by David Drake
“There’s no need for that,” Ilna said tartly to Temple.
“Perhaps,” said the big man with a smile. He sheathed his purplish blade with the smooth ease of water poured from a ewer, but the villagers remained where they were. As he’d intended, obviously; and perhaps he was right after all.
“Bistona’s lying on the couch,” Ilna said to Breccon. “She’s not responsible for the monsters, and from what she said a moment ago she may be coming back to her right mind.”
She paused, feeling her face harden. “You’re to treat her as one of your own,” she continued. “I may never return to your village, but if I do and Bistona’s been mistreated, I’ll consider you no better than the monsters we rid you of this morning.”
Bistona called, “Lamo eararacharraei anachaza!”
“What did she say?” Asion demanded, looking from the reclining woman to Ilna. “I didn’t understand it.”
“Richar basumaiaoiakinthou anaxarnaxa!” Bistona said. Her eyes were open but unfocused; her hands were crossed over her chest like a corpse’s.
“It’s wizardry,” Ilna said. The words meant nothing to her, but she’d heard Tenoctris and others speak words of power often enough that by now she recognized the tone and rhythms.
And a very inconvenient time for it, she thought, though she didn’t add that opinion out loud. Bistona’s chanting was bound to make the villagers uncomfortable, and they obviously blamed her for their misfortunes already.
“Breccon, she’s speaking for the Lady!” Graia said excitedly. “Redmin’s dead, but the Lady’s made Bistona Her oracle in his place!”
“How’s that an oracle?” Asion said. “Can you understand it?”
“Phameta mathamaxanrana echontocheritha!” said Bistona.
“No one understands it, not even wizards,” Ilna said contemptuously. She’d seen this sort of fakery before. No doubt Bistona would shortly “awaken” and announce to the village that she was now their priest and they should honor her. Well, that was the sort of result Ilna’d wanted, but it still irritated her to see it done through a lie.
“Ilna os-Kenset!” croaked the raven. “The straight path is crooked, the crooked path is straight.”
Its voice was harsh but completely understandable. There was no chance Ilna was misinterpreting the sort of sounds birds ordinarily made.
Graia gave a shout of delight and clutched her husband. The other elder knelt and touched his forehead to the floor of the porch. He crossed his hands, whole and maimed, over his head.
“You must turn aside,” said the raven, “or you will not reach your goal.”
Bistona stirred on the couch. She blinked twice and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand.
“I’d never heard a bird talk before,” said Karpos, not frightened but wondering.
“Yes, yes,” said Graia, “the Lady always speaks through the Servant, good sir. Well, when she does.”
“A lot of times Redmin says the Servant told him the answer and the suppliant has to leave his gift for the Lady,” Breccon explained. “But sometimes it’s like this.”
“Graia?” said Bistona, sitting up on the stone couch. “How did I get here?”
Then, with a hint of shrillness as she touched her filthy garment, “What’s happened to me?”
Temple gestured the old woman inside. Graia hesitated a moment, then scurried to Bistona and grasped her hands. She began speaking, quickly but in a low voice.
The raven croaked and spread a wing to preen its feathers. The bird had the mangy look of extreme age.
The elders whispered to each other, but Temple and the hunters were looking at Ilna. “Do you expect me to say something?” she said angrily. “There’s nothing to say. I don’t have a goal!”
Her companions didn’t speak. Ilna brushed past Temple and went quickly down the temple steps. She knew that she was leaving the shrine lest the bird say something more to her. That showed weakness and made her even angrier.
Ilna faced around. Temple and the hunters had come out onto the porch.
“I’ve never turned aside,” Ilna said. “I’m not going to start now!”
But as she spoke, she remembered that once long ago she’d given herself over to evil, to Evil. She had turned aside from that.
If she hadn’t, if she’d continued on the path she’d set for herself, this world would be an icy desolation … as she had seen.
THE SCREAMING HORSE awakened Garric, but his sword was in his hand before his own senses were alert. King Carus had the instincts of a cat and the reflexes of a spring trap; he never forgot where his sword was, and anything untoward sent his hand to it.
