by David Drake
Asion looked toward Ilna doubtfully. "Yes," she said, as she determined the pattern she'd use this night. "It's not a complicated problem."
Ilna had time to knot an unusually large pattern this time, though she had only the short lengths of yarn from her sleeve to work with. They'd do.
The raft wallowed and began to float downstream, rotating slowly in the current. The villagers who'd lost their footing crawled back aboard, saved by the ropes. It'd been unexpectedly satisfying to weave something for a solely physical purpose, a task that had no tinge of wizardry or compulsion.
Ilna smiled like a serpent, a tight-lipped, cruel expression. Whereas the fabric she knotted now had everything to do with compulsion. It would draw the warriors to their deaths as surely as a hangman's rope.
The river poured into the valley in a smoother, deceptively calm fashion now that it'd swept away the last of the dam that'd bounded it for so long. Half the Coerli were on the east side, across the broad channel from Ilna and her companions. As if on a signal, they waded together into the water and began swimming toward the raft and its cargo of villagers. The remaining catmen started toward Ilna's party.
Ilna decided her pattern was complete. It was slightly too long for her to stretch it by herself with her arms extended.
"Temple?" she said, handing him one end of the sketchy fabric. "Take this if you will. When I say to, pull it tight with me."
"We'll change sides then, Ilna," the big man said with a friendly grin. "So that I can hold it in my left hand rather than with—"
He drew his sword. The bronze blade hummed softly.
"—my right."
"Yes," said Ilna, walking behind him and swapping the end she'd been holding for the one she'd offered him.
The river continued to rise, though now slowly. It lapped to the edge of the portal; Ilna felt water bathe her feet, noticeably cool. The loose soil melted and squelched between her toes. She'd wondered if it'd leak into the other world, but she found she could see the panel of light gleaming even through the thin mud.
The door—the membrane of light—behind them made the hair rise on the nape of Ilna's neck. She glanced at her companions to see if they felt it. Karpos probably misinterpreted her gesture, because he said to Temple, ""So you're sure they can't come at us through this window from behind, then?"
"If the Coerli enter the portal from the back, Karpos . . .," Temple said with a deep chuckle. "They'll go to a place neither in our world nor in theirs. They don't know what that world is, but they fear it is a bad one."
He laughed again with honest amusement. "The truth," he went on, "is far worse than they imagine it could be."
Ilna sniffed. "I'd as soon we killed them ourselves anyway," she said.
The catmen who'd leaped into the water were nearing the raft. They swam like dogs, their heads out of water and all four limbs paddling. Perhaps ordinary cats swam that way too—Ilna'd never seen one take to the water.
The beasts didn't seem to mind the swim, but that didn't help them now. Gressar aimed his bow and arrow at the nearest of them. The beast ducked under the water but bobbed to the surface a moment later.
Gressar shot. The bow was crude and short—a farmer's weapon of plain wood, shooting a stone-pointed arrow. It was good enough for the purpose, though: the arrow drove a hand's breadth into the catman's neck. Blood spouted; the beast thrashed in a circle and sank.
A Corl dived under water and came up to grasp the edge of the raft. Three villagers struck at it together with spears and a club. One of the blows must've gotten home, because the brute drifted away in a spreading red curtain.
A panicked villager flung his spear at a swimming warrior. The weapon wasn't balanced to throw and the man had no skill at the business anyway; the cast missed by an arm's length as the target bobbed beneath the surface. Another man spun out his pebble-weighted minnow net, settling over the beast's head and shoulders as it rose again. The fisherman dragged his catch toward the raft where another spear, thrust this time, skewered it.
Smiling faintly, Ilna looked up from the pleasant drama about the raft. She and her companions had their own tasks to perform now: the Coerli on the west of the river were in better order than their swimming fellows had managed.
Karpos nocked an arrow; Asion held the bullet in the pocket of his sling with his left hand. "Whenever you give the word, Ilna," Temple said calmly, his eyes on the oncoming warriors.
Ordinarily Coerli could dodge even sling bullets at close range, but their narrow feet sank deeper in the mud than humans' did. They were splashing well out in the flow to keep clear of the missiles.
Staying out of range had its own problems. They were in waist deep water, and there was enough current to drag hard at them. Their tails lashed the surface, and Ilna was certain their snarls were fury rather than communication.
She smiled. "We'll let them come halfway closer," she said.
The beasts didn't have a real leader; instead of rushing as one at the command of a maned chief, they snapped and bickered for nearly a minute. The flood buffeted them.
When the attack came, it was almost an accident. A beast lost his footing and splashed forward. Those to either side of him leaped toward the humans, and a heartbeat later the whole band was in noisy motion.
"Now," said Ilna. She drew her pattern taut against Temple's simultaneous pull.
Cat beasts squawked and stumbled. One was spinning out a weighted cord when his eyes took in the full meaning of Ilna's jagged web. His throwing arm spasmed, whipping the capture line sideways to snag the neck of one of his own fellows.
