Unfortunately, Rikus no longer had reason to hurry to the oasis. As the legion had left the Kes’trekel canyon earlier that day, K’kriq had returned from the oasis with disappointing news. The Urikite halflings had abandoned the pool, and there was no sign that Maetan was continuing toward it. The Tyrians’ prey had vanished into the sandy wastes without a trace.
At the mul’s back, Neeva said, “Don’t expect to sleep like we would at Agis’s mansion.”
Rikus glanced over his shoulder. His fighting partner had tried desperately to clear the stones from a small section of barren ground, but it was a hopeless task. No matter how many stones she moved, there were a dozen more lying on the ground.
“Don’t worry about me,” Rikus said, looking back to the oasis. “I won’t sleep.”
Neeva stepped to his side and took his arm, something she seldom did when there were others around to see. “If you’re worried about spending the night outside camp, maybe we shouldn’t.”
Rikus squeezed her hand. “No, it’ll be good to have time alone. Besides, there aren’t any Urikites around here.” He withdrew his arm from her grasp and pointed at the distant clump of zaal trees. “How did Maetan know to avoid that oasis?”
“Caelum says there are no other nearby oases,” Neeva answered, stroking the tense muscles of the mul’s back. “Even if we weren’t following him, Maetan would have had to guess we’d go to that one.”
“Right. But how’d he know we’d catch him there?” the mul demanded. “Someone told him.”
Neeva stepped around to face Rikus. She had used part of her water to wash her body, which was now covered only by the green halter breechcloth she had been wearing when they killed Kalak. The setting sun lit one side of her form with a rosy blush, plunging the other side into alluring shadows. “Even if we had reason to believe someone had betrayed us, how could they have contacted Maetan?”
“The Way,” Rikus answered. “Maetan’s as strong as Agis, maybe even stronger. And don’t forget Hamanu. If Maetan can’t contact his spies himself, he might have something like this.” Rikus pulled Tithian’s olivine crystal, which he had recovered from Wrog’s mangled body, from his belt pouch.
“Anything’s possible,” Neeva reluctantly admitted. “But who would do such a thing?”
Rikus faced the canyon from which they had just come. In the evening light, it looked like nothing more than a great shadow slicing down the side of the fooothills. “The slave tribe.”
“The Kes’trekels?” Neeva gasped. “What gives you that idea?”
“They’ve been trying to keep us from catching Maetan all along,” Rikus said. “First they captured our scouts, then they tried to take us prisoner. Even after I killed Wrog, they fought with us. I should have seen it at the time—Maetan bribed them.”
“Just because they didn’t join Tyr’s army doesn’t make them Maetan’s spies.” Neeva gripped the mul’s arm with a warm hand and tried to guide him bed.
“It fits,” Rikus insisted, staying were he was. “Maetan showed no sign of knowing our plan until after we passed the Kes’trekel nest. And why else would they have insisted on fighting?”
“Because they wanted to keep their nest’s location secret and they didn’t trust us,” Neeva said, sighing in frustration. She let go of the mul’s arm and went to their makeshift bed, picking up one of the capes lying nearby for use as a blanket. “After what Tithian did, do you blame them?”
“How do we know the king really betrayed us?” the mul asked. “Wrog could have made the whole thing up.”
“Maybe he did,” Neeva sighed, no longer trying to hide her frustration. As she spread the cape over the space she had tried to clear of stones, she said, “You still have the gem. Ask Tithian if he lied to Wrog.”
The absurdity of Neeva’s suggestion jolted Rikus, and he realized he was behaving like a man obsessed. “It was the Kes’trekels,” he grumbled.
Rikus pulled the Scourge of Rkard from his belt so he could sit. As his hand touched the hilt, the dusk came alive with previously undetected sounds. From overhead came the muffled beat of a flying lizard’s leathery wings, and somewhere close by a snake’s belly scales were softly hissing against the rough edge of a stone. Farther away, an unseen rodent scratched at the ground in a frantic effort either to hide from a predator or catch its dinner. Rikus did not pay the sounds much attention, for evening was when many creatures came out to hunt.
“Put that sword down and come here,” Neeva ordered, stepping over to Rikus.
