The Gods Return

by David Drake

This door and the one across from it had white panels set out with gilt borders, the sort of fancy thing you’d expect in a place like this. It hadn’t weathered at all, though, despite the door standing ajar and the house on the edge of falling down.

  Cashel pulled it open. The room on the other side looked pretty much like this one, though it was a rectangle instead of round and the floor was a pattern of brown and tan tiles instead of squares of black stone. There was a little marble shelf sticking out of the far wall, supported by scrollwork. The glitter on it was likely the rest of the coin in his sash.

  Cashel looked back at the head; it had turned to watch him. “All right, ma’am,” he said. “I’ll do my best to fetch you the pledge, but you have to let Liane go now. She can stay with Rasile till I come back.”

  “You’ll get your friend when you bring me the coin!” Milady said. She had a voice like an angry squirrel. “Go on, hero! Get the coin!”

  “No, ma’am,” Cashel said. He turned and spread his feet out to the width of his shoulders. Rasile was watching from just inside the doorway from the vestibule. She’d laid her yarrow stalks but she wasn’t using them for anything just now.

  Her tongue wagged in a laugh. The Coerli sense of humor was a good fit for this sort of business.

  “Ma’am,” Cashel said to the head, “you’ll bring Liane back now or I’ll look for another way to get her free.”

  “There is no other way!” said Milady, even more of a squirrel.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” said Cashel. “But you won’t be around to learn which of us was right. Now, bring Liane down to us, please.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Milady shrieked, her face a mass of anger.

  “No, ma’am,” Cashel said. “I’m telling you to hand Liane over to Rasile here and then I’ll go fetch your pledge.”

  “Doomed one?” Rasile said. “You picked this warrior because of his strength. You will underestimate that strength at your peril.”

  “Bring the woman here!” Milady said. She spoke in the same voice she’d done before, no louder, but Cashel wasn’t surprised when the door on the other side of the circular room opened.

  An ape shambled in on its hind legs. It reached one long arm behind it to hold Liane’s wrist. She walked as straight as she could, but the second ape behind had the other wrist and they weren’t in step with each other.

  Cashel’s face went very quiet. He’d swipe the head in the floor as he brought the staff around, then take two strides and with the second ram a butt cap into the—

  “Let her go!” Milady said.

  Her voice wasn’t any more pleasant than it had been, but at least she was saying the right thing. The apes obeyed quick as quick, dropping down onto their knuckles.

  Liane darted around the beast in front of her and started toward Cashel. She’d lost the other sandal too, or more likely kicked it off because she could move better barefoot than half shod.

  “No ma’am!” Cashel said. She stopped: he hadn’t meant to shout like that.

  “Ah, Liane,” he said. “I’ve got business to tend to in the next room. Stay with Rasile, please, and I’ll be back just as soon as I can.”

  Cashel walked to the door to where the pledge piece was waiting. He skirted the head without looking down at it.

  It wasn’t right that Milady take Liane hostage to make him do this, but Cashel was a peasant. Talking about what’s fair isn’t going to put food in your belly during the Hungry Time in March. This was something he could do that got Liane free, so he was doing it.

  There wasn’t anything about the room beyond that looked funny, but if it was as easy as it seemed, Milady would’ve sent her apes to fetch the coin. Cashel poked his quarterstaff through the doorway and tapped the floor. It clacked duller than it would on stone, showing it really was pottery like it seemed.

  But it also popped a bright blue spark every time the iron touched. There was wizardry involved, which wasn’t much of a surprise.

  Cashel smiled, sort of, the way he generally did before a fight. He wasn’t one to start trouble, but nobody’d seen him run away from it yet.

  Sideways with his left hand leading on the slanted staff, he strode through the doorway. All his hairs stood up.

  The room was gone. Cashel stood on a narrow crystal bridge over a chasm of blue flames. In the depths beneath him stood the tiny figure of Milady, bathed in unquenchable fire. She laughed like a madwoman.

