by David Drake
"Throw down the axe, woman!" he cried. "Throw it down or they'll kill us all!"
Sharina didn'tlike Beard, and she'd lived all her previous life without owning a talking axe… but that didn't mean anybody had a right to take it away from her. She wondered what Cashel would do, or her brother Garric?
The truth was that they'd drop the axe without question. They didn't need to prove their courage to anybody And neither did she. She bent over and set Beard down gently. As a fine tool alone she owed the axe better than to be tossed onto hard stone.
"Wait, mistress!" the axe cried. "We're being attacked! I promised I'd warn you!"
"I know we're being attacked!" Sharina said in fury. "They're standing all around us with bows aimed. I'm giving you up."
"Not them, mistress," said Beard. His metal voice was as pure and piercing as the note of a bell. "The men are no danger, now that the fauns have come back!"
"What?" said Alfdan, looking over his shoulder. He gave a cry of angry wonder and pointed his staff in the direction of the hamlet. He began to chant in a high singsong voice, then choked to a halt. He swayed, on the verge of collapse. He must be exhausted from the wizardry involved in keeping his ambush concealed until Sharina walked into it.
"I can fight them, mistress!" Beard said. "I can drink their blood too, just like men's."
Sharina couldn't see anything from where she stood at the base of the seawall. One of Alfdan's men shot toward the new danger. He gave a shout of horror, tried to nock another arrow, and dropped it in nervousness.
"Come on!" Sharina cried, running up the steep slope more easily than she'd descended it. Emotions fired her now; emotions and the delighted, shrieking bloodlust of the axe in her hands.
Four or five archers were shooting; the others either scuttled down the seawall or stood in terror with their bows half-drawn. Sharina reached the top; Franca was with her but Scoggin hadn't followed.
Five creatures covered in lustrous blue fur were coming from the ruins of Barca's Hamlet. They were in a line spread from north to south, converging on Alfdan's band. They were somewhat taller than men, but much more of their height was in their legs; their thighs were as hugely muscled as a grasshopper's. Tiny curling horns grew at the top of their foreheads, and their faces had the calm majesty of ivory statues.
The creatures were male. Their genitals were pony-sized and erect, in obscene contrast to their saintly expressions.
The archers were shooting at the nearest of the five, the one in the middle of the line. Several arrows stuck out of his chest; one was through his calf; and one protruded from the socket of his left eye. He walked with high, mincing steps.
"I'll drink the blood of fauns!" chuckled Beard. His helve quivered in Sharina's hands; for the moment the weapon weighed almost nothing. "Oh, mistress, you're so good to Beard!"
"To the ship," Alfdan wheezed. "We can't-"
The nearest faun raised his edged club of dense bone over his head. He trilled like a frog in springtime, hideously magnified, and leaped thirty feet onto the wizard.
Sharina stepped forward, swinging Beard in a downward slant. The axe sheared off the faun's raised left arm and sank into his neck, severing the spine. The creature spurted steaming, sulfur-colored blood and made a spastic leap. It landed well out on the dry sea bed.
Alfdan sprawled where the faun had thrown him. Another of the creatures sprang onto the man to the left. He tried to fend off the attack with his bowstaff. The faun swung his club overhand, striking straight down and pulping the man's head. A man nearby thrust with his short sword. The blade left a steaming gash in the faun's hide but skidded off the ribs.
Sharina brought Beard around backhand and sank the spike in the faun's temple. This one sprang straight in the air, its limbs flailing wildly like bits of twine caught in a high wind. Sharina kept her grip on the axe handle, knowing it would be certain death if she lost her weapon.
"Behind you, Sharina!" Franca cried.
She spun, swinging the axe in a horizontal arc that ripped the full depth of its blade through a faun's ribs and breastbone. The creature's gushing blood burned where it spattered her forearms. The creature toppled down the seawall, holding the club it hadn't had time to use.
Sharina paused, gasping through her open mouth. The axe slobbered joyfully. Its edge was keen enough to split a ray of light, but the effort of jumping and whirling still took all Sharina's strength.
