Master of the Cauldron

by David Drake

  Ilna saw soldiers fighting in the ruins closer to the crater, but the solid wall of defenders had been breached even before Garric withdrew his troops to give the troll passage. The creatures boiling from the pit would spread throughout the city and the Isles unless something stopped them—as men could not.

  The troll bent toward the crater. White creatures continued to spill out, unaffected or even unaware of the mass of granite lowering over them. Their wizard stood beyond the lip of the pit, his arm pointing. Crimson bolts—bright, brighter, and finally hotter than the sun—spat from his athame. They vanished into the troll's broad chest.

  Davus laughed through the stone lips, a sound as joyfully terrible as the howl of a tornado. The troll thrust its hands into the ground to either side of the crater. Its thumbs gripped the inner edge of the cavity, crushing some of the white creatures. Others continued to crawl away, squirming into the city over whatever obstacle stood in their way.

  For a moment, nothing moved except that the earth trembled. The troll gave a deep, booming roar. It raised its right leg with the slow inevitability of a glacier, then slammed it down at the edge of the crater like a man kicking the jamb of a sticking door.

  Buildings danced on the horizon. Ilna fell to her knees, holding Merota, and even Chalcus danced for a moment as he might've done on a storm-tossed spar.

  Dust lifted in an expanding cloud, chokingly thick. Ilna slitted her eyes, then covered her nose and the child's with a fold of her sleeve.

  The troll straightened; slowly, as it did all things. Dirt and rock cascaded from its hands. Only when it started to turn and the fall of debris slowed did Ilna realize that the troll hadn't gouged out handfuls of earth: it'd wrenched the crater's lining out of the ground.

  The pit that remained was simply a hole filled with flying grit. Its walls fell inward, covering the bottom with lifeless rubble.

  The troll raised the lining, a cauldron of shimmering purple light a furlong across, to the height of its towering shoulders. The wizard's pale monsters still climbed over the rim, but they burst bloodily like falling spleens when they hit the ground.

  Davus and the troll he was part of laughed in one thunderous voice. The troll flung the cauldron seaward, spinning the great purple bowl through the air. The whole business seemed slow, but Ilna realized that the troll's size made its movements deceptive to eyes used to judging things on human scale.

  Monsters continued to spill out, flailing until they hit. On land, they splashed; over the sea, it was water that splashed. The white bodies sank out of sight in the churning froth.

  The cauldron landed in open water beyond Volita and exploded like all a storm's thunderbolts released together. Steam rose higher than the eye could follow.

  Ilna, knowing what was coming, clapped her hands over Merota's ears and opened her own mouth. She couldn't cover her ears and the child's as well, so the choice was clear.

  The blast lifted them and everyone in the city into the air like children tossed in blankets. They dropped back where they'd been in stunned amazement.

  The sea drew out, baring the bottom of the strait: for a moment Ilna on her rubble heap saw fish flopping in the mud. When the water rushed back, it curled up the shore and deep into the ruins of Erdin. Spouting and foaming from cellars, it undercut the remaining walls as it withdrew.

  The troll's laughter was so loud that Ilna felt it through her flesh though her ears were utterly deaf. The troll turned and leaned forward. Davus, a tiny figure on the granite head, waved.

  The troll dived into the cavity it'd torn the cauldron from, striking with another cataclysmic shock. There was a white flash. When Ilna opened her eyes again, she saw that what'd been a hole in the middle of Erdin was now a mass of lifeless granite.

  * * *

  Garric got to his feet cautiously. He wasn't sure whether the ground was still trembling or if the shudders he felt were just his body reacting to all that'd gone before.

  He squinted against the dust. Liane handed him a swatch of cloth she'd ripped from her tunic and dampened from the helmet she was using as a water bucket. Garric let his shield hang from the strap buckled behind his right shoulder and gratefully covered his nose and mouth to breathe.

  Many creatures had gotten out of the cauldron before the troll tore it from the earth. Instead of attacking as their fellows had done earlier, they ran for hiding places like startled rats. The troops who'd been fighting all day let the pallid survivors slip through gaps in the line.

