The Gods Return (58 page)

Cashel heard the
WHACK!
/thump of a catapult loosing, a big one. The bar hit the stop to release the stone, then the back legs of the frame slammed back down on the battlements. Not long ago he wouldn't have recognized the sound.

He'd been around armies a lot since he left Barca's Hamlet; way too much, in fact. Cashel didn't mind a fight, but war was more like a slaughteryard than fighting. He didn't like slaughteryards even when it was sheep being slaughtered.

"The pirates are here?" he asked.

"Yes, yes!" Amineus said. "They haven't released the Worm yet, but we know that it's only time before they do. We—my colleagues and I—came here to beg the Tree to send the champion Gorand to us, but everyone else in on the walls."

"Gorand brought us here," said Liane, looking in the direction where the catapult had shot. When Cashel concentrated, he could hear clangs and the snap of bows from that way too. It was just skirmishing this far, though. "We don't know where he is now, though."

"I'm here, your ladyship," said a voice behind them.

Cashel turned, smoothly and not in a panic, but he wasn't wasting time either. Then he lowered his staff with a bit of a smile.

The pod had opened; the eyes of the human face in it were open too. Even with the bark-brown color of the skin, Cashel could tell now that the face was Gorand's. He felt foolish not to have seen that when he first met the tall man sitting on the stoop of his cabin.

"Hello, Master Gorand," he said politely. "Thank you for bringing us back so quick as this."

The man in the pod—Gorand—chuckled. "It wouldn't been worth coming if we'd waited much longer, would it, Cashel? Not if I'm hearing what I think I am. I haven't been so long in the woods that I've forgotten what a siege sounds like."

"They figure the pirates'll bring out the Worm pretty quick," said Cashel. "Which is likely enough. Rasile here—"

He nodded to the Corl wizard.

"—showed me what they did to Ombis on Telut, and it was pretty bad. But I guess you know that from your own time."

Gorand nodded. "I guess I do," he said.

"Oh, mighty champion!" said the priest who'd dropped the wine. The first time they'd been in this place, Amineus had said one of them was Conwin and the other was Hilfe, but Cashel hadn't any idea which was which. "Tell us how to vanquish our enemies in this day of great trial!"

"For a start, you greedy little toad," said Gorand, "you—all three of you—can shut your mouths. I'm going to take care of this, but the less I think about you and all the other city scum, the better I'll like it."

"What's he saying?" said the goat-priest. Amineus clasped the bowl and other gear to his chest. With the hand thus freed, he tried to hush his fellow.

Who wasn't interested in being hushed. He pushed Amineus' arm away and said, "The oracle's not supposed to talk like that! There's something wrong, I—"

A branch of the tree curled down and slapped the noisy priest across the back of the head. He yelped and threw himself on his belly, covering his scalp with both hands. He was bald now that his feathered hat was knocked off.

Things got really quiet for a moment. Liane turned to face the pod, but Cashel decided he'd better keep an eye the priests just for now. Rasile walked over to the ancient temple and spread her yarrow stalks.

The priest who'd dropped the wine jar started moving back toward the house; the fellow who'd been knocked down looked fearfully over his shoulder and gathered his knees under himself to run. He'd be running away, though, nothing for Cashel to worry about . . . .

"That's right, Hilfe, time to flee," said Gorand with so much contempt that it made Cashel think of his sister. "Let somebody else do the dangerous part. That's what you Dariadans are good for, isn't it?"

Amineus tossed his paraphernalia on the ground and faced the pod with his hands at his sides. He said, "What would you have me do, Lord Gorand?"

Gorand laughed. "Go or be silent, Amineus," he said; there wasn't the edge in his voice that there had been a moment before. "All of you priests, go or be silent."

Conwin walked away, taking a longer stride and quicker one each time his legs moved. Hilfe stayed on the ground, lifted his knees to his chest, and began to cry. Amineus folded his arms and said nothing.

Cashel turned to Gorand. "Sir?" he said, leaning his staff into the angle of his elbow just like he had when they stood in front of his cabin in the woods.

