by David Drake
“As breeding stock, you mean?” Torag said. “Well, we’ll see. Get him in the pen and we’ll talk about it after I eat.”
Either Nerga or Eny—the pair was indistinguishable to Garric—raised his spear as a prod. Garric stepped forward quickly, joining the coffle of women being marched through the compound by their escorts.
A thought struck him. He turned and called, “Sirawhil? If you want me to settle in properly, you’d better come along with your Bird. I can’t speak the language of the villagers here.”
By chance he was near Soma. She put her arm around him and called in a loud voice, “Garric is my man, you women! I will let you share him, but I am his first wife.”
Garric shook her arm away. “Soma,” he said, speaking to be heard by the entire coffle. “I am not your man, and you will never be my woman. Your shamelessness disgusts me!”
That was more or less true, but Garric had better reasons for speaking the words. He wanted allies for whatever plan he came up with, but Soma was the last person of those he’d met in this world whom he’d be willing to trust.
Sirawhil joined them. She glanced over her shoulder to see that Torag was entering the longhouse and no longer looking at them, then whispered, “Garric, you must not run! Torag and his warriors will hunt you down easily. If you’ll stay quiet and not anger the chief, I’m sure I can get you home with me soon. Whether or not he agrees! You can live your life in safety, then.”
“I don’t want trouble,” Garric said. That was a lie or the next thing to one. “If you’ll help me, Sirawhil, I’ll do what I can to help you too.”
And that was a flat lie. Garric didn’t make the mistake of thinking the Corl wizard was his friend just because she wasn’t as likely to kill and eat him as her chief was.
The longhouse had a thatched roof. Its walls were wicker, waist high for two thirds of its length but solid at the back except for small windows covered with grills of some hard jointed grass like bamboo. Three Corl faces were crowded at the nearest window, watching Garric and the other prisoners file past. That must be Torag’s harem.
“Yes,” said the Bird’s silent voice. “If Torag allowed his warriors to eat fresh meat regularly, they’d become sexually mature and he’d have to fight every one of them. Just being close to females in estrus may bring males to maturity. That’s what was happening with Ido and why he risked killing meat for himself.”
To either side of the longhouse were circular beehives big enough for two or three warriors apiece. Members of the raiding party split up among them, growling to one another and to members of the garrison who were coming out of hiding now that Torag’s temper had cooled.
A single Corl climbed a tower supported on three poles, disappearing into the thick darkness. Garric couldn’t imagine how a watchtower was of any use in these conditions, but the fact the guard had called the alarm at Torag’s approach proved otherwise.
Behind the Coerli dwellings was another woven fence, this one only half the height of the fifteen foot wall surrounding the compound. The gate could be barred, but at present it stood open. A human male and female stood in the gateway watching the newcomers. Patterns of deeper darkness behind the fence suggested others were looking out through gaps in the wicker.
The man in gate was squat and burly; his arms were exceptionally long for his modest height. “I am Crispus!” he shouted. “I am the slave of great Torag! All other Grass Beasts are my slaves! Bow to me, all you who enter my domain!”
The coffle of women stopped. Garric stepped forward. Sirawhil was speaking, but though the Bird translated the words in his mind, they were a meaningless blur.
Garric had met his share of bullies at the borough’s annual Sheep Fair: merchants’ bodyguards, muleteers, and sometimes one of the badgers who’d drive off the sheep that a drover had purchased. He’d learned that you could deal with the bully immediately or you could wait, but waiting didn’t ever make the situation better. Therefore—“I’m Garric or-Reise,” he said, his voice rising. “I don’t need to be your master, but I’ll never be your slave!”
Crispus raised the hand he’d held concealed behind the gatepost; he held a cudgel the length of a man’s forearm. Garric lunged forward and smashed the top of his head into Crispus’ nose. Crispus bellowed and staggered backward. Garric drove at him again, catching Crispus with the point of his shoulder and crushing him against the gatepost. Garric felt the air blast out of Crispus’ lungs, but he didn’t hear ribs crack as he’d hoped he might.
