating in mid air. Wizardlight blasted from between them, throwing back the darkness to either side the way skin gapes away from a deep cut. The sun blazed down. Creatures of the false darkness shrivelled.
The spearman was Liane. She lowered the helmet back onto Garric's head. He rose and braced himself for the new assault, because despite the sunlight the monsters still came on with the fury of the damned.
Blackness burped from the crater. Instead of streaking upward to heal the wound in the overcast, it coalesced into the shape of a two-legged reptilian nightmare. The thing strode heavily down the cracked pavement toward Mab.
This wasn't an illusion. The corpses of white monsters burst like foul grapes as the three-clawed feet crushed down on them. The lifting foot kicked a dead soldier; he hurtled several double-paces through the air before falling again to the bloody pavement.
Cashel had his staff spinning at a moderate rate, alternating sunwise circles and widdershins to loosen all his muscles against the time he needed their full strength. He guessed that time was now.
The thing of darkness marched on. The only light on the sooty form was the eyes, searing orange-red blotches on either side of the narrow skull. The creature bore down on Mab-and standing in front of Mab, Cashel.
"Get out of the way!" Cashel shouted as he spun the staff faster-sunwise now, certain of every next move; certain of everything but the outcome. His voice was thick with rage. "Garric, get your men out of the way! This one's mine!"
Cashel couldn't tell if the soldiers heard him or not. The two in the center of the line edged a little toward either side. They raised their shields and cocked their swords back to strike if the lizard-thing bit down at them, but they didn't run.
The creature strode through the living ranks of white not-men, crushing and slashing them aside with the same disregard it'd displayed for the windrows of their corpses. Dying things, already stunned by the torrent of sunlight, mewled in horror; the stench of their gutted bodies was worse than a tanyard in hot summer.
"Move aside!" Cashel said.
The lizard reached the line of soldiers, breaking paving stones every time its feet smashed down. The two nearest men weren't cowards, couldn't be cowards to stand where they were; but they didn't throw themselves in the path of something they knew they could no more stop than they could stop an avalanche walking on two legs. The lizard-thing passed between the soldiers, heading for Mab with the unswerving assurance of an arrow. Cashel stepped forward to meet it.
His staff was spinning, scattering coils of blue wizardlight. He could see every bit of the pattern-the way the creature would move, the way he'd move; the perfect arc of his quarterstaff and the point his leading buttcap would meet the creature's long jaw.
Cashel could see everything but what happenedthen: whether the creature went down or it snapped him up on its way to Mab. That depended on how strong he was and how strong the creature was. There was no way of telling that except by trying, just like in any other fight.
That didn't bother Cashel. He didn't start fights himself, but his size drew fellows who needed to prove they were better than him. Thus far they'd all been wrong; and if this lizard was right, well, Cashel had won too often to complain about losing once.
The creature seemed to slow down, but that was what always happened at times like this. Cashel was seeing everything with the eyes of experience, all the little pieces that were really happening at the same time.
The lizard was the same dull color all over, no shades or highlights. It was like a shadow wrapped around something that could've been a crocodile on two legs. The bright sunlight didn't make any difference. Cashel saw the teeth only when the open jaws were canted to silhouette them against something on the other side. The maw, the throat, the pits of the nostrils-all were the same black that was really no color.
The lizard's left foreleg reached for Cashel, but he stepped inside it as he brought the staff around. It was all the way he'd seen it in his mind, the movements working together just the way the gears of his grandfather's mill in Barca's Hamlet turned and made the grindstones spin. Everything was perfect.
His sunwise-spinning buttcap struck midway on the creature's long jaw.
Cashel expected a shock and a blue flash. Instead, time stopped. Cashel's heart didn't beat, and the stench of death and sulfur was only a memory in his nostrils. He saw Garric and Liane from beyond the creature's out-thrust leg. Garric's mouth was open to shout, but Cashel heard nothing in this slice of forever.
Crackling blue wizardlight licked across the monster the way a downpour covers a statue. The living darkness flew apart as suddenly as chaff lifts in a windstorm.
Cashel fell backward, deafened and numb. The shattered dust of the lizard swept across him, bearing him down and smothering him. As he toppled, he felt the ground lift with a shock far greater than any that had struck the city before.
***
Sharina stepped from the sanctum of the temple, brightly lit through the open doors, onto the foreshore of Volita. The sky was covered by a black cloud almost as opaque as the block of stone on which she stood. She stumbled, more from surprise than because she'd just passed from one place to a distant other place in a single step.
"Ah!" said Tenoctris. "Set me-"
Sharina was already bending to put the Tenoctris' feet on the ground. She lifted the wizard upright, then cautiously released her. Tenoctris' spirit was indomitable, but her friends had learned techniques to cope with the weakness of an elderly body. For Sharina and Cashel in particular, these were by now second nature.
