by David Drake
The first time Sharina’d passed the centipede, she’d scraped herself on the bristles sprouting from a leg joint. The break in the skin had begun to fester. She moved carefully now instead of scrambling over the chitinous obstacles with the haste her instincts urged. She really wanted to be out of this place!
Though the huge corpse still twitched, men passed it without the bunching and hesitation Sharina had seen when they were going the other way. Maybe that was because the vivid light that guided the troops hid rather than illuminated the legs pressing against the dark ceiling; and maybe it was just that they were leaving. These were brave men or they’d never have come this way at all, but leaving didn’t require that they struggle against their hope of survival at every step.
“We didn’t drink Her blood,” murmured the axe in a faint, musical tone, “but we drank deep, blood and brains and souls. What will happen now to poor Beard, though?”
What would happen to any of them? Sharina thought with a stab of longing for her placid existence as a girl. Now she lived in a world where she might get up in the middle of the night because of a funny light and find herself dragged into a place ruled by a wizard for Her own evil purposes....
“It’s the same world, mistress,” the axe said. “You just understand what you didn’t understand when you were younger. Perhaps you’d rather be ignorant?”
Sharina smiled wryly. “No,” she said. “I’d rather know the truth. I just wish the truth was different, sometimes.”
“And because you do know the truth, mistress, and act on what you know...,” said the axe. “The truth becomes a little different, a little better, for other people. And Beard drinks his fill for a time, a brief time.”
Sharina was holding the axe in her right hand. With the fingers of her left she stroked the helve, then the steel head. Beard chuckled as if from deep in his throat. The sound trembled through Sharina’s fingertips, reminding her of a cat purring; a very large cat.
She laughed and reached forward to touch Cashel’s shoulder. Together they entered the rotunda where she’d first rejoined her friends and the army.
There were still many people here, but nothing like the crowd there’d been when Sharina arrived. The exit corridor was broad enough to let the soldiers march in squad ranks, and there wasn’t a monster’s corpse along the route to narrow it. Even so the rotunda’s human contents didn’t drain quickly. Sharina hadn’t believed how long it took a large body of troops to march off in column until she’d seen the process twice: the second time to convince her that something hadn’t gone horribly wrong on the first occasion.
“Garric!” Liane called and came running as soon as she saw him past Cashel’s broad shoulders. Sharina smiled as she stepped out of Liane’s way.
“Mistress!” Franca and Scoggin cried together. They and the rest of the ragged band rushed forward with an enthusiasm that caused Cashel to set his staff crosswise between them and Sharina.
That was reflex on Cashel’s part—he knew as well as Sharina did that they intended no harm. But it was also true that frightened men carrying weapons could trip in their haste. An edge didn’t care whether it cut by chance or by design.
Beard laughed. “Some of us care, mistress,” he said.
Master Ortron and several other officers had descended on Garric, who talked to them with one arm around Liane. She held her waxed tablet out at an angle to the light so that she could read the notes she’d been making.
Attaper stepped over to the Blood Eagles, by now a full company under a captain. While the regular troops filed out of the rotunda, the highest-ranking Blood Eagle present had held the bodyguards in ordered ranks until Garric and their commander reappeared. That didn’t delay the general departure and it salved their honor.
Many men worried about honor, which meant they were often silly. But Sharina’d met men who didn’t worry about honor at all, and they were far worse than silly.
“Mistress, what shall we do?” Neal asked. He’d found a spear to take the place of the hammer he’d dropped when Tanus slashed him. The remainder of Alfdan’s band—eight of them now—looked at Neal with sidelong glances at Sharina; only Scoggin and Franca were willing to face her directly.
“My brother Garric—” Sharina said. “Prince Garric, that is, he’s said he’ll make sure you’re taken care of.”
“Will he?” said Beard unexpectedly. “And what about the men in your world who were the same as these till She came? Will the prince kill them so that your friends can have their families and livelihoods back?”
Sharina frowned with real anger. “Of course not, but they’ll have some life!” she said.
“And all the rest in their world?” the axe demanded. “The scattered ones and twos and the families still surviving? She’s gone, but Her creatures still roam the Isles, you know.”