  A man with the face of the other bust in the vestibule was coming across the bridge toward Cashel. He held a long crystal wand in either hand and chanted words of power.

  FIRST SECTION WITH me!” bawled Prester, who’d trotted to the front as the company approached a plaza where five streets met. He slanted the leading troops to the right rather than following the boulevard they’d been jogging down thus far.

  A group of men—mostly men—were sitting and drinking on the display windows of shops they’d wrenched the shutters from. When the troops appeared, most of the looters either ran up the street or vanished into the gutted shops in hope of hiding among the debris. The exceptions were two men lying on their backs with their arms linked, singing, “She was poor but she was honest. . . .”

  Sharina kept close behind Pont, jogging to the side of the second section. As his portion of the company started around the plaza he shouted, “Guide left, Selinus, Sister take you! Come on, Second Section, don’t embarrass me in front of the princess!”

  The stone curb of the fountain in the middle of the plaza was crude, but the centerpiece was a delicate bronze statue of a nymph pointing one hand to heaven and the other toward the basin at her feet. She’d originally been gilded; swashes of gold remained as highlights in the folds of her tunic. The pirate chiefs of Pandah had looted the lovely nymph, but brute force didn’t give them the skill to place her in a worthy setting.

  “Are they going to get lost?” asked Burne, leaning forward in the cradle of Sharina’s arm. She wondered if the rat was worried or if he was just keyed up with excitement like her. Like all of them, she suspected, though the two camp marshals certainly didn’t give any sign of it.

  “Naw, not Prester,” Pont said, dropping back slightly to return titular command to the ensign who’d stayed with this section. “Me, now, I’m no good in cities and neither’s Selinus, the file closer, but—”

  He gestured with his javelin. “Abreci there in the first file, he’s from Valles and he never gets lost in a city, not even in a back alley when he’s blind drunk.”

  “There shouldn’t be a problem for us since this street takes us right past the temple,” Sharina said. “But Prester trying to arrive from behind.”

  Pont chuckled. “Don’t you worry about Prester,” he said. “And if anything should happen, well, I figure me and the boys can handle whatever a passel of priests throw at us.”

  Sharina started to object, then shut her mouth again. That was the right attitude. They had a plan, a good plan: to divide their force and surround the temple before those inside were aware of the troops’ presence. If it went wrong, and even good plans did sometimes go wrong, they’d carry on with the force available.

  And yes, thirty soldiers trained by Prester and Pont ought to be able to handle as many priests as you could cram into a temple, even a big temple like that of the Lady of the Grove.

  As the troops jogged, they held their shields out from their bodies. Simply hanging by their straps, the cylinder sections of laminated wood would have battered the men bloody by the time they’d gone a mile. Each soldier’s slanted javelin pumped back and forth, and the studs on their leather aprons jangled together with each stride of their hobnailed boots.

  The section clashed into Convocation Square. The court building, a basilica whose eaves were decorated with painted terracotta dragons, was to the right. The walled compound that’d been the slave lines—slaves were most of the loot which pirates captured—was to the left; the contents had been sold weekly at auction in the square. Now it had been conver
ted into barracks for the laborers engaged in Pandah’s expanding building trade.

  Directly across the plaza—it wasn’t a square or even four-sided—was the Temple of the Lady of the Grove, now without a tree in sight. The sanctum was a narrow building surrounded by a pillared porch. There were six sharp-fluted pillars across the front and the shadows of six more just behind them.

  “All right, troopers!” Pont roared, lengthening his stride to put himself ahead of the front rank where the whole section could see him. “Follow me! Prisoners if you can get them, but nobody escapes!”

  “Yee-ha!” somebody called in the near distance. Prester’s section appeared from a side street behind the building. They rushed toward it with their javelins lifted. The troops were in shadow, but their boots kicked sparks from the cobblestones.

  A door thudded shut beyond the rows of pillars. Sharina drew her knife. She had to be careful not to sprint out ahead of the soldiers as they spread into a skirmish line. Even against priests, she ought to leave the fighting to the men in armor if she possibly could.

