David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

"Why in the Lady's name would we do that?" Attaper said, speaking more harshly than he normally would've. "Once we're out in the open, those slugs on legs won't have a chance!"

Attaper liked and respected Liane, which was enough to bridle his tongue in any circumstances short of the present chaos. In addition to his ordinary courtesy-well, Attaper wasn't a toady, but an ordinary sense of self-preservation should've kept him from snarling at someone so dear to Garric; especially when Garric was stressed also.

But the kingdom came first. That was true not only for Garric, but also for the ancient king watching through Garric's eyes. Carus was remembering for both of them the many times in his own reign he'dfailed to put the kingdom first.

"Send the order," Garric said. Liane was already giving the tablet to a waiting courier. "Lord Attaper, when these creatures appeared before, they took Erdin and held it for a year till a wizard drove them underground. I'm hoping we can do better than that, but wedon't need civilians getting in our way. Besides, we owe it to give them a warning about what may happen."

"Which most of them will ignore," noted Carus. "But that's on their own heads, not ours."

"Lord Lerdain?" Garric said, suddenly aware of his young aide. He'd refused to take Lerdain into the tunnels, so the boy'd been waiting with a pained, put-upon, expression when Garric returned to the surface. "Get to the harbor and cross to Volita. Order Admiral Zettin in my name to bring the whole army across as fast as he can. I want each ship to come as soon as it's loaded. He's not to wait till the whole force is ready."

"Yes, Prince Garric!" Lerdain said, heading for the palace entrance before he had the words out. He hadn't even taken time to reform his expression from his present sour pout.

Lerdain had been sulking to indicate his hurt at being denied a chance to do something dangerous under circumstances where his presence wouldn't benefit anybody. Honor might be an empty word, but it drove some men as surely as a love of money drove others.

"Aye, and honor drives the best men," Carus agreed with a smile. "For all that I'll agree that personal honor shouldn't be the first thing on a king's mind, as it was on mine."

Garric and the Blood Eagles had just reached the other side of the courtyard. They were entering the passage to the front entrance of the palace when the sky darkened. Scores of terrified people screamed from the rooms around the courtyard, servants and courtiers who hadn't heard the order to evacuate or had chosen to disregard it.

The cloud frightened them, Garric thought.

In the artificial shadow, monstrous white creatures with stone and bronze weapons poured out of the Audience Hall and the front of the palace. Their gabbling was as meaningless as the croaking of frogs.

"Get out of the palace!" Garric shouted as his escort locked shields. "Don't fight them here! We'll cut our way clear!"

The sword he'd sheathed when he left the tunnels was in his hand again. Carus' instant reflex had drawn it before Garric's conscious mind was aware of the need.

There isn't time to think about your actions in the middle of a battle. You act reflexively, doing what you're trained to do with no more consciousness than a heliotrope facing toward the sun.

Carus/Garric's trained reflex was to hit harder and faster than anybody believed could happen. He didn't have a shield, so he drew his long dagger in his left hand. The monsters in the entrance passage were the business of the forty-odd Blood Eagles ahead; he strode into those swarming from the Audience Hall.

An arm and the curved axe it held sailing off to the side, Garric's blade continuing through the creature's throat. Monster blood was as red and spouted as high as that from a human. Dagger catching a club, sword thrusting quick as an eyeblink; more blood, much more blood. Pivoting, striking right, backhand left, striking right; twisting the dagger and jerking it free of the single eyesocket in the center of dwarf's sloping forehead.

And back, because the Blood Eagles had cleared a way through the entrance passage and the creatures which'd attacked from the side weren't a threat any more, were a wrack of distorted body parts; and blood, so much blood, sloshed over the stones.

But they weren't human, weren't human, weren't men.

And if theyhad been men, it would've had to be the same for the kingdom's sake…

"Your highness, in the Lady's name!" Lord Attaper shouted, putting himself between Garric and more corpse-skinned creatures surging from the side of the courtyard. "Out of the palace! Out of the palace!"

Garric ran into the passage; Attaper and the rearmost squad of bodyguards fell in behind him. A Blood Eagle'd fallen; over his corpse lay the six monsters who'd halted to hack at the victim while other humans slaughtered them in turn. Garric leaped the pile of corpses. Liane waited at the arched doorway, safe for the moment but unwilling to go farther without him.

"Abandon the palace!" somebody shouted from outside through what must be a speaking trumpet. "Abandon the palace!"

But when Garric ran out of passage and under the soot-black sky, he could hear human screams coming from the building behind him. Many, many human screams.

The gate wasn't like the other parts of Ronn that Cashel had seen, even down in the fungus-blighted lower levels. It was tall and broad enough for six people to walk through together, but it had no decoration unless you wanted to say the heads of the rivets holding the iron cross-braces onto the iron leaves. The metal showed a dusting of rust, and it didn't look like anybody'd been here in a long time.

At the hair-fine join of the gate leaves stood the woman who'd spoken for the Council of the Wise since the older man collapsed. She looked hopeless but resigned to it, like a ewe who knows she's going to be slaughtered and doesn't have the spirit to fight.

That happened a lot of the time-with sheep. Cashel knew it happened with people too, but not with people he thought there was any profit in knowing.

"Nobody's walked through this gate in a hundred and fifty years," Mab said, glancing at Cashel without expression. "In the days just after Valeri's last great victory, citizens came down the stairs outside the walls and played in the gardens for the day; but not for many years, and even then they didn't go out through the gate. It reminded them of things they thought were better forgotten."

Cashel didn't much like the look of the gate or the bare, sheer-walled passage that led to it. Unlike most of Ronn except the roof terraces, this was open to the sky. The walls were living rock for half the way up and above that crystal as gray as the winter sea. You could tell where the one stopped and the other began by the sheen of their surface, but the color was all the same.

Virdin was leading the citizens massed behind this central gate; he glanced at Mab. "They'd have done better to have remembered and to have finished the job," he said, speaking with no more emotion than a shopkeeper counting out change. "Of course that was true in my day too. I led the people out three times; but never all the way to the end, as if nine steps were enough when safety was ten steps away."

Behind Cashel, Mab, and Virdin waited as many men as you could fit into the passage without squeezing to the point they couldn't breathe. They weren't talking in real conversations, but the mutters and prayers and the clink of armor touching armor were as loud as the rattle of leaves when a storm sweeps through woodland.

"You were at fault," Mab said calmly. "And those who followed you were at fault as well; and most of all, the Queen was at fault. The fault will end this day; in victory I hope, but end regardless."