Once he had Mag’r’s puffy eyes and bloated cheeks securely in mind, Agis sent a thought message to him: What’s wrong? I thought you wanted us to open the gate for you.
My little spies? came the reply.
It’s Agis, the noble replied. Don’t let anything happen to our ship, or I’ll bar the gates again.
In the next instant, Mag’r’s voice came booming over the causeway. “Let the gates open!” he ordered. “Charge, Beast Eaters!”
A great roar rose from the Joorsh ranks, then the ground began to tremble beneath Agis’s feet as Mag’r’s warriors rushed across the isthmus. Boulder after boulder crashed into the walls of Castle Feral, filling the gateyard with a clamorous din such as the noble had never before heard. The Saram on the front wall responded with halfhearted battle howls of their own and hurled boulders down at the causeway.
Agis glanced upward, expecting to see the faces of the Poison Pack peering down from the lofty walls overhead. Instead, he saw nothing but yellow Athasian sky. Taking no chances that the ambush would fail, Nal had apparently withdrawn his troops from sight.
“What are you waiting for?” demanded Brita, using her sword to wave Agis ahead. “Open the gates!”
The noble rushed forward and placed one hand on each gate. Pumping his legs furiously, he slowly managed to get the heavy panels moving outward. When the gap between them grew too great for his arms to span, he concentrated all of his efforts on the one that had not been pierced by the harpoon. For a moment, it seemed to stick. Then it broke free and swung outward of its own volition. Giving it one last shove, the noble wrapped his arms around a bone slat and jumped on. His intention was not to hide, but merely to get out of harm’s way as soon as possible.
As Agis swung outward with the gate, he saw that the Joorsh warriors with the battering ram had cast their weapon aside. They were wading back to the shore to climb out of the silt. At the same time, Mag’r’s Beast Eaters were charging across the causeway, shaking their spiked clubs in the air and screaming threats against their Saram brethren.
Overhead, boulders flew in both directions as the Joorsh charged, and so much rubble rained down around Agis that he felt as though he had gotten caught in a landslide. As the Beast Eaters reached the end of the causeway and stepped onto the small deck before the gate, the Joorsh stone-hurlers turned their aim elsewhere. The lull lasted only a moment, for the Saram quickly began to drop boulders down on the heads of the Beast Eaters. The invaders responded by raising their kank-shell bucklers to deflect the deadly rain.
Their efforts met with little success. Aided by the incredible height of the walls over the gate, the boulders came crashing down with a force unmatched by the long-distance hurling that had taken place so far. The Saram stones smashed through the bucklers as though they were glass, spraying shards of kank shell in every direction, snapping Joorsh arms, and shattering Joorsh skulls with resounding cracks. Within moments of stepping off the causeway, a quarter of the Beast Eater company lay sprawled before the gate, either moaning and writhing in agony, or silent and still, like the rocks that had killed them.
The survivors rushed into the courtyard. A few muffled clatters sounded from inside, but it was nothing like the incredible din Agis expected to hear when the Poison Pack made their attack. The yard remained relatively quiet for a moment, until a triumphant Beast Eater cheer blasted out of the gate.
At the other end of the isthmus, Mag’r answered with a deep-throated war cry and signaled the second wave to charge. This time, he led the charge himself, waving a huge obsidian sword over his head and lumbering forward in great, swaying strides. Behind him came the giants who had been holding the battering ram, armed with a motley assortment of clubs and lances. Clearly, any of them could have outrun their king, for they were forced to trot at half speed behind his waddling form. Nevertheless, none of them attempted to pass, though Agis did not know whether their reluctance was out of respect for their leader, or merely because Mag’r’s immense bulk so completely filled the causeway that they would have had to jump into the dust harbor to get past.
Again, Saram boulders began to drop outside the castle, but the rain was not nearly as thick as before. The small contingent of beasthead warriors were splitting their attacks between the courtyard and the isthmus, with the result that they did not have much effect in either place.
Mag’r, charging through the sparse hail with a jubilant grin on his fleshy lips, hardly seemed to notice the stones that did fall near him. Knowing what would happen once the giant passed through the gateway, Agis could hardly bear to watch as the sachem waddled to his death.
