by David Drake
Garric stumbled forward with the blades locked, shouldering the servant in the chest. He thought there was something harder than bone beneath the robes, but he didn’t have time or need to worry about it. He punched the sword upward, in through the belly and out through the spine between the servant’s shoulder blades.
The fellow spasmed but didn’t let go of his curved sword. His tongue protruded from his pale lips and he began to grunt like a farrowing sow.
Garric pushed hard with his left hand—the feeling was beginning to come back—and jerked down on his hilt to clear the sword. His cross guard was against the servant’s ribs. If the blade hadn’t been uniquely sharp, he might not have been able to withdraw it from so deep a thrust. As it was, it cut bone as easily coming out as it had going in.
The dead servant flopped on the causeway. The living one recoiled slightly to avoid tripping.
Garric lunged, thrusting. His driving foot slipped on wet stone and he dropped to his left knee. His point didn’t go home, but neither did the servant’s roundhouse slash.
Carus—it was his reflex, not Garric’s—flicked his blade up instead of recovering the way a swordmaster would’ve directed after a failed thrust. The sword’s tip touched the servant’s wrist and sheared muscle, sinew, and bone.
The servant’s curved blade spun into the sedges and sank. His hand dangled at right angles to his forearm. He turned to run, his robes flapping, but his foot skidded just as Garric’s had a moment before. He fell off the causeway with another hoglike grunt.
Carus would’ve stabbed the floundering servant just in case, but Garric didn’t have his ancestor’s ruthlessness. He stepped past the man, his eyes on the wizard who stood chanting and pointing the athame at him.
“Artaie thaimam thar!” the wizard called. Garric froze where he stood.
The mare had been trying to regain the causeway since bolting off it the moment she’d been released. She put her forehooves in the middle of the servant’s chest and tried to lift herself upward; instead she drove the man into the bog with a final despairing grunt. Slime bubbled.
“Arbitha rathrathax!” said Shin in a musical voice.
Shards of red wizardlight, invisible till that moment, flaked away from Garric. They splashed on the wet earth and vanished hissing. He was free again. The aegipan stood on the causeway, grinning his goat’s grin.
The wizard beside the sinkhole shouted in disbelief. Garric started forward. Though momentary, the pause had robbed him of his momentum. His muscles ached from the ride and the fight.
But he could still kill a wizard. There was no question about that.
The wizard must’ve realized that too. He pointed his athame at the bog and mumbled words that Garric couldn’t hear over the roar of blood in his ears. Garric took another step, a careful one because he didn’t need to hurry: the wizard had nowhere to go but into the bog or the sinkhole.
The wizard stepped off the causeway and strode through the sedges. He wore slippers of gilt leather. They sparkled with scarlet wizardlight every time they touched the surface, but they didn’t sink into the mud.
The wizard had a thin, imperious face. He glared with contempt as he passed safely beyond the reach of Garric’s arm and sword, but he watched the aegipan with a combination of hatred and fear; he raised the silver athame as if to bar an attack. Shin merely laughed and lolled his tongue.
Garric started back down the causeway. “Don’t bother,” said Shin.
Garric stopped. He couldn’t get past the aegipan without stepping into the bog. He didn’t trust Shin’s judgment, but he was too tired to argue about it.
The wizard reached the base of his tower and started around it, keeping his face toward Garric and Shin the whole time. When the curving stone wall half-shielded him, he pointed the athame again and said, “Thora amaim—”
Kore reached down with a long arm and gripped the wizard’s ankles.
“Urk!” the wizard shrieked as Kore jerked him into the air. She dashed his brains out against the side of the tower. His athame clinked from the stone, then splashed into the bog.
Kore continued to hold the corpse upside down. With his robes hanging from his shoulders, the wizard looked like a chicken plucked for boiling. His skin was hairless and a waxen white.
“I did this on my own, master,” she said. The stone causeway must continue around the tower on this side, because she was standing in only a thin layer of mud. “Since I’m not satisfied with the quality of the food you offer me, I thought I’d kill a man to eat. You can’t object, since he was clearly your enemy.”
