by David Drake
They'd kept back from the crush right around Garric, but now a servant came out of the circle of high officials, nodded politely to Cashel, and said to Sharina, "Your highness, Lady Liane would appreciate you joining her and the prince if you would."
"Right," said Cashel, smiling. Making a passage for Sharina through folks who were too excited to be polite was something he could do better than most.
Though the servant leading back into the mass of gorgeous tunics and gleaming breastplates didn't do a bad job either. Liane employed two sorts of people for her work as spymaster: bookish ones and tough ones. This fellow was as courteous as could be and wore a tunic appliquéd in the latest fashion with a scarlet phoenix, but he wasn't a scholar.
Lord Waldron and two other soldiers were talking to Garric—or talking at him, anyway, because he seemed to be paying more attention to Liane and the small man in leather breeches holding a sabretache—sort of a saddlebag but for him, not the horse—in both hands. Cashel would've expected Attaper to be there too, just because his rival Waldron was if he didn't have a better reason. He was nowhere to be seen, though.
Cashel grinned. He wasn't sure Attaper or Waldron either one thought there was a better reason to do something than because the other of them was doing it. Anybody who'd watched two rams in the same meadow knew what was going on, but Cashel didn't have to look any farther than his own heart to understand it.
Garric had people around him on one side and on the other the horse he'd be riding: a rangy brown gelding. It looked strong, which Cashel supposed was the main thing. He wasn't wearing armor for the journey, just the new sword and a wicker shield, but he was a big man regardless and there was a packed bag hanging on either side from the crupper.
The horse made a nasty wheezing sound when it saw Cashel. That probably didn't mean anything, but Cashel didn't like horses in general and there wasn't anything about this one to change his opinion of the breed.
Sure, they moved faster than oxen so you could plow a longer furrow in a day; but they were skittish, you had to feed them grain, and they were apt to take sick for no better reason than the wind changed. Cashel'd take an ox to a horse any day.
He realized his face'd gotten hard; that made him smile all by itself. Imagine letting something a puny as a horse make you angry! And it wasn't as though anybody was asking him to ride.
Garric saw Sharina and Cashel coming toward him. "Excuse me, milords," he said and pushed between Lord Waldron and a younger fellow also dressed in cavalry boots and a short cape.
Putting his arms around his sister, Garric looked over his shoulder and said, "Lord Waldron, would you and your men please give me a moment with the princess and Master Cashel before I take up my new duties as ambassador to the Yellow King?"
He grinned. In that expression Cashel saw the happy young fellow he'd been friends with all his life.
Lord Waldron backed because he had to and bumped somebody, which also he didn't have much choice over with things being so tight. He clapped his hand to his sword hilt and shouted, "By the Lady, sir!"
The other fellow was a civilian who Cashel thought had something to do with the roads. "Move aside and give his highness some room!" Waldron said. "Move or I'll make the room myself!"
The aegipan, Shin, came around from the other side of the horse. Because he was so short, the people crowding didn't pay much attention till his hairy shoulders brushed their bare forearms; then they jerked back, some of them mouthing curses. The little fellow cleared space about as well as Waldron did, and he did it without shouting.
Shin saw Cashel watching and lolled his tongue out. "So, Master Cashel," he said. "Do I remind you of your former charges, then?"
"Sir," said Cashel, "I tended sheep, not goats. There's folks who think they're the same, but they never tended either. And anyway, you're not a goat."
Nor was he. Besides not really looking like one, the aegipan didn't smell any more like a goat than he did a man. Cashel's nose wrinkled as he considered. What his smell most resembled was a chicken, which wasn't anything he'd have guessed before getting this close to Shin.
"Sharina," said Liane, touching the courier's pouch. "You've been busy too, and I haven't kept you informed as I should've done. The Last have appeared at seven other places that we know about, all cities. At Lady Tenoctris' suggestion, Prince Garric has sent urgent warnings to all the cities of the kingdom—"
"I've signed my name to warnings that my able secretary composed," Garric said, putting his hand on Liane's shoulder. She reached up and pressed it firmly.
Liane'd been crying, though she seemed composed now. The powder and rouge on her cheeks—usually she didn't wear makeup—couldn't hide the puffiness around her eyes.
"I simply transcribe what his highness requests," she said firmly, looking at Sharina. "In any case, we've sent warnings that these appearances have to be crushed immediately and the reflecting pools which the Last are using must be blocked off from the sky. From the star—"
She nodded toward the south. The new white star wasn't bright enough to see in daylight, but everybody knew what she meant.
"—that is. In some cases our messengers have crossed with reports from the localities which've been attacked, as with these dispatches from Erdin."
The courier thrust forward the sabretache, but Liane gestured it away with a flash of irritation. That wasn't any more usual for her than the makeup was.
"Thus far, there've been no reports of attacks in places which we haven't warned, however. We can hope that will continue, but his highness—"
She broke off and looked at Garric. The silliness of talking about Garric as 'his highness' while she stood there with his hand on her shoulder had choked her.
