by David Drake
Nothing moved. Like an ox trying to pull an old oak from the ground, Garric thought, and for a moment he wondered if Cashel would succeed after all. When they were growing up together he'd known his friend was strong, but how very strong Cashel was had become a continuing source of amazement in more recent times.
Still, nobody'd seen Garric the innkeeper's son as a likely candidate for Lord of the Isles, either.
Cashel gave up, blowing his breath out like a surfacing whale. He breathed in great sobs.
"My, you are a strong one," Shin said, this time with no hint of mockery. "Are there many like you in the world of this time, Master Cashel?"
"There's no one like Cashel," Garric said harshly. Cashel bobbed the hilt toward him, still too wrung out to speak; he took it. "No one, Master Shin!"
Garric examined the sword. The rough metal hilt felt dry and only vaguely warm. The scabbard seemed an ordinary one of stamped tin decorated with a geometric pattern in black enamel. Presumably there were laths of poplar to stiffen the metal sheathing.
"A little room, if you will," Garric said, gesturing the guards away from the door with a flick of his left index finger; they hopped aside with instant obedience. Garric strode forward, swinging the sword from left to right in a hissing upward slash.
The stroke was burdened with the weight of the scabbard as well as the blade, but Garric was a strong man and on his mettle today. The tip crushed through the leather-covered wooden door and the belly of the blade struck the stone pilaster supporting the transom.
Splinters and stone chips flew. A man cried out in surprise and Attaper snarled, "By the Sister!"
Garric drew back his arm. His hand tingled but it wasn't numb, not yet. The ruins of the scabbard dangled from the blade. He'd sheared the tin and stripped much of it away with the wood splints.
The metal of the blade was the soft blue-gray of summer twilight. Its edge was a blackness too thin to have color; it was unmarked, even where it'd gouged deeply into the stone.
Garric looked at the grinning aegipan. The simplest way to remove the smashed scabbard would be to pull it off with his left hand, but sometimes a colorful demonstration is better than quiet practicality. He backhanded the blade against the other pilaster, flinging tin and bits of wood from another crash of powdered stone.
Breathing deeply, Garric turned to face his council. Guards in the outer hall called in alarm through the shattered door, but calming them could wait. Very deliberately he raised the gray-gleaming sword high over his head.
"People of this time!" said Shin, his voice golden and surprisingly loud. "You have found your champion!"
* * *
Temple came around from the back of the house with his shield slung behind him and, under his left arm, a bundle of poles trimmed from the white shadbush fringing the fields. Ilna turned on the stool where she was working. Before she could speak, the big man tossed the poles aside. With an odd sort of shrug he slipped the shield back into his grip and drew his sword, his eyes on the head of the valley.
By instinct Ilna glanced first at the pattern she was knotting rather than to what Temple had seen. Certain there was no danger she'd missed, she raised her eyes to the distant slope and saw Karpos coming toward them with ground-devouring strides that were just short of a lope.
His apparent haste didn't mean there was a problem: that was the hunters' regular pace when they weren't stalking or adjusting themselves to Ilna's shorter legs. Asion would be watching the back trail.
Temple slipped his sword back into its sheath. "I wasn't expecting them to return by that direction," he said softly. "They'll have doubled back on our trail to mislead the Coerli if they notice that humans have observed them."
"Yes," Ilna said, resuming her work of knotting yarn to the frame of previously gathered poles. "Chances are the beasts won't realize their camp's been found. If they do, though, we don't want to lead them straight here or they might wonder what was going on."
She rolled and set beside her the section she'd completed, so that it wouldn't affect her companions by accident. After a moment's consideration, she chose three of the poles Temple had just brought and resumed her work.
It was a complex task, the more so because the front of the house would be part of the pattern against which she'd lay her skeletal fabric. The gray and russet blotches of unpainted wood allowed subtlety that she couldn't have gotten from the wool alone, but using something other than fabric stretched her skills.
Ilna smiled. She liked learning new techniques. Besides, this was in a good cause, the best cause of all: killing catmen.
Karpos joined them. Before speaking, he braced the belly of his bow against his right knee and bent the upper tip down enough to release the loop of bowstring from the bone notches holding it. Rising, he let the yew staff straighten. Left strung, an all-wood bow would crack before long.
"They're not far," he said to Ilna. Asion was on his way down the track now also. "Maybe an hour ahead. No more than that, anyway. And they didn't try to hide their trail."
"Do they still have prisoners?" Ilna asked as she worked, judging where each strand must go without bothering to look behind her at the wall. The pattern was set in her mind; all she needed to do was to execute it according to that perfect truth.
"No," Karpos said. "Unless they'd gagged them. We'd have heard people if they'd made any sound. Well, Asion would've."
The two hunters believed that Asion's senses were sharper than those of his partner. Ilna accepted their judgment—because the men said so, and because she herself could discriminate between the shades of two threads which anyone else would've claimed were identical. So far as she was concerned, anything either of them said they saw or smelled or heard was as sure as sunrise.