“I do object,” Garric said. At first he thought the ogre was joking, but the realization dawned that she very well might be serious. “I certainly object! You’re not to, ah, to eat men!”
He’d started to say, “You’re not to kill men.” Under the circumstances that would’ve been not only foolish but churlishly ungrateful.
“Would you stop your horse from eating oats from a dead enemy’s storehouse?” Kore demanded.
“I wouldn’t let my horse eat men,” Garric said, “and I won’t let you either!”
A sucking roar came from the sinkhole. Garric turned, wondering if the edges were collapsing and about to pull him in with them.
A pincer with blades as long as Garric was tall reached up from the sinkhole. It groped, then squelched down in the muck like a paddle. A thing with one eye in the middle of its headplate and a nest of tentacles around its gaping mouth lurched into sight, followed by another pincer.
The creature’s body was the diameter of the peel tower. Duzi—or the Sister—knew how deep its body reached back into the sinkhole.
Shin laughed. “I don’t think it’s what your mount wants to eat that should be concerning you at the moment, Garric,” the aegipan said.
Chapter
10
GARRIC FELT CARUS place a cold overlay on the image of the monster before them. He was a warrior, a man of war first and foremost. Dangers—the huge pincers, the tentacles that writhed five or six feet out from the lamprey-like mouth—and weaknesses—joints and the great central eye—were highlighted, while the rest of the creature remained a shadowed bulk.
Garric knelt and wiped his sword on the tunic of the corpse lying across the causeway. He looked at his dagger. The servant’s blow had notched the steel a finger’s breadth deep; it’d been sheer luck that the blade hadn’t snapped instead of blocking an otherwise fatal stroke.
He threw the dagger down and wrenched the curved sword from the dead man’s grip. The servant’s hand was slender but ridged with sinew; the skin had a grayish cast. There was a nick just below the fat part of the blade, but nothing that seriously impaired its usefulness.
“Or you could run,” Shin said. “Many people would think that was the only sane course, Prince Garric.”
“I don’t think I will,” Garric said, turning to face the monster. That was the choice with evil, after all: you faced it, or you fed other people to it in hopes that it’d eat you last. Running away was just a way of feeding others to it.
King Carus laughed with harsh good nature. “Run, lad?” he cried. “There’s one of him and one of us. Easy odds!”
The monster had a dome-shaped body that moved on four broad paddles. The causeway supported it as it splashed forward, but Garric suspected it’d do well in the mire or even the open sea.
The creature probably wouldn’t move as well on the rocky hills in the direction of the Notch House, but there wouldn’t be any way for Garric to learn that. It’d get to Notch House over his dead body.
“Or more likely after swallowing you, I think,” Shin said in a conversational tone. He’d retreated to where he could lean against the tower; his right leg was cocked back against the flared base. “I suppose that would be entertaining to watch.”
The monster swam closer. Though its carapace didn’t flex as it moved, neither did it give the impression of being either slow or clumsy the way a tortoise would.
Carus judged the strength of the peel tower, then said, “The stonework might hold but I wouldn’t count on it. Regardless, we couldn’t fight a thing like this through a few arrow slits. Go for the eye, lad, and we’ll hope for the best.”
“Shin, can you help?” Garric called without looking over his shoulder again.
“A champion can’t be expected to defeat wizards, Garric,” the aegipan said. “This isn’t a wizard, though; and it remains to be seen whether you’re the champion the Yellow King requires.”
Garric laughed. Nobody’d ordered him to do this thing, so he didn’t have any right to complain if nobody volunteered to help him either.
The mare, her white coat slick with mud and algae, managed to get one, then both of her forelegs onto the causeway. Garric wondered whether she’d consciously swum toward the hidden surface or whether chance had led her to the nearest solid support. Nothing he’d seen of horses made him think they were any smarter than sheep, and sheep were on the intellectual level of rabbits.