  The battle was over. The men who'd fought it had their bellies full of slaughter; and besides, the rats still had their weapons. Let them crawl into cellars, if that was all they wanted to do....

  Garric started forward. He swayed for the first few steps, but he was all right when he got moving properly. Erdin had been nearly flat. Now a mass of granite like the citadel of Carcosa rose in the middle of the city. He wouldn't climb it—he didn't think he could in his present condition, living on his nerves with no margin of physical or mental strength—but he could go around.

  He had to go around. The wizard responsible for this had escaped northward just before the troll hurled the caudron into the sea. The soldiers there would see no more reason to stop their fleeing enemies than the men nearby did.

  The wizard had survived a millennium underground to rebuild his inhuman army. He'd do so again if he got the chance. Garric wasn't going to give him that chance.

  He jogged near three pale monsters. They were hunching toward an alley half-closed by the jumbled barrels of a fallen column. The nearest of the trio turned and faced Garric, moaning softly and raising the axes in two of its hands. When Garric went by, it dropped forward to lope after its fellows, bracchiating on its lower pair of arms. It'd behaved like a frightened dog, willing to bite if necessary but desperate to get away.

  The wizard's foul overcast had dissipated, allowing sunlight to bathe the granite plug. The stone was gray with streaks of white and pink, seemingly normal in every way save the manner it'd come here.

  It was warm, though. Garric felt the heat pulsing as he passed close to the rock on his way around.

  The breeze teased a valley in the swirling dust. Garric saw a clump of white creatures—perhaps four of them, perhaps many—carrying something toward the Temple of the Shepherd Who Overwhelms. The massive temple would have deep foundations.

  Garric didn't try to run faster. He knew that if he lost his pace he'd almost certainly stumble. He'd reach them in time. The mismatched creatures moved like a broken-backed centipede, each interfering with the others.

  The ground had stopped shaking, so the dust was settling gradually. The layer at Garric's mid-chest was thick, almost opaque, but above that only motes danced. They twinkled like droplets of spray over a breeze-whipped ocean. Four thick-bodied, thick-legged monsters carried a litter that'd been pegged together from human bones. On it rode the wizard Garric had briefly glimpsed in the underworld, a hump under a black robe.

  The wizard turned. Its face was that of a corpse which'd half decayed before being mummified. It pointed its athame.

  "Die!" Garric cried, his sword lifting as he strode the last two paces to his enemy.

  There was a red flash. Garric's muscles froze. His skin prickled and the sword flew out of his hand. He skidded forward on his chest.

  A javelin arced out of the sky, skewering both the creatures supporting the back of the litter. They bawled and collapsed, spilling the wizard to the pavement. The athame's point caught in a crack between two cobblestones; the tourmaline blade splintered.

  Garric could move again. He squirmed forward and grasped the wizard's throat. He neither knew nor cared what the other two litter-bearers were doing. He squeezed, feeling bones and muscles as dry as dead bone crunching. Then there was nothing in his hands, and nothing but stinking dust spilling from the black robe.

  Garric looked around. Prester and Pont trotted toward him, wearing satisfied expressions and drawing their swords. Behind the two marshals came
a squad of soldiers who appeared worn beyond human endurance.

  Lord Attaper had finished three of the bearers whom the javelins had put down. He stared in a mixture of amazement and disgust at the fourth creature, a pin-headed monster whose forearms were the size of a strong man's thighs.

  Liane knelt on the back of the fourth bearer. She'd cut its throat but seemed determined to continue thrusting her little dagger between its ribs as long as it was still twitching in death.

  CHAPTER 20

  Garric had taken off his armor. By the end of the fighting his helmet had looked like scrap that a tinker had snipped repeatedly to make patches for cookware. He'd wiped blood off his sword with a piece of bedding that'd been blowing in the street. Now that the patterned gray steel was clean, he was sharpening it with the small stone he kept in a pouch on his swordbelt.

  The sky was clear and the wind off the sea had cleared Erdin of the smell of sulfur. A number of fires had started when buildings collapsed onto lighted braziers, but they weren't out of control.