Crispus went down. Garric kicked him twice in the face with his heel. He’d been wearing boots or sandals since he became prince so his feet weren’t as callused as they would’ve been when he still lived in Barca’s Hamlet, but the blows would’ve broken bones in a less sturdy victim. As it was, Crispus’ head lolled back and his body went limp.
Garric was breathing hard. He hadn’t had anything to eat since the evening before he was captured; that was part of the reason he was suddenly dizzy.
He bent and picked up Crispus’ cudgel. It wasn’t much good to him with his wrists bound together and tied to his waist on a short lead, but he didn’t see any point in leaving it for Crispus when he woke up.
“Does anybody else think he’ll make me his slave?” he shouted into the darkness beyond the gateway.
The woman who’d been standing with Crispus stepped forward and touched the cords binding Garric’s wrists. She held a hardwood dowel no thicker than a writing stylus. She thrust the point into the knots and worked them loose with startling ease.
“I am Donria,” she said. She was young and shapely. “Until now there were no men here except Crispus.”
She looked up at Garric and added, “Now that I’ve seen you, I don’t think there were any men here at all—until now.”
Cashel figured the road to the charnel house wasn’t any worse than the one that led west out of Barca’s Hamlet, but nobody tried to take a carriage down that one. He, Chalcus, and Ilna had gotten out and were walking with the escorting soldiers, but Tenoctris stayed in the open vehicle of necessity.
Cervoran stayed for reasons Cashel wasn’t sure about. Maybe Cervoran didn’t notice the bumping around.
“Sister take this track!” said the Blood Eagle stumbling along beside Cashel. The guards had their equipment to carry besides watching out for enemies. “You can tell from the ruts how much traffic it gets. How come they don’t grade it smooth, hey?”
As soon as the party’d got into the valley north of Mona, the road’d become limestone—living rock, not crushed stone laid over mud. That sounded better than it was: some layers were harder than others, so the carriage’s iron tires bounced and skidded from one swale to the next. It made a terrible racket and must’ve felt worse, though Tenoctris didn’t let it show and Cervoran, well, he was Cervoran.
“I don’t guess it bothers most people who ride this way,” Cashel said after thinking about it for a little while.
They came around a corner. The valley floor widened here, not much but enough to turn a wagon if you swung the outside wheels up onto the slope. The entrance to the cave was a man’s height up the east wall. A heavy wooden frame’d been built against the limestone to support a double-leaf gate.
A slate-roofed hut stood above the cave mouth where the slope flattened into a ledge. An old man sat on the hut’s porch, cutting an alder sapling into a chain of wooden links. He must’ve heard the carriage far back down the route, but it wasn’t till he saw it was a carriage with the royal seal instead of a wagon carrying corpses that he jumped to his feet. He half-ran, half-scrambled down meet his visitors. He dropped the shoot he was whittling, but he was waving his short, sharp knife until one of the Blood Eagles stopped him and pried it out of his fingers.
“May the Sister help me, dear sirs and ladies!” the fellow said. He spoke the name of the Sister, the Queen of the Underworld, as a real prayer rather than the curse it’d been in the mouth of the soldier a moment before. “Has something gone wrong? Was t
he delivery this morning not a pauper after all? Oh dear, oh dear!”
“We’re here for other reasons,” Tenoctris said as Cashel helped her out of the carriage. “There has been a recent interment then?”
“Why yes,” the caretaker said, backing slightly. “A woman, it was. I didn’t hear the cause of death. They found her dead in the night, was all I was told.”
Cashel handed Tenoctris off to one of the soldiers and stepped quickly around the back of the vehicle to get Cervoran. The Blood Eagles knew Tenoctris well enough that they treated her like a friendly old woman instead of a wizard, but the recently dead man bothered them.
Cashel didn’t blame them for feeling that way, but Cervoran’d showed how useful he was when he made the sea burn. Cashel wouldn’t say the fellow was necessary; nobody was so necessary that the world was going to stop without him. But Cervoran knew more about the present trouble and how to fix it than anybody else Cashel’d met, Tenoctris included by her own words.
