David Drake - The Mirror of Worlds

"Who but the hero Garric or-Reise could tame a mount as handsome and powerful as myself?" "She's making them think it's a joke," said Carus, looking critically at the ogre through Garric's eyes. "But when you think how it came that you're riding her… she's a clever lady, whatever she looks like." "I've had greater compliments than any a human ruffian is capable of giving me," Kore said, puzzling the locals who hadn't heard the ghost's observation. "But thank you just the same." "I would be honored to meet Lord Holm," Garric said politely. "Though as I say, my wish is merely to pass through his territory, paying for food and lodging. We'll of course do no harm to anyone on the way." "Bloody well told you won't," the leader said, gesturing with his crossbow. The bow was horn-backed wood rather than steel, but Garric didn't need his ancestor's assessment to know that it'd send its square-headed quarrel through a man's chest at short range. "What is there to harm, Leel?" another man demanded. "They're not working any but the south islands, and you know half the grubbies've run away by now." "Shut up, Wagga!" Leel said. "Sister bite your tongue out, you fool." He looked up to judge the position of the sun. "All right, we'll take them back. The big one, whatever it is-" "The ogre, my man," Kore said with a note of chill. "Your ignorance is pardonable, but your lack of courtesy is not." "Like I say, whatever," Leel growled. "He can't get across unless he flies.

There's a little solid ground and most of the surface is okay for a man if he moves along. But a horse can't make it, and that brute's bigger'n any horse." "So I am," said the ogre, raising her left hand and spreading the clawed fingers. Their span was enormous, easily that of the ribs of a parasol. "But on all fours, as I will deign to go under the circumstances, I spread my weight more broadly than a horse or even a man. Lead on, sirrah!" Leel shrugged. "I figure it'll sink to the bottom of the tar," he said. "Which is no business of mine. And you'll-" He looked directly at Kore for the first time. Leel obviously disliked the ogre, though he didn't seem to be as fearful as many of those Garric had met since he began riding her. "-have plenty of company down there, much good may they do you. Trying to get through the lake without us to guide you, well-it's been tried." "Look, Leel," said Platt, scratching his groin again. It seemed to be a nervous mannerism. "It's pretty late already. Don't you think we should maybe wait till morning?" "No, I bloody well don't," snapped Leel. "Let's get going. Wagga, you lead." A ratty little man nodded and slipped forward. He carried three javelins in a bundle and wore a hat made of leaves bent onto a frame of willow shoots. Leel gestured Platt ahead of him, said to Garric, "You lot follow me," and stepped onto the yielding, barren surface. Shin hopped ahead, dancing rather than walking. Garric shuffled onto the path behind him. He noticed the lake's warmth on the backs of his calves before it seeped through the soles of his boots, but it wasn't dangerous in itself. Dust, vegetable matter, and gravel were worked into the bitumen. The men ahead of Garric moved swiftly, so he fitted his pace to theirs. He was used to marshes, but he'd have been more comfortable if he had a staff to probe and to vault and-if worse came to worst-to spread his weight if he slipped into a sucking cavity. He didn't suppose hot tar would release a victim as easily as the mud of Pattern Marsh in the borough, either. The aegipan turned and raised an eyebrow in question. Garric grinned, his mood suddenly lightened. "I was just thinking that I'd like a tar bath even less than I did a mud one when I tended sheep," he said. "So I'll avoid it." "Hey, what if the big one falls through, Leel?" called man toward the rear of the party. "Then you find a way around the hole, don't you, Tenny?" said the leader, for the moment a wraith in the mist. "Or you wait here on the lake till the bogeys come to get you." Tenny snarled a curse, but he didn't raise his voice enough to force Leel to notice him. "Or again," Kore murmured, "I might decide to spend my final moments savoring a meal of human flesh.

We can never be sure of the future, can we?" The ogre didn't sound concerned. Carus laughed, but Garric wasn't sure the comment had been meant as a joke. On the other hand- Garric grinned. The thought was amusing even if it weren't a joke, if you looked at the world in a particular way. He'd become enough of a warrior himself to understand that sometimes grim jokes were the only kind available, and those were the times you really needed a joke. The mist largely cleared, though Garric hadn't noticed a breeze or patch of cooler air to explain it.

They'd reached an island. Tar had soaked into the dirt of the margins, forming a black crust. Wagga was trotting across a field of bromeliads with squat, scaly trunks like palmettos. They grew in straight lines and must've been planted deliberately. "Pineapples," Carus said. "Saw them on Tisamur my first campaign. You cut the trunk open and it's sweet and sour both at once. Any cold at all kills them, but I guess this steam bath takes care of winter." Garric eyed the plants critically as he strode between the rows. They hadn't been tended in weeks or more, judging from the way vines were curling around the trunks. He wondered about the bogeys Leel had mentioned; then he wondered just what Lord Holm wanted a hero for. They were on the asphalt again. The paths led from island to island. A lead of dark water eight or nine feet wide cut the surface. Wagga and Leel splashed through. Shin leaped it gracefully, landed on his hands, and somersaulted onto his hooves again. Garric could've jumped across too, but he didn't trust the surface on the other side. Slamming down with his full weight might crack it. The very least he could expect then would be to lose a boot that he'd want after they'd crossed this stinking blackness. The water was warm, the bottom slimy but less than knee deep. He hopped up the other side and sloshed forward. Their bare-legged guides showed no interest in stopping to allow Garric to pour the water out of his boot. The path across the bitumen jogged repeatedly. Once Wagga led them in a wide circuit. The mist chanced to clear again long enough for Garric to see a single bubble of fresh tar in the midst of the otherwise unbroken gray expanse which they'd just avoided. They crossed three more islands of normal soil, each planted with fruit trees. The light was failing; the sky was too bright for stars, but all below was in heavy shadow. Neither Garric nor Carus could identify the fruit on the last island, and they didn't tarry long enough in the dimness even to guess at its kinship. Part of the crop was rotting neglected on the ground. Garric glanced over his shoulder. Kore was close behind, pacing easily on all fours. She'd stripped palm fronds to weave between the long fingers of either hand, increasing their surface area the way the webs of a frog's feet do.

She grinned, though her long face touched the expression with savage horror. "Leel, it's gettingbloody late!" Platt called. "We should've waited till morning." "Shut up, you fool, or you needn't worry about bogeys!" Leel snarled back. Lights winked ahead, then vanished in a curl of mist. "About time," one of the men muttered. "Look to the left, lad," warned Carus, seeing more with Garric's eyes than the owner did. At first Garric thought he was seeing another island half a mile away. The outlines were too square, though, and when the mist cleared momentarily he thought he glimpsed window alcoves and turrets on two corners. "Master Leel?" Garric called. "Is that a palace out in the lake there?" The leader's feathered bicorn jerked around. "Just shut your mouth, fellow!" he said in a tone of desperate anger.

"Anything you want to know, keep it to ask Milord, you hear?" Garric didn't reply. Leel was obviously frightened; there was no point in taking offense at what he blurted. "He's not a man I'd judge to be easily frightened, either," Carus said. "Well, it could be he doesn't like the dark. Some folk are that way." The ghost laughed again.