Master of the Cauldron (54 page)

They walked toward the shaft that would carry them to the surface again. The stone plaza had an inviting bright emptiness as sure as it'd threatened before. The Sons stood taller than they had when they came through the darkness; they were no longer boys.

“In addition to sending you back, Cashel,” Mab said, “I'll come along for a time. Though you may not need anything yourself, I believe you'll find that your friends do.”

She laughed, a sound more cheerful than any that can have echoed in this place for long ages since. “And your world is lucky to have you as well,” she added with the same merry lilt.

“Glad to see you again, your highness,” said Undercaptain Ascor, holding the horse's reins while two of his men lifted Tenoctris down from the pillion. “I wasn't sure how I was going to explain to Commander Attaper how it was I'd managed to lose you.”

Ascor sounded aggrieved. Bodyguards felt the folk they guarded shouldn't just disappear on them. Sharina more or less agreed, but she had more important things on her mind than trying to explain to the soldier a situation that she didn't fully understand herself.

She swung herself out of the saddle once Tenoctris was clear. “Lord Bolor's troops are reinforcing the royal forces,” she said, remembering that none of the troops gathered under Waldron's banners realized that the rebels of a few moments before were now valued allies. “It's very important that Tenoctris reaches the temple where all this started. Lord Waldron's sending me a company of the troops he brought from Volita with him, but
I'll
be in command. My orders to you”—she nodded to Ascor but then swept her gaze around his six troopers—“are to keep Lady Tenoctris from being injured. If anything happens to her, I fear that the kingdom is doomed.”

“You heard the princess,” Ascor said. “She and Lady Tenoctris both get through this, or we don't. Not”—he glanced sideways at Sharina and gave her a hard grin—“that I think you boys needed to be told that.”

Sharina smiled back. It was a rebuke of sorts, but she wasn't going to apologize for making the situation explicit. With Hani dead, nobody but Tenoctris
could
end the flow of People into Valles until the supply ran out, and the cellars in the wizard's lair had gone very far down.

The People were arrayed eight deep. They had no flags or standards, though ordinary men rode behind the lines and shouted orders. The humans were easy to spot simply because their equipment wasn't identical the way that of the People was. They were probably thugs like the late Mogon and Wilfus: survivors of the queen's servants, criminals to begin with or corrupted by the service of Evil.

The royal army was in eight ranks also, though Waldron had faced half his men around when the People began to stream out of the Northeast Gate behind him. This region outside Valles was a mixture of truck farms and small villas, more open than the city proper but not terrain that lent itself to cavalry sweeps and iron control by individual generals.

Ascor, thinking along the same lines, said, “Looks like a soldier's battle this time, lads. And I don't see any soldiers on the other side—just rows of dummies in armor.”

“Princess, ma'am?” Trooper Lires said, bringing out a silk-wrapped bundle that he'd been carrying in the hollow of his shield. “You didn't have this with you when you went away, but I kinda thought you might like it now.”

He handed her the bundle: her Pewle knife, with its belt and sealskin sheath. The single-edged blade was heavy and the length of her forearm. It was the tool a Pewle Island seal hunter used for all his tasks, from chopping driftwood for a fire to letting out a man's life. The knife and her memories were Sharina's legacy from the friend who'd died to save her.

“Thank you, trooper,” Sharina said, feeling a sudden rush of warmth and peace. She fastened the belt around her. The buckle, carved from a pair of whale teeth, was shaped like dragons coupling. “Thank you more than I can say.”

She wasn't likely to need a weapon: she had the Blood Eagles themselves, after all. But the Pewle knife was much more than a weapon to her.

A troop of a hundred or so horsemen approached. Captain Rowning was in charge, the man who'd commanded the escort when Sharina and Tenoctris visited Stronghand's tomb. Based on the way he and his men had reacted that day, Sharina was glad to have them with her again.

“Captain Rowning?” she said, shouting to be heard over the thuds and ringing as the troop reined up. “We'll be entering Valles by the Jezreal Gate to the east of here. From there we'l make our way to the temple where we had the trouble the other day. That's where the People are coming from.”

“You want my troop to attack the enemy from the rear, your highness?” Rowning said. There was nothing beyond quiet curiosity in his tone, but his eyes flashed instinctively toward the lines of bronze-clad People advancing on the royal forces. The contrast between those thousands of armored figures—at least ten thousand by now—and his hundred-odd was too marked for even a brave man to accept without qualms.

“No, we're just going to capture the temple so that Lady Tenoctris can cut off their reinforcements,” Sharina said. “And I'm not sending you; Tenoctris and I are going along. There'll be fighting but not—well, suicide.”

“Right, your highness!” Rowning said, noticeably brighter. “Though you understand, we're willing to do whatever the kingdom requires.”

“Of course,” Sharina said. She gripped the pommel of the horse she'd appropriated and swung back into the saddle. She reached down to help Tenoctris mount, but Lires was already lifting the older woman by the waist to where she could get her legs onto the pillion. “Ascor, you'll stick close to us.”

She knew that Rowning wasn't speaking empty words when he said his men would've attacked a hundred times their number if she'd ordered them to. It didn't make any sense in a logical fashion, but it was true for the sort of people a kingdom needs to survive. Pray to the Shepherd that the Isles had enough of them, soldiers and old women like Tenoctris…and girls like she herself had been, Sharina os-Reise.

The Blood Eagles had mounted also. Rowning's men were horsemen from childhood. Some of the Blood Eagles came from cavalry regiments, but for the most part they were former infantry and often no more comfortable on a horse than Sharina herself. They'd learned to ride, but they were soldiers on horseback rather than cavalry.

