The Fortress Of Glass

by David Drake

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 this accursed 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 to try 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 audible Cluk/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 i
n 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 he had: youth, strength, friends, and a good mind. And also he had 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; was the 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.”

  Garric stood out of courtesy for the women bringing the food, then settled again. The pails were cut from the stems of a jointed grass—bigger than bamboo from the island of Shengy, but something like that. The smaller pail held a sour fermented beverage. It had a reddish cast, so he supposed it was wine rather than beer. His lips puckered when he sipped it, but it was better than water polluted by run-off from human slaughter. Crispus stepped around the corner. He held a wrist-thick log the length of his forearm. It was cruder than the cudgel that he’d tried to use on Garric the night before, but it’d do.

  Garric scrambled to his feet, holding the pail. He’d left the cudgel behind in the headman’s room. He thought of shouting to Donria to throw it through the vent to him, but the chances were he’d lose the fight if he turned away from Crispus to grab a wildly flung weapon.

  The women scattered like frightened chickens, though Garric saw them only as motion at the corners of his eyes. He didn’t blame them. This wasn’t their fight, and he was a stranger with no claim on their loyalty anyway.

  Crispus shuffled forward, holding the club vertical in both hands. He hadn’t spoken. His nose was purple and swollen, and his eyes were bloodshot.

  What would happen if I ran? Garric wondered. He wouldn’t, though. There was the risk his leg’d cramp because of the way he’d been tied on the march from Wandalo’s village, and anyway he didn’t like the thought of running.

  In the back of his mind King Carus weighed options with the cold skill of a born warrior. Crispus wasn’t going to get a third chance to kill the man who’d supplanted him as headman…

  “Hey, what’s going on down there?” the tower guard called. The Corl couldn’t see him or Crispus either because the building was in the way, but he’d noticed the women fleeing and could guess what it meant. “Torag will decide when you’ll be allowed to fight!”

  Crispus ignored the guard, edging closer by a dragging step. Garric smiled disarmingly. He was crouching, but instead of tensing he let his body rise slightly as though he’d relaxed.

  Arms clutched his torso from behind and lifted him off the ground. “Now, Crispus!” Soma screamed. She was as strong as an octopus.

  Crispus strode forward, bringing his club down in a whistling arc. Garric kicked back at the post he’d been leaning against, throwing himself and Soma both to the right.

  The club smacked the woman’s shoulder hard enough to stagger Garric too. Soma shouted and lost her grip. Garric sprang up, grabbing Crispus’ left wrist and the shaft of the club.

  Crispus bawled in fear and tried to pull away. Garric let go of his wrist and used both hands to wrench the club free. Crispus turned and ran around the corner of the building. Garric sprang after him.

  The gate between the slave and Coerli portions of the compound was open. The guard stood in it; he’d come down from the tower to end the fight. His weighted cord curled around Crispus’ neck, choking him silent.

  Garric’s left hand jerked Crispus back by the hair as he raised the club in his right. Crispus gave a strangled bleat. The Corl snarled and leaped the ten feet separating him from Garric, furious that the beasts were continuing to fight even after he’d immobilized the nearer one.

  Garric’s club slashed down. He wasn’t quick enough to follow the ca
t man’s action, but King Carus’ instinct had allowed him to anticipate it. The business end of the club cracked the Corl’s skull.

  Garric jerked the stone-headed axe from the warrior as he convulsed. Crispus began to thrash also; the cord in the Corl’s right hand was tightening on his neck. Garric didn’t have either the time or the inclination to worry about that. He hadn’t been thinking, just reacting as Carus would’ve reacted. That was the reason he was still alive.

  He drew in a deep breath and sneezed violently: the longhouse was on fire. Flames curled out of the transom, and the wet thatch was gushing smoke.

  Donria ran out of the front door of the building. She held the sticks and cord the Bird had appeared with. Linked as they were now, Garric recognized a fire bow. He’d seen others light a fire by friction when flint and steel weren’t available, though he’d never had occasion to do it himself.

  “Come, Garric!” she cried. “There’s a hole at the back of the stockade!”

  “But—” Garric said, then turned to follow Donria. Action might save him; argument certainly wouldn’t.

  A glitter at the corner of his eye drew his attention as he ran. The Bird whirled out of the smoke with a tag of burning mattress in its claws. It dipped to set the fire under the eaves of Torag’s longhouse, then sparkled through the white billows to join Garric and Donria as they fled.

  Chapter 9

  The sun was just below zenith when the gigs and the soldiers guarding them pulled up in the plaza behind the palace. Tenoctris hadn’t spoken on the way back except for brief, vague replies to the few questions Sharina’d asked. Though the wizard’s eyes were on the horse and the road before them, her mind was obviously other places.

  Sharina’d ridden in silence most of the way also. It seemed likely that whatever Tenoctris was considering was more important than answering questions about Double and the hellplants that Sharina suspected didn’t have real answers.

  A groom gripped the horse’s cheekpiece. Two Blood Eagles reached up for Tenoctris, but Sharina helped the old wizard dismount herself. She was a princess and for the moment regent of the kingdom, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t lend a hand to a friend.