by David Drake
“Your highness,” Ascor said, looking out at the advancing hellplants. “If the ground was firm, well…”
He shrugged. “Nothing against the line regiments, your highness,” he continued, “but once troops start to run, it’s next to impossible to turn them. Even good troops.”
Lires stamped. His boot slurped ankle-deep in mud. “They couldn’t get to running in this, you see?” he said. “Nothing to do but stand the way the trumpets tell ‘em to do.”
Attaper was within ten yards, slogging on in silent fury. He’d widened the gap between himself and the soldiers who’d been with him, even though most of them were younger than he was. In the morning, if Attaper lived that long, he’d be in agony with pulled muscles in his thighs, but he didn’t allow pain or the mud stop him now.
Thinking of what she was going to tell the commander made Sharina look back at Tenoctris. The old wizard continued to chant within the fence of soldiers’ legs. How long will it take to—With a sudden convulsive movement, Tenoctris stabbed her bamboo split into the center of the scooped basin in front of her. She cried, “Sabaoth!”
The air sparkled faintly blue. The water in the basin froze.
Ice spread outward in jagged curves from the basin, crackling and forming a white rind over the marsh. The soldiers guarding Tenoctris were taken by surprise. They leaped up and stamped, breaking their boots free of frozen mud.
Sharina saw the ice sweeping toward her. She tried to jump over the oncoming change, but she hadn’t allowed for her fatigue. She stumbled forward and felt the mud congeal about her feet as the broad swathe slid past her and on. It left the rime behind it gleaming like a slug’s track.
She tried to pull free, twisting against the soil’s cold grip. Lires drove the butt of his spear into the ground beside her left foot, smashing the thick crust and allowing her to lift her feet out of it.
All around Sharina soldiers shouted in fear and amazement. As Tenoctris’ spell spread outward, its effect speeded up. The soil froze to the edge of the bay, turning windblown foam into a coating of rime.
Men hopped up and down, freeing themselves, but the hellplants stopped where they were as if suddenly rooted to the ground. Their tentacles moved sluggishly, no faster than the blooms of the heliotrope following the circuit of the sun. Plants don’t like cold any better than they like darkness…
“Lord Attaper!” Sharina said as the guard commander struggled to her side. “Now’s the time to attack, while we can move and the plants cannot. Can you give the signal?”
Attaper looked first shocked, then puzzled. Then the meaning behind the words dragged his mind out of the set, angry rut in which it’d been running and he saw that she was right.
“You, cornicene!” he shouted to the signaller from a line regiment standing a few yards away. “Sound Charge!”
He turned. “Blood Eagles, follow me!” he bellowed. “Sharina and the Isles.”
Sharina waved her Pewle knife in the air. “The Isles forever! Attack, attack, attack!”
The Blood Eagles turned around. Nobody else was paying attention to Princess Sharina; indeed, the Blood Eagles probably weren’t either, but they saw their commander slant his sword toward the enemy. That was enough for them.
Sharina could’ve stayed where she was; should’ve stayed where she was, she knew, because there were ten thousand male swordsmen in the regiments assembled here. Every one of them was better for the purpose than a woman with a knife, even a healthy young woman with a big knife..
She advanced on the hellplants anyway, with Lord Attaper at her left and Lires on her right. The trooper had loosened his shield strap so that he could hold it out in front of the Princess if he needed to.
Lires wasn’t a great thinker, but he knew battle and he knew his job. He had the ability many smarter men lacked, the knack of connecting his experience with the situation he’d be facing in the immediate future. Thus the shield strap.
The ground had occasional patches of greasy slickness, but the soil had been gritty enough that even frozen it gripped the soles of Sharina’s sandals well enough. The soldiers’ hobnails dug in; the texture of the ground was like that of the first hard freeze of winter, not the surface of a glacier.
