Free The Mirror of Worlds by Drake David Page A

stared up at him, his lips drawn back.
    "Never doubt that if the Coerli break their oath, they will have men for conquerors," Garric said. "But those conquerors will have no more mercy than the Coerli themselves would have. There will be nothing left of your keeps but ashes drifting over the bones of your dead!"
    " Garric and the Kingdom! " Waldron shouted, drawing his own sword and holding it aloft.
    "Garric and the Kingdom!" cried the Blood Eagles, clashing their spears against the bronze bosses of their shields. "Garric and the Kingdom!"
    Garric stepped down. "Lord Attaper," he said, putting his lips close to the guard commander's ear flap. "March us out!"
    The massed Coerli warriors stood in sullen silence, but no one objected as the human delegation stamped and splashed its way through the muck of the catmen's only city. Garric sheathed his sword as he stepped out of the Assembly Field, but the Blood Eagles continued to cheer and rattle their weapons all the way to the gate.
    * * *
    "Big fella, isn't he?" Karpos said, straightening and backing against a pilaster. He hadn't drawn his bow, but the broad point of his arrow was pointed at the spine of the man on the floor.
    "Yes, he is," Ilna said tartly as she knelt beside the stranger. Though there was nothing overtly threatening in Karpos' tone, Ilna knew that a big man looking at another big man is always thinking about a fight. Her brother Cashel had generally been the biggest man in a gathering . . . .
    The stranger groaned again. His face was turned slightly toward her; his moustache quivered as he breathed, and he had a short black beard as well. She'd guess he was about forty—old enough for a peasant, but this one hadn't been a peasant. His hair and nails were neatly trimmed, and his skin was smooth except for the scars—a cut above the right eye, a trough in the right forearm that could've been made either by a blade or a claw, and a puckering from a sharp point below the left shoulder blade.
    A hard smile touched Ilna's mouth: this one was a warrior. She guessed that if she rolled him over, she'd find the mate to the pucker somewhere in his upper chest where the point'd gone in. Why he lay here naked and unconscious while the priests outside had died fighting the catmen was a question to ask as soon as the fellow could speak.
    "Karpos, get some water," Ilna said. "I don't see any injury but there's something wrong with him."
    "Asion!" Karpos shouted to his partner. "We found somebody! Fetch us water!"
    Ilna frowned but didn't object. The hunters were her companions, not servants. Karpos was afraid to leave her alone with the stranger. His concern was misplaced, but it was a harmless mistake.
    Ilna only wished that her own mistakes had all been so harmless. If she hadn't made a particularly bad mistake, she'd have a better reason to exist now than the hope of killing every catman in the world; though killing catmen seemed to be enough.
    The floor of this temple was of simple stone flags instead of the designs in tile or mosaic that she'd seen elsewhere. The stranger brushed them with his palms, feeling for a purchase. His eyes remained closed.
    "Here!" said Asion, striding swiftly out of the sunlight with a dripping mass in his left hand; the knife in his right pointed toward the ground, not a threat but assuredly ready for any trouble that arose. "I didn't see a gourd around so I soaked some cloth in the fountain."
    "Off one of the bodies?" his partner said. "You're no better than a dog sometimes, you know, Asion?"
    "Hey, I cut off the skirt," Asion said defensively. "There wasn't any blood on that part. Who's the guy?"
    Ilna took the sodden linen from the hunter. She was more than a little inclined to agree with Karpos, but Asion had done what'd been requested. Since she hadn't told him what means to use, she had no right to complain about how he did it.
    While she considered whether to daub the corner of the stranger's mouth or perhaps to mop his brow, he