The mare’s shoulders bunched. The monster lunged forward like a snake striking, sending up a huge gout of mud and sedges. One pincer closed on the horse’s neck and jerked the beast out of the mire. Blood spouted and the muzzle band finally tore loose. The horse managed a blat of terror before the pincers crushed her windpipe.
The other pincer gripped the mare’s left ham and pulled, stretching her out. The monster slammed her down on the causeway, shattering her spine and ribs, and started to tear her apart.
Garric rushed while the monster was occupied. Before, he’d slipped and skidded all over the slimy stones, but now his balance was perfect.
He jumped onto the dead horse. The monster had turned its prey sideways and continued to pull until her hide split; its tentacles were at work in the body cavity, scooping the organs and ropes of intestine into its pulsing mouth.
A tentacle wrapped around Garric’s right thigh. Instead of suckers for gripping, these arms had tiny teeth covering the paler inner surface. Stabbing through Garric’s breeches, they began to shred cloth and skin as they twisted.
Garric slashed with his straight sword, severing the tentacle holding him and cutting off the tip of his boot. He missed his big toe by little enough that he felt the chill touch of the metal. There wasn’t time to be cautious.
He jumped to the monster’s face, his right foot on the muscular lip from which the tentacles sprouted. He couldn’t quite reach the eye, but if he raised his left foot onto one of the bony bosses protruding from the carapace he could—
Tentacles gripped both his ankles and tugged. He struck with the curved sword, cutting deep into the muscular tentacle but not severing it. The monster’s grip tightened instead of releasing.
Garric hacked with the straight sword. Though the edge was impossibly keen, he couldn’t free his right leg either. The angle was too awkward.
Both pincers were bending toward him. Because of the creature’s thick armor, the arms weren’t quite flexible enough to reach even with three joints. When Garric fell backward, though, they’d pick him to pieces—if the monster didn’t instead stuff him whole into its mouth. The stench from its gullet was worse than that of a week-dead mule.
Garric dropped the curved sword and grabbed the boss he’d hoped to stand on. His fingers slipped: the chitin was waxy and still covered with muck. He was going over.
The tentacle on his left ankle stopped pulling, though it didn’t release. Garric turned to his right and hacked again at the tentacle on that side, this time cutting it through. The severed end flopped and quivered, then fell away.
Kore had waded up behind Garric. She’d braced her feet to either side of the monster’s maw and was chewing on the tentacle holding his left leg. Her long arms were spread, gripping the lower blades of both huge pincers so that they couldn’t close. The chitin edges weren’t as sharp as metal and apparently couldn’t cut without the upper blades for an anvil. Some of the monster’s tentacles writhed on the ogre’s legs, trying to pull her loose. She was holding for the moment, but it wouldn’t be long.
Garric was free. He stepped onto the boss, sprang upward, and thrust the full straight length of his sword into the great eye.
The creature lurched backward with all four paddles. Garric’s legs flew up in the air, but he didn’t lose his grip on the sword. His torso slammed into the headshield, but he continued to hang on while his blade twisted in the creature’s skull.
The pincers clashed beneath him; Kore’d lost her grip. He hoped she’d been thrown clear instead of being crushed or engulfed, but everyone dies and he might die in the next heartbeat.
The paddles on one side lashed forward again, but the other pair nailed the surface like women washing clothes. The creature’s right side lifted, then slammed down. Garric swung like a pendulum.
The blade pulled out. He slid down the creature’s headplate and bounced from its lip. A tentacle lashed him but couldn’t hold; he hit on his back in a spray of mud. His right arm and chest were slick with clear humors that’d leaked from the monster’s eye, and the feeling that was beginning to return to his body was solely pain.
If I’d fallen on stone instead of into the bog, Garric thought, I’d probably have been killed.
He started to laugh. It was agony, and that made him laugh even harder. He still held the sword, but he had to let go of it because he was afraid he’d slash himself as the pain drew his arms close to his chest.
The ogre lifted him in the crook of her left arm. Holding him as gently as a mother, she paced toward the peel tower where Shin waited.
