The Gods Return

by David Drake

  He sounded wistful. Perhaps the ghost was remembering the time when he too needed sleep.

  Lord Waldron rode with the leading troop; so did the squad which had brought the alarm. It’d been remounted, and at least one of the replacement horses was clearly unhappy with his present rider.

  Garric smiled faintly. He was sorry for the trooper, but he was very glad that he hadn’t borrowed a skittish mount himself. Prince Garric could’ve ordered somebody else to trade with him—but he wouldn’t have.

  They trotted into woodland, a mixture of sweet gum and pine that must’ve sprung up from land that’d been clear within the past generation. The edge of the woods had been a mass of cedars sown too thickly to be of any size. The returning scouts had ridden the trees down as they approached the camp, providing easy entry for the Waldron’s troop and the rest of the column.

  The forest proper was open enough that the cavalry had little difficulty beyond having to break ranks. The skirmishers hadn’t seen any point in ranks to begin with. Here among the tree boles they were the equal of cavalry man for man, and the cheerful way they trotted among the troopers showed that they were well aware of the fact.

  Waldron shouted something to a man riding with him, a member of the squad that’d brought the warning. That fellow reined back slightly so that the Blood Eagles just ahead of Garric overtook him.

  “Let him through, Attaper!” Garric shouted. “I want to learn about the terrain ahead!”

  The Blood Eagles parted, but Attaper himself dropped back with the line trooper. The man was Bresca, the squad leader who’d delivered the message. He leaned toward Garric as they rode along together and said, “It’s the next valley and it’s mostly cow pasture, sir. There’s apple orchards on the north slopes, though, so they won’t bloom till it’s full spring and they can’t catch frost. We’ll come out through the apples. The l’tenant, he said he’d keep this side of the crest and not push unless, you know, he had to.”

  There were challenges and less formal shouts from close ahead. The instinct of King Carus slapped Garric’s hand to the hilt of his sword. He drew the long gray blade, forged either by wizardry or by a smith as skilled as Ilna was in her different craft. There didn’t seem to be anything magical about the sword, but you couldn’t dull its edge even by slashing rock.

  “That’s the l’tenant, sir!” said Bresca. He hadn’t learned that “Your Highness” was the correct form of address when speaking to a prince. It wasn’t something that line soldiers often had to worry about, of course. “We’re up with the rest of the troop!”

  “Hold up!” a cavalryman shouted. “Pass it back, hold up!” The call wobbled through the woods, each man turning in the saddle to send it on to those behind him.

  “Waldron isn’t using the horns because the rats are just over the hill,” Carus noted with grim approval. “They’ll have spotted the scout troop unless rats are stone blind, but horn calls will tell them to expect more company.”

  He paused, then added, “I could’ve used more officers like Waldron.”

  Garric joined Waldron and an officer he didn’t think he’d met—

  “You have,” snapped Carus. History claimed Carus had known the name of every man in his army. From what Garric had experienced in the years that his mind had been haunted by his ancient ancestor, history hadn’t exaggerated very much. “Monner, of course.”

  —along with the four troop leaders of the reaction force, and a grizzled fellow with a silk sash over his goat-wool tunic—the commander of the skirmishers. Though on foot and as old as Waldron, he’d kept up with the trotting horsemen.

  “Your Highness,” Waldron said with a bare nod to royal authority. “Monner’s been keeping watch. The enemy’s scattered through the valley, rounding up the livestock. The horse will charge the length of the valley in line so that the rats don’t have a chance to form ranks, with Ainbor here’s—”

  He gestured with his left hand to the skirmishers’ commander. There was no love lost between cavalry and light infantry, but Waldron had always used the latter intelligently.

  “—men following to mop up those we don’t kill in the first pass.”

  The ghost in Garric’s mind gave a curt nod of approval.

  “Carry on, milord,” Garric said. He managed a smile to show that his approval was more than formal.

  The troop leaders trotted toward their guidons, snarling orders as they tried to align their men despite the broken forest. Waldron spoke quietly to the trumpeter; he nodded, holding his instrument ready.

  Garric’s blood trembled with anticipation of the coming battle. He started to draw his long sword. Attaper touched his elbow.

