by David Drake
Garric paused, looking from the struggling fire toward the sky. Sirawhil, of course. Torag and his warriors had lost their heads in the disaster, but she had not. If she could keep the humans from winning by daylight, darkness and the pause to regroup would give the battle to the Coerli.
Give the humans over to slaughter by the Coerli.
"…semimenaeus damasilam laikam…"
Sirawhil chanting-but it couldn't be, it was frombehind.
Garric turned swiftly. Marzan sat on firm ground a short distance from the mat which bridged the bog. He wore his headdress of black feathers and held a separate feather, longer than the others, as a wand. He chanted over the topaz, "Iesen nalle nallelam…"
A wind was rising; cat's-paws fluttered puddles and chilled the sweat on Garric's shoulders. Somewhere in the mid sky a much greater force awoke with a low howl.
"Malthabeth eomal allasan…," chanted Marzan. The young girl who'd been helping him walk now stood behind him with a fire-hardened stake. She glared fiercely, turning her head to watch everything around them. It seemed to Garric that she was more concerned that another villager would bump the wizard than that the Coerli would attack.
Marzan's face showed the strain of his art, but Garric recognized also a hint of smug triumph in the wizard's expression. Carus and he hadn't considered Sirawhil's powers when they planned the attack, but neither had they remembered that Marzan was on their side.
And Marzan had the topaz. Within the jewel was an azure spark around which whirled the cloudy flaws.
The rain built to a thunderous downpour; to Garric it seemed more like standing at the base of a waterfall than being caught in an ordinary storm. The blaze that'd started to devour the stockade slumped back into steam and angry spittings.
A fist of wind shrieked out of the sky and whirled a hollow dome above the fire. In it glittered azure wizardlight; the rain splashed and runnelled away as though from a rock. The fire quickly regained its enthusiasm, carving into the fabric of the wall. Rain quenched the curtains of sparks swirling up beyond the shield of wind, but within its heart the blaze swelled into an inferno.
Garric turned his face away, watching through the corners of his eyes. The heat was too fierce for his cheeks to bear.
The flames roared so loudly that Garric couldn't hear Marzan's chanting, but the wizard's feather continued to tap to the rhythm of his moving lips. The rain lashed him and his helper just as it did the other gathered humans, but Garric noticed that the drops falling toward the topaz disintegrated in blue flashes a finger's breadth above it.
The upper gate hinge, a flat wicker rope, burned through. The lower hinge held for a moment, but when the leaf tilted inward it tore also. The gate fell open with a gush of sparks. Several Coerli sprang away from the ruin with despairing wails. The rain noticeably slackened, then stopped.
"Fellow humans!" Garric shouted. Carus had been right-of course: Garric was ready to fight now, and he'd havebeen ready if Torag had led another sally. "We'll go in as soon as the fire's burned back enough from the gap. Remember, we're deciding today whether this world belongs to men or cat beasts!"
"There's only one rule here," said Carus, watching through Garric's eyes but seeing more than Garric would ever see in a battle. "Don't stop, don't slow down; don't quit while there's one of them standing. Never quit!"
"Come along, Leto!" Donria said. "Mirza, you're next, and where's Keles?"
A woman carrying a bundle of brush that hadn't gone into the fire now threw her load off the end of the matting. It sank slightly in the bog, but buoyancy and the way its weight was spread kept it high. It didn't submerge even when another woman stepped onto it to drop her similar load a full stride closer to the stockade.
A third woman was struggling forward with what was more of a tangle than a bundle. The withies that'd bound the brush together had come untied at some point in the march or the recent fighting, so sticks kept dropping out.
The fire was burning in both directions from where Donria's raft had kindled it. It advanced through the stockade at the speed a man could walk. The wicker had been rained on daily for as long as it'd been up, but the core of the withies was dry and sapless. Heat sufficient to sear through the surface layer brought a return of many times greater flames, though these burned down quickly to white ash.
Garric looked at the gap, then at the waiting villagers. Some were apprehensive, but to his surprise more of them watched the destruction of this symbol of Coerli dominance with awed delight. The fight wasn't over yet, but that was a better mindset than fear.