That complicated Garric’s life, because it generally wasn’t appropriate for a prince to snatch out his sword. There’d been times it’d kept him alive, though, and this might be one of those times.
The horse screamed again. The sound cut off with a snap of bone, though other animals continued kicking and braying in the stables below Garric’s window.
The shutters of Garric’s room were barred, but the right-hand one sagged and let in moonlight. He laid the sword across the mattress stuffed with corn shucks and pulled his boots on quickly. Stepping on a pitchfork in the dark could be the last mistake he ever made.
“Do you know what you’ll be getting into if you go down there?” Shin asked.
“No,” said Garric. His belt was still hung from the peg at the head of the bed; he buckled it on. Not only might he need his dagger, he was likely to want to free his hands while keeping the sword available in its scabbard.
“You could wait here,” Shin said. “The room’s sturdy. You have no idea what creatures roam this region.”
The private rooms of the Boar’s Skull Inn were at the back of the second floor. They were built for merchants who wanted to lock themselves, their guards, and their baggage in for the night. There was plenty of space for Garric and the aegipan, though the latter’d chosen to curl up on the floor rather than share the mattress with its coverlet of sewn sheepskins.
Garric threw open the shutters and looked out over the slanting stable roof. He didn’t reply. He wouldn’t like himself if he’d been a person who thought in Shin’s terms; and anyway, Shin hadn’t asked a question.
The boy, Megrin, stood at the edge of the forest bawling something. Garric couldn’t make out the words; perhaps they weren’t words at all, just terror given voice. The next window over opened. Master Orra looked out, met Garric’s eyes, and ducked in again. His shutters banged.
The ghost in Garric’s mind laughed. “There’s no lack of folk wanting someone else to do their fighting,” Carus said. “I never minded being that someone.”
Garric’s shield leaned against the wall below where his sword had hung; he picked it up by its twin handles. It was wicker waterproofed with a covering of waxed linen, meant for skirmishers. It felt uncomfortably light compared to the line infantryman’s brassbound round of birch plywood that Garric had worn in battle, on his arm and far more often in Carus’ memory, but even so it was more than most travelers would have.
“It’ll do, lad,” said Carus in a husky whisper. “It’s what we have, so it’ll do.”
Garric stepped onto the roof, the shield in his left hand and the shimmering gray sword in his right. His smile mirrored that of the ghost in his mind.
The stable roof was of arm-thick poles laid side by side. They hadn’t been dressed, let alone squared, but enough bark had sloughed away that if there’d been light in the stables Garric would’ve been able to look through them and see what was going on.
And if I had a hundred Blood Eagles with me, I could let them take care of the problem, he thought, grinning. This would do.
The stable doors had been opened outward. Garric judged the ground below—it was clear—and jumped with his knees flexed to land in the shelter of a door valve.
The doors were built on the same massive scale as everything else about the inn. If he’d dropped in front of the opening, s
omething could’ve leapt on him before he turned to face it. Judging from the way the horse’d screamed before its neck broke, that would’ve been the end—and a nasty end.
Garric made sure of his footing, got his breath, and swung into the doorway with his shield raised. He stood there, letting his eyes pick out forms in the dappled shadows instead of rushing straight in. The pause would’ve been suicide if he’d faced human foes who’d have him as a silhouetted target for an arrow or even a thrown knife, but the grunts and slobbering gulps from the gelding’s stall weren’t human.
The creature which’d been crouching over the dead horse turned toward Garric. It was a distorted image of a man, very broad and too tall to stand at full height though the ceiling was ten feet high at the rear of the stables. Its face was long and flat; when its jaws opened, they dropped straight down instead of hinging at the back.
“Ho!” it bawled. “This horse was stringy, but here’s a morsel come to offer itself as a tastier dinner!”
A lantern from behind threw its light over Garric, then past him into the stables. The creature’s hide was faintly green where it hadn’t been bathed in the gelding’s blood, and it was female.
