Mercadian Masques

Chapter 9

The stillness of the wood was broken by shouts.

Orim rose, dropping the herbs she had been washing in the lagoon. She ran frantically, her mouth open in wordless horror. Even as she fled across the mossy forest floor, she saw hellish figures break through the surrounding trees.

On scaly legs they bounded forward. Claws ate up the ground. Bloody arms grasped villagers. Fangs sank into sides, shoulders, and heads. More blood painted the inhuman monsters.

"Mercadians!" Orim shouted. "Bar your doors! The Mercadians have come!"

More beasts arrived, monstrosities with boar heads, scorpion tails, and snake teeth. They rode horrific, sixlegged tigers and bore swords and crossbows. As they filed into the clearing, the brutes hoisted their wicked bows.

"Left wing, pivot. Archers, loose!"

The battle commands, familiar and yet remote in Orim's memory, made her freeze. There was a whir from the line of beasts. Shafts streaked through the air to punch with deadly precision among the crowd of Cho-Arrim. The front ranks staggered and fell in disorderly rows. Tribesmen behind turned with a shout and hauled forth weapons, only to fall to a second volley of quarrels. Then came a third hail of deadly missiles.

Dimly, Orim heard Is-Shada shout something and run toward her.

Several of the crossbowmen pivoted toward the motion, bows at the ready.

Orim threw herself to the ground and felt the volley pass over her head.

Is-Shada ran across the clearing. Several of her playmates kept pace. She had almost reached Orim when an angry hiss sounded. Is-Shada stopped suddenly, staring at Orim. Two black-feathered shafts protruded from her chest and shoulder. She looked stupidly at them for a moment, and then fell face forward. Companions on either side caught her as she fell. One of them twisted and screamed in agony as a quarrel sprouted from her knee. She staggered and dropped Is-Shada, whose body bumped against Orim.

Orim wrapped the girl in her arms. The breath was already gone from Is-Shada's punctured lungs, the blood from her pierced heart.

Hands seized Orim and drew her away. She heard a voice shrieking and realized with astonishment that it was her own. Her lungs felt raw, her cheeks wet with tears.

"Is-Shada," Orim sobbed out, "O-reem 'stva o'meer. IsShada., O-reem 'stva o'meer."

Ta-Karnst's firm hand was on her elbow, and he pulled her rapidly back toward the lagoon and the complex of huts that extended over the water. Wordlessly, the two healers ran up the causeway. The wickerwork strained beneath their pounding feet.

Another volley of quarrels whizzed overhead. Orim looked up and caught her breath. Before her, a wrinkled old woman slowly sank to the wooden platform. Three quarrels bristled from her chest, and another had pierced her leg.

The healers reached her. "Don't move," Orim commanded harshly. "We'll get those things out of you."

The old woman's fierce brown eyes, seemingly all dark pupils, glared at her. "Svascho.' Traitor! You have betrayed us all! Rot forever in the Nine Circles!"

"No," whispered Orim. Then louder she cried, "No!"

The dying woman's face wrinkled up into a terrifying rictus meant as a smile. "You will never win, Svascho. We are Cho-Arrim. We are…" Her voice was drowned out by a stream of blood gushing from her mouth. Her old eyes clouded. Her head slipped sideways from Orim's lap.

"You must leave the dead," Ta-Karnst said urgently, "and tend the living-" He rushed off in the direction of fresh screams.

"Yes," Orim said, laying the old woman down gently.

A sudden cry came from a nearby hut. Is-Meisha stood in the doorway. In her arms was a tiny, wrapped bundle.

Orim raced up the causeway. A quarrel skimmed her leg and struck die wall. Ignoring it, Orim thrust the young mother back into the comparative safety of the hut. Another flight of quarrels smashed into the side of the structure. They were tipped with burning pitch. The forest was damp and would not easily burn, but the smoke would drive the Cho-Arrim from their huts. Already, the fire spread.

At her wits' end, Orim slammed her shoulder against the rear wall of the hut. The thick grass reeds swayed and bent. Orim struck the wall twice more and then, casting her eyes about the smoke-filled room, saw a thin stone knife lying near the empty cooking pot. She grasped it, slashing at the reeds. They yielded, and in a few moments she had a hole carved in the wall, overlooking the water.

"Come on," she gasped. "Through there, quick, or we'll suffocate."

"My baby," Is-Meisha wailed. As if in sympathy, the baby had begun crying.

