The Gods Return

by David Drake

  “That man would complain if we hanged him with a golden rope!” King Carus said in half-serious exasperation. Waldron wouldn’t run even from certain death, but Garric didn’t recall the army commander ever making an optimistic assessment.

  They were lurching along on a platform raised from the bed of a cart drawn by eight span of oxen. An artificial vantage point was the only way you could see any distance on these rolling prairies. The oxen were slow, but the army was advancing in battle order and wouldn’t have been travelling faster than this anyway.

  “The sun was in your eyes at the Stone Wall, milord,” Garric said mildly. “And you won there.”

  To the south, Palomir’s forces moved like a swarm of ants; more ants than a tax clerk could count in an afternoon. Dark-furred, steel-glittering companies appeared on hilltops, trotted down grassy slopes, and vanished again in the swales.

  “The Stone Wall was a bloody near thing!” snapped Waldron. He blinked, thought about the verbal exchange, and managed a smile.

  “But as you say,” he added, “we won.”

  A second oxcart ambled along beside the first. Tenoctris sat cross-legged in its bed with her paraphernalia laid out before her on a white tarpaulin. A solid-looking man, one of Liane’s agents, squatted in a corner in case the wizard needed something fetched or other help. Normally Garric or one of his friends from Barca’s Hamlet would be with Tenoctris, but they had other duties today.

  Duzi, preserve my friends, Garric thought. Duzi, keep Liane safe.

  Even if Duzi existed, he was a little god who couldn’t affect great affairs. He’d been the god of Garric’s youth in Barca’s Hamlet, though, and a prayer to him gave comfort to that boy whom the world now called a prince.

  How many rats are there really? Forty thousand, Zettin’s scouts had guessed, but it might be more than that. It might be impossibly more than that.

  The royal army advanced in a shallow V formed by troops of the former phalanx, now arrayed only four deep instead of sixteen. The skirmishers with bows, slings, and javelins extended the wings of the V, and the heavy infantry closed the back of the formation to turn it into a triangle.

  To either side moved the scouts, humans and Coerli in ragged bands no more formally organized than the rats they were facing. They took the place of the cavalry which would’ve flanked the army in a normal battle.

  The rats would envelop both wings of the royal army. The heavy infantry would have horrendous casualties, but there was nothing to do about it. There simply hadn’t been time to reequip those regiments and train them in a wholly new style of warfare.

  “They won’t break, lad,” Carus said. “Sometimes that’s the thing you need most: men who won’t break even when they know they’re going to die if they stand. They’d die if they ran too, of course, but that isn’t what’ll keep them in their ranks.”

  A company of giant rats came over a hill barely a half-mile away. Waldron gestured to his trumpeter, riding in the bed of the cart and looking upward. The silvery Prepare to Engage rang out, followed by the trumpets and horns of all the regiments.

  The scouts didn’t have instruments, but they let out a yipping ululation. It was apparently a compromise that fit both human and Corl throats.

  “Sister take them!” said Carus. “I don’t know what that’ll do to the rats, but it’d bloody well raise the hair on the back of my neck. If I had hair, or a neck.”

  The Sister will have her share of them, I have no doubt, thought Garric. And the rest of us. But that’s the job.

  Garric adjusted his ornate, parcel-gilt cuirass. “Milord, I’ll leave you to it,” he said to Waldron. “May the Shepherd be with you!”

  He dropped down the ladder, impressed again by how rigid the apparatus was. The platform’s pole frame had been cross-braced by guy ropes—stays, in nautical parlance, since the work had been done by former sailors of the royal fleet. The result was makeshift and the additional twelve feet of height amplified the cart’s every jolt and wobble, but there was nothing flimsy about it.

  The Blood Eagles—the hundred and ten men who remained of the regiment besides the section in Pandah with Sharina—were waiting for him. They wore the leather padding without the bronze cuirasses that would normally cover their torsos, and steel or leather caps in place of full helmets. They carried skirmishers’ round wicker bucklers with linen facings instead of their usual massive shields of laminated wood.