"Right," said Garric easily. "Sharina, you'll be handling this while I'm gone, but there may not be anything more to do. Still, I thought I'd tell you myself before I left."
"Yes," said Sharina in a funny sort of voice. "I suppose I'll have to delegate my usual duties. I wonder what will happen about the Valles sewers?"
"I can loan you two trustworthy clerks," Liane said, her head close to Sharina's. "They can meet with petitioners and précis requests, though you'll still have to make the decisions."
"Yes, I'd appreciate that," Sharina said in the same low murmur. She looked at Garric again and said in a normal voice, "We've warned the cities, you say; but what if the Last appear somewhere else? There're ponds and pools everywhere, lots of them in places which nobody but a herdsman or a hunter would ever see."
"We're doing what Tenoctris told us to," Garric said with a shrug. He looked worried, though.
"Ah, Garric?" Cashel said. He wasn't comfortable butting into other people's conversations, but this time he knew something that the others didn't from chatting with Tenoctris in the gig. "Ah, what Tenoctris told me was that it isn't just the ponds, it's the ponds in a place with a lot of, you know, power. Wizard power. And those places always draw people or else it's all the people that draws the power. Regardless, if you warn the cities, then you get all the places the Last are likely to come at."
"Lady Tenoctris is very wise," Shin said in his pretty voice. "If you follow her instructions, you will buy enough time for your champion to reach the cave of the Yellow King. Though she knows and you must know that this is only a temporary help. If they must, the Last will march to the northern coast of your continent from the glacier where they arrive. They're on the way now, and they will not stop unless the Yellow King helps you stop them."
"Sir?" said Cashel. "I hope you and Garric have a safe journey; we'll be glad here for any help you can bring us from the Yellow King. But we've fixed other things without his help, and I guess we'll do our best to fix the Last too."
He thumped his staff down on the bricks harder than he meant. A spray of blue wizardlight shot from the top ferrule and made the clouds seem to dance.
Garric laughed and clasped Cashel forearm to forearm—using their left rather than the normal right because of t
he quarterstaff in that hand. "Watch yourself, Cashel," he said.
"And you watch yourself too, Garric," Cashel said, feeling embarrassed again. "We'll be glad to see you riding back, all of us."
Garric kissed Liane hard but quickly, then put his left foot in his stirrup. The horse whickered. It might've tried to lurch forward if Cashel hadn't seen the look in its nasty brown eye and grabbed the cheekpiece of the bridle. He'd held oxen; holding a horse was no work at all.
Garric walked his mount through the palace gate with a wedge of Blood Eagles clearing a path for him. The crowd outside gave a great cheer.
Cashel put his left arm around Sharina, just holding her. As Shin ambled out at the horse's side, he turned and stared at Cashel. His laughing tongue dangled, and then he too was gone.
* * *
Ilna frowned All the men working in the barley fields of the valley below were armed. No hearth-smoke rose from the village of considerable size nestled beneath the shrine on the western slope. The villagers had moved to a camp of huts made from hides, blankets, and brush on the other side of the valley—but why?
"Mistress?" Karpos said. He knelt nearby while his partner stood a distance back with a bullet in his sling.
Ilna disliked being prodded, but she didn't let the irritation touch her lips. She'd made it clear to the hunters that she'd make all the major decisions and that they could leave if they objected. She couldn't therefore complain if they wanted her to get on with her job.
"We'll go to the village," she said. "The new one. Karpos, leave your bow strung but don't nock an arrow."
She thought for a moment, then added, "And I'll lead. I'm not as threatening as the rest of you."
Temple chuckled. When Ilna looked at him sharply, he said, "People see what they expect to see, Ilna. But often that means that they see very little."
Ilna sniffed and started off, picking a route among the outcrops. The slope wasn't bad, but there wasn't even a track to the new camp. A path leveled with terraces and cuts led to the shrine and the original village.
Her fingers knotted complex patterns as she walked. Mostly she was keeping them—and the part of her mind that most disliked rock—occupied, but the skeletal fabrics she created were a weapon if she needed one.
She thought about Temple's comment and grimaced. She wasn't a threat to anybody, so long as they behaved properly.
Most people, much of the time, didn't behave properly. If they became a problem to her, then Temple was right in what he'd suggested. Ilna grimaced again, certain that if she turned she'd see the big man smiling. She didn't turn.
The folk in the fields noticed the newcomers, but for the most part they continued with their work. Whatever had them carrying spears and long knives, it wasn't fear of four strangers arriving in their valley. Two men who'd been pruning olive trees started up the slope; they'd reach the new village a little before Ilna's group did.
"Hello, friends!" Temple called in a carrying voice. This time Ilna did glance at him. He was waving toward the men who hastened up from the field. After a moment one of them waved back.
"Do you know this village?" Ilna said. The crops and the way the people dressed were like those of the community where they'd found Temple.
"Not this particular one, Ilna," Temple said. "Though I saw many like it once."
