The Brazen Gambit Part 26

While the Quraiters hurled their first and second sharpened-stake volley, Yohan pulled every other fighter from that part of the inner circle that did not face the attack and repositioned them in the quadrant that did.

Agafari s.h.i.+elds easily deflected those few stakes of the first Quraite volleys that were well-aimed and forceful, deflected as well the stakes of the third and fourth. Pavek hadn't expected the stakes to inflict much damage, except, perhaps, to the enemies' resolve. And perhaps they would have, if the bulk of Escrissar's force had been rabble from the elven market. But the Nibenay mercenaries were laughing as they came over the outer rampart.

With luck-a monumental amount of luck-that laughter would make them careless.

He chose a place where the right flank of mercenaries would come against the inner rampart and hurled javelins himself, aiming for the Urik templars who lacked s.h.i.+elds. He got one, too, square in the neck. She went down and a loud cheer went up from the Quraiters.

A shrieking, blood-red streak momentarily blinded Pavek, whether in the sky or in his mind's eye, he couldn't have said. His vision cleared in an instant and the apparition wasn't repeated, but it wasn't a good omen, either, if Akas.h.i.+a and Telhami could be so easily distracted.

But the enemy's front rank was atop the second rampart, now, and no longer laughing. Pavek shouted for the Quraiters to take up their hand weapons. One druid, already so unnerved that she couldn't move to attack or defend, was doomed, if she didn't recover quickly. But her fate was hers to call; the Nibenay mercenaries in the second rank of the outside file charged forward, wailing the Shadow-King's war-cry, and for Pavek, the battle had begun in earnest.

There was nothing skilled or subtle to his fighting, just beat or parry-with the flat of his sword when he could, because the agafari wood was more resilient than his steel and apt to bind the blade if he struck it edge-on-and attack whenever he could.

He tried to grab himself a s.h.i.+eld after taking his first attacker down with a bone-deep slash to the man's thigh, but the mercenaries had anch.o.r.ed their s.h.i.+elds around their necks with leather thongs. Pavek only had time for a single-syllable curse before a man and a woman bearing the weapons of Nibenay surged toward him.

He beat aside both clubs, then fell back a quick half-step to survey the battle. He had room to fight only because the Quraiters around him were down and dying. The circle still held, but there were far more bodies on the inside of the rampart than on the outside.

They'd been outnumbered almost two to one from the start, and with Escrissar's foreign fighters, it was more like ten to one.

But the female mercenary-a human: all the Nibenay mercenaries seemed to be human-left him no time to consider options. Following his retreat, she swung her club, a two-handed whirling blow that, had it landed, would have taken him out. But Pavek pushed forward into her unguarded attack, and over-balancing her, got a clean, backhand cut at her neck as she went down, insuring that she'd stay down. The other mercenary, undoubtedly her partner, came at him in blind rage.

At that same moment, a cry went up from the other end-Yohan's end-of the battle. The cries weren't cheers, and he could only hope the dwarf hadn't been wounded, or worse, gone down completely, but a numbing blow to his off-weapon arm jolted his attention back to more immediate concerns.

He got lucky, catching the mercenary's weapon hand above the wrist. The man dropped his club and ran screaming toward the trees. There was a five-heartbeat pause in the battling: long enough for him to reach down and pick up a club since he'd given up all hope of getting a s.h.i.+eld.

"Yohan's dead!" dead!"

The tidings he'd dreaded, delivered by the voice he wanted least to hear.

"Hold the line!" he shouted, not daring to turn around as a Urikite templar-an instigator whose face he recognized-came forward to join battle with him.

"We can't! Not without Yohan. What do we do? Everyone's hurt. Pavek!"

He parried quickly, using the edge against an obsidian weapon that chipped against the harder steel.

"Help us, Pavek! We're losing!"

Fear touched Pavek's heart then, a cold, s.h.i.+very tracing-and he would have died himself if Ruari hadn't thrust his staff between them and spun the thrust aside, exposing the instigator's flank long enough for Pavek to pierce it with the sword. As the templar fell, his medallion slipped from beneath his s.h.i.+rt.

Medallion. And Ruari had his.

"Give it to me!" Pavek dropped the club and reached across the body toward Ruari.

"Give what?"

"My medallion. Give it to me!"

"What?"

"You said it, sc.u.m: We've lost. That medallion is all we've got left."