  Lord Attaper’s grim expression had very little to do with the coming battle and a great deal to do with where his prince intended to fight it from. “Your Highness,” he said, handing Garric the silvered helmet with flaring gilt wings. “This isn’t a normal battle where your armor can give you reasonable protection. I know you like to lead from the front and—”

  “And I’m going to lead from the front again, milord,” said Garric. “Attaper? Please. This may be the last conversation we ever have. Let’s not make it an argument, eh?”

  He lowered the massive helm over his head and cinched the chin strap. He would’ve liked to wear a cap like the phalangists and reequipped Blood Ea gles, but if he was going to do this, it was important that he be seen doing it.

  And he was going to do it.

  For an instant, Attaper’s face went blank as a stone wall. Then he grinned—slightly—and said, “All right, we won’t argue, Your Highness. After all, if anything happens to you, I won’t be around for people to complain to.”

  They trotted to the point of the wedge. The leading companies of the phalanx had spread their rear ranks left and right during the advance; now those troops slipped back behind their fellows, making room for the Blood Ea gles and Prince Garric.

  The vanguard of the rats bounded down a grassy slope toward the humans; their stink curled on the breeze. Archers loosed arrows from the flanks, and the Blood Eagles readied their javelins to throw. Garric drew his long sword.

  “This isn’t a bad place to be in a hard fight, ” said the ghost in his mind, musing with the odd dynamic relaxation Carus always fell into before a battle. “There’s no safety anywhere, whatever Attaper says; and looking for safety is the quickest way I can think of to get killed.”

  He laughed like a cheerful demon. “I’ve killed my share of folks trying to do that. I’ll tell the world!”

  “The kingdom!” Garric shouted.

  “The kingdom!” the army snarled. Skirmishers and the Blood Ea gles launched their javelins, and the rats were on them.

  A chittering rat rushed Garric, then hunched instead of lunging. Garric—King Carus—thrust. His long arm gave him an angle over the top of the rat’s little circular shield.

  The beast gurgled and vaulted backward. Garric couldn’t tell whether the jump was the rat’s death throes or a vain attempt to escape. It was gouting blood from severed arteries.

  A rat came in from Garric’s left while he was extended for the lunge. He had his long dagger ready to defend—Carus preferred to use two blades rather than a shield in this sort of melee—but a Blood Ea gle in the second rank had kept his javelin. He jabbed, taking the rat through the chest just below the shoulders.

  The initial rush was over. There’d been about a hundred rats in the company, but they’d rattled against the wedge like hail on a slate roof. A few men were down, but human discipline and close ranks had told. More rats—judging from the sound, half a dozen similar companies—had attacked at about the same time, but with no greater effect. The army marched forward, maintaining its formation.

  More rats bounded onto the ranks of swordsmen, yipping and clicking. They threw themselves against the front of the wedge like a wave hitting a seawall.

  Garric used his sword’s length, thrusting for the beasts’ wrists before they were able to strike. The dagger was a help, but Blood Ea gles saved him repeatedly by forcing themselves in front of the rats’ weapons.

  Some of the bodyguards went down or fell out of line, cursing and trying to ban dage their own injuries, but the army trampled forward over
a carpet of quivering Palomir corpses. Carus had been right when he directed his descendant to wear the winged helmet and silvered cuirass: by drawing the rats’ sole attention to him, he left a broad swath of the beasts open to slaughter by the disciplined soldiers surrounding.

  It would only work for as long as the glittering prince remained standing, but so far, so good. Garric’s left thigh was bleeding, his dagger was badly notched—he’d have to replace it, but when?—there was a dent in the back of his cuirass, and a sword spinning from the wielder’s dead paw had lopped off part of his helmet’s right wing.

  That was nothing at all in a battle of this magnitude, but the battle was scarcely begun. Carus, in his element, laughed in Garric’s mind. As for Garric himself—

  Garric was tired and knew he’d be more tired. He disliked slaughter, even slaughtering beasts, and the stench was even worse—far worse—than that of a human battlefield.

  It didn’t matter. The rats wouldn’t surrender, but they died. Garric would stride forward and kill for as long as there was an enemy to kill. It had to be done.