The two remaining fauns approached her from opposite sides, more circumspect now than their fellows had been. They walked on their toes; though their feet weren't really hoofs, the four lesser toes were on the way to growing together.
Scoggin had crawled up to the edge of the seawall, clutching his spear. He thrust into the ankle of the faun to Sharina's right, tripping it over on top of him.
Sharina met the other faun's descending blow, lopping its long bony fingers off against a club made from a sea-beast's shoulderblade. That was what she'd been trying to do, but she'd felt Beard twitch in her hand at mid-stroke; the axe was adding its own increment to her strength and athleticism.
The bone club smashed into the top of the seawall and leaped out of the creature's maimed hands. The faun screamed musically and reached for Sharina with its thumbs and stubs of fingers. She drove Beard into the creature's forehead and heard the steel gurgle, "So much blood! Rich blood!"
The faun did a backflip to thrash like a dying beetle. Sharina jerked the blade free. Her arms felt swollen and her vision was blurred. The faun Scoggin had disabled lay on the ground with a dozen men on him, holding down his rangy body and stabbing. One of Alfdan's archers used a broken arrow as a poniard, punching it again and again into the faun's throat. Each thrust brought a spurt of searing blood, but the faun continued to struggle.
Sharina staggered over to the melee. She was afraid she'd hit one of the men if she swung normally.
"Give me room," she gasped, only half able to hear her own voice. Nobody in the surging mass reacted. Short-gripping Beard, she turned the axe over and pushed the spike through the faun's upper chest as though it were a dagger blade.
The creature arched its back violently, flinging away the men holding it. It continued to convulse until it rolled over the seawall to lie on the shingle not far from the glowing crystal ship.
Sharina rested on all fours. She didn't know whether her eyes were open or closed; she couldn't see anything through the roaring white fire that consumed her lungs and throat.
Voices coalesced out of the sea of noise. Men were talking, apparently to themselves rather than each other; nobody seemed to be listening to anybody else. Sharina heard prayers and curses and long half-coherent babbling about how close death had come-and passed by.
"There it is," Alfdan said. He spoke in a heavy, breathy voice, forcing out each syllable between his wheezing. "Take the axe from her and bring it to me."
Sharina heard the words, but they hung as if in a vacuum that was wholly separate from her and the world in her mind.
"Take it!" Alfdan said. "Faugh, I'll get it myself."
She felt a tug and suddenly was alert again. She held Beard in both hands; the steel was crooning in an undertone punctuated by sucking sounds and giggles. Alfdan had just tried to pull the axe away from her.
Sharina jerked back and rose to a kneeling position. Dizziness washed over her, but it was gone as quickly as it came. She braced the butt of the axe on the ground and used the helve as a cane as she rose to her feet.
"Oh, he's an enemy, mistress," Beard said. "Let's finish him too, a little dessert for Beard after the luscious fauns you fed him!"
"Kill her!" Alfdan shouted, jumping back. He stumbled, tangling his feet with his carved staff. "Quickly, shoot her down!"
Scoggin raised his spear; Franca fitted an arrow to the string of the bow he must have taken from a man the fauns slew. The youth's eyes were open and staring, but there was no more intellect behind them than there was in those of a rat cornered by a weasel.
"Stop!" said Shari
na. She put a hand on Franca's shoulder and shifted her body so that she stood between Scoggin and the wizard. "There'll be no more killing of men by other men, not here. There's few enough of us left as it is."
A faun sprawled on the ground beside her, its complexion turning from blue to purplish as the blood drained out of it. Its hands were shockingly long, its palm and fingers both twice the length of a human being's.
"She's right," a man said. "Lady help me, it would've broke my neck in the next heartbeat if she hadn't killed it when she did. Alfdan, let 'er be."
The wizard had lost his cap though he still wore the black cape. Sharina couldn't tell what the material was; it seemed to absorb light without having a color of its own.
He looked about the circle of his men. "All right," he said, trying to sound as if he were still in control. "But she must hand over the axe. Then she can do as she likes."
"Beard is-" Sharina said. She almost said, "mine," but her thought was quicker than her tongue. "-my companion. You will not take him from me, Master Alfdan."
