The convoy continued its slow crawl down the escarpment, crossing and re-crossing a river that grew louder and more swift as streams running in from the side-canyons contributed more water. Two horses and a lizard were swept away, but their riders were saved. The clouds fled and the green hills of Gundapur, full of vines and the shimmer of olive trees, were now visible below them. The silver river cast its loops back and forth across the fields, with the sultan’s road a straight brown line across the land.
Two more rest stops had been called before the caravan ran into trouble. One of the advanced parties, sent to secure a ridge above the track, was repelled by a shower of arrows and rocks. Nothing daunted, Nadeer reinforced the party and tried again. Advancing under the cover of their own archers, and aided by Nadeer’s remarkable throwing arm, the party pushed the bandits off the ridge, and onto another fold of higher ground beyond, where they remained, watching and jeering.
The engagement was over by the time Aristide arrived. He had been in the middle of the convoy when the fight broke out, helping one of the immigrants with the repair of his cart, and by the time he managed to ride to the head of the column, threading between carts and camels, the fight was over. He left his horse under the care of one of Grax’s lieutenants and scrambled up the ridge, where he was in time to dissuade Nadeer from launching another attack on the enemy survivors.
“They can always retreat to the next ridge beyond,” he pointed out. “And they know this country better than we do. You could run into an ambush.”
“Wretched bags of ratpiss!” Nadeer lisped, referring no doubt to the bandits.
An arrow protruded from one shoulder, where it had penetrated his armor but failed to pierce his hide. He wrenched it out with a petulant gesture.
“I want them crushed!” he said.
“You’ll get your chance soon, I think,” Aristide said. “I expect there will be more of them soon. These were intended to attack us in flank when the main body hit us somewhere else.”
Nadeer’s single eye turned to him. “Are you certain of this?”
“No. I claim no more than the average amount of precognition. But it’s logical—these weren’t numerous enough to fight our whole force, and they must have known we were coming.”
Nadeer glared at the bandits on the next ridge. “If we move on, it will leave them behind us.”
“We want them all behind us.”
Nadeer gnashed his tusks for a few moments, then told half of the guards to hold the ridge until the convoy had passed, and the rest to rejoin the advanced guard. The caravan continued its slow crawl down the valley. Five turns of the glass later—as the rear guard passed the ridge where the skirmish with the bandits had taken place—scouts reported that the road ahead was blocked by a substantial force.
Aristide joined the captains as they viewed the enemy. From where they stood at the head of the column, the track descended and broadened into the base of a side canyon, the track cut by a stream that joined the Cashdan, and then the track rose for two hundred paces and narrowed to a pass twenty paces wide, with the river thundering past on the right. This pass had been blocked with a wall of stones, and behind the stones the dark forms of bandits milled in large numbers. More bandits perched on the rocks above, armed with bows.
“The group on the ridge were to attack our rear when this group encountered our advance guard,” Aristide said. “They meant to panic us.” He scratched his chin. “I wonder if this group knows we drove the others off their position. If so, we might draw them out by feigning panic.”
“A formidable roadblock,” Eudoxia said. “They chose well.”
“Our people will be better fighters,” said Aristide. “Criminals are by nature a superstitious and cowardly lot, and few choose their profession because of a love of military discipline or order.”
“The same might be said of caravan guards,” Grax pointed out.
“If your people need heartening, you could point out that if they don’t win this fight, they’ll be sacrificed to evil gods.”
Grax looked at him. “That’s supposed to make them feel better?”
Aristide shrugged. “Perhaps it’s best to show that the enemy are, after all, mortal. Why don’t I dispose of a bandit or two and raise thus morale?”
Eudoxia looked at him. “How do you plan to do that?”
“Walk up and challenge them. Grax, you should charge them the second I dispatch an enemy. Nadeer, may I advise you to personally lead the attack on the rocky shoulder above the pass? It’s the key to the position.”
Nadeer looked a little put out. “It’s true I’m not much use in a mounted charge,” he admitted. “But why don’t I challenge them to single combat?”