Karpos shot—
Only the fletching of the arrow projected from above the breastbone of the nearest warrior. At this short range, it'd almost completely penetrated the beast's slender body.
—nocked one of the pair of arrows between the fingers of his left hand and shot again—
The beast was tumbling in the slow current; it'd lost its footing when it froze. The arrow raked it from below the ribs and poked out the opposite shoulder blade.
—nocked the third arrow and shot—
The arrow struck the top of the beast's skull with a whock; exiting, the point pinned the long jaws together.
—and reached into his quiver for the remaining three arrows.
Asion's sling was marginally slower to reload, but on targets so close his bullets crushed as well as penetrating. The hunter was a small man, but his arms were enormously strong. The dim red sun darkened the blood swirling from the corpses as they drifted downstream in the flood.
Three beasts remained. The current'd pulled them far enough south that Ilna's web would no longer command them as it should. She said to Temple, "We have to turn to keep the pattern toward them or—"
Temple dropped his end of the pattern and strode forward, shrugging his buckler into his left hand. "This will be simpler, Ilna," he said without looking back over his shoulder.
Then, in a tone of command that reminded her of when King Carus ruled Garric's body during a battle, Temple thundered, "Comrades, don't shoot! I'll finish this!"
He waded into the water. The Coerli were fully alert now. Ilna thought they'd regroup and attack together, but perhaps they were too angry to think the matter through. Or again, perhaps the nearest warrior didn't see any reason to delay: no ordinary man was a match for the beasts' quickness.
Water as deep as his back-bending knees sprayed as the warrior leaped high. It swung a short length of its hooked line to wrap Temple's neck and sword arm from above. The weighted end sailed away instead because Temple's sword was where the beast'd expected a clear path; the cord severed itself on an edge as keen as a beam of light.
Temple hadn't responded to the beast's attack: no human was that quick. He'd anticipated it, seeing the pattern of events before they happened and striking at where the beast would be when the blade passed through the place. Just as Chalcus used to do, when he was alive.
The Corl twisted, seeing the death he was
flinging himself onto, but all four limbs were off the ground so it had nothing to push against. The sword continued its curving stroke, catching the beast in the short ribs and slicing on through as easily as it'd cut the cord a heartbeat earlier.
The beast flew apart in a gout of blood and stomach contents. Its mouth was open but silent in one half and the legs pumped wildly in the other. Ilna knew how sharp the bronze blade was, but the strength needed to lop complete through a torso was beyond the dreams of most men.
Temple strode forward without slowing. The second warrior lunged low with a wooden poignard in either hand. He scissored them toward Temple's knees like a trap springing, but the swordsman's long arm and long blade had again anticipated the attack: the Corl drove itself onto the sword hard enough to punch the bronze point out through the base of its skull.
The third warrior hadn't verbally coordinated with the second, but the pack were experienced killers who'd worked together in the past: he went high because his fellow had attacked low. As he leaped he slanted his spear downward so that the pair of springy wooden points would grip the human's neck with the barbs on their inner surfaces.
The thrust glanced from Temple's small shield, rising as part of the same motion as had put the sword into the second beast. It was like watching a dance, but considerably more graceful than any dancers Ilna had seen.
The Corl continued on over, landing with a splash in the water behind the swordsman. It dropped its spear and snaked a stone-headed axe from a loop on the crossbelts that were its only garment.
Temple was turning, hunching, bringing the shield down and around. He knew what would happen next—Ilna knew what would happen next—but understanding something wasn't the same as being able to stop it. Temple was quick for a human, but the Coerli were as quick as thought, as quick as the shimmer of water.
Motion sparked in the alien sunlight. Whock!
The beast leaped straight up, its limbs thrashing. Its head was a bloody ruin. It fell onto its back, then flopped over on its belly and began to drift on the current. Occasionally a further spasm would stir the water, but generally only one limb at a time.
Asion folded the release cord of his sling back against his right palm on the staff. "That was my last bullet," he said sheepishly. "I'm glad I kept it, hey?"
Temple let his buckler swing against the strap that held it while not in use. He stepped to Asion and embraced him, carefully keeping the sword away from both of them. He couldn't sheathe the weapon till he'd wiped the bronze clean of blood and filth.
"I am very glad you kept it, Brother Asion," Temple said, stepping back. The torso of the first beast he'd killed lay on the slope above where the water—now slowly receding—had washed. He picked the corpse up by the scruff of the neck and wiped his blade on the brindled fur.
Karpos was cutting an arrow from the body of a beast lying in the fresh mud. "I wonder if the farmers have arrows I could use?" he said. "I don't think I'm going to find more than a couple of my own, what with the current."
Ilna looked down into the valley. The women had come out of the cave. Several of them were running toward the raft, grounded when the initial head of water had passed.