"The people of Dariada were very pleased that I'd saved them from the Worm, back all those years ago," Gorand said. He was talking quietly, but Cashel could hear the anger returning to his tone. "And they were pleased at the Tree Oracle, too. It wasn't long at all before somebody figured out that they could make a very good thing out of that. They're merchants, you see."

"Yes, sir," said Cashel, just showing that he was paying attention.

"But they didn't want
me
, or that's what I think happened anyway," said Gorand. Another branch of the tree waved; just a wave this time. "They're nervous around my sort when it's all peaceful again.
Our
sort, Cashel. You'll need to watch out too, you know."

Cashel shrugged. "Sir," he said, "I trust my friends. But anyhow, I miss peace myself. I'm not, well . . . I'm a shepherd."

"The obol struck in my honor, that was the key," Gorand said. "My face is on it, not the gull's head for Dariada . . . or now the Tree, but in my time the gull was the symbol of the city. With that in my hand, I could go or stay as I liked. But they didn't put it in my hand, did they? Not till they needed me again!"

"Sir," said Cashel, "I don't know what happened in your time. Neither does Master Amineus, I'll warrant. But like we said back at your cabin, it doesn't matter."

Gorand laughed again, but this time he sounded sad. "You needn't worry, shepherd. I gave my word that I'd deal with the Worm, so that's what I'll do. Just like you would if you could. But there's something else that I'm telling you because of who you are. You can think of it as a free response from the Tree."

Gorand's brown eyes shifted—to Amineus, Cashel guessed, but he didn't take his attention off the man in the pod to make sure. "Ordinarily a response from the Tree would be worth the taxes of your whole borough. Though as you can see, I wouldn't have been the one spending the wealth that came in."

"Sir," said Cashel, just a placeholder like before. He'd rather have all the answers straight out, but the tall man was angry and it sounded like he had reason to be. Letting Gorand talk himself out was better than pushing the business . . . though he would still do what he said. Cashel didn't doubt that in the least.

"I'll take care of the Worm," Gorand repeated. "But Archas, the pirate chief who's handled the Worm in the past, he's left it to his one-armed lieutenant this time. Archas is in the city now. He arrived with the last group of refugees fleeing the terrible pirates. He'll be coming here, Cashel."

"Coming to the Tree?" said Cashel, frowning as he thought of all the things the words could mean. "Coming to you, Master Gorand?"

"I won't be here, Cashel," Gorand said. "He's seeking the temple that was here when the Tree was planted. If he's allowed to stay there, you and your friends will rue it for the rest of your short lives."

Cashel glanced at the stubs of the ancient stone columns. Just how old was it really? Though that was the sort of thing Garric and Sharina thought about, not any business of his.

"Thank you," said Cashel, turning. He shifted the quarterstaff into both hands, slanting it on-guard without thinking. "I guess we'd best not let him stay."

There was a rattling and cracking, then a long, drawn-out crash as the brick wall around the enclosure crumbled into bricks and brick dust.
Had the Worm . . .?
But the Worm couldn't have torn the whole thing down all at the same time.

The Tree was rising, out of the ground and out of the wall too. Over the centuries, hair-fine tendrils had dug away half the mortar, but they'd wrapped the individual bricks in a web that held them firmer than the lime could. When the roots pulled away, what had been masonry collapsed into rubble.

Amineus and Hilfe ran together into the Priests' House. Cashel couldn't blame the priests—there was nothing holding them here, after all—but he wondered how much shelter they thought the building was going to be from what was happening.

The Tree trembled. Cashel thought it was tipping into the street, but the roots nearest him bent away like legs. The huge creature stepped toward the southern edge of the city—toward where the fighting was going on. The pod with Gorand dangled high in the air, looking down on Dariada and the battle.

"Good luck, Master Gorand!" Cashel called, raising his staff. The noise was tremendous, worse than the crash and boom of a thunderstorm.

"Good luck to you, shepherd!" called the man in the pod. A branch waved goodbye to Cashel.

