David Drake: The Gods Return

He looked down the swath cleared by the monster's body, mashed vegetation from which a miasma rose. Birds hopped among the crushed branches, hunting for prey stunned by the catastrophe. All this power… "Here, Captain Archas," Salmson said in a clear voice.

"Take the talisman. By the grace of Franca, God over all Gods, it is given to you to conquer the Kingdom of the Isles!" Archas reached left-handed for the offered statuette. Before he touched it, he paused and said, "And what then? When I've conquered the Isles, what of your folk in Palomir?" "We're all slaves of Franca, Captain," Salmson said.

"When the whole world worships Franca, then He will decide our fate."

Archas hesitated a moment longer, then snatched the talisman. "There's nothing more to it?" he demanded. "I just-use it as you did?" "The Worm is yours to command," Salmson said quietly. "But don't lose the talisman, or-" He shrugged and gestured with his head toward the gouge in the jungle. "-the whole world will look like this. Like the Worm's own world." And will it be any different for mankind when Franca is God of Gods? Salmson wondered. But there's no turning back…

Chapter One Cashel carried Rasile in the crook of his arm up the last few tens of steps to the top of the fire tower, the highest point in Pandah. The old wizard's people, the Coerli-the catmen-held the physically weak and aged in contempt even if they happened to be wizards. Since the Change, Rasile had been helping the humans who'd conquered the Coerli; her life and health had improved a great deal.

Still, the fire tower was a hollow pillar with many tens of tens of steps shaped like wedges of pie on the inside. Lots of younger people, catmen and humans both, would've had trouble climbing it. Cashel didn't mind. Rasile scarcely weighed anything to begin with, and besides, it made him feel useful. Cashel's friends were all smart and educated. Nobody'd thought that Garric would get to be king while he and Cashel were growing up together in Barca's Hamlet, but he'd gotten as good an education from his father, Reise the Innkeeper, as any nobleman's son in Valles got. Likewise Garric's sister Sharina. Cashel smiled at the thought of Sharina. She wasso smart andso lovely. If there was wizardry in the world-and there was; Cashel had seen it often-then the greatest proof of it was the fact that Sharina loved him, as he'd loved her from childhood. Cashel's sister Ilna couldn't read or write any better than he could, and like Cashel she used pebbles or beans as tellers if she needed to count above the number of her fingers. But there was more to being smart than book learning, and nobody hadever doubted that Ilna was smart. She'd been the best weaver in Barca's Hamlet since she'd grown tall enough to work a loom, and the things she'd learned on her travels had made her better than any other soul. None of that had made her happy. Her travels had been to far places, some of them very bad places. She'd come back maybe missing parts that would've let her be happy. Still, Ilna was much of the reason that the kingdom had survived these past years; why the kingdom survived and, in surviving, had allowed mankind to survive.

Cashel, well, he was just Cashel. He'd been a good shepherd, but nobody needed him to tend sheep any more. He was strong, though; stronger than any man he'd met this far. If he could use that strength to help people like Rasile who the kingdom depended on, then he was glad to have something to do. "I'm setting you down," he said, just as he'd have done if he'd been carrying a bogged sheep up to drier ground. The sheep couldn't understand him and the Corl wizard didn't need to be told. Still, a few calm words and a little explanation never hurt. "It's supposed to be the highest place in Pandah and-" He looked around. The top of the tower flared a little, but it was still only two double-paces in diameter. "-I guess the folks who said that were right." Rasile stepped to the railing. From a distance the catmen didn't look much different from humans, but close up you saw that their hands and feet didn't use the same bones. As for their faces, well, they were cats. Rasile was covered with light gray fur which had a nice sheen since she'd started eating properly again. Cashel grinned. If Rasile was a ewe, he'd have said she was healthy. Of course back in the borough she'd have been butchered years ago; there was only fodder enough to get the best and strongest through the winter before the spring crops came in. "I'll never get used to the cities you beast-men live in," Rasile said. She flicked the back of her right hand with the left, a gesture Cashel had learned was the same as a human being shaking her head. "All those houses together, and so many of them stone. None of the True People ever built with stone." "Well, you don't use fire, so you can't smelt metal," Cashel pointed out. "That makes it hard to cut stone." He didn't add, "And you catmen aren't much interested in hard work, either," though it'd have been true enough. The Coerli were predators. All you had to do was own a housecat to know that most of the time it'll be sleeping; and when it isn't, it's likely eating or licking itself.

"Anyway…," Cashel continued diplomatically. Rasile didn't mean anything by "beast-men" and "True People;" it was just the way the Coerli language worked. "I don't guess I'll ever get used to cities either. I was eighteen before I left Barca's Hamlet, and it wasn't but three or four tens of houses." Pandah had been a good sized place when the royal army captured it back in the summer, but that was nothing to what it'd become now. All around the stone-built citadel, houses were going up the way mushrooms pop out of the ground after the spring rains. There were wood-sheathed buildings, wattle and daub huts, and on the outskirts any number of tents made of canvas or leather. Before the Change, travel for any distance meant travel by ship. The Isles were now the Land, a continent instead of a ring of islands about the Inner Sea, and Pandah was pretty nearly the center. It'd gotten to be an important place instead of a sleepy little island where ships put in to buy fruit and fill their water casks. The Corl wizard cleared her throat with a growl that had sounded threatening before Cashel got used to it. She paced slowly sideways around the tower, seeming to look out over Pandah. Cashel had spent his life watching animals and figuring out what was going on in their minds before they went and did something stupid. He knew Rasile hadn't asked to come up here just to view a city she disliked even more than he did. That was why he'd asked Lord Waldron, the commander of the royal army, to put a couple soldiers down at the base of the stairs to keep idlers out of the tower while Cashel and the wizard were in it. "Warrior Cashel," Rasile said with careful formality, though she still didn't meet his eyes.

"You are a friend of Chief Garric. As you know, the wizard Tenoctris summoned me to help your spouse Sharina while Tenoctris herself was occupied with other business." "Yes, ma'am," Cashel said. "I know that." "There is no wizard as powerful as Tenoctris," Rasile said, this time speaking forcefully. Cashel smiled. It was a good feeling to remember a success. "Ma'am, I believe that's so," he said. He could've added that it hadn't been true before Tenoctris took an ancient demon into her while Cashel watched. Risky as that was, it'd worked; and because it'd worked, the kingdom had a defender like no wizard before her. "Even she says that, and Tenoctris isn't one to brag." "And now she has accomplished her other tasks," Rasile continued, turning at last to look at Cashel. "It may be that with a wizard of his own race present-and so powerful a wizard besides-Chief Garric may no longer wish to keep me in his council. Do you believe that is so, Warrior Cashel?" Cashel chuckled, glad to know what was bothering the old wizard. "No ma'am, it'snot so," he said, making sure he really sounded like he meant it. He did mean it, of course, but with people-and sheep-lots of times it wasn't the words they heard but the way you said them. "Look, Garric's job is fighting against, well, evil. Right?