The dwarf must die, Tamar replied simply. Finish him, or there will be more accidents.
“No!” Rikus cried.
He turned and charged away, leaving behind Caelum, Neeva, and another dozen dazed survivors. In front of him, a pair of Urikites called upon Hamanu’s magic, then each hurled a glowing pebble in his direction. The stones streaked straight at the mul, trailing flames and smoke.
Rikus’s stomach knotted with fear, and he let out a panicked bellow. Although the mul had worn the Belt of Rank through enough battles to know its enchantment would protect him from normal arrows, he had no idea whether it would shield him from the fiery missiles now streaking at him.
The rocks struck him square in the midsection and exploded. The impacted knocked the mul off his feet, hurled him a dozen steps backward, then dropped him roughly to the street. His breath blasted from his lungs and a sharp pain shot though his back. Rikus opened his mouth to scream, then choked on the stench of sulfur as a storm of golden fire erupted less than a foot over his face.
As the yellow blaze roiled above him, the mul feared he was going to burst into flames himself. The inferno vaporized his robe and seared his bronzed skin. Rikus closed his eyes against the brillant glare, convinced that they would never open again.
Nevertheless, the glow died away a mere instant later, and the mul was surprised to find that he remained completely conscious. His back ached from his tailbone to his neck, his body stung as though it had been scrubbed raw with a whetstone, and the inside of his lungs burned from breathing hot, sulfurous air. To Rikus, the pain hardly mattered. If the belt had not protected him from all the effects of the blasts, it had at least stopped the fire rocks from penetrating his flesh and erupting inside his body.
Roaring his battle cry, the mul resumed his charge. The stunned Urikites barely managed to raise their crossbows before Rikus reached the thorn barrier. He threw himself over head-first. As he somersaulted through the air, he swung his sword at the nearest templar and separated the woman’s head from her shoulders. He landed in a rolling fall and lashed at a pair of legs concealed beneath a yellow robe, then shouted in pain as his wounded shoulder rolled over the hard stones paving the street.
Rikus came up dizzy, his vision blurred and his mind numbed in agony. It did not matter, for he was now fighting on instinct and rage. Something yellow moved in front of him. He swung his sword, and it collapsed to the ground.
A foot scraped the stones at his back. The mul tucked the blade under his armpit and thrust it backward. A Urikite screamed and died.
“In the name of Haman—”
Rikus’s foot drove the air from the man’s lungs in midsentence, smashing several ribs over his heart. The templar fell, clutching his chest.
For a moment, the mul could not find the last templar, then heard a frightened woman’s labored breathing as she fled down the street. Shifting the Scourge to his bad arm, Rikus pulled a dagger from the belt of the man he had just killed. Calmly, he turned and threw it.
The blade disappeared between the woman’s shoulder-blades, sending her sprawling face-first onto the ground.
A loud crack sounded from the other side of the thorn wall. Rikus looked over his shoulder in time to see the orange-white tail of a fiery whip lash down on the barricade. It cut a smoking swath through the hedge, then Neeva and a handful of gladiators poured through the gap.
“Rikus, are you hurt?” demanded Neeva, rushing over to him.
“I’m well enough,” the mul answered, inspecting himself. Other than his reddened skin, he found no sign of fresh injury.
“What happened?” Neeva asked. “It was like you went mad!”
Though the mul did not know whether she referred to the attack on Caelum or the leap over the barricade, he nodded. “I think I did,” Rikus answered. “But it’s too late to worry about that now. How’s the dwarf?”
“He’ll survive,” she replied. “He’s waiting with the others. I didn’t want him coming through until …”
When she let the sentence trail off, Rikus finished it for her. “Until you found out whether I was going to murder him.”
“Yes,” Neeva said. “What’s wrong with you? Back in Makla, you agreed he might not be the spy, and now you’re trying to kill him—even when it’s clear he’s a great help!”
“I told you to leave him with Jaseela,” Rikus snapped. The mul turned, then added, “Bring him through, but make sure he stays away from me.”
“We won’t have to worry about that,” Neeva answered.
