It took Sharina a few heartbeats to realize that, "Easy girl, easy," had been directed to the horse. Nervous from the smoke and perhaps other things-the hair on the back of Sharina's neck had begun to rise-the animal was threatening to run up the backs of the soldiers immediately in front of them on the narrow track. The hills framing Calf's Head Bay weren't high, but they were steep.
Three troops of Blood Eagles marched ahead of the gigs, and another troop brought up the rear. The soldiers were on foot but trotting along the rutted track double-time. Sharina hadn't thought that they could keep up the pace with three miles to cover, but with a few exceptions-men recently wounded and not fully recovered-they did. The royal bodyguards had been trained to be soldiers equal to any they might meet, not just a shiny black backdrop for the king on public occasions.
Sharina looked at the older woman. "I don't trust Cervoran," she said. "That means we can't trust Double either, if he's the same as his creator."
"They each have their own agendas," Tenoctris said, her eyes on the bay mare she was driving. "And as you say, their purposes aren't ours. But when I said Double was the same as Cervoran, I didn't mean they're allies. Double is as surely Cervoran's rival as each of them is opposed to the Green Woman. That gives us some...."
She let her voice trail off, then glanced at Sharina with a wry smile and went on, "I was going to say that it gives us some advantage, dear, but that isn't correct. It gives us a certain amount of hope, though."
Sharina laughed and squeezed her friend's shoulder. Despite the situation, she felt more comfortable than she had for longer than she could guess. She'd changed into a pair of simple tunics under a hooded military cape, and she wore the Pewle knife openly in its heavy sealskin sheath. At the moment, being able to move-and fight if necessary-was more important than impressing people with the majesty of the Princess of Haft.
The leading guards disappeared over the top of the ridge. A man shouted. Sharina touched her knife hilt, but the cry had been startlement rather than fear and there was no clash of weapons with it.
Tenoctris clucked the horse over the rise. They drove out of bright daylight into a dank gray mist and the smell of rotting mud; the change was as abrupt as going through a door. No wonder a soldier had called out in surprise.
"Hold up!" somebody called angrily. "Hold up! And by the Lady, what're civilians doing here!"
Tenoctris was already drawing the horse around to get the gig off the track. A Blood Eagle ran back to them and called, "Your highness? Lord Attaper says not to take the cart any closer, if you please."
Attaper was talking to-shouting at-one of Lord Waldron's aides. The topic probably involved the respect owed to Her Royal Highness Sharina, Princess of Haft. That wasn't fair: the mist blurred details, and she and Tenoctris really were civilians, after all.
"Milord Attaper!" Sharina said, jumping down from the gig while Tenoctris was still maneuvering it. "As I've heard my brother say, worse things happen in wartime. Where is Lord Waldron?"
And where's Liane, who'd be more forthcoming and probably more knowledgeable. Liane and the army commander were probably together; if not, Sharina could make further inquiries.
The shoreline and the barley field a hundred double-paces inland crawled with hellplants. Liane's estimate of three hundred seemed reasonable, but the gray undulations of mist prevented certainty.
A hundred fires burned on the curved plain below; some had dimmed to red glows. All had bodies of troops behind them. Through the swirling mist Sharina saw thirty men march forward carrying what'd been a full-sized fir tree, possibly one of those whose stumps grew in a circle where Tenoctris had halted the gig.
Under other circumstances the tree would've made a good battering ram. This one had a torch of oil-soaked fabric, probably a soldier's cloak, wrapped around the small end of the pole. On command, the troops slammed their weapon into a hellplant. The flames billowed, then sank beneath a gush of black smoke roiling from the point of contact.
The hellplant staggered back. Two of the tentacles that curled to wrap the pole shrivelled in the flame, but a third gripped closer to the men carrying the weapon. Squads of waiting infantry darted in and hacked the tentacle to green shreds.
