David Drake - The Fortress of Glass

The dog must've had the same thought; it relaxed for a moment. The rest of the pack joined the two leaders. All together they went over the lip of the chasm, each scraping out a trail of dirt and pebbles in a high roostertail behind it. The wall was steep but not quite sheer, and the dogs didn't seem to be having any trouble with the slide.

Coming back up the other side would be a lot harder, but Cashel didn't figure they'd have started down if they didn't think they could make it up too. Given how big they were the dogs didn't have much of a turn of speed, but nobody could teach them anything about determination.

Antesiodorus had staggered to his feet; the boy did everything his little body could to help. The scholar muttered something; somehow he was still hanging onto the sea lily.

Protas turned to Cashel and called desperately, "He says to come on! It's close, he says!"

Cashel scooped Antesiodorus up in the crook of his left arm. "Bring the bindle!" he said. It'd take some time for the dogs to make it up the near side of the chasm; from the look of the scholar it'd be longer yet before he was able to walk on his own legs, let alone run.

Cashel didn't have a direction except the general one, toward the distant mountain, so he followed that. He held the staff out to his right side so it'd balance the scholar's weight. He didn't like to run and he wasn't good at it, but he could lumber along the way an ox did when unyoked after a long day and scenting water.

It was there in front of them, a square slab of granite flush with the ground. You had to be right on top of the stone to see it, and even then it was because there wasn't grass growing on it. A figure with more angles than a hand had fingers was carved onto the surface.

"Get on the heptagram!" Antesiodorus said. His breath was whooping in and out. "Please. Please, quickly."

Cashel placed himself in the figure and hugged Protas close; it was a tight fit for the two of them to stay inside the lines, which he figured they'd better do. But "Master Antesiodorus?" he called. "What about you?"

The scholar pointed his wand at the stone slab. "Choi…," he said. "Chooi chareamon…"

Blue light glittered briefly among the knotted arms of the sea lily. Protas had dropped the bindle before he stepped onto the marked stone, but Antesiodorus ignored it. The roll'd opened when it hit the ground, spilling a zebrawood baton and a pair of scrolls tied with red ribbon.

"Iao iboea…," Antesiodorus said. Again wizardlight, this time scarlet, danced on his wand. He was speaking the words of power from memory instead of reading them from one of the books he'd brought. His face was set in an expression of utter determination.

The head of one of the great dogs lifted above the rim of the chasm. It slipped back in a fresh cloud of dust and gravel kicked out by the beast's scrabbling claws, but two more dogs got their forepaws over the edge and bunched their shoulders to leap onto the plain.

"Sir!" Cashel shouted. "The dogs!"

"Ithuao!" Antesiodorus shouted. The dogs lurched up, got their hind legs under them, and galloped forward. Their slavering jaws were open.

Light, blue and red and then merging to purple, flared on the many-pointed symbol. Cashel felt the stone give way beneath him in a fashion that'd become familiar.

"I kept my oath!" Antesiodorus called as the dogs lunged.

The curtain of purple light thickened, blocking sight of the world Cashel was leaving with the boy. He heard the scholar's voice crying, "This time I kept my-"

The words ended in a scream, or perhaps that was only the howl of the cosmos as it whipped Cashel away in a descending spiral.

Lord Attaper sloshed toward Sharina. The Blood Eagles who'd been with him-all those but the section with Sharina and Tenoctris-followed in a ragged wave.

"Ascor, you idiot!" he shouted in a voice loud enough to be audible over the general tumult. "Get her highness out of here! What are you standing around for?"

Attaper'd compromised between his duty and the desire of a warrior to be part of the battle instead of standing out of it as an observer: he'd placed the hundred or so men of the bodyguard regiment in the earthworks directly between the ridge where Princess Sharina stood and the direction of the hellplants' attack. At the time, of course, he'd assumed that her highness would be able to flee if the struggle went badly…

"No!" Sharina said-to Ascor, but then turning to Attaper she cried, "Milord, we have to defend Lady Tenoctris! She's our only hope!"

The guard commander probably couldn't hear her, but Ascor did. He hesitated. His orders came from Attaper, not from a princess who, though exalted, wasn't in his chain of command.

Sharina wasn't sure what Ascor would've decided if he'd made up his own mind, but Trooper Lires chuckled and said, "Don't you worry, Princess. The captain remembers how you'n Lady Tenoctris saved things back in Valles. He got promoted that time, and I guess maybe they'll make him deputy commander this time, hey cap'n?"

"That's if we survive, Lires," Ascor said in a taut voice. With a smile almost as sharp as his words he added, "Which I doubt we'll do, but you're right-I doubted it in Valles too."

Double had fallen with everyone else when the hills flattened. He got up slowly, as though he had to consider each separate movement, then staggered to his box of equipment. It lay on its side, half sunken in the mud.

The two trumpeters with Lord Waldron blew the quick, ringing notes of Stand To, halting the retreat. The cornicenes took it up, then signallers throughout the army. The soldiers Sharina could see-she didn't have the vantage point of the ridge to look down from-slowed and looked behind them, milling in indecision.

Lires chuckled. "Look at 'em," he said. "It's a bloody good thing that it's all gone to muck underfoot, ain't it, cap'n?"

Sharina looked from the trooper to Ascor in surprise. She'd heard all the words, but they didn't mean anything to her.

"Your highness," Ascor said, looking out at the advancing hellplants. "If the ground was firm, well…"

He shrugged. "Nothing against the line regiments, your highness," he continued, "but once troops start to run, it's next to impossible to turn them. Even good troops."

Lires stamped. His boot slurped ankle-deep in mud. "They couldn't get to running in this, you see?" he said. "Nothing to do but stand the way the trumpets tell'em to do."

Attaper was within ten yards, slogging on in silent fury. He'd widened the gap between himself and the soldiers who'd been with him, even though most of them were younger than he was. In the morning, if Attaper lived that long, he'd be in agony with pulled muscles in his thighs, but he didn't allow pain or the mud stop him now.

Thinking of what she was going to tell the commander made Sharina look back at Tenoctris. The old wizard continued to chant within the fence of soldiers' legs. How long will it take to -

With a sudden convulsive movement, Tenoctris stabbed her bamboo split into the center of the scooped basin in front of her. She cried, "Sabaoth!"

The air sparkled faintly blue. The water in the basin froze.

Ice spread outward in jagged curves from the basin, crackling and forming a white rind over the marsh. The soldiers guarding Tenoctris were taken by surprise. They leaped up and stamped, breaking their boots free of frozen mud.

Sharina saw the ice sweeping toward her. She tried to jump over the oncoming change, but she hadn't allowed for her fatigue. She stumbled forward and felt the mud congeal about her feet as the broad swathe slid past her and on. It left the rime behind it gleaming like a slug's track.

She tried to pull free, twisting against the soil's cold grip. Lires drove the butt of his spear into the ground beside her left foot, smashing the thick crust and allowing her to lift her feet out of it.