David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

The rider lay face up on the ground. His eyes were open, but his only movement was to move his lips like a carp sucking air. The stone had caught him in the pit of the stomach, knocking the wind out of him despite his armor.

Sharina tried to pull herself into the saddle. She had her right foot on the step and held the stirrup in her left hand. From the way it was laid out, she was meant to lift her left foot into the stirrup, grip a bronze handle below the horn with her left hand, and lift herself aboard. She was perfectly capable of doing that-if the lizard stopped hopping away for the three seconds or so it'd take!

A horn sounded, a quickHeep! Heep! Heep! rather than the long calls she'd heard before. The lizard sidled, twisting. Loping down the waste ground on Sharina's side of the creek was another of the lizard-riding hunters with his horn to his lips. She grimaced in frustration, making one last attempt to get The lizard had been easing forward at the same time that it moved sideways. Sharina, her attention fixed on mounting, hadn't noticed what was happening. She jumped, her left foot lifting for the stirrup, and her left shoulder slammed into the trunk of a willow as big around as her body.

She recoiled backward and dropped to the ground, her body a white flash of pain in a cocoon of numbness. The lizard, having finally brushed her off, capered away and turned with a hoot of delight.

The second hunter leaned from his saddle and thrust his trident down, pinning the skirts of Sharina's tunics to the ground. Leaning on the shaft to hold it in place, the hunter blew the quick three-note call, then repeated it.

Two more hunters rode up. One dismounted and rolled Sharina onto her stomach. When he jerked her arms behind her back, the pain in her left shoulder turned the world into white haze. He tied her wrists efficiently, then turned her face-up again.

The third rider bent over his saddlehorn to check on the hunter Sharina'd disabled. The injured man was doing something with his hands, maybe trying to unbuckle his dented cuirass. The third rider straightened and clucked his lizard over to the first man's mount, catching its reins without difficulty.

Sharina's head had hit the willow also, though she hadn't noticed it until the pulsing agony in her shoulder subsided a trifle. She hadn't had an inkling that the tree was there till the instant she slammed into it…

Her captors turned to look to the left, the direction from which they'd come. They didn't speak. Sharina realized that the only words she'd heard from them were the first rider's commands to his mount.

A bronze boat was sailing toward them over the plowed fields. It was large enough to hold more than the dozen men already aboard it. The one in the bow had a face like a monkey's. He wore a sky-blue robe and peaked hat, and he was beating the air with a copper athame. Some of the others were People like the hunters who'd captured Sharina, uniformly still and pale-skinned, but half the boat's passengers were ordinary men like the wizard in the bow.

The boat settled, sinking into the soft earth. The wizard lowered his athame. Though he tried to seem relaxed, he was breathing hard from the effort of his wizardry.

Sharina didn't recall having seen any of the boat's passengers before, but the tall, black-bearded man with a grim frown looked so much like Lord Waldron that she'd be willing to bet he was Bolor bor-Warriman. He turned to the wizard and said without affection, "This is Sharina, the usurper's sister, Hani. How did she get here?"

"She must have the ring," said the wizard. "That means there was trouble in Valles, but there'll be time enough to learn the details later. Two of you lift her aboard and we'll go back to the lake."

A pair of ordinary men climbed out of the boat. They were dressed in velvet and gold, but both looked more like street thugs than noblemen. The short one's nostrils had been slit, and his taller companion was missing three fingers on his left hand.

As they lifted Sharina, dizzy with renewed pain, into their vessel, she saw the man who hadn't crowded to the railing to look at her the way the rest had. His face was that of the oversized bronze sculpture of Valence II Stronghand that she'd just seen in front of the mausoleum of the bor-Torials. She was looking at Valgard.

Ilna backed a step as the parasite walked toward her. Swam toward her, really: it looked like a dollop of slime floating on top of a pond. It wasn't moving very fast, but she couldn't go any farther back unless she wanted to slip into the pool of the worm's wastes below.

If that happened, the creatures living there would probably object before she could convince them that she hadn't arrived to steal their filth. It wasn't only human beings who jumped to the worst possible conclusions without giving the other fellow a chance to explain…

Ilna walked to the right and started forward. The parasite stopped. The tiny legs around three-quarters of its flat body wriggled furiously, turning the creature like a wheel; then-in its fashion-it charged Ilna again.

By advancing she'd come close to a second parasite, this one slightly larger than the first and wearing a different pattern of black smudges on its brown back. It pulled its beak from the worm, just as the first one had, and started toward her also

Ilna smiled in a combination of amusement and triumph. That was what she'd expected would happen. Patterns weren't merely something that appeared on the backs of monstrous bugs. She retreated a step quickly. The two parasites drove together and began fencing with their long beaks, trying to force each other out of the space they both were claiming.

Ilna walked around the back of the first parasite at the pace the surface held her to. Her feet set up slow waves in the worm's flesh, undulating the length of the creature. If she took her usual rapid strides, the ripples would trip her.

It was like walking on a huge fresh intestine. And at that, she didn't suppose there was much difference between a worm and a sheep's gut. All either one did was turn food into waste in the course of its trip from one end to the other.

The parasites were scarcely more intelligent than the worm. They couldn't think, so they reacted. So long as they were reacting against each other, Ilna had nothing to fear from them. It only meant that to walk from the worm's tail to its head, she had to zigzag instead of going in a straight line.

The next creature up the worm's back pulled its beak out with a slurping sound. As soon as it was ready to move, Ilna started around it to the right. It and the parasite nearest to lunged together with the same mindless determination as the first pair. When they were firmly locked together, she went on to the next.

On firm ground Ilna might've been able to simply run the gauntlet of the parasites instead of tricking them into fighting for territories, but she didn't trust this jellied sponginess. Besides, she'd never been interested in running. If it was something good, it'd wait till she got there. If it was bad… Well, if it was bad, she wasn't going to run away from it.

She guessed life'd be easier for her if she treated obstructive people the way she did these flat bugs: trick them into fighting one other so that they left her alone. Instead she met them head-on and smashed them into a proper awareness of their mistakes. Human patterns weren't any harder to grasp than those of bugs were. Because they were fellow human beings, however, Ilna felt a need to correct them instead of leaving them in their errors.

She smiled as she negotiated the parasites. In her heart of hearts, Ilna'd never been able to believe that she reallywas a human being. Perhaps her assumption of duty to her fellows was merely self-deception.

The worm was nervous, moving its rear portion side to side in what for it must be major exertion. That was probably Ilna's fault. The parasites she'd passed continued to struggle, in pairs and occasionally four at a time, locking their beaks against one another and shoving sideways. This must be the first time in a great while that the worm had been free of their attentions.