"All right," Ilna said. "Lay the fire then, please. I've crossed two sticks where I want it. And set out half a dozen billets of light-wood for me to use when they come."
She'd almost said, "Good," when Karpos reported the catmen had already killed their captives. If the prisoners were alive, she and the men would have to attack the beasts in their camp. That could be done, she supposed, but it'd add a further complication to the business.
So . . . Ilna hadn't hoped the catmen had slaughtered the children they'd carried off, but since they had—they'd be hungry and looking for further prey. She was going to offer some: herself. And if the beasts managed to kill her, then they'd have earned their meal indeed.
"There's a breeze all the way from here to where the cats're camped, mistress," Asion said as he approached. "We had to swing way wide so we didn't wake 'em up early."
"All right," said Ilna as she wove her three poles together with strands of wool she'd picked from the tunic which a woman had died in. "Help Karpos with the wood, then. I don't want a large fire for now, but I need to have plenty of sticks ready so I can feed it as the night goes on. They may take their time coming."
"Not them, mistress," said the hunter as he passed his partner returning from the wood pile. An extension of the roof overhang sheltered it at the back of the cabin. "But I'll get more wood."
"Have you further directions for me, Ilna?" Temple asked pleasantly. He rested on one knee, polishing his dagger with a swatch of suede he'd brought from the hamlet where they'd found him. He'd used the short blade to cut and trim the lengths of brush; the sap oozing from the layer of inner bark smelled faintly acid.
"No," Ilna said, but she glanced around to be sure of her statement. "I have enough poles."
"Very well," he said, rising and sheathing his dagger. "Then I'll bury the goats."
Ilna frowned. After providing her with the first bundle of poles, Temple had dug a deep trench and buried the dead family. She'd been amazed at how quickly he worked with only the tools they'd found here at the farm: a dibble of fire-hardened oak, a pick made from goat antler, and a stone adze which he'd used as a mattock.
"We'll be leaving tomorrow morning at the latest," she said. "Probably tonight. If the smell disturb
s you . . .?"
"No, Ilna," Temple said with his familiar slight smile. "The smell does not bother me. Animals deserve courtesy too, though, if we have time to grant it to them."
"We didn't kill the goats," Ilna snapped. "They're on the catmen's conscience, or they would be if the beasts had one!"
"All life is the same, Ilna," Temple said. "And we have time. But if you'd rather I not, I will not."
"Do as you please," Ilna said. She was furious with herself for having started an argument over nothing, an insane nothing. "As you say, we have time."
Temple gathered his tools and walked toward the dead animals. Ilna wound and knotted, seething inside.
Killing catmen was the only thing that mattered now. And she was about to kill a few more of the beasts.
Chapter 4
Garric'd hung his belt with sword, dagger, and wallet over a finial of his chair back before he sat down. Carus winced every time the descendent whose mind he shared disarmed himself in a public gathering, but Carus wasn't in charge—and he didn't like civilian gatherings to begin with.
"Being in the middle of soldiers is fine, though," the king's ghost said, grinning. "Even if they're enemy soldiers. I know the rules we're playing by."
Garric stepped toward the chair. It hadn't fallen over, probably because Liane had put her hand on the back to keep it from tipping when he shoved it back. He held the aegipan's sword high but now he was just trying to avoid shaving pieces off those around him. The blade was as sharp as Shin claimed, even where the edge'd notched the stone.
"Give his highness room!" shouted Attaper, who seemed to've recovered from his strain. "Back away, I don't care who you are!"
Garric glanced at the guard commander, wondering how he'd taken the fact his prince had figured out a trick he'd missed. Attaper caught his eye and winked, grinning ruefully.
"Careful!" Garric said, drawing his own sword left-handed and setting it on the table. Duzi, this was no job to be doing in such a crowd, half of whom had no more experience with weapons than they did with Serian philosophy! Its watermarked blade shimmered in light through the clerestory windows.
Garric had carried that sword into more fights than he could say for certain; it'd served him well. Seeing it alongside the weapon the aegipan had brought was like comparing his father's inn to this palace.
Holding his scabbard in his left hand, Garric slid the new sword home with no more than the usual faint zing as the side of the blade rubbed the stamped bronze lip. He shook it slightly to see how loose it was in the new sheath; there was no more play between the blade and wooden battens than there'd been with the sword it'd been made for.
"Are you surprised, Prince Garric?" asked Shin, who was standing as close to Garric's left side as Liane was to his right. Attaper and the guards wouldn't have dared object to Liane's presence, but the aegipan must move like water in a brook. "The Yellow King forged it for the human champion to carry, after all."
"Then . . . I'm meant to use it?" Garric said, trying to keep the desperate eagerness out of his voice. The emotional jolt he'd gotten from the implied offer came more from Carus than from Garric's own soul, though the innkeeper's son had become enough of a warrior himself by now to feel a touch of greedy desire when he looked at the gray perfection.
