David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

"Abracadabra!" Liane shouted as the crowd sucked in its breath. Garric looked over his shoulder. She was standing on the altar now, both arms stretched toward the sky.

An arrow arched toward Liane, but it wobbled and went wide. The archer must've been drawing his bow when the apparition appeared above him. He'd simply let go of the cord instead of loosing his shot properly.

"Demon, I command thee, strike my enemies!" Liane cried. "Hic haec hoc!"

The mob gave a collective scream. At the rear Lord Tawnser was trying to keep control, but not even the speaking tube could give his voice authority.

"All ranks!" Lord Attaper bawled. " Throw on command, throw!"

Garric doubted that the Blood Eagles could really hear their commander's words over the tumult, but they were so well trained that a hint was enough. The javelins went up over the right shoulders of every man still standing, then snapped forward with the authority of strong arms and long practice. The front of the mob-the soldiers, the cut-throats, the thugs who'd break heads for fun if no one was willing to pay them for the work-went down like wheat in a reaper's cradle.

"At 'em, boys!" Garric shouted, ripping off his priestly robe to draw his sword again. Through his willing lips, King Carus added, "Haft and the Isles!"

The ghostly cloud had smothered the rioters' courage, and the javelins smashed them like thistledown in a sleet storm. Only the mob's own numbers and the narrow streets leading out of the square kept it from dispersing instantly. The troops surged down the temple steps in perfect unison, moving like a hammer dressed in black armor.

For a moment the urge to slaughter threw a red mist over Garric's mind. He was Carus the Warrior King about to stride through the streets of a rebel city, the tip of his long sword slinging blood at every stroke.

But he wasn't Carus-

Erdin wasn't a rebel city unless he made it one by a massacre here-

And Garric had seen enough dead men to want to avoid seeing more of them when he could avoid it.

"Use the flat of your swords!" Garric shouted as he followed the Blood Eagles down the steps. "Don't kill anybody who isn't trying to fight! Knock 'em down and let 'em tell their stories when they wake up!"

It wasn't exactly being soft-hearted, but-there were men and there were monsters. The only way the kingdom would survive-and Mankind itself would survive-was if all men stayed together.

Though Garric had to agree with Liane: there were a few men like Lord Tawnser whose actions had made them monsters.

Tawnser was still trying to rally the mob, but nobody was paying attention to him now. The wagon he'd overturned to serve as his command post rocked like a ship in the storm as desperate rioters forced their way by it. When it gave a particularly violent lurch, Tawnser flung away the speaking horn and jumped off the other side of the wagon, out of sight.

Garric hadn't been sure the Blood Eagles would obey his order, but all the strokes he saw as he stood on the bottom step to check the advancing lines were with the flats, not the edges, of the blades. The troops didn't even push as hard as Garric knew they could. They were aware that panicked congestion at the mouth of the streets leaving the square could be as lethal as swords.

Being knocked down by a steel club or a shield boss was a hard lesson, but it was a survivable one. Some of the Blood Eagles had even retrieved javelins from the heavies who'd fallen in the front row of the mob. They were using the shafts as batons against the scalps and shoulders of those fleeing.

"Not every regiment would take that order," said the image of Carus, watching with a mixture of pride and a frustrated urge to kill. "And not every king would've been smart enough to give it in the first place."

Carus laughed and threw his hands behind him. That was a gesture he must've used in life when circumstances prevented him from following his violent instincts.

Garric hadn't worried about the apparition in the sky while he had pressing business with the mob, but that seemed to be under control. He glanced up at a cloud whose writhing, smoky tentacles mimicked a giant ammonite. They, the Great Ones of the Deep, had a close link with black wizardry. The apparition was so savagely evil that Garric raised his sword, a pointless but instinctive response.

Breathing through his open mouth, Garric looked down to the square. He knew the cloud was probably harmless, but it horrified him to look at. Better a shambles of moaning, bleeding human beings…

Lord Tawnser was escaping. A confederate had lowered a rope to him from the roof of a three-story building. Tawnser'd lost the black cape he'd worn as a backdrop, but his scarlet tunic and breeches showed vividly as he climbed the wall of weathered brick.

Garric was sure he'd capture Tawnser eventually. But as long as the mad nobleman was alive, his venomous hatred would poison Sandrakkan's relationship with the kingdom. This riot wouldn't be the last trouble he'd rouse.

Lord Attaper had been with his men. Now he came back to join Garric on the step from which he could judge the Blood Eagles' progress. Attaper's boots were blood-splashed, and from the smear on his blade he'd used it to thrust, not club.

"There were Sandrakkan soldiers in the mob," Carus explained hard-faced. "Which makes them mutineers by my lights, since Wildulf's accepted you as king. I think Attaper sees that the same way as I do."

Garric grimaced, but what's done is done-and he was pretty sure that none of his advisors, Liane included, would've agreed with him about sparing traitorous soldiers. A battle wasn't the same as an execution, at least so far as the public had to know.

"I didn't know your…," Attaper said. He glanced sidelong at Liane, still on the altar with her arms raised. "I didn't realize that Lady Liane was a wizard, your highness."

"She's not," said Garric.

"But I saw-" Attaper said. "Your highness, there she is!"

"There she is, shouting gibberish and play-acting," Garric said. "Knowing that that lot-"

He nodded to remnants of the mob, climbing over the bodies of those crushed trying to leave the square.

"-would panic if they thought she controlled the vision, which she can't any better than you could."

Blinking away emotion Garric added, "There's not a smarter person in all the Isles, Attaper. And maybe not a braver one either, to dare to look at that thing in the sky!"

In the wrack of injured civilians behind the double line of troops was the archer, a sturdy-looking countryman. He must've slipped and been trampled in the mob's sudden rush to escape, because he was well back of where the volley of javelins had landed. The bow lay several feet away, but the quiver hanging from his belt was certain identification.

"She wasplaying?" Lord Attaper said in amazement that seemed tinged with anger. The apparition had frightened him as surely as it did Garric, and the notion that a well-born girl had the wit and courage to toy with that fear was at best embarrassing.

Garric didn't answer. He sprinted across the plaza, sheathing his sword as he ran. He had to dodge fallen bodies. Once he jumped over a women in tawdry clothing who screamed curses as she clutched her wrenched knee. Garric had learned about armies and swordsmanship from his ancestor Carus, but as a shepherd boy on Haft he'd had plenty of opportunity to become a skilled archer.

He picked up the bow. It was a simple weapon, a staff of seasoned yew without the layers of horn and sinew that would've made it more powerful but also more delicate. A compound bow might not have survived being trampled, but this self bow and its horsehair cord were none the worse for the experience.

It was a hunter's weapon. The staff was only four feet from tip to tip so that the man using it could slip through dense brush, but it was thick and a powerful weapon in the hands of an archer strong enough to use it.