She waved the rest of the survivors past the gap. As the stepped through, each gladiator glared at the mul as though he were some sort of monster.
Caelum brought up the rear. With one hand, he clutched his chest where Rikus had kicked him. In the other, he held a coiled whip of crackling fire. The lash was made of three distinct flames, one red, one white, and one yellow, all braided together in a single tail. Its bone handle glowed red with blazing heat. From the grimace on Caelum’s face and the pain in his eyes, the mul could tell that holding it caused the dwarf great pain.
“Tell him to set fire to anything he can with that thing.” Rikus said, pointing at the whip. “The more the Urikites have to worry about, the better.”
With that, he turned and led the way toward the wall, keeping a careful watch for another templar ambush. They soon reached a ramp leading to the top of the city walls. It ran beneath a small tower, with a portcullis of thick mekillot ribs blocking the way. A dozen arrow loops overlooked the approach ramp, and in each one Rikus saw a Urikite with a crossbow.
At the top of the walls, the archers were all firing into the cul-de-sac is front of the slave gate. Rikus could hear men and women screaming on the other side, and he knew that Jaseela had arrived with the rest of the army. If he didn’t reach the top of the wall and do something about the archers, his legion would be slaughtered.
“Neeva, wait here until I breach the gate,” Rikus ordered. He pointed at the arrow loops in the side of the tower. “In the meantime, see if Caelum can’t do something about the Urikites inside the tower.”
“What are you doing?”
Rikus didn’t want to explain the rest of his plan, for he knew it would be obvious once he put it into action. Instead, he rushed across the short distance separating him from the portcullis. The crossbows clacked. Instinctively, the mul dodged, though he knew his belt would provide far better defense than his reflexes. Most of the bolts missed and clattered against the stone pavement, and several more glanced off his belt or simply stuck in the heavy girdle.
Caelum’s whip cracked over Rikus’s head. Then the mul smelled the caustic stench of charred flesh. A man screamed, and Rikus shuddered. The searing that he had suffered earlier still caused him enough pain that he could not stop himself from thinking of the dying man’s agony. The dwarf’s whip cracked again.
Rikus reached the gate and began hacking at the mekillot ribs. The magical blade bit deeply each time, and within moments he had torn away the first one and was working on the second. Caelum’s whip continued to pop over his head, and soon smoke was spilling out of the tower in black clouds.
Finally, Rikus cut away the third rib and stepped through the portcullis, motioning for Neeva and the others to follow. As he passed beneath the tower, he paused for a moment to look up into the murderholes lining the ceiling of the arch. When the mul saw no sign of anything except flames and smoke, he continued to the other side of the tower and waited for his companions.
They caught up to him a moment later, then he led the way up the ramp at their best pace. As they neared the top, a handful of archers appeared along the wall and began firing. Neeva and the others had to stop and take shelter along the base of the wall, but Rikus continued forward. Several arrows hit him in the belt, then Caelum cracked his whip, searing one of the archers completely in half.
The mul leaped onto the wall and a pair of archers moved forward to meet him with their swords. Rikus finished them with an
effortless parry and two quick slashes, then moved on to attack the next Urikites in line. They took their bows and fled, screaming for help.
Now that the way was clear for his companions, Rikus rushed over the wall and cut down an archer. He saw that he and his small group of gladiators had emerged at the outer end of the battlements, overlooking the front edge of the cul-de-sac before the slave gate. All down the line, archers stood every four to five yards, firing down onto the causeway below.
There, hundreds of warriors—gladiators, dwarves, quarry slaves, even templars—lay scattered upon the road, their blood spread across the white stones in puddles. More of Rikus’s legion were pouring into the cul-de-sac with each moment, only to meet a hail of dark shafts that struck them down in waves. Despite the heavy losses, a constant stream of men and women reached the gate and hurried through to the boulevard beyond.
“For Tyr!” Rikus yelled, lifting his sword.
The warriors looked up and, when they saw the mul standing along the wall, echoed his cheer. “For Tyr!” They pressed toward the gate with renewed vigor, oblivious to the rain of arrows being showered down upon them.
