Darik wrestled her into a sitting position, but warned, “No games, Ninny, or I swear to the Brothers, I’ll truss you up like a rabbit.” He glanced back again.
The enemy soldiers broke their party into bands of four and five to chase after the individual Kratians.and their camels. One of these bands caught up to one of the stragglers, some two hundred feet back from Darik and Sofiana. The Kratian drew a scimitar and turned to face his enemy. His camels bellowed at the horses, and the horsemen had to struggle to get their mounts to move in against the beasts. At last, the men drove through the camels and exchanged blows with the Kratian.
Darik crested a hill and lumbered down the far side, so he didn’t see the final outcome. He led them through a dry wash, past scrubby trees and around tangles of deadwood. His camel grumbled at the sudden change of terrain; the gravely surface bothered its feet in a way the sand hadn’t. But the camel made fewer tracks along the bottom of the wash. A galloping rider might easily miss them.
“Look!” Sofiana said, pointing. “A hiding spot.”
She pointed at a pair of knotted juniper trees that grew next to two boulders, each as tall as the camel’s head. There was a gap between the trees where they could hide. Darik wasn’t too proud to accept her suggestion.
He stopped and slid from the saddle. He tried to help Sofiana, but she slapped him away and jumped down herself. The two of them shoved and poked at the camel until it squeezed into the gap, protesting loudly. Darik tapped it on the nose with his riding stick until it squatted to the ground, then the two of them squirmed into the hiding place with it. They waited, their breathing loud and heavy.
Darik didn’t like squatting here helplessly and was afraid that the shouting Marrabatti soldiers would soon discover their ill-conceived hiding place. Sofiana took out her dagger, and he could see her itching to be discovered, so she could go to work with her blade.
Three horses and their riders galloped along the ridge less than fifteen feet overhead. He could see them through the branches of the juniper tree, and if they had glanced into the ravine, the enemy would have spotted Darik and Sofiana as well. But they didn’t look down and passed out of sight within a few seconds. When they were gone, the two of them breathed a sigh of relief.
“How long should we wait?” Sofiana asked.
“A few minutes longer.”
“I’m not scared. I can take two of them, if you can handle the third.”
“We can’t risk it. There are too many riders out there.”
“I’d rather die in the open, a blade in hand, than wait here cowering.”
“It’s almost dark,” Darik said. “Once it’s night we can come out and look for the red spire.”
“If it’s dark, then how will we manage to find it?”
“The comet gives plenty of light.”
He wasn’t sure about that, but he didn’t want to sit here arguing, either. For one thing, the wind might carry their voices.
Twice more they heard riders pounding past, but they maintained their discipline and remained undetected as the shadows grew long and twilight came. Once it was dark enough to risk, he relented to Sofiana’s pestering and sent her out of the wash to take a look. She proclaimed it safe to emerge.
“Don’t you dare throw me across the saddle again,” she said coldly. “If you try it, I swear I’ll grab a rock and brain you senseless. Then you can find your way out of here on foot.”
Darik refused to let her rile him. Once they got the camel out of its hiding place, they dropped it to its knees long enough to regain the saddle, then urged it to its feet. They stuck to the bottom of the dry wash as they set out again. Twice, he sent Sofiana up above to check for enemies. Each time, she returned saying the coast was clear.
The comet had grown until its light was enough to drown out all but the brightest stars, but it wasn’t enough to penetrate the deepest shadows, so they continued cautiously.
The dry wash joined a main channel, almost an entire riverbed cutting across the desert floor. It was mostly dry, but here and there they found a few patches of brackish water from a recent storm, these swarming with flies and smelling of brine. The camel refused to drink. Thick vegetation grew along the edges of the ravine, but none at the bottom where the seasonal waters had torn away anything that tried to take root.
Sofiana returned from one of her scouting expeditions to tell him that she’d heard horses and the shouts of men calling to each other. The enemy was still searching for them.
