“And furthermore,” he added, “since the caravan guards won’t be able to afford to rent all those animals, or bribe the sultan’s advisors, it’s clear that the merchants who command the caravans deserve a share of the treasure.”
Which began another argument concerning how large that share would be. Aristide had no comment to make on this matter, and instead returned to his seated position. He looked down at his two prisoners, who slumped against the rock below him. One—the bowman he had tripped—was a man of middle years, with a scarred cheek that put his mouth in a permanent scowl and a beard striped with grey. The other was a tall man, very muscular, but who presented the appearance of youth, with bowl-cut hair and a face swollen by the blow from the flat of Aristide’s sword.
“Where is the Venger’s Temple, by the way?” the swordsman asked.
The older man gave him a contemptuous look from slitted eyes. “I will happily tell you,” he said. “Certain as I am that the knowledge will send you all to your deaths.”
“Well,” Aristide said, “for heaven’s sake don’t keep me in suspense.”
The older man gave a jerk of his head to indicate the way they had come. “The Temple’s in a side canyon,” he said. “Back up the valley.”
Aristide looked at the younger man. “Do you agree?”
“Oh yes. Also, that you will certainly die if you go there.”
“How far?”
“From here you can walk the distance in fifteen or twenty turns of the glass. But you’ll die. So don’t.”
Aristide looked at him with curiosity. “Are the defenses so formidable?” he asked.
“Not the defenses. The priests.” The young man looked at Tecmessa. “The Priests of the Vengeful One possess the same power as your blade.”
Aristide’s face turned into a smooth bronze mask, his hawklike nose a vane that cut the wind. His dark eyes glittered with cold intent.
“What do you mean?” he asked. He spoke with care, as if the simple sentence was a fragile crystalline structure that might shatter if he uttered the wrong syllable.
“The priests cause people to disappear in a clap of thunder,” the captive said. “Just as you caused Ormanthia to disappear.”
“It is a sacrifice,” the older man corrected. His voice was a hiss. “The Vengeful One is a powerful god. He swallows his victims whole.”
The young man gave a shudder. “True. He does.”
The older man looked at Aristide. “He will swallow you.”
“Perhaps,” said Aristide. “But on me he may break a tooth.” He turned to the younger man. “How many priests are there?”
“Three.”
“And they have swords like mine?”
“No. They are armed with…” He hesitated, as if he knew how absurd this would sound. “Clay balls,” he finished.
“Clay. Balls.” The delicate words once again chimed with a crystalline sound.
“They dangle the balls from strings. The balls dart around as if they had minds of their own. And the balls… eat people.”
Aristide’s profile softened as he considered the bandit’s words.
“I shall look forward to encountering these priests,” he said softly.
The older bandit spat.
“I shall look forward to your death,” he said.
“How do you know the priests send their victims to death?” Aristide asked. “It might be paradise, for all you know.”
The bandit spat again.
“I’ll cut your throat myself,” he said.
“Now, now,” said Aristide. “I’ll have to tick the box next to your name that saysunrepentant.”
“So we swear! So we swear!” The cry went up from the assembled captains. Aristide looked up from his conference. Apparently the leaders of the expedition had reached agreement.
As the others moved off to their companies, Grax looked up at Aristide on his rock
“You’re authorized a double share if you accompany us to the Temple,” he said.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Aristide said. “You’re in command of this expeditionary force, I assume?”
“Of course!” The troll showed his yellow teeth.
“Congratulations on your expanded responsibilities. My captives—for different reasons admittedly—are willing to lead us to the Venger’s Temple.”
Grax studied them with his golden eyes. “They show wisdom.”
The older bandit curled his lip. Perhaps he’d run low on saliva.
“May be,” Aristide said. “But I regret to tell you that it may be that our fight against these people may be more difficult than we’ve expected.”
“Yes?” Grax didn’t seem troubled. “Where is the Temple,” he asked, “and how far?”
“Back up the valley. Fifteen or twenty glasses.”
“Damn. We’ll have to wait for this lot to get by us, then.” He lumbered off to give orders to the elements of his new army, and to pass the word to the caravans that they should begin to move. The huge caravan picked itself up and began to trudge its way down the path to Gundapur’s plain.
The story of the brief battle must have spread through the caravan, because Aristide found that many pointed at him as they passed, or huddled together and whispered. He saw Souza ride past on a mule, leading two more mules shared by the three children he’d salvaged for the College, and he and the scholar exchanged salutes.
Finding his celebrity tedious, and unable to move out of public scrutiny on a narrow track filled with carts and camels, Aristide spoke with his prisoners and found the younger bandit talkative, as he’d anticipated. He learned that the Venger’s Temple was in a broad cleft in the mountain, with its own water supply, and with powerful natural defenses.
“It’s like a pool of life, really,” the young man said. “There’s a waterfall on both sides of a stone pillar, and a pool below.”
“Does it have the properties of a pool of life?” Aristide asked.
“No. It’s just rocks and water. Quite pretty, really.”
