Mistress of the Catacombs

by David Drake

  Ceto's clothes fit Garric. None of the Brethren quarreled when Vascay awarded the entire kit to “Gar,” who'd regained his faculties, though he gathered that normally the whole gang would share in the division. Garric didn't mind wearing a dead man's clothes, though he had chosen not to take the shirt Ceto had on when Vascay let his life out in a gush of blood.

  Tint fawned on Garric when he stepped to a rock, then jumped to shore. The band had gathered around Vascay, looking into night and muttering.

  “That's the high road, there past the trees,” Hame said. “Many a time I hiked it while my sister was alive in Durassa.”

  The shore was a rising waste ground of rock and coarse, prickly bushes. A line of poplars grew fifty feet inland, straggling in both directions to where they were lost in night and the hills. A farmhouse was silhouetted on the eastern horizon; an ox moaned, but there were no lights.

  Vascay nodded; the band trotted forward, forming a loose line abreast without need for discussion. Vascay was on the left flank, so Garric fell in on the right.

  “Aye, it's the high road!” Hame repeated with satisfaction.

  So it might be—and a better road than Barca's Hamlet had known since the fall of the Old Kingdom—but it was years since the track had last been gravelled. Twin ruts showed there was wagon traffic, but Garric couldn't imagine anything but walkers and pack mules using it during the rain.

  “There'll be patrols, like enough,” a man said, looking at the road doubtfully.

  “Not at this hour,” another said. “Look at how high the Phoenix is.”

  Garric followed the line of the bandit's pointing arm. The constellation was the one he'd learned to call the Goat Horns in Barca's Hamlet.

  “We're deep in the second watch by now. The Protectors of the Peace like their sleep as much as honest men do. They won't ride again till dawn.”

  “We still dassn't take the high road,” said the first man—Blesfund, Garric saw now as the speaker's head turned. “ 'Tain't safe.”

  “We've no choice,” Vascay decided abruptly. “There's no place to lay up near here, not the whole lot of us, and we've got to get to Lord Thalemos' estate by daybreak. Prada, go on ahead to scout. We'll give you two furlongs' lead. I'll take your sword and you carry one of these javelins. That way if you run into the Protectors, you're just a traveller who needed to be in Durassa at daylight.”

  “Why me?” muttered Prada, a lanky, sad-looking fellow at the best of times. He unbuckled his sword, though—a wide-bladed, square-tipped weapon like no other Garric had seen—and traded it to Vascay for the javelin.

  “Somebody'll spell you in a while,” Vascay said.

  Prada grimaced but started trudging down the road. With his pack and the javelin over his shoulder, he really did look like a traveller who'd decided to keep on through the night. Garric suspected—and Prada almost certainly knew—that regardless, the Intercessor's patrols would sweep up anyone they caught out at night.

  “Get out of the middle of the road,” Vascay said mildly to his band. He gestured.

  Obediently the band moved into the shadow of a poplar, each man squatting or stretching his muscles, according to his individual taste. Tint crept on all fours along the rock-strewn slope toward the sea. Occasionally her hand shot out and snatched something into her mouth. Once the prey squeaked before the beastgirl's molars crunched down.

  Prada reached the farmhouse and started down the other side of the hill. The road seemed to curve as well.

  “Gar, keep him in sight,” Vascay ordered. “The rest of us will follow you.”

  “Right,” said Garric. He rose, hitched his sword belt to settle it more comfortably, and strode down the dusty track after the scout.

  Tint gave a squeak of alarm and bounded to his side. Men laughed, and somebody muttered, “I still don't believe Gar coming around the way he's done. I swear I don't.”

  “We leave Vascay now, Gar?” the beastgirl asked. She didn't sound concerned, just curious. She ambled along the road on all fours most of the time, but every few paces she rose to her hind legs and scanned her surroundings. Her flat nostrils flared.

  “No,” Garric said, “we're just watching Prada so that if the Intercessor's patrols catch him we can warn the others. Vascay and the others will come behind us.”

  Tint scratched herself between the shoulder blades with a long-fingered hand. “Tint tired,” she said. “We sleep soon, Gar?”

