by David Drake
The only pause between prayers was however long it took Ademos to draw breath. The other Brethren listened without complaint; indeed, Halophus looked as though he might join in.
Metron lay on the millipede's armor, drained white by the effort of forcing back the pursuing liquid a second time. He was either asleep or comatose; occasionally he snorted like a seal as he struggled to breathe.
“It's catching up with us again,” said Thalemos in a tone of aristocratic calm. Indeed, the only hint of the youth's nervousness lay in the fact that he'd bothered to state something so blindingly obvious in the first place.
The living fluid shimmered through the trees to either side. Garric remembered that he'd thought at first it was sun-struck water; he smiled, wishing that he were still so ignorant.
Not long before, a beetle the size of a house had lumbered past the millipede and into the pearly glow. The fluid crawled up the creature's legs like oil soaking a wick. Lines of cobweb-gray traced across the shiny black wing cases; bits of the wings fell away, and the beetle's legs turned to powder also.
The beetle's fat body continued to writhe for as long as Garric's eyes could follow it The fact that the agony was silent made it all the worse.
“I can't say I'm looking forward to the thing eating me,” Vascay remarked conversationally. He glanced sidelong at Garric. “Eh?”
“If you need somebody to kill you now so that doesn't happen," Garric said forcefully, “then look for somebody else.”
The chieftain smiled. “I said I wasn't looking forward to it, lad,” he said. “I didn't say I wasn't man enough to face it.”
“It's coming toward us now,” Thalemos said. His voice was still calm, but fear stretched his cheeks tight over the bones.
To the right, a thin tendril slanted from the edge of the liquid sheet. The same would be happening on the millipede's other side. The creature's technique—was it even a creature? Was it as mindlessly destructive as a windblown fire?—never changed.
Nor did it need to change. Perseverance was sure to carry the day, if not on this attempt then on the next.
“Time to wake our learned friend,” Vascay said, kneeling at Metron's side. He shook the wizard by the shoulder.
He was increasingly firm, but only to rouse the man. Several of the Brethren stared at Metron with obvious hatred, but Vascay knew as Garric did that the wizard was no more responsible for their plight than was any other member of their group.
They'd gambled and apparently lost. The forfeit wouldn't come from a Protector's sword or the gallows in the main square of Durassa, but they'd all known there were risks. Metron would be paying the same price as the rest of them.
“Wakey, wakey,” Vascay said, shaking still harder. “Time for your party piece again, Master Metron.”
The wizard's eyelids fluttered. He lay with his cheek on his arm. He didn't—or couldn't—lift his head, but he looked at the three men beside him.
“There's no use,” he croaked. “I used the last of my True Mercury. You saw that the phial was empty.”
“You opened a gate for us into this place from Durassa,” Garric said. “Can you open it again so we go back?”
Metron sat up with sudden animation, then gasped with pain. Vascay supported him by the shoulders as if the wizard were a comrade with cracked ribs.
Metron closed his eyes, then opened them with a look of resolution. “Not back, no,” he said. “But it may be we're close enough that I can open the passage to, to our destination. We'll need a lamp, a flame—”
“Toster, come here with your lighter!” Vascay ordered. “And Ademos, you're still wearing those clogs. Bring 'em here. I've got a better use for those wooden soles than you walking on them!”
Ademos turned to look, but he didn't get up from his appearance of piety. “What better use?” he demanded.
“Burning them to get us out of this place!” Vascay said. “Move it, Brother Ademos!”
“I don't—” Ademos began.
Toster gripped him by the neck. “Somebody get the shoes and come on,” the big man said in a hoarse voice. Calm though he was to look at, Toster was close to the edge also.
Ademos didn't struggle. Halophus snatched off the clogs and followed Toster to the chief.
Metron had moved slightly so that he had an unmarked patch of armor before him. He began to draw, using the brush and pot of vermilion instead of the yellow powder he'd called his True Mercury.
