Kadya, satisfied that she had won the argument, was walking away from Aric when this morning’s party returned. They bore the remains of yet another goliath soldier in their arms. The day’s travel would be delayed long enough to dig her a shallow grave.
One of the soldiers, a human, broke off from the other searchers and strode up to Kadya. He stopped before her with clenched fists resting against his hips, chin thrust toward her. “Templar,” he began. “There’s been enough death. Let’s return to Nibenay while there are enough of us left alive to make the journey.”
“I’m sorry,” Kadya said, barely restraining a laugh. “Did my husband put you in command of this expedition without telling me? How unusual.”
“You know he did not,” the soldier said. He stood his ground, but Aric detected a falter in his voice. “But we’re losing people every night now. How long can this go on?”
“Until we’ve found Akrankhot and retrieved what Nibenay wants from there,” Kadya said.
“It had better be small, lady, because there won’t be many left to carry it.”
Others had gathered to observe the confrontation. Even those who held their mutilated comrade stared with rapt attention. Nobody stood up to a templar in this way—not if he expected to survive the encounter.
At the same time, Aric was glad someone had found the courage. He suspected the same was true of most of the people making the journey. Kadya had used magic on several occasions already. Between that and the ongoing, almost nightly deaths, people were ready to rise up against her leadership. But they all knew it was suicide to try, and that had held them back.
“I don’t know what you’re so upset about, soldier. Yes, there have been some killings—people caught by sand cactus, that one who strayed too close to a hungry mekillot. Whose fault were those deaths? Surely not mine. You’re soldiers, killing and being killed is what you do. So stop arguing and do it before I lose patience with you.”
Aric felt a presence at his shoulder. Ruhm loomed over him, bending toward his ear. “Only reason she hasn’t struck him down, she knows we’ll need every sword arm we got.”
“You might be right,” Aric said. He wished he knew what to think of her. She showed precious little concern for the dead. But she had, for the most part, been decent to him. And her husband Nibenay had sent him on this trip, promising rewards. For all he knew, Nibenay really was the one who had watched over him for most of his life—he couldn’t truly believe that, but he couldn’t make himself completely discount it, either. Anything was possible, and who knew the secret heart of the Shadow King?
The two friends walked away from the ongoing confrontation. Aric didn’t want to see what she might do to a soldier who dared argue with her in front of others. “She’s been protective of me,” he told Ruhm. “But it’s true, if we keep losing people to whatever is stalking us—if that’s indeed what’s happening—we’re all in more danger every day.”
“Dune freak, I heard.”
“Really?”
Ruhm shrugged. “Could be.”
Aric tried to picture an anakore—a dune freak—erupting from underground in a burst of sand, all claws and fangs, grabbing someone and dragging him back down with it. Ferocious predators, they lived in colonies beneath the sand, and they could sense the vibrations of people moving about on the surface.
“There are so many dangers in the world, Ruhm. Ones I never even considered, living in the relative safety of Nibenay.”
Ruhm didn’t answer. The goliath might have talked himself out. But Aric still had something to say, something that had been wearing on him day and night, and this seemed his best opportunity. He looked away from Ruhm, out across the trackless waste surrounding them. “I don’t think I’ll make it back there alive. I’ve had this feeling, since before we left, that I was saying goodbye to the city for good.”
“You’ll make it,” Ruhm said. “They need you.”
“Until we’ve reached Akrankhot and found all the metal. If it’s even there. After that—what good am I? Nibenay offered to share the wealth with me, so he might want me killed before the expedition gets home. Anyway, if Akrankhot is even real—and I’m starting to have doubts, it’s taking so long to find it—who knows what sorts of creatures might be hiding in there? Something’s killing good soldiers out here along the way, but when we’re in there, confined in a city …” Aric shuddered. “I hate to think what could happen.”
Aric knew he sounded like a coward, but at the moment he didn’t feel particularly brave. He had never claimed to be any kind of hero. People noticed heroes.
