But the Coerli
ate
men, just as surely as men ate beef. That would've been sufficient reason to handle the problem in the fashion Carus wanted, if the catmen had balked at Garric's offer of trial by battle.
The Coerli shrieked louder. A Corl chieftain, the biggest catman Garric had thus far seen, swaggered out of the city. He paused just beyond the open gate leaves and, raising his maned head, bugled a menacing challenge of coughs and screams.
"I am Klagan!" the catman cried. Garric could hear the Corl even through the brazen cacophony of the royal army. "No one can stand against me!"
"
Wait and see, beast
," said Carus with murderous relish. "
You and your Council of Elders don't know what you're in for!
"
Carus'd been the ruler of Old Kingdom when it crashed into anarchy a thousand years before his distant descendant Garric was born. There'd never been a warrior the equal of Carus. If generalship and a strong sword arm could've preserved civilization, then the Old Kingdom would still be standing.
Kingship requires more than military might, though. The anger and furious drive that'd made Carus unstoppable on the battlefield were as much the cause of his kingdom's collapse as the rebels and usurpers springing up whenever the royal army was at a distance. Eventually a wizard had sucked Carus and his fleet to their doom in the depths of the Inner Sea; and because the wizard's trust in his power had been as deceiving as Carus' own, they'd drowned together in the cataclysm.
The wizard's death hadn't saved the kingdom, though. When death loosed the King's hand, chaos, blood, and burning had followed for all the islands. It'd taken a thousand years for civilization to return—and now the Change threatened to bring chaos in a different form.
The Elders know what's going to happen
, Garric said silently as he stretched, feeling his mail shirt ripple like water over the suede jerkin cushioning it.
I offered them an excuse to permit them to surrender, and they snapped it up. Otherwise every Corl in the Place will die, and they know that too
.
He chuckled aloud, then added,
Klagan may not know, of course
.
"
He will
," said Carus. "
Very soon he will
."
Garric stood ahead of the front ranks of his army by a double pace, the distance from the toe of a marching soldier's right foot to where that toe came down again—five feet by civilian measurement. The timber walls of the Place were only a hundred double paces away, suicidally close if they'd have been defended by humans with bows and catapults.
The Coerli were quick enough to dodge thrown spears and even arrows, so they'd never developed missile weapons for warfare. They didn't use them in hunting either; they ran down their prey, tangled it with weighted lines, and either slaughtered it immediately or drove it back to their keeps to keep it fresh for their females and kits.
The Coerli's preferred prey had been human beings until the Change. That wouldn't be the case for the catmen whom Garric and his government permitted to live in this new world.
"I am Klagan!" the Corl repeated. "Who dares to challenge me?"
"I am Garric, King of Men and Coerli!" Garric shouted. "Bow to me or die, Klagan!"
The chiefs of the Coerli were half again as heavy as the sexually immature warriors who made up the bulk of the male population. Even the chieftains were usually no more than the size of an average human male.
Klagan was an exception; but then, so was Garric. He'd been the tallest man in Barca's Hamlet by a hand's breadth and, though rangy, would've been the strongest as well were it not for his friend Cashel. Cashel was tall by normal standards, but he was so broad that he looked squat from any distance; and even for as big as he was, Cashel was disproportionately strong.
The Corl champion raised his mace and screamed. He started toward Garric with a springy step, which for a Corl showed unusual caution. Normally a catman would charge headlong, even though in this case it meant he'd be rushing into ten thousand human soldiers.
"I do not fear your weapons, beast!" Klagan shouted; which meant he did. He had reason to.
The Coerli didn't use fire and therefore didn't have metal. The stone head of Klagan's mace was the size of Garric's fist and the warrior's leather harness, the only garment he wore, held a pair of poignards. One was hard wood, while the other'd been ground from a human thigh bone. They were needle sharp, but they didn't have edges and they'd splinter on armor. In Klagan's left hand was a thirty-foot coil of tough vegetable fiber, weighted with a ball of sun-dried clay in which hooked thorns were set to snatch and tear.