“For the simple reason,” said Aristide, “that no one would dare to fight Nadeer the Peerless.”
Nadeer considered this, then brightened. “Very true,” he said. He reared to his full height. “I shall lead the attack up the rocks, as you suggest.”
Aristide dismounted and performed a few stretching and limbering exercises while the captains gathered their forces and arranged their assault. “One last thing,” he said when they were ready. “Remember to capture a few prisoners. We want them to lead us to the Venger’s Temple and the loot taken from all those caravans.”
“Indeed,” said Nadeer, brightening even more.
Aristide took an arrow from one of the caravan guards, stuck a white headcloth on it, and began his walk toward the bandits. He paused after a few steps, then turned and said, “Look after my cat, will you?”
He walked down the slope to the mountain freshet, waded through ankle-deep water, and began the walk upslope to the improvised wall. He stopped a hundred paces from the wall and called out over the sound of the rushing water.
“While my colleagues are working out what to do next,” he said, “I thought to relieve your boredom, and come out to challenge your bravest fighter to single combat.”
Among the bandits there was a general muttering, followed by jeers and scornful laughter.
“No takers?” Aristide called.
Someone behind the barrier threw a rock. Whoever threw it was no Nadeer. Aristide stepped to the side and let the rock clatter on the stones. He waited for the laughter to subside.
“I’m disappointed that there’s no one among you with courage,” Aristide said. “It will make it all the easier for us to slaughter you.”
In response came more laughter, some obscene suggestions, and a few more rocks.
“Just,” Aristide said casually, “as we slaughtered those friends of yours, up there on the ridge a few leagues back. They’re lying on the rocks for the vultures to peck at. Surely one of you had a friend among them, and now possesses a burning desire to avenge his life?”
“I do,” said a voice. The figure that jumped on the barrier was vast, grey-skinned, and female. She was as large as Grax and had an additional pair of arms: the upper pair carried two throwing spears, the lower an axe and a target shield with a spike in the center. Her grin revealed teeth like harrows. She stood on the barrier, acknowledging the cheers of the bandit force.
“You present a formidable appearance, madam,” said Aristide. “Perhaps you will make a worthy opponent.”
“Perhaps?” the troll demanded. She jumped down from the barrier and advanced. Chain skirts rang under armor of boiled leather. Her crude iron helm was ornamented with horns and a human skull. Cheers and laughter echoed from the bandits. She advanced fifty paces and then halted. She paused and said, in a theatrical voice, “Prepare to meet thy doom.”
“You first,” Aristide suggested, and tossed the arrow with its white rag to the side.
The troll crouched and came on, preceded by a wave of body odor. The upper arms held the two spears which she declined to throw, instead reserving them as thrusting weapons. The axe clashed on the shield.
In a single motion, Aristide drew Tecmessa. The sword flashed beneath the dim sun.
There was a sudden
crack, as of thunder, that echoed off the rocks. Observers had an impression that something had twisted into existence, then out of it, too fast for the eye quite to follow. A wave of air blew out toward the bandits, visible as swirls of dust in the air.
Of the troll, there was no sign.
Silence fell upon shocked ears.
“Uh-oh,” said a bandit clearly, in the sudden stillness.
Aristide whirled his sword up, then down, in an impatient Come-on-let’s-charge motion that he hoped would remind the caravan guards of what they were supposed to be doing at this moment.
“Anyone else care to fight?” he asked.
Arrows whirred down from above. Tecmessa’s point rotated slightly, there was another crack and a blast of wind, and the arrows vanished.
“Anyone else?” the swordsman called.
There was a deep-voiced bellow behind Aristide, and then shouts, the clatter of armor, and the rush of feet. Apparently Nadeer had finally remembered his assigned role.