“You’ll be good,” Ruhm said simply. He clapped one of those huge hands on Aric’s shoulder and gave it a crushing squeeze, then wandered off. Aric supposed it was meant to reassure him.
It didn’t work.
8
After dinner, around the fire, everyone determinedly avoided the subject of the deaths, or the fate of the soldier who had stood up to Kadya. No one had seen him since the confrontation. Any number of things could have befallen him, but some claimed Kadya had turned him to sand and scattered him on the breeze. Aric and Ruhm sat with Damaric and Amoni, the mul, all of them huddled under furs against the night’s bitter chill. Instead of talking about the killings or what tomorrow might bring, Amoni had delved into her past.
“I was bred to be a gladiator,” she said. “And I was a good one, too.”
“You’re still here,” Damaric said. Frost rimed his thick mustache. “That’s something.”
“Twenty-seven bouts. Not without a scratch, but without any life-threatening injuries. It was the twenty-eighth that was a bitch.” She gave them a smile and took a healthy swig of the ale that Kadya had so thoughtfully arranged to be brought on the journey, and distributed in rationed measures. “The worst part is, I was up against a brohg warrior. Nothing I hadn’t beat easily before.”
“What happened, Amoni?” Aric asked.
“After several kills, I started to accumulate somewhat of a following,” she said. Aric had noticed before that the mul tended to keep to herself—she was happy to share food, drink and conversation, but even then she sat off by herself even while others huddled for warmth. And she glanced about often, as if making sure no one was sneaking up on her. “People came just to see me, to cheer me on. It swells your head, hearing your name ringing from wall to wall. Fortunately, my fellow gladiators mostly liked me, except those I fought. Still, there were rivalries, petty feuds. Like in any group of people, I guess. There was a goliath I had been … let’s say, friendly with—a slave whose master fought him in the pit instead of working him or allowing him to be used in the military. I won’t go into the whole thing, but there was another female gladiator who was envious of me, and another male who was after her, and things got ugly.
“At any rate, there I was, battling this brohg. Ugly bastard,” she shuddered, “all those arms. You know how they love their spears. This one was using a triple attack, a spear in each of three hands and a rock in the fourth. I had suffered a few cuts, nothing terrible, and succeeded in wrenching two of the spears from its hands. I was about to run it through when that gladiator I mentioned, the male—a mul he was, too, of all things—struck. He had arranged for an accomplice, a powerful psionic, to sit in the front row, right there among my cheering fans. As I was about to deliver the killing blow, I glanced over at them, and that’s when the accomplice struck. He used the Way to cloud my head. I was there, and suddenly I didn’t know where I was, who I was, what I was doing.
“That’s all the brohg needed. He threw the other spear away, picked me up in his four hands, bent one knee, and brought me down hard, smashing my back against his knee.
“I guess it was obvious to everyone that there had been some cheating going on, although not the brohg’s doing. Anyway, because of my popularity—my fans would have torn the place down, or tried to, had the brohg been allowed to finish me off—the match was halted. My spine was broken in four places. I was out of the gladia
torial business, needless to say.”
“That must have been painful,” Aric said, aware how much his words understated what she had endured.
“Yes,” she replied, wincing at the memory. She set her mug down on the dirt and arched her back, hands on her hips. “Pain like I hope you never have to imagine. I haven’t been allowed back into the pit, but I was trained for game hunting in the Crescent Forest, and have brought down my share of wild beasts these past few years. And of course, what use am I if I can’t fight? I’m lucky they conscripted me to do manual labor. So here I am.”
“Sounds great,” Damaric said. “Not the manual labor part. Or the back. But the freedom. For the most part, you’ve been able to do what you want, whether it’s fighting or hunting.”
“Have you always been a slave, Damaric?” Aric asked. Ruhm was sitting with his back against a boulder, sipping his ration of ale and keeping quiet. But he was taking it all in. When Ruhm was quiet, it was a safe bet he was listening intently. Or sleeping, but his mouth would have been open had that been the case.
