Master of the Cauldron loti-6

by David Drake

  ***

  Garric got to his feet cautiously. He wasn't sure whether the ground was still trembling or if the shudders he felt were just his body reacting to all that'd gone before.

  He squinted against the dust. Liane handed him a swatch of cloth she'd ripped from her tunic and dampened from the helmet she was using as a water bucket. Garric let his shield hang from the strap buckled behind his right shoulder and gratefully covered his nose and mouth to breathe.

  Many creatures had gotten out of the cauldron before the troll tore it from the earth. Instead of attacking as their fellows had done earlier, they ran for hiding places like startled rats. The troops who'd been fighting all day let the pallid survivors slip through gaps in the line.

  The battle was over. The men who'd fought it had their bellies full of slaughter; and besides, the rats still had their weapons. Let them crawl into cellars, if that was all they wanted to do…

  Garric started forward. He swayed for the first few steps, but he was all right when he got moving properly. Erdin had been nearly flat. Now a mass of granite like the citadel of Carcosa rose in the middle of the city. He wouldn't climb it-he didn't think he could in his present condition, living on his nerves with no margin of physical or mental strength-but he could go around.

  Hehad to go around. The wizard responsible for this had escaped northward just before the troll hurled the caudron into the sea. The soldiers there would see no more reason to stop their fleeing enemies than the men nearby did.

  The wizard had survived a millennium underground to rebuild his inhuman army. He'd do so again if he got the chance. Garric wasn't going to give him that chance.

  He jogged near three pale monsters. They were hunching toward an alley half-closed by the jumbled barrels of a fallen column. The nearest of the trio turned and faced Garric, moaning softly and raising the axes in two of its hands. When Garric went by, it dropped forward to lope after its fellows, bracchiating on its lower pair of arms. It'd behaved like a frightened dog, willing to bite if necessary but desperate to get away.

  The wizard's foul overcast had dissipated, allowing sunlight to bathe the granite plug. The stone was gray with streaks of white and pink, seemingly normal in every way save the manner it'd come here.

  It was warm, though. Garric felt the heat pulsing as he passed close to the rock on his way around.

  The breeze teased a valley in the swirling dust. Garric saw a clump of white creatures-perhaps four of them, perhaps many-carrying something toward the Temple of the Shepherd Who Overwhelms. The massive temple would have deep foundations.

  Garric didn't try to run faster. He knew that if he lost his pace he'd almost certainly stumble. He'd reach them in time. The mismatched creatures moved like a broken-backed centipede, each interfering with the others.

  The groundhad stopped shaking, so the dust was settling gradually. The layer at Garric's mid-chest was thick, almost opaque, but above that only motes danced. They twinkled like droplets of spray over a breeze-whipped ocean. Four thick-bodied, thick-legged monsters carried a litter that'd been pegged together from human bones. On it rode the wizard Garric had briefly glimpsed in the underworld, a hump under a black robe.

  The wizard turned. Its face was that of a corpse which'd half decayed before being mummified. It pointed its athame.

  "Die!" Garric cried, his sword lifting as he strode the last two paces to his enemy.

  There was a red flash. Garric's muscles froze. His skin prickled and the sword flew out of his hand. He skidded forward on his chest.

  A javelin arced out of the sky, skewering both the creatures supporting the back of the litter. They bawled and collapsed, spilling the wizard to the pavement. The athame's point caught in a crack between two cobblestones; the tourmaline blade splintered.

  Garric could move again. He squirmed forward and grasped the wizard's throat. He neither knew nor cared what the other two litter-bearers were doing. He squeezed, feeling bones and muscles as dry as dead bone crunching. Then there was nothing in his hands, and nothing but stinking dust spilling from the black robe.

  Garric looked around. Prester and Pont trotted toward him, wearing satisfied expressions and drawing their swords. Behind the two marshals came a squad of soldiers who appeared worn beyond human endurance.

  Lord Attaper had finished three of the bearers whom the javelins had put down. He stared in a mixture of amazement and disgust at the fourth creature, a pin-headed monster whose forearms were the size of a strong man's thighs.