  “No, Your Highness,” he said. “You’re not wearing armor, and you’ll see nothing beyond the point of your sword if you rush down into a melee. If you’re an honorable man, you’ll watch from the brow of the hill.”

  “The bloody man’s right!” snarled Carus. “But by the Lady! if it was me—”

  Which fortunately it wasn’t, as Carus knew as well as his descendant did.

  “Yes, of course, Attaper,” Garric said mildly. “We’ll find a suitable vantage point. Though I reserve the right to defend myself if the rats attack me.”

  Attaper looked startled, then nodded agreement and removed his hand from Garric’s arm. He wasn’t a man who could laugh about his duties as a bodyguard.

  The trumpeter sounded Advance, followed instantly by the horns of the cornicenes; they’d been waiting for the signal. The reinforced squadron, about a hundred and fifty troopers, trotted up the last of the rise and over it.

  “Not a man of them but thinks they could do the job themselves without any infantry,” Carus said. “I’d think the same. But speaking as a commander, I’m just as glad of those javelins. If the rats keep their heads and hamstring the horses . . . and who knows how good troops rats turn out to be?”

  You and I are going to know in a few minutes, thought Garric as he clucked his horse over the crest. Which is why we’re here.

  The trumpeter signaled Charge. Again, the horns echoed him—four deep, mellow calls and the blat on the cowhorn. The Ornifal cavalrymen had their long swords drawn; on the right of the line, the Sandrakkan troop couched short lances that were light enough to have thrown if they’d been facing a shield wall.

  The troopers started downhill, disarrayed at first by the apple trees but not slowed. The javelin men whooped and began loping along after them.

  Garric and his guards trotted through the orchard. Beyond spread a broad valley several miles long, with a right dogleg extending it unguessibly farther. Instead of individual homesteads, there’d been a hamlet straggling along both banks of the stream in the middle.

  A neck-roped coffle of the human residents, fifty or sixty of them, was almost out of sight to the southeast. A score of rat men guarded the prisoners. Hundreds more of the creatures were scattered by tens and handfuls throughout the valley, rounding up brindled cattle.

  The horn signals had drawn the narrow muzzles of all the rat men toward the northwest slope down which the cavalry charged. Lord Waldron was in the center of the line; Ornifal’s golden lion on a red field flapped above the standard-bearer to his left.

  The rats were the size of short humans and wore bronze caps and breastplates. They stopped what they’d been doing and drew short swords, then began to trot forward to meet the attack.

  The nearest clot of rat men was only two furlongs south of the apple trees through which the cavalry rode. They were directly in front of Lieutenant Monner’s troop, but the Sandrakkan unit on the far right of the line was edging over to snatch the kill. Lord Waldron stood in his stirrups screaming abuse at the lancers, and King Carus’ hot rage snatched the sword from Garric’s scabbard before intellect could restrain him.

  Nobody seemed to notice. Garric grinned faintly. Drawing your sword while you watched a battle swirl wasn’t the sort of thing that aroused comment.

  Monner was on the right of his troop
and slightly ahead of his men. He held his sword vertical, ready to slash down at the rats, but he was trusting his mount to find its own course as he bellowed at the lancers crowding him.

  The horse suddenly planted its feet in the cropped turf. Monner went over its head—nobody could’ve kept his seat. The horse had stopped as abruptly as if it’d charged into a stone wall, then nearly somersaulted over its rider.

  Other mounts were going wild also, pitching and bucking. A pair of Sandrakkan geldings collided as they turned toward one another while both trying to flee back uphill; one had already thrown off its rider.

  Chittering in delight, the rats—there were six or eight of them—rushed the sudden chaos. They ran on their hind legs, but the way they bent forward suggested they were about to drop onto all fours. Their swords were short, deep-bladed, and almost square-tipped.

  Several horsemen dismounted or regained their feet after being bucked off. They poised to meet the oncoming rats, but the rhythm of the battle had shifted to the beast-men.