  The bodies remained. Even the stench of the monsters' gutted corpses seemed less nauseating in bright sunlight.

  "Lord Tadai is here, your highness," Liane said primly.

  Garric looked up in amazement. He was seated at a conference table pulled from the wreckage of a house which the troll had bumped on its way to... to saving the Isles, Garric supposed. Certainly on the way to saving Garric or-Reise and the people dearest to his heart and soul.

  Soldiers had placed the table—and straight chairs from a nearby ruin—in a small plaza not far from where the palace had stood. Ensign Attarus commanded the detachment of Blood Eagles guarding the Prince, but Garric had sent Lord Attaper to take stock of the army as a whole.

  Garric remembered giving that order and a series of similar ones, to prevent looting and to reorganize the army in case something else happened suddenly. That had been—he looked up at the sun—over an hour ago. He didn't remember anything from that point till now.

  King Carus smiled a little sadly from Garric's mind. "There's different ways to cope," he said. "Cleaning your weapons is a good one. But any way that gets you through to the next dawn is a good one."

  "Lord Tadai," Garric said, nodding to the plump nobleman. He'd have gotten up for courtesy's sake—he was the Prince, of course, but Tadai was very powerful, very skilled; and (along with his rival Royhas) as much a real friend as Garric had at the highest levels of his government.

  He would have gotten up, but he was just too tired.

  Tadai's robe of peach-colored silk was spotless and perfectly arranged. He'd probably donned a fresh one in the past few minutes, before he set off for an audience with Garric. He'd lost part of the nail of his right index finger and the layer of tinted rice powder on his cheeks couldn't conceal the scratch from his left ear to the point of his chin.

  "I'm glad to see you looking so well, your highness," Tadai said. He bowed but a stitch in one muscle or another made him stiffen in blank-faced pain; he didn't sweep as low as he'd normally have done.

  "I was afraid you...," Garric said. He stopped, because there wasn't any honest way to continue.

  In all truth, he hadn't thought about Tadai and the rest of the ministerial delegation to Erdin since the trouble broke out in the temple library in the morning, a lifetime ago. Apparently they, or at least Tadai, had gotten out of the palace before the creatures of the pit slaughtered everyone they found. Garric was glad of that, but he'd had more pressing problems until this very moment.

  He grinned. Including the problem of cleaning and sharpening his sword.

  Tadai cleared his throat. "I've set up an interim city administration," he said. "The Earl hasn't been seen in some time—"

  "He won't be," Liane said. Her voice was musical, but there was a hard finality to it. "Ever."

  "Ah," Tadai said. He cleared his throat again. "Well, that may be for the best. I've made contact with many of the watch committees and used them to organize bucket brigades. Erdin doesn't have a paid fire watch. Ah—"

  "Milord!" Garric said, sounding harsh even in his own numb ears. "I have every confidence in your ability to deal with this... to deal with this—"

  His hands were trembling. He laid the sword flat on the table and laced his fingers. Liane, who'd been studiously formal to that point, pressed her hand on top of his.

  Garric rose cautiously. It was a good idea to work the muscles a little, though it'd be—

  An honest grin spread across his face.

  —a long time before he was up to digging ditches.

  "Tadai, I don't have enough mind right at the moment to guess which direction the sun'll rise in the morning," Garric said gently. "I'm glad you do, I'm lucky and Erdin is more than lucky that you're able to take charge in this crisis. But you don't need to give me progress reports. You have my backing until I tell you otherwise."

  "I understand, your highness," Tadai said. He turned his face away while he gathered his courage to blurt what he'd really come to say. Just before Garric snarled something gruffly to prod the man, Tadai went on, "Your highness, it's the soldiers. They're hunting the, the things that got out into the city before ....."

  He pointed a hand vaguely toward where the palace had been. Garric wasn't sure how he'd have described the way the crisis ended either. Rather than let Tadai choke for lack of a word he said, "I understand. Some of the creatures got through the cordon before the wizard who'd raised them was defeated. The troops are carrying out my orders to kill them all."