Tenoctris had collapsed over her symbol and basin. One of the guards had lifted her head off the ground and was placing his rolled cloak under it; the rest of the squad stood around her as they’d been ordered to do, looking unhappy. Seeing them allowed Sharina to relax slightly. If they hadn’t been there, she’d have had to go back and stay with her friend; but then, if they hadn’t stayed where they’d been ordered to, Attaper would’ve dismissed them from the Blood Eagles and very possibly had the squad leader executed. A princess has the right to determine for herself where duty lies. A soldier does not.
Lord Waldron was trying to reorganize his forces after the multiple disruptions caused by wizardry; his subordinate commanders had even more basic objectives, to halt men on the verge of panic and to get them to listen to commands again. Nobody had time for or interest in a single signaller sounding Charge on the horn wrapped around his body.
They noticed the bodyguard regiment, though—a hundred and some big men in black armor, advancing toward the enemy in a reasonably compact mass. Sharina’s bright blonde hair hadn’t regrown to the splendor it’d been before she’d had to shave it a few months earlier, but it still stood out like a banner in a sea of soldiers.
And even troops who couldn’t see the Princess among her guards were drawn by the attack. Often it’s easier to move toward danger than it is to wait patiently for imminent danger to come to you.
Once men looked in the direction the Blood Eagles were advancing, they saw that the terrible enemies they’d feared as even brave men fear were frozen and motionless. They were no more dangerous now than so many cabbages.
The hellplants were ripe for revenge.
Sharina jogged and skidded over ground that was more solid than the week before when it’d been plowed fields. It was better footing this way too, since the furrows had slumped closed when the farm’d turned to marshland. It was tricky to run across furrows and almost impossible to run along them without stumbling in a soft spot or where a clod turned underfoot; Sharina knew…
Tenoctris couldn’t have done this! To undo the work of the Green Woman would’ve required a wizard of equal power, and only Double—Sharina looked over her shoulder. The whole army was returning sluggishly to the attack; that was gratifying. But Double was where Sharina’d last seen him, standing beside his case of paraphernalia and wearing a look of blank incomprehension. She didn’t think his legs had moved since the spell took effect; was he frozen to the ground?
Tenoctris had done something. Perhaps she’d summoned Cervoran? But she’d claimed that Double was Cervoran!
A hellplant had advanced a few yards ahead of its fellows; perhaps it’d crossed the earthworks at a place where the rampart had slumped. Three Blood Eagles and a line soldier fell on it just ahead of Sharina. One guard had come from a cavalry regiment and still carried his long sword; he thrust it deep into the hellplant’s barrel and twisted as it jerked it back.
A crinkle of ice followed the steel; the reservoir in the creatures’ bodies had frozen along with the fields. No wonder the plants had stopped advancing!
Four men hacking at one object, even an object as large as a hellplant, were enough. More blades without careful coordination meant the attackers would cut one another, and Sharina had seen too many battles by now to imagine that ‘careful coordination’ was possible in the midst of one.
She ran to the next plant. Attaper and Lires flanked her as before. She half expected Attaper to object, but instead he saved his breath for better uses.
The score of tentacles fringing the top of the hellplant’s barrel were blackening from the cold already. One moved feebly toward Sharina; she sheared it with a side-stroke, then bent. As the soldiers slashed at the plant’s vast body, she began methodically to chop off the w
hite, wormlike tendrils on which the creature walked.
Each blow crunched the blade through into the ground beneath. She’d have to sharpen it after the battle, but there was no time for finesse. Nonnus would’ve understood that.
Lady, bless the soul of my friend and protector. Lady, make me worthy of the life he sacrificed for me.
“Back, your highness!” Attaper said. Before he had the last syllable out, he’d grabbed Sharina by the shoulder and dragged her away. There’s no time for finesse.
The plant slumped like a mass of snow sliding off roof slates, a quiver building to a rush until it crashed into the hard ground. The green body burst at every point a blade had cut it. A slush of half-frozen seawater oozed out, smelling of iodine.
A javelin stood up from the mass, then fell free as the remains rotted with the usual suddenness. The spear hadn’t been there when Sharina and the guards attacked the creature: one of the soldiers behind them had thrown it while they fought, missing the humans by the Lady’s grace and doing no significant harm to the plant, as any idiot should’ve known by now!