Garric looked into the forest. The glowing liquid lapped alongside, close enough that Vascay could have skewered the tendril with a cast of his javelin. No point in that, of course. It no longer slanted toward them; rather, it was drawing slightly ahead of their course. When the filament gained enough that it could merge with the horn on the other side, there'd be no escape for the millipede or the men riding it.
Vascay trimmed slivers from the wooden shoes; Halophus laid them in a tiny fireset in the middle of the hexagram the wizard had drawn on the purple-black armor.
Metron placed the ring on the tip of his ivory athame. At his muttered instruction, Toster struck the plunger of his fire piston. When he opened the end, a smolder of milkweed fluff spilled onto the fireset and blazed up at the touch of open air.
“Pico picatrix sesengen...” chanted Metron, holding the sapphire ring up beside the fire. The gem's facets glinted in hard contrast to the muted blur of these forest depths.
The tendrils of fluid slid toward one another again, this time well in front of the millipede. The creature paced forward on its many legs, unperturbed by what was about to happen. The Archa driver stood with a fluting cry. Hurling its wand to one side, it leaped toward the ground in the other direction. It must have fallen under the millipede's pincered feet, but Garric didn't suppose that made much difference in the long run.
Vascay glanced at Garric, though the knife in his hand kept trimming slivers from the clog like a cook peeling a turnip. “Can't say I'm sorry to be shut of him,” he said, transferring a palmful of shavings for the waiting Halophus to feed to the fire.
Garric smiled as his ancestor Carus would have smiled, an expression as hard as diamond millstones. There probably wasn't a long run, for the Archa or for the rest of them.
“Baphar baphris saxa...” Metron intoned, adjusting the angle at which he held the ring. The jewel refracted the firelight as well as reflecting it, bending some of it back to dance on the next segment of armor.
“Nophris nophar saxa...” said Metron.
The arms of glowing liquid met with a gush of pearly light. The thin tendrils broadened swiftly, the way water spreads from a breached dike. The millipede stumped on without hesitation, closing on the fluid as it swelled inward.
“Barouch baroucha barbatha...” Metron said. He didn't stop chanting, but his right hand beckoned to the Brethren desperately. A keyhole of light quivered on the second segment of the millipede's back.
“Come on, boys!” Vascay said. “This is it!”
Ademos scrambled to his bare feet. The bandits started forward but stopped in a group, staring at the pattern quivering on the armor.
Vascay's eyes met Garric's. They both knew the dangers: certain death if they stayed here, unknown and perhaps worse horrors on the other side of Metron's passage.
“Lead!” Garric said. “I'll bring up the back like before!”
Vascay leaped into the doorway of light and vanished. Hame and Halophus jostled one another to be next through. Garric touched Thalemos' arm and gestured him forward. The youth hesitated, then followed Prada into nothingness.
Garric stood at an angle, watching Metron with the gateway in the corner of his right eye. He held his sword bare, though he didn't recall drawing it. The Brethren jumped and disappeared, some of them muttering prayers. Toster remained at Garric's side.
The millipede suddenly twisted back, making Garric sway. Metron tried to stand. Garric put his swordpoint at the wizard's throat to hold him where he was. “Toster!” Garric shouted. “Go!”
“I'll kill you!” the big man cried, but then he began to scream. The scream continued, but it no longer sounded like anything that might come from a human throat.
“Please!” Metron said. The fire was burning down. Only an occasional sputter woke glints from the sapphire's facets. “Please, it'll be—”
Garric put his left arm around the wizard. He lunged forward, taking them together into the freezing maelstrom of Metron's gateway.
There was no sound in the passage, but Toster's screams still echoed in Garric's mind.
He supposed they always would.
“Well, my lords—and princess,” said Carus, bowing to her as they stood on the ridgeline viewing both the royal fleet and the vast assembly in the bay beyond to the west. “I did Admiral Zettkin an injustice in not believing that Lerdoc could raise fifteen thousand men. He's got that many and more besides, I shouldn't wonder.”