The water was only twenty feet away. Sharina stepped off the stone. It was a thin, square slab with sides an arm's length across. It didn't seem to have come from the ruined mansions just above the tide line.
"Bolor's courier must've placed it here," Tenoctris said, glancing at the slab approvingly. "It's sheltered by these pilings, so when someone appears here, he looks like he's just stepped into view normally."
A trireme stood fifty feet out in the strait, broadside to the shore. Only the uppermost bank of oars was manned. Fully-equipped soldiers were boarding by a pair of rope ladders. The warship rocked violently on its narrow keel, but the fact it didn't capsize indicated that its officers had men standing on the opposite outrigger to balance the weight of th
ose climbing.
A few other vessels were beached nearby, but most of the royal fleet had crossed to the mainland. The trireme's sailing master stood in the stern, bellowing through a speaking trumpet, "Two more only! Any more and we'll bloody sink in the chop!"
Soldiers, many of them with signs of injury, stood on the sand in two and threes to watch the loading. Civilians, apparently refugees from Erdin, formed in larger groups apart from the troops.
Sharina stepped out of cover. "Where's Prince Garric?" she demanded loudly. "Is he still here on Volita?"
Some people turned to look at her, though others continued staring in numb amazement at the devastation across the strait. No one spoke.
"Where's Prince Garric?" Sharina shouted, pointing her finger at a soldier He wore his cuirass but no helmet because of the bandage on his head.
Instead of the soldier, a barefoot woman in expensive robes answered, "He's at the palace, fighting the demons from below. He's there if he's still alive."
"Hurry!" Tenoctris said. "We've got to get aboard the ship."
There was no help for it, then. Sharina was tired, physically as well as mentally, but without hesitation she picked the wizard up again. She ran into the water shouting, "I'm Princess Sharina! Help me! I've got to reach my brother in Erdin!"
Those aboard the trireme probably couldn't hear her, but the soldiers waist-deep in the strait waiting their turn to climb the ladders did. Three of them bellowed in unison, "Hold up for the Princess coming aboard!"
The warship rode as close inshore as it could without grounding, but the sea would still be up to Sharina's chest. The troops at the back of the line saw the women's problem. One grabbed Sharina's arm and handed her forward. The next man did the same, not carrying her and Tenoctris but shoving from one man to the next so that Sharina didn't have the problem of trying to walk in deep water.
"You've got no business there, your highness!" the sailing master replied through his trumpet. If the captain-a nobleman who wouldn't be expected to know about ships-had an opinion, he kept it to himself. The sailing master turned and ordered, "Crew, prepare to set off!"
Soldiers continued to pull and push the women toward the vessel. Aboard the trireme, a soldier handed his javelin to the soldier beside him, then drew his sword. He laid the point of it against the sailing master's throat. The sailor flung his speaking trumpet into the air in shock. He probably would've jumped himself if the soldier hadn't been gripping his shoulder.
"Come on, your princessship!" shouted the soldier holding the javelins. His unaided lungs gave up nothing to the sailor's orders through the speaking trumpet. "We'll wait for you!"
Sharina finished the journey to the ship with her face in the water half the time. She hoped Tenoctris was all right; the wizard's occasional sneezes were reassuring. When they reached the tarred black hull, a pair of men lifted them out of the water together and two more-the soldiers who'd convinced the sailing master of his duty-jerked them over the railing with about as much consideration as you'd give sacks of grain.
They'd gotten the job done. Delicate men wouldn't have. Sharina felt a rush of gratitude to them.
"Now you can get moving, sailor boy," said the first soldier as he retrieved his javelin from his buddy. "And don't waste a lot of time, hear?"
If the sailing master had an opinion, he swallowed it and merely shouted orders to the crew. The flutist seated under the sternpost began blowing time, and the oars took up their beat. The trireme groaned forward and swung slowly toward the mainland.
"Don't guess you'd remember me and Pont, your princessship," said the soldier who'd been speaking. "We met back in the ice a time ago, but there was a lot going on then."
Sharina looked at the men. They were non-commissioned officers in a line regiment, and at least the age of her father. There were several hundred men like them in the royal army. But "I do recognize you!" she said. "File-closers Pont and Prester! You saved my brother's life and he gave you estates! What are you doing here?"
The trireme laboriously gained speed. It rode deep in the water, just as the sailing master had warned. Sharina hoped the lowest range of oar ports had been blocked when the warship was converted into a transport, but worse come to worst she could swim to the far shore even if she had to pull Tenoctris along with her.
"Oh, ma'am, what do we know about farming?" Prester said. "Anyway, your brother saved my ass and Pont's both a time or two, as I remember it. With a little seasoning he'd make a real soldier, he would."
"But it's good of her to remember us, Prester," said his partner. "A lady like that, aprincess, and she remembers us."
"Pont and me signed back on," Prester said. "Camp marshals, that makes us warrant officers. That's why we were still on Volita. Somebody had to chivy stragglers over."