“May the Shepherd help us, it’s an ogre!” squealed Hann. “Milord, run! No man can fight an ogre!”
King Carus laughed. It was only when Garric heard the sound echoing from the stable rafters that he realized he was laughing too.
“Milord!” the innkeeper repeated, this time in a scandalized tone.
Garric backed a step. Carus was plotting the next move and all the moves to follow, a chess master who gamed with real humans and himself at their head.
“I’ll lick the flesh off your thighbones, little man!” the ogre said. Her four breasts, flaccid but pendulous, wobbled as she bent forward slightly. “And you’ll still be alive when I do it!”
“The ogre reads minds, Master Garric,” said Shin from somewhere behind him. Garric wondered if the aegipan had jumped from the roof as he had or had come out a door on the ground floor with the innkeeper. “Not my mind, of course.”
“Then she knows exactly how I’m going to kill her,” Garric said. The words came out in a growl; his mouth was dry. “She’ll have to hunch to get through this doorway, and when she does I’ll put my sword through her. It’ll cut stone, you know, Shin; it’ll slice that ugly skull of hers like a cantaloupe.”
The ogre roared and rushed forward—but toward the door, not through it. Garric stayed in his waiting crouch. He laughed, at the trick and at the way he and Carus had anticipated it.
The ogre’s arms were long, even for a creature so big. If Garric’d lunged to meet her, she’d have snatched him while he was off balance and dragged him inside, probably slamming him a time or two against the doorposts along the way. By standing his ground a little way back from the opening, Garric had time to meet a clutching hand and lop it off. This sword’s edge would make nothing of the ogre’s big bones, and if she read his mind she was sure of that.
The ogre backed and bellowed again, flexing her arms at her sides. It was like watching a crab threaten a rival. The arms were amazingly long, eight feet or so; her knuckles’d scrape the ground if she hunched over.
“Bring a bow and arrows!” Garric shouted into the night. He turned his head slightly, but he could still see the ogre with both eyes. Hann had left his lantern on the ground and vanished, but Garric was sure everybody in the Boar’s Skull was listening to him. “Javelins, any missiles! I’ll keep her from coming out while you shoot her full of arrows!”
“So you think you can stop me, my little morsel?” the ogre said loudly. “Do you doubt that I’ll pull your head off even if you manage to find my heart with your sword?”
Carus barked a laugh. Garric said, “No, I don’t doubt that. But I will find your heart.”
He tossed his shield down and drew the dagger with his left hand. The wicker wouldn’t be any use if the ogre rushed, but he might drive the dagger home even if she tore the sword from him after his first stroke. It wouldn’t matter to him, of course, but the quicker the ogre bled out, the less chance there was of her killing anybody else.
Somebody has to do it. This time that somebody is me. That was the decision you made when you became a shepherd, or a soldier, or a prince.
The ogre reached up and tore at the roof; the poles crackled in her grip. Garric poised. She could break out of the stables, but the roof and walls were too sturdy for her to do so easily. When she gets her head and shoulders through the hole, I’ll lunge. I’ll put the point in through her diaphragm and rip down to spill her guts on the stable floor. It’s not as quick as a stroke to the heart, but it’ll kill—and I might even survive the encounter, unexpectedly.
The ogre suddenly backed and leaned against the side-wall, making a sound like rocks grating. After a moment, Garric realized she was laughing.
“Well, you’re a brave one,” she said affably. “And a clever one besides. I’ve never met a man like you before, I’ll tell you that.”
She cocked her head to the side and let her jaw drop; her front teeth looked like a wolf’s, but behind them were great molars that could crush a horse’s thigh.
“She’s smiling, if you wondered,” Shin said. “She doesn’t have lips like a man’s, so she’s trying to make an expression that suggests a smile. Personally I don’t think it’s a very good copy, but I suppose she deserves something for making the effort.”
“I’ll give her something,” Garric said in a thick voice, mouthing the words Carus spoke in his mind. If he rushed, he was almost certain to get home with the dagger as the ogre concentrated on the longer blade….
