The Fortress of Glass (34 page)

Chalcus continued watching in all directions. He hadn't ceased to do that even when he was belaying the rope for Ilna to climb.

"I saw the little people," she said quietly. "They don't seem to have weapons. Or any tools whatever.'

"Aye," said the sailor. "They're a fleeting, fearful lot and likely harmless. But it strikes me, dear heart, that they wouldn't be so fearful were there nothing here in this garden to fear, not so?"

He stepped around the next corner of the maze, munching an apple in his left hand as his sword quivered like a dog scenting prey. Merota followed, holding the apples in her tunic with both hands, and Ilna brought up the rear as before.

Several trees grew in the opposite wall of the hedge. One was a walnut, she thought. Nutmeats would be a good addition to the apples, though the capsules holding the nuts would stain her hands indelibly when she shucked them. Perhaps—

A fat-bodied snake stepped on two short legs from the opposite end of the aisle. The creature was the size of a man, pale red in front and its back and tail covered with vivid blue scales. It raised a neck frill as Chalcus lunged forward.

"Look away!" Ilna shouted, closing her eyes. Her fingers knotted a pattern that she understood perfectly though she couldn't have described if her life'd depended on it. Words were for the world's Lianes; Ilna had her own way of communicating.

Merota's scream muted into the desperate wheeze of someone drowning. Ilna lifted her pattern of cords and looked.

A shock lashed her. It felt like what'd she'd gotten from touching metal after walking across wool in a dry day. Merota stood paralyzed with her mouth open; Chalcus had fallen as if his legs were wood. His sword was outstretched and his eyes stared in horror.

Instead of a snake's jaws, the creature had a blunt, bony beak like a squid's. A forked blue tongue trembled from it in a high-pitched hiss. Ripples of blue and red played across its broad frill in a sequence as wonderfully perfect as a nightingale's song. The pattern caught every eye that fell on it and gripped with the crushing certainty of a spider's fangs.

The creature, taking one clumsy stride forward, saw the open fabric in Ilna's hands. The rhythm of color in its frill broke, bubbled, and subsided into a muddy blur.

"Basilisk!" Merota shouted. She flung an apple at the creature. It bounced harmlessly away. The rest of the harvest fell to the ground.

Chalcus rolled to his feet. The creature leaped backward. The sailor was still off-balance so his sword notched the frill instead of skewering the long snake neck.

"My pardon!" the creature cried. It leaped onto a limb of the walnut tree; the stubby legs were as powerful as a frog's. "My pardon, I didn't realize you were Princes! The One hasn't added new Princes in an age of ages!"

Chalcus jumped upward, his sword flickering left to right. The creature sprang over the hedge and into the aisle beyond.

"I beg your pardon, fellow Princes...," it called, its voice trailing off behind its hidden flight.

"It was a basilisk!" Merota said, staring at the scars the creature's claws had left in the bark.

"What did it mean by calling us Princes?" Ilna said, trying not to gasp.

Chalcus shot his sword and dagger home in their sheaths. He leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees to breathe deeply.

"What I'd like to know...," he said to the ground in front of him. "Is who the One is?"

* * *

It was so dark that Garric couldn't see his own hand at arm's length, but he knew they were being stalked. He didn't hear the predator, but changes in the sounds other marsh creatures made showed that something was disturbing them.

"Donria," Garric said quietly. He slid the axe out from under the sash that was his only garment for the time being. He hoped that mud he'd splashed on the grip wouldn't make it slippery. "Something's moving up on us from behind. I want you to take the lead, but don't make a fuss about it."

"You'd have made a good scout, lad," Carus whispered in his mind.

Perhaps, but what Garric had been was a shepherd. He'd learned to absorb his surroundings: the color of the sky and the sea, the way light fell on the leaves or the swirls of fog over the creek on cool mornings. Garric didn't exactly look for dangers. He simply noticed things that were different a few minutes ago or yesterday or last year.