  A mare reared, then pitched forward; her rider managed to land on his feet though momentum flopped him on his face an instant later. Freed of her burden, the mare charged into the rat men, whinnying and kicking with all four hooves. A rat went down, its skull crushed, and another flew backward with a dent in the middle of its breastplate.

  The surviving rats slashed at her, one carving a line of blood all the way down the mare’s ribs. The saddle rolled off her back when the cinch was cut. She squealed and twisted back to clamp the rat’s muzzle with square, strong teeth. With jerk of her head, she sent the rat flying. Its limbs twitched spastically, and its head lolled from a broken neck.

  Rats and dismounted cavalrymen met in a clanging melee. One of the humans went down, but thanks to the mare’s berserk attack the remaining rat men were easily dispatched. Bleeding from a dozen stabs and slices, that horse continued to stamp and pivot on what had once been a dangerous enemy.

  “May the Sister suck my marrow!” Attaper said in furious amazement. “What’s happening? It’s wizardry! They’re bewitching the horses!”

  The first skirmish was the model for those to follow. Every time cavalrymen bore down on the rats, their horses went out of control, either panicking or—in a handful of instances—attacking the rat men in a foaming rage. Generally the dismounted cavalry were able to defend themselves until the infantry reached them, but sometimes the rats hacked down a horseman who’d been stunned in mind as well as body by the unexpected turn of events.

  “It’s not wizardry!” Carus said. The face of the ghost was sallow with cold anger. “It’s the smell! The stink of the beasts sets the horses off. I’ve seen it with camels, and it’s the same with these bloody rats!”

  There’d been no wind in the forest. A fitful westerly blew on this side of the ridge, bringing not only the high-pitched chatter of the rat men but their rank odor.

  Garric’s mount shied. Carus’ reflexes clamped his knees tight against the horse’s barrel and sawed the reins savagely when the beast tried to pivot to its right.

  The Blood Eagles around him were in similar straits. Attaper and some of the others were horsemen by birth or training, but half the detachment came from infantry regiments and rode by dint of single-minded determination. That wasn’t enough when their mounts began to pirouette and buck.

  Garric’s horse made a sound that was more a scream than a neigh. It thrust its head forward like a battering ram despite Garric trying to haul back on the reins. They thundered downhill with the suddenness of an eagle stooping.

  Duzi. This gelding’s one of the handful that the smell drives into a killing rage instead of a panic.

  “Jump, Your Highness!” Attaper shouted. “Sister take this Sister-raping horse! Jump!”

  Some of that must be directed against his own mount, though he probably wasn’t any more pleased with Garric’s. . . .

  The bubbling laughter of the ghost of King Carus was infectious. Garric too chortled as he hurtled toward the rat men. Carus had picked a horse that wanted to fight. Why would that surprise anybody who knew him?

  The tall gelding galloped through clots of javelin men and dismounted cavalry. Some fighting was still going on, but the horse apparently didn’t think it was worth his attention. Instead he rode straight at about twenty—

  “Twenty-two,” Carus corrected.

  —twenty-two rats, several smaller groups which had merged and were advancing uphill in a shallow V.

  Garric was too busy to be afraid. Oh, this was a disaster, no question, but there wouldn’t be time to worry until it was over—and probably no opportunity then either, of course.

  He couldn’t jump from the galloping horse, not with a bare sword in his hand. Attaper would’ve known that if he’d been thinking instead of reacting. Nor could Garric sheath the sword: under these conditions, not even Carus’ skill could guarantee the point would find the scabbard mouth instead of the flesh of his thigh.

  Of course Garric could’ve hurled the sword away before jumping and taken his chances of being able to escape uphill unarmed while the rat men pursued. He didn’t figure that was an option he’d choose in this lifetime—nor would Carus choose it in another thousand years.

  He might as well laugh.

  The gelding charged the center of the line of rat men. There was nothing wrong with the rats’ courage: the one which the horse had marked for his own stood his ground. His sword was raised and his little round shield advanced, though nobody could imagine that the impact of a horse weighing a hundred stone plus rider was going to be survivable.

  They crashed together. The gelding pivoted. Garric gripped the saddle horn with his left hand and cut down to his right at a rat man. His sword sheared the rat’s helmet and into the narrow skull, but the beast stabbed deep into the horse’s flank before thrashing away.

