“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 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 her 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 gray 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 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.”
“True. And what happens to them is going to be more up to them than it will be to us.”
“You’re wasting times aid 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.
The priests continued to stalk among the bound bandits. The other bandits watched, and even though they were over a hundred paces away, Aristide could tell they wer
en’t happy at whatever was going on.
Then Aristide noticed the clay balls. They were dangling by cords from the priests’ hands, and they darted through the air as if they were creatures with minds of their own, like the cicadas that children leash on the ends of string.
Aristide and Grax started at a sudden blast of sound. A stir of dust rose from the grove and whirled away as the crash echoed repeatedly among the rocks. Birds flew up from their perches, calling in alarm.
Where there had been a bound bandit, there was now nothing but air.
Again Aristide’s face became a smooth, intent mask, a bronze form from which glittered his dark, fierce eyes.
“So it’s true!” Grax said. He looked over his shoulder at his troops, who seemed to have grown nervous. He favored them with a silent, morale-boosting laugh.
The murmur of the priests continued without cease. Another boom shattered the air; another bandit vanished.
“We should attack,” said Grax.
“The longer this goes on,” Aristide said, “the more they reduce their own strength. Let’s watch.”
“We can’t wait too long. My men will lose heart.”
“Go tell them the bandits are killing their own people and doing our job for us.”
“Oh.” Grax considered this. “Oh. Very good.”
Bent low, he rumbled down the slope to his troops and told them to spread the word.
“This isn’t looking good,” Bitsy said to Aristide, once they were alone.
“No.”
“This overthrows everything.”
Aristide didn’t bother to answer. The priests continued their milling, their chanting. The startled birds began to settle back into the trees. Aristide watched as closely as he could.
Another detonation sounded from the grove. The birds rose again into the sky. Another outlaw vanished. And, somewhere behind Aristide, a warhorse neighed.
The horse was a stallion and waiting with other stallions made it fretful and belligerent. It was beginning to scent the strange horses in the corral, and the repeated detonations had not soothed its nerves. So when the third bang echoed from the surrounding ranks the stallion answered, issuing a furious, shrieking challenge into the sky.
Aristide glanced over his shoulder at the sound. Grax, standing by another body of caravan guards, whirled to the horseman and signaled angrily for him to quiet his beast.
Horses in the bandits’ corral answered. The first stallion screamed back at them, and so did several other horses in the party.
Grax turned to Aristide, arms thrown wide in frustration. Aristide turned back to the plantation.
The three priests had turned as one to stare in the direction of the noise. Their chanting ceased. And after a half-second pause they were in motion again, running, gesturing, issuing orders not in their own language but in the common tongue.
Aristide turned to Grax and his command.
“Now!” he called. “Charge them!”
Grax took three steps and hurled himself onto his riding-lizard. He pulled his lance from the ground and shook it.
“Grax the Troll!” he shouted.
“Grax the Troll!” his riders echoed, and spurred forward.
“Not exactly ‘Leeroy Jenkins!' ” remarked Bitsy, “but I suppose it will do.”
The riders roared over the lip of the bowl in a great cloud of dust. Grax led the lancers across the open ground to the right while the archers spread out widely, their arrows already humming through the air.
As the riders passed him, Aristide stood to get a better view.
The archers were not particularly accurate in firing from the backs of jouncing beasts, but their arrows at least served to increase the confusion of the bandit force. The advance of Grax and his lancers was hampered by the tent lines and shelters of the bandit camp, but they managed to maintain their momentum and were trampling much of the bandits’ armor and reserve weapons underfoot.
The main body of bandits had faded back from the edge of the palm plantation, leaving behind eight of their number still bound hand and foot. These were screaming and rolling and crying for help, much to the amusement of the archers, who were pleased to use them for target practice as they trotted forward. Aristide could see nothing of the priests.
There were a series of concussions, however, that revealed the priests were most likely causing arrows to disappear.
Aristide unsheathed Tecmessa and trotted forward on foot. Bitsy ran by his side.
Ahead of him, the archers fired a low scything volley into the plantation, then jumped their beasts over the wall and rode on. Aristide followed. There were a series of cracks, and Aristide was nearly trampled as the archers came galloping back with a group of sword-swinging bandits in pursuit. A pair of priests were leading the charge and the archers knew not to let them get close.
It was clearly unwise to fight two priests at once. Aristide retreated along with the archers. Bitsy went up one of the palms.
