David Drake - The Gods Return

Garric could still see it undulating toward him. He lunged to meet it with his sword point. The captain and two of his troopers struck at the same time. The creature parted like gossamer at the touch of multiple weapons. It drifted away in pieces that dissolved as they sagged toward the ground. As they did so, the rosy glow vanished and with it Garric's ability to see the floating monsters. Only the smell remained, and even that was disappearing. Garric sank down on one knee. The physical effort hadn't been excessive, but his blood was seething from the attack. Now that there was nothing left to fight, he was afraid he was going to throw up. "What were they, Tenoctris?" he asked, his eyes on the ground. He was taking deep breaths, trying to cool down. All his muscles were trembling. Men had come running, Lords Waldron and Attaper among them, but Garric wasn't ready to talk to them yet. "They were invisible!" "They weren't invisible," said the wizard, "but they were the same color as air, at least in this light.

How did you see them?" Garric's body was beginning to settle again.

There were soldiers all around them. "A rag!" he said. "Somebody find me a rag to wipe my sword blade!" "Here, your highness!" someone said, handing Garric a cloth. It was the sleeve of his tunic; Garric could've torn his own sleeve off, but he hadn't thought of that because he was still reacting to what had happened. "I saw the shadow on the wall beside you," he said. "Please, give us some room.

Everybody! Back away if you please." A moment before he must've sounded like the worst sort of nobleman ordering his servants about.

He'd apologize later-not that anybody else would care that the Prince had barked out orders. "Carus knew something was wrong, though," he said, looking up to meet Tenoctris' quiet gaze. The ghost of his ancestor beamed from his mind. "I don't know how. Experience, I suppose." "Your highness!" Lord Attaper said forcefully. "Captain Willer says there were snakes in the air. Do we need to get you out of this place? Lady Tenoctris, do we?" Garric raised an eyebrow toward the wizard. "No," she said. "There were only three and they're dead, thanks to his highness. It must've taken weeks to prepare this attack and it would take even longer to prepare another one." Her expression became unusually serious. "Garric, this wasn't precisely wizardry, because the creatures are natural. But they're not natural in this world and time, and therecertainly was wizardry behind their presence here. I should have been ready. I'll not fail you in this fashion again." "I don't think anybody failed," Garric said. "Except the wizard or whatever in Palomir who was behind this." He got up. Lurched up, really, but he felt better with each movement. He sheathed his sword and held up the borrowed sleeve. "Thank you, whoever gave this to me," he said. "But I think it'd better be burned immediately. I couldn't see what I was wiping with it, maybe nothing, but I'd burn it just in case." "At once, your highness!" a Blood Eagle murmured, snatching the rag from him. He'd say the same thing if I ordered him to jump off a cliff! "Just asyou'djump off a cliff if the kingdom required it," Carus said with a hard grin. "Duty is duty." Garric grimaced, but he knew that was true. Well, he'd work not to be the sort of leader who ordered men to jump off cliffs. "We'll be meeting the first contingent of militia from Haft tomorrow, your highness,"

Lord Waldron said, putting up his sword also. "Before they arrive, I'd like to discuss with you my plan for how we'll use them, if you would." "Yes, we'll do it now," Garric said, seating himself against the rock face again. And how many boys from Haft would he have to order over cliffs? Because the kingdom required it… *** Ilna lurched to her feet. The boat shifted with a scrunch of gravel, throwing her down again. This time her bruised right knee landed on the gunwale. The additional sharp pain on top of the battering she'd just taken made her dizzy, but she managed to catch herself before she tumbled onto the beach. She closed her eyes and steadied herself. She supposed she should've gotten up more carefully, but if she'd been seriously injured she wanted to know about itnow.

Besides- Ilna smiled, not widely but widely for her. -while she wasn't rash, she generally acted on her initial impulse. Once that had taken her to Hell, but who was to say that she wouldn't have gotten there anyway? Anyway, that was in the past. The beach was shingle like at Barca's Hamlet; here the fist-sized chunks of rock were red sandstone instead of the black basalt she was used to. Though by this time, Ilna supposed she was used to anything the world could put her into, as well as some things that had nothing to do with the waking world at all. Ingens groaned. He was still holding onto the mast, so he hadn't been clubbed unconscious while the vessel was being thrown around.