The men were kneeling over several of their fellows who they'd laid out on the ground. One or more warriors must've gotten aboard the raft and done damage before being killed.
"They've lost everything," Temple said. "They'll have to replant their crops as well as rebuilding their houses."
Ilna looked at the big man. His face and tone were both without expression.
"Peasants have a hard life, soldier," she said sharply. "These peasants, the ones who're still alive, won't have cat beasts preying on them. That's all I can do for them. Or anybody could!"
"Yes, Ilna," Temple said. "Now, before that sun sets—"
He nodded toward the dim red orb now close above the western horizon.
"—we must go through the portal. Our task isn't done yet."
"All right," she said. "Asion and Karpos, are you ready?"
The hunters got up from the bodies. They moved into line beside her and Temple.
All together, Ilna and her companions stepped through the membrane of light.
* * *
"Oh!" said Sharina as she saw the Citadel of Pandah rising out of the plain. "That isn't what I expected."
"It's bigger than I thought too, your ladyship," said Trooper Lires. "I'd heard it was a sleepy little place. Ah, not that we couldn't take it in a week or two. Or maybe even faster if you ordered an assault instead of undermining the walls."
"I'm not going to order an assault," said Sharina dryly, "or make any other military decisions so long as I have competent officers. But I was on Pandah in the past—before the Change, of course—and it was a sleepy little island. They grew fruit and garden truck for ships crossing the Inner Sea, and merchants bartered cargoes to local factors."
Pandah now—and Sharina supposed in her distant past—had massive stone walls within which rose square towers with arrow slits. Figures moved on the battlements. She couldn't make out details of them, but Lires said, "By the Sister! There's cats there and men both!"
He cleared his throat, turned his head away from Sharina in embarrassment, and then forced himself to meet her cool smile again. Rasile continued telling beads in her palanquin, but her eyes were open and seemingly focused on the city coming into view.
"Sorry, milady," the trooper muttered. "I mean, it's no different from us. I don't know why I said that."
The leading regiments of the royal army were spreading into battle order as they advanced across the plain. The afternoon air rang with trumpets and horns, insistent and never tuned the same. Sharina supposed that made it easy for soldiers to tell their own call from those of other units, but it was gratingly unpleasant to a civilian.
Rasile rose to a squat. Though her palanquin rocked as the bearers paced down the defile to the plain, the wizard balanced on her haunches as easily as a bubble bobs in the air.
She pointed to the southwest. "There is the nest the Last have built around the entrance to this world," she said. "Are you able to see the powers which we wizards focus, Princess?"
"No," said Sharina, following the line of the Corl's arm. Close to Pandah's western walls—so close they partly hid it—was what she'd taken at first to be a shadow. Closer attention showed it to be a structure of odd bumps and angles, higher than Pandah's walls though some of the towers within the city overtopped it. "Rasile, I have no talent for wizardry."
Rasile's arms had angles at the wrong points, and her covering of fur—more gray than auburn and worn away in patches—was disturbing. She looked more like a beast in detail than she did when Sharina viewed her as a complete person.
The Corl chuckled in her throat. "Seeing the fluxes is not wizardry," she said, "though the best wizards see the matter they work with. In this case—"
She'd lowered her arm—her fore-limb. Now she tapped her clawed fingers twice more on the air.
"—I can see the threads of power spun into two great hawsers, scarlet and azure. But I could not affect them myself any more than you could. The Last are using forces which could not be manipulated by any single wizard; not even by your friend Tenoctris, Princess. Their whole race must possess both the art and the ability to merge their talents the way ants together lift a dead grasshopper."
Skirmishers from the head of the column began moving toward the alien fortress, spreading as they advanced. Small groups of the Last had been working in the plain, demolishing all human plantings and structures beyond easy bowshot of the walls. Now the black figures began moving back toward their citadel.
"They're running!" Sharina said hopefully.
"They're withdrawing until they've judged the strength of the new threat," Rasile corrected emotionlessly. "The walls of their citadel are impregnable. Only the open gates can be attacked, and the Last will close them with their bodies where your warriors cannot use their greater numbers. When you figh
t the Last one against one they will likely win; and if one of them is killed, another will take its place."
The leading regiments of heavy infantry followed the skirmishers at a measured pace. Horns and trumpets skirled with cheerful enthusiasm.
"Call back your warriors, Princess," the Corl said. "They will die to no purpose. Call them back."
"Captain Ascor!"Sharina said to the commander of her guard contingent. She wasn't going to tell her military officers how to fight, but she would—she must in good conscience—pass on important information which she'd gotten from other advisors. "Summon Lord Waldron to me, if you will!"
The Corl wizard continued to squat on her haunches, telling a string of pink coral beads. Her long face was turned toward the black citadel, but her eyes were unfocused.
"Rasile?" Sharina said. "If we're not to attack the Last, then how are we to drive them out?"