“Oh well,” Aristide said, “if you won’t come to me…”
Aristide began trotting forward at a pace calculated to bring him to the barrier about the same time as Grax and his Free Companions. He didn’t want to get trampled by his own side, but neither was it wise to face the whole body of the enemy at once—Tecmessa’s powers had their limits. The sword was held in both hands, the point moving in a circle.
More arrows came. More arrows disappeared in claps of thunder and whirls of dust.
Behind him, Aristide heard the sound of animals splashing through the shallow freshet, and increased his pace.
The stone barrier was breast-high, topped by ranks of spears and figures in helmets. As the swordsman approached, the bandits in front shrank back, while those in the rear—who hadn’t seen what had occurred—pressed forward. There was an incoherent shouting and the sound of spears rattling against one another, sure signs that the morale of the bandits was not ideal.
Before Aristide quite reached the barrier he heard a roar and a ferocious reptilian shriek, and Grax appeared on his lizard, his lance lowered. The lizard cleared the barrier in one bound—Grax dropped the lance that had skewered a tall man with a scalp lock—and then Grax was among the bandits, striking left and right with a flail made out of linked iron bars.
Aristide reached the barrier, parried a half-hearted spear thrust, and swung Tecmessa horizontally. Half a dozen bandits vanished with a bang. The remainder, a many-headed monster that seemed composed entirely of staring eyes and shuffling feet, drew back.
The rest of the Free Companions reached the barrier. Some reined in and thrust with their lances, some jumped the barrier like Grax, some tried to jump and failed. In the sudden wild stampede, Aristide flattened himself against the rocky side of the pass and tried to get out of the way.
The bandits were broken in any case. Their efforts to escape were impeded by the narrowness of the pass, the mass of their fellows behind them, and the large herd of riding beasts which they had picketed just behind their position. The outlaws were packed so tightly that the Free Companions could hardly miss, and the bandits’ tangled mass hampered any efforts to strike back or defend themselves. Many bandits died, many were trampled, and many threw themselves into the river and were swept away.
“Prisoners!” Aristide shouted. “Remember to take prisoners!”
The general slaughter continued without cease. Aristide glanced at the rocks above. The bandits that had been holding this key feature had seen the rout below, and many as a consequence were abandoning the fight, hoping to clamber down the steep boulder-strewn slope and reach their mounts before the Free Companions did.
There was a clattering of hooves and a cry, and Aristide saw the next company charging to the fight. The chances of getting trampled seemed stronger than ever, and a place above the fray consequently more desirable, so Aristide vaulted the barrier and began to climb the slope.
Green-skinned Nadeer reached the summit before Aristide did—bellowing, half-a-dozen arrows standing in his chest, hurling rocks left and right. The bandits broke completely. Aristide saw one bandit running past and swung Tecmessa. The flat of the blade caught him full in the face and he went down, stunned. Out of the corner of his eye Aristide saw another darting figure, a broad-shouldered man in black with a recurved bow in one hand, and he thrust the sword between the archer’s legs. The bandit fell face-first onto the stony ground, and then Aristide was on his back, the edge of Tecmessa against his neck.
“Take me to your leaders,” he said.
03
“I count a hundred and eighteen bodies,” Grax announced. He was in buoyant spirits: even his chain mail seemed to be jingling with satisfaction. “We lost six, and three of those were lost because they fell off their mounts and got trampled by our own side, or drowned in the river.”
“‘Tis a famous victory,” said Aristide.
Leaning on his scabbard, he sat on one of the great granite rocks above the pass while he watched the convoy guards demolish what was left of the barricade and hurl the stones into the river. His two prisoners, thoroughly bound, crouched at his feet.
Bitsy sat on a nearby rock, licking her anus.
Grax carried a sack of heads thrown casually over his shoulder, in hopes the sultan would offer a bounty. Since there was no pool of life in which to deliver the bodies that choked the roadway, the bandits’ headless torsos were given to the river.
Aristide had made a point of refilling his water bottle upstream from that point.
The troll’s gaze turned to Tecmessa.
“Your sword is magic?”
Aristide considered his answer. “It performs miracles, to be sure,” he said.