"Are we going to be in trouble because we didn't, you know, wait for the last ship out, Prester?" Pont said. "Looks like there's another coming after all."
He pointed. A stubby patrol vessel, packed with troops and only one of its two oar-banks manned, was wallowing away from Volita in the trireme's wake.
"No," Sharina said with a decisive nod. "You're not going to be in trouble."
"Anyway, we may've screwed the pooch this time anyhow," said Prester, in a surprisingly cheerful tone given what he was saying. "Nothing like fighting in a city to get yourself killed."
"But there's loot, Prester," said his partner. "Remember those temple dishes we got in Durance?"
"I remember the hangover they bought me," Prester said. "ThatI'm never going to forget."
Wizardlight slashed out of the city, ripping a long gash in the overcast. The sun poured down, more than doubling the light that'd been seeping in around the perimeter of the artificial shadow.
Prester looked at the flashes and the sky of roiling blackness, then looked out to sea past Sharina. "Well, we seen wizards before," he muttered. "It's no big thing that we're seeing 'em again, I guess."
"Anyhow," said Pont cheerfully, "it's nice to have sunlight."
He looked at Sharina in sudden concern. "But it's all right if we don't, your princessship," he added. "I mean, whatever you want, ma'am. You can count in me 'n Prester to cope."
"Thank you, Marshal Pont," Sharina said formally. Did they really think she controlled the wizards battling in Erdin? "I have no doubt at all that you will cope, as you've done before. As we've all done before."
The trireme's mast was stepped, though the spar and sail had been left on shore. The lookout at the masthead shouted down, "Master Darrin! All the slips are full and there's ships tied to the ones already moored. We'll have to go upriver!"
The sailing master stepped onto the pivot of the steering oar, gripping the railing with his left hand. "Hanging on like that looks very dangerous," Tenoctris said in a tone of mild disapproval. "Though I suppose he knows what he's doing."
Sharina opened her mouth to reply. The ridiculousness of the statement-here, from Tenoctris to her-struck her. She giggled. Tenoctris looked at her in surprise, then started to chuckle also.
Sharina's giggle became laughter that was barely on the right side of hysteria. She leaned over the railing to take the pressure off her chest.
"No, we'll berth alongside theSword of Ornifal here in the harbor," the sailing master decided aloud. He didn't seem to be speaking to anybody in particular, but he spoke loudly enough that everybody on deck from the mast sternward could hear. "The passengers can cross the other ships to the quay. If we go up the river, the Shepherd knows what we'll find."
Turning to the helmsman he added, "Two points to starboard, Henga. Master Estin, prepare to back water."
Pont cocked an eye at the sailing master. "That all right with you and your friend, Princess?" he asked.
"I won't be able to carry Tenoctris from ship to ship by myself," Sharina said. "But he's probably right-the river will be choked. Warships are too long to turn in the channel, and…"
"Oh, that's no problem, Princess," Prester said.
He turned to survey the soldiers nearest to him on deck. "Mallus and Jodea, you're carrying the old lady here, got it? Unter and Borcas, you two take their spears and be ready to grab if something goes wrong. You got that?"
A soldier blinked. His fluffy blond moustache flared into sideburns and disappeared under his helmet. "How far do we carry her, Marshal?" he asked doubtfully.
"Until I bloody tell you to bloody put her down, you bloody fool!" Prester replied like a thunderclap.
"Back 'em, back 'em!" the sailing master shouted, still clinging to the oar block. "Four, three, two, one-ship oars! Ship oars, or you'll pay for the broken shafts, I swear it!"
The trireme wobbled as it slowed, pummeled by the wake of its forward passage and the stroke of its reversed oars rebounding from the vessel it slid toward. That one, the outermost of three triremes already moored, held several score civilians but none of the regular crew. A few refugees seemed to be trying to get the vessel under way, but the others were simply huddling on deck. This was as far as they'd been able to run from the destruction occurring in their city.
The ships scrunched together, rocking violently. The passengers hindered the deck crew, but there were hawsers across to the inner vessel before they drifted apart again. Soldiers had started leaping over before the ships were lashed together firmly.
"Make way for the Princess and the old lady!" Prester bellowed. He glared at the men he'd detailed to carry Tenoctris and added in a scarcely quieter voice, "Mallus and Jodea, hop to it!"
The troops crashed and slid their way across the ships till they'd reached the stone quay. A couple of them managed to fall into the water, but they were able to rescue themselves because cut rigging already hung from the vessels' sides. Troops must've fallen previously, and soldiers had no compunction about destroying a ship-or most anything else-to save a buddy's life.
The men holding Tenoctris negotiated the route without difficulty; they must've been either sailors or mountaineers at an earlier point in their lives. It struck Sharina that Prester and Pont might be simple men in many respects, but their knowledge of troops and the things required to keep troops alive was of a very sophisticated order.