The Brazen Gambit

by Lynn Abbey

  Zvain's gaze settled then on him, steady and accusing. "Just like at Escrissar's. No better. Worse, maybe." And Pavek couldn't forget being faced with that look, clenched fists in the night.

  The hand trembled with what, he suspected, was very real, fear. Zvain had made himself a lair in the middle of the grove's largest grassland, a small hollow some seven mansized strides across. He was noticeably thinner; the druids' assertion that no one could starve in one of their groves apparently did not apply to a prisoner too frightened to pick a handful of berries from a bush with eyes. And when those fingers slipped his and Zvain wrapped his arms around Pavek as he had done so often in the Urik bolt-hole, Pavek found he couldn't refuse to offer the comfort so obviously needed.

  "It's not my fault, Pavek, is it? I was looking for you when he found me. He locked me up, just like this, and then he gave me things-I tried to be careful Pavek, I thought he was a slaver, but he was worse, and then it was too late." Zvain's arms squeezed harder. "You've got to believe me. You've got to get me out of here."

  Pavek knelt to return Zvain's embrace, and as the boyish arms wrapped around his neck and the boyish head burrowed into his neck, he found himself wondering why it was easier to hug and hold someone he didn't trust than to comfort Akashia, whom he did. Even now, when tears were soaking his shirt and trickling down his ribs, why should he want to reassure the boy when he knew, both in his head and his heart, that Telhami was right? It was a tragedy when an innocent youth was corrupted, but that didn't mean that the corruption should be spared its rightful end.

  He, himself, had lived in corruption all his life without succumbing to it-or so both Oelus and Telhami said. Of course, no one had ever tempted him the way Escrissar had tempted Zvain, or abandoned him quite the way he had abandoned the boy. And Zvain was his weak point, the only opening a man like Escrissar needed.

  He extracted himself from Zvain's embrace.

  "Please, Pavek? Please?" The whine was back; Zvain reattached himself around Pavek's ribs. "Don't leave me here. Take me with you. Make them forgive me-like you made them forgive Ruari after he busted the zarneeka stowaway."

  And how had Zvain learned that?

  He pushed the boy away, scowling. Zvain made no attempt to reattach, seemingly resigned to losing this battle, but threw himself instead back onto his lair and scowled up at him.

  Was Ruari paying visits to the grove? It was possible. Ruari held himself apart from the farmers and druids who drilled twice every day, trying to transform themselves and their tools into fighters and weapons. Ruari wanted personal instruction from both him and Yohan and the assurance that he wouldn't be standing in a line of hoe-toting farmers, but doing hand-to-hand hero's work; an assurance neither he nor Yohan would give. And knowing a bit of the way Ruari's mind worked, it was more than possible that he was sulking in Telhami's grove rather than his own.

  Ruari and Zvain together in the same thought sent a shiver down Pavek's back.

  The youths were talking, perhaps plotting. Telling himself that he'd have to warn Yohan, if not Telhami, he turned his back on the scowling face.

  "You risked your life to save a farmer's brat." The voice from behind him had taken on a new maturity in the past six days, one he could hear, now with his back turned. "You defied that old woman to save a half-elf that tried to kill you; but you won't say a word in my behalf-me, who saved your life, templar, after you took my mother's.... And left me behind."

  He almost turned, then, to defend actions he couldn't explain to himself, but:

  "Why, Pavek?" The whine was gone, and the maturity, leaving only a soft quiver.

  A quiver far more dangerous to all he fought for than all Escrissar's unknown forces. Pavek pried himself free of Zvain's insidious influence and made a clean escape to the barren land outside Telhami's grove.

  He was still on the path between the fields when he heard frantic hammering on the hollowed log that served as Quraite's general alarm.

  * * *

  Most of Quraite had assembled by Telhami's hut by the time he got there. Telhami herself stood beside the door, waiting. Her gray hair stood out from her head in windswept wisps, and her eyes were weepy from the sun.