As Mag’r reached the opening, he fixed his gray eyes on Agis’s form, which was still clinging to the gate. “Good!” He stretched a chubby arm down to pluck Agis off the gate. “Come, you’ll fight at my side!”
The noble’s heart jumped into his throat. He released his hold and dropped off the gate, allowing the sachem’s pudgy fingers to close on thin air. Mag’r frowned and looked as though he would stop to pluck the noble off the ground, but was carried into the courtyard by the momentum of the second wave’s charge.
Agis threw himself beneath the gate, then watched from his shelter as the rest of the company rushed into the courtyard. By the time the last giant had passed through the gates, the apron had become, quite literally, a mountain of dead flesh and stony rubble. Only a small space directly in front of the gates remained relatively clear, for it appeared that the Saram had deliberately avoided dropping any boulders in this area. Agis found this puzzling, since the Saram ambush would work better if their enemy’s only escape was blocked by bodies and stones.
Mag’r’s deep voice began issuing orders inside the courtyard, and Agis crawled from his hiding place. To both sides of the isthmus, he saw Joorsh warriors wading toward the castle entrance from the Bay of Woe. At the same time, the clatter of boulders dropping into the courtyard increased in frequency, fixing the attention of Mag’r and his warriors on the walls above their heads.
Agis saw Brita’s camouflaged form slip out of the courtyard. She grabbed the gate with the harpoon in it and began to quietly pull it closed. Nal’s plan, the noble realized, was even more ingenious than it had appeared. Once Brita closed the gates, the true slaughter would begin—leaving him locked outside the castle, while Tithian remained inside with the Dark Lens.
Agis rushed over to the body of the nearest Joorsh and pulled the warrior’s bone dagger from its sheath. The weapon was taller than the noble, and he had to hold it like a two-handed sword, but he suspected he could wield the blade well enough for his purposes.
By the time Agis turned back around, Brita was reaching for the second gate. Hefting the borrowed blade over his head, the noble rushed forward. The chameleon-head turned one eye on him and one on Mag’r, her club-ended tongue flickering in anger. Paying her gesture no heed, Agis swung his blade with all his might. The beasthead deftly pulled her leg out of the way, narrowly avoiding a gash across her knee, and kicked.
The giant’s toe caught Agis square in the stomach, wracking his body with pain and causing him to drop his weapon. The noble went tumbling across the rocky apron, not stopping until he hit a pile of Joorsh corpses.
Agis was still trying to shake the dizziness from his head when he saw that his brief skirmish with Brita had been noticed. Ignoring the steady clatter of boulders in the courtyard, Sachem Mag’r stepped up behind the Saram spy and sent her reptilian head flying with one hack of his obsidian blade. Agis barely had time to roll out of the way before her body crashed down on the same pile of corpses into which he had tumbled.
Mag’r scowled and pointed his sword at Brita’s body. “What was she doing here?” he demanded.
As the sachem spoke, the first Joorsh reinforcements began to arrive from the Bay of Woe.
“She was hiding, I guess,” Agis replied.
The noble cast a nervous glance around the apron. To all sides, Joorsh were slowly hauling themselves onto the barren
rock, silt pouring off their bodies in long gray streamers.
The king frowned and stepped toward the noble. Before he could ask another question, a deafening thunder erupted inside the courtyard. Even from his side of the gate, Agis could see tons of boulders pouring down into the courtyard. The Joorsh warriors cried out in a single shocked voice. A cloud of rock chips and dust came roiling out of the gateway to engulf Mag’r.
“It’s a trap!” the sachem yelled.
Agis ran for cover, sprinting at an angle for the cliffs that flanked Castle Feral’s gateworks. He narrowly avoided the outthrust hands of several Joorsh who were just climbing onto the apron, and dived into a hollow at the base of the bluff. He crawled to the back of this hole, hoping that it was small enough to keep the giants’ thick fingers from plucking him out.
The noble need not have worried. No sooner had he found his hiding place than a soft, low-pitched rumble issued from the gates, growing louder and more resonant with each passing moment. The dust haze settled enough for him to see Mag’r looking back through the gate, and the rumble developed into a roar. Castle Feral began to shake so badly that Agis could see centuries of encrusted dirt and loosened building stones dropping onto the apron outside his hole.
