Goddess of the Ice Realm (43 page)

“Getchin is a fool,” Syl said distinctly. “To believe
he
has any chance, I mean.”

The toad laughed. The boat lifted, jerking forward with a wobbly violence like a skiff rowed by an angry man. Someone on the ground cheered, and then the whole crowd was shouting, “Lord Cashel!” and “Long live the wizard Cashel!”

Syl smiled faintly. Her eyes looked through Cashel, not at him.

The boat slanted upward till it was about a furlong above the ground. It steadied too; they trembled a little when Cashel turned his head to look around, but nothing serious.

He half-expected Getchin to say something anyway, but the fellow just stood there in the stern with his crystal rod held out crossways like a rope walker using a balance pole. He didn't seem to notice Cashel—or Syl, either one.

“At the beginning of the First Cycle. . .” Evne said. She sounded like one of the priests reading the Hymn of the Lady to the assembled borough at the end of the Tithe Procession. “A moon fell to earth. Its impact formed a great bowl surrounded by ranges of mountains.”

“What do you mean,
the First Cycle?”
Syl asked, looking at the toad on Cashel's left shoulder.

“This is the Seventeenth Cycle,” Evne said. “I can't imagine why you would ask, except to satisfy intellectual curiosity . . . which rather surprises me, given the source.”

Syl smiled at her. “Thank you, Mistress Toad,” she said. “Pray continue.”

“The manors are built on the peaks,” Evne said. “The streams that flow inward drain into the bowl and form a swamp because there's no outlet. More than water sinks toward the center and collects, so human arts aren't sufficient to allow the airboats to fly into the swamp. You will go on foot from the edge, master.”

“There's power in the air above the Great Swamp, Lord Cashel,” Syl said. “Our boats rise or fall or simply come apart if they venture there. . . . But of course there's no reason to go there at all.”

“There's no reason to leave the manor!” Getchin snarled. Lapsing into a desperate whine he added, “Oh,
why
did this happen to me?”

“One answer might be that it spared some useful person from discomfort,” said Evne. “Though I don't expect that that's true.”

Cashel smiled. When he noticed that Syl was smiling also, at him, he blushed.

Clearing his throat he said, “But the Visitor flies there?”

“The Visitor does as he wills,” Evne agreed. “Or so he has always done.”

They'd risen considerably higher. Cashel could see the ridges curving beneath him the way ripples spread on a pond. There wasn't enough forest to color the general gray
rock background, but creeks glittered jaggedly. On more peaks than Cashel could count with his fingers stood manors built of a variety of gleaming materials.

Several of them were in ruins. The manors had no enemy except the Visitor, but he seemed sufficient.

A sea of fog rose over the ridge ahead. “The Great Swamp,” Evne said. “You'll find the air there warmer, master. A great deal of power has settled in the basin.”

“There's monsters in the swamp,” Syl said. “Sometimes the mist clears and they've been seen. But you slew the dragon of Portmayne, Lord Cashel. You don't fear monsters, do you?”

Cashel smiled. “I don't guess I do,” he said. Maybe it was bragging to say that, but he wasn't going to lie; and anyway, Syl was a pretty thing in her way.

“I'm setting us down,” Getchin said in a hoarse voice. “I don't dare go any closer. It isn't possible!”

“Not for him, at any rate,” Evne said with an audible sniff. “But this is good enough, master. The ground here on the south edge of the basin is firmer than that to the east and north, though there's little enough to choose.”

The boat slid downward and past the tops of trees clinging to cracks in the rock. There were hardwoods here, oaks and beeches, and down on the valley floor grew a few tall, straight-trunked trees with shiny, oval leaves and big flowers.

Ahead was a patch of warm mist. They drove into it, slowed, and set down on a plain of pulpy grasses. There were low banks a stone's throw to either side. The trickle meandering down the center of the plain must be a roaring freshet in the spring.

“All right, get out,” Getchin said, standing with his wand upright before him.
“Please,
Mas . . . that is, Lord Cashel. It's not safe here!”