  “Probably not till almost dawn,” Garric said. “I'm sorry, Tint.”

  He could use some sleep too. He'd had two shifts on the sweeps, but it hadn't been a hard day so far as work went.

  Lord Thalemos—or his advisor, Metron—had hired Vascay's band because they were willing to go. They didn't have any particular expertise at searching for a ring on a deserted islet some distance from Laut.

  It wasn't until he'd boarded the stolen fishing boat that morning that Garric had realized almost the whole crew were landsmen as surely as he was himself. Garric had faced worse dangers than setting off in an open boat with men who barely knew how to row, but the hours of constant low-level tension had wrung him out worse than the same time spent digging a drainage ditch would've done.

  Garric walked briskly to keep Prada in sight. The full moon gave good light, but the poplars frequently hid the scout on the winding road.

  Garric and Tint neared the farmstead to the right of the road. A waist-high drystone wall set the foreyard off from the highway—to keep out animals being driven to market in the city, Garric guessed, rather than to keep the household's own stock in. The house was stone like the wall and had a thatched roof, but the large barn was of frame construction. It slumped sideways; the boards gapped and seemed never to have been whitewashed.

  Pigs grunted from the pen at the back of the yard; the sharp, bitter stench of hog manure had already announced their presence. There wasn't a dog, though, which was surprising.

  Tint stopped and gripped Garric's thigh. Her fingers were painful. “Gar!” she said. “Men behind wall! Men hurt us!”

  “How do you—” Garric said.

  He swallowed the rest of what would've been a stupid question. Tint's senses were sharper than his, as she'd proved several times in their brief acquaintance. Besides, now that she'd warned him, Garric could smell horses. A farm like this plowed with oxen, not horses which had to be fed grain.

  The corner of the farmyard was fifty feet ahead—an easy spear throw, and no distance at all if those waiting in ambush had bows. Since they had horses as well...

  “Walk on,” he murmured to Tint, but he only took one more pace before he stopped to look at the sole of his bare foot as though he'd picked up a thorn. By bending over he could see that Vascay and the others were only a hundred feet behind him. He was simply the relay; Prada was expected to spring any ambush.

  If the ambushers were mounted, then the bandits who survived the first volley of arrows would be run down as surely as the sun rises; which it would not, for them, ever again.

  “Hey, Vascay!” Garric called. He stood straight and waved toward the gang. “Come up here, will you? There's something funny out to sea!”

  Hame started forward, then paused when he saw his fellows had stopped where they were. Garric's call was unexpected, and in a bandit's life the unexpected was usually bad news.

  “Gar, we run!” Tint whimpered, tugging his left hand hard. “Many many men hide by wall!”

  Garric gently disengaged her. There was no use asking the beastgirl exactly how many ambushers there were—six? A hundred?—because she couldn't count. Besides, the number didn't matter because no matter how many there were ...

  “Come along, Sister take you!” Vascay growled. “Didn't you hear the boy?”

  He sauntered up the road, one javelin point down in his left hand. The other missile was in his right hand but behind his back, as though he were scratching himself behind the shoulder blades with the butt; it was unobtrusively cocked to throw. After a further moment's
hesitation, the rest of the gang followed.

  Garric waited as they approached, smiling broadly. “I noticed it when I was getting a thorn out of my foot,” he said in a loud voice. He was only half-turned, so that though he was speaking to Vascay, he had the farmstead in the corner of his eye. “Come here, and I'll show you.”

  “So, lad?” Vascay said as he walked to touching distance. He continued to scratch his back; his eyes flicked about him the way sunlight dances from running water.

  “Don't look around,” Garric said quietly. “There's a band of men behind the wall; they'll jump us any moment. They've got horses, so our only hope is to go for them first.”

  “They can't be waiting for us!” Ademos said. “We didn't know where we were going to fetch up on Laut. Nobody could've set an ambush here.”

  “Gar, we run!” Tint demanded.