Garric grinned. Though fear was certainly justified.
The third bundle of brushwood went into the bog; two other women had helped the bearer tie it back together. Where the stockade gate had been was now a hole you could drive a team of oxen through if you could convince them to step in hot ashes. Garric couldn't see any cat men.
"Nets ready!" Garric shouted. He raised his axe; he didn't have a minnow net any more himself. "Come on, fellow humans! The world for mankind!"
With Metz at his side and behind them Abay and Horst, Garric charged the opening. Smoke stung his eyes, but he noticed with pleased surprise that the pain of his wound had subsided to a dull ache. "The world for mankind!"
The last bundle of cut brush rotated slightly as Garric jumped from it. He landed short, on firm ground but tilted forward and about to fall on his face. He dabbed his left hand down and bellowed; he'd put his weight on a live coal hidden under the ashes. His callused feet might not have minded it, but his palm certainly did.
"It's on fire!" Metz shouted. "It's burning!"
Of course it's burning, we started the fire ourselves! Garric thought, but the snarl-really over his blistered hand, not anything Metz had said-didn't make it to his lips. Fortunately, because otherwise he'd have had to apologize.
The slave barracks was ablaze. The damp thatch gushed a pall of choking white smoke. The slave women-the cattle, as they'd been-had opened the gate in the cross wall. They were pouring into the Coerli portion of the compound, each bearing a torch and generally a weapon as well: a stake, a club, even a bag with enough wet dirt in the end of it to knock a man silly.
To knock a cat man silly. Garric saw Donria's raw-boned deputy Newla, but she seemed to be leading rather than commanding the revolt. The slaves' only future had been to become cold dinners for the Coerli, later if not sooner. All they'd have needed to riot was an opportunity. But where had they gotten the fire?
"When you and Donria fled…," said a voice in Garric's head. It was the first time since the attack began that the Bird had spoken to him directly. "Soma concealed the block and fire bow I'd brought you. She lit a fire when the attack began. By the time the Coerli realized what was happening, she'd begun distributing torches among the other women."
"Somadid?" Garric said in amazement. The only Coerli he saw were one who'd been wounded in the fighting outside the stockade and had apparently died from the gaping hole in his chest while crawling toward Torag's longhouse, and a dead warrior close to the gate from the slave quarters.
"Yes," said the Bird. "She led the attack on Sirawhil here in the courtyard. She killed the warrior guarding the wizard by thrusting a torch into his mouth. Not before he disemboweled her, of course."
"Half a dozen of you pick up that burning hut!" King Carus shouted, taking control of Garric's tongue while Garric was too stunned by what he'd just heard to be fully aware of his surroundings. "We're going to throw it into the longhouse. That's where the cat beasts have laired up!"
One of the half-dozen beehives that housed the warriors in groups of two or three was burning with the same sluggish determination as the slave barracks. The blanket of white smoke it spewed out hovered at waist height, drifting slowly westward now that Marzan's whirlwind no longer ripped through the compound. Though the fire didn't look enthusiastic, it'd devoured about a quarter of the thatch dome.
"Right!" said Garric, puzzling nearby villagers who thought he wa
s talking to himself. "Come on, five of you! Metz, you and your uncles guard us. Come on, grab a post!"
Garric deliberately put himself closest to Torag's longhouse, at the edge of the pall of smoke. He gripped one of the hooped poles supporting the frame and tried to lift it with his left hand only. The pole was sunk too deep for him to pull it out of the ground that way.
He dropped the axe and shoved both hands through the thatch to seize the pole, then straightened his knees. His vision blurred. Duzi it hurt!
"Put your man in it!" old Cobb used to say when he'd hired Garric at fourteen to grub a drainage trench through a boulder-studded field. "Put your-"
Garric came up with the pole in his hands. The hut shuddered, spewing sparks and rising all along its circumference as villagers lifted their poles also when Garric had broken the weight free to begin with.