"I will have it!" Alfdan shouted, his face transfused with fury.
"Drink his blood!" shrilled the axe.
"No!" said Sharina. "Both of you, be silent! There will be no more killing!"
"Alfdan," said the man who'd spoken a moment before, a big fellow with auburn hair and a beard that was nearly brunet. "She saved our lives, yours too. If we need the axe, ask her nice to come along with us. And if she doesn't want to, well, that's all right too. We don't, andyou don't, force her to do nothing."
"That's right, Alfdan," said another man. "Neal's speaking for me."
Alfdan suddenly relaxed. "Yes, I see the sense of that," he said. He managed a weak-kneed bow; he was as wrung out as Sharina herself. "Pardon me, mistress, this has been…"
He gestured around him with a trembling left hand. "I'm not myself. None of us are ourselves. Will you come sit with me in the Queen Ship so that we can discuss the future?"
Sharina looked at the shimmering crystalline vessel that had drawn her into Alfdan's trap in the first place. "Yes," she said. "Let's do that."
With Beard muttering in her hand, she walked down the seawall again. This time she didn't brace herself with a hand.
***
Garric was dreaming…
He and Carus walked into the garden they'd entered the previous night. It was the same location but a different age; the stonework was sharper and beds of carefully-tended flowers lined the paths.
"The moon isn't right," Carus said, locking his palms together to keep from fidgeting with his swordhilt. In this dream the king was dressed as he often did in Garric's mind, wearing a short blue tunic over breeches and knee-high cavalry boots. His sword hung from the left side of his broad leather belt, its weight balanced by the dagger and traveller's wallet on the right.
Garric looked at the full moon through the branches of a fruit tree. The orb seemed bigger than he was used to, but it also had a deep golden cast as though there were more than distance between it and him.
"Nothing right's here," he said. "We're dreaming."
Did ghosts dream? Was the Carus beside him only a dream himself?
The trees were in bloom. Garric thought they were pears, though there'd been only apple orchards in the borough so he wasn't sure. The perfume of their white blossoms was faint but noticeable in the moonlight.
Garric walked toward the altar in shadow at the back wall, but as he moved he felt his consciousness swirl away. He was being lifted by a pair of figures so faint that the stars twinkled through them, so huge that their presence filled the cosmos.
There was no Garric, no seeing or hearing; time wasn't the same. There was warmth and water and eventually surging excitement as he/itgrew.
Sunlight flooded and faded; moon and stars had no meaning any more. Rain fell and the soil dried again; and fell and dried, and fell… Always there were the Presences, tending and protecting him/it.
The days became shorter, the sunlight weaker. Garric felt his leaves slough away. He'd been only vaguely aware of them, the way a man might be aware of his skin. The cold came, as painless as a cloud covering the sun for a moment. He felt his young limbs being trimmed; the Presences flowed about him, as omnipresent as the breeze.
Spring followed andgrowth; richer and fuller than before, and wholly engaging. His/its limbs were being trained. His/its leaves unfolded, soaking in sun and converting nutrients, processes too complex for a human mind to fathom but utterly a part of the mindless being he/it now was. His/its buds bloomed in lustful profusion and the bees brought fulfillment which flowed through every vein and rootlet. He/itwas.
Sun and rain, warmth and cold; and always the Presences were there to guard and guide him/it. Every year brought growth, every spring meant blossoms. Life was good, joy was eternal, and always the Presences…
He/it felt a tugging. He/it resisted, but he had no strength to change what was happening. His existence flowed out and upward, bodiless for an uncertain time.
For an instant, Garric or-Reise stood in the moonlit garden again. King Carus was at his side, his face twisted in a look of fury.
The ancient pear tree beside them no longer curved its gnarled branches into a ragged oval. The trunk had been stunted to knee height, and its two remaining limbs were trained in a cordon which ran parallel to the path. Great white blossoms bloomed on stubs like miniature trees which grew upward from the horizontal limbs.
Garric's consciousness roared on. He sat up with a shout. His sword hung from a rack at the head of the bed. He'd half-drawn its watered steel blade when he realized where he was-and that it was reallyhim again, not a dream phantasm.