The flow of combat had swung away from them, toward the place where Yohan no longer offered solid resistance. Pavek scrambled down the rampart, heedless of what lay beneath his feet. Ruari kept pace with him, his staff-wielding more effective than any s.h.i.+eld. They disabled three Nibenay mercenaries in quick succession, but the tide of the battle didn't change.

Escrissar's force would be over the rampart at any moment.

"Now!" Pavek shouted above the din of weapons striking and men screaming.

True to form, the half-wit sc.u.m threw threw the medallion without warning. the medallion without warning.

Pavek caught the thong on a fingertip, and didn't allow himself to think about what might have been. He spun the inix leather around his left hand and closed his fist around the familiar ceramic lump, shouted Guard me! Guard me! and raised his wrapped fist high above his head: and raised his wrapped fist high above his head: "Hamanu! Hear me, your servant, O Great and Mighty One!"

Everyone in Escrissar's force heard Pavek's cry and surged toward him. Ruari would have gone down in a pair of heartbeats once they closed, but the remaining Quraiters, though they couldn't have understood what he was trying to do, saw Ruari defending him and rushed to their aid.

The fighting was fierce and desperate around him. Pavek felt a sharp pain in his leg; then it went completely numb: the telltale sign of a serious wound. But the leg held, and he prayed as he'd never prayed before to see a pair of sulphurous eyes in the lurid sunset sky.

s.h.i.+mmering ovals glowed faintly overheard: the distance between Urik and Quraite was considerable, even for a sorcerer-king.

Who knew what Hamanu saw when a templar invoked his name and power? Another sorcerer-king would know; certainly not Pavek, though he hoped Urik's ruler would see the agafari weapons of Nibenay creating carnage in his his domain. And Pavek hoped Great and Mighty Hamanu, having seen that, would give a renegade templar one great and mighty spell... domain. And Pavek hoped Great and Mighty Hamanu, having seen that, would give a renegade templar one great and mighty spell...

"Flamestrike!"

...Granted...

The s.h.i.+mmering eyes flared like nearby suns, all seething reds and oranges. The air over the Quraite ramparts thickened and became very still before a wind began to blow upward from the ground itself. Will they or nil they, the men and women on both sides of the rampart lowered their weapons to stare at the sky. Urik templars, recognizing what they saw, ran for the trees-much too slowly.

A flaming bolt exploded from the sky. It grounded itself in the medallion Pavek still held above his head. Searing heat and pain beyond imagining transformed him. He thought he would surely die-thought Hamanu had chosen to destroy him first-but he did not even lose consciousness as lesser fire-bolts arced away from the inferno erupting at his wrist. The bolts struck true into the hearts of Escrissar's allies, and into them alone.

Howls that would haunt Pavek's sleep until he died escaped those living-dying-torches, which continued to burn erect even after they fell silent, until their substance was completely consumed and nothing, not even ash, remained.

Then, abruptly, the great gout of flame rising from his wrist fizzled. Heat and pain were reduced to memories; his flesh was unmarked and whole. The medallion shone with its own light for another instant before it, too, reverted to an ordinary ceramic lump.

Pavek lowered his arm.

"It's over," someone whispered, and someone else cheered.

But it wasn't over. A scream out of Telhami's hut scattered the last remaining wits of the surviving Quraiters. Pavek crossed from the rampart to the hut in two leaps-remembering his wound only when he'd landed solidly on the threshold on a leg that should have collapsed.

A blackened weal ran from knee to hip along his thigh. The spell, he thought, though how a flamestrike spell had cauterized the gash and sewn up the muscles beneath it went beyond his his knowledge of magic. His leg ached when he thought about it, but he knew better than to think about it twice, and swept aside the curtain-door. knowledge of magic. His leg ached when he thought about it, but he knew better than to think about it twice, and swept aside the curtain-door.

Telhami had collapsed on her sleeping platform. Her eyes and mouth were closed, but her limbs sprawled at awkward and unmoving angles. She was unconscious at the least, and very likely dead. Akas.h.i.+a sat alone, now, weaving her hands randomly over an a.s.sortment of herbs and powders. Her face was twisted into a silent scream as she sought to both shape the guardian's power and maintain the mind-bending spells Telhami had begun.

Quraite's most dangerous enemy, Elabon Escrissar, still lurked somewhere in the guarded lands, apparently unscathed by King Hamanu's bounty.

"Ruari!" Pavek shouted. "Get in here!"