Hundreds of ships were grounded on the open coast to the west of the royal encampment. Most of them were sailing vessels, round-bellied merchantmen which could carry some hundreds of men apiece, albeit in great discomfort. Only a score of triremes escorted them; the Blaise fleet was no larger than the royal fleet had been before Garric—guided by Carus—began to rule the kingdom.
You could command an island with soldiers. To command the Isles, you had to have a fleet.
“You didn't say that you doubted him, your highness,” said Lord Attaper. Zettkin was a former officer of the Blood Eagles, Attaper's friend and protege. “Not in my hearing, at least.”
“Didn't I?” mused Carus. “Maybe I learned something in the time since—”
Sharina reached out to touch Carus' cheek. The gesture must have looked odd to the high officers standing close and scowling as they gazed at the rebel army, but was better than having the ancient king blurt some variation on “—since I drowned a thousand years ago.”
The king's face was warm but as stiff as sun-washed marble. He patted Sharina's fingers, and said, “Since I first came to Valles. I thought Zettkin was wrong, though.”
If the royal triremes had met the Blaise merchantmen at sea, only surrender could have saved the rebel army from drowning to a man. If. Luck or more likely wizardry had given Count Lerdoc perfect weather, perfect timing, and perfect secrecy for his sweep across the Inner Sea. Someone was weaving a plot as complex as one of Ilna's tapestries.
Sharina and the command group were mounted, but Lord Attaper had flatly refused to allow Carus to gallop back to the harbor with only a troop of Blood Eagles to guard him. All four regiments of javelin-armed skirmishers had jogged along with the high officers, the horsemen adjusting their pace to that of their escort. They couldn't fight the whole Blaise army, but they could delay any desperate thrust by the rebels long enough for the rest of the royal army to arrive.
“We could attack them now,” said Lord Dowos, previously commander of a cavalry regiment which had remained behind to guard Valles. He pointed at the confused mass of ships and men. “Before they get organized, why, we'll slaughter them!”
Dowos was Lord Waldron's cousin. When he'd demanded to accompany the expedition to Tisamur, Waldron appointed him adjutant of the royal army. Since he and Waldron thought alike, Dowos was a good choice to ride with the king while Waldron sorted out the sudden disruption of the siege.
“No!” said Lord Attaper, to Dowos' right. “That'd be slaughter, all right, but not—”
“Who are you to—” Dowos shouted. He jerked his mount's head to face Attaper. The captured horse, unused to being ridden and too small for the big cavalryman anyway, stumbled to its knees. Dowos jumped clear and reached for his sword.
“If you draw that, Dowos,” Carus said in a voice of thunder, “then you'll be the first rebel I kill on Tisamur. Depend on it!”
“Wha—?” said Dowos, turning in amazement at the violence of the words. “Your highness, I'm no rebel! I only—”
“Silence!” Carus said.
Sharina sat transfixed on the king's other side, afraid that any action she took would spark his barely restrained fury. Carus was angry beyond reason at the situation he'd created by bringing the royal army to Tisamur, where the kingdom's enemies could trap it. If Dowos, if anyone, did the wrong thing now, the king would unload that anger lethally on an undeserving victim.
Attaper kneed his mount between Dowos and the king.
He caught the reins of the loose horse, and said in a neutral voice, “Let me help you back into the saddle, my lord.”
Now Sharina could touch the king's cheek again. “Your highness,” she whispered.
Carus threw his head back and laughed. Sharina knew the humor was honest, but at this juncture it disturbed the nearby officers as much as the anger a moment before had done.
“Your suggestion wouldn't be a worse blunder than the way I brought us all to the present pass, Lord Dowos,” he said, “but one bad mistake is quite enough for a campaign.”
He nodded toward the rebel force. Lerdoc had brought mounts for his cavalry, trusting his wizard advisors for fair winds—if he weren't simply being a nobleman and therefore a fool on the question. At least a squadron of horsemen were with the skirmishers, moving out as the regiments of heavy infantry tried to form on the beach. On the ships stranded when the tide backed, men swarmed like bees from an opened hive.