Mag’r spun and threw himself away from the gate. Half his reinforcements did likewise, but the other half were still standing on the apron when a cataclysmic bang shook its barren stones. A massive granite ball came blasting from the gateyard. The gateworks erupted into a shower of jagged masonry, cutting down every living thing that stood before the blast and raising a thousand plumes of dust as the shattered stones splattered into the Bay of Woe.
The ball continued on, plowing into the mountain of rubble that covered the apron, flinging dead giants and huge boulders high into the air, then arcing out over the silt bay to vanish from sight beneath a long plume of dust.
Like Mag’r and the Joorsh warriors who had survived the explosion, Agis could only stare in open-mouthed wonder as the debris stirred up by the stone came drizzling back to the ground.
Finally, the shower stopped. Mag’r appeared from the far side of the gate, a mountainous silhouette lumbering through the dust haze. Behind him came a dozen more Joorsh forms, long spears or heavy clubs clutched in their hands, too dazed to speak and stumbling over the rubble like the survivors of an inferno that had destroyed an entire city.
“Come out, spy!” yelled Mag’r, pulling an enormous dagger from its sheath. “Don’t make me search for you, or your death will be twice as painful!”
Agis remained motionless and silent in his little alcove, content to take his chances. It would not be long, he suspected, before the Poison Pack charged to his rescue.
Sure enough, the noble soon heard the clatter of stumbling giants coming from the rubble-strewn gateyard of Castle Feral. The sound was followed by the raucous battle cry of the Poison Pack, an angry wail so full of hissing and chirping that it sounded almost ghostly.
Forgetting about Agis, Mag’r raised his sword and charged into the courtyard. The rest of the Joorsh followed, but the Poison Pack began to pour out of the castle onto the apron. Peals of thunder rolled over the peninsula as the two groups of warriors met, their weapons clashing like bolts of lightning. Angry yells and savage snarls filled the air. Dripping fangs sank into unprotected flesh, while bare hands smashed arachnid skulls and snapped serpentine necks. Soon giants from both tribes were crashing to the ground, their blood running in dark rivers and gathering in steaming lakes.
For a few awestruck moments, Agis watched the battle without moving. Then, once he judged that the giants were too preoccupied with each other to bother with him, he slipped from his hiding place and crept along the wall. Just a few feet away danced the legs of fighting giants, their blows echoing off each other like clashing mountains. Once, Agis was nearly crushed when a Saram toppled over in front of him, and another time he was bowled over when a Joorsh tooth, still slick with the giant’s saliva, crashed down on his shoulder.
Eventually, the noble reached the hole where the castle gate had once stood. The place was even more littered with bodies and rubble, if that were possible, than the rest of the apron. The gateyard was an impassable jumble, except that a valley of crushed stone and flesh marked where the granite ball had rolled through.
In the center of this valley, Agis saw Bawan Nal and Sachem Mag’r, the only living beings in the gateyard, battling furiously. Nal fought with his back to the trench-path, thrusting first with a lance he carried in one hand, then slashing madly with the crude bone sword he held in the other. His owlish eyes blazed with a murderous light, and his hooked beak hung half-open, ready to clamp down on any appendage that came too near it.
Although Mag’r faced away from Agis, the noble did not doubt that the look on the Joorsh’s face was every bit as angry and determined. The sachem was making good use of his single sword, turning each parry into a counterattack, thrusting first at the bawan’s throat and slicing next at his abdomen.
Both giants fought with a grace and skill that the noble found surprising, but the advantage clearly belonged to the larger Joorsh. Mag’r towered a full ten feet over his foe and was making good use of his size to force the Saram back. From all appearances, it would take him only a few more passes to drive Nal clear to the trench-path—cutting off any hope Agis still had of catching Tithian before the king captured the Dark Lens.
The noble slipped into the gateyard and picked his way along the edge of the valley of crushed stone. Filled as it was with death and unwashed giant flesh, the place smelled incredibly foul. Agis tried to breathe through his mouth and put the stench out of his mind, but the farther into the courtyard he went, the worse the odor became.