“I’m not going to leave them in the ice!” Sharina snapped. The ragged men glanced from her to the axe, listening with mingled fear and horror. “They wouldn’t stand a chance up on the surface, and these tunnels are no place to live even if they weren’t going to collapse soon!”
Indeed, the ice seemed to moan louder with each passing moment. Shortly it’d be time for Garric and his companions to fall in at the end of the column exiting the rotunda. Sharina knew her brother wouldn’t leave before his troops were clear, any more than he or Cashel would’ve abandoned their flocks when danger threatened.
“Ah, but the tunnels go to other places in this world, mistress,” said the axe. “If these men went now to a valley in this world’s Ornifal, they might be able to save what’s left of a village barricaded against a pack of Her wolves. There’s fourteen men, but some are old; and there’s thirty women, and there’s children besides.”
Cashel stood as silent as a crag. He’d turned his staff vertical and planted one end on the floor beside Sharina now that he was sure the men weren’t going to trample her.
“But I don’t...,” Sharina said.
I don’t know where any of these tunnels lead, except the one that goes back to the edge of the frozen sea and the one down which light leads me home.
I don’t want to stay in this ravaged world myself!
“But I know, mistress,” the axe said. “And I want to stay; with these men, if you’re leaving.”
“Beard, you want to stay here?” Sharina said, shocked by the unexpectedness of it. She wouldn’t—Princess Sharina wouldn’t—need the axe, but she’d assumed after what they’d gone through....
“Mistress, if Beard goes to your world, he becomes a lump of iron,” the axe said. “There She won’t have awakened him. Would you do that to one whom you’ve fed so well in the past, when there’s so much more for him here to eat?”
The Blood Eagle captain shouted an order over the creak of the ice. His company came to attention. There was already a gap between them and the end of the shuffling column of regulars.
“Sharina?” called Garric. “Time to go.”
Without looking up, she waved a hand to indicate that she’d heard. She opened her mouth to object to the axe, then said instead, “Neal and all the rest of you?”
She glanced from Scoggin to Franca, adding, “Both of you as well. You can come to my world where you’ll have some sort of jobs. Or you can let Beard lead you to a place in your world where you’re needed and you can make a difference. Which? Quickly!”
“Will you come with us to Ornifal, mistress?” Franca asked. They’d of course been listening to what she and the axe said, deciding their future for them.
“No, she won’t come with you,” said Beard in a rising, sneering tone. “And you’ll never see her again if you come to the mistress’s world either. She’s a fine lady, you fools! You’ll have your farms and your shops, and you can bore people who’ll think you’re lying when you say you helped Princess Sharina save your world—which you then abandoned!”
“But you’ll be safe,” Sharina said.
Garric waited; Attaper spoke in his ear, but
Garric gestured him back curtly. Both men’s eyes were on Sharina.
“Mistress,” said Neal. “If we go to this place in Ornifal—”
“The place with the women,” Layson amplified.
“—who would carry your axe?”
“Here,” said Sharina, turning Beard to offer the grip to Neal.
The big man shied as if the helve were a snake. “Mistress!” he said, his hands trembling despite their grip on his spear shaft. “Not me, mistress, please!”
The rest of the band had backed away also. They’d seen a great deal of wizardry when they followed Alfdan. That had made them more, not less, afraid of it.
“I’ll take Beard,” Franca said. He looked down at the axe and added, “If he’ll have me?”
“I’ll serve you, young master,” said the axe. “Oh, wolves’ blood first and then who knows what we’ll drink?”
In a voice like an alarm bell, Beard went on, “Quickly, though! Quickly!”
Franca grasped the axe. He hesitated a moment, then offered his hunting spear, bloody now, to Sharina.
I don’t need this! she thought, but she took it.
“Let’s go!” Garric ordered with a peremptory gesture. He started off at a trot to join the end of the column.
Sharina touched Cashel’s arm; he nodded and they followed Garric. Behind them a screamed order brought the bodyguard company off to a crashing double time.
Franca’s band jogged toward another of the arched corridors. Sharina could hear Beard calling directions in a voice that pierced like an awl. They’d be in darkness most of the way, she supposed; but she also supposed they’d be all right. Beard had never failed her, after all.