"Garric?" said Liane, her voice so sweetly modulated that it all but concealed her fear.
A footed lamp in the form of a three-headed dragon stood in a niche across the room; one wick burned as a night light. Garric shot his sword back home in its sheath and padded over to the lamp. His hands were shaking. He tried to light the other wicks from the first, but he couldn't even get the scrap of tow he intended for a spill to catch from the existing flame.
Liane took the tow from his trembling fingers and lit the wicks. She glanced at a second lamp, but instead of lighting it also she crushed the spill out on the bottom of the niche. She faced Garric and put her hands on his shoulders without speaking further. He hugged her hard against him.
"I was a tree," he said. He closed his eyes tightly. "They made me grow exactly where they wanted me to grow."
He drew in a deep breath. "I don't know who they are, Liane," he said. "But I know what they intend."
"They won't succeed," Liane said, her voice calm but her heart hammering like a bird's. "You won't let them, Garric. None of us will let them do that."
"Read to me," Garric whispered into her hair. "I don't care what-just civilized words, my love. Because what they are isn't civilized. It isn't even human."
Obediently Liane lifted the lamp out of the niche with one hand. With the other she guided Garric back to the bed and sat him beside her on the edge. She set the lamp on the nightstand and opened the book she'd been reading earlier in the evening.
"'I know my own language only from letters,'" she read aloud, her voice a glow of amber in the darkness. "'If I could not write, I would be mute…'"
She paused with a look of horror. Garric started to laugh. His choked giggles built quickly to bellowing guffaws just this side of hysteria. She'd been reading Pendill'sLetters from Exile, and because of her nervousness she hadn't remembered the subject matter when she picked it up in haste at Garric's direction.
After a moment, Liane began to laugh also. She set the book back on the table and embraced him. "Oh, Garric, wewill win this, you know," she gasped between gusts of laughter.
"Aye," growled the king in Garric's mind. "And when it's time to split skulls, we'll do that too, lad; you and me!"
***
Ilna awakened in her bedroll on the stern an instant before the lookout'
s cry roused everybody aboard theBird of the Tide. The sky to the north rippled and flared crimson.
"Get the oars out," Chalcus ordered calmly from the door to the tiny deckhouse. "Nabarbi and Tellura to port, Shausga and Ninon starboard. Kulit-"
Kulit was on watch; he'd sounded the alarm.
"-stay there in the bow to conn us through the passage."
In a break from his usual blithe cheerfulness, Chalcus added in a snarl, "Sister take those bloody rocks, and may they not takeus before we're even out of this harbor!"
Ilna glanced at the stars; it was past midnight. The moon was waxing and not yet visible in Terness Harbor, though on the open sea it would probably be above the horizon.
The weapons were stored in the deckhouse, sheltered from the weather. Chalcus took out a bow, set one end on the deck, and leaned his weight on the other until the staff curved; then he slipped the bow cord into its notch. Bowstaves cracked if left with the cord taut, so an archer only strung his weapon when he was about to use it.
Night lay on the drystone huts built up the hillside; the town was dark as only a peasant village or the deep forest can be. No lights gleamed from the fishing boats. A muted clang came from theDefender, moored across the harbor. The narrow-hulled patrol vessel rocked even in the still water of the harbor; the hammer hanging beside the alarm gong in the stern occasionally brushed it as they both swung.
"What's it that's happening out there, captain?" Hutena asked as he took the first bow as Chalcus began to string the next. The four crewmen told off to row were fitting their long oars onto the thole pins. They worked with their usual skill, never wasting a motion, but there was a silent tension to the task tonight.
"Ah, that's what we're going out to learn, lads," Chalcus said. He passed the second bow to the bosun who gathered it with the first in his right hand. He held them by their tips. "Wizards' work, that we know from the sky."
He nodded as he strung the third bow, a particularly stiff one. Its core of black wood from Shengy was laminated between a layer of whalebone on the face and a backing of ox sinew. "Which wizards those would be, and what their intent is-those things we need to be closer to learn."
