David Drake - The Gods Return

The last of the ramparts disappeared in a rumbling earthquake, partly crushed but also swallowed by the enormous mouth. Orange-red dust rose in a cloud that staggered forward like a line of cavalry advancing. It covered the foreparts of the creature that had worked the destruction, but hundreds of feet of gray horror continued to grind forward like an unending landslide. "Even if they surrender, it's all the same for most of them," Tam said. "You give the city to your, your thing. And all the ones who don't join us. Who we don't let join." "Well, what do you care?" Archas shouted. "What did cities ever do for you, Tam? Why, if we'd tried to get in here a year ago, they'd have arrested us at the gate and likely hung us just for what we looked like!" And he and his men sure wouldn't have attacked a place like this, whatever its name was. Archas had never had more than six ships under his command-three hundred men, maybe; certainly not more. They'd have had as much chance trying to gnaw through these walls-the walls that the Worm had just finished destroying-as they would assaulting them.

Archas looked at the army he'd assembled in his march north, straggling across the landscape. There were several thousand men, now.

Most were slaves and farm laborers who'd joined the band because the life was better than what they were used to. They weren't very different from the pirates he'd commanded before the Change. The men Archas had taken from captured or surrendered cities were generally soldiers who came with their weapons and knew how to use them. Despite how they feared the Worm they might've been dangerous to him if there'd been more of them, but he saw to it there weren't. The Army of the East had been attacked several times during its advance. Because it had proper scouts and flankers, only one of the ambushes had forced Archas to loose the Worm. He hadn't been sure the creature was going back to its own world that time. Hill tribesmen had attacked in a rocky gorge. They were after loot, not trying to halt the column, though by by luck they'd swept down on the carriage in which Archas rode in state. He'dhad to bring out the Worm to save himself, but there hadn't been much for it to destroy once it'd devoured the mountaineers' meager village. The Worm had taken his orders at last, but he hadn't been sure it would until the last moment. He'd allowed it to destroy the next city they reached, down to the last mouse and pebble. He hadn't given the populace even a chance to surrender. "I know, captain, I know," said Tam with a sigh. "I never thought I'd have all the wine and all the women I wanted, all the time. We've got it good, I know we have. Only…" He'd turned his eyes toward the women. There were more of them than the men by now and almost entirely captives from the cities. Not all whores, either: there were councillors' wives and priests' daughters. They'd volunteered after they learned the alternative, too, because Archas' men didn't need to bother with the unwilling. Except for the men who liked a struggle, of course. The Army of the East had no few of those, but they generally discarded the women after they'd used them, picking out fresh companions when the next city fell. "Look, Tam," Archas said. He was cajoling his deputy, but it was really his own heart that he was trying to convince. "They're lucky we're here, that's the truth. If they waited for the rats to spread this far, you know what'd happen.

They'dall be sacrificed, right? They'd ask us to capture them if they knew the truth." There was nothing left of the walled city but a pall of dust which continued to churn as the Worm writhed through it.

Archas held the talisman close. He'd use it shortly, but he needed to ready himself for what he knew would be a struggle. "Have another drink," he said to Tam, offering the wineskin he'd slung over his left shoulder. It was almost empty, but there were others. Tam tossed his helmet to the ground to free his hand. He took the skin and drank deeply. Gesturing toward the helmet with his toe, he said, "Wouldn't be much use against that thing, would it? And there's nothing else I'm worried about here." "You!" Archas shouted to a man standing nearby, staring transfixed at the Worm's continued progress. "Find some wine and bring it here. Now!" Tam hadn't needed to explain what "that thing" was. "I just keep thinking…," Tam said. He looked critically at the wineskin, then shook it; there was enough left to slosh. "Pretty soon the rats are going to swarm over the whole rest of the world, right? Everything's going to be Palomir, except us. What's going to happen then, captain?" "Don't worry about that, Tam," Archas said with a confidence he didn't feel. "As soon as we take Dariada, everything's going to change. Everything'll be all right as soon as we do that!" He touched his tongue with his lips. He was sure that things would change. But he wasn't sure that they'd be all right.

Chapter 9 Cashel looked at the stele's carvings again. Rasile, Liane, and the priest were doing that too. There must be half the city trying to watch Liane and the rest of them. If it hadn't been for the company of soldiers making a half-circle to give them space, Cashel would've been pushing the crowd back with his staff to keep it from trampling the two women. It seemed like the people here had heard stories about the thing that was eating its way north toward them.

Looking between him and Liane-Rasile was squatting on Cashel's other side-Amineus said, "That's the hero Gorand, your ladyship. He's shown strangling the Serpent, as we thought." He coughed in embarrassment.

"We, ah, thought," he continued in a lowered voice, "that the story was an allegory of a great military leader who defeated an attack of pirates from the Outer Sea. Because the sea encircles the Isles like a serpent swallowing its tail." Liane looked at the priest. "It appears that before the Change, Archas and his men were pirates on the Outer Sea," she said. "But no, I don't believe the image is a serpent. Or an allegory." "The face looks like the one in the tree," Cashel said. "I think." "How can you tell?" Amineus said. He wasn't trying to sneer, but he wasn't exactly trying not to either. "This is so small. And ancient." Cashel shrugged. He moved to the other side of the stele, stepping carefully around Liane. "Master Amineus?" he said as he stared at the sand-smoothed stone. Kneeling, he began grubbing in the dirt at its base with his knife. "Was this always here? This stele?"

"Well, there are no records about it being erected, I can tell you that," the priest said. "Though that doesn't prove it wasn't set up or moved here from somewhere else without anybody bothering to mention it. Or the records could've been lost, of course." "The reason I ask is…," Cashel said. Yes, it was there like he'd thought, a row of letters in the swirly Old Script and maybe another row beneath them.

"There's still some writing here where it got covered before the wind could smooth it away." "Let me see!" Liane said, squatting beside him.

"Ah-please, I mean. And ah-" "Ma'am, would you like my knife?" Cashel said politely, offering her the haft of the simple tool. A blacksmith had forged the iron blade and pinned wooden scales to it. It could do everything from carving at meals to picking stones out of ox hooves.

Or digging dirt away from the base of a stele. "No, Cashel," Liane said with a laugh. "I'd like you to finish clearing the inscription, as you were doing before I interrupted you. My pardon, please." "It's more my line of work," Cashel said mildly. He scraped the back of the blade through the gritty earth like a plow breaking unpromising soil.

He had to be careful not to snap the iron, because it might be hard to replace. City folks here didn't wear knives any more than they did in Valles or Erdin, and he didn't guess Liane and Rasile would want to traipse about the countryside looking for a smith with a sideline in knives. Liane rubbed the last of the dirt away with the hem of her cape. The letters were worn, especially on top. But not so they couldn't be read, apparently. "When the priests have carried out these rites," Liane said in a clear voice, her finger tracing the line to keep her place along the faint letters, "they may summon Lord Gorand from his rest. Lord Gorand will defend the people of Dariada from the Devouring Danger-I think that's what it is-as he defended them in the past." She rose to her feet and turned. "The rites would've been on the upper part of the stone," she said quietly to Rasile. "I think."