“I’ve seen other swords that were supposed to be magic. They were all used in the past by heroes—well-made swords, all of them. But so far I know they never—you know—did anything.”
“This one never did anything until I touched it,” said Aristide. “It seems to work only for me.”
Which, in addition to being the truth, might dissuade anyone—Grax, for instance—from killing him over possession of the blade.
Grax looked at him. “How did you find out what it does?”
“That’s rather tragic actually. I’d rather not talk about it.”
“When your enemies… disappear,” Grax said. “Do you know where they go?”
Bitsy paused in her grooming and looked at him with green eyes.
“I’ve no idea,” the swordsman lied.
Grax hitched up his wide belt. His chain skirts rang. “The captains are going to meet to decide what to do next. They all want to hunt for the loot and the Venger’s Temple, but some are still going to have to guard the convoy on its way to Gundapur.”
“This should be entertaining,” Aristide said. “I’ll attend, if I may.” He rose to his feet and prodded his prisoners with his scabbard. “Up, you two,” he said. The prisoners rose and, without their bound hands to aid them, picked their way carefully down the steep slope. Aristide rested his sword on his shoulder and followed.
As the party moved off, Bitsy rose to her feet, yawned, stretched, and joined the party.
The argument that followed was not unpredictable. Nadeer wanted to lead his little army to the Venger’s Temple. Others pointed out that Nadeer was captain of the convoy guards charged with escorting the caravans to Gundapur, not the leader of a group of freebooters on their own account. Nadeer protested at first, but was finally brought to admit that he had accepted the responsibility of escort.
With Nadeer thus out of the running, the other captains all proposed themselves as leaders of the expedition to the Temple, and were in the process of arguing this when the actual caravan masters, their employers, demanded that all the guards accompany them all the way to Gundapur—or, failing that, surrender a share in any loot.
The argument was brisk and prolonged. Aristide, perched nearby atop a boulder that had fallen from the cliffs above and come to rest on the edge of t
he river, ate hard bread and dried fruit, and enjoyed the rush and flow and scent of the Cashdan with the pleasure that only thirty-odd days in the desert would bring. He smiled to himself as he listened to the arguments. Bitsy, less entertained, found a warm place on the rock and curled up to sleep. It was only when the captains’ wrangle had grown repetitious that Aristide interrupted.
“My friends,” he said, “may I point out that this debate is bootless?”
They looked at him. He stood on his rock and smiled down at them.
“At the Venger’s Temple lies the loot of over a dozen caravans!” he pointed out. “Plus a sizeable hoard of plunder gathered elsewhere. Even if every convoy guard among you marched to the Temple and captured the treasure, how would they get all the treasure away? Even if they took every beast of burden in our combined caravans, they could only move a fraction of the total.”
The captains looked at each other, their eyes glittering not with surprise, but with calculation. Perhaps, they seemed to be thinking, we could only take the absolute best…
“Therefore,” said Aristide, “Nadeer and at least half the guards should take the caravans to Gundapur as quickly as they can, because they will have a vital role—to search the city in order to round up every horse, every camel, every ox, and every dinosaur-of-burden, and to bring them back to the Vale of Cashdan to carry away the greatest treasure in the history of the sultanate!”
The captains raised a cheer at this. But Masoud the Infirm raised an objection.
“If we take the treasure to Gundapur,” he wheezed, “the sultan will want a percentage.”
“No doubt,” Aristide said. “But if you take the treasure anywhere else, the local ruler will also require a tax. And it must be admitted that your ordinary guards and camel drivers will want to be paid as soon as possible, so that they may spend their earnings in the city’s pleasure-domes. Gundapur is your best bet.
“And since that is the case,” Aristide said, and made a gesture of money falling from one palm into another, “may I suggest that while some of you organize the caravan to bring the treasure to the city, the rest of you should be offering bribes to the sultan’s advisors to make certain that the taxes you’re required to pay are minimal.
Implied Spaces Page 4