  The rats swept in a third time, separate war bands spreading themselves like a sticky fluid across the front of the wedge. Lord Waldron commanded the army. Prince Garric was the champion, the warrior, and the Isles had never known a greater warrior than the ghost who now controlled the prince’s body.

  Garric’s eyes saw only movement: a whiskered face—dimpling before a sword tip; a sword swinging in from the left—blocked but the bloody dagger broke, left leg kicking the rat’s feet from under it, right heel flattening the pointed helmet and crunching the narrow skull; rats on three sides—lurching forward, powerful human body shoving the lighter beasts away, slash, stab, fur spouting bright blood in arterial arcs, grabbing a sword in the air and blocking a stroke with it despite the rat’s severed paw locked on the grip.

  The rush was over, drowned in its own blood. Garric stood on top of a hill, looking down into a swale and still another mass of rats tramping forward.

  The green-and-white Palomir standard fluttered on the ridge opposite. Beneath it stood a human warrior in black armor, his sword drawn. Below him was another human, a wizard in blue robes of some thin fabric. He gestured with a wand and chanted words lost in the intervening distance.

  “Your Highness!” Attaper said, gasping with effort. His shield had been hacked so often and deeply that part of the outer layer of wood had sprung away. “Your Highness, I can’t follow you if you run into the middle of them that way. I can’t, nobody can!”

  “I didn’t . . . ,” Garric said, looking around dully. His every muscle ached or stung. His arms were red to the shoulders, and some of that blood had to be his own. “Did I . . . ?”

  He tried to remember what had just happened in a connected sequence. He had—Carus had, wearing the body of his descendent Garric or-Reise—burst into the tight Palomir ranks, cutting a path ahead of himself and largely ignoring the rats he’d left behind.

  He’d actually ripped through the wave—and survived, because the rats hadn’t expected what was happening any more than the Blood Ea gles had. Attaper and his men had had to butcher their way forward, taking reckless wounds as they tried to save the prince they were sure had committed suicide in front of their eyes.

  Men fell in beside Garric as the wedge re-formed. Half of those in the ranks were dismounted cavalrymen who’d formed the reserve in the center of the triangle. Waldron had ordered a troop to the front to replace the Blood Eagles who’d fallen in their desperate haste.

  The sky to the south throbbed with black clouds. Lightning crackled from thunderhead to thunderhead, and the rising wind hissed with waiting violence.

  Garric looked at the slope behind them. The ground was as thick with bodies as a wheat field with stubble after the harvest, and hundreds of those lying still or moaning were human.

  The ancient king viewed the scene through Garric’s eyes. “We’re just tools, now, lad,” he said in a tone of cold appraisal. “You and me and them. Tools break, but only the work matters.”

  Briefly taking control of Garric’s body again, he threw down the clumsy Palomir sword. “Give me your dagger,” he said harshly to the cavalryman beside him.

  “Your Highness,” the man said. He already held his shield and his drawn sword, so he lifted his elbow. Garric pulled the dagger from his right-side sheath.

  Tenoctris sat in her cart as it trundled forward. From the pentacle before her, a mist of wizardlight spurted upward like smoke. Scarlet and azure strands mixed in a delicate netting. She paid no attention to the carnage about her. Garric smiled at his friend with gentle affection and returned to his own business.

  “They’re coming,” muttered Attaper. The sword he now carried was of infantry pattern, not his own horse man’s sword. Waldron’s trumpeter blew Prepare to Engage!

  The rats bounded up from the swale. As they did so, the Palomir wizard pointed his wand into the sky. A bolt of wizardlight crashed upward, turning all the clouds the sullen red of a banked furnace.

  The storm struck, lashing the faces of the human army with hail the size of pigeon’s eggs among the icy rain. Men cried in surprise and the fear of wizardry, and the chittering rats raced upward.

  THE TREE WALKED south, out of the ruins of its enclosure. Dust from mortar and the broken bricks swirled in a rusty blanket; every time another pile of rubble settled, more choking powder spurted up. Cashel turned his head slightly to breathe through the sleeve of his tunic.