Hellplants advanced with greasy determination on either side of their smoking fellow. The troops holding the pole retreated; the flame had sunk to a sluggish ghost of what it had been. Other soldiers came closer and threw hand torches which bounced off the barrel-chested plants. The creatures changed their course to avoid torches burning on the ground, but they continued to advance.
For a moment, the injured plant remained where it was, the wound steaming and bubbling thick fluids. Then that hellplant too advanced, though it was slower than its fellows.
Like trying to fight the sea, Sharina thought. Her guts were tight and cold.
"Your highness, my sincere apologies!" the aide said. "I didn't see-"
"Understood, Lord Dowos," Sharina said. The name had come to her unexpectedly, but at a particularly good time. "Now there are real problems. Where's Lord Waldron?"
"Lord Drian," Dowos snapped to one of the boys at his side to carry messages. Drian was probably Dowos' relative or the relative of some noble friend. "Lead her highness to the commander immediately."
To Sharina he added, "They're down by the pile of timber, your highness. Well, what used to be a pile. Most of it's been burned, I'm afraid."
The second gig pulled in beside the first. Double sat next to the driver, who was as stiff as the statues of the Lady and Shepherd which priests from Valles drew through the borough during the annual Tithe Procession.
Tenoctris joined Sharina, her arms over the shoulders of the two soldiers who were carrying her. Their shields were strapped to their back and they used their spears butt-down in their free hands as walking sticks. That wasn't necessary here, but it would be as they descended the slope which thousands of cleated boots had already chewed to slippery mud.
A third man, Trooper Lires, carried the satchel with the wizard's equipment in it. Sharina beamed at him and said, "I thought you'd been discharged wounded, Lires. After the fight in the temple in Valles."
The Blood Eagle grinned, delighted to be recognized. "Well, ma'am, I'm on light duty," he said. "But I figure a sword, that's not very heavy; and I guess Captain Ascor, you remember him, don't you? He felt the same way. Because he's here too."
In truth, she'd thought Lires had been killed in the wild slaughter while the guards protected Tenoctris as she closed the portal from which creatures would otherwise have overrun the Isles. It was amazing that a man could survive such serious wounds, but that he'd willingly return to the same dangers was more amazing yet.
Thank the Lady that men did. And thank especially the Shepherd and all the human shepherds, with their swords and their quarterstaffs and their courage.
Laughing in relief, Sharina followed the impatient Lord Drian, a thirteen-year-old who showed signs of growing out of his gold-inlaid armor. The situation was just as bad as it'd been when she was in despair a moment ago, but if ordinary men soldiered on cheerfully, how could their leader do less?
The slope wasn't as bad as Sharina'd feared, though she was glad Tenoctris was being carried. The mist smelled of salt and decay, like a tidal flat but worse. It didn't get thicker as she went down the way she'd expected, and the whorls and openings in it didn't seem to be connected with the light breeze off the water.
"Your highness!" Waldron said. "Your highness, I don't think this is a safe place for you. Though we're holding them at present, as you see."
"I've given directions in your name to Lord Tadai, your highness," said Liane in a cold, flat voice unlike her usual pleasant tones, "to scour building sites in Mona for quicklime and to start burning any limestone he can find. Marble statues as well."
"Will quicklime be more effective than using the same fuel in open flames, the way you're doing here?" said Sharina.
She kept her voice calm, but she couldn't help feeling a twinge of regret at the notion of statues being reduced to the caustic powder that was the basis of cement. The only statues in Barca's Hamlet had been simple wooden ones of the Lady and the Shepherd in the wall shrines of the better houses. Sharina's first view of lifelike humans carved in marble was a treasured memory of her arrival in Carcosa.
"We can use pots of quicklime in our ballistas," Waldron said. He nodded at Liane. "It was her idea. Stones don't do much, and we can't shoot firepots at full power or it blows out the flame through the air holes. Before now I haven't had much use for artillery except for sieges, and I haven't had much use for sieges either; but quicklime driven into those plants to where they're full of water, that'll take care of them!"
