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 halfhearted 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 that 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 as a consequence many 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.
“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 as 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 the rivei; 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 here 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 anot
her, “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 advisers to make certain that the taxes you’re required to pay are minimal.
“And furthermore,” he added, “since the caravan guards won’t be able to afford to rent all those animals, or bribe the sultan’s advisers, 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 gray. 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, gazing at the young man, glittered with cold intent.
“What do you mean?” he asked. He spoke with care, as if the simple sentence were 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 says unrepentant.”
“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 green-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 told him 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.
Aristide’s expression confirmed that 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 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 recrossed 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 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 of fellows they called ‘deserters.’”
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