“My sword,” Garric whispered. Had it sunk out of sight already? But he couldn’t have kept holding it.
“I have it,” said Kore. She kicked the dead servant into the bog instead of stepping over him again. “You’ll want to wipe it, I’m sure, but Shin has rags.”
“And fresh clothing,” said the aegipan, holding up a drab tunic. “No doubt you can sew one of these into breeches as well.”
“I can walk,” Garric said. He sounded like rattling death even to himself, but he knew what’d happen to his bruised muscles if he let them stiffen. “I think I’d better walk.”
Kore handed the slimy sword hilt-first to the aegipan, then lowered Garric’s feet to the pavement at the base of the tower. She held his shoulder till they both were sure he could stand unaided, then released him.
The monster’s hindquarters were slewed into the bog, sinking slowly, but the sunken causeway supported its head. The lower blade of the nearer pincer had been wrenched from its socket; it hung by a strand of pale muscle. Kore splashed toward the huge corpse.
“Kore?” Garric said. “Where are you going?”
The ogre turned. “To get my dinner, master,” she said. “I only helped you because I didn’t fancy another meal of pork. Are you going to tell me that seafood such as this—”
She gestured toward the monster. Her arm was incredibly long when she stretched it out at full length.
“—is forbidden your faithful mount also?”
“The last time I told you what you could eat,” Garric said, “that thing came out of the sinkhole. I’m not in any shape right now to deal with another one, so you go right ahead and eat your fill.”
He started laughing again. Though he tried to hold himself upright on the side of the tower, he still sank to his knees. Pain proved that he was alive.
That thought made Garric and the ghost in his mind both laugh even harder and more painfully.
THE HUGE BRICKWORK cylinder was several miles west of Valles. Cashel didn’t know why Tenoctris had brought them to it.
He entered ahead of her. He’d expected it to be full of vagrants or at least choked with their trash, but instead there was only echoing emptiness and the smell of bird droppings. Pigeons cooed nervously; two lifted off with the familiar rattle of flight feathers.
The building was windowless, so the only light was what the moon cast through the doorway. By it, Cashel could tel
l that the interior was domed instead of being straight-sided like the outside, though even so it was very large.
Tenoctris walked in, carrying her satchel. Cashel’d asked her to wait with the gig till he looked the place over, but he hadn’t really expected her to listen to him. Even before Tenoctris called up the demon, she’d been a lot less cautious about danger than he’d liked.
Cashel was used to it, of course. Sheep were the same way.
“I’ll get the rest, Tenoctris,” he said as he walked out to the gig. Tenoctris had tied the reins to a piece of iron no bigger than a clenched fist. The bay horse could’ve run off easily, but instead it just backed as far as it could get without moving the weight. It rolled its eyes at Cashel as he lifted the sword and bronze tripod from the back of the vehicle, but it seemed afraid even to whinny.
Cashel frowned slightly. They didn’t want the horse to wander away, but there wasn’t a good place to tie it. Still, the fear in the animal’s eyes bothered him a bit.
Tenoctris was always polite and kindly, but under the surface…The horse made Cashel realize that he’d never seen the wizard hesitate to do anything or use anything she had to get her job done.
He grinned. Tenoctris was on their side. He guessed that was all that really mattered.
“Set the tripod here,” Tenoctris said, gesturing to the center of the floor. She’d swept away leaves that’d blown in and placed a handful of twigs with rough, scaly bark on the cleared space. “Over the fireset.”
It didn’t look like a fireset to Cashel, not to heat a tripod with a bowl big enough for Ilna to do the wash in. He obeyed without arguing, though: there were lots of things he didn’t understand but other people did. He trusted Tenoctris.
She waited while he positioned the tripod, then nodded approval. She’d unstoppered a tiny bottle—it wasn’t but the size of Cashel’s thumb—and now poured its contents into the bowl. It was way too dark to be able to tell the color of what she’d poured out, but he’d have been willing to swear that it had a violet tinge.