  Garric was ice-cold and trembling; he wasn't consciously frightened, but the emotion racing through his veins had its own logic. “Let me borrow this,” he said, taking the javelin from Vascay's left hand. The shaft was thumb-thick and three feet long, with a short fluted head and a length of cord tied just above midpoint to stabilize the missile when thrown.

  “This don't make any sense!” Ademos said. “They can't be laying for us, it don't make sense!”

  “Let's get 'em!” Garric shouted in the clear, carrying voice he'd learned from Carus for ruling troops. He turned and charged the farmstead, cocking the javelin back as he ran.

  “Blazes!” a bandit squealed. “He's gone nuts a—”

  Armed men stood up behind the stone wall, two at first and then a score. Garric loosed the javelin with the skill he'd learned hunting squirrels as a boy with similar weapons. The strength of Gar's right arm was behind the cast.

  The first man to stand was the officer whose silver gorget gleamed in the moonlight. The javelin thumped into his breastbone, sinking to the knotted cord. The officer flopped over backward, his orders frozen in his throat by the shock of death.

  “Carus and the Isles!” Garric screamed as he drew his long sword.

  An archer went down with Vascay's remaining javelin in the eye. He'd started to draw his bow; the arrow wobbled into the dirt when his fingers spasmed open. Several others of those behind the wall had bows, but the dying man was the only one who'd been alert enough to respond instantly.

  There were twenty Protectors along the wall. There must be others in the barn with the horses, but those didn't realize yet what was happening.

  “Carus!” Garric repeated, whirling his sword in a moonlit circle. He knew from experience—his own and that of Carus before him—how frightening a ten-foot arc of edged steel looked when it was coming at you. The bandits' only hope of survival—Garric's only hope of survival—was to startle the ambushers so completely that they didn't react until their would-be prey was among them.

  He wasn't quite successful.

  An archer drew his arrow to the head while Garric was still ten feet from the wall. Both the Protector's eyes were open. He aimed at Garric's midriff, but the arrow's lift at the moment of release would take it through his heart.

  The ambushers wore close-fitting iron caps, not real helms, and breastplates of quilted linen. Except for the archers they carried six-foot spears with a knob instead of spike on the butt; the latter would make a useful baton for crowd control. Echeon's Protectors were more closely akin to the City Patrols who policed Valles than they were to the Royal Army of the Isles. The bandits, most of whom had real swords instead of the long knives the Protectors carried, were armed as well or better than the ambushers.

  But one arrow would be enough to end Garric's existence, in this time and probably all time. Still running, he tensed himself to receive the missile—

  Tint bounded past in the same sort of flat leap that had carried her to shore. Her long jaws closed on the archer's throat as they tumbled backward together. The man didn't have time to scream.

  Garric bounded to the top of the wall, slashing to right and left. His edge cut deep into the forearm a Protector flung up reflexively to cover his face; the back of Garric's curved blade wasn't sharpened, but it rang on the skullcap of the fellow short-gripping his spear to jab at the sword-swinging demon who towered over him. The Protector staggered sideways, sprawling onto the wall; his cap fell off. Vascay, swift despite his peg leg, beheaded him. Prada's sword turned out to be serviceable after all.

  Except for Vascay the bandits had been almost as surprised by events as the Protectors were, but they reacted with the desperate suddenness of men who'd long been hunted. Several hurled javelins as they rushed the wall. The hail of missiles dropped two more ambushers, and others ducked or flinched away. The Protectors' knobbed spears couldn't be thrown, so they'd lost the initiative even before the bandits closed.

  Blesfund squealed as he took an arrow and doubled up. The archer tried to nock another, then turned to flee. Toster jumped the wall and sank his axe—an ordinary forester's tool—helve deep in the Protector's back. He jerked the axe head free with casual ease.

  The barn door opened. A Protector stood there, one hand on the door and the other holding a horse's bridle. He stared bug-eyed at the carnage: most of his fellows were down, and the few still upright were trying to run.

  “Don't let 'em break out!” Garric said. He ran toward the barn, raising his bloody sword. He was gasping for breath.

  “Shepherd guard me!” the Protector cried. The javelin Vascay had retrieved from a dead man's eye socket took him in the hip joint; the point had bent so that the missile didn't fly true, but it was true enough. He fell over screaming.

