David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

"The thing that attacked Garric's ship," she said. "The whale."

"She sent that creature's mate to your world to aid minions of Hers," the male Rua said.

"Not Gaur but others," added the female. "Your enemies but not ours, save that all who serve Her are the enemies of all who do not."

"It seems, dear heart," said Chalcus with a lifted eyebrow, "that whoever She may be, She's brought us into this fight."

Ilna sniffed. "And you were going to walk away from it otherwise?" she said coldly.

"Aye, you have me there, my love," Chalcus said, smiling in wicked merriment. "It's not my habit to walk away from fights, that is so."

"No," said Ilna crisply. "Nor is it mine."

She looked from one Rua to the other. "What needs to be done to…?"

She turned her palms up. "To overcome her, you say. To kill Her, I suppose."

"We do not know," said the male. "But we have watched you, mistress."

"We could not overcome Gaur," said the female, "but we saw you slay him."

Ilna grimaced. "From what you say, Gaur's mistress will be a worse knot to untangle," she said. "And Gaur wasn't an easy one."

She shrugged. "Still, we said we'll do what we can. How do we reach Her?"

"We will open a gateway for you, mistress," said the Rua together. They turned and plunged off the cliff edge, rising on the updraft like dandelion seeds.

Ilna watched, frowning in puzzlement as the Rua spiraled to join their kin in the high skies. The air before her took on a faint opalescence in the same shape as the mirror of blue topaz in Gaur's den.

"Ah!" she said. "Chalcus, the pattern of their flight-all of them together? Do you see what they're weaving?"

"No, my heart," the sailor said in a tone as silvery as thesring! of his sword against the scabbard as he drew it. "But I think shortly there may be use for the things Ido understand."

The corridor ahead forked; for the seventh time, Garric thought, though he doubted he could recall the particular pattern of the branchings that'd get them out of this place by the portal they'd entered through. He supposed there was still a solid line of men behind him, marking the route better than the white pebbles of the folktale.

Carus grinned in his mind. Right, worrying about getting back could wait till they'd survived getting to where they were going.

Tenoctris' trail of light bent to the right, down the branch whose walls glowed red like those of the corridor Garric was in at present. In the middle distance the sullen crimson became a dot of purple.

"Prester?" he said to the noncom on his right; he'd learned the men's names as they marched together into frozen Hell. "How far do you guess we've come? It must be miles."

"That's Pont you want, your highness," Prester said. He leaned forward and called to his partner on Garric's left, "Pont! The Prince here wants t' know how far we come."

"Three thousan seven hunnert fiffee three," Pont said. "Paces. Four, five…"

"Got it, Pont," said Garric, breaking in on what was likely to be a very long sequence as Pont called out a number every time his right heel came down.

"Pont was in the engineering section back when he was a nugget," Prester explained with a proprietorial nod. "His job was route measurer. The habit's stuck with him all these years."

A thousand double paces equaled a mile, so they'd come three and three-quarters miles. Garric had no way of guessing how much farther they had to go. Maybe he should've made commissary arrangements before he went charging through that hole in the world…

"Your highness, there's something in the tunnel ahead of us!" called the Blood Eagle who'd taken charge of the front rank. He pointed his spear forward.

"Right," said Garric, peering past the shields and helmets of the men ahead of him. He was taller than the pair directly in front, but they'd both slipped their horsehair crests into the slots on top of their helmets during the past half hour of uneventful march. Their care was commendable, but at the moment Garric wished he'd had a less-obstructed view. Not that what he saw was anything he looked forward to meeting.

There hadn't been any fighting since they'd killed the giant scorpion. Garric hadn't consciously expected that to be the last, but when he saw the creature ahead he realized that emotionally he'd hoped that everything would be peaceful. Now reality clattered toward him on more legs than he could count. He felt as though he'd been dropped into ice water.

"Your highness," said Lord Escot, turning to look back at Garric past the cheek piece of his silvered helmet. Escot was commander of the second regiment to enter this ice world. He'd trotted up through the column to the front to take the place of Lord Mayne. "It's time for you to retire."

He was a landholder from Northern Ornifal, cut from the same cloth as Lord Waldron though thirty years younger. He wasn't an officer Garric had ever warmed to; so far as he could recall, Escot had never said a word about anything but horses save in response to a direct question.

"Aye, lad," agreed Carus in his mind. "He's thick as two short planks. But he's here where he belongs, and how smart do you have to be to stand in the front rank in a business like this?"

Point taken, agreed Garric. Aloud he said, "Carry on with your duties, milord. I will do the same-from here, where I can see what's going on."

"Oh, aye, lad," said Carus with a savage grin. "And I suppose you'll take off your sword now and give it to one of the fellows who're fighting while we stand by and watch?"

I've too much of your blood for that, thought Garric as he grinned in response to his ancient ancestor. Escot took the expression as meant for him and blinked in surprise. "Of course, as you say, your highness," he blurted and faced front again.

"Silly twit," said Prester in an undertone.

"He'll do to stop a spear, though," replied Pont. Apparently counting paces was so ingrained that that it didn't interfere with him carrying on a conversation-or fighting, for that matter. "Bloody officer."

From the way the two noncoms talked, Garric decided they'd promotedhim to line soldier… and thatwas a promotion, so far as Pont and Prester were concerned.

What had been a purple blur when Garric's column entered this corridor became a circular volume beneath a dome whose surface was ribbed for strength. Eight corridors merged in it, including the one the troops were in.

The rotunda was about thirty double paces across, and as best as Garric could tell in a quick glance the room's ceiling was the same height as the diameter. Threads of red and blue light twisted about one another at the core of the walls and of the piers framing the arched corridor mouths, turning the ice violet. The ice floor beneath must have been feet or even scores of feet thick, but again Garric saw monsters twisting in the phosphorescent water.

The creature coming down the corridor directly across the rotunda was more like a centipede than anything else Garric had seen, and more like a nightmare than anything alive. It had side-hinged mandibles and a chitinous maw whose interior was a mass of jagged plates rotating against one another like millstones.

The thin azure guideline passed through the monster. The only way to where Garric needed to go was by the same route: through the monster.

"Double time!" he shouted. He and his troops might be able to block the centipede before it got to the rotunda where each of its pincer-tipped legs was a deadly weapon.

"Charge!" cried Lord Escot, slanting his sword forward and breaking into a run. As Carus said, Escot was bright enough for his present position.

The troops were happy to run also. The ranks spread to either side as the column entered the rotunda where there was room. The clear floor was so hard that hobnails skidded instead of digging in. It was much like running on stone, because the extreme cold also meant the footing was dry and not nearly as slippery as ice normally would be.