David Drake - The Fortress of Glass

Garric stabbed with his pole, using it as a blunt dagger instead of a club. Ribs cracked under the Corl's brindled fur.

Garric's arm went numb; he saw the post drop from his hand though he couldn't feel his fingers release. The Corl standing above him raised its stone axe for a second blow like the one that'd already stunned his right shoulder.

Garric kicked sideways. The Corl leaped over the swift attack with no more difficulty than Garric would've made in hopping from rock to rock in crossing a stream. Garric had saved his skull for a few moments, but perhaps only that.

Soma threw her rushlight at the Corl in a blazing whirl. The cat man wailed, its eyelids blinking closed and its arms crossing in front of its face. The pithy stalk bounced away in a shower of sparks.

Garric lunged upward, still seated but his torso straight and his left hand spearing out to grab the Corl by the throat. It struck clumsily with the axe, but he jerked its face down onto the anvil of his skull. A fang gouged Garric's forehead painfully, but the Corl's nose flattened with a crackling of tiny bones.

Garric tried to lift his right hand to twist its neck like a chicken's; the muscles of his bruised arm didn't respond. He shook the Corl one-handed, showering blood from its ruined face for the instant before the world flashed in negative: charcoal shadows on a sepia background becoming white on pearl.

I've been hit on the head…

Garric turned and rose like a whale broaching from the depths. His world was silent and without feeling but he could move, did move. A Corl half again the size of the others faced him with a ball-headed baton lifting for another blow. This creature had a lion's mane and prominent male genitalia. Behind him Soma was being born down by another cat man.

Garric lurched toward the big Corl, stumbling from weakness. The club's shaft rather than the knobbed end cracked him across the head.

Light flashed. Garric saw the mud rushing up, but he didn't feel the smack of it against his face.

Then there was nothing at all.

Cashel stood on shore beside Tenoctris and Ilna, waiting for word to board. Chalcus walked down the line of oarsmen, chatting in friendly fashion but looking each man over as carefully as Cashel would the sheep walking out of the byre past him in the morning.

"Is he worried about the men?" Tenoctris said. "They're his regular crew, aren't they?"

Ilna looked at the older woman but didn't speak. Cashel nodded in understanding. His sister wasn't one to repeat things that she and Chalcus talked about in private, not even to a friend like Tenoctris.

Cashel had only what he'd seen and what he knew from experience. Tenoctris was very smart, but she'd lived in a different world from that of men whose work took them into places they might not come back from. Cashel understood that sort of thing better.

"I don't guess he's worried about the men, rightly," he said. "But they've been on shore and living pretty hard, I guess. If anybody's so hung over he'll be dragging on his oar, or he's got his head cracked in a tavern, Chalcus'll leave him ashore this time."

He cleared his throat. "It's not the men, he's worried about," he added. "It's where we're going."

"Ah," said Tenoctris. "Yes, I see that. I regret to say that I share his concern."

They all three looked where the sailors were determinedlynot looking, at King Cervoran standing alone with a case of age-blackened oak on the sand beside him. Cervoran's complexion was so waxen that Cashel had a vision of him melting in the bright sunlight.

"He's bringing objects from the collection in his workroom," Tenoctris said quietly. "Nothing of real power or significance, except for the diadem. Thereisn't anything else really significant in the palace."

"He brought the big topaz?" Ilna said as her fingers knotted and picked out patterns. She glanced out through the mouth of the harbor to where a plume of vapor rose on the horizon.

"Yes," Tenoctris said. "He said it was necessary… the way he does, you know."

She shrugged and added with a faint smile, "I'm not sure what the stone is. It's important, but I can't find the key to how to use it. I've been reading the documents in Cervoran's library. I've learned many interesting things, but thus far nothing about the topaz."

"All right, buckos!" Chalcus called in a cheerful voice. "Let our fine passengers board and we'll take them to visit a hole in the deep sea."

He turned and flourished his right arm toward Cervoran and beyond. "Master Cervoran, Milady Tenoctris, and my dear friends," he said. "If you'll cross the gangplank and stand steady, we'll be shortly under way."

Cervoran was stumping forward at the first words. Cashel was ready to help him across the narrow boarding bridge that ran from shore to the bireme's central catwalk, but he shuffled along without hesitation.

That didn't mean he wouldn't fall off, of course. TheHeron was pulled up on the beach, and the catwalk was a full man's height above the sand.

"A man could break his neck if he fell from that," Cashel murmured.

"Yes," said Tenoctris. "And perhaps Cervoran could also, though I'm by no means sure that's true."

She paused and added, "I may be being unjust."

"We can go aboard now, I guess," Cashel said quietly.

Ilna looked at Tenoctris. "Do you think I shouldn't have saved him?" she asked with a touch of challenge.

"I'm not sure Cervoran is an enemy," Tenoctris said. "He's certainly not our only enemy at present. You did what was right at the time."

Ilna gave a little dip of her chin in acknowledgement. "I'm sure some of the people I hurt when I was doing evil's will were evil themselves," she said. "I suppose it's only fair that I save a few of them now to make up for it."

She was joking but completely straight-faced. Well, maybe she was joking.

Cervora'd reached the deck and gone forward. It was intended for the steersman, the ship's officers, and seamen handing the sails when they were set.

Chalcus had told Cashel that although theHeron didn't carry marines, the oarsmen had swords or spears and wicker shields under their benches. TheHeron had a ram, but if they found themselves locked to an enemy vessel the crew'd leap over the other's gunnels with wild cries and their weapons out.

Chalcus said that was how the pirates fought; and from the scars Cashel saw on the fellow's body, he should know. Cashel smiled: Chalcus was good for Ilna, and that was all that mattered now.

Ilna led the way up the gangplank. Tenoctris followed, one hand gripping Ilna's sash. The older woman wasn't prickly about doing everything for herself; she knew she could lose her balance. Cashel was last in line, the satchel and quarterstaff in his left hand so that his right could grab Tenoctris if she slipped.

The plank wasn't much, but even so it was for the landsmen only: Chalcus and his sailors would swarm aboard like so many monkeys. Cashel would just as soon of done that himself-he wasn't a sailor, but with his strength and the quarterstaff to brace him he could climb a sheer wall twice his own height-but he'd come for Tenoctris' sake, and that meant staying close to her.

When the passengers were on the central catwalk, Chalcus shouted an order. A double handful of men scrambled onto the outriggers and thrust their oar looms down to brace the narrow hull. The steersman loosed the hawsers tying the sternpost to the mast and yard, rammed into the sand as bollards while the ship was out of the water. Chalcus was leaving the sailing paraphernalia on shore since theHeron was going no farther than they could see on the horizon.

When the men aboard were set, Chalcus called, "Pay me or go to jail!" in a sing-song voice. "Pay me my money down!" The crew on shore surged forward, lifting and shoving theHeron into the harbor.