David Drake: Master of the Cauldron

Prester eyed the men falling out of the detachment. He said, "Anddon't let me hear you embarrassed me or I'll come back and piss on your worthless corpses, you hear?"

"From the left by ranks…," said Pont, who'd looked at the debris-choked street they'd be following as they went off to the right. "Form column of fours! Detachment, march!"

Liane jogged toward the courtyard of a mews just down the street, carrying the helmet which was now empty. She wasn't fleeing: Sharina could see a well-curb in the court yard of the mews.

The creatures from the cauldron were within twenty double-paces of the human line. They didn't approach any faster than a man could walk, but they gave the impression of disgusting unity. They resembled less a formation of soldiers than the blotches on a slug's slimy body.

"You want these boys, Princess?" Prester asked in a low tone as the detachment marched off under Pont. He nodded to the four men who'd accompanied Tenoctris, still standing close by. "They're not half bad, if I do say myself who trained 'em."

Sharina shivered. Garric was spreading the reinforcements along the thin existing line. Yes, she did want Mallus and the others by her very much, but it wasn't her decision to make.

"No," she said. "Thank you for your help, Marshal Prester, but you have your duties to carry out. And may the Lady guard you!"

Prester and the four troopers followed their fellows at a thudding run. Sharina grimaced, then glanced down at Tenoctris. The wizard was chanting words of power softly over the six-pointed star she'd drawn in yellow sulfur. She's too close to the fighting here!

Sharina drew the Pewle knife which Lires had handed her on Ornifal. They could use Lires and his fellow guards here. They could use all Waldron's five regiments, as a matter of fact, though it probably wouldn't make any difference in the long run…

The battle of wizards, bolts of light against jets of blackness, continued. The sky was becoming more open, but though sunlight seemed to hurt the white creatures it didn't keep them from coming on.

There was a windrow of bodies where the most recent fighting had occurred, most of them monsters but with a leavening of men. Garric had pulled his remaining troops slightly back to keep his enemies from leaping straight down on them from the pile. This next wave crawled up the corpses of their fellows, then slithered toward the humans with the mindless determination of leeches scenting blood.

A blue thread lifted from the center of Tenoctris' pattern. She continued to chant. The line of light rose arm's length from the ground, then twisted to the left and continued to grow longer.

The creatures met the line of soldiers. Garric stabbed, then struck overhand. His blows were quick as a snake's tongue; it was hard to believe that moments ago he'd seemed so weary.

A thing with a bronze mace swung at Garric from the side. He caught the blow on his shield but went down on one knee. A soldier coming from the river threw his javelin, skewering the fat, multi-legged body of the creature with the mace. It curled in on itself like a broiled spider; Garric regained his feet.

Most of the reinforcements from the river joined the fighting as the monsters forced the line of defenders back. One of them strode stolidly toward Garric. He didn't have a javelin, but he'd drawn his sword. The thread of wizardlight from Tenoctris' hexagram extended till it touched the center of the soldier's breastplate and followed his progress.

Sharina looked sharply. The man was Memet, who'd brought her news of Cashel's disappearance. Or at least he wore Memet's face, as the creature forming in Hani's tank on the island had done.

"Garric!" she shouted. "Watch-"

A pair of monsters with three legs and three heads between them closed with Garric. He knocked one back with his shield as his blade blocked the other's axe. Memet raised his sword.

Sharina grabbed Memet's wrist with her left hand and stabbed the Pewle knife into the pit of the man's stomach. The keen steel point belled on the bronze cuirass, punching through to the depth of hand's-breadth.

Memet struck. Sharina's weight on his sword wrist couldn't prevent the blow but she slowed it. Garric was dodging back after slashing through one throat of the creature attacking from his right. Memet's swordhilt rang on his helmet instead of the blade cutting his spine as it was intended to do.

The false soldier shook Sharina loose and raised his sword for another stroke. She fell back, dragging her knife from the wound. A gout of black decay squirted through the cuirass as the blade came free. The semblance of life washed from Memet's face, leaving behind a skull half-covered with rotten flesh. Memet had said his father'd died on Ornifal a few years previous…

Sharina got back to her feet. The latest attack was over, though new regiments of monsters were rising from the cauldron.

She looked around. Tenoctris swayed, apparently bewildered by the fact her spell had ended unexpectedly.

Sharina squatted and hugged the old woman, careful not to touch her with the Pewle knife. "It's all right, Tenoctris," she said. "You've ended the danger."

The ground shook violently. Sharina looked seaward. Something terrible was happening across the strait on Volita.

Davus stood on a wisp of crystal which stuck out from the Citadel's crown. His right foot was in front of his left because the slender beam wasn't wide enough for them side by side. The wind's whimsy snapped his tunic to and fro.

Ilna, on the crown also but well back from the edge, watched without emotion. Davus had known what he was doing throughout their past acquaintance, so she supposed he still did now that he was King again. And if Davus fell, well, he was an adult. She had enough difficulty living her own life to want to get into the business of deciding what other people should so.

"Ilna, what if he falls?" Merota said. She didn't whine, but she was holding Ilna's right hand and Chalcus' left tight as oysters grip the rocks.

Chalcus chuckled with his usual cheerful ease. "Well, then, my dear girl," he said, "the three of us will have to find our own way back to our friends. Which no doubt we'll do, though I'll admit at the moment I haven't decided how."

He glanced at Ilna over the child's head. "Eh, love of my life?" he added.

Ilna sniffed. "I doubt most things, as you well know," she said. She felt her tight, disapproving lips loosen into a smile. "But I don't doubt that the three of us wouldtry to find passage home, until we succeeded or we… couldn't try any more."

Davus turned with a laugh of pure joy. He walked toward the three outlanders, as sprightly as a dancer at the Harvest Fest. "Oh, my friends," he said, "I can't tell you how good it feels to be back in my land at last."

"You've been back, I'd have judged," Chalcus said, "for the week and more that it's taken us to walk from there-"

He pointed to the south, where the cliffs of their arrival were a purple-brown line on the horizon.

"-to here." His foot tapped the crystal, a sheet as smooth and broad as an iced-over pond. "Not so?"

"Indeed, not so," said Davus. His smile was good-natured but as hard and certain as Ilna's own when she told people truths that didn't fit their understandings. "I was in this land, but it wasn't mine until Mistress Ilna made it mine. A deed I couldn't have accomplished myself, and one which puts me in her debt for so long as I live. A good long while, I would expect that to be."

He threw his head back and laughed again, a man satisfied with the world and his place in it. The jewel hovered just above his scalp, softly scintillant despite the rainbow blaze from the mass of crystal on which he stood.

"Sir?" said Merota. "I'd really like to go home now."