  A man already mounted spurred his horse out of the barn, trampling his comrade. His spear jabbed at Garric. Garric hunched and chopped the rider's left knee as he passed. The fellow toppled over his horse's right shoulder as it shied because of the reek of fresh blood.

  Garric started into the barn, then jerked back to safety. The interior was full of horses, pitching and kicking in terror. With the door open they forced their way out two abreast. A powerful roan gelding struck the jamb with his shoulder and knocked it askew, causing the sagging structure to lean still farther.

  “Catch the horses!” Vascay called. “By the Lady, we'll ride to Durassa tonight on the Intercessor's bounty!”

  The last of the animals, a flea-bitten gray, plunged into the courtyard dragging a Protector whose left hand was tangled in the reins. The horse circled, trying to free itself from its living anchor.

  Garric grabbed the beast's headstall and held it steady. He pointed his sword at the Protector's face, and shouted, “How many of you are there in the barn?”

  “Mercy!” the man cried, lying on his back with his hand lifted in the reins. “No more, nobody more, just three of us!”

  “Here's the mercy you lot gave my sister,” Hame said.

  He set one of the Protectors' own spears against the man's breastbone.

  “Don't!” said Garric.

  Vascay took Garric's right wrist, his sword wrist, in a grip that would grow firmer if it needed to. “Aye, boy,” he said. “We must. And Hame would anyway, with good reason.”

  Hame leaned his chest against the spear's knobbed butt, driving the point through the man and deep in the ground beneath. The Protector thrashed wildly, then went limp.

  Garric turned his head. He'd seen worse, and he understood the kind of reason Hame might have had, but...

  He let go of the gray's harness. Somebody else could hold the beast—or not, he didn't care.

  One of the Protectors had been wearing a short cloak. Garric pulled it off the body and wiped his sword. There was a nick in the belly of his blade; he'd have to polish it out with a stone. His first victim wore a wristlet in the shape of a curling snake; the sword had struck one of the ornament's ruby eyes.

  “That's a rare bit of luck, isn't it, brethren?” Vascay said in a satisfied voice. “Mount up and let's get going. Oh, and Toster—lead one of the extras for Prada when we catch up wi
th him.”

  “Gar safe?” Tint asked, rising on her hind legs to stroke Garric's neck.

  “Gar is fine,” Garric said. If he'd had anything in his stomach, he'd have thrown it up, from reaction and from the slaughterhouse stench.

  “I'm fine, Tint,” he said, squeezing tight the beastgirl whose warning had saved all their lives. “Thanks to you we're all fine.”

  Tint purred contentedly as she licked her muzzle. Her bloody muzzle.

  * * *

  Ilna stood above her body, though the only reason she recognized the still figure on the bed was that it wore her clothing: a bleached inner tunic beneath a heavier garment of blue yarn with a gray pattern woven, not embroidered, into the hem. Her own work, of course, so that was her body as well: slim but sturdy, not willowy—that was a word they used for tall blondes like Sharina—but showing the supple strength of a hickory switch.

  Mirrors of polished metal were for rich folk. In Barca's Hamlet, girls filled buckets and looked at themselves in the water's reflection; but not Ilna, she'd never cared about that—

  She was surprised to see how attractive her face was. The cheekbones, her cheekbones, were visible instead of being cushioned by fat; flecks of gold floated in the depths of her brown eyes; her lips were severe and thinner than some might choose, but in all ways they suited Ilna herself.

  She sniffed. She supposed it was all right to be vain about your body when you weren't wearing it anymore.

  Tenoctris sat—had collapsed, more properly—on her ivory-legged chair; she looked utterly drained. Sharina stood close behind the older woman, supporting her by holding one forearm and the opposite shoulder. They both looked with concern toward the waxen figure on the bed. Despite the smoke of the charred parchment, the edges and colors of the scene were vivid to Ilna's present eyes.

  But her business wasn't in the room where her body lay, nor even in this world. A gray curtain hung around her. She stepped toward it, walking through a corner of the bed.