A few minutes later they found a hollow beneath an overhanging rock large enough for half a dozen camels and had a brief discussion about waiting out the night. Sofiana thought it was still too close to the town and if the search continued, they might be spotted. Darik worried that she was right, but with so much light overhead, he was inclined to risk it. But when they further inspected the cave, they discovered animal bones and a musky odor, marking the hollow as the den of some animal. Wild dogs, maybe, or hyenas. That settled it.
The sounds of the desert picked up as they continued. Crickets chirped their answer to the cicadas who droned in every bush and tree. A desert owl hooted somewhere nearby, and further away, a lion roared, a sound that sent a chill down Darik’s spine. A second lion answered, this time further south.
“Do you hear that?” Sofiana whispered. “I’m scared.”
It was uncharacteristic of her to admit fear, but Darik’s own terror came welling up as another lion roared from a few hundred yards away. The camel shivered beneath them, moving far too quickly, given the darkness. If Darik let it, the beast would break into a wild, terrified flight and break its leg.
As soon as he could, Darik brought the camel up and out of the dry riverbed to the desert floor. They were nearly to the hills, but he’d be beggared if he could figure out how they would find the red spire and the watering hole in the dark so as to locate Abudallah and the Kratians. And they were still deep enough in the desert that he was afraid to cross the open terrain toward Balsalom alone. He needed help finding water holes and avoiding enemies.
Movement caught his eye to the left, and he turned in the saddle, heart pounding, thinking about lions.
A man on a horse was pacing them a hundred or more yards distant, stealthily closing the distance. Darik slapped the rump of the camel with his riding stick. It was already skittish from the roaring lions and now launched forward. The rider gave a cry to some unseen companions and swept in for the attack. He drew a scimitar, holding the reins in one hand and the outstretched weapon with the other. Darik dropped the stick and drew his sword.
The horse pounded past, the heavy scimitar sweeping in for a blow. Darik found himself tangled up with Sofiana, who was drawing her own dagger, but got his blade free just in time to parry the man’s swing. Sofiana thrust out with her dagger as the man went past, and he cried out and twisted his shoulder away from the blow. But the girl had dislodged herself from the saddle in the process, and Darik had to grab her with his free hand to keep her from falling.
Sofiana yelled a taunt as the enemy brought his horse under control and came in behind them. Darik concentrated on flight.
His camel was more sure-footed in the darkness than the man’s horse, and as they entered straighter, flatter terrain, stretched into its loping gallop. It was a dangerous game, running at such speeds in the darkness, where either animal might fall or break a leg. The enemy started cautiously, but as the chase continued, he urged his animal forward, and it gained on the camel and its two riders. Again, the man shouted for help.
“Face him!” Sofiana said. “We can take him down.”
“He’s not alone.”
The man came in from behind and Darik was forced to turn the camel around so he wouldn’t be cut down with a blow across the back of his neck. For a moment, the two of them faced off, trading blows with steel clashing against steel. Darik had a higher vantage point from atop the camel, but the enemy enjoyed greater maneuverability, and his scimitar was big and heavy compared t
o the slender griffin rider’s blade Darik carried. And he was more wary now for Sofiana’s slashing counterstroke.
For a moment, Darik imagined himself back in the sky, trading blows from atop a huge, powerful griffin while dragon wasps and their riders flashed past. When Daria fought, she always tried to get the higher position, both so the beak, talons, and claws of the griffins could come into play and so she could swoop down from above. Darik’s camel wasn’t going to do any fighting, but he could use the same strategy in regards to the heights he commanded.
So when the two animals swung around and charged each other again, the fleeter horse racing in below, and Darik lumbering by above, he waited until the horse was pounding past, scimitar blow dodged, and then he launched himself from the camel. He struck the rider across the shoulders and knocked the man from his horse. Darik held onto his sword as the two landed, and his enemy broke his fall before the two of them disengaged.
Darik sprang to his feet and got his sword into place as his enemy struggled to his feet. The man grabbed his scimitar where he’d dropped it and brought it up. But by now Darik had positioned himself and stabbed forward as the man straightened. His blade thrust into the man’s belly, and he shoved it through with all his strength. When he pulled it out, the man crumbled to the ground, weapon dropped, clutching at his gut. He screamed in pain, and with enemies around, Darik couldn’t risk that. He dispatched the man with another blow.