The bandits pursued to the edge of the plantation. In the shade of the palms their eyes glowed like polished marbles. The archers rode back to a safe distance and then resumed their shooting. Clay balls whirled on the ends of their cords, and booms tore the air as arrows vanished in mid-flight. But while the priests could protect themselves, they couldn’t protect all their followers, and outlaws cried in pain and rage as they fell with arrow wounds.
Then there were shouts of Grax the Troll! from the depths of the palm trees, and the sound of riders. One of the priests turned and dashed back into the plantation, along with a group of bandits. The other priest remained, with a handful of followers clumped behind him, so that he could protect them from arrow fire.
Aristide came forward again, his sword leveled. A few archers trotted forward as well, but rode wide, keeping a respectful distance between themselves and Tecmessa.
An archer sheltering behind the priest knelt, drew, let fly. Tecmessa took the arrow with a crack, a blast of wind, and a puff of dust.
The bandits, as one, took a step back, consternation plain on their features. The priest did not move.
Aristide paused in his advance and addressed the priest.
“I am Aristide, the traveler. Will you favor me with your name?”
The priest made no answer, but glared at him with orange eyes. His unnatural height was exaggerated as he stood on the wall that bordered the plantation. He wore a black turban with the tail wrapped around his lower face, a black robe, black pantaloons, boots. His hands and the skin around his eyes were blue. He wore an indigo-colored sash around his narrow waist with a pair of silver-hilted daggers stuck in it. The clay ball, no larger than a knuckle, quested on the end of its cord like the antenna of an insect.
“If not your name,” Aristide said, “then perhaps your purpose. Your order. Feel free to discourse on the name and nature of your god—who knows, I may convert.”
The priest gave no answer.
“Well.” Aristide whirled his sword in a bit of bravado. “As you choose to remain silent, let us then get on to the contest of skill.”
There was a barrage of bangs from the depths of the plantation, and cries of “Grax! Grax!” Aristide advanced, his eyes intent on the clay ball.
The ball swooped, darted, swung toward him. Tecmessa’s point angled toward it.
Something twisted in the air between them. Then untwisted. A preternatural silence seemed to descend on the field for an instant.
Aristide continued his advance. “We are well matched, I see,” he said, “except perhaps in the matter of practical weaponry.”
Tecmessa slashed through the air and cut the priest’s leg in half just above the knee. As the priest fell, a backhand cut took his right hand.
The hand, the ball, and the cord fell to the ground, all lifeless.
The priest gave a howl of anger, snatched a dagger from his waist, and lunged as he rose on the elbow of his crippled arm. Aristide parried, and then his blade thrust forward, the single edge slicing
the priest’s throat.
There was a red spurting, a rattle, a kicking of boots. The air tasted briefly of copper. The silver knife fell to the stones.
Tecmessa slashed out again, and three bandits vanished in a blast of air. The rest scrambled back in disorder.
Aristide leaped atop the wall and waved the archers forward, then moved into the plantation on the heels of the bandits.
Amid the palms ahead, a knot of bandits brandished weapons in the murk and dust. Arrows hissed between the trees. Lancers galloped in, then away. Grax had succeeded in cutting off the outlaws from their mounts, which made their escape problematic, but a barrage of cracks and booms made it clear that the priests were still guarding their flock.
“Grax the Troll!” There was a storm of arrows, followed by a rush on the flank. Cries among the bandits showed that at least some of the arrows struck home. An unnaturally tall figure rushed to meet the threat, and the riders reined in and turned. All save the leader, who was too large to easily check his speed.
There was a bang, a swift eddy in the risen dust. Grax vanished.
“Damn!” said Aristide.
The Free Companions fell back in confusion. The outlaws gathered courage and prepared an attack. Aristide took several running steps forward and took another pair of bandits with a blast from Tecmessa.
The priest turned, the clay ball moving ahead of him like a third, questing eye. Aristide dodged behind a tree just as a blast peeled bark and sent leaves flying. He lunged out of cover to the right, Tecmessa in a high parry, and saw the priest’s boots disappearing around the tree in the other direction. The sword made a great slashing cut to the left just as the clay ball darted around the palm trunk, the cord whipping around the tree like the chain of a morning star.
The cord was severed. The clay ball flew spinning through the air.
The priest shrieked, a hair-raising sound like the battle cry of a cougar. Aristide took a step back as the tall, black-clad figure lunged around the palm trunk, a thrusting spear held high in one hand. The orange eyes blazed. The tail of the turban had been torn away from the lower face and revealed a mouth brimming with dozens of needlelike, moray-sharp teeth.
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