He'd heard a shift in the pattern of trills, chirps and clicking. The little animals he and Donria'd disturbed were remaining silent after they were well past. Previously the chorus of frogs and insects had resumed as soon as they went on.

'There's a human following us, Garric," said the Bird. "His name is Metz, but you think of him as Scar. He's been lying in wait on the route Torag used to attack Wandalo's village twice in the past."

Garric stopped and straightened. He couldn't see a thing. Besides darkness, the rain was falling as it had more hours than not during the day. He and Donria'd been moving since they broke out of Torag's keep, and fatigue was taking a toll of him.

"Metz!" he called. "Scar! This is Garric! I've escaped from the Coerli and I'm here to help you!"

He'd come back to join Wandalo and his people, at any rate. He might or might not be able to help, but he was going to try.

Nothing happened for a moment; then Metz sloshed up from the darkness and came forward. He held what'd started as a fishing spear. A single hardwood spike now replaced the springy twin points intended to clamp a fish between them.

"How did you learn to speak our language?" he asked, obviously doubtful. Then, frowning in real concern he added, "And how did you see me? Nobody could've spotted me, not at night!"

"I listened to the frogs," Garric said. "I've spent a lot of time outdoors too."

He didn't say that he'd been a shepherd. That wouldn't have meant anything to Metz, since the only large animals he'd seen here were humans and their dogs.

The Bird landed on Garric's shoulder. Its feet were solid pressures, but the glittering creature didn't seem to weigh anything. "I am helping you speak to one another, but I can speak to you as well."

"Master Garric?" said Donria, "is this man the chief of the village?"

"No, the chief's named Wandalo," Garric said. "This is the man who found me when I came here from my own land."

"Wandalo's dead," Metz said. It was too dark for Garric to be sure of the hunter's features, but his voice sounded tired and worn. "Nobody's really chief now."

He turned to look back in the direction Garric had come from. "My uncles and I decided we'd better watch the way the Coerli came from," he continued. "Nobody else was willing to. If we don't have any warning, they'll keep snatching us up until nobody's left. I said I'd watch nights; I'm better at it than Abay or Horst."

Garric had thought a club hung from Metz' belt; it was actually a wooden trumpet. Garric looked at it and looked up at the man again. Metz might be able to hide from a raiding party as long as he kept silent, but as soon as he blew a warning on that trumpet the Coerli were going to kill him. Unless they captured him to torture at leisure at their keep.

"Well, what else could I do?" Metz said angrily. "Somebody had to watch!"

You could've done what the rest of the villagers did, Garric thought. Hide in your hut like a frightened rabbit till the cat men came to wring your neck for dinner.

Aloud he said, "The village must be close, then. We'll go there and call a town meeting. There's a way to deal with the Coerli if we stay together and work fast."

"Torag won't be coming tonight," the Bird said. "Nor tomorrow night, I think; but soon he will come. Garric will act before then."

Metz led the way sure-footedly through the marsh to the village gate. Donria had never been this way before, but she had less trouble with the slick wood rods of the catwalk than Garric did.

"Marzan said he was summoning a hero to destroy the Coerli," Metz said. "That's why my uncles and I were waiting for you-Marzan told us where you'd come. He's a great wizard. But you didn't seem...."

"I can't do much about the Coerli by myself," Garric said quietly. "With your help-the help of everybody in the village-I think there's an answer."

The village walls loomed up before them. Metz lifted the trumpet to his lips and blew a surprisingly musical tone, clear and wistful.

"Open the gates, Tenris," he called. "I've brought friends back with me."

"Is that you, Metz?" called a man from the gate platform. There'd been no sign that the guard had been aware of their presence, even though Garric thought he'd been slipping and splashing enough to wake the dead. "All right, I'm opening the gate."

"And call the villagers to assemble!" the Bird said in what would've been a tone of command if the words were audible. "We must prepare immediately."

"Who's that?" cried the guard in sudden alarm.

"Never mind, Tenris, it's a friend," Metz snapped. "And do as he says. The Bright Spirit knows we need all the friends we can get in these times."

