Master of the Cauldron (56 page)

If the sailing master had an opinion, he swallowed it and merely shouted orders to the crew. The flutist seated under the sternpost began blowing time, and the oars took up their beat. The trireme groaned forward and swung slowly toward the mainland.

“Don't guess you'd remember me and Pont, your princessship,” said the soldier who'd been speaking. “We met back in the ice a time ago, but there was a lot going on then.”

Sharina looked at the men. They were noncommissioned officers in a line regiment, and at least the age of her father. There were several hundred men like them in the royal army. But—

“I do recognize you!” she said. “File closers Pont and Prester! You saved my brother's life, and he gave you estates! What are you doing here?”

The trireme laboriously gained speed. It rode deep in the water, just as the sailing master had warned. Sharina hoped the lowest range of oar ports had been blocked when the warship was converted into a transport, but worse come to worst she could swim to the far shore even if she had to pull Tenoctris along with her.

“Oh, ma'am, what do we know about farming?” Prester said. “Anyway, your brother saved my ass and Pont's both a time or two, as I remember it. With a little seasoning he'd make a real soldier, he would.”

“But it's good of her to remember us, Prester,” said his partner. “A lady like that, a
princess,
and she remembers us.”

“Pont and me signed back on,” Prester said. “Camp marshals, that makes us warrant officers. That's why we were still on Volita. Somebody had to chivy stragglers over.”

“Are we going to be in trouble because we didn't, you know, wait for the last ship out, Prester?” Pont said. “Looks like there's another coming after all.”

He pointed. A stubby patrol vessel, packed with troops and only one of its two oarbanks manned, was wallowing away from Volita in the trireme's wake.

“No,” Sharina said with a decisive nod. “You're not going to be in trouble.”

“Anyway, we may've screwed the pooch this time anyhow,” said Prester, in a surprisingly cheerful tone given what he was saying. “Nothing like fighting in a city to get yourself killed.”

“But there's loot, Prester,” said his partner. “Remember those temple dishes we got in Durance?”

“I remember the hangover they bought me,” Prester said. “
That
I'm never going to forget.”

Wizardlight slashed out of the city, ripping a long gash in the overcast. The sun poured down, more than doubling the light that'd been seeping in around the perimeter of the artificial shadow.

Prester looked at the flashes and the sky of roiling blackness, then looked out to sea past Sharina. “Well, we seen wizards before,” he muttered. “It's no big thing that we're seeing 'em again, I guess.”

“Anyhow,” said Pont cheerfully, “it's nice to have sunlight.”

He looked at Sharina in sudden concern. “But it's all right if we don't, your princessship,” he added. “I mean, whatever you want, ma'am. You can count in me 'n Prester to cope.”

“Thank you, Marshal Pont,” Sharina said formally.
Did they really think she controlled the wizards battling in Erdin?
“I have no doubt at all that you will cope, as you've done before. As we've all done before.”

The trireme's mast was stepped, though the spar and sail had been left onshore. The lookout at the masthead shouted down, “Master Darrin! All the slips are full, and there's ships tied to the ones already moored. We'll have to go upriver!”

The sailing master stepped onto the pivot of the steering oar, gripping the railing with his left hand. “Hanging on like that looks very dangerous,” Tenoctris said in a tone of mild disapproval. “Though I suppose he knows what he's doing.”

Sharina opened her mouth to reply. The ridiculousness of the statement—here, from Tenoctris to her—struck her. She giggled. Tenoctris looked at her in surprise, then started to chuckle also.

Sharina's giggle became laughter that was barely on the right side of hysteria. She leaned over the railing to take the pressure off her chest.

“No, we'll berth alongside the
Sword of Ornifal
here in the harbor,” the sailing master decided aloud. He didn't seem to be speaking to anybody in particular, but he spoke loudly enough that everybody on deck from the mast sternward could hear. “The passengers can cross the other
ships to the quay. If we go up the river, the Shepherd knows what we'll find.”

Turning to the helmsman, he added, “Two points to starboard, Henga. Master Estin, prepare to back water.”