"If you wish, you can offer it back to the Yellow King when you reach his cave," Shin said. "Until then at least it's yours—though you have to reach his cave, after all."
"Everybody sit down, please!" Cashel said. One of the clerks standing near the wall flung his document case in the air. Even Garric jumped—he wasn't sure he'd ever heard his friend shout in an enclosed room before. "And be quiet."
Tenoctris stood on the bench where she'd been resting. The extra height allowed her to see and be seen by everybody in the hall, but it didn't help her be heard over the confusion. Cashel had done that. He stood on the floor in front of her, looking a trifle embarrassed at the way everybody stared at him.
Garric grinned. For somebody who needed to be heard, the next best thing to having the strongest lungs in the borough was to have a friend with the strongest lungs in the borough.
"Thank you," said Tenoctris. She dipped her head in a tiny nod of satisfaction. "Garric, this isn't the portent I expected—I thought the image I saw in my scrying stone was allegorical. It wasn't. You must go with him."
"Prince Garric has a kingdom to rule," Tadai said. "Lady Tenoctris, I greatly respect your judgment, but in this crisis it'd be irresponsible for the prince to go off to—we don't even know where to!"
"Milord, he must," Tenoctris said. She was a tiny woman who looked now like a bird chirping from its perch, but just now she had a presence that no one else in the room could've equaled. "Or there won't be a kingdom for him to rule. The Last will be the only men in this world."
"I'm planning to go, Tenoctris," Garric said quietly. "I planned to from the first."
Carus grinned broadly in Garric's mind, waking Garric's grin as well. And maybe even a little before I knew I was the champion . . . .
He felt enormous relief. The weight of the crown had been lifted away from him. He was free to be himself again; just a man, a person who made decisions for himself alone.
"I felt that way in battle," Carus said, his face unexpectedly somber. "That was the only time I was free of being king. But it made me look for battles to fight, lad, and that made me an even worse king than I'd have been if I'd worked harder at the job."
"How many troops will you be taking with you, your highness?" Attaper said in a coolly matter-of-fact tone of voice.
"Ho, and you'd trick the Yellow King into accepting an army when he sent for a man?" said Shin in a trill of golden mockery. "Is that what you think, Lord Attaper? The champion will travel alone, as he knows and as you know also."
"He can fight alone in your tournament or whatever it is," Attaper said harshly. "As he did with the catmen, since he insisted. But he'll have an escort to get there!"
Three voices swelled toward a babble—and cut off sharply when Cashel cracked the butt of his staff twice quickly on the stone floor. "Tenoctris needs to talk!" he said, not quite as loudly as he'd spoken before when he called to get attention, but loudly enough.
The old wizard straightened, using Cashel's shoulder to brace her. She'd bent forward to speak into his ear so he could hear her. She flashed Garric a smile when their eyes met, but he thought he saw sadness under the bright expression.
"Our own efforts won't save the world for the things of this world," Tenoctris said. When she began to speak there were still whispers rustling, but at the first words of her thin voice they stilled. "Lord Tadai—"
Her eyes, momentarily those of a hawk rather than a sparrow, lighted on the commander of the Blood Eagles.
"—and Lord Attaper especially, all of you: we must have help. The Yellow King has offered an alliance at a price we can pay."
The aegipan, quivering in place as his hooves danced, made a half-bow of acknowledgment. The coarse black hairs of his beard seemed to twist more tightly together as though they had minds of their own.
Tenoctris dipped her head in response, smiling wryly. "The world is more important than the kingdom, milords," she said. "If we fail, every man and Corl and sheep in the world will die. There won't even be worms in the ground, because the Last will smooth and bake and kill it."
No one spoke for a moment. Garric nodded, stroking the hilt of the new sword with his fingertips. He said, "Lady Tenoctris, have you anything further to add or may we get down to the business of organizing the government during my absence?"
"One more thing, your highness," Tenoctris said. The formality wasn't for humor; she was recognizing that the kingdom did still matter even though it couldn't be their first priority. "We'll also need the help of a wizard far more powerful than I."
Garric started to speak. The old wizard waved the words back with a moue of irritation. "This is no time for pretty words. Yes, I've done things and we've all done th
ings, but now we need help!"
"Sorry," Garric muttered, in apology for what he hadn't said. "What do you want from us toward finding a, the, wizard?"
The thought made him shiver inside, but he didn't let that show on his face. Liane recognized it, though; she shifted slightly so that he could feel the warmth of her body so close to his upper arm.
Garric didn't hate or fear wizardry the way many folk—the ghost in his mind among them—did. Nonetheless, with the exception of Tenoctris herself the wizards he'd met in the past two years were either unpleasant or dangerous or—very often—unpleasantly dangerous. The disaster that ended the Old Kingdom had been caused by a wizard; the cataclysm that shattered Garric's world into its present confusion had been caused by wizards; and the thought of trusting the safety of the world to a powerful wizard was profoundly disturbing.