  Liane knelt on the back of the fourth bearer. She'd cut its throat but seemed determined to continue thrusting her little dagger between its ribs as long as it was still twitching in death.

  CHAPTER 20

  Garric had taken off his armor. By the end of the fighting his helmet had looked like scrap that a tinker had snipped repeatedly to make patches for cookware. He'd wiped blood off his sword with a piece of bedding that'd been blowing in the street. Now that the patterned gray steel was clean, he was sharpening it with the small stone he kept in a pouch on his swordbelt.

  The sky was clear and the wind off the sea had cleared Erdin of the smell of sulfur. A number of fires had started when buildings collapsed onto lighted braziers, but they weren't out of control.

  The bodies remained. Even the stench of the monsters' gutted corpses seemed less nauseating in bright sunlight.

  "Lord Tadai is here, your highness," Liane said primly.

  Garric looked up in amazement. He was seated at a conference table pulled from the wreckage of a house which the troll had bumped on its way to… to saving the Isles, Garric supposed. Certainly on the way to saving Garric or-Reise and the people dearest to his heart and soul.

  Soldiers had placed the table-and straight chairs from a nearby ruin-in a small plaza not far from where the palace had stood. Ensign Attarus commanded the detachment of Blood Eagles guarding the Prince, but Garric had sent Lord Attaper to take stock of the army as a whole.

  Garric remembered giving that order and a series of similar ones, to prevent looting and to reorganize the army in case somethingelse happened suddenly. That had been-he looked up at the sun-over an hour ago. He didn't remember anything from that point till now.

  King Carus smiled a little sadly from Garric's mind. "There's different ways to cope," he said. "Cleaning your weapons is a good one. But any way that gets you through to the next dawn is a good one."

  "Lord Tadai," Garric said, nodding to the plump nobleman. He'd have gotten up for courtesy's sake-he was the Prince, of course, but Tadai was very powerful, very skilled; and (along with his rival Royhas) as much a real friend as Garric had at the highest levels of his government.

  Hewould have gotten up, but he was just too tired.

  Tadai's robe of peach-colored silk was spotless and perfectly arranged. He'd probably donned a fresh one in the past few minutes, before he set off for an audience with Garric. He'd lost part of the nail of his right index finger and the layer of tinted rice powder on his cheeks couldn't conceal the scratch from his left ear to the point of his chin.

  "I'm glad to see you looking so well, your highness," Tadai said. He bowed but a stitch in one muscle or another made him stiffen in blank-faced pain; he didn't sweep as low as he'd normally have done.

  "I was afraid you…," Garric said. He stopped, because there wasn't any honest way to continue.

  In all truth, he hadn't thought about Tadai and the rest of the ministerial delegation to Erdin since the trouble broke out in the temple library in the morning, a lifetime ago. Apparently they, or at least Tadai, had gotten out of the palace before the creatures of the pit slaughtered everyone they found. Garric was glad of that, but he'd had more pressing problems until this very moment.

  He grinned. Including the problem of cleaning and sharpening his sword.

  Tadai cleared his throat. "I've set up an interim city administration," he said. "The Earl hasn't been seen in some time-"

  "He won't be," Liane said. Her voice was m
usical, but there was a hard finality to it. "Ever."

  "Ah," Tadai said. He cleared his throat again. "Well, that may be for the best. I've made contact with many of the watch committees and used them to organize bucket brigades. Erdin doesn't have a paid fire watch. Ah-"

  "Milord!" Garric said, sounding harsh even in his own numb ears. "I have every confidence in your ability to deal with this… to deal with this-"

  His hands were trembling. He laid the sword flat on the table and laced his fingers. Liane, who'd been studiously formal to that point, pressed her hand on top of his.

  Garric rose cautiously. It was a good idea to work the muscles a little, though it'd be An honest grin spread across his face.

  – a long time before he was up to digging ditches.

  "Tadai, I don't have enough mind right at the moment to guess which direction the sun'll rise in the morning," Garric said gently. "I'm glad you do, I'm lucky and Erdin is more than lucky that you're able to take charge in this crisis. But you don't need to give me progress reports. You have my backing until I tell you otherwise."