  Pont’s right arm came forward in a smooth, swift motion, loosing his javelin at the peak of the arc. Why’s he throwing at a building? Sharina wondered.

  A man wearing a priest’s black robe—but without the usual white sash—lurched from the shadows between the pillars. He’d flung away his bow when the javelin transfixed his upper chest; his quiver spilled arrows as he sprawled down the three-step base.

  “For the princess!” Pont cried, drawing his sword.

  At the back end of the temple, Prester was shouting, “Come on troopers, show the princess what you’re made of!”

  The dead archer had been the only man outside the sanctum. The leading soldiers jumped over his body and bashed their shield bosses at the closed door, making peevish thuds. Several men dropped their javelins to draw their swords, but instead of hacking at the wood, Pont sheathed his blade.

  “Selinus, with me!” he said, unstrapping his shield so that he could hold it by the edge. “The rest of you scuts keep back!”

  Sharina watched in puzzlement as the two non-coms faced one another, turning the shield endwise and gripping what had been the top edge. “On three,” Pont said.

  They leaned back together, one leg forward against the lintel and the other well back to brace them. “One, two, three—”

  Together the men used used the whole strength of their upper bodies to slam the shield into the right-hand door valve, just inside the edge where a stiffener would be. The panel was massive but centuries old; the curved shield was of triple-ply birch, inches thick and bound with gilding metal. It smashed a hole a hand’s breadth deep where it struck the door.

  Instead of rearing back to batter the door again, Pont dropped the shield and thrust his sword through the split in the panel.

  Sharina frowned, at a loss as to what the veteran thought he was doing. Pont gripped the sword hilt with both hands and jerked upward, lifting the crossbar from its track before the priests inside understood what was happening.

  “Hit it, boys!” he shouted. Six soldiers threw their shoulders against the valves, shoving them inward.

  There was a brief struggle in the doorway. The priests had swords or iron-studded cudgels, but the troops’ armor and superior training ended the fight before it began.

  Sharina jumped the wrack of bodies as she followed the first squad into the anteroom. She thought there’d been four or five priests, but she couldn’t be sure: the short, stiff infantry swords made terrible wounds when driven by excitement and strong arms.

  She burst into the nave with the troops. The lanterns hanging from brackets on either side still burned, but predawn light, entering through the rose window in the pediment over the entrance, dimmed them. At the back was a pierced bronze screen which could be opened to display the tall statue of the Lady.

  Sharina hadn’t been in this temple before; she wondered whether the image would be an old one of painted wood or if that had been replaced by a gold and ivory masterpiece. How ready had the pirate chiefs been to spend their looted wealth on the Queen of Heaven?

  There were half a dozen priests in the nave. Three with swords had been running toward the entrance when the soldiers appeared: javelins sent them sprawling on the mosaic floor without an order. Sharina already knew that Prester and Pont taught their men always to use missiles when that was an option: it wasn’t as heroic as wading in hand-to-hand, but it did the job and saved the right kind of lives—your own and your buddies’.

  The remaining priests were unarmed, an old man with wild white hair and two young aides. They halted when they saw the troops. The old man raised his hands in the air and cried, “Sacrilege! Sacrilege!”

  “We want prisoners!” Sharina said as she sprinted toward them. Burne sprang from her bosom and hunched over the floor even faster than she did. The nave was easily a hundred feet long, and the soldiers’ hobnailed boots skidded dangerously on the polished stone.

  The priests started back toward the wicket in the bronze screen. Sharina closed on the old man. One of the aides threw himself at her. She swatted him across the forehead with the square back edge of the Pewle knife; the heavy steel rang, knocking the priest to the floor, stunned and bloodied.

  The old man flung his arms out and pitched onto his face with a gabbling cry. Burne jumped clear of his legs.

  The remaining priest ran through the wicket into the sanctum. Sharina was only a hand’s breadth behind him.

  The screen was perforated, but it shadowed the interior. For a moment Sharina couldn’t identify the dark mass crouching where the image of the Lady should have been.