The long serpent of the caravan continued its crawl past the swordsman’s perch. Aristide looked up at the sight of a young blue-eyed woman on a palfrey, but she had drawn a veil over her face, and kept her eyes turned from his.
He bowed as she passed. She kept her face turned away.
She had demonstrated that she was afraid of sorcery, and of the College. Certainly anyone who could wield such a weapon as Tecmessa must be a powerful wizard, worthy of trepidation.
Aristide’s expression confirmed he was not pleased to be such an object of fear.
The caravan finally passed, leaving behind colossal amounts of fresh dung, and Grax organized his force of sixty warriors. They had few spare mounts: their comrades were deliberately making it difficult for the party to abscond with much of the loot. Aristide gave Grax the older bandit as a guide, and kept the talkative one for himself. Both captives were tied onto saddles that had been placed on mules.
The mounted force could move much more quickly than the caravan. After a brief march up the valley they came to the ridge where the band of caravan guards had been left to face a group of enemy on the opposite ridge. Their lieutenant descended to greet Grax.
“I was coming to report,” he said. “The bandits we were watching have gone.”
“Gone where?” asked Grax.
“Back over that ridge they were on. We don’t know any more than that.”
“Survivors must have told them we’d wiped out their main force, and they decided it was pointless to stay.”
“There’s a goat track back there,” said the younger bandit. “It leads to the Venger’s Temple.”
Aristide raised his eyebrows. “A back entrance?” he asked.
“More like a side entrance. But the defenses are less formidable than the main track up the canyon.”
Aristide looked at Grax. “Perhaps we should take this path.”
Grax looked at the outlaw. “Is it suitable for our mounts?”
> “You may have to lead them up a few steep places, but you shouldn’t have any real trouble.”
And so it proved. Grax’s force—now augmented by the rear guard, who opted for glory and loot rather than the more tedious prospect of rejoining the caravan—ascended the enemy ridge unopposed, and found a narrow valley behind, pleasantly shaded by aspen. Birds sang in the trees overhead; butterflies danced beneath the green canopy. A brook sang its way down the valley, and the party crossed and re-crossed the water as they advanced.
There was fresh dung on the trail, which proved that they were on the track of the outlaws. The valley was ideal for an ambush, and Grax kept his scouts out. They saw nothing but a small, wary deer—they took a shot, and missed.
The trail rose from the valley floor and up a stony ridge. The party dismounted and led their mounts along the steep, narrow trail. From here it was a constant climb, on foot or mounted, along one slope or another. The terrain varied widely: sometimes they were in little green valleys filled with trees and flowers; on other occasions they were on rocky slopes as dry as the desert plateau beyond the top of the pass.
At one point, as the party rested and refreshed themselves while the scouts examined the next ridge to make certain there was no ambush, Aristide offered his captive a drink from his water bottle. He considered the outlaw’s physique, his length, his breadth of shoulder, his well-developed muscles.
“How old are you really?” he asked.
The young man laughed. “I was sixteen when I left the Womb of the World. I’m not sure how long ago that was—eighteen months, maybe.”
“Had you always intended to be an outlaw?”
The bandit gave a rueful grin. “Songs and stories made the life seem more exciting than it is. I’d thought it would be more fun.”
Aristide gave an amused smile. “I’ve heard that from someone else recently.”
“I hadn’t intended to become the slave of a group of killer priests, that’s for certain. But when I saw what their men did to Black Arim—he was our gang’s leader—I joined right up. And once I met the priests, I was too frightened to run away. Especially after what I saw them do to a couple fellows they called ‘deserters.’”
“Do the priests have names?”
“Not that I’ve ever heard. They speak to us in the common tongue, but they have a language of their own when they don’t want us to understand what they’re saying.”
“Which is most of the time, I suppose.”
The outlaw nodded. He looked over his shoulder to make certain no one was listening, then leaned close to Aristide and spoke in a lowered voice.
“How about cutting these ropes and letting me run for it?” he asked. “I’ve cooperated, and I promise to give up the outlaw life once I’m away from here.”
Aristide considered this proposal. “I think I’ll wait to see whether your information is correct.”
“No offense,” the bandit said, “but in a few hours you’ll all be dead. I’d like to be well away from here before that happens.”
The swordsman smiled. “I guess you’ll have to take your chances with us. Want some more water?”
The bandit accepted another drink. The scouts on the ridge ahead appeared, and signaled that it was safe. Aristide helped the bandit back onto his mule, made sure the ropes were secure, and mounted his own horse. The small army continued their long climb.
Four turns of the glass later, they entered a small, shady valley fragrant with the smell of pine. “The Temple’s just ahead,” the young outlaw warned. “Past the trees, and up a slope.”
Aristide rode ahead to deliver this news to Grax, whose own captive had been mute in the hopes that the column would just blunder into the bandit nest.
“Ah,” Grax said in surprise. “I see.” Then he turned in his saddle and without preamble ran the older bandit through with his lance. As the man kicked and thrashed his way to his next incarnation, Grax began making his dispositions.
Aristide rode ahead to where the scouts were hovering in the fringes of the trees, looking up at a boulder-strewn slope marked with evergreen scrub.