Pont cocked an eye at the sailing master. “That all right with you and your friend, princess?” he asked.

“I won't be able to carry Tenoctris from ship to ship by myself,” Sharina said. “But he's probably right—the river will be choked. Warships are too long to turn in the channel, and…”

“Oh, that's no problem, princess,” Prester said. He turned to survey the soldiers nearest to him on deck. “Mallus and Jodea, you're carrying the old lady here, got it? Unter and Borcas, you two take their spears and be ready to grab if something goes wrong. You got that?”

A soldier blinked. His fluffy blond moustache flared into sideburns and disappeared under his helmet. “How far do we carry her, Marshal?” he asked doubtfully.

“Until I bloody tell you to bloody put her down, you bloody fool!” Prester replied like a thunderclap.

“Back 'em, back 'em!” the sailing master shouted, still clinging to the oar block. “Four, three, two, one—
ship oars
! Ship oars, or you'll pay for the broken shafts, I swear it!”

The trireme wobbled as it slowed, pummeled by the wake of its forward passage and the stroke of its reversed oars rebounding from the vessel it slid toward. That one, the outermost of three triremes already moored, held several score civilians but none of the regular crew. A few refugees seemed to be trying to get the vessel under way, but the others were simply huddling on deck. This was as far as they'd been able to run from the destruction occurring in their city.

The ships scrunched together, rocking violently. The passengers hindered the deck crew, but there were hawsers across to the inner vessel before they drifted apart again. Soldiers had started leaping over before the ships were lashed together firmly.

“Make way for the princess and the old lady!” Prester bellowed. He glared at the men he'd detailed to carry Tenoctris, and added in a scarcely quieter voice, “Mallus and Jodea, hop to it!”

The troops crashed and slid their way across the ships till they'd reached the stone quay. A couple of them managed to fall into the water,
but they were able to rescue themselves because cut rigging already hung from the vessels' sides. Troops must've fallen previously, and soldiers had no compunction about destroying a ship—or most anything else—to save a buddy's life.

The men holding Tenoctris negotiated the route without difficulty; they must've been either sailors or mountaineers at an earlier point in their lives. It struck Sharina that Prester and Pont might be simple men in many respects, but their knowledge of troops and the things required to keep troops alive was of a very sophisticated order.

The trireme had carried at least two hundred soldiers besides the oarsmen. No wonder it'd ridden low in the water! The men first across to the quay were starting up the boulevard that led to the harbor.

“Halt and form ranks of twelve, you miserable disgraces!” Pont cried, moving in a rolling trot to the front of his men. “Are you the prince's royal army, or are you a herd of bloody
cats,
eh?”

Men crunched and clattered into place. Though they must be a mixture of several or many different units, they fell into formation as easily as grain fills a sack. The only problem seemed to be the length of the front rank, and Pont quickly trimmed that back to the twelve he'd demanded.

“Do we fall in, Marshal?” one of the soldiers carrying Tenoctris asked plaintively.

“You bloody well do
not
,” Prester snarled, his eye restraining as well the pair of soldiers holding the bearers' javelins. “You stay back with me and the princess, you got it?”

All four men nodded. Prester's tone was so commanding that Sharina, half-numbed by all that had happened, almost nodded also.

“Forward…,” Pont called from the left front of the formation. “March! Hup! Hup! Hup!”

Hobnails on stone, the studded aprons of the soldiers and pieces of their equipment jouncing together combined deafeningly. It sounded like wagons full of scrap metal driving over the edge of a quarry.

“Double…,” Pont called.
“Time!”

Prester glanced at Sharina as they kept pace with the rear of the formation—him trotting, her in what was more a leggy walk than running. “This all right with you, princess?” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” said Sharina. “But can troopers Mallus and Jodea keep up?”

“They can if they know what's good for them,” Prester said with baleful significance. “We don't have packs, you see. And it's just up to the palace the messenger said where we meet his princeship.”

The air was chilly. Fires were burning at half a dozen places in the city, adding their smoke to the unnatural overcast, but in addition the atmosphere had the cutting, choking stench of sulfur.

