by David Drake
When something more than information gathering was needed, Liane had men-and perhaps women for all Sharina knew-to accomplish that too. The trio waiting here looked like they knew as much about weapons as any soldier.
In anybody else's hands, the spy apparatus would be a huge potential danger to the kingdom. Under Liane, it along with the army and Tenoctris were the three pillars on which Garric's rule rested.
And on which Princess Sharina's rule rested, for what Sharina hoped would be a very short time.
"Why can't the warships stand offshore and bombard the plants?" Sharina said. She frowned. "In fact, why weren't there warships here before the attack started? I'd have thought there'd be a squadron at least on the beach, it's so close to Mona."
"There's a mud bar at the mouth of the bay, your highness," said a young soldier Sharina didn't recognize. The short horsehair crest on his helmet was dyed blue, indicating he was one of the fleet officers under Admiral Zettin. "We're looking into dredging it so that warships could get through, but with the creatures swimming…"
"I see," said Sharina. She looked at Liane and Lord Waldron, feeling her guts freeze tightly again. "That means the person sending the hellplants knows the terrain, and knows at least something about war."
Double joined the group, helped by Lord Attaper himself. The guard commander had no expression as he withdrew his arm from the wizard's grasp.
Another time Attaper would be able to order one of his men to perform the service-because they'd seen him do it this once. Sharina knew that Attaper would rather face death than touch a wizard, but he'd done his duty regardless. Courage came in many forms.
"The Green Woman knows the shape of this world because she intends to rule it," Double said. "She will fail, because I will defeat her."
Waldron looked at Double with distaste, then said to Sharina, "Your highness, I've summoned a section of the phalanx from where they're billeted on the east coast. Ordinary spears don't do any good against the creatures, but I hope that the mass of long pikes will kill them, destroy them. Fire works to a degree, but there are so many of them that we're forced back when we attack one."
"I saw that," Sharina said. She took a deep breath. "What do you need from me?"
"Your highness?" said Liane in a careful voice. "I carry Prince Garric's signet, as you know, and I've been giving orders in what's now your name. If you acquiesce-"
"Yes," said Sharina, "I do. Lord Waldron, do you have any requests?"
"They've stopped coming out of the sea," Waldron said, getting to the question indirectly. "We can take care of the ones here in the bay if that's all there are. It'll cost men, but that's what an army's for."
"She will send more of her creatures," Double said. His voice was a sharper-and if possible, more unpleasant-version of Cervoran's own. "She will send her creatures till they have killed me, or I kill her, or weed stops growing in the sea, and the weed will never stop growing."
"Then we'll keep on killing them!" Waldron said. He was partly angry and partly afraid of the wizard; and because he hated fear, especially in himself, he was becoming more angry.
"Look at the land her creatures hold," said Double, stretching out his left arm toward the bay. "The sea swallows it down. Every day more hellplants will attack, and every morning this island will be smaller with fewer men to protect what remains. Only I can defeat the Green Woman!"
Sharina followed the line of the wizard's arm. Knots of soldiers battled hellplants with fire and their swords, trying to destroy the creatures by force of numbers before the lashing tentacles could destroy them all. Occasionally they succeeded, but the hills behind the plain echoed with despairing cries. Sharina saw bodies and body parts fly into the air.
Close to the shore… Double was right. Rows of barley were sinking into the marsh. Sharina had never seen Calf's Head Bay before, but she knew that even salt-resistant barley couldn't have grown with sea water gleaming in the furrows as it did now. The hellplants were a material enemy, but they weren't the only threat the Green Woman posed.
"Tenoctris?" Sharina said. She tried to keep her voice neutral, but she was afraid that there was a hint of pleading in the word.
"No, dear," said the old woman. "Though I'll try, of course."
"I must go back to my chamber of art," Double said. He touched the amulet hanging around his neck. "I must have the help of Ilna os-Kenset and her companions. I will defeat the Green Woman."
