David Drake - The Gods Return

"Youshouldn't… I mean-" He straightened, as much as sitting down and the pain of his wounds would allow. "Your highness, I was with your father-" Which meant Valence III, Garric's father by adoption and officially still king. "-at the Stone Wall when we beat the Sandrakkan rebels back into their kennel. But I was just a file closer, never got higher than that, and I only been called back to the colors now to put a little discipline in shepherds and wagon drivers.

You've got no business wasting time on us!" "I've driven oxen," Garric said, smiling but feeling the sadness of the youth and innocence he'd lost, "though they were yoked to plows rather than wagons. I've watched my share of sheep as well. Also I've fought rats, like you men-" He turned and nodded, to include the Coerli in the word "men."

"-just did. When I decide that I'm too good for any job the kingdom requires, then I'll have stopped being the prince that the kingdom needs." Garric turned and cleared his throat. His eyes fell on the guard who'd been helping Kucros. The fellow straightened in a parody of a soldier coming to attention. "A good bow," Garric said. He'd carried one like it in the pastures south of Barca's Hamlet. The short, stiff yew staff was a useful prod and lever, and strung it would see off wildcats or even the sea wolves which sometimes rushed out of the surf to claim a sheep. "Your highness, I didn't, I mean I couldn't take time to look for my arrows," the fellow blurted nervously. He wasn't someone Garric knew, but he knew thesort of man he was. Garric had been, or thought he'd been, one of them. "We had to get going. And we're short-teamed now, from the rats." "There're additional oxen on the way from camp," Garric said. "They won't be long coming even at the pace an ox moves, since you're so close." They were using the heavy infantry to guard the transport and food animals in stockaded camps. Their equipment wasn't suited for fighting ratmen, but they had a great deal of experience in building and holding fortified positions. The noblemen commanding what had been the elite infantry regiments hadn't liked what they saw as a demotion, but Lord Waldron-a cavalryman now on foot because of the nature of the new enemy-had even less sympathy for their complaints than Garric did.

"There's somebody coming now," said Kucros, looking to the east. "Is that them?" He rose on the wagon seat, forgetting his wounds until the pain jabbed him-and then standing nonetheless. King Carus nodded grim approval: Kucros was an old soldier. He wasn't especially bright or talented, but he was a man you could count on to hold firm no matter what it cost. An army needs those men, almost as much as an army needs commanders who won't throw these men away. "It can't be," Garric said, hopping onto the wagon step to get a little additional height. "No, that's a battalion of scouts." He frowned as he stepped down. "And Lord Zettin himself is with them. Attaper, something's happened." The scouts, two or three hundred of them, loped toward the halted supply train. They were spread to sweep half a mile or more and to reduce the chance of an ambushed enemy catching the whole unit. Garric knew that some scouting formations segregated humans from Coerli, but in this battalion javelin-carrying woods-rangers alternated man for man with the catmen. Lord Zettin was in the center, running easily beside a chieftain with a brindled hide. "What happened to Zettin?" said Lord Attaper. Then, in fury and amazement, "Sister take me, what does Zettin think he's playing at?" Carus chuckled. "Attaper hadn't seen his boy in field uniform, I guess," he said. "Yeah, that might be a bit of a surprise." Zettin was a former Blood Eagle and Attaper's protege. He'd done a very professional job as commander of the royal fleet, and he'd obviously thrown himself into his new duties as commander of the scouts. Instead of a gilt breastplate and a glittering helmet, Zettin wore an iron-studded leather cuirass and a leather hat. In the loops of his cross-belts were two throwing axes and several knives; but he didn't carry a sword, and the salt-cured tails of five ratmen dangled from epaulets sewn for the purpose onto the shoulders of his jerkin. "Your highness?" Zettin said. He wasn't breathing hard. "The rats are moving faster than we expected. Their main body is fifteen miles to the south." "How far away are the additional draft animals?" Garric asked, letting the king in his mind sort the priorities with the ease of long experience. "The oxen?"

Zettin said in surprise. "Half an hour, I suppose. But Lord Waldron hopes you'll return at once, with my men as escort." "First things first, milord," Garric said. "Admiral Ditter, hand over escort duties to the heavy infantry when they arrive with the oxen, then return to the camp as quickly as possible. Not until you've been relieved, though. We're not leaving Marshal Kucros and his men without an escort." "Yes, your highness!" Ditter said. "But we'll be back in time for the real action?" "Have no doubt of that, sir," said Garric. "Lord Attaper, are you ready for another run?" "Yes, your highness," Attaper said curtly. He didn't say, "or I'll die trying," because death would be failure and he didn't intend to fail. Anger at the situation burst out, though, when he snarled, "Zettin, who told you to dress like that? A jester?" "You have your uniform, milord," said the younger officer. "So do we in the scouts." Holding Attaper's eyes, he flicked the dried rat-tails with his thumbs. "And I lead my men from the front," he added, "as you taught me to do." "Let's go, gentlemen,"

Garric said, his grin a mirror of the ghost in his mind's. "With luck and the help of the Gods, we're going to make these rat men extinct before sunset!" *** Invisible brightness pressed Sharina from all directions.

Her skin prickled and her mind, not her eyes, felt squeezed. Then- She stood in the temple precinct of her nightmares. Her feet were firmly planted on the pavers of black granite, and Burne balanced on her shoulder. She couldn't move her limbs, and the rat was as still as a furry statue. Before them stood Black, hooded and ten feet tall. He held a codex in his left hand and an athame of black crystal in his right. On his shoulder, its hooked stinger raised, was a scorpion; its body alone was longer and broader than a man's hand and extended fingers. At one end of the colonnaded plaza beyond the tall wizard was the temple on whose triangular pediment a figure robed like Black strangled a bull, while a great scorpion drove off a horde of tiny humans. To Sharina's right-she could turn her head, though her arms were petrified like her legs-she could see above the portico that a series of mansions with gilded entablature climbed the natural slope.

To her left, past Burne, was a multi-story building with ranks of glass windows in bronze casements on the upper levels. Sharina had looked at the design of a similar central records building with Lord Tadai and a trio of architects, though the one they planned would've been in white marble. In the sky roiled a figure molded from storm clouds, a scorpion which stood upright instead of sprawling. Lightning flashed behind its many eyes and dripped like poison from the tip of its stinger. Black laughed in the same thunderous rumble as he had in her dreams. "You've caused me difficulties, princess," he said.

"That's ended, now. Nothing can prevent the rise of Lord Scorpion, the only true God." The scorpion on the wizard's shoulder drew a complex pattern with its pincers; the figure of cloud lowering over the black city mimicked-mirrored?-the same gestures. Sharina tried to grasp the hilt of her Pewle knife. Black was too far to stab from where she was frozen, but she could throw the weapon. Her arms didn't move any better than her legs did. She strained anyway. She had to do something. "Lord Scorpion will appear in the sky of Pandah, your Pandah, as soon as I speak the final incantation," said Black, "and the city will worship Him. When Lord Scorpion becomes manifest, you and I will return to the waking world as His high priests. We will live and reign forever in Lord Scorpion's black radiance!" "I'll never join you," Sharina said. "I'll fight you until I win or I die. Never!"