  "Yes, of course, kill them," Tadai said. "But they're making a game of it! They're making bets about who can throw a spear through each creature from the farthest distance. The officers are encouraging them to behave like that. A game, your highness, a game!"

  Garric looked at Lord Tadai: a brave man who was both decent and self-sacrificing by the standards of his class. By any standards, really; there were few enough peasants in Barca's Hamlet who'd have willingly undergone the dangers and discomfort Tadai had today and many days in the past.

  Still, Tadai was a cultured gentleman who ate pork but had never seen a pig clamped by the snout to be butchered.

  "Milord," Garric said gently, "my officers have had the wit to turn a dirty, dangerous, necessary job into a training exercise. Maybe there's no way the creatures could fester and breed in the caverns below Erdin now that their wizard's dead, but I don't know that for sure. I'm not going to let this—"

  He swept his right arm in an arc, encompassing the devastated center of the city.

  "—happen again a thousand years from now to people who don't deserve it any more than the poor devils you're organizing into bucket brigades do. Milord—Tadai, my friend Lord Tadai—these are the men who saved as much of Erdin as could be saved! Not because they care about Sandrakkan or the Isles or much of anything else. They stood because it was their job and because their fellow soldiers were standing. And if now they're going to have fun finishing the job instead of treating it as a distasteful duty, more power to them. Don't expect me to get in their way."

  Garric crooked a smile at Tadai, a man he genuinely liked as well as respecting. "And don't get in their way yourself, please; because the kingdom needs you. Just as it needs them."

  Tadai bent his head slightly, rubbing his brows in a fashion that hid his eyes for the moment. "I was frightened," he said, so softly that only Garric and Liane could hear the words. "I've been pretending that things are normal, just a little disrupted. But they never were normal."

  Tadai lowered his hands and met Garric's eyes. He smiled wryly. "Not the way I pretended in my well-appointed office, where servants brought me sherbet cooled with last winter's snow when I was thirsty. When I shouted at my chamberlain if the sheets weren't turned down at precisely the correct angle when I was ready to go to bed."

  Tadai looked around, then nodded with an expression of cool resolution. "I'd best get back to my duties," he said. "Quite a number of people need temporary shelter and of course fo
od till normal services are restored. I have assistants making quick inventories of the warehouses along the river, looking for wine and bulk grain. It'll be a fiscal mare's nest to sort out afterwards, but we can't let people starve, can we?"

  Garric smiled, then embraced the plump nobleman. "No, Lord Tadai," he said as he stepped away. "The kingdom doesn't let its citizens starve."

  He'd smudged the clean robe, but Tadai was beaming as he bustled off with a retinue of aides. The kingdom was indeed lucky to have him.

  "And lucky to have the officers who turned the cleaning-up operation into javelin practice instead of cut and thrust that'd cost more lives," Carus noted with a smile of his own. "My guess it wasn't any hereditary nobleman who came up with the notion, eh?"

  Garric grinned back at the ancestor in his mind. Veterans like Pont and Prester had gotten to be old soldiers by learning how not to get themselves needlessly killed. Having them around to pass on their knowledge meant that a lot of younger men would live to be old soldiers.

  He let his eyes drift over the scene around him. Tenoctris lay under a shop awning, sound asleep on a salvaged mattress; drained by the hard work of wizardry, Garric assumed. Tenoctris had a wonderful ability to keep going as long as her skill was needed, but the effort still had to be paid for.

  Sharina sat on the pavement beside her, holding the Pewle knife on her lap unsheathed. Garric frowned at his sister's disturbingly empty expression. Something had happened to her, but he didn't have any idea what. Maybe it was just the overwhelming disaster....

  Cashel squatted with Sharina, facing the other way down the street. His left elbow touched her right, that was all. Because he was Cashel, he provided more support than a whole regiment of Blood Eagles could; but he did it without saying a word or even seeming to be aware of what he was doing. Cashel had been the best shepherd in living memory in the borough, but his talents were far too great to spend on sheep.

  Garric smiled again. "Spend on sheep," not "waste on sheep," because sheep had value also. Garric or-Reise had been a pretty decent shepherd himself.