  In the last few days, Pavek had heard her say many times that she watched over Quraite. He remembered how she'd been the first to know that Yohan was crossing the Fist, first to know that Pavek and his companions were returning with her and Zvain; but he'd assumed that she'd used some trick of the Unseen Way to accomplish that. He'd never guessed, until now, that she literally and actually hovered above her guarded lands.

  "They're coming," she said, flatly and firmly. "From the southwest, straight out of Urik."

  "All ten thousand?" an anxious farmer asked.

  "Fifty men and women, give or take a handful. They've lost some coming across the Fist, but those I saw will finish the journey before sundown."

  Fifty sounded better than ten thousand. The farmers sighed with relief, but Pavek didn't. He thought of fifty fighters, probably including Rokka and other renegades from the Urik templarate, and shook his head grimly.

  Any templar could take battlefield commands and carry them out. And even a desk-bound procurer like Rokka had to put in his time on the practice fields.

  Pavek held himself a competent fighter with the weapons he knew-better than competent, his size, strength and Dovanne's sword would give him a real advantage. But when the fighting was between one man and many, the wise man placed his bets on the many.

  Yohan had made his own analysis of what they faced:

  "They'll be parched and exhausted. Maybe they'll make camp." And his eyes sparkled with thoughts of an ambush. Telhami looked at Pavek.

  He shook his head. "Unless it's so dark they don't see the trees."

  "My thought as well," she agreed.

  She took a long moment to study the Quraiters, one by one, looking straight into each pair of eyes with a confident smile. "We've done everything that we could do in advance," she said. "You know what we must do now, and I know that you can do it."

  Pavek admitted to himself that for a woman who'd spent her life growing trees, Telhami did a credible job of marshalling her forces for what she, at least, had to know was going to be an all-out, to-the-last-survivor battle. His own confidence rose as he watched the farmers and lesser druids gather the long-handled tools that would serve as their weapons. Calmly determined, they laid the hoes, flails, scythes and rakes beside their stations along the waist-high dirt rampart that encircled Telhami's hut.

  In six days they had transformed the village from a cluster of comfortable dwellings and pantries to a bare ground clearing in which they had hastily created three trench-and-rampart rings. They'd hacked stakes from the sacrificed trees and homes and set the largest point-up in the outer bank of the first two ramparts to slow the enemies' advance. Smaller stakes had become make-shift spears heaped in sheaves at each station of the innermost rampart.

  The farmers and druids, everyone old enough to fling a stick or bind a length of cloth over a wound, would fight from behind the third ring's rampart, while he and Yohan would add their skills wherever, whenever the circle threatened to break.

  And while they were holding back the physical attack, inside the hut Akashia would be shaping and focusing the guardian's power as Telhami combined druidry and the tricks of the Unseen Way to fend off whatever Escrissar sent at them.

  And if they failed-if the circle broke and the enemy stormed Telhami's hut, or Escrissar got around Telhami and; the guardian to flood them all with nightmare monsters... Well, every druid had wrought unique spellcraft to hide his. or her grove. Escrissar would be hard-put to locate them all, and if he found them, the likelihood was that the zarneeka plants, and everything else the Quraite druids had nurtured for generations, would be dead.

  It was as good a defense strategy as they'd collectively been able to devise. Pavek would have given all the gold stashed beneath Telhami's hut for a few bows and the men to shoot them,
but there was no sense longing for what they couldn't have. Escrissar and his fifty allies would march undisturbed through the fields and the ring of trees and find an unpleasant surprise waiting for them.

  Pavek only hoped the wheel of fate would give him just one opportunity to slip his sword between the interrogator's ribs.

  He felt a tug on his shirt and spun around.

  "What about me, Pavek?"

  Ruari, with his staff.

  "You know your place."

  "Pavek, I can do better than that-"

  "You can't. Gather your weapons, your water, and the cloth for bandages. Take them and yourself to your place on the rampart and stay there!"

  "I want to fight"

  "You're going to fight, scum. Now-Go!"