Meanwhile, Sofiana had disappeared into the darkness on the back of the camel. Given a chance, she had apparently abandoned him without a second thought. He stared after her, furious that her loyalty was so shallow. From the distance came the sounds of horses and men shouting to the one who had cried for their help and now lay dead at Darik’s feet. They were getting closer. He looked for a place to hide, but he was out in the open again with no shelter in sight.
He was growing desperate when the camel came lurching out of the darkness with Sofiana on its back.
“I thought you left me,” he said as she dropped the camel to its knees so he could climb up.
“Don’t be an idiot. What kind of person do you think I am? I had to get control of the camel—it was spooked. What are you doing? No, get in back, I’ll lead this time. Quick, no time to argue.”
They drove the camel to its feet and continued their run toward the hills. After a few minutes, the sound of the searching enemies died away to their rear.
“Did you kill him?” Sofiana asked.
“Yes.” He took no pleasure in the memory of his sword thrusting through the man’s gut, and less of the killing blow, striking down a wounded and helpless enemy.
“You weren’t a coward, I’ll give you that,” Sofiana said, her tone grudging. “The Harvester take us, how are we going to find this red spire?”
#
They bore east and north as they came into the hills. Darik strained for the sound of pursuit, as well as the grunt and bellow of camels that might indicate that they’d located Abudallah and his caravan. But he heard nothing but the sounds of the desert, including the occasional roar of lions. Once, a dark shape rustled through the brush and alarmed their mount, who picked up its pace, in spite of its exhaustion and obvious thirst. Darik hoped it was a wild dog, or even a hyena, and not one of the lions. He couldn’t tell if that roaring sound was the lions fighting amongst themselves, or if they were out hunting. Either way, he wanted to stay as far from them as possible.
“We have to stop,” Sofiana said after about an hour. She sounded tired.
“Very well. We’ll look for the red spire in the morning.”
“Don’t be so smug about it. You need a break too.”
“I didn’t mean to sound smug,” he said. “I’m exhausted.”
They’d come into a boulder-strewn gap between the hills, and Darik figured it was as safe a place to stop as any. He ordered the camel down. They sank from the camel and leaned back into the sand. The comet light cast long shadows on the ground.
Sofiana scratched the camel’s jaw. “I take back everything I said,” she told the beast. “You’re not so bad. You don’t lose your head in battle.”
Darik sighed and closed his eyes, knowing full well that if he kept them closed for long, he would fall asleep. The air was cool, but the sand was still comfortable and warm. After a struggle, he opened them again. “This isn’t a safe place to sleep. We should find somewhere sheltered in case those lions come sniffing around.”
He used the camel to lever himself off the ground, then he frowned and rubbed his fingers together. They were wet and sticky. Blood trickled down the camel’s neck. The soldier’s scimitar must have cut the animal when he came by to trade blows. Fortunately, it proved to be a shallow cut, and most of the bleeding stopped when Darik and Sofiana wrapped its neck with a strip torn from one of the spare robes in the saddlebag.
Sofiana found them a secure place sheltered between two boulders at the base of the first steep rise in the mountains. A short slope, not really a hill, sat about twenty feet back from the boulders and would block view of the fire to any but the closest searchers. They gathered dried and broken juniper and sagebrush, then scraped the bark into a pile and retrieved the flint and steel from the bags. Within a few minutes, Darik had a cheery fire going that lifted their spirits and heated a pot of tea. They discussed how best to keep watch until morning.
Unfortunately, either the fire or the smell of camel blood soon drew unwanted attention. The camel sensed the newcomers first, rising to its feet and letting out a bellow. A dark shape came slinking along the outer edge of the firelight. Darik heard a throaty rumble.
They pushed the camel against the boulders where it would be safe behind the fire, but fearing the beast would run off, Darik tied the rope to an outcropping of rock. They settled behind the fire, confident that no animals would attack through the flames. The only problem was the wood supply, which looked to give out before dawn.