She reached out with her left hand and squeezed Cashel’s forearm as they ran, just for the companionship. Her eyes stung. She was angry at herself for being so silly, but she couldn’t stop the tears.
***
“Go on ahead,” Cashel said to Sharina as the last of the regular soldiers walked through the lens of light. Their forms shrank faster than their strides justified. “I’ll stay with Tenoctris.”
He squeezed her hand as she stepped into the light, her head high and her spear glinting.
Garric hesitated also. Attaper gripped him by the elbow. “Your highness, nobody doubts your courage. Now let’s get back to our world so that you can take charge!”
Garric met Cashel’s eyes; grinned in embarrassment, and obeyed. He and Attaper vanished into the lens, still arm in arm. The company of Blood Eagles followed, man by man across each rank, from the front to the rear.
“You can go too,” Cashel said to the soldier who knelt with a supporting arm around Tenoctris’ shoulders. The old wizard looked pale as a wraith, but she continued to mumble a chant as she tapped the corners of her triangle in sequence. A line of light lifted from the center of the marking and split—one arm blue and brilliant stretching back down the corridor, the other faint and red where it entered the lens.
The soldier glared. His right leg stuck out straight; splints made from broken spear shafts were bound above and below the knee.
“I been with her this long,” he snapped. “Guess I’ll take her the rest of the way. Beat it, farm boy!”
Cashel nodded. “Are you going to carry her back?” he asked calmly. “Because I guess you know she won’t be able to walk.”
The soldier gaped in sudden horror. Cashel gave him a warm smile. “Go on through, friend,” he said. “I’ll be along with Tenoctris. You’ve done a great job, but for this I’ll do better.”
He squatted to Tenoctris’ other side and placed his arm below the soldier’s. The man sucked in his lips, then nodded. “Right,” he said. “I’ll wait for you on the other end.”
He staggered to his feet. The last of the bodyguards were entering the lens. A pair of them took the injured soldier’s arms over their shoulders and walked in, holding him upright.
Cashel looked up. Nobody was left but him, the old wizard, and the fellow who commanded Garric’s army—Lord Waldron. “Go on, sir,” Cashel said to the old man. “I’ll bring Tenoctris.”
“Get out of here, boy!” Waldron snarled. “I obeyed orders to stay while the others went on to fight, but the Sister eat my kidneys if I leave before everybody else is gone!”
“Right,” said Cashel. “I can see that.”
He slid his arm under Tenoctris’ haunches. “It’s time for us to go, Tenoctris,” he said calmly and lifted her, still chanting. The guiding line vanished, but they didn’t need it now.
Cradling the old woman to his chest, the quarterstaff upright in his other hand, Cashel walked into the disk that became a corkscrew tunnel as soon as he entered. He could see the miniature figures of the soldiers ahead of him, but even without them he wouldn’t have gotten lost.
He glanced over his shoulder. Lord Waldron was following, as stiffly upright as Cashel’s staff—though he seemed to be walking on his side because of what this place did to eyesight.
Tenoctris mumbled something. “We’ll be out of this in a moment, Tenoctris,” Cashel said. “You can get a proper rest, then. You did a wonderful job. You saved everybody.”
That was pretty much true, but it was true for a lot of people. Cashel included, he guessed.
Shortly Cashel would step out into sunlight again. Sharina’d be there waiting for him, and likely Garric and Ilna besides. They’d done a good job, all of them. They could relax for a time, he hoped.
And if something else happened, as it probably would... well, Cashel had been a shepherd. He’d gone out every day with his flock, because they might need him. That was what Garric was doing now, only instead of sheep he had the whole Isles to watch over. That was how it was supposed to be.
And Garric had friends to help him watch. That was how it was supposed to be too.
Cashel stepped into the sunlit palace garden, onto the altar and then down to the ground where he handed Tenoctris to the soldier who’d been helping her in the tunnel. There was a lot of shouting, but it was happy shouting. Sharina threw her arms around Cashel and he kissed her, right there in public with ever so many people looking on.
At least for now, things were the way they were supposed to be.
