David Drake - The Fortress of Glass

"Yes," said the Bird. "She led the attack on Sirawhil here in the courtyard. She killed the warrior guarding the wizard by thrusting a torch into his mouth. Not before he disemboweled her, of course."

"Half a dozen of you pick up that burning hut!" King Carus shouted, taking control of Garric's tongue while Garric was too stunned by what he'd just heard to be fully aware of his surroundings. "We're going to throw it into the longhouse. That's where the cat beasts have laired up!"

One of the half-dozen beehives that housed the warriors in groups of two or three was burning with the same sluggish determination as the slave barracks. The blanket of white smoke it spewed out hovered at waist height, drifting slowly westward now that Marzan's whirlwind no longer ripped through the compound. Though the fire didn't look enthusiastic, it'd devoured about a quarter of the thatch dome.

"Right!" said Garric, puzzling nearby villagers who thought he was talking to himself. "Come on, five of you! Metz, you and your uncles guard us. Come on, grab a post!"

Garric deliberately put himself closest to Torag's longhouse, at the edge of the pall of smoke. He gripped one of the hooped poles supporting the frame and tried to lift it with his left hand only. The pole was sunk too deep for him to pull it out of the ground that way.

He dropped the axe and shoved both hands through the thatch to seize the pole, then straightened his knees. His vision blurred. Duzi it hurt!

"Put your man in it!" old Cobb used to say when he'd hired Garric at fourteen to grub a drainage trench through a boulder-studded field. "Put your-"

Garric came up with the pole in his hands. The hut shuddered, spewing sparks and rising all along its circumference as villagers lifted their poles also when Garric had broken the weight free to begin with.

"Let's go!" Garric bawled, barely able to see for the tears and pain. He staggered forward, in the direction memory told him the longhouse ought to be. If the cat men made a sally, he'd be dead before he knew it. This wasn't strategy or even tactics, it was a buzzing determination of a horsefly which is willing to die so long as she can drink blood first. "Let's go!"

"It's the way to win battles," growled the king in his mind. "Never flinch, never quit."

"Torches!" Donria screamed. "Throw your torches! Throw them, Newla!"

Garric more felt than saw the brands whickering past in smoky arcs, bouncing from the roof and on the porch boards. A Corl, perhaps Torag himself from the volume, shrieked in maddened fury. If they'd been preparing to rush, the rain of torches made them hesitate.

Garric's foot stubbed against the porch. "Now!" he cried. "Throw the-"

He lifted and heaved, twisting his body out of the way. The burning hut slid past him under the grunting effort of the villagers still pushing the load.

Garric landed on his side and arm; the left arm, thank the Shepherd, but it wouldn't have mattered. it wouldn't have mattered if he'd torn his whole arm off because he'd succeeded. They'd beaten the Coerli.

The hut, fanned to brighter flames when they moved it, crunched into the porch of the longhouse. Smoldering bits of thatch broke off, but a considerable quantity must've gone through the central door. Almost at once white smoke curled from the windows at either end.

Metz helped Garric up and slapped the butt of his stone axe into his hand. Garric's fingers closed over the weapon thankfully, ready to meet the rush of Coerli warriors that he knew now would never happen. The fire had beaten them; and more than fire, the shock of facing men who understood war and who carried the fight to their enemies.

Metz pulled him back. The walls of the longhouse crackled more fiercely than damp thatch as the flames mounted. "Is there another way out?" Garric asked hoarsely.

"I sent my uncles around the building with nets to cover any doors they found," Metz said. "The cords'll burn, but they'll hold till the fire finishes the business."

"There are no other doors," said the Bird with crisp authority. It landed on Garric's left shoulder, a gossamer weight and a comforting presence. "Besides, the Coerli would not run."

"Then they'll die," said Garric, lifting the axe slightly. His arm felt as though it belonged to somebody else, not so much painful as a vividly described pain.

He remembered watching the Coerli kill and devour a woman with slavering gusto. "Either way they were going to die," he added.

The ridgepole broke; the roof of the longhouse collapsed on the interior in a shower of sparks. A handful of thatch lifted in a spiral, then fell apart twenty feet in the air. It dribbled back as scattered smoke trails. Garric thought he heard a cry of agony, but it might've been steam squealing from a burning log.

"I have brought the hero who freed us from the Coerli!" quavered a voice.

Garric turned, feeling the heat of the burning longhouse on his back. Marzan stood where the gate of the stockade had been. His right arm was over the shoulders of the girl aiding him, but his left held the topaz out before him.

"I have conquered!" the wizard cried. "I am Marzan the Great!"

"You know, lad?" said King Carus. "I think I'd have to agree with him. But he sure picked the right sword for his fight.."

Around them the flames hissed, and a plume of smoke climbed into the gray skies.

Cashel rocked a little as he felt coarse soil under his feet. He and Protas didn't move-it was more like the world moved under them-but each time it happened Cashelfelt like he ought to be falling on his face.

It was night. The moon in its first quarter hung low in the west and the stars were bright but unfamiliar. One constellation looked a little like the Widow's Donkey, but just a little. Something wailed dismally at the back of the cold, dry wind.

"Umm," said Cashel, pulling the slippers out from under his belt where he'd stuck them. "Here, Protas. They're still wet and muddy, but you'll probably be better with them on."

The boy stood on one leg to pull a slipper on the opposite foot. When he started to topple he caught Cashel's arm.

"Best sit down," Cashel said, disengaging himself without being too harsh about it. Protas thumped to the ground, and Cashel resumed looking all around them.

A new guide ought to be picking them up, and there might be other things looking for them besides the guide. It was hard to tell what was howling in the distance, and there was no way at all to know how big it was.

He and Protas were on a mound of dirt dried to crumbly stone. Around them were more mounds, bigger or smaller, their sides carved by the rain that must fall occasionally. Not any time recently, though. Spiky bushes and clumps of grass were scattered widely. Each stood on the pedestal which its roots protected from the scouring wind.

"Hello?" called a voice. "Hello, are you there?"

"Sir?" said Cashel, turning the direction the sound came from. The bigger mounds were clearly banded, though he couldn't tell colors in the faint moonlight. Here and there what looked like big bones were weathering out of the dirt. "Lord Protas and me're this way, sir!"

He wasn't completely sure it was a man calling, the voice was that thin and squeaky. Well, if it was a woman, he'd apologize.

"What's that?" the voice said. A yellow light bobbed around a pinnacle as tall as a man but not much wider than the quarterstaff was long. "All right, I see you now. Don't move!"

"Move where, Cashel?" Protas said in a low voice. The boy was looking at the landscape too, though there wasn't much to see. That wasn't the worst thing they could've found, of course.

"I think he's just talking," Cashel said. "But in case the ground's going to swallow us whole if we step off this little hill, we'll stay right where we are."