David Drake - The Fortress of Glass

"But Lord Garric," said a woman Garric didn't recognize. She'd been one of the captives, he thought. "There are so many Coerli and we are few. This was only one keep."

"There's other keeps, sure," Garric said, "but there's many more human villages. Metz, uniting your neighbors is as important as attacking the Coerli. Youcan unite and the cat men never will. This-"

He gestured at the smoking ruins of the keep.

"-was a real fight for your village alone, but if there'd been three or four villages together Torag wouldn't have had a prayer. You've got booty for trade, Coerli tools and fabrics-"

"And excess women," Carus added. "There's many a chief whose opinion could change if you offered him the sort of young, healthy woman that the cat beasts picked for their own uses."

That was true, but it wasn't something Garric was going to say or even allow himself to think. He continued aloud, "-that'll help you convince other villages that this isn't a wild risk. And you've got Coerli weapons. They'll impress neighbors who aren't completely willing. It's theworld's safety at stake."

He took a deep breath. He felt oddly euphoric; the root that Lila'd pushed into his wound must have more than a simple healing effect.

"You've got to do it yourselves, Metz, all of you," he said, "but you can. And you should, because it's your world you're saving, not mine."

"Lord Garric?" said the woman who'd spoken before. "If you could stay with us for just a little while, then we'd be able to take over ourselves when you left. There's so much we don't understand!"

Carus watched through Garric's eyes with grim humor, his knuckles on his hips and his arms akimbo. "Just a little longer," was the most common plea a king heard…

"There'll always be things you don't understand," Garric said, speaking to Metz but pitching his voice so that all the villagers could hear. "There'll always be things that're new to me too. This isyour world. You're better off running it than I'd be-and if you're not, then you'll be leaving it for the Coerli. I hope and pray that's not what happens, but the choice is yours to make."

Donria whispered something in Metz' ear. The former hunter, now chief, straightened and said, "Garric? You've helped us. What can we do to help you?"

"By the Lady!" Carus said in delight. "That Donria'll be the making of this world. Thiskingdombefore long, I shouldn't wonder!"

"Bird, what must I do to get home?" Garric asked. His conscience still troubled him, but he knew what he'd said was the truth: there'd never be a time that he couldn't be of some benefit to the Grass People, but he really had given them sufficient tools to save themselves.

"We must go to the cave in the abyss from which the Coerli enter this time," the Bird said. "I am not a wizard, but I can analyze potentials and adjust them. We will be able to do what you wish and what I need. We will go alone."

"But Garric?" Metz said, frowning in consternation. "That place is full of monsters. And the cat people as well, going to and from. We never went near it, even before the cat people came to the Land. Things live there that live nowhere else, terrible things."

Garric held the axe he'd taken from the Corl he'd killed when escaping. He turned to get a little room, then swung it back and forth in a wide arc. His shoulder felt like glass was breaking in it, but the weapon moved smoothly nonetheless.

He looked down, expecting to see blood start from the entrance wound; it didn't. Lila was back at Marzan's side; she gave him a smirk of satisfaction.

"When I have to," Garric said, "I can be pretty terrible myself. If the Coerli can pass that way, so can I."

The Bird jumped/flew/fell onto Garric's left shoulder. "Then let us go now," it said. "You're tired, but time is critical."

"Yes," said Garric. "Metz, fellow humans-my heart will be with you as you reclaim your world from monsters."

"And I suspect it's time and past time to do the same for the Kingdom of the Isles," said Carus. "Because I don't believe the wizardry that brought you here didn't have more effect than that!"

Captain Ascor cleared his throat and said, "Your highness, it's best you and Lady Tenoctris start back for Mona now. Things are apt to get-"

He paused to look down to the fog-wrapped plain.

"-pretty busy here soon."

Sharina smiled despite herself. Those weren't the words Ascor would've used if he'd been talking to another soldier.

She drew the big knife from beneath her outer tunic. "Ascor," she said, "provide a detail-a section, I think-to escort Lady Tenoctris to Mona. I'm going to remain here with the army."

"Your highness, it's not safe!" the captain snapped.

"I know it's not safe," said Sharina, an edge in her voice as well. "That's why it's my duty to stay. With respect, Captain-precisely what do you think I could save by running away? Except my life, that is, which of course would be worthless if I were a leader who abandoned her troops."

"Oh, I'm not leaving, dear," Tenoctris said. "Apart from anything else, Cervoran hasn't been defeated yet. That was just a skirmish, another skirmish."

Sharina's eyes and the Blood Eagle's too shifted to Double, who'd arranged on the ground several objects he'd taken from his case. One was crinkled and amber. At first Sharina took it for a tortoise shell, but closer attention convinced her it was the husk of a cicada of remarkable size; her spread hand wouldn't have covered the thing.

Double bent and scribed a hexagram in the soil with his athame. He made the strokes separately instead of angling each side into the next in a combined motion as most people would've done. The amulet containing the lock of Ilna's hair wobbled on a silver neck chain.

One of the small ballistas released with a loudcrack, sending out a caustic-headed quarrel. It struck at the base of a hellplant's torso, just above the squirming legs. All down the line of catapults and ballistas, men with long wrenches were tightening the springs of their weapons. The artillery couldn't be left at full tension for very long without warping the frames and weakening the coiled sinews. This morning the crews hadn't started cocking the weapons until they realized Double's wizardry wasn't going to save them.

"Huese semi iaoi…," Double chanted, dipping his athame to a different angle of his hexagram with each syllable. "Baubo eeaei."

Thecrack s of more artillery-including a heavy catapult which must've had a picked crew-echoed around the bowl of the hills. Several plants ruptured and collapsed, already beginning to decay into the sodden ground. Another staggered in a wide curve to the right, gushing steam from its wounded side.

"Sope…," said Double. "San kanthare ao!"

The ground seemed to bubble. Tiny sharpnesses jabbed Sharina's feet between the sandal straps and up her ankles; she shouted in surprise. A guard jerked off his cape and began slapping it at his feet as though he were beating out a fire.

Locusts, some of them the length of a man's middle finger, were hatching out of the ground. That's all it was-locusts; but thousands upon crawling thousands of them.

"It's all right," Tenoctris called. Sharina doubted whether any of the soldiers heard her or if they'd have paid attention if they had. "This is Cervoran's doing. He's helping us!"

Crawling, fluttering, flying in slow, clumsy arcs, the locusts converged where the linked threads had crushed Double's mirror. The air was full of them and the ground for as far as Sharina could see shivered as still more insects dug up through it.

"Eulamon," Double chanted. "Restoutus restouta zerosi!"

Sharina held the Pewle knife in her right hand and clung to Tenoctris with her left. She knew she was reassuring herself instead of supporting the old wizard; though perhaps she was supporting Tenoctris as well.