Rikus rushed the wall, screaming a battle cry at the top of his lungs. The next archer in line turned to face him, swinging his empty bow at the charging gladiator. The mul ducked the blow, then drove the Scourge of Rkard through the Urikite’s heart. He kicked the man’s body off his red-dripping blade and started toward his next victim.
Neeva rushed to his side and wrapped her arms around the mul’s shoulders. “Wait,” she said. “Caelum has a faster way.”
His bloodlust already stirred, Rikus tried to break away. Neeva, however, gripped the mul’s sore shoulder and stopped him. “Let him try.”
Caelum stepped foreward and threw his whip to the ground. It seemed to come alive, shooting down the wall like a snake. When it passed the first archer, a tongue of crimson flame lashed out and left a smoking hole in the back of the man’s leg. After the snake passed, a yellow flame spewed out of the puncture and transformed the Urikite into a pillar of flame.
When the snake slithered to the next archer and repeated the attack, the third man in line noticed what was happening and stepped away from the wall. As the fiery serpent moved toward him, he nocked an arrow and fired at it. After passing through the thing’s blazing body, the shaft clattered off the stones. The blazing viper struck again.
The fourth and fifth archers fled, screaming for their companions to do likewise. Rikus sent his gladiators down the wall after the snake, instructing them not to let any of the Urikites escape alive. Caelum followed a short distance behind the gladiators, keeping the fire serpent in sight so that he could control it.
Rikus led Neeva forward until they could see the mass of Tyrian warriors gathering on the slave boulevard below. Now that the archers had been chased away, there was no sign of opposition anywhere near the gate.
“Do you still think this is a trap?” Rikus asked, motioning at the clear avenue ahead of his legion.
“I don’t know,” Neeva said, her eyes searching the distant boroughs of the city. “My answer depends on what we find in the slave quarter.”
SIXTEEN
THE CRIMSON
LEGION
RIKUS DID NOT UNDERSTAND HOW HE COULD FEEL so lonely. He stood atop a guardtower overlooking Hamanu’s vast slave pit. Before him, standing in the lanes between the long rows of shabby mudbrick pens, waited more than ten thousand men and women, all of them chanting his name. His own warriors were briskly moving along the streets, organizing the newly liberated slaves into companies.
On the far side of the squalid pits, barely visible through the thick clouds of smoke drifting in from the templar quarter, rose the high stone wall of the king’s central compound. Along the crest of the imposing barrier stood dozens of soldiers and templars, all watching Rikus’s preparations with great interest. In the fortress behind them lay the high bureaus of the templars, the gladiatorial arena, and the barracks of the Imperial Guard—a large company of half-giants led by experienced templars of war. From the sounds drifting over the wall, it seemed likely that the guards would soon leave the safety of their fortress. Rikus did not think the imminent threat of a counterattack was the reason for his glum mood. So far, the battle had gone more or less as he had foreseen, despite the heavy losses. The trouble with the archers had cost him three hundred warriors, but after that the legion had encountered only minor resistance as it worked its way into the slave pens. The Tyrians now controlled both the templar district and the slave pens—nearly a quarter of the city.
Certainly Rikus had a reason to be satisfied with those results, but his quick victory had been followed by a minor setback. The mul had expected Urik’s slaves to rise in a spontaneous revolt as soon as they were freed, but after their captors had been killed, the slaves had meekly huddled inside their huts, as frightened of their liberators as they had been of their oppressors. Rikus had found it necessary to send his warriors into the pits to rouse the timid swarm from their hovels.
While Rikus had been compelled to waste valuable time calling the slaves to arms, Hamanu’s forces had moved with astonishing rapidity to cut the Tyrians off from the rest of the city. Within minutes of the initial breakthrough, the private bodyguard of the aristocracy had blocked the gateways into the noble quarter. At the same time, companies from Urik’s garrison had sealed off the other side of the templar quarter. Hamanu even managed to slip several thousand soldiers around the city to block the slave gate from the outside. It had all occurred so quickly that the mul’s sentries had barely sounded the alarm before the Urikite troops were in place.
“Don’t look so worried, Rikus,” called Neeva, climbing up the bone ladder that led into the tower. “It makes the legion nervous.”