Sharina started to laugh. She took two steps toward the next hellplant, but there was already a squad of men around every one of the creatures in the immediate vicinity. She stopped, her laughter building hysterically. She knelt and set the Pewle knife flat on the ground; she was afraid she’d cut herself as she laughed uncontrollably.
“Your highness?” Attaper said. “Your highness!”
“I’ve read the Old Kingdom epics, Attaper!” Sharina said. Concentrating to speak helped her to regain self control. “They’ve all got battles in them. Sometimes they’re mostly battles.”
“Your highness?” Attaper said, this time in confusion instead of building concern.
“Not once in an epic, milord,” Sharina said. “Not once. Is the king killed when one of his own men accidentally sticks a spear through him from behind. I’m beginning to think the poets aren’t trustworthy guides to the reality of battle!”
She dissolved into laughter again, resting her palms on the hard ground. Around her rang the triumphant cries of her men as they cleared Calf’s Head Bay of living hellplants.
Garric paused at the lip of the abyss. He’d been expecting a narrow canyon—for no particular reason, he realized. It was just an assumption he’d made.
A foolish assumption, he saw now: the abyss was more or less circular as best he could tell through the mist. The walls were steep, crumbled back slightly around the rim but close to vertical in many places further down as Garric’s eye tracked it. He heard water roaring over the cliff somewhere though he couldn’t see the falls themselves. They were probably the reason that the depths of the abyss were even foggier than the general landscape.
“Is it a sinkhole?” Garric asked the Bird on his shoulder. He bent and rubbed the rock exposed on the track leading downward. “It can’t be! This is hard, basalt I think. Sinkholes are in limestone that the water’s eaten away.”
“There was a bubble in the flow of a great volcano,” the Bird explained. “The top wore away. That took longer than you can imagine—longer than this world has known life. But it happened.”
It clucked audibly, then added, “There’s an hour left of daylight. We should start down. It’ll be more dangerous after sunset.”
“All right,” said Garric. “Ah—I won’t be able to see any farther than my hand outstretched when we get anyway down in that, even now.”
He wasn’t complaining, just making sure the Bird understood the situation.
“A little farther than that,” the Bird said. “But yes, I’ll guide you. We’ll keep to the trail as long as we can, but if we meet a party of Coerli we’ll have to move to the side. The other creatures have generally learned to avoid the trail themselves, but even that isn’t safe.”
Garric chuckled as he started down. It was too narrow for a pack animal, even an unusually sure-footed donkey, but it was only moderately steep.
“Safe was when I was tending sheep back in the borough,” he said quietly. He thought of the afternoon the pack of sea wolves had squirmed out of the surf, great marine lizards. “And even that had its moments,” he added.
The dense basalt was slick with spray condensed on its surfaces. Though the path wasn’t particularly regular—the footing humped and sagged, and at some points the track was undercut so that the side of the cliff bellied out above it—it certainly wasn’t natural.
And it showed considerable wear. That would’ve taken a long time in rock so hard.
“Did men cut this, Bird?” Garric asked. Part of him felt silly to vocalize the question when he knew the Bird heard his thoughts, but he found it more comfortable to pretend this was a normal conversation. “It’s too worn for the Coerli to’ve done it if they just arrived here a few years ago.”
“A normal conversation with a crystal bird,” Carus said, grinning. “In a land of swamps and shadows, with one really deep hole.”
“Others than men built the path, Garric,” the Bird said. He’d taken to flying ahead and perching on an outcrop or a tree just at the edge of Garric’s vision; a dozen feet or so away. “The cave in which my people lived has drawn visitors since before there was intelligent life in this land, though those who made the path were intelligent.”
Garric thought of asking more, then decided not to. The Bird had shown itself a friend. If it didn’t volunteer information, there was probably a reason for its reticence.