The noble was just trying to slip past one side of the battle when Mag’r let out a mighty bellow and pressed forward with a vicious series of slashes. At first, Nal gave ground rapidly, and it appeared he would be driven back to the trench-path before Agis could gain it. Then the bawan stopped and ducked a high attack, countering with an abdomen slice that the noble feared would bring an end to the battle.
Mag’r saved himself only by jumping to one side, almost crushing Agis as the giant landed at the edge of the valley of crushed rock. The ground trembled, and the rubble shifted beneath the noble’s feet, then he found himself struggling to regain his balance as the giants’ combat raged over his head.
Agis looked up and caught Nal’s golden eyes flitting away, fixing on Mag’r’s black sword as it flashed down from the sky. The bawan lifted his own blade to parry. The two weapons met high overhead, filling the canyonlike space between the giants with a tremendous clap that rattled the noble’s ears.
The sound had not even died away before Nal’s lance darted forward, a gray bolt of lightning streaking past just yards above Agis’s head. The Joorsh twisted away with surprising agility for his rotund figure, but still took a shallow gash across the abdomen. Several gallons of warm blood spilled from the wound, nearly knocking the noble from his feet as they splashed over his head.
Screaming in rage, Mag’r countered the successful attack by smashing a bare fist down on the lance, snapping the shaft in two. The head of the broken weapon landed a short distance away. Keeping a close eye on the huge feet dancing all around him, Agis scrambled across the rubble and picked it up.
As the noble retrieved the weapon, he heard a tremendous crack far above. He looked up to see the pommel of Mag’r’s sword arcing away from Nal’s face, taking the top mandible of the Saram’s beak with it. The bawan roared in pain and stumbled back, raising his free hand to cover the gruesome wound.
Mag’r moved forward to press the attack, and once more Agis found himself many steps behind the battle. He could see the Joorsh striking repeatedly at the beasthead, rapidly beating down the weaker giant’s guard. Raising the head of Nal’s broken lance, the noble rushed forward. As he came up behind Mag’r, he took a deep breath and, holding the lance in both hands, drove it into the king’s fleshy
calf.
Roaring in pain, Mag’r stopped his attack in midswing and looked down. Agis saw the giant’s puffy cheeks grow red with fury, then the noble glimpsed Nal’s white sword arcing toward the Joorsh’s shoulder. The bone blade bit deep into Mag’r’s stout arm. Mag’r stumbled back.
Agis, diving between the Joorsh’s legs, narrowly avoided being crushed. He rolled once, then came to a rest in the no-man’s-land between the two giants. Nal’s blade passed low overhead on its way toward Mag’r’s knees, but the sachem blocked. Shards of obsidian and bone showered down on the noble’s head.
Nal raised his foot to step forward, lowering it toward Agis. The noble tried to scramble away, but gasped in agony as the giant’s heel came down on his left arm. He tried to pull free and heard a bone snap.
The giants’ swords crashed together over Agis’s head once, twice, three times. Beads of foul-smelling sweat fell all around. Mag’r and Nal rocked back and forth, grunting and cursing, smashing each other with their elbows and fists. Agis could do nothing but lie on the ground and scream in pain.
At last, Nal raised his leg to smash a knee into his foe’s thigh. Letting his arm dangle at his side, Agis staggered away. Keeping a watchful eye on the battle, he saw Mag’r smash an elbow into Nal’s face. The Saram grunted, stumbled back two steps, and crashed to the ground a dozen yards away.
Agis reached the path leading up to the castle and stopped to remove his belt. As he tied his injured arm to his side, he watched Mag’r lumber forward and kick the sword out of Nal’s hand. The Joorsh touched the tip of his weapon to the Saram’s throat. He did not even pause before pushing the blade in.
Agis turned and staggered up the trench-path, keeping his head low so that Mag’r would not see him.
FOURTEEN
THE OBSIDIAN
ORACLE
TITHIAN STARED INTO THE UTTER BLACKNESS OF the Dark Lens, trying to comprehend what he saw—or rather, didn’t see. Shaped like an egg and about the size of a small kank, the Oracle’s surface glimmered with the sheen of polished obsidian. Through this glassy skin swam languorous streaks of scarlet, often vanishing from one place and, in the same instant, reappearing another. But beneath these torpid lights, the king saw nothing—unless inviolable gloom could be called something.
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