David Drake: Master of the Cauldron

"I understand, your highness," Tadai said. He turned his face away while he gathered his courage to blurt what he'd really come to say. Just before Garric snarled something gruffly to prod the man, Tadai went on, "Your highness, it's the soldiers. They're hunting the, thethings that got out into the city before…."

He pointed a hand vaguely toward where the palace had been. Garric wasn't sure how he'd have described the way the crisis ended either. Rather than let Tadai choke for lack of a word he said, "I understand. Some of the creatures got through the cordon before the wizard who'd raised them was defeated. The troops are carrying out my orders to kill them all."

"Yes, of course, kill them," Tadai said. "But they're making a game of it! They're making bets about who can throw a spear through each creature from the farthest distance. The officers are encouraging them to behave like that. A game, your highness, agame!"

Garric looked at Lord Tadai: a brave man who was both decent and self-sacrificing by the standards of his class. By any standards, really; there were few enough peasants in Barca's Hamlet who'd have willingly undergone the dangers and discomfort Tadai had today and many days in the past.

Still, Tadai was a cultured gentleman who ate pork but had never seen a pig clamped by the snout to be butchered.

"Milord," Garric said gently, "my officers have had the wit to turn a dirty, dangerous, necessary job into a training exercise. Maybe there's no way the creatures could fester and breed in the caverns below Erdin now that their wizard's dead, but I don't know that for sure. I'm not going to let this-"

He swept his right arm in an arc, encompassing the devastated center of the city.

"-happen again a thousand years from now to people who don't deserve it any more than the poor devils you're organizing into bucket brigades do. Milord-Tadai, my friend Lord Tadai-these are the men who saved as much of Erdin as could be saved! Not because they care about Sandrakkanor the Isles or much of anything else. They stood because it was their job and because their fellow soldiers were standing. And if now they're going to have fun finishing the job instead of treating it as a distasteful duty, more power to them. Don't expect me to get in their way."

Garric crooked a smile at Tadai, a man he genuinely liked as well as respecting. "And don't get in their way yourself, please; because the kingdom needs you. Just as it needs them."

Tadai bent his head slightly, rubbing his brows in a fashion that hid his eyes for the moment. "I was frightened," he said, so softly that only Garric and Liane could hear the words. "I've been pretending that things are normal, just a little disrupted. But they never were normal."

Tadai lowered his hands and met Garric's eyes. He smiled wryly. "Not the way I pretended in my well-appointed office, where servants brought me sherbet cooled with last winter's snow when I was thirsty. When I shouted at my chamberlain if the sheets weren't turned down at precisely the correct angle when I was ready to go to bed."

Tadai looked around, then nodded with an expression of cool resolution. "I'd best get back to my duties," he said. "Quite a number of people need temporary shelter and of course food till normal services are restored. I have assistants making quick inventories of the warehouses along the river, looking for wine and bulk grain. It'll be a fiscal mare's nest to sort out afterwards, but we can't let people starve, can we?"

Garric smiled, then embraced the plump nobleman. "No, Lord Tadai," he said as he stepped away. "The kingdom doesn't let its citizens starve."

He'd smudged the clean robe, but Tadai was beaming as he bustled off with a retinue of aides. The kingdom was indeed lucky to have him.

"And lucky to have the officers who turned the cleaning-up operation into javelin practice instead of cut and thrust that'd cost more lives," Carus noted with a smile of his own. "My guess it wasn't any hereditary nobleman who came up with the notion, eh?"

Garric grinned back at the ancestor in his mind. Veterans like Pont and Prester had gotten to be old soldiers by learning how not to get themselves needlessly killed. Having them around to pass on their knowledge meant that a lot of younger men would live to be old soldiers.

He let his eyes drift over the scene around him. Tenoctris lay under a shop awning, sound asleep on a salvaged mattress; drained by the hard work of wizardry, Garric assumed. Tenoctris had a wonderful ability to keep going as long as her skill was needed, but the effort still had to be paid for.

Sharina sat on the pavement beside her, holding the Pewle knife on her lap unsheathed. Garric frowned at his sister's disturbingly empty expression. Something had happened to her, but he didn't have any idea what. Maybe it was just the overwhelming disaster…

Cashel squatted with Sharina, facing the other way down the street. His left elbow touched her right, that was all. Because he was Cashel, he provided more support than a whole regiment of Blood Eagles could; but he did it without saying a word or even seeming to be aware of what he was doing. Cashel had been the best shepherd in living memory in the borough, but his talents were far too great to spend on sheep.

Garric smiled again. "Spend on sheep," not "waste on sheep," because sheep had value also. Garric or-Reise had been a pretty decent shepherd himself.

Garric walked toward Cashel and Sharina, leaving his sword on the table behind him. It was part of his present life, a tool on which the safety of the kingdom might depend; but there'd been a previous life when things were simpler. They hadn't seemed simple at the time, but they certainly did now that he looked back at them.

Garric wished there were sheep around him, grazing on a sunny hillside. There weren't, but he had his friends from that time, which was even better.

Cashel murmured something to Sharina. She brightened and slid the knife back in its sheath. They stood up together, graceful despite having gone through pretty much what Garric had, he suspected.

Chalcus came through the brick archway from the interior of the adjacent mews, one of many surviving buildings which'd become temporary hospitals. His lips smiled as his eyes darted in all directions. Ilna and Merota walked slightly behind him, safe if there'd been some unlikely danger waiting in the plaza.

Their clothing-the child's as well-was dusty and blood-splotched; they'd been helping with the injured, bandaging wounds and bringing water to men crying for it. There was nothing incongruous about Chalcus working to save lives: like any long-time fighting man, he must've had plenty of occasion to treat those injured by violence.

Their faces and hands were freshly scrubbed. Trust Ilna to see to that.

Garric gripped arms with Cashel, then embraced his sister and stepped away. He looked at his friend and said, "Cashel, you brought a wizard with you. Was she…"

"Was she killed?" was what he meant, but he didn't need to say that.

"Is she all right, that is?" Garric substituted.

"Her name's Mab," Cashel said shyly. "And I guess she's fine, but she had to go back and take care of things back home. She's a queen, you see."

He smiled to greet his sister, continuing, "And Ilna? Mab said to tell you that we're both credits to our parents. Do you know, part of the time she looked like the spit 'n image of you?"

"Did she say anything else about your parentage, Cashel?" Tenoctris asked. She'd risen to a sitting position, looking rumpled but as bright as if she'd spent the day reading on a couch. Sharina helped her up.

"No ma'am," Cashel said. "Not really."

Ilna looked up from the pattern she'd just knotted with yarn from her sleeve. She met Tenoctris' calm gaze. The older woman nodded; Ilna shrugged in response, then began picking out her knots again.