  It started toward her. It was black and the size of an ox, and it was a scorpion.

  Sharina retreated through the wicket. “Get back!” she screamed. “It’s a scorpion! Get—”

  The bronze screen ripped open. The scorpion, its huge pincers high, stepped over the ruin and into the nave. Its claws clacked on the mosaic floor.

  ILNA WATCHED THE leading apes push in single file between two clumps of evening olive, then fade away. It was as though night had fallen and shadows had swallowed them. Perrin walked after them and also vanished; the stiff, upslanting olive stems closed behind the youth’s body, but that body was no longer in the waking world.

  Ilna made a sour face and followed. She hadn’t known what to expect, and now that it was happening she wasn’t any wiser. She ducked instead of spreading her arms to keep the olive from slapping her cheeks. She had to keep both hands on her pattern to be able to open it instantly.

  Her skin prickled. She was behind Perrin again. The liveried apes led them down a track toward a sprawling mansion a furlong away at the base of the hills. For as far as she could see to either side, there were planting mounds between shallow irrigation ditches. On them grew crocuses in purple profusion, and occasional pistachio trees. Widely scattered among the rows were apes bending to pick the flowers and toss them into baskets.

  Ilna stopped. She started to count the laborers, then realized it was a hopeless task. The whole broad valley was a single field. There were more tens of tens of apes visible than there were sheep in the borough where she’d grown up.

  Perrine, Ingens, and the remaining pair of apes walked out of the air behind her. There was nothing to see where they appeared except the rows of plantings stretching into the misty distance.

  The princess was leading Ingens by the hand. Ilna wasn’t sure he even noticed that they weren’t in the world where the gong hung.

  “You see, Mistress Ilna?” Prince Perrin said, turning with a welcoming smile. “We are at peace here in our valley, because we’ve withdrawn from your world. No one can threaten us, and we threaten no one.”

  “Except the flowers,” said his sister with a pleasant giggle. She waved her free hand across the purple expanse. “But they grow back from the bulbs and we tend them, so I don’t think they grudge us their pollen.”

  Ilna stepped two rows away and laid he
r rolled cloak in the ditch; it was dry at the moment, though when her feet disturbed the stony soil she noticed that the undersides of flat pebbles were wet. They must run the water at night.

  The others walked past, putting Ilna’s body between them and the cloak. She knelt and looked closely at a crocus to explain why she was delaying here.

  Ilna had never been interested in flowers. Their bright colors didn’t fade, which was impressive; but they couldn’t be transferred to cloth either, and besides—she preferred earth tones and neutrals. People didn’t appreciate how pleasing neutrals could be until they’d seen a garment Ilna’d woven solely from gray shades.

  The crocus petals pleased her well enough, but the yellow and deep red pistils from which the spice came thread by tiny thread were garish and intrusive even by themselves. In combination with the purple flowers—

  Ilna smiled—broadly, for her. Feydra, her aunt by marriage, would have found the yellow/red/purple combination attractive. There might be a more damning comment about the flower than that a fat, cloth-headed slattern would have liked it, but that would do.

  “Aren’t they lovely?” Prince Perrin said, kneeling across the mound from Ilna. He smiled. “I was just thinking how much you remind me of a crocus, mistress, with your grace and beauty.”

  Ilna looked at him without expression. She might have gotten angry at his attempts to make himself agreeable, but he was so remarkably clumsy at it that she was on the verge of laughing instead.

  In a mild voice she said, “My colors are more muted, I believe.”

  She stood, fluffing her tunics slightly, and picked up the rolled cloak. As she’d expected, the bundle was lighter now. She didn’t look back to call attention to Usun, though she doubted that even she could’ve found the little hunter if he’d had a few moments to conceal himself. “Shall we go?” she said.

  “Of course,” said Perrin. He seemed to have no expressions but a half-smile and a smile, though it seemed to her that a hint of fear underlay the jollity.

  He offered his arm. “May I take your hand, mistress?” he said.