  "I understand, your highness," Tadai said. He turned his face away while he gathered his courage to blurt what he'd really come to say. Just before Garric snarled something gruffly to prod the man, Tadai went on, "Your highness, it's the soldiers. They're hunting the, thethings that got out into the city before…."

  He pointed a hand vaguely toward where the palace had been. Garric wasn't sure how he'd have described the way the crisis ended either. Rather than let Tadai choke for lack of a word he said, "I understand. Some of the creatures got through the cordon before the wizard who'd raised them was defeated. The troops are carrying out my orders to kill them all."

  "Yes, of course, kill them," Tadai said. "But they're making a game of it! They're making bets about who can throw a spear through each creature from the farthest distance. The officers are encouraging them to behave like that. A game, your highness, agame!"

  Garric looked at Lord Tadai: a brave man who was both decent and self-sacrificing by the standards of his class. By any standards, really; there were few enough peasants in Barca's Hamlet who'd have willingly undergone the dangers and discomfort Tadai had today and many days in the past.

  Still, Tadai was a cultured gentleman who ate pork but had never seen a pig clamped by the snout to be butchered.

  "Milord," Garric said gently, "my officers have had the wit to turn a dirty, dangerous, necessary job into a training exercise. Maybe there's no way the creatures could fester and breed in the caverns below Erdin now that their wizard's dead, but I don't know that for sure. I'm not going to let this-"

  He swept his right arm in an arc, encompassing the devastated center of the city.

  "-happen again a thousand years from now to people who don't deserve it any more than the poor devils you're organizing into bucket brigades do. Milord-Tadai, my friend Lord Tadai-these are the men who saved as much of Erdin as could be saved! Not because they care about Sandrakkanor the Isles or much of anything else. They stood because it was their job and because their fellow soldiers were standing. And if now they're going to have fun finishing the job instead of treating it as a distasteful duty, more power to them. Don't expect me to get in their way."

  Garric crooked a smile at Tadai, a man he genuinely liked as well as respecting. "And don't get in their way yourself, please; because the kingdom needs you. Just as it needs them."

  Tadai bent his head slightly, rubbing his brows in a fashion that hid his eyes for the moment. "I was frightened," he said, so softly that only Garric and Liane could hear the words. "I've been pretending that things are normal, just a little disrupted. But they never were normal."

  Tadai lowered his hands and met Garric's eyes. He smiled wryly. "Not the way I pretended in my well-appointed office, where servants brought me sherbet cooled with last winter's snow when I was thirsty. When I shouted at my chamberlain if the sheets weren't turned down at precisely the correct angle when I was ready to go to bed."

  Tadai looked around, then nodded with an expression of cool resolution. "I'd best get back to my duties," he said. "Quite a number of people need temporary shelter and of course food till normal services are restored. I have assistants making quick inventories of the warehouses along the river, looking for wine and bulk grain. It'll be a fiscal mare's nest to sort out afterwards, but we can't let people starve, can we?"

  Garric smiled, then embraced the plump nobleman. "No, Lord Tadai," he said as he stepped away. "The kingdom doesn't let its citizens starve."

  He'd smudged the clean robe, but Tadai was beaming as he bustled off with a retinue of aides. The kingdom was indeed lucky to have him.

  "And lucky to have the officers who turned the cleaning-up operation into javelin practice instead of cut and thrust that'd cost more lives," Carus noted with a smile of his own. "My guess it wasn't any hereditary nobleman who came up with the notion, eh?"

  Garric grinned back at the ancestor in his mind. Veterans like Pont and Prester had gotten to be old soldiers by learning how not to get themselves needlessly killed. Having them around to pass on their knowledge meant that a lot of younger men would live to be old soldiers.

  He let his eyes drift over the scene around him. Tenoctris lay under a shop awning, sound asleep on a salvaged mattress; drained by the hard work of wizardry, Garric assumed. Tenoctris had a wonderful ability to keep going as long as her skill was needed, but the effort still had to be paid for.