“Bitsy,” he said. “Take a look, will you?”
The cat jumped from his perch behind Aristide’s saddle. The barb snorted and made an uneasy sideways movement. Bitsy ignored the animal and sprang ahead, out of the shadow of the pines and onto the slope, and stayed close to the ground as she took a zigzag path to the crest, darting from cover to cover.
The nearest scout—a green-haired woman—gave Aristide a look.
“Your cat understands you,” she said.
Aristide affected nonchalance. “Most of the time, yes.”
Grax rode forward on his giant lizard to give instructions to the scouts, and seemed surprised to find Aristide there.
“I’ve sent a scout ahead,” Aristide said. “She should be reporting back any time.”
And in fact Bitsy was soon observed returning from her mission. She didn’t bother weaving from cover to cover, but instead came straight back.
“You sent your cat?” Grax laughed, and then Bitsy arrived and spoke.
“No guards,” she said. “It seems they’ve all been called in to witness punishment.”
“Punishment?” Aristide asked.
“Your cat talks!” Grax said, wide-eyed. His green-haired scout made a sign to ward evil.
“I counted twenty-two outlaws, variously armed,” Bitsy went on. “Three priests in black, and eleven bound captives. I believe these latter are the group we’ve been following—it seems the priests are unhappy with the failure of their mission.”
“Your cat talks!” said Grax.
“The waterfall and pool are ahead on the right,” Bitsy continued. “On the left is a plantation of date palms, and that’s where the outlaws are congregated. Behind the pool is a stock pen, where their mounts are confined.”
“Your cat talks!” said Grax. Bitsy looked at him.
“Yes,” she said. “I do. May I suggest that you attack soon while one-third of their strength remain bound and helpless?”
Grax looked from Aristide to Bitsy and back again, his huge grey head bobbing on its thick neck.
“I believe Bitsy’s advice is sound,” Aristide said. “But let me tell you first about the priests.”
He related what the captives had told him about the priests’ abilities. Grax listened with grim attention, his eyes darting toward Bitsy now and then, as if to discover if she had sprouted wings, or a second head, or demonstrated some other unexpected talent.
“What do you recommend?” Grax said finally.
“Don’t close with the priests. Tell your archers to keep shooting at them, from as many directions as possible.”
“You can’t make them… go away?”
“Perhaps.” Aristide rubbed the stubble on his chin. “I wish we could take them alive. I’d like to know what they can tell me.”
“If their powers are what you say, it may be easier to kill them.”
“Yes. And what happens to them is going to be more their choice than ours.”
“You’re wasting time,” said Bitsy sharply.
“True,” Grax looked over his saddle at his forces, now waiting his command. He turned his great lizard and rejoined his guards, to give his orders.
Aristide also rode back, but only to join his guide, the young outlaw. The bandit flinched as Aristide drew a knife from his belt. Aristide reached out and placed the knife in one of the young man’s bound hands.
“What you do from this point is your choice,” he said, “but I’d run like hell if I were you.”
The outlaw’s face flushed. “Thank you!” he said. “I’m a law-abiding man from this point forward!”
“Don’t make any promises you can’t keep,” Aristide said, and turned to rejoin the caravan guards. The outlaw called after him.
“Try not to die!”
Aristide laughed and rode on.
Grax’s little army, having received its orders,
was deploying left and right and moving upslope, all the while trying to make as little noise as possible. Aristide looked ahead and saw Bitsy’s black-and-white tail waving from the shelter of a scrub pine. He increased his pace and rode to join her, passing the armed force as it was still deploying.
He dismounted before he reached the top of the slope, and made his way cautiously to the shelter of the little pine. He found himself on the rim of a shallow bowl three hundred paces in width. There was a great pile of rock on the right, cleft by a mountain brook that fell in two streams past a great basalt pillar into a broad pool, just as Aristide’s guide had described. The stream rose again from the pool and wound its way across the bowl, cutting a trench through the palm plantation. The plantation itself had been raised above the floor of the bowl, and was surrounded by a chest-high stone wall, the interior of which had been filled with soil hauled to this place at considerable labor, to provide a fertile anchor for the trees.
Whoever had done this was long gone. The plantation had an untended look.
Beyond the plantation was a corral with horses and other animals. Most of the open area was cluttered with the tents and shelters of the bandit army. Only the fact that the plantation was elevated above the surrounding area gave Aristide a view of what was happening beneath the palms.
There was a gathering in the plantation, a half-circle of bandits with the three black-clad priests prominent in the center. At the priests’ feet stretched another group of bandits, each bound hand and foot. Taller than the tallest human, and unnaturally slender, the priests stalked among them, chanting in a guttural tongue. It was impossible to hear any words over distance, and over the sound of the waterfall.
Grax rode up behind Aristide, peering over the twisted pine, his lance poised to give the signal to attack. Aristide motioned him to wait.
“I want to find out what happens next,” he whispered.
Grax turned and signaled the army to stillness and silence, and then he dismounted and joined Aristide in concealment. The troll was wider than the bush he was hiding behind: at some other time it might have been amusing.
Implied Spaces Page 5