"Liane?" Sharina said. "Lord Waldron? Is there anything I can do here that you want me to stay for?"
Liane shook her head minusculely. Her face was as still as a death mask of the cheerful, smiling woman she had been.
Waldron said, "I have a regiment throwing up earthworks on the slopes. I'm not worried during daylight, but if they attack at night, I, well, I want a barrier even if it takes time to shift troops to the point that's threatened."
Double looked at him. "Her creatures will not advance in darkness," he said shrilly. "They will wait in the marsh and attack again when the sun rises."
They're plants, Sharina realized. With the weaknesses of plants as well as plants' lack of a vulnerable brain or heart.
She nodded. "All right," she said, "we'll go back. Tenoctris, will you come or…?"
"Yes," Tenoctris said. "I have a manuscript that might be useful; I'll read it carefully."
She smiled wistfully. "It's a manual of spells and potions to aid crops," she said. "There might be something."
Double laughed. He turned and started up the track toward the gigs.
Sharina felt an urge to slap the creature and keep slapping him until she'd worked off the wash of anger and frustration that suddenly filled her. After a moment she sighed and said, "Carry on, Lord Waldron. Tenoctris, we'll return to the palace."
At least there'd be sunlight as soon as they got out of thisaccursed plain.
***
Garric awakened slowly. He ached in many places and this bed was the most comfort he'd felt since he came to wherever he was now.
He opened his eyes. The sun was well up, making the room reasonably bright. Though the roof thatch was opaque, the walls were wicker without mud and plaster to make them solid. The eaves sheltered the triangular vent at the top, but quite a lot of light-as Garric was learning to judge things here-came in that way.
The wall separating his room from the hall was woven bark fabric on a lattice of finger-thick poles. Garric heard women speaking in normal tones on the other side of it. With a smile at the incongruity realized that he couldn't see through the inner wall the way he could through the much thicker outer ones.
He carefully raised his torso, then swung his legs out of bed. He wrapped the coverlet around him and stood.
His head didn't throb as badly as he'd expected, but it felt odd. He touched his scalp, expecting to find hair matted with his blood, and found instead a linen bandage holding a pad where Torag's mace had cut him. The nurse-Donria beyond reasonable question-must've sponged him clean while he was asleep, because he remembered his face'd been crusted with a mixture of mud and his own blood despite the frequent drizzle he'd marched through.
"Not all of it your own blood," said King Carus. The balcony on which the smiling ghost stood might never have existed in reality, but for now its sunlit stone was a memory to cherish. "Some of the other folks in those fights were bleeding pretty freely, remember."
Garric reached for the latch, a simple rotating peg that held the frame of the door panel to the jamb. There was no lock. It bothered him that he'd been so exhausted that he hadn't thought totry to lock it, though. He had Crispus for an enemy here and no certain friend except Donria.
"She's your friend while it suits her purposes," Carus said. "That may not always be true."
I think she's my friend regardless, Garric said firmly. As it is with Cashel, or Ilna; or me.
The ghost laughed, but there was more sadness than humor in his voice as he said, "The only thing I ever trusted was my sword, lad. You're in a
better place; you are, and the kingdom is with you ruling it."
A flutter behind Garric threw highlights over the room. He spun, realizing what'd happened even before he saw the Bird perching in the vent as it had the night before. By daylight-and it wasn't even raining-the Bird looked more like the scrap pile at a glass foundry than it did anything living. This time the creature balanced on one glittering foot and grasped a cord and some wood in the other.
"It's midday," the Bird said silently. "You've slept long. Are you able to fight and run, Garric?"
"I'm able," Garric said. "I don't expect to do either of those things for at least another day or two, until I have a better idea of the circumstances."
The Bird made an audibleCluk/clik/clik/clik with its beak. In Garric's mind it said, "Wait and learn, then."
Garric didn't know where he'd run to. All he could think of now was to run away from Torag's keep. That was all very well, but Torag had captured him once and could quickly capture him again. Unless, of course, he happened to stumble into the arms of another band of the Coerli who were spreading into this land.
