David Drake - Mistress of the Catacombs

Cashel smiled. Tilphosa’d said she’d stay close to him for protection tonight. He hadn’t expected her to follow him up here, but maybe she wasn’t showing such bad judgment.

The chime of gold on gold rang softly through the night. Cashel sighed in relieved anticipation. He’d been afraid that his quarry would keep running instead of going to ground. A shepherd learns to get along in the woods, but he doesn’t become a tracker.

He started climbing to the crag and spring, slipping a little on the slick, steep clay. Funny. It’d been easier to lope through the night than it was to make this last short way under a pink-gray sky. The immediacy was past, though the job that remained might be hard enough.

“Cashel?” Tilphosa called from not far below him. “I’m coming up! It’s me, Tilphosa.”

She was smart enough to know how Cashel might react to being startled just now. Tilphosa was smart enough, period.

After his breathing slowed, Cashel could hear water dripping down into the basin of the spring. Dawn had awakened creatures to squawk and warble, unseen because of distance and the foliage.

The airboat’s skeleton lay as Cashel had left it. So far as he could see, Costas hadn’t been able to mark the flint-hard gold. The sailor’s body lay at the edge of the spring, his chest ripped open and emptied. Costas’ eyes stared at the dawn.

“I’m coming, Cashel,” Tilphosa said, blurting the words out between gasps. “It’s me behind you.”

The girl clambered onto the ridge as she spoke. Cashel turned slightly so that he could see her without losing sight of the wreck.

Thorns or a sharp branch had torn Tilphosa’s tunic. A line of dried blood crossed her right cheek to the lobe of her ear. She didn’t have Cashel’s instinct for the darkness, but she’d come anyway.

In her right hand Tilphosa clutched a chisel she must have taken from Hook’s tool chest. The shaft was hardwood, but the fluted blade was steel and sharp enough to shave with.

“You took a chance,” Cashel said, but his tone was approving. “I guess there isn’t anywhere a lot safer around here, though.”

“Yes, well, I wasn’t going to stay down there without you,” Tilphosa said. Her quick breaths whistled, but she made a point of not opening her mouth to pant like a dog. “Did it get away?”

“I don’t think so,” Cashel said. He looked around him carefully to be sure that nothing, no thing , waited in ambush. Then he pushed into the lobelias with his staff slanted forward, this time in both hands.

“Cashel?” said the girl. She’d stayed far enough back to be clear if he and the quarterstaff had to spin suddenly. “Do you know what it is? Is it a man?”

“We’ll know in a little bit,” Cashel said, his voice a growl as he concentrated on what was in front of him.

Three larger swellings grew from the tubing like seedpods hanging on a trumpet vine. One was near the bow. The impact had crushed it open. Roots twisted about it, and a line of ants crawled in and out of its protection.

Cashel moved on, each time testing the ground with his toes before putting his foot down. At any moment his legs might need to anchor a smashing blow of his quarterstaff….

He heard rustling and the crackle of a branch behind him. “Lady Tilphosa!” Metra wheezed. “Where are you, lady?”

“Keep her out of the way!” Cashel said. He trusted Tilphosa’s judgment, but he didn’t trust anything at all about her attendant wizard.

The two women talked in quick, irritated voices, but Cashel needn’t worry-about that now. He’d reached the second pod, this one about the size of a goatskin water bag. It dangled in the air, half-wrapped in the skein of tubes that supported it. The pod’s weight had pulled the hard gold into a cat’s cradle, folding and flattening the tubes without breaking them.

The third pod was egg-shaped and larger than a man. Loam, the detritus of centuries of leaves and fallen branches, mounded around it. The softly gleaming upper surfaces reflected growing daylight; the smooth metal was not only untarnished but clear of the litter which covered the surrounding soil.

Cashel eyed the pod, watchful for any change in it. After a time—he couldn’t have said how long, a length of time he found appropriate—he rapped the cold metal with the outstretched tip of his quarterstaff. It rang hollowly at the touch of the ferrule, a sweetly musical sound. It was the same note that Cashel had heard as he chased his quarry in this direction.

Cashel eyed his surroundings, sure now of what he needed but not quite certain he was going to find it here. Tilphosa waited, still-faced and obviously nervous, just back of the crumpled framework. She raised her eyebrows in question when Cashel glanced at her, but she didn’t speak. Maybe she was afraid of breaking his concentration.

Metra sat behind Tilphosa, her athame bobbing like a chicken gobbling corn. She’d spread another silk square, this one black with symbols—different symbols from those of the other day, Cashel supposed—in red. Clever of the wizard to change colors so that she wouldn’t grab the wrong pattern in haste.

Cashel saw what he needed, a torso-sized chunk of limestone separated from the rest of the outcrop. Moss outlined the fracture, probably the result of the airboat’s crash.

Could the creature hear him? Could it understand speech even if it did hear?

“It’s all right,” he said to Tilphosa. He smiled. “Just keep that chisel ready. I’m going to have to put my staff down for a bit.”

She probably thought he was being reassuring. He truly was glad she was here with a weapon.

Cashel backed, then sidled, carefully, to the block. After watching the pod intently for some moments more—just in case it decided to open—he leaned his quarterstaff into the angle where two gold tubes joined seamlessly.

He squatted, gripping opposite sides of the block and shifting it slightly to make sure it would give. It did. Because the soil was so thin over the outcrop he didn’t have to worry about trees. He didn’t want to trip and lose his balance when he was carrying a stone as heavy as a young bull.

Cashel breathed deeply—once, twice, and again. “Now!” he shouted—to the stone, to himself, it didn’t matter—and jerked the block free. As it crunched away from the outcrop, Cashel straightened his knees. Stiff-legged, his hands adjusting the block minutely to balance it as he moved, he walked toward the pod.

The blood roared in his ears. He couldn’t hear outside sounds, not even the thump of his heels on the ground step after step, but he felt the words of Metra’s incantation. Her art was affecting the cosmos through which Cashel moved….

He couldn’t look down: his spine was perfectly vertical to accept the weight it now bore. The pod was a golden shimmer through the red haze throbbing with his pulse.

“Now!” Cashel repeated. He swung his missile down, tilting his whole body when the stone’s path had slanted clear of him.

Cashel fell forward, following the missile. The block hit corner foremost in the center of the smooth curve. Metal bonged, splitting before the massive stone rolled off to the left and wobbled crazily several paces downhill before a stand of lobelias halted it.

Cashel struggled to his feet. Tilphosa grabbed his arm to lift. She was more trouble than help, but he didn’t have enough breath to send her away. Anyhow, he appreciated the thought.

Metra pushed through the brush, looking as wobbly as Cashel felt. She tried to slide her athame back under her sash, but the effort of her art had robbed her of the necessary coordination. Her eyes were fixed on the ruptured pod.

“Get her back ” Cashel whispered hoarsely. Tilphosa handed him his quarterstaff—that was a help—and caught Metra around the shoulders. She held the wizard easily; and would, Cashel was pretty sure, even if the other woman weren’t already exhausted.