  He expected the Tree to smash a path through Dariada the same way as the Worm would, though of course the Worm wouldn’t stop with making the one track. Instead Gorand picked his way along like an octopus walking across the sea bottom on the tips of its arms, only he had more legs than anybody could count.

  The gnarled trunks, dangling roots, and vines furred with green mosses reached and placed themselves with rippling ease. Cashel could tell there was a pattern, though it wasn’t something he saw with his eyes; it was more the way he judged the swirl of a fight with quarterstaffs, but a lot more complicated.

  Chimney pots fell and shards of roof tiles rained off the eaves as the Tree passed, but the only real destruction was what happened to the enclosure itself. Though Gorand now was a whole forest walking, he chose where he put his legs. The cobblestone streets took most of his weight, and though they twisted like sheep tracks, the roots/stems/vines spared the houses from any but brushing contact however the streets turned.

  Cashel grinned in delight. It was always a pleasure to watch somebody who really understood craftsmanship, whatever his craft happened to be. What Gorand was doing now was beyond the slickest dancer Cashel expected to see ever.

  The Tree passed out of sight. It hadn’t been tall as trees went, and even lifted up on its roots the houses blocked the view by the time it had gone more than maybe halfway to the city walls.

  Cashel turned, wondering which direction this Archas was going to come from. He didn’t doubt the pirate would come; not because Gorand was an oracle, but because he wasn’t the sort of man who’d say something he wasn’t sure of.

  Rasile was chanting. To Cashel she sounded like a pair of screech owls courting, but she knew what she was doing. Liane stood beside the wizard, looking alert and ready to help if she needed to. To look at Liane you’d never guess that she’d just watched a big grove of trees lift up from around her and walk over the roofs of the city.

  Cashel grinned. She’d seen other stuff just as amazing, he guessed; but he’d bet she’d look just as cool and unworried now if she’d spent her previous life chatting with other fine ladies in the palace. She was a good friend for Sharina, and she’d be a great queen for Garric.

  Rasile yipped, then made a funny twitch in the air with her slate athame. A slanted image of Dariada hung in the air, not dimmed by the sunlight nor smothered by brick dust still settling over the ruined enclosure.

  From this angle the Tree looked like green surf sweeping across a beach of red roof tiles.
The soldiers and citizens on the battlements were ant-sized; Cashel could tell what they were only because he already knew. There were lots more ants on the plains to the south of the city, but he didn’t see the Worm. It would come soon enough.

  Cashel went back to looking out for Archas. He wondered if the fellow would be alone. Well, he had to be stopped. No matter who or what was with him. He spun his quarterstaff, getting the kinks out of his shoulders.

  “You can watch this, Warrior Cashel,” Rasile said. Her voice was a bit harsh, but she sounded strong.

  “Ma’am,” he said, “I think I ought to keep an eye out for the pirate that’s coming here.”

  “I will let you know when Archas nears,” Rasile said. “Until then you may watch your fellow warrior. You are much alike, you and Warrior Gorand, you know.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Cashel said, turning toward the image. “I do know that.”

  The Tree was climbing over the city walls. Gorand had gone off to the left instead of heading straight to where the pirates were. Which made sense when Cashel thought about it, since Gorand would’ve been trampling on people for sure if he’d crossed the wall where they were thickest. There were only a few stairs down from the battlements for folks to get out of the way.

  The picture was clear as clear, even sharper than what the wizard had showed him back in Pandah. She didn’t seem near so wrung out as she’d been then, neither.

  Rasile smiled. “This is a good place for my sort of art, Cashel,” she said. “Almost a uniquely good place. That is why the Warrior Archas is coming here.”

  Cashel nodded; he could feel the prickle of wizardry all over his body. It wasn’t just Rasile’s little chant to make the picture of what was happening on the walls.

  The Worm squirmed out of the air like a maggot twisting from the sore it’d raised on a sheep’s back. Its solid parts were gray, and it was purple with mixed wizardlight in the splotches that hadn’t yet come out of the place it was from. The Worm had a round mouth, and the spike it pointed to the city wall was as long as a boat’s mast.