“Here!” said the ogre sharply, straightening. “You’re a king, you have a whole nation depending on you. There’s no point in the two of us killing each other. I made a mistake coming here, I freely own it. You go your way and let me go mine, and I’ll never trouble you again.”
“No,” said Garric hoarsely. “You’re right, I’m a king. I’m not going to loose you on people who trust me. Tomorrow it might be a child, it might be Liane….”
His mouth was dry as ashes, as dry as hot sand. He trembled with the need to act, to move. He’d thought he could wait for someone to bring a bow and arrows, but he couldn’t; he was going to rush very soon now and kill this monster as it’d killed his horse, as it’d killed who-knew-what in the past.
“Prince Garric, I wronged you!” the ogre said. She knelt on one knee—her legs were in normal human proportions to her body—dipped her head slightly, and touched her fingertips to her forehead. That was a sign of obeisance among the Serians. “I killed your horse.”
“You’ve killed more than my horse,” said Garric, as startled as if the monster had begun to sing a hymn of praise to the Lady.
“You know nothing of my past,” the ogre said. “Besides, the world before the Change was a different place—for you, for me, for everyone. What happened in this world is that I killed the horse which you needed to reach the Yellow King. I will be your horse, Prince Garric. I will carry you as surely and safely as that stupid quadruped could ever do.”
The absurdity of the situation made Garric dizzy. He would’ve laughed, but his mouth was too dry. “Do you have a sea wolf friend that I could sail across seas on too?” he croaked. “Why in Duzi’s name do you think I’d trust you?”
“Oh, her oath is binding, Garric,” Shin said cheerfully. “Though far be it from me to dissuade you from being torn limb from limb. I’m sure that’s what a proper hero like your ancestor would insist on doing, isn’t it?”
“How can that be?” Garric said in amazement. “Trust that monster?”
He almost turned his head to look at the aegipan but caught himself. Big as the ogre was, he’d seen how quickly she moved.
“You’re surprised?” said Shin. “I don’t know why. Your oath is binding, isn’t it? Even if you gave it to an ogre?”
Shin walked in front of Garric, eyeing the kneeling ogre with the
cool judgment of a drover pricing sheep. “You couldn’t use your saddle, of course, but I’m sure you could improvise harness from hides. There’s no lack of hides in this place, is there? After all, we have a longer way to go than I’d care to walk in those clumsy boots of yours.”
He gave his gobbling laugh. “Though of course that won’t matter,” he added cheerfully. “She’ll certainly tear you apart if you fight. It will be a very heroic death, no doubt.”
Garric coughed, started to laugh, and coughed again. His sword was trembling. He was going to have to do something.
“Ogre!” he said. “Do you swear … what do you swear by? Do you have Gods?”
The ogre mimed a distorted smile again. “What do the Gods care about the affairs of humans like me or creatures like you either one?” she said. “I give you my word, Garric or-Reise, that I will bear you like a horse, that I will not harm you, and that I will not harm others whom you wish me not to harm.”
Garric shot his sword home in its scabbard. “And I swear to you, ogre,” he said, “that I’ll treat you as well as I would a horse or a good servant for so long as you keep your word to me.”
“Her name is Koray,” said the aegipan, out of the doorway. “Spelled K-O-R-E. Though I suppose you can continue to call her ogre. You didn’t have a name for the horse, did you?”
“Come out, Kore,” Garric said, “and let me look at you in better light. Besides, you must be cramped in there and I promised I’d treat you properly.”
He still had the long dagger in his left hand; he must’ve forgotten it. He sheathed it as the ogre ducked low to pass under the door transom and then rose to her full height, easily twelve feet.
Kore stretched, then said, “While I realize this may be an indelicate question, master, I broke into these stables because I was very hungry. If you don’t have a better use for the corpse of your former steed, may I resume my meal?”
Garric began to laugh, but the ghost of Carus laughed even harder.
Chapter