Cashel rose and stepped out of the boat. Though it rested on a narrow keel, it didn't topple over the way an ordinary ship would do if the tide left it on dry ground. He wondered how they made it do that.

“Wait,” said Syl, getting out behind him. She untied her
hair ribbon, a pale green color like the middle band of the rainbow. Cashel had never seen cloth of that shade before.

“Syl, we mustn't—” Getchin whined.

“Shut up, you fool!” said Syl, stretching the ribbon between her hands. Evne laughed from Cashel's shoulder.

“Lord Cashel,” the girl said. “Stretch out your left arm, if you would be so good.”

“Ma'am. . . ?” said Cashel, but he obeyed. Syl looped the ribbon over his sleeve above the biceps and tied it into a quick square knot. It wasn't tight around his arm, but the friction of cloth to cloth would hold it against his tunic unless things got too active . . . as of course they might.

“I'd like you to wear this token as you go forward,” Syl said. “In memory of Manor Bossian, let us say. It shouldn't get in your way.”

Cashel frowned. “It's likely to get lost, mistress,” he said. “I'll have other things on my mind, and—”

“Then it gets lost!” Syl said. “It's only a ribbon, after all. But you'll wear it till then?”

“I guess I will, yes,” Cashel said. “Evne, I think we'd best—”

“Am I holding you up, master?” the toad snapped. “Are you waiting for me to pick you up and walk off with you?”

“Right,” muttered Cashel as he turned, giving his quarterstaff a slow spin. Glancing back over his shoulder, being careful not to meet Syl's eyes, he said, “Thanks for carrying me this far. I hope things go well for you.”

He started off, walking faster than he'd usually have done. He didn't want any more conversation. He heard Getchin ask Syl to get back into the boat—and her snarl at him in a voice like an angry cat.

But she didn't call to Cashel, and he was just as happy about that. He wouldn't have answered, but he wouldn't have been happy not to.

“Atten-
shun!
” bellowed a voice with the twanging accent of Northern Ornifal as Garric walked into courtyard of the barracks of the 4th Company of the Carcosa City Watch. A
squad of Blood Eagles was in front of him, another squad behind, and the remainder of the demi-company had taken key positions in the barracks before Lord Attaper would permit Garric's visit to go ahead.

“Permit!”
snorted Carus in Garric's mind.
“Every bodyguard is born an old lady, it seems to me.”

Perhaps,
thought Garric.
But it's generally easier to go along with them, and in this case Attaper may have a point.

Liane walked primly to his left. A Blood Eagle—one of
her
guards—was a pace behind her, carrying the traveling desk with her documents. The guards had explained that they'd rather carry the gear themselves than worry about a servant being that close, and everybody from Liane on down had insisted that Prince Garric couldn't do servants' work in public.

“Generally easier to go along with them,”
Carus parroted back with a gust of laughter.

“Your highness!” shouted the commander, a former cavalry decarch named Pascus or-Pascus. “The Fourth Company is all present to receive you!”

Garric smiled faintly. Normally the report would've been, “All present or accounted for,” because there were always men on sick leave or detached service. Not today: every man on the muster rolls of the newly-constituted company was here to greet their prince.

“Some of them look like they'll be on their backs in bed as soon as you've left the compound, though,”
Carus noted with amusement. That was true enough, and their commander himself had a febrile brightness that suggested he was still suffering from his injuries.

Pascus had been among the first troopers to batter their way through the back wall of the Temple of the Mistress in Donelle; he'd lost half his left foot in the fighting there. His family had been retainers of Lord Waldron's family for as far back as parish records went, but even without the army commander's enthusiastic recommendation Pascus would've been an obvious choice for promotion to a job in the City Watch.

“Captain Pascus,” Garric said, “tell your men to stand easy.”

His voice rang across the courtyard loudly enough that Liane winced. Garric hadn't learned to call orders through the clangor of a battlefield the way Carus had, but a shepherd shouts most of the time if he expects to be heard by another human being.

“Stand easy!” Pascus ordered, just as loudly. “Your prince will address you!”

