David Drake: The Gods Return

"Coming to the Tree?" said Cashel, frowning as he thought of all the things the words could mean. "Coming to you, Master Gorand?" "I won't be here, Cashel," Gorand said. "He's seeking the temple that was here when the Tree was planted. If he's allowed to stay there, you and your friends will rue it for the rest of your short lives." Cashel glanced at the stubs of the ancient stone columns. Just how old was it really?

Though that was the sort of thing Garric and Sharina thought about, not any business of his. "Thank you," said Cashel, turning. He shifted the quarterstaff into both hands, slanting it on-guard without thinking. "I guess we'd best not let him stay." There was a rattling and cracking, then a long, drawn-out crash as the brick wall around the enclosure crumbled into bricks and brick dust. Had the Worm…?

But the Worm couldn't have torn the whole thing down all at the same time. The Tree was rising, out of the ground and out of the wall too.

Over the centuries, hair-fine tendrils had dug away half the mortar, but they'd wrapped the individual bricks in a web that held them firmer than the lime could. When the roots pulled away, what had been masonry collapsed into rubble. Amineus and Hilfe ran together into the Priests' House. Cashel couldn't blame the priests-there was nothing holding them here, after all-but he wondered how much shelter they thought the building was going to be from what was happening. The Tree trembled. Cashel thought it was tipping into the street, but the roots nearest him bent away like legs. The huge creature stepped toward the southern edge of the city-toward where the fighting was going on. The pod with Gorand dangled high in the air, looking down on Dariada and the battle. "Good luck, Master Gorand!" Cashel called, raising his staff. The noise was tremendous, worse than the crash and boom of a thunderstorm. "Good luck to you, shepherd!" called the man in the pod.

A branch waved goodbye to Cashel.

Chapter 17 "The sun's going to be in our eyes by mid afternoon," said Lord Waldron gloomily, eyeing the army of giant rats to the south. "That man would complain if we hanged him with a golden rope!"

King Carus said in half-serious exasperation. Waldron wouldn't run even from certain death, but Garric didn't recall the army commander ever making an optimistic assessment. They were lurching along on a platform raised from the bed of a cart drawn by eight span of oxen. An artificial vantage point was the only way you could see any distance on these rolling prairies. The oxen were slow, but the army was advancing in battle order and wouldn't have been travelling faster than this anyway. "The sun was in your eyes at the Stone Wall, milord," Garric said mildly. "And you won there." To the south, Palomir's forces moved like a swarm of ants; more ants than a tax clerk could count in an afternoon. Dark-furred, steel-glittering companies appeared on hilltops, trotted down grassy slopes, and vanished again in the swales. "The Stone Wall was a bloody near thing!" snapped Waldron. He blinked, thought about the verbal exchange, and managed a smile. "But as you say," he added, "we won." A second ox cart ambled along beside the first. Tenoctris sat cross-legged in its bed with her paraphernalia laid out before her on a white tarpaulin. A solid-looking man, one of Liane's agents, squatted in a corner in case the wizard needed something fetched or other help. Normally Garric or one of his friends from Barca's Hamlet would be with Tenoctris, but they had other duties today. Duzi, preserve my friends, Garric thought. Duzi, keep Liane safe. Even if Duzi existed, he was a little god who couldn't affect great affairs.

He'd been the god of Garric's youth in Barca's Hamlet, though, and a prayer to him gave comfort to that boy whom the world now called a prince. How many rats are there really? Forty thousand, Zettin's scouts had guessed, but it might be more than that. It might be impossibly more than that. The royal army advanced in a shallow Vee formed by troops of the former phalanx, now arrayed only four deep instead of sixteen. The skirmishers with bows, slings and javelins extended the wings of the Vee, and the heavy infantry closed the back of the formation to turn it into a triangle. To either side moved the scouts, humans and Coerli in ragged bands no more formally organized than the rats they were facing. They took the place of the cavalry which would've flanked the army in a normal battle. The rats would envelope both wings of the royal army. The heavy infantry would have horrendous casualties, but there was nothing to do about it. There simply hadn't been time to reequip those regiments and train them in a wholly new style of warfare. "They won't break, lad," Carus said.

"Sometimes that's the thing you need most: men who won't break even when they know they're going to die if they stand. They'd die if they ran too, of course, but that isn't what'll keep them in their ranks."

A company of giant rats came over a hill barely a half mile away.

Waldron gestured to his trumpeter, riding in the bed of the cart and looking upward. The silveryPrepare to engage rang out, followed by the trumpets and horns of all the regiments. The scouts didn't have instruments, but they let out a yipping ululation. It was apparently a compromise that fit both human and Corl throats. "Sister take them!" said Carus. "I don't know what that'll do to the rats, but it'd bloody well raise the hair on the back ofmyneck. If I had hair, or a neck."

The Sister will have her share of them, I have no doubt, thought Garric. And the rest of us. But that's the job. Garric adjusted his ornate, parcel-gilt cuirass. "Milord, I'll leave you to it," he said to Waldron. "May the Shepherd be with you!" He dropped down the ladder, impressed again by how rigid the apparatus was. The platform's pole frame had been cross-braced by guy ropes-stays, in nautical parlance, since the work had been done by former sailors of the royal fleet. The result was makeshift and the additional twelve feet of height amplified the cart's every jolt and wobble, but there was nothing flimsy about it. The Blood Eagles-the hundred and ten men who remained of the regiment besides the section in Pandah with Sharina-were waiting for him. They wore the leather padding without the bronze cuirasses that would normally cover their torsos, and steel or leather caps in place of full helmets. They carried skirmishers' round wicker bucklers with linen facings instead of their usual massive shields of laminated wood. Lord Attaper's grim expression had very little to do with the coming battle and a great deal to do with where his prince intended to fight it from. "Your highness," he said, handing Garric the silvered helmet with flaring gilt wings. "This isn't a normal battle where your armor can give you reasonable protection. I know you like to lead from the front and-" "And I'm going to lead from the front again, milord," said Garric. "Attaper?

Please. This may be the last conversation we ever have. Let's not make it an argument, eh?" He lowered the massive helm over his head and cinched the chin strap. He would've liked to wear a cap like the phalangists and reequipped Blood Eagles, but if he was going to do this, it was important that he be seen to be doing it. And hewas going to do it. For an instant, Attaper's face went blank as a stone wall.

Then he grinned-slightly-and said, "All right, we won't argue, your highness. After all, if anything happens to you, I won't be around for people to complain to." They trotted to the point of the wedge. The leading companies of the phalanx had spread their rear ranks left and right during the advance; now those troops slipped back behind their fellows, making room for the Blood Eagles and Prince Garric. The vanguard of the rats bounded down a grassy slope toward the humans; their stink curled on the breeze. Archers loosed arrows from the flanks, and the Blood Eagles readied their javelins to throw. Garric drew his long sword. "This isn't a bad place to be in a hard fight," said the ghost in his mind, musing with the odd dynamic relaxation Carus always fell into before a battle. "There's no safety anywhere, whatever Attaper says; and looking for safety is the quickest way I can think of to get killed." He laughed like a cheerful demon. "I've killed my share of folks trying to do that. I'll tell the world!" "The Kingdom!" Garric shouted. "The Kingdom!" the army snarled. Skirmishers and the Blood Eagles launched their javelins, and the rats were on them. A chittering rat rushed Garric, then hunched instead of lunging.