"The sun's going to be in our eyes by mid afternoon," said Lord Waldron gloomily, eyeing the army of giant rats to the south.

"
That man would complain if we hanged him with a golden rope!
" King Carus said in half-serious exasperation. Waldron wouldn't run even from certain death, but Garric didn't recall the army commander ever making an optimistic assessment.

They were lurching along on a platform raised from the bed of a cart drawn by eight span of oxen. An artificial vantage point was the only way you could see any distance on these rolling prairies. The oxen were slow, but the army was advancing in battle order and wouldn't have been travelling faster than this anyway.

"The sun was in your eyes at the Stone Wall, milord," Garric said mildly. "And you won there."

To the south, Palomir's forces moved like a swarm of ants; more ants than a tax clerk could count in an afternoon. Dark-furred, steel-glittering companies appeared on hilltops, trotted down grassy slopes, and vanished again in the swales.

"The Stone Wall was a bloody near thing!" snapped Waldron. He blinked, thought about the verbal exchange, and managed a smile.

"But as you say," he added, "we won."

A second ox cart ambled along beside the first. Tenoctris sat cross-legged in its bed with her paraphernalia laid out before her on a white tarpaulin. A solid-looking man, one of Liane's agents, squatted in a corner in case the wizard needed something fetched or other help. Normally Garric or one of his friends from Barca's Hamlet would be with Tenoctris, but they had other duties today.

Duzi, preserve my friends
, Garric thought.
Duzi, keep Liane safe
.

Even if Duzi existed, he was a little god who couldn't affect great affairs. He'd been the god of Garric's youth in Barca's Hamlet, though, and a prayer to him gave comfort to that boy whom the world now called a prince.

How many rats are there really?
Forty thousand, Zettin's scouts had guessed, but it might be more than that. It might be impossibly more than that.

The royal army advanced in a shallow Vee formed by troops of the former phalanx, now arrayed only four deep instead of sixteen. The skirmishers with bows, slings and javelins extended the wings of the Vee, and the heavy infantry closed the back of the formation to turn it into a triangle.

To either side moved the scouts, humans and Coerli in ragged bands no more formally organized than the rats they were facing. They took the place of the cavalry which would've flanked the army in a normal battle.

The rats would envelope both wings of the royal army. The heavy infantry would have horrendous casualties, but there was nothing to do about it. There simply hadn't been time to reequip those regiments and train them in a wholly new style of warfare.

"
They won't break, lad
," Carus said. "
Sometimes that's the thing you need most: men who won't break even when they know they're going to die if they stand. They'd die if they ran too, of course, but that isn't what'll keep them in their ranks
."

A company of giant rats came over a hill barely a half mile away. Waldron gestured to his trumpeter, riding in the bed of the cart and looking upward. The silvery
Prepare to engage
rang out, followed by the trumpets and horns of all the regiments.

The scouts didn't have instruments, but they let out a yipping ululation. It was apparently a compromise that fit both human and Corl throats.

"
Sister take them!
" said Carus. "
I don't know what that'll do to the rats, but it'd bloody well raise the hair on the back of
my
neck. If I had hair, or a neck
."

The Sister will have her share of them, I have no doubt
, thought Garric.
And the rest of us. But that's the job
.

Garric adjusted his ornate, parcel-gilt cuirass. "Milord, I'll leave you to it," he said to Waldron. "May the Shepherd be with you!"

He dropped down the ladder, impressed again by how rigid the apparatus was. The platform's pole frame had been cross-braced by guy ropes—stays, in nautical parlance, since the work had been done by former sailors of the royal fleet. The result was makeshift and the additional twelve feet of height amplified the cart's every jolt and wobble, but there was nothing flimsy about it.

The Blood Eagles—the hundred and ten men who remained of the regiment besides the section in Pandah with Sharina—were waiting for him. They wore the leather padding without the bronze cuirasses that would normally cover their torsos, and steel or leather caps in place of full helmets. They carried skirmishers' round wicker bucklers with linen facings instead of their usual massive shields of laminated wood.