“I must have the body,” Cervoran said, tramping toward the gate. The slope’d been cut and filled into a ramp instead of a flight of steps. That’d make it easier for fellows carrying a body. The weight wasn’t much, not for two men, but you were likely to trip on steps for not seeing your feet.
“Ah, may I ask why, sirs and ladies?” the attendant said. He stood stiffly, wringing his hands together. He wasn’t as old as Cashel’d thought first off, maybe no more than thirty. It was hard to judge with bald folks.
Cervoran ignored him, not that, “It is necessary,” would’ve helped much if the fellow’d been what was for him talkative. Tenoctris followed on Ilna’s arm, with Chalcus behind looking as tense and alert as an eagle.
“There are dangers to the kingdom, sir,” Tenoctris said. “Perhaps you heard about the fortress that rose from the sea? The body will help us, help my colleague that is, deal with the threat.”
Cervoran turned on the platform at the top of the ramp. “The Green Woman’s creatures are landing even now,” he said. “Human weapons may delay their advance, but I alone can defeat the Green Woman.”
He paused, then added at a pitch even higher than his usual squeak, “I am Cervoran!”
The attendant looked at Tenoctris and blinked three times quickly, trying to get his mind around the thought. “King Cervoran?” he said in disbelief.
“It seems so,” said Tenoctris, not putting any opinion into her tone. Cashel grinned. He’d probably have said, “I guess so,” and meant the same thing: that they weren’t sure.
Cervoran took hold of one of the doors’ long vertical handles. The panel quivered when he tugged, but it didn’t open. Something buzzed a loud, low note.
“I’ll get it,” Cashel said, stepping past the two wizards and gripping the handle. The door didn’t have a bar or even a latch; nobody was going to break in or out, after all.
Cashel pulled. The door was heavy and fit tightly, but it swung sideways with a squeal.
A flood of flies curled out of the cave and back, like sparks when the roof of a burning building collapses. The stink was the worst Cashel’d smelled since the summer the body of a basking shark cast up on Barca’s Hamlet, so rotten that the lower jaw had fallen off, the cartilage of the gill rakers had rotted into what looked like a horse’s mane. He was used to bad smells, but he stepped back by reflex because he hadn’t expected this one.
Tenoctris threw a hand to her face, then turned and bent over. “Tenoctris, are you—” Cashel started to say, but right then the wizard opened her mouth and vomited. She retched and gasped and tried to throw up again. Cashel stepped toward her but his sister was already there, supporting Tenoctris by the shoulders so she didn’t fall on her face from sheer weakness.
It didn’t affect Cervoran. Well, Cashel hadn’t expected it would. He stepped into the cave and said, “I will use this body. Remove it from the cave for me.”
Cashel pulled the other panel open to give better light than there’d be if his body blocked the half the doorway that was already open. Flies were whirling around like anything, brushing Cashel’s face and even lighting on him. It was pretty bad and the stink was still worse, but he didn’t let any of that show in his face.
From the entrance the cave sloped down for as far as Cashel could see. The stone floor was covered with bodies, bones, and the slick, putrid-smelling liquids that a body turns into if you just let it rot. The corpses near the entrance weren’t as far gone as the ones further in, which’d probably slid or leaked downward as they rotted. The one just inside the door was a middle-aged woman who might’ve been asleep if you didn’t know better.
Cashel squatted beside the body, judging how best to pick it up. It’d stiffened since she died, which’d make it easier to carry. It was a good thing the carriage was open, though, because with her arms spread like this he’d need to break something to get her in through the usual little carriage doors.
“Where d’ye want me to set her, Master Cervoran?” he asked, looking over his shoulder.
It’d have been a side-panel of the carriage that got broken if it’d come to that. The woman wouldn’t mind and what nature was going to do to her body shortly was a lot worse, but Cashel would still’ve broken the side-panel.
“Carry her outside and put her on the ground,” Cervoran said. “The presence of so much death aids my work, but I need more room.”