"You'll have to swim," Orim said, panting. "Come on! You can do it. It's your only chance." There was a shout from below. A reed canoe passed beneath her, packed with tribesmen. "Hey," Orim called.

The paddler looked up. "Orim!"

"Wait." She bodily dragged Is-Meisha to the opening. "Look. You can go in the canoe. But hurry."

The paddler shook his head. "No. We will sink. There is another close behind. Take that one." He bent forward for another stroke.

Is-Meisha, with a shriek, stumbled to her knees. A bolt protruded from her chest. The quarrel had also pierced the baby's arm, and the child added her wail to her mother's dying gasps.

Orim tore the bloodied baby from Is-Meisha's arms and thrust it at the paddler. "Take the child!"

He did. "Where is Ta-Spon?"

Orim shook her head. "I do not know."

One of the other men in the canoe turned back. "Ta-Spon is

…" He stopped, and Orim could see the unspoken words in his eyes. "He fell in the front lines, along with the archers and skyscouts and wizards. Along with Cho-Manno."

Orim reeled, almost falling through the gap. "No… he isn't…"

The canoe was already beyond reach of her words. Its paddlers propelled it rapidly away from the burning village.

Orim dropped to her knees and clutched the ragged opening in the side of the hut. All around her, flames crackled. One wall of the hut was a solid mass of fire. Smoke stung her eyes and raked her throat raw. She didn't care.

"Cho-Manno is dead…"

Surrounded by killing fire, she felt only his warm arms around her. Despite roars and screams, she heard only his tender words in her ears. Through blinding smoke, she saw his smiling face, lit by the Fountain of Cho-by belief in the Uniter…

"Cho-Manno is dead…"

If Mercadian monsters filled the forest, Weatherlight was lost to them. The Uniter was lost. And if Cho-Manno lay dead in the woods, Orim would lie dead just here.

"Cho-Manno, Orim 'stva o'meer."

Aback a new Jhovall, Gerrard and Takara rode into the clearing and saw the atrocities performed by the caterans. "How could they…?"

Women and children-human women and children-lay slaughtered everywhere. There were hundreds torn apart by cateran claws and fangs, pinned to ground by cateran quarrels, burned alive by cateran torches. Human flesh like so much refuse, human blood like so much sewage… Already the flies were gathering. The nearest corpses were missing hands, ears, scalps-trophies gathered. Surely those visceral cuts could only be for cateran blood rites.

"How could they…?" Gerrard repeated, white-faced.

"The Cho-Arrim were human after all," Takara hissed.

Sisay rode up behind, turned in the saddle, and vomited.

"A massacre," Tahngarth gasped.

The survivors of the Mercadian Fifth Regiment flooded into the space as well.

Takara spoke a dread whisper in Gerrard's ear. "You ordered them to do this, Gerrard. You ordered the caterans to kill everything between you and Weatherlight. They followed your orders. Unknowing, you killed every man, woman, and child in this clearing."

"It must stop!" Gerrard shouted, standing in the saddle. "Forward, all of you. Fight the caterans. Kill them, if you must. Stop the massacre!"

Orim was nearly dead in smoke and flame when she felt ChoManno's hands upon her. She could not have spoken to him. Her lungs were suffused in smoke. Nor could she see him, but his rescuing arms were sure as they wrapped her and lifted her and carried her alive from the pyre. He strode from the oven-hot room and across wicker causeways.

Orim's eyes streamed, unseeing, beneath her turban and coin-braided hair. She clung to him, coughing poison from her lungs.

Then, they were clear, on shore. He laid her down on scorched reeds. The sounds of battle receded. The distant fighting slowly died.

"You're… alive," Orim choked out, her eyes swimming.

"You're alive," came the glad response. The voice was not Cho-Manno's. It was a woman's-strong and familiar.

"Sisay?" gasped Orim.

"Yes!" Sisay said, laughing happily. "Yes, it's me!"

Rubbing tears from her eyes, Orim said, "What are you… what are you doing here?"

"We came to rescue you," Sisay replied as she daubed a cloth at Orim's eyes. "And to get Weatherlight."

A look of dread crossed Orim's features. Her face went very white. "You came… with Mercadians… with those killing… monsters?"

Sisay's eyes darkened. "Yes. But we didn't know about all of this. We thought the Cho-Arrim were the monsters. Even now, Gerrard is calling off the caterans. He even killed a few that wouldn't stop fighting."

Teeth gritting, Orim sat up at last. "Gerrard. I should have known…" Eyes at last clear, she struggled to stand. "Take me to him."