"
And his teeth, lad
," Carus noted with the calm assurance of a warrior who never underestimated a foe, and who'd never failed to win his fight regardless. "
We'll not forget his teeth
."
"I don't need steel to kill you, Klagan!" Garric said. He lifted off his helmet, a work of art whose gilt wings flared widely to either side. He brandished it in the air, then set it on one of the pair of posts which a squad of his troops had hammered into the soil while the Coerli Elders deliberated on Garric's ultimatum. "You'll surrender or you'll die! Those are the only choices Coerli have in this world that humans rule!"
Garric unbuckled his heavy waist belt. The dagger sheathed on his right side partially balanced the sword on his left, but a thinner strap over his right shoulder supported the rest of the sword's weight. Keeping his eyes on the Corl, Garric pulled the harness over his head and hung it on the crossbar of the post already holding his helmet.
"What are you doing, beast?" Klagan called. "Have you come to fight me or not? I am Klagan! I fear no one!"
"I'll fight you, Klagan," Garric said. He gripped his mail shirt and lifted it off as well. He was tense, knowing he was blind during the moment that the fine links curtained his head. "And when I've killed you with my bare hands—"
He draped his mail over the other post. The links were alternately silvered and parcel gilt. Sunlight danced from them and from the polished highlights of his helmet, drawing the eyes of the watching catmen. Metal fascinated them beyond its practical uses; it cut deeper still into their souls.
"—then the Elders who sent you will see that no Corl can match a human warrior!"
"
That'd depend on the warrior, lad
," said the ghost in Garric's mind. "
But match you and me together—no, not a one of the beasts!
"
Klagan snarled, now in real anger rather than merely posturing before battle. The big chieftain had paused while Garric stripped off his equipment; now he came on again, grunting deep in his throat. Garric found that sound more menacing than the cutting shrieks of the warriors on the city wall.
Garric undid the fine-meshed net hanging from the sash of his light tunic and picked up the four-foot wand which leaned against the stake holding his helmet. He strode to meet the catman, grinning in nervousness and anticipation.
Of course
he was going to kill the Corl champion; he wouldn't have made this plan if he'd had the least doubt in the matter. But it was a fight, and Garric had been in a lot of fights. Whatever a fighter told himself, the only thing he could be really certain of was that
somebody
would lose . . . .
Garric set the net spinning before him. Its meshes were silk, close enough to tangle minnows and so fine that they looked like a shimmer of gnats in the light rather than a round of fabric. Lead beads weighted the edges. They were just heavy enough to draw them outward when Garric's hand in the center gave the net a circular twitch.
Klagan paused again and hunched, eyeing the net; he'd never seen one being used in a fight before. With another rasping snarl he came on again, but Garric noticed the Corl was edging to his left—away from the unfamiliar weapon. Garric changed his angle slightly to keep Klagan squarely in front of him.
Garric cut the air in a quick figure-8 with his wand. He was loosening his shoulders and also reminding his muscles of what the slim cudgel weighed.
He'd chosen wood to make a point to the watching Coerli, but this staff was cornel—dense and as dead to rebound as iron. A blow from a cornelwood staff crushed and broke instead of stinging. Garric's wand was little more than thumb thick, but only a strong man could break it over his knee—and he'd bruise his knee doing that.
"
He's getting ready, lad
. . .," Carus murmured. "
His cord'll spin around toward your right but he'll come in from the left
."
The two champions were within thirty feet of one another, but Garric could see nothing in Klagan's movements that seemed in the least different from what they'd been for the whole length of his approach. He didn't doubt the warning, though; Carus didn't make mistakes in battle.
Garric crossed his left arm before him, shifting the dance of silk to his right. For an instant it shone like a slick of oil in the air. Klagan leaped, not at Garric but toward the spot of ground at his side; the weighted tip of the Corl's line was already curving out. Garric jerked his net toward him while his right hand brought the wand around in an overarm cut.
Klagan was reacting before he hit the ground. He'd started a swing that would've crushed Garric's skull if the cornelwood staff hadn't been in the way; since the staff was, the big Corl recovered his mace and curved his body to avoid Garric's blow, moving with a speed no man could've equaled. His blunt-clawed feet snatched a purchase from the clay soil and launched him away at an angle more quickly than the staff swung.