"Let's go!" Garric bawled, barely able to see for the tears and pain. He staggered forward, in the direction memory told him the longhouse ought to be. If the cat men made a sally, he'd be dead before he knew it. This wasn't strategy or even tactics, it was a buzzing determination of a horsefly which is willing to die so long as she can drink blood first. "Let's go!"
"It's the way to win battles," growled the king in his mind. "Never flinch, never quit."
"Torches!" Donria screamed. "Throw your torches! Throw them, Newla!"
Garric more felt than saw the brands whickering past in smoky arcs, bouncing from the roof and on the porch boards. A Corl, perhaps Torag himself from the volume, shrieked in maddened fury. If they'd been preparing to rush, the rain of torches made them hesitate.
Garric's foot stubbed against the porch. "Now!" he cried. "Throw the-"
He lifted and heaved, twisting his body out of the way. The burning hut slid past him under the grunting effort of the villagers still pushing the load.
Garric landed on his side and arm; the left arm, thank the Shepherd, but it wouldn't have mattered. it wouldn't have mattered if he'd torn his whole arm off because he'd succeeded. They'd beaten the Coerli.
The hut, fanned to brighter flames when they moved it, crunched into the porch of the longhouse. Smoldering bits of thatch broke off, but a considerable quantity must've gone through the central door. Almost at once white smoke curled from the windows at either end.
Metz helped Garric up and slapped the butt of his stone axe into his hand. Garric's fingers closed over the weapon thankfully, ready to meet the rush of Coerli warriors that he knew now would never happen. The fire had beaten them; and more than fire, the shock of facing men who understood war and who carried the fight to their enemies.
Metz pulled him back. The walls of the longhouse crackled more fiercely than damp thatch as the flames mounted. "Is there another way out?" Garric asked hoarsely.
"I sent my uncles around the building with nets to cover any doors they found," Metz said. "The cords'll burn, but they'll hold till the fire finishes the business."
"There are no other doors," said the Bird with crisp authority. It landed on Garric's left shoulder, a gossamer weight and a comforting presence. "Besides, the Coerli would not run."
"Then they'll die," said Garric, lifting the axe slightly. His arm felt as though it belonged to somebody else, not so much painful as a vividly described pain.
He remembered watching the Coerli kill and devour a woman with slavering gusto. "Either way they were going to die," he added.
The ridgepole broke; the roof of the longhouse collapsed on the interior in a shower of sparks. A handful of thatch lifted in a spiral, then fell apart twenty feet in the air. It dribbled back as scattered smoke trails. Garric thought he heard a cry of agony, but it might've been steam squealing from a burning log.
"I have brought the hero who freed us from the Coerli!" quavered a voice.
Garric turned, feeling the heat of the burning longhouse on his back. Marzan stood where the gate of the stockade had been. His right arm was over the shoulders of the girl aiding him, but his left held the topaz out before him.
"I have conquered!" the wizard cried. "I am Marzan the Great!"
"You know, lad?" said King Carus. "I think I'd have to agree with him. But he sure picked the right sword for his fight.."
Around them the flames hissed, and a plume of smoke climbed into the gray skies.
***
Cashel rocked a little as he felt coarse soil under his feet. He and Protas didn't move-it was more like the world moved under them-but each time it happened Cashelfelt like he ought to be falling on his face.
It was night. The moon in its first quarter hung low in the west and the stars were bright but unfamiliar. One constellation looked a little like the Widow's Donkey, but just a little. Something wailed dismally at the back of the cold, dry wind.
"Umm," said Cashel, pulling the slippers out from under his belt where he'd stuck them. "Here, Protas. They're still wet and muddy, but you'll probably be better with them on."
The boy stood on one leg to pull a slipper on the opposite foot. When he started to topple he caught Cashel's arm.
"Best sit down," Cashel said, disengaging himself without being too harsh about it. Protas thumped to the ground, and Cashel resumed looking all around them.
A new guide ought to be picking them up, and there might be other things looking for them besides the guide. It was hard to tell what was howling in the distance, and there was no way at all to know how big it was.