“I can’t help it,” the mul said, glancing down as she climbed through the trap door. “Things aren’t going according to plan.”
“Plan?” asked Neeva, grinning. “Did I hear you say you’re worried about a plan?”
Rikus felt the color rise to his cheeks and looked away. “You heard me,” he muttered. “The slaves were too slow to revolt. We’re going to have to fight our way out of here on Urikite terms.”
“It won’t be easy, but we can do it,” Neeva said, stepping to his side and looking out over the slave pens. “More than ten thousand slaves have joined us, and we have close to one thousand of our own warriors left.” She paused and glanced toward the high wall protecting Hamanu’s compound. “It’s the sorcerer-king that worries me.”
“You leave him to me,” Rikus said.
“I intend to,” Neeva answered. “But I’d feel a lot better if I knew how you’re going to stop him.”
Rikus laid a hand on the hilt of his sword. “With this,” the mul said. “When the battle starts, he’ll have to show himself. I’ll be waiting.”
Neeva frowned. “And what about his sorcery? What about the Way?”
“My sword and my belt are magic, too,” the mul answered. “As for the Way, I’ll have help.”
Not from me, Tamar interjected. Not until Caelum and the dwarves are dead.
When the time comes, you will help, Rikus replied. You need me alive to recover the book.
Can you be certain of that? Tamar responded.
You have no choice, Rikus said.
Neeva allowed Rikus his moment of silence, expecting him to elaborate on how he intended to counter Hamanu’s mastery of the Way. When he did not, she asked, “What kind of help?”
“The kind that I can’t explain—yet,” Rikus answered, looking toward the gate that led to the main boulevard.
Styan’s templars were guarding the gate, where their presence would not be as likely to alarm the Urikite slaves. In a broad cobblestone courtyard behind the templars stood Caelum and the dwarves. “You’d better join your company,” said Rikus. “We’ll be ready for battle soon.”
Neeva returned to the ladder. She hesitated there for a moment, her emerald
eyes fixed on the mul. “Rikus, have you …?
Her voice cracked with emotion and she let the sentence trail off, but the mul did not need to hear the rest of it to know what Neeva had meant to ask. Rikus still did not know how to answer her, for nothing had changed since she demanded his fidelity and love at the Crater of Bones.
“Good fighting, Neeva,” Rikus said, looking away.
“And you, Rikus,” she answered, starting down the ladder. “Strike hard and fast—it’s our only chance.”
After Neeva left, Rikus summoned Gaanon, K’kriq, and Jaseela to the tower. He had no chance to discuss the coming battle with them, however. As the pair was climbing into the cramped stand, a woman’s voice boomed over the slave pens.
“Captives of mighty Hamanu, listen well!”
The slaves fell immediately silent, obviously accustomed to obeying the magically amplified voice.
“Your leader has delivered you unto Hamanu, and it is by Hamanu’s will alone that you shall survive!” she rumbled, stepping into view high atop the wall of the king’s fortress. The woman wore the yellow cassock of a templar, and in her hand she held a golden staff of office.
“K’kriq, who’s that?” asked Rikus.
“Rasia, Templar of Toil,” answered the thri-kreen. “Brutal woman who herds slaves.”
“Mighty Hamanu allowed you to enter Urik, he allowed you to drive his archers from the walls, he allowed you to enter his slave pens—but he will allow no more!” Rasia proclaimed. “The city is sealed and you cannot escape. You cannot resist the will of Hamanu!”
A disparaging murmur rustled through the ranks. The neatly formed columns began to break up as Urikite slaves faced the woman and angry Tyrian gladiators turned to glare at Rikus.
The mul grabbed Gaanon’s arm. “Get a spear and silence her,” he ordered.
The half-giant obeyed immediately, dropping off the tower in a single leap and forcing his way into the crowded slave pits.
“Captives of Hamanu, great is your despair, for on this day have you been returned to bondage—or to death!” the woman continued. “Throw down your weapons and Hamanu the compassionate will feed you as he feeds his other slaves—”
The Crimson Legion Page 28