Until the morning before, these barracks had been the stables and servants quarters of one of the private houses owned by the priesthoods—the priests of the Lady, as it happened, but it made Garric's blood boil to attach Her name or the Shepherd's either one to gangs of thugs. Lord Anda had donated the buildings to the kingdom on behalf of his priesthood; without protest, which was just as well.

A part of Garric and the whole of King Carus wanted to hang the man whose gift had snatched Sharina away to the-Shepherd-knew-where. It wasn't entirely fair to blame Anda for that, because the urn wasn't really his gift—but that same part of Garric wasn't in a mood to be fair, either.

The buildings were easy to come by. Filling them with men who'd act to defend the law and the citizenry rather than this or that individual who believed wealth and strength made them the law—that was more difficult. The process had brought Garric here to the northern corner of the city.

Garric stepped through the line of Blood Eagles and surveyed the new members of the City Watch. The members of the new City Watch, in fact; Carcosa hadn't had a public force to maintain order since the fall of the Old Kingdom.

“You men haven't worked together before,” Garric said. He wore his silvered breastplate and the helmet with the gilt wings flaring to either side. This was a public occasion, one on which his job was to be
seen.
“You're starting out with fresh companions and officers to protect the safety of all the residents of this city. Not just the rich ones, not just the ones who can afford to hire muscle . . . though them too, so long as they're behaving as good citizens.”

The company was lined up in four ranks of twenty-five men each. They wore linen cuirasses and protective head-gear, though there hadn't been time to standardize that as yet. For the most part they were in iron caps confiscated
from the temple thugs, but some men wore leather hats and those who came from the army—Pascus among them—had generally kept their bronze helmets.

“You don't work for me,” Garric said, his voice echoing. “You don't work for the Vicar of Haft, either, though your salaries will be paid through his office. And you particularly don't work for an individual nobleman anymore, those of you who used to be in private households.”

The City Watch—the whole body, not just this company, though Liane had seen to it that the individual companies were widely mixed also—came from assorted backgrounds. Some—including all those who started out with rank in the new organization—were former soldiers from the royal army who'd been pensioned for age or wounds or who simply wanted to retire. Many of those would be abandoning families on Ornifal or elsewhere, but right now Garric and the kingdom had more pressing problems.

Others had been members of Count Lascarg's household troops, but most were former retainers of the city's noble families. King Carus smiled broadly.
“If I'd had a fellow as clever as your Lord Tadai,”
he remarked, “
I might not've gotten myself in so much trouble by solving all my troubles with a sword. Though I'd probably have thrown a table at him for disagreeing with me and he'd have left. The Shepherd knows I did that often enough;
that
or worse.”

Liane had drawn up the rosters with the help of her spies and a group of noncoms seconded from the royal army and the Blood Eagles both; Lords Waldron and Attaper had checked the results. She'd suggested that households be limited to four bodyguards apiece to create an immediate pool of personnel for the Watch.

Lord Tadai had suggested a refinement: anyone appearing in public with more than four male attendants between the ages of eighteen and forty-five was taxed at the rate of a hundred gold Riders per man, per year, payable immediately. After that had been enforced—reasonably politely, but with the royal army stationed in Carcosa there wasn't going to be resistance—a few times, the nobles had released most of their guards. If you couldn't display them in public, there wasn't any point in having them.

“You serve the citizens,” Garric said. “Everyone who wants to live in peace with his neighbors. Your job is to make it possible for them to do that—and my job is the same as yours!”

Each watchman had a sturdy three-foot club of oak or hickory. They weren't quarterstaffs, but they weren't mere batons of office either. A quarterstaff was a wonderful weapon—a wonderful
tool
—in trained hands, but training took time, and even so it was awkward to use in a building or a narrow alley.

Besides clubs, the watchmen carried short, slender swords like those of the troops of the royal phalanx. The phalanx used long pikes as its primary weapon, but at close quarters or in an ambush the men had their blades. Carcosa was too dangerous a city at present for Garric to expect men to patrol it with a club and a rattle to summon good citizens to their aid.