"You're too weak," Sisay objected.

Orim wrenched her arm free, disproving the objection.

"All right. All right. I'll take you."

Weatherlight's captain and her healer walked arm in arm across the battlefield. The dead lay all around. With shame and despair, Sisay's eyes traced out shattered skulls and punctured hearts. Orim's eyes were full of death too, but they overflowed with tears of loss and fury. Scorch marks covered the sides of trees. Huts on the lagoon burned. Dead floated in the dark waters.

At least-at last-there were no more roars, no more screams.

Ahead, Weatherlight's deck swarmed with Mercadians and caterans. They had lashed the ship to shore, tossed off the scaling vines, and positioned a makeshift gangplank to one side. The vessel was well guarded. Even now, Tahngarth and Takara followed a cateran enforcer below decks.

On the nearby shore stood another familiar figure: Gerrard. He stared at his ship. His face was battle-scarred and weary, but he bore the look of a man seeing an old friend. As Orim and Sisay approached, Gerrard turned, and his glad look deepened. "Orim. You're alive! It's so good to see you!"

"Kravchak!" she hissed. "I wish I weren't alive. I would gladly die if I could bring back all the people you slaughtered today!"

"Orim?" Gerrard asked wonderingly.

The healer glared at him. Her eyes were dancing with sparks. "Look at what you have done, Gerrard. Look who you have brought with you." She gestured to the Mercadians and caterans, who stood watching her curiously.

"We came to rescue you, to recover the ship. What's the matter with you? I thought you'd be glad to see us. I thought"

"You thought nothing! You're just like them. You only take things! You never give! Instead, you take and take, and always with the point of a sword! What about Is-Shada? Is-Meisha? TaSpon? And all the others?" She gestured to where a few of the Mercadian soldiers were still piling corpses. "What about ChoManno?" Her voice caught, and then she recovered herself. "They paid the price for your greed."

"Orim, I don't understand…"

"No, of course not! How could you? You've never made an effort to understand anything."

"All right, that's enough!" Gerrard shouted. "A massacre occurred here today. An atrocity. I gave the order that set it off, yes, but as soon as I found out what was happening, I put an end to it. I didn't come for massacre. I came to rescue you and Weatherlight-"

"You don't even know what that ship is! You don't even know the power it has. You've spent all your life running from your Legacy, but now, when someone else finds the true worth of it, you come with swords and monsters to take it back?"

"I'm sorry for what happened here," Gerrard said contritely. He looked out over the fields of dead. "I am very sorry. But I didn't declare this war. These folk stole my ship, and I came to get it back."

"The ship is secure," said a new voice. So intent had the argument been that Gerrard and Orim had not noticed the approach of a four-armed cateran enforcer and his henchmen. The creature was crimson from his knobby head to his taloned feet. Only his fangs remained white, and they smiled gruesomely. "Per your orders."

"Thank you, Xcric," Gerrard replied coolly. "Just now, I'm in the middle of something." He turned back toward Orim.

"Yes, you are," the cateran hissed. He seized Gerrard's wrists and locked shackles over them.

Gerrard spun in sudden shock. "What is this?"

"You are under arrest, Commander," Xcric said, grinning.

Sisay reached for her sword, only to have shackles snap closed over her wrists too. A whole party of cateran enforcers surrounded them.

"Arrest? And what is the charge?"

"Murder of those in your command," Xcric said. "You ordered the Mercadian guard to attack my forces. You yourself killed two of my soldiers."

"This is ludicrous," Gerrard growled. Orim was also imprisoned now. Aboard Weatherlight, Tahngarth and Takara stood, similarly chained. "You have no authority-"

"On the contrary, the magistrate himself hired me and my band. He anticipated such treachery from you. I am empowered to imprison you and your coconspirators and press into service whatever Cho-Arrim wizards and workers are needed to convey Weatherlight back to Mercadia. Now, I am finished with you. Take him to the Jhovall corral."

Gerrard struggled against the caterans that dragged him away. "You can't take my ship! The magistrate can't renege on the deal."

Xcric smiled. "He does not renege. You bargained for troops to regain your ship. You did not bargain for the ship itself."

Guards pushed Takara and Tahngarth up beside Sisay and Orim. Together, the bridge crew of Weatherlight staggered in chains across the field of the dead.

Takara's red hair gleamed with firelight. She said bitingly, "I knew it had been too easy. Nothing here is as it seems."

Book II