  Sharina sat on the pavement beside her, holding the Pewle knife on her lap unsheathed. Garric frowned at his sister's disturbingly empty expression. Something had happened to her, but he didn't have any idea what. Maybe it was just the overwhelming disaster…

  Cashel squatted with Sharina, facing the other way down the street. His left elbow touched her right, that was all. Because he was Cashel, he provided more support than a whole regiment of Blood Eagles could; but he did it without saying a word or even seeming to be aware of what he was doing. Cashel had been the best shepherd in living memory in the borough, but his talents were far too great to spend on sheep.

  Garric smiled again. "Spend on sheep," not "waste on sheep," because sheep had value also. Garric or-Reise had been a pretty decent shepherd himself.

  Garric walked toward Cashel and Sharina, leaving his sword on the table behind him. It was part of his present life, a tool on which the safety of the kingdom might depend; but there'd been a previous life when things were simpler. They hadn't seemed simple at the time, but they certainly did now that he looked back at them.

  Garric wished there were sheep around him, grazing on a sunny hillside. There weren't, but he had his friends from that time, which was even better.

  Cashel murmured something to Sharina. She brightened and slid the knife back in its sheath. They stood up together, graceful despite having gone through pretty much what Garric had, he suspected.

  Chalcus came through the brick archway from the interior of the adjacent mews, one of many surviving buildings which'd become temporary hospitals. His lips smiled as his eyes darted in all directions. Ilna and Merota walked slightly behind him, safe if there'd been some unlikely danger waiting in the plaza.

  Their clothing-the child's as well-was dusty and blood-splotched; they'd been helping with the injured, bandaging wounds and bringing water to men crying for it. There was nothing incongruous about Chalcus working to save lives: like any long-time fighting man, he must've had plenty of occasion to treat those injured by violence.

  Their faces and hands were freshly scrubbed. Trust Ilna to see to that.

  Garric gripped arms with Cashel, then embraced his sister and stepped away. He looked at his friend and said, "Cashel, you brought a wizard with you. Was she…"

  "Was she killed?" was what he meant, but he didn't need to say that.

  "Is she all right, that is?" Garric substituted.

  "Her name's Mab," Cashel said shyly. "And I guess she's fine, but she had to go back and take care of thin
gs back home. She's a queen, you see."

  He smiled to greet his sister, continuing, "And Ilna? Mab said to tell you that we're both credits to our parents. Do you know, part of the time she looked like the spit 'n image of you?"

  "Did she say anything else about your parentage, Cashel?" Tenoctris asked. She'd risen to a sitting position, looking rumpled but as bright as if she'd spent the day reading on a couch. Sharina helped her up.

  "No ma'am," Cashel said. "Not really."

  Ilna looked up from the pattern she'd just knotted with yarn from her sleeve. She met Tenoctris' calm gaze. The older woman nodded; Ilna shrugged in response, then began picking out her knots again.

  "Did you say she was a wizard, Cashel?" Ilna said as she put her yarn away.

  "She sure was!" Cashel said. "A really powerful one but, you know, good like Tenoctris."

  "If Queen Mab is who I think she is…," Tenoctris said, speaking with the careful neutrality of somebody trying not to say the wrong thing. "She's something very different from a wizard. As you and Ilna are, Cashel."

  Her expression loosened into her usual cheerful calm. She added, "But you're right about her powers. I wouldn't care to speculate on the limits of them."

  Garric looked over his shoulder at the ruins of Erdin. The despair that he'd avoided by refusing to think about the future suddenly crashed down on him.

  "We won the battle," he said in a bleak voice, "but a disaster like this is the end of the kingdom. Look at what we've done to the second greatest city in the Isles!"

  "Yes, look," said Liane as clearly as a trumpet. "A few buildings destroyed, but not a fraction of the city."

  "You're forgetting the dead!" Garric said, furious because the only thing he felt at the moment was despair and Liane was taking that away too.

  "I'm not forgetting them," she said, not angry but not in the least afraid of the man she faced. "A thousand civilians died, I know that. But not ahundred thousand civilians as died when the city fell a thousand years ago. And the reason most people here survived is because the Royal Army, the army of all the Isles and not just this island, stood between monsters and men!"