Rowning led his troop in a wide circuit to the left around the back of the royal forces. Either he or one of the men with him in the lead knew the area, because when they cut across a field there was always a gate or a stile on the other side.

The rear ranks of the royal forces were generally in sight; when Sharina's troop neared the left flank, Bolor's men were still falling in. The battle must've already opened on the right: the clash of weapons was unmistakable, and the shouts were shriller and more urgent than those of men trying to find their proper places in the line.

Soldiers turned to watch with doubtful expressions as Sharina and her escort rode past. “Hope they don't think we're running away,” one of the Blood Eagles muttered.

“Don't matter what they think, Onder,” Lires said. “We're guarding the princess. That's all we got to worry about.”

That wasn't true, of course. These guards—these men—would've accompanied her even if she'd really been running away from the battle, but they wouldn't have been happy about it. The sort of men who joined the Blood Eagles—who were
allowed
to join the Blood Eagles—were those to whom it was important not only to be brave but to be seen to be brave.

The Jezreal road got traffic only from the large villas and the market towns in the hills east of Valles. It was graveled, not paved with flagstones, and only indifferently leveled at that. Sharina's group struck it less than a furlong from the city walls, though, so the ruts didn't matter.

Normally there'd have been a squad of soldiers on duty at the narrow gate, but Waldron had withdrawn them. A pair of City Watchmen with knobbed batons stood there, along with scores of civilians made nervous by trouble whose cause was a complete mystery to them.

Rowning rode through, barely slackening enough to let the frightened townsfolk get out of the way. One cried, “What's happening? Are the rebels attacking?”

The soldiers didn't reply. Sharina called, “There's no rebels. We're going to arrest a wizard, that's all!”

It was something the civilians could understand in a few words. The whole truth would've taken much longer to tell, without being in any real sense more informative.

Tenoctris leaned back and gripped the cantle of the saddle instead of clinging to Sharina's waist as Sharina would've done had their places been reversed. Tenoctris was a noblewoman who'd been taught the skills of her station from earliest youth. Age was the only reason she needed to ride pillion.

Smiling at the incongruity, Sharina wondered if the old wizard could sing courtly romances, accompanying herself on a lyre. Very possibly she could.

“Tenoctris?” she said. “Who's leading the People now that Hani's dead? He is dead, isn't he?”

They crossed the boulevard running inside the walls. Though choked with barrows of merchandise and poultry, it'd have been the simplest route toward the temple. Rowning's guide was taking them by back streets so they'd approach their goal from the rear instead of charging straight into the line of creatures marching to join the battle.

“Certainly dead,” Tenoctris said, bending forward to put her lips close to Sharina's right ear. “When we have leisure, I intend to dispose of his body beyond risk of anyone's raising him again, but I don't think there's much risk of that happening regardless. As for their leader—”

They rode down a narrow alley, scattering children and driving adults back from their stoops. Washing hung on poles from second-story win
dows on both sides of the street. The spears of the leading horsemen hooked the clothing, setting off shouts and curses from both the owners and the tangled soldiers. The troop rode on. There'd be time to pay for damages later, if there was time for anything at all.

“—I don't believe they have a leader, dear,” Tenoctris continued, bending to pluck a child's tunic from the right stirrup and toss it back toward where it'd been hanging. “They have a purpose, is all. They intend to capture Valles, then conquer Ornifal and, finally, all the Isles. Not for any reason, but because that was what they were directed to do. In that sense they're rather like a flung stone, but far, far more dangerous.”

The troop rode into a plaza with four unequal sides and a well curb in the center. Civilians, mostly women, shouted frightened questions from doorways. The standard-bearer at Rowning's side held his pole crosswise over his head.

“Hold up!” Ascor translated in a shout. More quietly he explained, “They didn't use the horn like usual because we're trying to surprise them. Your highness.”

The Blood Eagles led Sharina to Captain Rowning's side. The plaza was too small to hold the whole troop on horseback, but it provided enough space for the leading section to form without being trampled by the men behind them.

“We'll round that corner…” Rowning said, pointing down one of the five streets joined in the plaza, “and be right on top of them. I want you to keep well back, your highness, until we've got the temple cleared.”

“No,” said Sharina before Tenoctris could speak. “The temple can't be cleared until Lady Tenoctris is there to block the portal. She and I will go in immediately with our escort”—she nodded to Ascor—“and set to work. You and your men will keep the creatures who've already reached Valles from attacking from outside.”

Rowning and Ascor looked at one another. Both grimaced.

“No help for it, then,” Rowning muttered. To his cornicene, he said, “Sound Charge, Sessir. They'll know we're coming in a heartbeat no matter what.”

The cornicene's horn was curled around his body. He put his lips to the bone mouthpiece and blew a quick tune. The trained horses lurched into motion at the first touch of their riders' heels—Sharina's included, and much more suddenly than she was expecting. The signaller repeated
his call as the troop charged down the cobblestone street and around the elbow that put the east side of the temple directly ahead of them.

A line of People marched two abreast from the entrance of the small temple toward where the Northeast Road left Valles. The column was several blocks long, moving at a measured pace. Neither the sounds of battle beyond the city wall nor the residents openly gaping from roofs, windows, and even the street itself seemed to affect them. The invaders' first priority was to destroy organized military resistance; that they were about to do.

Captain Rowning and half a dozen of his troopers were ahead of Sharina; the Blood Eagles hedged her to either side. They burst out of the narrow street and into the broader one that the temple faced. For a moment the People ignored them: then all the smooth bronze helmets turned at once. Their shields came up, and their right hands drew the swords that they hadn't bothered to unsheathe before.