The ground continued to jump the way a dead frog does, a spastic trembling unlike the two real earthquakes Sharina had experienced. Many buildings had collapsed. Sometimes the lower stories of brick and stone remained, but the lath-and-plaster construction above them had shaken into the street. A few corpses lay on the pavement, but the people who could flee were already gone.

Wizardlight continued to tear the overcast. The bolts were searingly bright, but they didn't leave afterimages on Sharina's eyeballs the way direct sunlight would've done.

The boulevard bent to the right between a pair of government office buildings, still standing while lesser structures had fallen. Men were fighting monsters at the head of the street, but the earl's palace had vanished into a cauldron of black vapors and grubs trying to be men.

Garric and Liane were at the left end of the line, where a street leading toward the river joined. Fallen buildings half choked the cross street, but troops were using the rubble as artificial hills to defend against the creatures attacking.

The battle was ending as Sharina and the reinforcements double-timed up. The monsters didn't retreat: they died, throwing themselves forward like rabid dogs and sometimes drawing blood before they were butchered.

“Detachment…,” Pont said, as his troops neared the present defenders. He paused for three more crashing double paces, then cried, “Halt!”

“Bring Tenoctris!” Sharina said as she ran to her brother.

Garric turned slowly but didn't seem to recognize her. He was breathing through his mouth, and his eyes were focused in another time. His sword was so bloody that only in streaks and patches could Sharina see that the blade was patterned in gray waves.

Liane began moving down the line of soldiers, offering them drinks from a helmet filled with water. She lifted the improvised bucket to each man's lips; for the most part they were too exhausted to raise it themselves.

“Garric, you're in danger!” Sharina said. His arms hung at his sides, weighed down by his equipment. His shield'd been hacked to half its original dimensions. What was left of its leather facing held together the wooden core.

“I'd noticed,” Garric said. He started to laugh, but the flash of humor turned into a cough. He went down on one knee.

“A wizard on Ornifal planned something against you,” Sharina said. Mallus and Jodea set Tenoctris beside her, then stood beaming as they waited for further orders. The stench of inhuman corpses was nauseating, even beyond the other reeks.

Tenoctris seated herself in the littered roadway and opened the satchel she'd carried in her lap from Valles. “Now that I'm here, I hope I can learn just what the danger is. I'm afraid I couldn't tell when I was in Valles,” she said. She started drawing a figure by pouring powdered sulfur from a flask.

“Whatever it is,” Garric said wearily, “it'll have to wait its turn.”

He looked at the reinforcements and suddenly smiled. He lurched upright again. “Pont, you're a warrant officer, now?” he said.

“Yes, prince,” Prester said. “Me and Pont are camp marshals. Ah—this is pretty much the tailings from Volita, I'm afraid. Where do you want us?”

Garric looked over his shoulder. A mass of white creatures with weapons as distorted as their bodies rose from the cauldron. Garric's face lost the moment's happiness Sharina had seen there.

“It's like the surf hitting a cliff,” Garric whispered. “Not all at once, but again and again. Until it stops, or the cliff goes down, and I don't guess this surf is going to stop.”

“There's troops coming up from the river too, your princeship,” Pont said. “Dunno how many, but some.”

As Pont spoke, he nodded toward the handful of soldiers coming up the street from the left. All were line infantry. Lord Attaper was on the other side of this boulevard and a few more guards remained in the line, but the pavement back to the cauldron had many more bodies in black armor.

“Marshal Pont,” Garric said, drawing himself straight. “Leave ten men here with me. Take the rest widdershins around the perimeter, leaving detachments where in your judgment they're most needed.”

He drew a shuddering breath, no longer Sharina's brother but a tortured soul whose determination burned through the wasted flesh. “Which is everywhere, as I well know, but do your best. Do your best, all of you.”

“Aye aye,
sir
,” Pont said, clashing down his right foot and turning on his heel. He tapped the man who'd been next to him with his spear butt, and said, “Rastin, you're sticking with me. Rest of you beggars in the front rank, you stay here with the prince.”