Cashel glanced toward Tenoctris; she lifted her chin just a hair’s breadth in agreement. Her face was tight and would’ve been angry if she’d allowed it to have any expression.
“All right,” said Cashel, sliding his hands under the shoulders and hips of the corpse and lifting it. The dead woman wasn’t heavy, but she stuck to what’d soaked into the stone. He had to rock her back and forth carefully so that he could pick her up without tearing her skin. He stood, turned, and set her down just clear of the arc the doors swung through.
In the cave it didn’t bother Cashel that all the bodies’d been stripped before being thrown there. The sun was high enough now to shine on the little entrance plaza, though, and the woman looked different. It made Cashel feel like a bully to treat her this way, even though she was dead.
He shrugged, but his expression didn’t change. Well, it had to happen.
Ilna stepped past and swung the doors shut. She didn’t have any difficulty moving the heavy doors, though some of that was just knowing how to use your weight. Still, she was stronger than most people would guess.
Cervoran followed her with his dull eyes. “There was no reason to close the cave,” he said.
“I choose to close it,” Ilna snapped. “Just as I chose to pull you off the pyre. You may call it my whim, if you like.”
Cervoran looked at her for a further moment, then bent and opened his oak case. He had no more expression than a carp does, sucking air on the surface of a pond in high summer.
Cashel grinned. Ilna was a lot of things that most people wouldn’t guess. She hadn’t said, “Tenoctris is a fine lady, not a peasant like me’n my brother, so the smell bothers her.” That might’ve embarrassed Tenoctris, and Ilna wasn’t one to lay what she did on somebody else anyway.
Cashel was proud to have her for a sister. She felt the same way about him, which made it even better.
Cervoran put on the topaz crown, then took other things out of his case. He hadn’t started chanting a spell, but Cashel could feel his skin prickle the way it always did around wizardry. That was what they’d come here for, after all.
Cashel looked at his friends: Ilna and Tenoctris and also Chalcus, who’d backed against the rock face so he could look all the other directions without worrying that somebody was coming up behind him.
The sailor flashed Cashel a grin in response, but he was tense and no mistake. Chalcus wasn’t afraid of wizardry, exactly, but he was nervous because he knew his sword and dagger were no use against it.
Cashel checked to make sure he had space, then started his quarterstaff in a series of slow circles, first in front
of him and then over his head. There was a lot of power around this place. The ferrules on the ends of the hickory shaft twinkled with sparks of blue wizardlight. Cashel smiled as he moved. This quarterstaff had saved him and those he was watching over lots of times; and some of those times he’d been facing wizards.
Ilna watched Cervoran draw a knife from his box and turn toward her. She knew it was an athame, a wizard’s tool used to tease out incantations. The curving symbols cut into the blade were words written in what educated people like Garric called the Old Script. Ilna could recognize them as patterns, though she couldn’t read them any better than she could the blocky New Script folk used today to write in.
Wizard’s tool it might be, but this athame was a real knife also. The hilt and blade were forged from a single piece of iron, and the double edges were raggedly sharp.
“You, Ilna,” Cervoran said. He stepped toward her, raising the athame. “I must have a lock of your hair for the amulet which controls my double.”
Chalcus flicked his sword out and held it straight. The point didn’t touch Cervoran’s right eye, but if it would run the wizard through the brain if he took another step forward.
“Let’s you take a lock of somebody else’s hair, my good friend,” the sailor said in his falsely cheerful voice. “A lock of your own, why not? You’ll not want to pay the cost of raising that ugly blade of yours to Mistress Ilna.”
“Do you think your steel frightens me, man?” Cervoran said. His head turned toward the sailor. “There must be a lock of my hair in the amulet to animate the simulacrum. The hair of Ilna is to control it. Do you think to build a double of me and free it uncontrolled?”
“Why hers, then?” Chalcus said. “Take hairs from my head if you like!”
He was angry in a way Ilna’d rarely seen him. Normally anything that disturbed the sailor as much as this did would’ve given him the release of killing something. The humor of the situation struck Ilna, though nobody seeing her expression was likely to know she was smiling.