“I am not your friend, Garric,” the Bird said in a tone of dry disapproval. “Our purposes happen to coincide, that is all. But I will not harm you or yours by my own choice.”
I wish I could be sure that was true for all the people who say they are my friends, Garric thought. And particularly those who say they’re friends of Prince Garric. He grinned but he didn’t speak aloud.
The walls of the cliff were covered with ferns and air plants, some of which draped broad gray-green streamers like tapestries far down over the rocks. When Garric saw tree tops jetting out from a central stem, he thought he must be nearing the bottom of the gorge. By the time he’d clambered down far enough to be among them, he saw that he’d been wrong: the trunks were dim pillars vanishing far below.
“The trees at this level are three hundred feet high,” the Bird said. “It will be some time before we reach the floor. Unless you slip.”
“Was that a joke, Bird?” Garric asked.
“No,” said the Bird. Then it clicked two body parts together—not its beak—and said, “Stop. I hear something. A band of Coerli has started up the path.”
As Garric climbed and slid down the cliff path, he’d heard occasional noises over the background thrum of the falls: a booming croak, a bell-like chiming, and once a shriek like a child being torn limb from limb. He’d left his axe and knife in his sash because he needed both hands free to move safely; even so he’d twitched toward the weapons when he heard the scream.
Now, hunching where a crevice the width of his palm crossed the path, he heard nothing. “What do you recommend?” he asked, moving his lips without letting any sound pass them.
“Get at least twenty feet off the trail and stay very still,” the Bird said. Then it added in emotionless apology, “The Coerli have no fixed time to use the portal in the cave. Whether we met a party or did not was purely a matter of chance.”
“You didn’t tell me it was going to be easy,” Garric mouthed as he crept sideways over the edge of the trail.
The slope here was more gradual than in many places, less than one to one, but the rock had a slick covering of hair-fine moss. He found a crack to stick his right big toe into, then settled his weight onto it as he reached down with his left hand. There was nothing better than a handful of moss to grip, short and slippery, but he clung to it as best he could.
“There is a root on your right side,” the Bird said, fluttering in the air beside him. “It’s narrow, but it will hold you.”
Garric swept his hand over the rock and fo
und the root, crawling up the rock from a plant lower down. It was no thicker than a piece of twine, but its suckers held it to the stone like ivy on a brick wall. He pinched the root between his thumb and forefinger, afraid to wrap his whole hand around it lest he pull it away from the cliff.
Garric could hear the Coerli now, the rasping rhythms of their voices. He couldn’t tell how many there were, but he doubted he’d be able to handle one healthy warrior in his present condition.
“Though we’d try,” cautioned the ghost in his mind; and of course he’d try and die trying. But better to avoid the problem.
“There are five warriors and their chief, Grunog,” the Bird said. “Grunog has no females, but he hopes to gain enough prestige in this new land to make himself powerful in two years, or perhaps three.”
Garric had stuck the axe helve under his sash, but when he squeezed himself to the rock face the blade gouged him over the hipbone. He’d have been all right if he’d shifted the axe before he left the trail, but he hadn’t thought of the problem until it jabbed him.
Supporting himself by his hands alone, Garric removed his right foot from the crack and felt below him for another toe-hold. He was sure the axe was drawing blood. As soon as he got another safe foothold, he’d—His right arm spasmed in response to the shoulder wound. Garric lost his grip and tore through plants as he crashed down the cliff side. He bounced from rocks to the bottom fifty feet below where he’d started. Above him the Coerli were calling excitedly.
My fault! Garric thought. Intellectually he knew it really wasn’t anybody’s fault: he was pushing himself to the limit, and if that sometimes meant he went over the edge—literally, in this case—that was inevitable.
But he still blamed himself.
“This way!” the Bird said, fluttering around the nearest tall trunk. Garric got to his feet and followed.
He’d lost the axe but the knife was stuck hilt-deep in the ground beside him. He snatched the weapon, a single piece of polished hardwood, as he ran. He’d probably been lucky not to put it the long way through his thigh.
