by David Drake
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 un-painted 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 cat men.
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 lightwood for me to use when they come.”
She’d almost said, “Good,” when Karpos reported the cat men 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 cat men 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 the 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 woodpile. 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 and donkey.”
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 disturbs 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 cat men’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 cat men 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 descendant 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 cat men, 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 herself. 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 things, 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.
He grinned. We’ve survived this long by accepting Tenoctris’ judgment. I’m not going to stop doing that now.
“All I need at the moment is your permission to leave,” Tenoctris said, flashing a brief smile that returned her face to its usual cheerful optimism. “I’d like to go to the Temple of the Mighty Shepherd. When I’ve done that, perhaps I’ll have a better notion of what the next step will be.”
“That temple’s in ruins, is it not?” Liane said. She stiffened in sudden embarrassment. “That is, it was before the Change. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have spoken.”
“It was in ruins in my day too, dear,” Tenoctris said. “I intend to meditate or perhaps dream, I suppose, rather than sacrifice. And if I may …”
She touched Cashel’s shoulder again. He didn’t turn to look at her.
“I’d like Cashel to accompany me,” she went on. “In part because he is a mighty shepherd.”
“If Cashel agrees—” Garric said, but it was toward his sister that his eyes shifted. She gave a quick nod of agreement, though her expression had frozen for a moment. “—then yes, of course.”
“Sure, Garric,” Cashel said quietly. His staff was upright beside him, as usual. “I like to help, and you don’t need me here.”
Though maybe Sharina does, Garric thought, but that was a matter between her and Cashel; and anyway, she’d agreed.
Tenoctris stepped carefully down from the bench, bracing herself on Cashel’s arm. Garric looked around the assembly. “In that case, counselors,” he said, “let’s rough out the details of the administration during my absence.”
A thought struck him; he glanced toward the aegipan at his side. “That is … how much time do I have to prepare, Master Shin?”
Shin chuckled, making his beard dance though his feet were still for the moment. “You have all the time you wish to take, Prince Garric,” he said. “But I would advise you not to take very long if you wish your world to survive.”
“OH, SHEPHERD, HEAR me!” Ilna wailed hoarsely. “Guide my husband to the Realm of Peace. Protect him with Thy staff.”
Her voice had a right to crack: she’d been calling in false grief since just before sunset and by now they were well into the fourth watch of the night. The moon had set, and within an hour the light that precedes the dawn would tinge the northeastern sky. Despite Asion’s assurance, the cat men had waited.
Ilna glanced at the pattern her fingers were knotting and unknotting, just to keep themselves occupied during the delay. They wouldn’t wait much longer, though.
“Oh, Lady, my daughter was a good child,” she cried. “Hold her safe beneath the hem of Thy mantle.”
To the best of Ilna’s knowledge, the cat men couldn’t understand human words any better than she could make sense of their yowls and shrieks. Though her present grief was as false as the belief in the Great Gods that she implied, she sang re
al words because they were part of the pattern she was weaving.
Chalcus would’ve understood what she was doing, and perhaps Merota would as well. Merota had learned from her and Chalcus to see the patterns that most people didn’t, couldn’t, see. Patterns in the way a sword blade shimmered, patterns in the way leaves rustled in a forest …
Merota was a clever girl, smarter than either her or Chalcus, rich and educated. She’d have gone far.
Merota was dead, her skull crushed by a cat man’s axe. Chalcus was dead, pierced through by several points; dead on his feet but nonetheless cutting down his slayers and the girl’s before he let himself fall. And Ilna os-Kenset had died also, killed by the same strokes that slew her family.
She caught herself. Her eyes were open, but for a few instants she’d seen only the past. The wordless cries which grief had torn from her memory were real.
Ilna tossed three billets of dry, pitchy pine knots on the sunken fire, the lightwood she’d kept ready for this moment. The waiting was over.
“They’re coming,” she said, speaking to the hidden men. She grasped the hem of the blanket she’d hung across the front of the cabin and waited.
The fire flared, its sudden light winking from the eyes of the four cat men who’d approached the edge of the farmyard. One of the beasts snarled in angry discomfort, rising from his crouch. He carried what looked like a fishing spear, its two springy points spreading from where they were bound to the shaft. The thorn barbs were on the inside so they’d grip instead of killing the victim quickly.
The Corl stalked closer, bending his course to skirt the fire by more than his own height. His three companions rose also, though they were careful not to rush past their leader. The beasts hunted in packs, but from what Ilna’d seen they weren’t much more social than cockerels. They fought for dominance frequently, brutally, and to the death … which saved Ilna a little trouble, though a kind of trouble she didn’t mind.