David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

The spearman was Liane. She lowered the helmet back onto Garric's head. He rose and braced himself for the new assault, because despite the sunlight the monsters still came on with the fury of the damned.

Blackness burped from the crater. Instead of streaking upward to heal the wound in the overcast, it coalesced into the shape of a two-legged reptilian nightmare. The thing strode heavily down the cracked pavement toward Mab.

This wasn't an illusion. The corpses of white monsters burst like foul grapes as the three-clawed feet crushed down on them. The lifting foot kicked a dead soldier; he hurtled several double-paces through the air before falling again to the bloody pavement.

Cashel had his staff spinning at a moderate rate, alternating sunwise circles and widdershins to loosen all his muscles against the time he needed their full strength. He guessed that time was now.

The thing of darkness marched on. The only light on the sooty form was the eyes, searing orange-red blotches on either side of the narrow skull. The creature bore down on Mab-and standing in front of Mab, Cashel.

"Get out of the way!" Cashel shouted as he spun the staff faster-sunwise now, certain of every next move; certain of everything but the outcome. His voice was thick with rage. "Garric, get your men out of the way! This one's mine!"

Cashel couldn't tell if the soldiers heard him or not. The two in the center of the line edged a little toward either side. They raised their shields and cocked their swords back to strike if the lizard-thing bit down at them, but they didn't run.

The creature strode through the living ranks of white not-men, crushing and slashing them aside with the same disregard it'd displayed for the windrows of their corpses. Dying things, already stunned by the torrent of sunlight, mewled in horror; the stench of their gutted bodies was worse than a tanyard in hot summer.

"Move aside!" Cashel said.

The lizard reached the line of soldiers, breaking paving stones every time its feet smashed down. The two nearest men weren't cowards, couldn't be cowards to stand where they were; but they didn't throw themselves in the path of something they knew they could no more stop than they could stop an avalanche walking on two legs. The lizard-thing passed between the soldiers, heading for Mab with the unswerving assurance of an arrow. Cashel stepped forward to meet it.

His staff was spinning, scattering coils of blue wizardlight. He could see every bit of the pattern-the way the creature would move, the way he'd move; the perfect arc of his quarterstaff and the point his leading buttcap would meet the creature's long jaw.

Cashel could see everything but what happenedthen: whether the creature went down or it snapped him up on its way to Mab. That depended on how strong he was and how strong the creature was. There was no way of telling that except by trying, just like in any other fight.

That didn't bother Cashel. He didn't start fights himself, but his size drew fellows who needed to prove they were better than him. Thus far they'd all been wrong; and if this lizard was right, well, Cashel had won too often to complain about losing once.

The creature seemed to slow down, but that was what always happened at times like this. Cashel was seeing everything with the eyes of experience, all the little pieces that were really happening at the same time.

The lizard was the same dull color all over, no shades or highlights. It was like a shadow wrapped around something that could've been a crocodile on two legs. The bright sunlight didn't make any difference. Cashel saw the teeth only when the open jaws were canted to silhouette them against something on the other side. The maw, the throat, the pits of the nostrils-all were the same black that was really no color.

The lizard's left foreleg reached for Cashel, but he stepped inside it as he brought the staff around. It was all the way he'd seen it in his mind, the movements working together just the way the gears of his grandfather's mill in Barca's Hamlet turned and made the grindstones spin. Everything was perfect.

His sunwise-spinning buttcap struck midway on the creature's long jaw.

Cashel expected a shock and a blue flash. Instead, time stopped. Cashel's heart didn't beat, and the stench of death and sulfur was only a memory in his nostrils. He saw Garric and Liane from beyond the creature's out-thrust leg. Garric's mouth was open to shout, but Cashel heard nothing in this slice of forever.

Crackling blue wizardlight licked across the monster the way a downpour covers a statue. The living darkness flew apart as suddenly as chaff lifts in a windstorm.

Cashel fell backward, deafened and numb. The shattered dust of the lizard swept across him, bearing him down and smothering him. As he toppled, he felt the ground lift with a shock far greater than any that had struck the city before.

Sharina stepped from the sanctum of the temple, brightly lit through the open doors, onto the foreshore of Volita. The sky was covered by a black cloud almost as opaque as the block of stone on which she stood. She stumbled, more from surprise than because she'd just passed from one place to a distant other place in a single step.

"Ah!" said Tenoctris. "Set me-"

Sharina was already bending to put the Tenoctris' feet on the ground. She lifted the wizard upright, then cautiously released her. Tenoctris' spirit was indomitable, but her friends had learned techniques to cope with the weakness of an elderly body. For Sharina and Cashel in particular, these were by now second nature.

The water was only twenty feet away. Sharina stepped off the stone. It was a thin, square slab with sides an arm's length across. It didn't seem to have come from the ruined mansions just above the tide line.

"Bolor's courier must've placed it here," Tenoctris said, glancing at the slab approvingly. "It's sheltered by these pilings, so when someone appears here, he looks like he's just stepped into view normally."

A trireme stood fifty feet out in the strait, broadside to the shore. Only the uppermost bank of oars was manned. Fully-equipped soldiers were boarding by a pair of rope ladders. The warship rocked violently on its narrow keel, but the fact it didn't capsize indicated that its officers had men standing on the opposite outrigger to balance the weight of those climbing.

A few other vessels were beached nearby, but most of the royal fleet had crossed to the mainland. The trireme's sailing master stood in the stern, bellowing through a speaking trumpet, "Two more only! Any more and we'll bloody sink in the chop!"

Soldiers, many of them with signs of injury, stood on the sand in two and threes to watch the loading. Civilians, apparently refugees from Erdin, formed in larger groups apart from the troops.

Sharina stepped out of cover. "Where's Prince Garric?" she demanded loudly. "Is he still here on Volita?"

Some people turned to look at her, though others continued staring in numb amazement at the devastation across the strait. No one spoke.

"Where's Prince Garric?" Sharina shouted, pointing her finger at a soldier He wore his cuirass but no helmet because of the bandage on his head.

Instead of the soldier, a barefoot woman in expensive robes answered, "He's at the palace, fighting the demons from below. He's there if he's still alive."

"Hurry!" Tenoctris said. "We've got to get aboard the ship."

There was no help for it, then. Sharina was tired, physically as well as mentally, but without hesitation she picked the wizard up again. She ran into the water shouting, "I'm Princess Sharina! Help me! I've got to reach my brother in Erdin!"

Those aboard the trireme probably couldn't hear her, but the soldiers waist-deep in the strait waiting their turn to climb the ladders did. Three of them bellowed in unison, "Hold up for the Princess coming aboard!"