  He and Ruari stared at each other, then Ruari stalked away. Pavek hoped-prayed to whatever nameless power might listen to a one-time templar, not-quite druid-that Ruari's bile wouldn't get him killed in the first assault wave. Quraite needed everyone, and Ruari was proficient with that staff of his; he set the standard for the fanners around him. They'd lose heart if Ruari went down in some fool's burst of bravery.

  He'd lose heart.

  Except for Yohan, none of them were veterans, none of them had fought a pitched battle-including himself. Stalking Dovanne's attacker or breaking the heads of petty criminals in his inspector days didn't count. The closest he'd come to combat was skirmishes on the streets of Urik against the Tyrian hooligans years ago.

  Inside, he was scared to the marrow and desperate to see another sunrise. He almost envied Ruari his blind anger and commitment.

  Waiting was worse than he imagined it could be, knowing that the circle fighters were looking over their shoulders at him and curbing their fears because he looked calm. Yohan, sitting beside him on the stoop of Telhami's hut, looked calm as he examined the edge of his obsidian sword.

  But maybe, as Yohan's eyes met his, not calm at all. Maybe Yohan's panic went even deeper, because there was no one at all for him to turn to.

  Then, without warning, the mind-bending began: a black fist thrusting through his mind. Everyone jerked backward; a few cried out in shock or terror before Telhami launched her counterattack, and the black fist became a memory.

  Pavek slapped his hand against Yohan's and pulled himself to his feet. "Better you than me." Which was a lie. He had no idea what templars said to each other.

  But Yohan laughed and shook his hand heartily. "That's good. I'll remember that."

  "See that you do."

  They released each other's hand and took a step backward toward the quadrants of the circle they'd selected for themselves. For a moment Pavek wanted to say something more, something sincere, then Yohan turned away and the moment was gone.

  * * *

  Escrissar brought his force through the trees in a compact group: a dozen fighters in the front rank and three or four in each of the files. If Telhami's estimate of their enemy's strength was correct-and Pavek saw no reason to doubt it -the interrogator was committing himself personally to a single thrust and holding nothing in reserve.

  On second glance, the interrogator wasn't committing himself to anything, unless he was the black-haired half-elf marching second-from-the-left. There wasn't a black enamel mask to be seen, like Telhami and Akashia, Escrissar was holding himself out of the battle, mind-bending from a safe distance.

  And that wasn't the worst thing Pavek saw, or didn't see. He spotted Rokka and a few other templars he recognized from Urik, about ten in all, just as he'd figured. They'd left their yellow robes behind-no surprise; heavy sleeves were a dangerous obstacle to a swinging sword-arm-and marched in such oddments of weaponry and armor as they'd scrounged from the templarate armory and private armorers in the elven market. Their rag-tag panoply stood in considerable contrast with the fighters who marched around them.

  Escrissar had filled his force not with the ill-equipped rabble from the market he'd hoped for, but with some three dozen hardened fighters, each of whom carried a polished wooden shield, a javelin, and a yard-long knobkerrie club all carved from bronze-hard agafari wood.

  The agafari tree grew near Nibenay, and, as far as Pavek knew, no where else in the Tablelands. Nibenay's templarate was composed of the Shadow-King's wives only, so he was either looking at army conscripts-which didn't seem likely given the way they marched-or one of the numerous mercenary companies Nibenay's ruler employed to augment his harem.

  But whether the Shadow-King knew that his mercenaries were here, far northeast of Urik, was a question only Elabon Escrissar could answer.

  Nibenay's mercenaries threw their single javelin before they descended into the trench around the outer rampart. Two farmers went down. One took a shaft through his left arm; he might recover from the shock to fight again. The other was gut-struck, and bis screams were horrible to hear.

  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 shields 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 shields. 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 Akashia 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 shield after taking his first attacker down with a bone-deep slash to the man's thigh, but the mercenaries had anchored their shields 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.

  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 shield.

  "Yohan's 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, shivery 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 shirt.

  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, scum: 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 shield. 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 scum threw the medallion without warning.