The half-elf appeared at his side, battered, bleeding, and filthy, but still on his feet. He glanced under Pavek's arms and-for once-needed no instructions. He pressed his palms against Akas.h.i.+a's moving hands before he settled on the floor.

"Hold steady, sc.u.m. You'll know when I've found him."

The interrogator could be almost anywhere. He wasn't within the tree circle around the village, and he wasn't among the trees themselves; Pavek tramped through the fields, to the line where Escrissar's allies had hobbled their kanks, but Escrissar wasn't there, either.

He looked until the sun was setting, the lavender sky turning to violet, and still he searched, until the only light was that of the stars. A half-elf couldn't see in the dark as well as a full-blooded elf, but still Escrissar would see better than Pavek.

The mind-bending interrogator should should be nearly exhausted. Akas.h.i.+a and Ruari be nearly exhausted. Akas.h.i.+a and Ruari should should be able to hold against him. But should be didn't always mean was, and in his heart Pavek felt fortune swinging away from Quraite again. be able to hold against him. But should be didn't always mean was, and in his heart Pavek felt fortune swinging away from Quraite again.

"Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy," he whispered, not an invocation, but a simple man's simple oath. The medallion hung around his neck again but he had no intention of using it. There was no spell in any of the scrolls he'd memorized that would guide him to Escrissar.

Then he heard sounds behind him, a heavy-footed tread, crus.h.i.+ng the ripening grain as his own feet crushed gra.s.s in the groves. Drawing the sword, he spun around to face a silhouette half again his height and watching him with glowing yellow eyes.

"Hamanu?" Pavek whispered, then, realizing it could be no one else, dropped to his knees and threw his sword away. "O Great and Mighty King-"

"My pet is in the wastes yonder. You may follow."

The ground gave around him as King Hamanu strode past Pavek. No one knew the sorcerer-king's true aspect, if he had one. Tonight he was the Lion of Urik, dressed in golden armor and crowned with a mane of golden hair. A sword as long as a man's leg hung from his waist, but it was the sharp, curved claws he flexed with each step that froze Pavek's heart in his throat.

He followed, retrieving his own sword along the way and taking two strides for every one of the king's until they came to a dark low-crouching figure.

"Recount!" Hamanu demanded.

It was more than a simple command. Pavek's skull felt as if it had exploded, and he was, most definitely, not the king's target. Not yet.

Escrissar scrabbled across the ground, a scavenger surprised by a true predator. "I have found the source of Laq," he babbled, as if any mortal could lie successfully to a sorcerer-king.

"Ambition has blighted your imagination, my pet. You bore me."

Hamanu's voice was as weary as his clawed hand was swift. He seized Escrissar by the neck and, lifting him off the ground, began to squeeze. The interrogator struggled wildly, then hung limp, but the king was not finished. By the light of the Lion-King's golden eyes, Pavek watched in nauseous horror as Hamanu's fist squeezed ever tighter. The bones in Escrissar's neck snapped and crumbled; gore flowed from his lifeless mouth and nostrils.

And still Hamanu was not finished with his former favorite. He cast a spell the color of his eyes that wrapped itself around the interrogator's corpse and, layer by layer, from black robes to white bones, consumed it.

When there was nothing left, the yellow eyes found Pavek on his knees again and trying heroically not to be sick.

"I have need of a High Templar. Follow me."

The king headed for the village.

Pavek found his feet, somehow, and followed.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

Fires had been lit in the hearths within the village's inner rampart. A bright, crackling fire made any night seem safer-except when the flickering light reflected on Hamanu of Urik as he strode through the trees. Pavek, hard pressed to stay within ten human paces of the sorcerer-king, had neither the time nor the energy to call out a warning. Besides, nothing prepared anyone for the Lion: breathtakingly handsome in his golden armor, radiant with arcane power, cruel and terrible beyond mortal measure. After a day of loss and triumph, a handful of Quraiters simply swooned at the sight. The rest wisely dropped to their knees.

The king paused by a fire to survey this previously hidden part of his domain and its quaking inhabitants. Pavek caught up with him.

"Where is she?" Hamanu asked. "Where is Telhami?"