"Admiral Zettin is taking the ballistas from the ships and sending them here also," Liane said. "The problem's transport, getting enough wagons and baggage animals together in Mona Harbor."
Three fit-looking men in civilian tunics stood nearby, separate from the aides and couriers around Waldron. Lady Liane bos-Benliman was the kingdom's spymaster. She alone controlled the movements of the agents and received their reports. She'd based the operation on her father's banking and trading contacts, and she paid for it entirely out of her considerable personal wealth.
When something more than information gathering was needed, Liane had men-and perhaps women for all Sharina knew-to accomplish that too. The trio waiting here looked like they knew as much about weapons as any soldier.
In anybody else's hands, the spy apparatus would be a huge potential danger to the kingdom. Under Liane, it along with the army and Tenoctris were the three pillars on which Garric's rule rested.
And on which Princess Sharina's rule rested, for what Sharina hoped would be a very short time.
"Why can't the warships stand offshore and bombard the plants?" Sharina said. She frowned. "In fact, why weren't there warships here before the attack started? I'd have thought there'd be a squadron at least on the beach, it's so close to Mona."
"There's a mud bar at the mouth of the bay, your highness," said a young soldier Sharina didn't recognize. The short horsehair crest on his helmet was dyed blue, indicating he was one of the fleet officers under Admiral Zettin. "We're looking into dredging it so that warships could get through, but with the creatures swimming...."
"I see," said Sharina. She looked at Liane and Lord Waldron, feeling her guts freeze tightly again. "That means the person sending the hellplants knows the terrain, and knows at least something about war."
Double joined the group, helped by Lord Attaper himself. The guard commander had no expression as he withdrew his arm from the wizard's grasp.
Another time Attaper would be able to order one of his men to perform the service-because they'd seen him do it this once. Sharina knew that Attaper would rather face death than touch a wizard, but he'd done his duty regardless. Courage came in many forms.
"The Green Woman knows the shape of this world because she intends to rule it," Double said. "She will fail, because I will defeat her."
Waldron looked at Double with distaste, then said to Sharina, "Your highness, I've summoned a section of the phalanx from where they're billeted on the east coast. Ordinary spears don't do any good against the creatures, but I hope that the mass of long pikes will kill them, destroy them. Fire works to a degree, but there are so many of them that we're forced back when we attack one."
"I saw that," Sharina said. She took a deep breath. "What do you need from me?"
"Your highness?" said Liane in a careful voice. "I carry Prince Garric's signet, as you know, and I've been giving orders in what's now your name. If you acquiesce-"
"Yes," said Sharina, "I do. Lord Waldron, do you have any requests?"
"They've stopped coming out of the sea," Waldron said, getting to the question indirectly. "We can take care of the ones here in the bay if that's all there are. It'll cost men, but that's what an army's for."
"She will send more of her creatures," Double said. His voice was a sharper-and if possible, more unpleasant-version of Cervoran's own. "She will send her creatures till they have killed me, or I kill her, or weed stops growing in the sea, and the weed will never stop growing."
"Then we'll keep on killing them!" Waldron said. He was partly angry and partly afraid of the wizard; and because he hated fear, especially in himself, he was becoming more angry.
"Look at the land her creatures hold," said Double, stretching out his left arm toward the bay. "The sea swallows it down. Every day more hellplants will attack, and every morning this island will be smaller with fewer men to protect what remains. Only I can defeat the Green Woman!"
Sharina followed the line of the wizard's arm. Knots of soldiers battled hellplants with fire and their swords, trying to destroy the creatures by force of numbers before the lashing tentacles could destroy them all. Occasionally they succeeded, but the hills behind the plain echoed with despairing cries. Sharina saw bodies and body parts fly into the air.
Close to the shore... Double was right. Rows of barley were sinking into the marsh. Sharina had never seen Calf's Head Bay before, but she knew that even salt-resistant barley couldn't have grown with sea water gleaming in the furrows as it did now. The hellplants were a material enemy, but they weren't the only threat the Green Woman posed.