Sirawhil wanted to take him to the place the cat men came from. It was at least possible that Garric'd find it easier to get home from there than from this gray swamp. Aloud he said, "Where is Sirawhil, Bird?"
"The Coerli are asleep, all but the guard in the watch tower," the Bird said. It fluffed its wings into a rainbow shimmer like the play of light on a dew drop. They were thin crystal membranes, not really wings like a bird's or even a bat's. "Torag slaughtered another of the recent captives. His folk feasted except the warriors who were here with Ido. They had to eat fish, and they're keeping watch today while Torag and his raiders sleep with full bellies."
Was it Soma who'd been eaten? Garric thought. The whole business of the cat men butchering people for food disgusted him, but since it'd happened he could hope that Marzan's wife was the victim. That might make his life in Torag's keep-and escape from it-considerably simpler.
"The victim was named Jolu," the Bird said. "She was seventeen, plump, and had a high laugh. She was unmarried, but Horta whose wife had died in the Spring planned to ask her father for her. Horta died in the raid, though Jolu never knew that."
Garric felt a wash of dizziness. Jolu was a complete stranger to him. Hundreds of people like her must die every year back in the Kingdom of the Isles: drowned or carried off by fevers, dead in childbirth or any number of other ways. Death wasn't horrible in itself; it was part of life.
But Jolu had been eaten by catlike monsters. If somebody didn't stop them the Coerli would eat many more people, until they'd eaten all the people there were in this world…
"I'm going to get something to eat," Garric said, reaching for the door latch again. He needed to know more before he could act, because based on what he knew at the moment there was nothing he could do. Except, he supposed, throw his life away with nothing to show for it except taking a few Coerli with him.
"Killing cat beasts isn't a small thing," Carus murmured. "And maybe we could get more than a few of them."
The latch turned before he touched it. "Garric?" said Donria, pulling the thin panel open. "Did you call?"
"Thanks for cleaning me up last night," Garric said. It was disconcerting to hear the woman's words clearly in his mind while at the same time seeing her lips form completely different sounds which came to his ears in the same tone as those in his mind. "Ah, can I have something to eat? And I'd like to see things outside."
He had only the vaguest notion of the compound's layout. It'd been dark, he'd been woozy from the fight and the march, and when he arrived murderous violence had pretty quickly absorbed his whole attention.
Donria took his hands and pulled him gently toward the door. "Whatever you wish, Garric," she said. "Newla! The headman wants food! Bring him porridge from the smaller tub. I put the herbs in that one."
Half a dozen women were in the open hall of the large building. Two were villagers Garric had seen in the coffle captured with him in the raid. Newla was watching as they cleaned the far end of the hall where the food was prepared. The new arrivals went to the bottom of the pecking order, here as in any society.
Though here the hierarchy could be disrupted at any moment by Torag's choice for a meal. Which, thinking about it, was how chickens lived in the inn yard too.
Garric's whole youth had involved the care and feeding of domestic animals, but he was getting a different view of the process now. He smiled, because his discomfort wasn't primarily because of the risk he'd be killed and eaten.
They walked outside. Behind them, Newla shouted gruff directions to the slaves she was managing.
It surprised Garric to see thirty or forty women sitting or lounging in the relative sunlight. Many were weaving on handlooms, but it looked to him like a friendly activity rather than work imposed by the Coerli.
There were a number of children as well, girls of all ages but no boys old enough to walk on their own. Behind the first longhouse was a separate building. Pregnant women and mothers must be relegated to that one, explaining why Garric hadn't seen children the night he arrived.
Soma sat at the kitchen end of the first longhouse. She met Garric's eyes without expression. He didn't see Crispus. That was good in itself, but it made him wonder where the other man was.
Fishnets hung beneath the eaves, just as they had in Wandalo's village, and a separate thatched shelter covered hoes, rakes and sickles set with chips of clamshells. Nobody seemed to be working in the raised fields north of the dwelling, though, nor fishing in the surrounding moats.
