David Drake - The Mirror of Worlds

Besides, this was in a good cause, the best cause of all: killing catmen. Karpos joined them. Before speaking, he braced the belly of his bow against his right knee and bent the upper tip down enough to release the loop of bowstring from the bone notches holding it.

Rising, he let the yew staff straighten. Left strung, an all-wood bow would crack before long. "They're not far," he said to Ilna. Asion was on his way down the track now also. "Maybe an hour ahead. No more than that, anyway. And they didn't try to hide their trail." "Do they still have prisoners?" Ilna asked as she worked, judging where each strand must go without bothering to look behind her at the wall. The pattern was set in her mind; all she needed to do was to execute it according to that perfect truth. "No," Karpos said. "Unless they'd gagged them.

We'd have heard people if they'd made any sound. Well, Asion would've." The two hunters believed that Asion's senses were sharper than those of his partner. Ilna accepted their judgment-because the men said so, and because she herself could discriminate between the shades of two threads which anyone else would've claimed were identical. So far as she was concerned, anything either of them said they saw or smelled or heard was as sure as sunrise. "All right," Ilna said. "Lay the fire then, please. I've crossed two sticks where I want it. And set out half a dozen billets of light-wood for me to use when they come." She'd almost said, "Good," when Karpos reported the catmen had already killed their captives. If the prisoners were alive, she and the men would have to attack the beasts in their camp. That could be done, she supposed, but it'd add a further complication to the business. So… Ilna hadn'thoped the catmen had slaughtered the children they'd carried off, but since they had-they'd be hungry and looking for further prey. She was going to offer some: herself. And if the beasts managed to kill her, then they'd have earned their meal indeed. "There's a breeze all the way from here to where the cats're camped, mistress," Asion said as he approached. "We had to swing way wide so we didn't wake 'em up early." "All right," said Ilna as she wove her three poles together with strands of wool she'd picked from the tunic which a woman had died in. "Help Karpos with the wood, then.

I don't want a large fire for now, but I need to have plenty of sticks ready so I can feed it as the night goes on. They may take their time coming." "Not them, mistress," said the hunter as he passed his partner returning from the wood pile. An extension of the roof overhang sheltered it at the back of the cabin. "But I'll get more wood." "Have you further directions for me, Ilna?" Temple asked pleasantly. He rested on one knee, polishing his dagger with a swatch of suede he'd brought from the hamlet where they'd found him. He'd used the short blade to cut and trim the lengths of brush; the sap oozing from the layer of inner bark smelled faintly acid. "No," Ilna said, but she glanced around to be sure of her statement. "I have enough poles." "Very well," he said, rising and sheathing his dagger.

"Then I'll bury the goats." Ilna frowned. After providing her with the first bundle of poles, Temple had dug a deep trench and buried the dead family. She'd been amazed at how quickly he worked with only the tools they'd found here at the farm: a dibble of fire-hardened oak, a pick made from goat antler, and a stone adze which he'd used as a mattock. "We'll be leaving tomorrow morning at the latest," she said.

"Probably tonight. If the smell disturbs you…?" "No, Ilna,"

Temple said with his familiar slight smile. "The smell does not bother me. Animals deserve courtesy too, though, if we have time to grant it to them." "Wedidn't kill the goats," Ilna snapped. "They're on the catmen's conscience, or they would be if the beasts had one!" "All life is the same, Ilna," Temple said. "And we have time. But if you'd rather I not, I will not." "Do as you please," Ilna said. She was furious with herself for having started an argument overnothing, an insane nothing. "As you say, we have time." Temple gathered his tools and walked toward the dead animals. Ilna wound and knotted, seething inside. Killing catmen was the only thing that mattered now. And she was about to kill a few more of the beasts.

Chapter 4 Garric'd hung his belt with sword, dagger, and wallet over a finial of his chair back before he sat down. Carus winced every time the descendent whose mind he shared disarmed himself in a public gathering, but Carus wasn't in charge-and he didn't like civilian gatherings to begin with. "Being in the middle ofsoldiers is fine, though," the king's ghost said, grinning. "Even if they're enemy soldiers. I know the rules we're playing by." Garric stepped toward the chair. It hadn't fallen over, probably because Liane had put her hand on the back to keep it from tipping when he shoved it back. He held the aegipan's sword high but now he was just trying to avoid shaving pieces off those around him. The blade was as sharp as Shin claimed, even where the edge'd notched the stone. "Give his highness room!" shouted Attaper, who seemed to've recovered from his strain.

"Back away, I don't care who you are!" Garric glanced at the guard commander, wondering how he'd taken the fact his prince had figured out a trick he'd missed. Attaper caught his eye and winked, grinning ruefully. "Careful!" Garric said, drawing his own sword left-handed and setting it on the table. Duzi, this was no job to be doing in such a crowd, half of whom had no more experience with weapons than they did with Serian philosophy! Its watermarked blade shimmered in light through the clerestory windows. Garric had carried that sword into more fights than he could say for certain; it'd served him well.

Seeing it alongside the weapon the aegipan had brought was like comparing his father's inn to this palace. Holding his scabbard in his left hand, Garric slid the new sword home with no more than the usual faintzing as the side of the blade rubbed the stamped bronze lip. He shook it slightly to see how loose it was in the new sheath; there was no more play between the blade and wooden battens than there'd been with the sword it'd been made for. "Are you surprised, Prince Garric?" asked Shin, who was standing as close to Garric's left side as Liane was to his right. Attaper and the guards wouldn't have dared object to Liane's presence, but the aegipan must move like water in a brook.

"The Yellow King forged it for the human champion to carry, after all." "Then… I'm meant to use it?" Garric said, trying to keep the desperate eagerness out of his voice. The emotional jolt he'd gotten from the implied offer came more from Carus than from Garric's own soul, though the innkeeper's son had become enough of a warrior himself by now to feel a touch of greedy desire when he looked at the gray perfection. "If you wish, you can offer it back to the Yellow King when you reach his cave," Shin said. "Until then at least it's yours-though you have to reach his cave, after all." "Everybody sit down, please!" Cashel said. One of the clerks standing near the wall flung his document case in the air. Even Garric jumped-he wasn't sure he'd ever heard his friend shout in an enclosed room before. "And be quiet." Tenoctris stood on the bench where she'd been resting. The extra height allowed her to see and be seen by everybody in the hall, but it didn't help her be heard over the confusion. Cashel had done that. He stood on the floor in front of her, looking a trifle embarrassed at the way everybody stared at him. Garric grinned. For somebody who needed to be heard, the next best thing to having the strongest lungs in the borough was to have a friend with the strongest lungs in the borough. "Thank you," said Tenoctris. She dipped her head in a tiny nod of satisfaction. "Garric, this isn't the portent I expected-I thought the image I saw in my scrying stone was allegorical. It wasn't. You must go with him." "Prince Garric has a kingdom to rule," Tadai said. "Lady Tenoctris, I greatly respect your judgment, but in this crisis it'd be irresponsible for the prince to go off to-we don't even know where to!" "Milord, he must," Tenoctris said. She was a tiny woman who looked now like a bird chirping from its perch, but just now she had a presence that no one else in the room could've equaled. "Or therewon't be a kingdom for him to rule.