David Drake: Master of the Cauldron

The ships scrunched together, rocking violently. The passengers hindered the deck crew, but there were hawsers across to the inner vessel before they drifted apart again. Soldiers had started leaping over before the ships were lashed together firmly.

"Make way for the Princess and the old lady!" Prester bellowed. He glared at the men he'd detailed to carry Tenoctris and added in a scarcely quieter voice, "Mallus and Jodea, hop to it!"

The troops crashed and slid their way across the ships till they'd reached the stone quay. A couple of them managed to fall into the water, but they were able to rescue themselves because cut rigging already hung from the vessels' sides. Troops must've fallen previously, and soldiers had no compunction about destroying a ship-or most anything else-to save a buddy's life.

The men holding Tenoctris negotiated the route without difficulty; they must've been either sailors or mountaineers at an earlier point in their lives. It struck Sharina that Prester and Pont might be simple men in many respects, but their knowledge of troops and the things required to keep troops alive was of a very sophisticated order.

The trireme had carried at least two hundred soldiers besides the oarsmen. No wonder it'd ridden low in the water! The men first across to the quay were starting up the boulevard which led to the harbor.

"Halt and form ranks of twelve, you miserable disgraces!" Pont cried, moving in a rolling trot to the front of his men. "Are you the Prince's Royal Army, or are you a herd of bloodycats, eh?"

Men crunched and clattered into place. Though they must be a mixture of several or many different units, they fell into formation as easily as grain fills a sack. The only problem seemed to be the length of the front rank, and Pont quickly trimmed that back to the twelve he'd demanded.

"Do we fall in, Marshal?" one of the soldiers carrying Tenoctris asked plaintively.

"You bloody well donot," Prester snarled, his eye restraining as well the pair of soldiers holding the bearers' javelins. "You stay back with me and the Princess, you got it?"

All four men nodded. Prester's tone was so commanding that Sharina, half-numbed by all that had happened, almost nodded also.

"Forward…," Pont called from the left front of the formation. "March! Hup! Hup! Hup!"

Hobnails on stone, the studded aprons of the soldiers, and pieces of their equipment jouncing together, combined deafeningly. It sounded like wagons full of scrap metal driving over the edge of a quarry.

"Double…," Pont called. "Time!"

Prester glanced at Sharina as they kept pace with the rear of the formation-him trotting, her in what was more a leggy walk than running. "This all right with you, Princess?" he asked.

"Yes, of course," said Sharina. "But can troopers Mallus and Jodea keep up?"

"They can if they know what's good for them," Prester said with baleful significance. "We don't have packs, you see. And it's just up to the palace the messenger said where we meet his princeship."

The air was chilly. Fires were burning at half a dozen places in the city, adding their smoke to the unnatural overcast, but in addition the atmosphere had the cutting, choking stench of sulfur.

The ground continued to jump the way a dead frog does, a spastic trembling unlike the two real earthquakes Sharina had experienced. Many buildings had collapsed. Sometimes the lower stories of brick and stone remained, but the lath and plaster construction above them had shaken into the street. A few corpses lay on the pavement, but the people who could flee were already gone.

Wizardlight continued to tear the overcast. The bolts were searingly bright, but they didn't leave afterimages on Sharina's eyeballs the way direct sunlight would've done.

The boulevard bent to the right between a pair of government office buildings, still standing while lesser structures had fallen. Men were fighting monsters at the head of the street, but the Earl's palace had vanished into a cauldron of black vapors and grubs trying to be men.

Garric and Liane were at the left end of the line where a street leading toward the river joined. Fallen buildings half-choked the cross-street, but troops were using the rubble as artificial hills to defend against the creatures attacking.

The battle was ending as Sharina and the reinforcements double-timed up. The monsters didn't retreat: they died, throwing themselves forward like rabid dogs and sometimes drawing blood before they were butchered.

"Detachment…," Pont said as his troops neared the present defenders. He paused for three more crashing double-paces, then cried, "Halt!"

"Bring Tenoctris!" Sharina said as she ran to her brother.

Garric turned slowly but didn't seem to recognize her. He was breathing through his mouth, and his eyes were focused in another time. His sword was so bloody that only in streaks and patches could Sharina see that the blade was patterned in gray waves.

Liane began moving down the line of soldiers, offering them drinks from a helmet filled with water. She lifted the improvised bucket to each man's lips; for the most part they were too exhausted to raise it themselves.

"Garric, you're in danger!" Sharina said. His arms hung at his sides, weighed down by his equipment. His shield'd been hacked to half its original dimensions. What was left of its leather facing held together the wooden core.

"I'd noticed," Garric said. He started to laugh, but the flash of humor turned into a cough. He went down on one knee.

"A wizard on Ornifal planned something against you," Sharina said. Mallus and Jodea set Tenoctris beside her, then stood beaming as they waited for further orders. The stench of inhuman corpses was nauseating, even beyond the other reeks.

Tenoctris seated herself in the littered roadway and opened the satchel she'd carried in her lap from Valles. "Now that I'm here, I hope I can learn just what the danger is. I'm afraid I couldn't tell when I was in Valles,"she said. She started drawing a figure by pouring powdered sulfur from a flask.

"Whatever it is," Garric said wearily, "it'll have to wait its turn."

He looked at the reinforcements and suddenly smiled. He lurched upright again. "Pont, you're a warrant officer, now?" he said.

"Yes, Prince," Prester said. "Me and Pont are camp marshals. Ah-this is pretty much the tailings from Volita, I'm afraid. Where do you want us?"

Garric looked over his shoulder. A mass of white creatures with weapons as distorted as their bodies rose from the cauldron. Garric's face lost the moment's happiness Sharina had seen there.

"It's like the surf hitting a cliff," Garric whispered. "Not all at once, but again and again. Until it stops or the cliff goes down, and I don't guess this surf is going to stop."

"There's troops coming up from the river too, your princeship," Pont said. "Dunno how many, but some."

As Pont spoke, he nodded toward the handful of soldiers coming up the street from the left. All were line infantry. Lord Attaper was on the other side of this boulevard and a few more guards remained in the line, but the pavement back to the cauldron had many more bodies in black armor.

"Marshal Pont," Garric said, drawing himself straight. "Leave ten men here with me. Take the rest widdershins around the perimeter, leaving detachments where in your judgment they're most needed."

He drew a shuddering breath, no longer Sharina's brother but a tortured soul whose determination burned through the wasted flesh. "Which is everywhere, as I well know, but do your best. Do your best, all of you."

"Aye aye, sir," Pont said, clashing down his right foot and turning on his heel. He tapped the man who'd been next to him with his spear-butt and said, "Rastin, you're sticking with me. Rest of you beggars in the front rank, you stay here with the Prince."