She nodded curt understanding. The Change had wildly jumbled times, but people in the borough had raised sheep and grown the same crops for as long back as the books Garric and Sharina read told about. The same was probably true here.
Ilna'd gotten past the worst of the broken rock. The remainder of the way to the hut village was clear enough that she could eye the shrine across the valley while she walked.
It was round and, though not large, nonetheless more impressive than she'd have expected here. Most villages made do with a sacred grove or a wooden statue under a thatched roof. Barca's Hamlet didn't even have that, though the shepherds made offerings to the face of Duzi scratched on a hilltop boulder in the South Pasture.
This shrine and the altar in front of it were dressed stone, though the chest-high wall around the sacred enclosure was of fieldstone slabs laid in rough courses. The houses in the abandoned village were also built of fieldstone, but with mud chinking; the roofs were thatched.
The priest's house inside the enclosure was like the rest, though bigger than some. Ilna thought she saw movement behind one of the small windows, but it was too far away to be sure.
For her to be sure. "Mistress," said Asion from behind her. "There's somebody in the house by the temple there, and there's somebody in the temple too. Except I don't know that what's in the temple is people."
"What do you mean?" Ilna said, hearing the edge in her voice. "If they're not people, what are they?"
"Mistress, I don't know," Asion replied humbly. "It was just movement I saw, but it didn't seem right."
"Welcome, travellers!" called the eldest of the four men who'd come from the huts to meet them. The pair who'd been in the fields joined them, puffing a little from their scramble. "Have you travelled far?"
All the men had spears, though they were just knife blades bound onto poles with sinews. Each point had a little wicker cover so that nobody'd get poked by accident. The villagers were prepared for trouble, but they made it clear they weren't going to start it.
"We've been travelling for more than a moon," Ilna said. "May we shelter here for the night, or would you rather that we go on?"
If they turned her and her companions away, Ilna would think they were a sullen and miserly lot. She supposed people had a right to be sullen and miserly, because if she started punishing that sort of behavior, it'd be very hard to know where to stop. Besides, it wouldn't help her with her real business in life, killing catmen.
There were women behind the group of men, the village elders, she supposed. There were children, too, some of them watching from trees and rocks higher up the slope where they got a better view.
"We notice that you're travelling with soldiers, mistress," the village spokesman said. He was bent and had a wrinkled face, but there were still streaks of black in his hair.
"They're armed," Ilna said. "We mean no harm to you or any other human, though."
She halted two double-paces from the villagers. Her hands were clasped over the pattern she'd woven, but she could spread it in an eyeblink if she needed to.
"Breccon, you're an old fool!" said an old woman who pushed herself through the line of men. Her red and blue striped linen sash was obviously expensive and well made, for all that Ilna sniffed at the garish color choices. "Lady, what my husband means is we're hoping we can hire your soldiers to kill the demons troubling us. They're your bodyguards, are they?"
"They're my companions," Ilna replied, more sharply than she need to have spoken. It embarrassed her to have assumed hostility when none was meant. "We have nothing to do with demons—"
She paused, remembering that she'd just misjudged these people harshly.
"—but what demons do you have, then?"
"Come, bring them in where we can sit like decent folk and explain things," said Breccon, obviously hoping to take charge again. "Ah, we don't have a proper village hall to put you up in, but we can find you room in our shanties if you're not particular."
"We choose to stay together," Ilna said. She was sure by now that the villagers weren't hostile, but if something happened during the night—a fire could sweep through these crowded-together hovels in no time at all—she didn't want to have to search for her companions in the confusion.
"That's all right, Breccon, we'll put them in ours," said the old woman. "I'll sleep with Mirra and Doan, and you can find a place for yourself, I guess."
"Now Graia—" Breccon said.
Ilna couldn't see the look Breccon's wife directed at him, but he and his fellow elders saw it. His mouth shut and his head jerked back as if he'd been slapped. The fellow next to him, missing two fingers on his left hand, grunted and said, "Yo
u can doss with me'n Weesie, I guess, Breccon. For the one night, I mean."
"Well, let's sit down and talk it over," Breccon said, working at being cheery as he led the way between the straggling huts to where broken rock stuck out of the hillside. He paused, looking at the site, then growled, "For the Lady's sake! Some of you bring straw and blankets for our guests to sit, won't you?"
Ilna glanced at her companions. Karpos had his knee in the belly of his bow and was unstringing it; Asion had put the lead bullet back in his pouch and slid his sling staff under his belt. Temple—
That was odd. Temple didn't look dangerous at the moment, though he was a big man even without the very serviceable sword and dagger on his belt. When he'd struck the Corl through, however, he'd been as surely Death on two legs as any man she'd seen beside Chalcus.
A village boy sidled up to him and whispered a request. Obediently Temple stretched out his left arm and let the boy swing from it. An even smaller girl, probably the boy's sister, ran from her mother's side and grabbed on also. The children squealed and laughed as Temple jiggled them with his arm straight out as if they weighed nothing.