Not Who rules here? Who rules here? or some question of that sort, which Pavek had expected, but or some question of that sort, which Pavek had expected, but Where is Telhami? Where is Telhami? because, inexplicably, the Lion already knew who ruled Quraite. If he lived another day, Pavek promised himself he'd think through all the implications of this discovery, but for the moment-because those sulphur eyes were focused on him-he answered plainly: because, inexplicably, the Lion already knew who ruled Quraite. If he lived another day, Pavek promised himself he'd think through all the implications of this discovery, but for the moment-because those sulphur eyes were focused on him-he answered plainly: "In there." And pointed to Telhami's hut.

Hamanu's head rose above the roof-beam. His shoulders were wider than the doorway. Pavek held his breath, waiting for the king to call Telhami by name, fearing what he would do if she could not answer. But Hamanu solved his problems on his terms. He pierced the hut's reed walls with his claws, seized the support poles and lifted the entire structure over his head before tossing it over the inner and middle rampart. His size was no longer a problem.

Akas.h.i.+a and Ruari were held motionless in panic, both looking up, slack-jawed, from the length of linen cloth they'd wrapped around Telhami's corpse. Hamanu motioned them aside with a small gesture from his huge, clawed hand, and they hastened to obey. Telhami lay in repose on her sleeping platform, arms folded over her breast, thin gray hair spread across a linen pillow. Remembering what the king had done with Escrissar, Pavek dreaded what he might do with her.

Then the rightly feared ruler of Urik sank to one knee. While Pavek watched with the others, clawed fingers curled around Telhami's cheek so gently that her translucent parchment skin was not creased.

"Telhami?"

Pavek had thought she was dead, but she opened her eyes and, after a moment, smiled. It seemed that not only did King Hamanu know Telhami, she knew him, and not as an adversary.

"So-" the king began, "this "this is Quraite." is Quraite."

Telhami's smile deepened with evident pride, but she said nothing. Perhaps she couldn't speak, or move. Her hands seemed waxen in the light.

"It has seen better days, I think. Don't you?"

There was a moment's pause, then Hamanu laughed, an incandescent sound that echoed lightly from the trees.

"But I was was invited!" invited!"

The king extended his hand toward Pavek, who reluctantly came closer. When he was in range, Hamanu ran a clawed finger down Pavek's neck, hard enough that he could feel its strength and sharpness, but not-he thought-hard enough to break the skin. That, he was certain, would come later, after the king had toyed with him and tired of his fear.

"I never grow tired of fear, Pavek," King Hamanu a.s.sured him with a grin that revealed glistening fangs. "Never." Then he hooked the inix leather thong of Pavek's templar medallion, which the king withdrew into the firelight. "A regulator of the civil bureau." A claw gouged through the marks that indicated Pavek's rank, effectively eliminating him from that rank and that bureau. Hamanu let the defaced, but intact, medallion thump against Pavek's breast-bone, in effect proclaiming that he was a templar without a formal rank: a High Templar, if he ever chose to claim that distinction. "The best always slip away, Pavek. Remember that."

And for a moment Hamanu seemed-he could not possibly be- be-less a leonine sorcerer-king with sulphur eyes and more a man, an ordinary man with clear brown eyes and a face a woman-Telhami-might find attractive.

Then King Hamanu turned back to the sleeping platform.

"Come back with me, Telhami. It's not too late. Athas has changed. Borys is gone; the stalemate is broken. Nothing is as it was, Telhami. For the first time in a millennium, I do not know what will happen after I wake up. Come back to Urik-"

He fell silent and remained that way until Telhami closed her eyes. Then he stood up with a sigh of disappointment and age creaking in his bones. "Hold them tight or set them free, they always slip away. Always," he said to no one in particular and stared at the moons.

"Was this your plan?" the king asked suddenly, his private rumination ended and, apparently, forgotten.

Pavek, at whom the question had been directed, was, at first, too startled to answer. When the shock faded, a single word hung in his mind: "Yohan."

But Yohan wasn't there to take the credit for his concentric ramparts. Yohan was gone, and Pavek did not feel better that he was alive instead.

"They die, Pavek. They slip away when your eye's on something else, and you can never get them back. Learn to live with it. Think of them as flowers: a day's delight and then they die. You'll die yourself if you care about them."

Then King Hamanu walked out through the ramparts, through the trees, and into the night.

Pavek's gaze hadn't left the place where he'd disappeared when he felt an arm slip around his back. Silently, Akas.h.i.+a rested her head against his chest. Hesitantly-he didn't think such things would ever seem easy to him-Pavek put his hand on her neck and soothed the knotted muscles he found there.