Garric's net belled around the catman's cord, tangling the thorns and wrapping the line itself. The weight of the net pulled the cord harmlessly away from Garric.
Klagan landed ten feet away, his mace rising for another attack if his opponent had stumbled or were even off-balance. Garric dropped the net and jerked on the Corl's own line. Klagan bleated in surprise: he'd wrapped the end twice around his left wrist for a surer grip. Instead of trying to jump away like a harpooned fish, he leaped straight at Garric—
Gods but the beast's quick!
—to give himself slack so he could release the line.
Klagan met Garric's wand, still in the middle of the stroke Garric had started before the Corl first charged. The catman interposed his mace. Its bamboo shaft cracked and flew out of his hand. The cornel staff rapped Klagan's muzzle, breaking out a long canine tooth in a spray of blood.
Klagan slammed to the ground. Even injured and blind with pain he'd spun onto all fours to leap away when Garric landed knee-first on his back. Garric's weight crushed the Corl flat, driving his breath out in a startled blat.
Klagan scrabbled. Garric grabbed the thick mane at the top of the catman's head left-handed and pulled back. Instead of banging his face onto the dirt—perhaps painful, but pain didn't matter to either party in this fight—Garric punched his opponent's thick neck with his right fist.
Klagan's four limbs shot out convulsively. Garric struck again and heard the catman's spine crack. Klagan's head came back in his hand, the black tongue lolling from the corner of the jaws.
Garric tried to stand but slipped to his knees again; if he'd gotten up, he'd almost certainly have toppled full length. He was blind and dizzy with fatigue, and he was so weak that his legs couldn't hold him.
People ran to where he knelt, his guards and officers and Liane, the woman he loved. Liane wiped blood and sweat from his forehead with a damp cloth and said, "Darling, darling, are you all right?"
Garric opened his eyes. His stomach had settled; he'd thought for a moment that he was going to vomit with reaction to the fight.
"Get back," he muttered. Then, loudly and fiercely, "Give me room! By the Shepherd, give me room!"
They moved enough for him to stand. He wobbled, but only slightly; he'd caught himself even before Liane touched his arm in support.
"Elders of the Coerli!" Garric shouted in the catmen's language. "Come out and hear the laws you and your people will keep from now till the last breath you take! Come out before my army kills all Coerli as I killed this warrior!"
He spurned Klagan with his heel. The royal army shouted and cheered, but from the walls of the Place came only wailing.
* * *
"Princess Sharina, we're
so
pleased by your presence!" said the plump man wearing an ermine-trimmed red cloak, three gold chains, and a gold or gilt crown cast in the form of a laurel wreath. Lantern-light gleamed from his regalia and the sweat beading his forehead and ruddy cheeks. "No greater honor has ever been done the proud community of West Sesile."
"His title's Chief Burgess," said Mistress Masmon, one of the Chancellor's aides, into Sharina's ear. She was trying to speak loudly enough for Sharina to hear but still keep the words private from the chief burgess and the clutch of lesser officials standing just behind him. Bands were playing in three of the four corners of the town square and the whole community had turned out to celebrate. "His names Clane or Kane; I'm sorry, I can't read my clerk's notes. I'll have his nose cropped for this!"
If Sharina'd thought the threat was serious, she'd have protested. From the Chancellor's aide it was merely a form of words indicating that she was frustrated and over-tired. Everybody in the government was frustrated and over-tired, of course.
Sharina grinned. They'd been frustrated and over-tired dealing with one crisis after another for the past two years. The Change had made the problem only marginally worse when it tore everything apart.
Tenoctris said there'd be no further shifts for at least a thousand years. The future looked bright if the kingdom and mankind could survive the immediate present.
If.
"Thank you, Master K'ane," Sharina said, letting her amusement broaden into a gracious smile. She hoped her slurring would cover the uncertainty over the fellow's name. "Prince Garric regrets he was unable to attend the Founder's Day festival because of his duties with the army, but he begged me to convey his appreciation for West Sesile's demonstrated loyalty to the kingdom."