“Born and raised,” Damaric said. “My mother was carrying me when she and my father crossed into Nibenese territory. They were barbarians, you might say. Not citizens of any state, living off the land, stealing when they had to, working when they could. My father had been employed from time to time as a mercenary. But then they were caught on Nibenese land. My father mouthed off to some templar, and they were both consigned to slavery. My father didn’t take to it. He was killed on his ninth or tenth escape attempt. But my mother was tired of fighting, and she had a baby on the way. So she submitted, and I was born a slave’s child. Trained in military ways since I could walk, or so they tell me. Never known a day’s freedom.”
“You look like you’ve taken to it,” Amoni said.
“I’m hale enough, if that’s what you mean. But freedom? Some days it’s like I can almost taste it. Then others, it’s as far away as the clouds. When I heard about Tyr …” He shook his head. “I’m not educated. I hear about things like Kalak’s death, and the uprising in Tyr, and I don’t have any historical basis to understand it. But it sounds like someone just rang a bell and set thousands of people free.” He gave a low whistle. “What that must be like.”
Amoni looked like she was going to say something. Instead, she shot a look over her left shoulder, snatched up her cahulaks, and sprang to her feet. The motion tipped over her mug, and precious ale soaked the ground.
“What is it?” Ruhm asked.
She stared intently into the darkness beyond the fire’s glow. “Probably nothing,” she said. “I’m just a nervous type, right?”
Aric combed through his memory of the seconds before Amoni rose. Damaric had been saying something. Had there been a sound from out in the wastes? The scrape of bare feet on sand?
The mekillots grumbled and snorted, making Aric nervous. A couple of other soldiers emerged from wagons. They stood close to Amoni, joining her in scanning the night. “You heard it too?” one asked.
“I heard something. So do the beasts.”
The other soldier took a step away from the fire, toward the pitch-black desert.
It was his last step.
9
A chatkcha arced out of the night.
It caught the unsuspecting soldier at the top of his nose, cutting across both eyes. The man had started to move his head, hearing the whistling sound as it approached, but he didn’t move it enough. The weapon made a slicing sound as it hit him, then kept going, spinning back to its thrower’s hand.
Up and down the caravan, soldiers spilled from the argosies or lurched up from around the fires. Some were half-dressed, others fully armored with weapons at the ready. They all dashed to the caravan’s east side, where the first attack had come from.
The next assault was a hail of stones, as big as a goliath’s fist. A soldier near Ruhm went down with a gash in his scalp and blood pouring into his eyes. Cries of “Raiders!” rang out.
Aric drew his wooden sword. Ruhm, his greatclub gripped in both hands, looked for someone to use it on. Damaric spun a singing stick, his hands at its middle, its distinctive whistling tones providing a musical counterpoint to the shouts of warriors seeking an enemy.
“What kind of raiders?” Aric asked.
“Dead kind, soon,” Ruhm replied.
“Face us!” Damaric called, impatient to start the fighting. “Don’t hide in the dark like old women!”
As if in response, the attackers showed themselves.
Aric wished they hadn’t.
“Halflings!” went the shouts of the soldiers. “It’s halflings!”
Faces painted with what must have been the dried blood of the caravan’s dead, the halflings charged out of the desert screeching incomprehensible words from voracious mouths. They carried every kind of weapon imaginable; ivory swords and obsidian-tipped spears, gouges and gythkas—some wielded the horns of of exotic animals, filed to dagger-sharp points. Most were naked, or nearly so, though a few wore pieces of chitin armor no doubt stolen from previous victims of their raids. Halflings, Aric had heard, bore no trace of humanity. They were savages with only bloodthirstiness and cruelty in their feral little hearts.
It seemed there were hundreds of them.
They swarmed into the Nibenese soldiers, cutting and stabbing as they came.
