David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

Ilna leaned slightly as the troll took its third step. They'd reached the midpoint of the channel, now, and still the water didn't come to the troll's waist. Davus murmured gentle encouragement in the tone Cashel used when his oxen were starting a heavy haul.

Davus' real communication with the troll was through the touch of his hand. His fingers shifted with greater or lesser pressure, much as a lute-player's did on the neck of his instrument.

A wizened figure in black stood on a platform in the middle of the crater. Ilna might not have noticed him except for the haze of wizardlight about him like a ball of red gauze. He pointed his athame. Black smoke/soot/vapor shot from it and filled a rip in the overcast. An instant later another pair of bolts tore the blackness even wider open to the light.

The troll stepped forward again. It moved with jerky deliberation: every stride was a separate thing instead of all being part of the motion of walking. The harborfront was crowded with ships. Some had already been swamped by waves the troll threw up, but people-from the look of them, civilians rather than proper sailors-were trying to launch one of those remaining. They suddenly broke and fled like lice from a corpse in either direction down Harbor Street.

The female wizard stood between a pair of fallen pillars as she tore the black sky open; her back was to the sea. She was younger than Tenoctris, but that was as much as Ilna could see from behind.

The broad, solid man who stood between the wizard and the pit could be no one but Cashel. His quarterstaff moved in circles as lazy and powerful as those of a whale herding fish before gulping them.

The wizard in the crater began to move, but not under his own power. His creatures raised him on an open litter and carried him toward the back edge, away from the river and the oncoming troll.

Soldiers in the boulevard from the harbor turned from the next wave of pallid monsters. Their heads rose as they stared at the troll. One man started to run, then caught himself or was caught by the unheard command of an officer. They faced the crater again, waiting to meet the onrush of creatures they might stop and ignoring the thing they could not.

Ilna didn't like soldiers or what soldiers did: a life spent killing other people wasn't a fit life for a human being, in her view. But she'd always done her duty, and she respected people who did theirs. Not even Ilna os-Kenset had anything to teachthese men about duty.

"Get out of the way, Prince Garric!" Davus shouted.

"Get out of the way, Prince Garric-c-c!" the troll said, his voice the thunder of an avalanche shouting.

"Let me by to end this for good and all/Let me by to end this for good and all-l-l!" Davus and his minion shouted.

The female wizard lowered her arms and touched Cashel's right shoulder. He slowed the quarterstaff and brought it upright on his left side, glancing back at the woman and then letting his gaze rise to the oncoming troll.

The boulevard was wide enough that even something the size of the troll could pass down it without hitting buildings. Cashel didn't run; he shifted slightly to put himself between the woman and the mountain walking toward them.

Ilna looked at him and smiled, then glanced at Davus with her face growing still again. "Easy," he murmured as his fingers caressed the stone. "Easy, easy… Now!"

The troll's leg came up with a sucking sound and a bloom of silt lifted from the bottom. The strait's current drew the mud westward, away from the creature's step. The troll didn't have feet; the ends of its legs spread slightly when its weight eased onto them. Its hands were fingerless paddles with outcrops to the side which worked as thumbs.

The troll lowered its right leg toward the mainland of Sandrakkan, shaking the ground. The tremor lifted an expanding ring of dust from the city. His foot touched a pair of warships; they flew to splinters, though Ilna on the troll's head hadn't noticed the contact.

"Gently," Davus said to his charge. "Gently, give them a little time. Time doesn't matter to us…"

The soldiers defending the broad street were moving aside: grudgingly, haltingly; several of them helped by their comrades. They'd been standing in the path of the monsters from the pit; but barely standing, too battered and exhausted to have run even if their courage had finally failed them.

The white creatures stumbled/crawled/slithered toward the gap. Sunlight scoured them unmercifully. Ilna heard a moan of inhuman agony even over the crackling thunder of the troll's body, but still they came on.

The creatures had carried their leader, the wizard on the litter, over the rim of the crater. He'd continued to work spells, but his gouts of darkness could no longer blot out the sun even though his female rival watched arms akimbo instead of clawing further rents in the overcast.

"Now, my mighty one," Davus said, his voice rising. He was fixed to the troll like a hummingbird on a high twig. "Now, my bold fellow, three strides and we'll have them!"

The troll stepped forward, its left leg coming out of the sea. The limb heaved through the air with the inevitability of a swelling thundercloud drizzling seawater and lowered to the street.

The contact seemed delicate, but a shockwave rippled through the city and the pavement buckled. A row of four-story tenements several furlongs away swayed and fell into a geyser of smoke and shattered plaster.

The troll's right leg lifted. The soldiers were battling the edges of the column of monsters which filled the entire street and spilled beyond it, scrabbling over the ruins of fallen buildings. The troll's leg came down, crushing masses of the white creatures with a squelching sound. Black blood sprayed to every side. It was like seeing a horse step on a gorged tick, only on a much, much greater scale.

The street was of flagstones over concrete set on a gravel base thicker than Ilna was tall. It shattered. Men and monsters fell, then rose to continue their battle.

Davus crooned to the troll, then glanced aside to his human companions. He blinked as though surprised to see them, then smiled and said a little awkwardly, "I get so caught up I could forget to breathe. It's time that we part, my friends. Ilna and Chalcus, it's been an honor and a pleasure. Lady Merota-"

The troll halted in the wreckage between the edge of the pit and the humans who stood as a barrier against the creatures swarming from that pit. Below, the battle continued. Farther into the city, the streets were choked with civilians fleeing earthshocks and rumors of a disaster whose reality they couldn't have imagined in their worst nightmares.

"-again, I regret that you were caught in trouble from which your innocence should've protected you. You comported yourself with the grace I would expect from one who associates with Ilna and Chalcus."

As Davus spoke, the troll's left arm rose in a series of tiny increments like sand sliding down a slope. The paddle-like palm spread. A seam of mica in the granite caught the sunlight and shimmered.

Chalcus sheathed his dagger and bent forward on one knee. Davus touched/gripped the troll with his right palm, so Chalcus extended his left arm for the King to clasp.

"I've had a few good comrades over the years," Chalcus said. "I've never had a better one."

Davus laughed. "Aye," he said. "Hard times, but they had to do. Now, join your friends while I pay my debt to Mistress Ilna for freeing me and mine."

The troll's palm, a granite shelf with dips and hillocks, touched the gray stone scalp beside them. It was flat only in the sense that Ilna could hold her own hand flat.

Ilna laughed also. "It was a pleasure," she said, marvelling at life and at herself. "As much pleasure as I find in life."

She stepped onto the stone hand. Merota darted across beside her and Chalcus followed an instant later.