Ilna leaned over the secretary and removed her lasso. She had to lift his right leg to get the silken noose clear. "Ouch!" Ingens cried, twisting his head to look up at her. He'd bloodied his nose, though it wasn't broken or he'd been giving it more attention than he did the leg he was kneading with both hands. "What did you do me?" "Beyond saving your life?" Ilna said coldly as she looped the cord so that she could loop it around her waist again. "If I hadn't taken it off when I did, you'd have died of gangrene in a week or two. What you're feeling is the blood coming back into your leg." "I'm sorry," the secretary muttered to his hands. "I wasn't… I didn't mean to complain. I wasn't thinking clearly. Wasn't thinking." People were coming from huts to the right, above what would have been the shoreline before the Change. Ilna saw nets drying on racks; the men of Ortran must still fish, though now in the river rather than the Inner Sea. Two men, then a third, began to trot when they saw Ilna was watching. "Good day!"

Ilna said as they approached. "We've been thrown here by the earthquake." Her fingers were knotting a pattern that would sear anyone looking at it like a bath in boiling oil. That was her reflex when she met new people, but in this case there was more than the usual reason for it. The whole village was coming, down to babes in their mothers' arms. The villagers didn't look hostile, precisely, but they certainly didn't seem friendly. The men wore the crude knives that were as much a part of peasant dress as a tunic. "You're on Ortran, now!" called a burly man whose beard was lopped off square a hand's breadth beneath the point of his chin. He'd lost his right ear in the distant past; only a lump of gristle and scar tissue remained.

"You're under our laws!" The three leaders paused a double-pace short of the boat. Ingens got to his feet, but he seemed willing to let Ilna talk for both of them. He usually travelled with Hervir, of course. "I don't see any sign of damage here," he murmured, nodding toward the village. "Those flimsy huts should've been thrown down. Can the earthquake just have followed the river?" "We have no intention of breaking your laws," Ilna said coldly, letting bigger questions wait on immediate need. "We're only here because we were caught by the earthquake. We'll go on as soon as we're able to arrange a crew for our boat." This place must be about the size of Barca's Hamlet, several double handfuls of huts. The villagers lacked the bits of ornamentation-a bracelet of carved wood, a ring mounted with a pretty piece of quartz-that some of them would've had back home, but they seemed well fed. "I want enough cloth for a tunic!" said a woman with a voice like stones rubbing. She glared at the woman beside her as she spoke; they both could've been any age from twenty to forty beneath the grease. "I want cloth fortwo tunics, because I got shorted last time. You know I was, Achir!" "We don't take slaves here on Ortran," said a pale blond man, another of the three leaders, "but you're castaways and all you come with is salvage to us. You have the tunics you're wearing, no more." "Aye, that's the law of Ortran," said the third leader, a fat old man who'd taken this long to catch his breath after scurrying to reach the vessel. He nodded solemnly. "The law of our fathers and their fathers before them." "You're under royal law now," said Ingens sharply. "You can't rob travellers simply because your fathers used to rob them!" A boy from the back of the crowd shied a stone. It missed Ingens' head, but he shouted and ducked away. Ilna held up the pattern she'd knotted. The villagers staggered back screaming as if she'd flung live coals in their faces. The fool who'd been nattering about the laws of his fathers gasped twice, clutching his chest. His face flushed so red it was almost purple; he toppled forward onto the shingle. Good, thought Ilna. Maybe you'll have a chance to chat with your ancestors about why they should've come up with different laws. "I curse you!" she shouted to the departing crowd. The words didn't have any effect except to frighten the unpleasant fools further, but that was worthwhile. "May your limbs burn till they fall off!" Not everybody had been looking when she'd displayed her loose pattern, and those at the edges of the mob hadn't gotten the full effect. They all joined the panic as their neighbors fled in screaming agony. The only remaining villagers were the red-faced fellow, now breathing in snorts like a hog, and a girl of eight or nine who'd been knocked down. She was bleeding from a cut on the forehead. "What did you do?" Ingens said. "Have you killed them?"