David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

Women and children looked down from the parapet. Those on the highest terrace were so far away that Cashel couldn't see figures, just the shimmer of movement as hands waved scarves. They were trying to be encouraging, he knew, supporting the grown males of the city who had the muscles to swing the swords and bear the armor; but it was also desperate prayer.

Virdin laughed, deep in his throat. He looked at Cashel. "What do you figure to do, kid?" he said.

"I'll stay with Mab," Cashel said. "I'll keep her clear of trouble the best I can."

He'd heard the challenge in the Hero's tone, but he didn't let it bother him. Virdin was pushing a little because pretty quick other things were going to push a lot harder. You needed to know how the people beside you would behave before the trouble started, not after.

"I guess you will at that," Virdin said. He quirked a smile at Cashel. Maybe he'd have clasped arms if it weren't for the weapons. Virdin held his shield and bare sword, and Cashel had the quarterstaff in both hands. To Mab he added, "Are the others ready?"

"Your fellows are," Mab said, smiling in much the same way as the Heroes smiled at one another. "Whether anybody else is besides them and ourselves, that I won't swear to."

"We'll learn soon enough," Virdin said. Then in a loud voice he called, "Open the gates!"

A trumpeter in the crowd, the mob-not the army, nothing like what Cashel knew an army looked like-blew two notes, descending and rising. A trumpet answered from the distant roof of Ronn; then, very faintly, came the notes of another, a second, and finally a handful of trumpets.

The Councillor raised her wand and mumbled words of power. Her tongue caught in the middle of the incantation, bringing her to a stumbling halt. Mab frowned, her eyes glinting like the sun on frozen lakes, but the Councillor recovered enough to finish with forceful strokes of her wand.

Ruby light crackled up the joint in the middle of the door; the valves creaked inward. For an instant the Councillor stood in the opening, still beating the wand though her tongue was silent. Beyond her, covering the plain like white scale on a leper's hands, were the Made Men. In their midst, on a litter of human bones, hunched the King himself.

The Councillor squealed and pressed herself against the side of the passage where the folded-back door leaves provided a little concealment. The King swung his bone athame forward, and the creatures he commanded began to advance as a mass of purulent flesh.

"We mustn't be late to the party," muttered Virdin. He lifted his sword at a slant and shouted, "Charge!" as he strode through the gateway.

Cashel glanced over his shoulder as he and Mab followed. The mass of citizens in the passage behind were lurching forward too. The ones in the lead looked frightened, and the words they were shouting weren't always the sorts of things Cashel liked to hear from the folks fighting on the same side as him-"Mama!" was one of them, and some of the crowd kept saying, "God help us! God save us!" Still, they were coming, and that was more of a relief than Cashel'd have figured before the feeling rushed over him.

Mab looked calm and businesslike. As she walked, her fingernails traced brilliant patterns in the air. Cashel didn't know what she was doing until a dazzling blue thunderbolt shot toward them from the King's athame. It vanished with an earthquakecrack! midway between the armies.

Mab rocked back like she'd walked into a tree while she was thinking about other things. Cashel put out a hand to steady her, but she'd already got her balance and was walking on.

The King flopped onto his back in the litter, flailing the air with his athame. He looked like an overturned beetle kicking. Cashel grinned. He was just here to help, but it felt good to be proud of the lady he was helping.

Men with swords and shiny armor were coming out of Ronn's other gates to left and right. Cashel could only see the ones closest to where he was, but he guessed each of the Heroes was leading the men of a district just like they'd planned.

Cashel had seen flocks of sheep keep better step and look more soldierly, but the citizens of Ronn were trying. From the roof and the terraces lower down, silks and shining metal gauze were waving, and the men were down here on the plain-scared half to death and like enough to die in all truth. They were doing all they could; and Cashel was proud to stand with them, too.

The Made Men called out in a burbling gabble as they shambled along. The sound less resembled words than they did gulps of liquid leaking from a week-dead corpse.

Cashel stepped to the side for a little room and spun his quarterstaff overhead. Duzi, those white monsters weren't in any better formation than the citizens were, and besides that they didn't have shields or armor. If the people of Ronn kept their faces to the enemy, this might turn out all right after all!

The ground stepped downward from the city in a series of wide terraces. They'd been decorated with hedges and terra cotta tubs, though by now everything was pretty well overgrown. Farther to the north the land started rising again into the black hills and gorges from which still more Made Men poured.

Virdin strode down the slope to the second terrace, carrying the boldest of the citizens with him. Mab halted well short of the break and drew in the air with her hands. Cashel took one pace forward and crossed his staff before him, putting himself a little to Mab's left. He wanted to keep her in the corner of his eye. With two mobs like these mixing, there was no telling what direction trouble'd come in.

A Made Man, slight-bodied but with spider-thin limbs so long that he was much taller than Cashel, charged Virdin gobbling. The creature swung a curved bronze sword far out to the side, then brought it around to strike the back of the Hero's skull.

Virdin lopped the Made Man's arm off at the elbow. The forearm and blade together spun away like an elm seed. The Hero punched the boss of his shield into the creature's chest, crushing ribs and flinging the body back into the faces of other oncoming creatures.

The straggling front of armored citizens hit the straggling front of Made Men, both sides hacking furiously. Cashel waited, his legs spread into a good stance. His instinct when he saw a fight was to get into it. Not that he liked to fight, exactly, but the emotions that seeing a fight roused in him made him want to dosomething instead of just stand there.

But standing here was the right thing just now, so Cashel did it. He was used to doing hard things, even when that meant doing nothing till the right time came.

The lines of men and Made Men fighting didn't move much after the first contact midway down the second terrace. Neither side was any good at what it was doing. If the citizens'd been chopping trees, they'd have turned them all to wood chips instead of timber. For their part, the Made Men moved in great leaps and slashes like they were dancing for an audience instead of closing with enemies.

The difference was in the shields and armor the humans wore. The Made Men didn't have the skill to pick apart armored men the way Cashel'd seen Garric and Chalcus do when they faced better-equipped enemies. The citizens couldn't have landed two blows on the same spot if their lives'd depended on it-but one blow was enough every time, shearing through white skin and pale flesh. The sprays of blood were as red as what ran in the veins of real men.

Rows of Made Men went down. More citizens joined the line, taking the place of men whose arms were already weary with unfamiliar exercise, or whose stomachs were churning to see how the inside of a body looks when the heart's still beating and the guts spill out in writhing coils.

Ronn was a city. City folk don't know the things that every peasant child sees in the Fall when the flock's thinned so that there's fodder enough to take the survivors through to new growth in Spring.