Damaric stepped to meet the onrush. His rod spun so fast it seemed to be a solid shield, the wider ends batting away halfling weapons and crushing skulls at the same time. Amoni gripped the handle of her cahulaks and swirled them about, four-bladed heads at the rope’s ends slicing through flesh and sending halfling blood spraying into the air. Ruhm seemed pleased to have an enemy he could see, and he waded into their midst, his club flying this way and that in a killing flurry.
For a few moments, Aric thought none of the halflings would reach him. After all, Kadya said he was to be protected. Surely soldiers would surround him any moment, keeping him safe from the raiders.
But Ruhm, Amoni and Damaric were all engaged with multiple opponents, as were the few other soldiers nearby. The halflings kept coming, and when Aric saw the glint in the horrible yellow eyes of one staring right at him, he knew he had met his first foe.
The halfling bore a short spear with an obsidian tip. Ducking around the swarm trying to get at Ruhm, he came straight for Aric. Aric raised his sword. The halfling thrust his spear forward, and Aric parried the attack, wooden blade clacking against the spear’s shaft. But Aric didn’t recover from the parry fast enough to make an attack of his own, and the spear came at him again. Aric stepped back and to the side, bringing the blade around in a down-sweeping motion, left to right. It stopped the spear from stabbing him, but the stone tip sliced across his belly, opening a thin cut.
Sweat was running down Aric’s face, stinging his eyes. He stabbed at the halfling, who beat the blade away. The spear streaked toward Aric again. He lurched backward and caught the shaft in his left hand. With a mighty heave he yanked the halfling toward him and brought his blade up for the killing thrust.
The halfling’s eyes were full of hate, and his scent was rank. He snarled at Aric, then tugged back on the spear. The shaft dragged through Aric’s fist and the obsidian head sliced his palm and fingers. Second blood, and still all that had spilled belonged to the half-elf, none to his savage foe.
He had to do something fast. His comrades battled half a dozen halflings at once, and here he was being sliced to ribbons by a single one. He remembered his battle against four elves, how he had woven a web of shining steel—
But that was the difference, wasn’t it? With steel in his hands, he was a different person. This wooden sword had an edge to it, but it felt like he was fighting with a tree branch.
The halfling nicked his right arm with the spear’s edge. Concentrate, fool! Aric told himself. Ragged gasps of breath tore at his throat.
Aric launched himself forward. The halfling threw his weight to his rear foot, but that didn’t give
him enough distance, and Aric landed too close for the spear to come into play. The half-elf’s sword was almost useless at this range, too, but he held it low, point up, and grabbed the halfling’s shoulder in his left hand. He pulled the halfling to him and pushed the blade at the same time. It met resistance, but cut through the halfling’s flesh, glanced off bone, tore at his innards. An expression of dismay and then agony twisted the halfling’s horrible face. His spear fell to the ground and the halfling went limp in Aric’s hands.
Aric shoved him backward, drawing his sword out at the same time. More halflings converged on him, two of them, a female armed with a wrist razor, the other a male with a crude club. Bolstered by his victory, Aric engaged them both at once.
If the halflings had a strategy beyond overwhelming their foes through sheer numbers, none could see it. They had, it was true, picked off soldiers here and there over the last few days, putting the entire expeditionary force on edge. But that slow attrition was forgotten as the halflings surged toward the light, breaking on the Nibenese defenses like a muddy red wave.
The Nibenese goliaths stood more than twice as tall as the halflings, with correspondingly greater reach. Most of the soldiers were armored, and even those who were laborers instead of soldiers had access to shields, and armored wagons to hide behind when the halflings launched aerial bombardments of rocks and chatkchas.
All of which meant the battle was closer than it might have been, had Nibenay’s army been less well trained, disciplined, and equipped, or the halflings less numerous. Aric dispatched his two newest foes with a lucky slash that split one open from his collarbone to the center of his chest, and a precise thrust that pierced the other’s heart. But for every halfling who fell, it seemed two or three more took his place. When he found himself facing three at once, his newfound confidence faltered.
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