David Drake - The Mirror of Worlds

He slept in the outbuilding, I suppose." She came down the ladder deliberately, stepping on every rung and holding the rails. She wanted to get away from the beds the children would never return to, get out of thishouse; but she wouldn't let dislike make her act in haste.

Mental discomfort was merely one of those things, like pain and hunger and bleak hopelessness, that you avoided when you could and bore when you couldn't. Temple gestured toward the fireplace; there was ash on his fingertip. "It's cold," he said. "All the way down to the hearthstone. At least two days." The catmen didn't like bright light.

They must've come at dawn, while the family was starting the morning chores. The pack would be sleeping in a the shade of a booth of woven branches at this time of day. The Coerli showed real talent with wicker and bark cloth, though they didn't grow flax or raise animals for wool. They were beasts… The wooden chimney had been sealed with a thick coating of clay. Ilna frowned when she saw it, but there wasn't much free stone here; and the family hadn't died from a chimney fire, after all. The folk who'd built the farm had come from a more settled region. Did it exist now, or had the Change torn this farmstead an unguessible distance in time and space from where it'd sprung? That probably didn't matter. If it did, then she'd know soon enough. Asion was tracing the simple carvings on the top of a wooden chest with his fingertip. "My, that's fine," he said. Looking toward Ilna, he went on, "Mistress, where'd the kids go if we didn't find them here? They couldn't 've run if the parents couldn't, could they?"

Ilna looked at Temple. The big man said, "The raiding party carried them off, Asion. They'll be more tender than the adults." There was no expression in his voice. He turned to Ilna and said, "I'd guess there were four or five males, and there may be females and kits in their lair. They'll be hunting again soon." "Yes," said Ilna. "Asion, take Karpos and locate the beasts. I wouldn't expect them to be very far away. I'll prepare matters here to receive them." "Yes, mistress," the hunter said, slipping through the door and drawing his sling from beneath his belt from where he'd been carrying it. He seemed glad to get away. Ilna looked around once more, then walked into the farmyard.

Temple followed her. She'd hoped there'd be a loom, but that wasn't important; she could knot the necessary patterns by hand. She'd pick out yarn from the dead woman's tunic. The rip would make the task easier, and she could put the blood dyeing the wool to practical advantage. "Ilna?" said the big man. "Have you a task for me?" "I'll summon the beasts by lighting a fire on the hearth," she said. "I'll be waiting for them in front of the house, though. You might decide where the three of you should best be to act when they come to me."

Her lips quirked into a smile or a sneer. She said, "After all, you're a soldier, aren't you?" She didn't like soldiers, men whose life was directed at killing other men. "Something like that," Temple said equably. He glanced around. "Asion in the goat's byre, under the straw to hide his smell. Karpos in the manure pile for the same reason. I'll wait in the house, because the Coerli won't take time to separate my smell from the previous owners' before they attack." "Yes, all right," said Ilna, taken aback by the speed with which he'd planned the business. The hunters would prefer to hide in filth for the hours before the catmen came rather than to be inside a house… and Temple noticed that, as I did. "I'll get to work, then." "Ilna?" the big man said. "There's tools in the shed. I'd like to bury the dead.

Since there's time." "Yes," said Ilna. "If you wish." She walked to the woman's corpse. She should've thought of that herself, but it wasn't her real job. Her real job was to kill catmen, and very shortly she'd have a chance to do more of that. *** "But we don't have a completed survey for the route to Pandah," said a civilian named Baumo. "I'm sure it seems simple to people who don't have to do the work, but most of the residents in that direction are Grass People and don't speak a proper language!"

Cashel didn't know what Baumo's title was or what he did beyond-it seemed-make surveys. Indeed, Cashel didn't know what most of the government officials here at the meeting did; so far as he was concerned, they all sort of blurred together. It wasn't that hecouldn't have learned: inside of two days, he'd know the personality of every sheep in a flock of ten tens or more. But he was interested in sheep and not a bit interested in palace officials, no matter how important they were; and officials weren't his job. "Well, surely there'll be enough food to supply one regiment," said Admiral Zettin.

"I don't think we'll need more troops than that. There can't be more than a thousand or so of the pirates and they're disgusting perverts, after all. What we can't afford to do is wait!" The meeting was in one of the bigger conference rooms and involved far more people than Cashel could count on both hands. Besides the important folk sitting at the table, there were all sorts of clerks and runners standing against the walls waiting for somebody to ask them or tell them something. A bunch of people started talking, none of them seeming to agree with Zettin but none of them saying the same thing either.

Garric hadn't arrived yet and Tenoctris didn't want to get into the business of the black men, the Last as she called them, till he did.

Sharina was letting Zettin talk about his notion of attacking Pandah where Cashel'd been a long time ago. It wasn't the same place since the Change, it seemed. Sharina sat in the middle of one long side, listening to the argument but not running things the way Cashel knew she could do if she wanted to. She was letting folks talk to keep them occupied while she waited for Garric and the real business. Cashel let the smile spread across his lips. Sharina wasso smart, andso beautiful; and she loved him, which he'd never dreamed could be when they were growing up together in Barca's Hamlet. Tenoctris sat to Sharina's left, reading books and scrolls she took out of the satchel which held the things she wanted as a wizard. She didn't even pretend to care about Pandah. Mostly she'd put each book back when she'd looked at it but now and again she'd lay one on the table with a bamboo splint for a place marker. When it was a scroll Tenoctris wanted to mark, she weighted it open with whatever came to hand, generally a codex. One time, though, she'd whispered to Sharina, who handed over the Pewle knife she wore hidden beneath her outer tunic.

The big knife appearing in Princess Sharina's hand made a lot of eyes bug out. One of Lord Tadai's clerks even started to say something, but the soldier standing next to him clapped a hand to the fellow's mouth and hustled him out of the room. From the look on Tadai's face when he turned to see the disturbance, the clerk was lucky somebody other than his chief had taken care of the business. Cashel glanced at the gleaming knife. The blade was sharpened on one edge; you could hammer on the wide backstrap if you had to. The seal hunters of Pewle Island used their knives for whatever work came to hand: chopping wood, fixing dinner-or gutting an enemy with a quick upward slash. Pewlemen were often hired as mercenaries, because they weren't afraid of anything. They had no more mercy than the cold seas where they hunted seals in flimsy woodskins. Sharina'd gotten her knife from an old hermit named Nonnus. He'd died to save her life, and maybe died also to make up for some of the things he'd done when he was a soldier. If Sharina wanted to carry the knife to remember Nonnus… well, Cashel figured he'd earned the memory, and there'd been times it was good that Sharina had a big blade. Cashel looked around the room, his quarterstaff upright beside him. He stood behind Sharina and Tenoctris, not because he really had to worry about somebody bumping them in this gathering but because that was his proper place.