David Drake - The Fortress of Glass

"Why are you so big, beast?" Torag said. "Are there more like you back in the warren where we captured you?"

"Its name is Garric," Sirawhil said to her chief. "Sometimes using their names makes them more forthcoming."

Garric looked at the Corl in amazement. Didn't they realize that he could hear what they said to one another?

"The Coerli think only what they say directly to you will be translated," said an unfamiliar voice in Garric's mind. "It's never occurred to them to test their assumption. They're not a sophisticated race."

Neither of the Coerli had spoken. The Bird on Sirawhil's shoulder fluttered its membranous wings again.

"I don't come from around here," Garric said. "I'm a visitor, you could say. All the members of my tribe are as big as me or bigger."

Torag looked at Sirawhil, his face knotting in a scowl emphasized by his long jaw. "Is the beast telling the truth?" he demanded.

"I don't know," Sirawhil said. "Usually they're too frightened to lie, but this one does seem different."

In a sharp tone she added, "You beast women! Is the male Garric a stranger in your warren?"

"I know where he comes from," called one of the woman carrying the dead warriors. "My husband Marzan brought him. Make somebody else take the pole and I'll tell you all about him."

Garric turned. He understood the words only because the Bird translated them in his mind, but the tone of the speaker's voice identified Soma more clearly than he could see through rain and darkness.

"Nerga, discipline that one," Sirawhil said off-handedly to the nearest warrior. Nerga lashed out with his line. Soma tried to get her hand up, but the Corl was too quick: the hooked tip combed a bloody furrow across her scalp.

Soma wailed in despair but didn't drop the pole. Head bowed and her left hand clasped over the fresh cut, she stumbled on.

"Speak, animal," Sirawhil demanded with satisfaction.

"My husband sent men out to find the stranger," Soma said in a dull voice, no longer bargaining. "The stranger is a great warrior and was supposed to protect us."

She raised her head and glared at Garric. "Protect us!" she said. "Look at me! What protection was the great warrior?"

"Does she tell the truth, animal?" Torag said to Garric. He wore a casque of animal teeth drilled and sewn to a leather backing. As he spoke, he rubbed them with his free hand.

From the chief's tone he was trying to be conciliatory, but he hadn't taken the wizard's suggestion that he call his prisoner by name. Indeed, not a great intellect… and the fact Torag rather than somebody smarter was in charge of the band told Garric something about the Coerli.

"Itold you the truth, Torag," Garric said. "I'm a visitor here. Why did you attack me? My tribe has many warriors!"

Walking had brought the circulation back to Garric's legs. That hurt, of course, but he'd be able to run again.

If there'd been anywhere to run to. And he knew from seeing the Coerli move that at least in a short sprint they could catch any human alive.

"Where does he come from, Sirawhil?" Torag asked, scowling in concern. "If there's really many like him…"

"I can do a location spell," Sirawhil said. "We need to stop soon anyway, don't we? It's getting light."

"I'd like to go a little farther…," Torag grumbled. Then he twitched his short brush of his tail in the equivalent of a shrug. "All right, if he's alone. If there was a whole warren full of them close, I'd keep going as long as we could."

"I'm hungry, Torag," whined Eny, the second of the warriors told to guard Garric specially.

The chief spun and lashed out. He used the butt of his club rather than the massive ball, but it still knocked the warrior down. Eny wailed.

"You'll eat when I say you can eat, Eny!" Torag said. "Watch your tongue or I won't even bother to bring your ruff back home to your family!"

Eny rolled to his feet almost before his shoulders'd splashed on the muddy ground, but he kept his head lowered and hid behind Nerga. Torag snorted and called, "All right, we'll camp here till it gets dark again."

He looked at Sirawhil. "Learn where the animal comes from," he said forcefully. "And learn how many there are in his warren. That could be important."

"Sit here, Garric," Sirawhil said, pointing to a hummock: a plant with fat, limp leaves spreading out from a common center. "You and I will talk while the warriors make camp."

It looked a little like a skunk cabbage. The best Garric could say about it as a seat was that it wasn't a pond. He didn't have any reason to argue, though, so he squatted on one edge facing the Corl wizard squatting opposite him.

"If they call this light," said King Carus, viewing the scene through Garric's eyes, "then they must see better in the dark than real cats do."

Garric nodded. The eastern horizon was barely lighter than the rest of the sky, but even full noon in this place had been soggy and gray. Dawn only meant it was easier to find your footing between ponds.

Warriors began trimming saplings for poles and stripping larger trees of their foliage. The Coerli hands had four fingers shorter than a human's; the first and last opposed. They looked clumsy, but they wove the mixed vegetation into matting with swift, careless ease.

After staring silently for a moment, Sirawhil opened her pack of slick cloth and took out a bundle of foot-long sticks polished from yellow wood. They were so regular that Garric thought at first they were made of metal.

"Don't move," she said. She got up and walked around the hummock, dropping the sticks into place as she went. Only once did she bend to adjust the pattern they made on the ground, a multi-pointed star or gear with shallow teeth.

The Bird shifted position slightly on her shoulder to keep its place. Its eyes, jewels on a jeweled form, remained focused on Garric as Sirawhil made her circuit.

Garric watched for a moment, then turned his attention to what the rest of the party was doing. He wondered how the warriors were going to build a fire on this sodden landscape. Perhaps there was dry heartwood, but most of the trees he'd seen were pulpy. They'd be as hard to ignite as a fresh sponge.

"The Coerli don't use fire," said the Bird silently. Its mental voice was dry and slightly astringent. "They don't allow their human cattle to have fires either. In the villages the Grass People keep fuel under shelter to dry out and light their fires with bows."

"Do you come from here, Bird?" Garric asked. He flexed his legs a little to keep the blood moving. He was used to squatting, but being trussed to the pole had left the big muscles liable to cramping.

Sirawhil looked up as she finished forming her pattern. "We captured the Bird when we first came here to the Land," she said. "Torag and I are the only ones who have such a prize. The other bands can't talk to the Grass Animals they capture, so it's a great prize."

"I am Torag the Great!" the chieftain roared, looking over at Garric and the wizard. "I've torn the throats out of two chiefs who thought they could take the Bird from me!"

Nobody moved for a moment. His point made, Torag surveyed the camp. The warriors had raised matting around a perimeter of a hundred and fifty feet or so. Though the sun still wasn't up, it'd stopped raining and the sky was light enough for Garric to count a dozen Coerli and about that number of captive humans. All the latter were females.

Torag gestured toward a plump woman. She'd been one of those carrying Garric when he was tied to the pole. She moved awkwardly; she seemed to have pulled a muscle in the course of the raid and march.

"That one," Torag said.

The woman looked up, surprised to be singled out. Eny grabbed her by the long hair and jerked her into a blow on the head from his stone-headed axe. The woman's scream ended in a spray of blood. Her arms and legs jerked as she fell.