  A rat slashed from the left, slicing the back of Garric’s thigh. Time later to worry about how bad that was. The screaming horse reared, kicking with both forefeet.

  Garric swung his left leg over the saddle and slid to the ground over the gelding’s bleeding right haunch. Four rat men were coming at him. He thrust the first through the throat, notching the little shield the beast man tried to interpose.

  Thank the Lady for this sword! Or better, thank the Yellow King.

  The other three would’ve had him but the gelding, continuing to turn, crushed them down, bathing them in gouts of blood from a deep cut in his neck. Garric drew his dagger in his left hand and turned to his left to meet the rat men coming from that direction.

  Carus was in full charge of his mind now. There was neither time nor need of anything but reflex, and the ancient warrior had honed his reflexes in a hundred battles like this one.

  Five or six rat men were squirming toward him, getting in each other’s way. Their shields were wicker with thin bronze facings. Garric thrust through the center of the nearest, deep into the forearm of the rat holding it, and flicked his sword sideways to drag the squealing creature into the path of its fellows.

  Garric jerked back on the sword to clear it. The preternaturally sharp blade screeched free, but one of the rat men vaulted the struggling knot and cut at his head. He got the dagger up in time to catch the stroke, but the rat cannoned into him.

  Garric stepped back with his left foot, tripped on a furry corpse, and fell over beneath his attacker. It struck at him with its shield, numbing his left arm. He twisted the sword around and pounded the pommel into the beast’s ribs. He heard bone crack, but the rat tried to hit him again.

  Garric shoved the rat away. It didn’t weigh more than eighty pounds, but Duzi! it was strong. Three more of the creatures pushed close.

  Garric was still on his back. He kicked a rat in the crotch. They weren’t built like men and anyway this one was female, but his boot slammed the creature out of the way for the moment. The other two—

  Half a dozen javelins zipped overhead. A rat turned one with his shield but another took him in
the belly beneath the lower edge of his breastplate. Missiles spiked the standing rat through the eye and shoulder, while the female Garric had kicked was skewered from knee to hip bone.

  That last javelin nicked the toe of Garric’s raised boot and could as easily have taken off a toe. A toe would’ve been a cheap price to pay for the rest of the volley.

  “Yee-ha!” shrilled a skirmisher leaping past with his hatchet raised.

  The female with the spear through her leg cut at him. The skirmisher blocked the sword with his remaining javelin—they went into action with three apiece—and sank his hatchet into the side of the rat’s skull. She’d lost her helmet, but thin bronze wouldn’t have helped her anyway. As she spasmed into death, other skirmishers stabbed or hacked the bodies of rat men who were still quivering.

  “Thanks for baiting ’em for us, buddy,” said the first skirmisher on the scene. He stuck the butt spike of his javelin into the turf and helped Garric up with his left hand. “The furry bastards ’re too quick to spear when they’re paying attention.”

  “Yeah,” said another cheerful skirmisher. “I always knew cavalry pukes must be good for something.”

  Garric’s borrowed mount lay in a pile of furry bodies. The gelding had died with his teeth clamped on a rat man’s shoulder. In his death throes he’d almost bitten the creature’s arm off.

  “Ought to put up a monument to that horse,” Carus said. “For valorous conduct in battle.”

  I don’t think Attaper would agree, Garric thought.

  The skirmisher who’d finished the female rat wiped his hatchet clean and turned to Garric. “You ought to have that leg looked at, buddy,” he said.

  “Hey, if it’d got the artery, he wouldn’t be standing, right?” said his fellow. He knelt and lifted the skirt of Garric’s tunic. “Still, let me have a look at it.”

  “You bloody fools!” bellowed Attaper. “That’s your prince!”

  “Bugger me if it ain’t!” said the man thrusting the hatchet away under his belt.

  “Yes, milord,” said Garric, turning with a smile. He’d have to wipe his sword before sheathing it, but from the way the gelding had sprayed blood it didn’t seem any of this group of rats had enough clean fur for the long blade. “And they saved my life, not to put too fine a point on it.”