David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

"Who do you recognize, then?" Sharina said, speaking loudly but pitching her voice deeper than normal so that she didn't sound shrill. The men around her would take that as a sign of fright, which neither she nor the kingdom could afford. "A moment ago you bowed to the glamour a wizard hung on a corpse! Now the wizard's dead and the corpse is dead again-and there's an army of monsters preparing to swarm over Ornifal and the Isles beyond. Which side are you on, man or monsters?"

Lord Waldron with an official from the City Provost's office whom Sharina didn't know by name and another officer carrying the truce flag had waited between the armies for several minutes. Now they rode slowly toward the rebel army.

"Look, your highness…," Lord Lattus said awkwardly. "We've taken arms against Prince…, well, against your brother. And marched on Valles. We don't have any choice now but to go through with it. Or hang, that's all."

"What do you mean, 'No choice'?" Sharina said, sweeping her gaze around the circle of eyes watching her all up and down the hillside. Most of the army couldn't hear the discussion, but they could see her imperious posture and the deference the rebel nobles gave her. "You have the choice of following Princess Sharina of Haft against monsters like those your grandfathers routed forty-nine years ago. There's that choice, or there's sitting on your hands while real men save the Isles! Which will it be for you?"

"Sister take it!" said Lord Luxtus. "We came here to fight. And I for one won't be sorry if I'm not fighting my own sister's son, as I see carrying Waldron's banner!"

Bolor nodded and muttered, "Yes, all right." He turned to face the commander of the royal army, now close enough to touch with a lance.

"Uncle Waldron!" he said in a deep, carrying voice. "Princess Sharina summoned us to come to your support. May I request that you place me on the right flank against the People?"

Lord Waldron, as lean and hard-featured as a hawk, glared down from his saddle at Bolor. Just as Sharina opened her mouth to speak, Waldron said, "You can request anything you please, nephew, but I'll not be giving up the place of honor in an army I command, to you or to anybody else. Apart from that, though, I'm glad of your loyal support. The kingdom-"

His eyes flicked to Sharina; he nodded, as close as he could come to making a full bow from horseback.

"-has always been able to depend on the bor-Warrimans."

A trumpet signalled from the royal army. The ranks of People had begun to advance like a long bronze wave.

"And now is the time we prove it," said Bolor. "Gentlemen, tell your regimental guides that we'll be marching obliquely to the left, putting our right on the left of my uncle's forces-which I trust will shortly be facing around."

Sharina dropped the mace and took the reins of the horse. A former rebel opened his mouth to object, then subsided without speaking.

"Tenoctris," Sharina said, "I'm going to mount and then pull you up behind me. We'll be rejoining Lord Waldron for the battle."

And not coincidentally rejoining Under-Captain Ascor and his squad of Blood Eagles. They were the only troops in this army who considered it of the first importance to keep Tenoctris alive. The past few hours had convinced Sharina once again that if anything happened to the old wizard, the kingdom wouldn't long survive her.

Trumpets had started sounding from the battlements as soon as the citizens of Ronn had returned from a field piled with the bodies of the Made Men. Their brassy tunes skirled over city and plain alike, joyously triumphant. Cashel could hear them faintly even here in the stone-cut cellars of the city.

The sun had been rising over the eastern mountains when Cashel, Mab, and the Heroes entered the shaft that dropped them to the city's lowest level. Mab said that this time they didn't need to walk the last half of the way down. All danger to Ronn ended when the King let down his defenses to deal with Cashel, allowing Mab to blast him as though he never was.

Mostly Cashel liked to hear music, but right now he'd sooner that the trumpeters would just stop. It wasn't right to be happy when so many fellows were freshly dead or were missing limbs. Sure, it was good that Ronn was safe and the King wouldn't trouble its citizens any more-but that didn't bring the dead back to life.

Light wicking from the city's roof and walls brightened these depths also, now that black algae no longer curtained the crystal windows in the ceilings. The slimy growths covering everything when Cashel first came here had dried to fine powder that swirled away through the ventilation system. When Cashel stirred up a pinch of dust that'd hidden in some cranny, it had a pleasant sharpness that made him sneeze the way he did when Ilna grated ginger into a stew.

"In a few days the streams here will be running clear again," Mab said. "The plantings will take longer to regrow, but not much longer. And very shortly people will return to these levels."

She grinned at Cashel. Since the battle Mab had gone back to looking like she had when Cashel first met her on the hillside where he followed the ewe: a woman in her thirties, good-looking but too queenly to be called pretty. She added, "Not everybody likes to have only clear crystal between them and the outside, you know."

Cashel shrugged though he didn't speak. He knew what Mab said was true, but he didn't understand how it could be. He'd sooner sleep on an open hillside than in a thatched hut, and these rock caverns made him uncomfortable just to visit-let alone live here. But there was no accounting for taste, in sheep or people, either one.

The Heroes hadn't spoken since they entered the shaft with Mab and Cashel. Now the surviving twin, holding the left arm of his dead brother over his shoulders, said, "I thought the first time I made this trip would be my last."

"It would've been," said Dasborn, supporting the corpse's right arm, "if you'd finished the job you started. And if you'd done that, I wouldn't have failed in turn and raised Valeri to fail."

He laughed. It was hard to tell with Dasborn if he really thought all the things he laughed at were funny, but Cashel guessed he probably did. That was true of a lot of soldiers, it seemed. Garric had gotten that way since he left Barca's Hamlet and started wearing a sword.

The doors of the temple were open. It looked different by daylight than it had when Cashel was here first, fighting his way through a fog of evil that was cruel and determined and angry at its own existence. Now the doors' surfaces were bright. Their carvings showed all manner of people living happily, city folk on the right valve and on the left countrymen. One big fellow watching sheep on a hillside could've been meant for Cashel himself.

"Well, we're done with it now," Valeri said harshly. "And not before time!"

He and Virdin carried Hrandis' body on a stretcher made from two spears and a blanket. A sword-stroke had torn off Valeri's helmet; blood soaked the left side of the bandage around his head. Virdin limped from the wound in his right thigh, and the blow that'd dented his breastplate must've bruised ribs if it hadn't broken then.

Cashel had offered to replace either of them on the stretcher-or carry the corpse alone; Hrandis was a heavy weight, but the task wasn't beyond Cashel's strength. "You're a stout lad," Valeri had replied, his tone just short of sneering. "But this isn't for you."

Mab stopped at the temple entrance. Cashel placed himself at her side, holding the staff upright and close in to his body. He figured his job now was to keep out of the way. He'd figured that when he offered to carry the dead Hero, too, but he'd offered help anyway because courtesy required him to. It wasn't the first time he'd gotten snapped at for being polite.