Donria followed Garric's glance. "We get a holiday when the masters feast," she said. "We take one, anyway. They're all asleep except the one in the tower. And anyway, they're not hungry."
"I see," said Garric. The mud in front of the gate to the Coerli side of the compound had been raked since the rain stopped. Blood still showed at the edges of the patch. The cat men must've killed and gutted Jolu there before carrying the carcass out to be devoured.
Garric looked up at the watchtower, a platform on thirty-foot poles. Two of the three poles were supports for the fence dividing the Coerli from their slaves. A warrior glared down at Garric.
When Garric held his eyes, the Corl snarled and shouted, "Go on about your business, beast!" He looped his thorn-toothed cord down and up again in a quick arc.
"Come this way, Garric," Donria said, leading him around the end of the longhouse. Under the eaves they were out of sight of the tower, and vice versa.
Garric squatted with his back to a support post, breathing deeply and trying to wash the anger out of his system. There was nothing to be done at the moment. Maybe there'd never be anything he could do!
He balled his fist to slam it into the wall, but he realized how silly he was being. He opened his hand and laughed instead. The sun was shining-all right, above the overcast, but it was shining-and so long as the Coerli kept him alive he had a chance of escaping and maybe even doing something about the plague of monsters overrunning this land.
Women congregated around him and Donria in a polite arc, the way students did in Valles before their teacher. There were no schools in Barca's Hamlet. Most children learned basic letters and how to count from their mothers, but the only books in the community were those Reise had brought with him from Carcosa.
Reise perhaps would've been willing to teach other children while he taught his own, but none of the other parents valued the sort of education he was giving Garric and Sharina. What did it matter who were the rulers of the Old Kingdom and what wars they fought?
It mattered to Reise's son, who'd become ruler of the Isles. It mattered not only because Garric didn't have to repeat mistakes thousand years old, it meant that he could relax with the simple beauty of, "Oh Bandusian spring, shimmering like glass; worthy of being mixed with sweet wine at a party…"
Garric laughed, suddenly able to focus on what hehad: youth, strength, friends, and a good mind. And also he ha
d the Bandusian spring, gleaming as clearly in his mind as it had in the eyes of the poet Celondre a thousand years before. As long as Garric lived he'd have the Bandusian spring, one of Reise's greatest gifts to his children.
"Donria," said the Bird from the transom above them, "come to the headman's room immediately."
Donria jumped up, looking around in amazement. "Who said that?" she cried.
"Donria, what's wrong?" a spectator called. Other women were getting to their feet, looking surprised and fearful. Surprises in Torag's compound were generally going to be unpleasant, Garric supposed.
"The Bird spoke, Donria," Garric said, wondering if he should get up too. "Haven't you heard him before?"
From the look Donria gave him, that was one of the sillier things Garric had said since he came to this place. "The Bird?" she said, looking up and gaping at the glittering distortion.
"Yes," said the Bird. Its mental voice was a mechanically crisp as the tick of a metronome, but Garric thought it held an undertone of impatience. "Come into Garric's room immediately. Newla can feed him without your presence."
"I didn't know…," Donria said, staring at Garric again. "Headman, did you make it do this?"
"Do as it asks, mistress," Garric said. "The Bird isn't one of our enemies here."
He grinned at the Bird. "I don't think so, at any rate."
The Bird clucked audibly again. "I do not have friends or enemies," it said in Garric's mind. "Only purposes. Your present survival benefits my purposes, Garric."
"Go along with him," Garric said, giving the trembling Donria a gentle pat. She bolted around the corner of the building, almost colliding with Newla and her two flunkies holding pails and a trencher of dried fish.
Did Donria think the Bird was a God? Hmm; wasthe Bird a God?
The Bird had hopped with its assortment of sticks and cord into the interior of the building. Though unseen its words rang with tart clarity in Garric's mind: "I am not a God."