Wood squealed on the platform and the bar shifted on the inside of the gate. There was apparently a lever and cord, a large-scale equivalent of the ordinary latch string. Metz pushed open one of the gate leaves, then lifted his trumpet and blew it again in harmony with the three blasts of the guard's deeper horn.

Lights, dim and yellow, began to wink through the fog. Villagers were lighting oil lamps from embers on their hearths. Garric heard a woman begin to wail in high-pitched despair.

"There is no danger," said the Bird, dropping down from the stockade to perch on Garric's shoulder. "You are not being attacked. You must assemble and do as Garric orders, because the Bright Spirit has sent him to save you."

Garric frowned and started to turn his head, but the Bird was too close for him to focus on it with both eyes. He faced front again and said quietly, "How many of the people in the village can hear you?"

"All of them," said the Bird with a hint of satisfaction. "Every one of them. But they will not follow me, Garric. They will follow you."

That remains to be seen, Garric thought, but cynicism didn't suit him. Natural optimism lifted his spirits as he saw villagers coming toward the gate with whatever weapons had come to their hands. Just maybe....

The sky had brightened from pitch black to dark gray. That'd make it easier to address the villagers, though he still wasn't clear about what he was going to say. He grinned: maybe he could claim his arrival at dawn was a good omen.

"Get up on the platform where they can see you," Carus directed. "And make sure Metz comes with you. It'll work, lad."

It would or it wouldn't, but Garric was going to try regardless. "Come along, Metz," he said to the hunter. "We're going to tell them how to defeat the Coerli."

"How are we going to do that?" Metz muttered, but he looked up and called, "Get down from there, Tenris. Me and the hero who Marzan brought us need the room."

Tenris dropped from the platform with real enthusiasm. "There's no chief," Metz had said; because nobody wanted the job in the face of inevitable disaster. The villagers were terrified, so anybody could become chief just by saying he wanted to lead.

Which was different from saying anybody would follow him; but maybe....

The ladder and platform were lightly built, but they weren't as flimsy as Garric had expected. The Grass People lacked arts that everybody in the Isles took for granted, but they had very highly developed skills nonetheless. Woodworking, including the ability to weave withies into solid structures, was among the latter.

"What's going on, Metz?" called one of a pair of husky men in the growing assembly below. It wasn't bright enough yet for Garric to be sure of faces, but the voice sounded like one of the men who'd met him-captured him-with Metz when he arrived in this land.

"Garric escaped from the Coerli," Metz said. "Nobody's ever done that. He's going to talk to us."

"He's the hero I summoned to save us!" cried Marzan. A girl of seventeen or so had been helping him along the path from his house, but now the old wizard stood with only his staff to support him. The feathered crown waggled on his head. "See how my foresight has been repaid?"

Well, not yet, thought Garric, but that was a good opening for him. In a loud voice he said, "People of the village. Fellow humans!"

That was a nice touch. He'd given enough speeches by now that he was getting the feel of the task.

"The Coerli can be defeated!" he said. "My return proves that. But we, the rightful owners of this world must act together and we must act now. We must arm ourselves. I'll teach you the tactics I've used to kill cat men already. Instead of waiting for them to attack again, we'll go to them. Tomorrow evening we'll set out for Torag's keep, the chief who's been raiding you, so that we arrive at dawn. We will destroy Torag and free his human captives!"

"You're a demon, sent to destroy us all!" cried a woman. "Metz, come down here now! Better yet, throw that madman off the walls and close the gate!"

"That is Opann," said the Bird; to Garric alone, he supposed, though there was no way of telling. "She is Metz's wife. Her father was chief before Wandalo."

"The chief of my village was Paltin!" called Donria from the base of the ladder. "I am Donria who was Paltin's wife. Torag and his warriors came to us, snatching folk from the fields by day and entering our walls at night. At first they took a handful, then another handful. At the end we were only a handful, and they took all of us but those they slew. Listen to Lord Garric!"