He and Protas were on a mound of dirt dried to crumbly stone. Around them were more mounds, bigger or smaller, their sides carved by the rain that must fall occasionally. Not any time recently, though. Spiky bushes and clumps of grass were scattered widely. Each stood on the pedestal which its roots protected from the scouring wind.
"Hello?" called a voice. "Hello, are you there?"
"Sir?" said Cashel, turning the direction the sound came from. The bigger mounds were clearly banded, though he couldn't tell colors in the faint moonlight. Here and there what looked like big bones were weathering out of the dirt. "Lord Protas and me're this way, sir!"
He wasn't completely sure it was a man calling, the voice was that thin and squeaky. Well, if it was a woman, he'd apologize.
"What's that?" the voice said. A yellow light bobbed around a pinnacle as tall as a man but not much wider than the quarterstaff was long. "All right, I see you now. Don't move!"
"Move where, Cashel?" Protas said in a low voice. The boy was looking at the landscape too, though there wasn't much to see. That wasn't the worst thing they could've found, of course.
"I think he's just talking," Cashel said. "But in case the ground's going to swallow us whole if we step off this little hill, we'll stay right where we are."
"Oh!" said Protas with more enthusiasm than Cashel's comment warranted. He'd probably read books the way Garric and Sharina did, all full of wonderful things that hadn't really happened or didn't happen much.
Sometimes they did happen, though, so Cashel was staying where he was. A shepherd learns to be careful. There's nothing so unlikely that some ewe, some day, won't manage to get herself in trouble doing it.
"Yes!" said the man with the lantern. He was as tall as Cashel but thin as a rail. "There's two of you, then. Well, come along, we mustn't waste time outside. It's quite dangerous, even this close to my dwelling. And we can't possibly try to go on at night, that would be hopeless, completely hopeless! I don't know why you came here at this time of day!"
"Who are you, sirrah?" Protas said sharply, making his voice seem to come out of his nose in that way he had. "I am Protas, son of Cervoran, and my companion is Master Cashel, the great wizard. We are not men to be ordered about by some nameless flunky!"
"What?" said the guide, drawing himself up full-height and holding the lantern closer to Protas' face. It was just a candle, likely tallow, behind horn lenses and didn't do much to aid the low moon. "I'm Antesiodorus, that's who I am. A scholar and a man who deserves respect even from ill-mannered boys."
"I don't mind
standing here," said Cashel. "But if you've got water in your place, Master Antesiodorus, I'd appreciate a drink."
Cashel was smiling, more on the inside than with his lips. He'd been ordered around by no end of angry little people who thought they were more important than the world thought. He didn't make a fuss about it; he didn't fuss about much of anything. If Protas wanted to bring somebody up short for being impolite, though, that was all right with with him. The boy was being a lot nicer about it than Ilna would've been, that was for sure.
Protas raised his left hand and touched the topaz crown.
"I'm not afraid," said Antesiodorus, this time with a kind of stiff dignity. "I have my duty and I'll do it. If you'll come with me, sirs, I'll provide such hospitality as I have available."
Cashel heard rustlings around them as they traced a winding path between the cutaway mounds, but it didn't seem there was anything big or anything particularly interested in them, either one. What he thought at first was a bird swooped close, but it flew more like a bat as he watched it flutter away.
A low house was built between a couple of miniature buttes ahead of them. Light, probably from a single candle, winked through chinks in the walls.
"Are those logs?" Protas asked. "Where did you find trees so big here, sir?"
"They are not logs, they are bones," said the guide. "I didn't find them, they were found by those persons who built the dwelling I am forced to occupy. And while I can only conjecture, it seems reasonable that they dug the bones out of the hills. Similar ones are weathering out even now."
The house was long and rambling. Instead of going through the doorway covered with fabric pinned to the transom, Cashel walked to the southwest corner to look at the place in the moonlight. They were bones all right, thighs mostly but with big shoulder blades slid in sideways between layers and chinked with mud. The roof trusses were ribs, covered with sod. Well, dirt anyway, and Antesiodorus must keep it wetted down because coarse grass grew all over it instead of just tuffets here and there like the landscape in general.
