David Drake - The Fortress of Glass

Though salvation was in Double's hands, at least for now. If the wizard failed, the army would at best delay the attacking plants.

More wood, brush and heavier timbers as well, had been brought up during the night; it filled the trenches in front of the breastworks. That would hold for a time, and the soldiers' swords would hold for a further time. The phalanx had marched across the island; perhaps its twenty-foot pikes would prove more useful than the shorter spears of the regular infantry.

But after that, human resources were exhausted. Without Double, it was simply a matter of how fast the hellplants could walk and how many more would come out of the sea. Not that there was any reason to fear failure after the wizard's triumph the previous day…

"If you'll excuse me, milord," Sharina said, stepping out of the tent past the nobleman. "It'll be dawn shortly, and I want to talk to Tenoctris beforehand."

She and Tadai had discussed everything there was to say about her location. In truth she didn't have any important business with Tenoctris either, but the old wizard was a friend in a fashion that Lord Tadai-smart and skilled and completely loyal though he was-could never be to someone who never forgot she'd been raised as a peasant.

Tenoctris was a noble also, but all she'd ever cared about was her studies. She'd spent much of her life in garrets and the dusty basements of libraries, oblivious of her surroundings and completely untouched by notions of birth and family. Tadai was plumply sleek and studiedly cultured. Like Waldron, a noble of a very different sort, Tadai was brave and hard working-but neither man could look at another person without first determining where that person ranked in the social order.

Friends are equals. Sharina was no more comfortable with Tadai's deference than she'd have been with with him ignoring her if she were waiting tables in her father's inn.

The tent didn't have a charcoal brazier, but the dozen candles for lighting and the watchful Blood Eagles-present by Attaper's order no matter who was talking to Sharina-must've warmed the interior more than she'd realized. The dank sea wind was stronger than she'd expected. She hugged herself and started back inside for a wrap.

"Here you go, Princess," said Trooper Lires, one of the guard detail. He swung the cape he must've brought from the wardrobe in the tent's curtained anteroom. "I figured you'd want this, so I grabbed it."

"In the Lady's name, my man!" Tadai protested. "Show some respect for your ruler."

"He's keeping me warm, which is better," Sharina said, letting the soldier help her on with the garment. Blood Eagle officers were noblemen, but even they weren't courtiers. It hadn't occurred to Lires that it wasn't more important to give Sharina the cloak than to do so in a properly subservient way And Sharina agreed.

It was a formal garment, black velvet with a lining of crimson silk. That didn't prevent it from blocking the chill breeze as well as cruder, cheaper fabric could've done. Sharina walked to where Tenoctris sat cross-legged on the ground. . One of the wizard's guards had spread his half-cape beneath her, though Sharina was sure Tenoctris hadn't thought to ask for it. She'd drawn a figure in the dirt; in this light Sharina couldn't describe its shape, let alone the words of power drawn around it. The older woman looked up as Sharina approached.

"Have you learned anything?" Sharina asked, squatting beside her friend.

"I feel like a mouse between a pair of granite mountains," Tenoctris said with her usual cheerful humility. "I can see the-"

She gestured with the bamboo split in her hand.

"-structures, call them, which Cervoran and the Green Woman are preparing, but until they act I have no way of judging their intent."

She grinned. "Except that it's unlikely that the Green Woman plans anything that will benefit humanity," she added. "And I'm more than a little doubtful about Cervoran as well."

Sharina looked to where Double stood with his head down at one end of where he'd raised the mirror. The post-and-canvas form remained, shuddering in the wind, though the silver had vanished into the ground.

"Has he moved since the battle yesterday?" Sharina asked quietly. Then she added, "I haven't seen him eat."

"No," said Tenoctris without being specific as to which comment she was replying to. "He'll be rousing soon. It's almost dawn, and I can-"

She looked at the sky, faintly gray though the brightest stars were still visible.

"-feelthe balances shifting. I wish I could really describe what I see, Sharina, but I suppose it doesn't matter since I don't know what it means myself."

"Here they come!" a soldier bellowed. Horns and trumpets blew Stand-To in shrilly. So far as Sharina could tell the whole army was already in position behind the earthworks. She hugged her friend again and stood up.

The tide was coming in and with it dark ugly lumps. More hellplants bobbed farther out to sea. They stretched so far into the distance that Sharina couldn't tell the shapes from those of the waves. Spume flew inland, driven by the sea breeze.

Double shook himself like a dog coming out of a high wind. He gave Sharina a fat-lipped grin, then pointed his athame at the ground.

"Eulamon," he said. "Restoutus restouta zerosi!"

As the words of power sounded, blue wizardlight twinkled coldly along the ground before him. The wind, already strong, picked up. It drove dust and leaves and mist.

"Benchuch bachuch chuch…," Double chanted, the same words as on the day before. He lifted the point of his athame; silver rose from the soil into which it'd sunk at the end of the previous day's battle. The sun, just above the horizon, flared red on the film of metal. "Ousiri agi ousiri!"

Some of the soldiers began cheering. The sound was scattered, but there was no misgtaking what it was.

Tenoctris looked down the slope. The sun spread the shadows of the oncoming hellplants in long blurred masses.

"I think that's the first time I've heard laymen cheer a wizard," she said in a musing tone.

"It's only the troops who were here yesterday," Sharina said. "The ones who survived the battle."

"Yes, well…," Tenoctris said. She gave Sharina a wry smile and shrugged. "I started to say that I hope there'll be even more cheering tomorrow, but I think instead I'll just hope for the best result."

Sharina opened her mouth to ask what that would be. "Ah," she said instead, nodding. If Tenoctris had known what the best result was, she'd have stated it. Looking at Double, his face waxen and grinning like a badly molded doll's, she understood why Tenoctris would be unwilling to hope outright for that creature's victory.

The mirror was complete, a silver shimmer as precise as the edge of a sword. Even as low as the sun still was, the metal waked a dot of light that tracked the plant on the southernmost end of the attacking line. The creature began to smoke, but the fog was thickening.

Something swirled past Sharina on the breeze. Spider silk, she though; gossamer; one of thousands of strands drifting from the sea. She'd seen its like often in springtime: egg sacks hatched and tiny spiderlets sailed across the meadows, lifted on long threads of silk. But this A strand, many strands draped themselves on Sharina's arms and hair. They were blowing up the slope in numbers beyond any hatching in her memory. They didn't support spiders, and they seemed to be of coarser vegetable material rather than silk. The breeze carried them onto the mirror where they clung, squirming across the metal and linking as though the wind were weaving them.

The silver film deformed as the threads squeezed wrinkles into the surface. The dot of light searing the distant hellplant blurred into a vague brightness quivering harmlessly through the fog.