David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

Wildulf snorted. "Talk?" he said bitterly. "All right, we'll talk. Are you behind those accursed demons in the sky?"

"No, milord, I am not," Garric said evenly. "My understanding is that they've been appearing since long before my companions and I arrived on Sandrakkan. Now, shall we sit down and talk like gentlemen?"

Garric didn't add an "or else", because he was trying hard to calm the situation instead of fanning Wildulf's anger and resentment… and fear, no doubt, as there was good reason for fear. He found it very hard to keep a bridle on an angry retort, though, since he'd been frightened too. Who wouldn't feel frightened, watching a smear of evil blackness reaching down out of the sky for him?

The Earl's suite was a south-facing bay, a central space surrounded by three wedge-shaped rooms where the occupant could determine how much breeze and light he wanted at any time of day. Wildulf huddled in the central round. The outer rooms were shuttered and curtained, so the only illumination was by narrow clerestory windows of ribbed glass. Garric would've been luxuriating in the returned sunlight if he hadn't needed to see Wildulf, but he understood perfectly why the Earl wanted to avoid all sight of the sky for a time.

A pair of sad, nervous servants stood against a wall. They watched with silent concern as Garric and his guards followed Wildulf into the suite.

There was a square table in the middle of the room. The top was patterned marble, pretty enough to be decorative but able to function for meals and conferences as the need might be. Liane had explained that Sandrakkan etiquette was based on circles of intimacy. Visitors of the very highest rank were admitted to the bedchamber, which therefore had the most ornate and expensive decoration in the house.

Garric hadn't brought Liane with him. This discussion was between men.

"Ah," said Wildulf. He gestured to the bench across the table from where he'd been sitting. "Ah, be seated, your highness. I, ah, there's wine if you'd like. And I'm drinking ale, though I don't suppose…"

When the Earl hadn't appeared at the planned reception in the courtyard-the Countess and her wizard were present, and about half the nobles who'd attended the coronation-Garric had decided to go find him.

Wildulf couldn't ignore what was going on. If he tried to, Garric didn't dare let him.

"Where I was born, on Haft," Garric said as he pulled the bench a little out from the table before sitting down, "Sandrakkan ale was the drink of the Gods according to the folks who'd travelled enough to have drunk it. I'd like some-but in a mug, if you please."

He added the last with a grin and a nod to the Earl's drinking horn. Wildulf turned to bark an order at the servants, but one of them was already bringing Garric a goblet of carnelian carved with ivy leaves and berries. A far cry from the masars of polished elmwood in which Reise served customers in his taproom in Barca's Hamlet; but the ale was smooth. When he drank it, Garric thought of other men all over the Isles drinking similar beer and dealing with the problems that were just as important to them as his were to him.

Wildulf took a deep draft from his horn. "I suppose you think I'm a coward," he said with a morose belligerency. "Because those cursed clouds scare me. Scare me!"

"Well, they scare me too," Garric said. "Maybe it's just a cloud, but you can't tell me it doesn't mean something-and mean something bad. There's evil in this world, milord. It doesn't like men, and it'll wipe us away if we don't fight it with all the strength there's in us."

"I'm not afraid of anything I can fight!" Wildulf said. "Only-"

He looked at Garric, drank, and went on, "What good's my sword against a cloud, eh? Tell me that!"

Garric nodded. "Milord, I can't give you an answer to that," he said. "But there's a place for swords. And if men stand together, then we have only the monsters to worry about. If you stand me with and with Count Lerdoc of Blaise and with all the other rulers. Working together, for the sake of our families and our subjects and of Mankind."

He sipped and smiled. The ale was good beyond question, but maybe it was too good for a boy raised on dark germander bitters brewed in a peasant community where hops were an expensive import.

"Milord," Garric continued. "If we fight each other, the blackness that waits outside will take us all, sure as death. For a thousand years the separate Isles have been squabbling with one another, holding each other back. That's going to stop now, either because we stop it ourselves or because the Dark comes in from outside and stops everything. Come with me to the reception. Stand beside me, and know that I'll stand beside you with all the strength the Shepherd gives me. For Mankind's sake."

Wildulf drank and dropped his empty horn clattering on the table. He rose to his feet. "Right," he said. "We'll go. Now!"

Instead of leaving through the formal entrance to the suite, Wildulf strode toward the back stairway obviously intended for servants. When Attaper realized what was happening, he spoke a curt order that sent two Blood Eagles sprinting ahead with a clatter from their hobnails and their skirts of studded leather straps. He himself followed Garric as Garric followed Earl Wildulf: the stairs were too narrow for two to walk abreast.

At the bottom, four landings below his suite, the Blood Eagles stepped aside so that Earl Wildulf could push back a hanging woven from coarse grasses. The squad of guards at the entrance stepped aside, then stiffened when they saw Garric following. Attaper glowered at them as he fell into step at Garric's side.

They were in a service hall. To the left were the palace's inside kitchens, while on the right were the backs of tables placed in arches of the central courtyard as they had been during the reception of the previous day.

A senior household functionary wearing a silken snood noticed the Earl and his unexpected entourage. She snapped an order. All the servitors turned and bowed, some of them dropping or spilling food and beverages.

Wildulf ignored them as he strode through an archway that wasn't blocked, but Garric offered servants a smile and a dip of his head. He'd served guests in the inn for too many years not to think of servants as human beings.

The nobles and officials already in the courtyard turned with a flutter of sound to greet the newcomers. It was like watching brightly colored geese change direction, the heads twisting around and then the bodies following. The locals were even more rigidly segregated from the royal officials than they had been the day before.

They'd all been watching something on the other side of the courtyard. The crowd parted as Wildulf stepped through with Garric pointedly at his side.

The focus of attention had been a tented table on which dozens of small figures moved. A puppet show, Garric thought… but they weren't puppets, they were live mice and frogs, wearing armor and standing on their hind legs as they battled with tiny swords. Wizardlight, faint azure sparkles, danced over the helmets and sword points.

Lest there be any doubt that they weren't illusions, a number of fighters sprawled dead or dying on the stage. A frog leaked pale blood from a throat wound, its broad mouth opening and closing spasmodically. Nearby was a mouse whose belly had spilled intestines for a hand's-breadth before death stiffened its little limbs.

Countess Balila's great bird prowled behind the stage, fluffing its stub wings and making angry metallic sounds deep in its throat. It smelled the blood and didn't like it Any better than Garric did.

Balila herself stood beside the stage with the naked cherub prattling at her feet. She spoke through the side of the tent, then gave Garric a cold smile and said, "Does our entertainment impress you, your highness?"