Over the next twenty minutes, a dozen dark shapes appeared on the hill beyond the camp. One rumbled, and another let out an answering roar, which confirmed their fears. Soon, the night filled with roaring lions. A few of them stepped closer to the fire. They were broad-shouldered, enormous beasts, larger than Darik had expected. Once, when he was a boy, a band of traders from Ter had brought a troupe of captured lions into the Grand Bazaar. The lions, who performed tricks when they were whipped, had never been let off their chains and were thin, bony creatures. Darik had watched with a mix of curiosity and pity. Nothing like the magnificent terror he suffered as these lions paced back and forth, roaring their hunger.
Sofiana waved a stick back and forth over her head. “Get out of here! Go!” Her voice was shrill and frightened. “Leave us alone!”
Darik took another stick, dipped it in the fire, and joined her in dancing around, shouting.
Most of the lions retreated up the short hillside, but one of the larger lionesses stayed behind and the others rejoined her a moment later. No amount of shouting and waving the stick could convince them to back away again. They found rocks and pitched them into the crowd. One struck a lion on the shoulder, and it let out a surprised snarl.
“We need a bigger fire,” Sofiana said.
“We can’t, we’re running out of wood.”
“They’re going to come through.”
The flames had died to sputters and a pile of glowing coals, and the large lioness looked ready to jump across and come at them. They hastily fed in more sticks. The fire leaped up.
The lions had been jostling at each other, no farther than fifteen feet away, but now they roared in frustration and drew back as the flames licked higher. The wood was dry and burned too quickly. Worse, they’d used half of their remaining wood to stoke the fire. Once it died down, they could build the fire one more time, and then they’d be done. Hours to go until dawn.
“What do we do?” Sofiana asked.
Darik wondered if they should initiate the inevitable fight now, while they still had firelight
. If only there weren’t so many. He didn’t see how they could possibly fight off a dozen hungry lions. Maybe if they wounded the head lioness that would dissuade the rest. It was a desperate chance, but he couldn’t see any better alternative.
“The fire is dying again,” Sofiana said in a warning voice.
There were still flames, although they weren’t as high as they had been, but the lions seemed bolder this time, less frightened by the fire. If they let it die down again to where it had been before, it would surely be too late.
Suddenly, the roaring stopped, and the lions froze in place. Heads cocked.
A deep rumble reached Darik’s ears from somewhere not too distant. Then came a bellowing call so low and powerful that it made the roaring of the lions sound like the mewling of kittens. The rumble reached deep into Darik’s bones. The lions scattered into the night. Darik and Sofiana stared at each other through wide eyes.
The camel bellowed in terror behind them and jerked its head back and forth against the rope, trying to free itself. Whatever was out there, the camel was so frightened that it would rather break free and race off into the desert after the hungry lions than face it.
A huge shadow moved through the darkness beyond the light of the fire. The roar sounded again, so loud this time that the ground trembled beneath their feet.
Chapter Twenty-three
Markal left Whelan with his signal corps and raced around the battlements to the gate tower. Behind him, the king was frantically trying to bring in Hoffman’s reserves, now shattered and disorganized, to get them in behind the advancing ravagers. Even though the initial blow of the enemy had been like an iron maul hitting a strong but brittle block of stone, the remaining pieces were large enough to force the ravagers to delay, if only he could rally them.
The wizard took out Memnet’s Orb. It was cold to his touch, like a piece of polished ice, even though the evening was warm. He cradled it in one hand and rubbed the surface in his other. Dozens of spells, conjurings, and incantations ran through his mind, the result of generations of study and practice. He had been filling the orb with magic since the battle on the Tothian Way with Chantmer and the mage from Marrabat, and there was enough power stored within to hurl the ravager company all the way to Veyre and into the sea, if only his faith and will were as strong as his knowledge. Instead, he knew that much of that power would leak out helplessly into the air as he tried to control it.
The Warrior King (Book 4) Page 18