“Next thing to chaos, isn't it?” the king said with a wry smile. His expression hardened. “How good do you suppose our formation's going to be after we go charging down into them, hey? Especially when their archers start shooting at us from the ships' decks! Every one of those ships is going to be a little fort with its own moat of seawater.”
“Your highness...” Dowos said, but his voice trailed off. Abruptly he added, “Lord Attaper, my apologies. And my thanks for your assistance with my horse.”
Sharina looked over her shoulder. The skirmishers, savage-looking men with bundles of javelins and a broad knife or a hand axe, were spreading into a loose screen on the forward slope of the ridge. Most of these men were hirelings from islands less settled than even the rural parts of Ornifal: hunters, goatherds, nomads of one sort and another. A few wore hide garments, and many were in dressed leather rather than cloth. They were men well used to a hard life, and used also to killing.
In the far distance Sharina could see the leading ranks of the phalanx, moving more slowly because they needed to keep formation if they were to be ready to fight at sudden need. Eighteen-foot pikes waved upright in the air above them like the spines of a poisonous caterpillar. The phalangists wore bronze caps and carried flat, round shields; their real protection came from their tight formation and the hedge of spearpoints that kept enemies from closing with them.
The traditional heavy infantry would be bringing up the rear, but from where Sharina stood they were still out of sight. Those regiments were recruited from Ornifal's yeoman farmers and provided their own equipment, considering themselves socially superior to the oarsmen who formed the phalanx and were the core of Garric's new tactics. They'd be on their mettle to prove themselves better than the phalangists in battle as well as birth.
“Attaper,” the king said, “how long do you think it'll take them to get organized enough that Lerdoc would engage of his own accord?”
“Not today,” said the Blood Eagle commander. “He's a rash man—he wouldn't be here if he weren't—”
Carus smiled like a curved knife. “True of more than him,” he said.
“—so he may not wait to fortify a proper camp, but he'll want to get all his troops ashore and marshalled.”
“That's what I'd judge as well,” Carus said, nodding. “So ... What do you suppose he'll do if I withdraw Waldron and those last regiments from Donelle ... and I bring the whole army together here on this ridge?”
The royal officers looked at one another, dumbfounded by the king's question. “Surely you're joking, your majesty?” said the first who d
ared speak; Lord Muchon, a former officer of the Blood Eagles and now in command of a division of the phalanx.
He didn't sound sure. Like many of the other officers present, Muchon knew little of Prince Garric beyond the rumor that he'd been a shepherd on Haft a few months before.
“The regiments still in the lines around Donelle are holding ten times their numbers of rebels, mercenaries as well as local militia," Attaper said cautiously. His contact with Garric had been close and of the sort that cements trust. “If you withdraw them, then the rebels will combine their forces and attack us with...”
He turned up his palms in a deliberately vague gesture. “Twice our numbers. At least.”
There was a general murmur of assent from the command group. The other men looked relieved that Attaper had stated what they all thought was obvious: obvious even to a priestess, let alone to the prince commanding their army.
“Aye,” said Carus with a smile like a striking viper's. “The rebels'll march out of Donelle, and we'll hit them while they're marching. Kill the most of them and scatter the rest. If things work well, we'll take the city gates while some of the survivors' try to get back inside, but that can wait if it needs to.”
Lord Dowos had been trying to avoid calling attention to himself, choosing to stand holding his horse's bridle instead of remounting. Carus' latest proposition shocked him to speech again.
“But Count Lerdoc!” he said. “It's only three miles to Donelle. Lerdoc'll attack us from behind while we're fighting the troops from Donelle and, and...”
“We'll hold the ridgeline here with two regiments of heavy infantry,” the king said briskly. “Waldron will. The phalanx has to be moving to be effective. The phalanx to slice through the locals fast, the rest of the heavy infantry to watch the flanks, and the javelin men to keep the survivors running far enough that they can't regroup when we turn to deal with Lerdoc.”