She kissed him long and hard, at the same time unbuckling his Belt of Rank. As the heavy girdle slipped from his waist, he felt the first stirrings of the savage lust only Neeva could kindle in him.
She casually tossed the belt aside, and it landed in the rocks with a loud clatter. Rikus’s desire quickly faded.
“Be careful!” he objected, grabbing the belt.
“It’s that worthless strip of leather or me,” Neeva said, working her thumbs beneath the thin straps holding her breechcloth on her curvaceous hips.
“This is more than a ‘worthless strip of leather,’ ” Rikus said, picking up the heavy girdle and laying it neatly at the foot of their rocky bed. “It’s my destiny.”
Neeva popped her thumbs free of her breechcloth straps. “Destiny?” she exclaimed. “Rikus, I think you’re taking that senile old dwarf too seriously.”
“No, I mean it,” the mul said, respectfully placing the sword next to the belt. “People make their own destinies. Mine is to lead the legions of freedom.”
“Maybe you should think that over, Rikus,” Neeva said. “So far, you’ve only got one legion, and you’ve nearly lost it more than once.”
The mul furrowed his hairless brow. “When?”
“Kled, for one,” Neeva pointed out. “If Caelum hadn’t saved you from Maetan, by now your mind would be ash and the rest of us would be quarry slaves in Urik’s obsidian pits.”
“But Caelum did help me. We killed more than five-hundred Urikites—”
“And lost the Book of the Kemalok Kings,” Neeva interrupted. “As for Wrog and the slave tribe—it’s a fortunate thing the fight in the aerie didn’t erupt into a full battle. One sun cleric was not going to blast that fortress off the cliff.”
“He didn’t have to,” Rikus countered, more hurt by Neeva’s criticism than he cared to admit. “Why are you doing this, Neeva? I thought—”
“I’m telling you the truth because I love you and because I love Tyr,” Neeva said. She sat down in the middle of the cape and wrapped it around her shoulders, her romantic mood vanishing with the setting sun. “The way you’re talking scares me. It’s not like you to think this way.”
“Of course not,” the mul answered, sitting at her side. The sharp rocks, which had been lying exposed to the blazing sun all day, seared his naked skin wherever they touched him. “Before we killed Kalak, my purpose in life was to become a free man,” Rikus said, shifting his position so that his breechcloth insulated him from the hot stones. “Now, I’m free. I have a new purpose. We all do—you, me, and Sadira, even Agis.”
Neeva frowned. “Leave me out of this.”
“No,” Rikus insisted, laying one of his powerful hands on her knee. “Agis and Sadira safeguard Tyr from threats inside, like Tithian. It’s for you and me to defend against outside threats like Maetan and the Urikites.”
Allowing the cape to fall open at the neck, Neeva faced the mul and studied him for several moments. Finally, a hopeful light in her emerald eyes, she asked, “Rikus, what are you trying to say?”
The mul had seen similiar expressions in his fighting partner’s face before. He was no more comfortable with it now than he had been then. “I’m not sure,” he answered, fearing that once again Neeva was reading more into his words that he meant to be there.
Neeva rose to her knees and faced Rikus, looking directly into his eyes. “Let me make this easy for you,” she said, her voice optimistic. “Are you saying you’ve made a choice
between me and Sadira?”
Rikus looked away, wondering how a conversation about his destiny had turned into an interrogation on his least favorite subject. Since they had killed Kalak, his fighting partner had been pressuring him to end his love affair with Sadira. Neeva insisted that, now that they were free, they had to start thinking about the future and commit their hearts to each other. To Rikus, however, commitment sounded too much like captivity. Though he loved Neeva, he was not willing to yield any of his hard-won freedom—especially if it meant giving up Sadira.
When Rikus did not answer, the eagerness drained from Neeva’s face. Nevertheless, she did not look away. “Just answer yes or no.”
“There’s no choice to make—”
“Yes or no, Rikus.”
“No, I haven’t made a choice,” the mul said.
Neeva stood, gathering the cloak around her broad shoulders. “I’m going back to camp,” she announced. “Why don’t you stay here and ponder your destiny?”
The gladiator grabbed her heavy battle-axe, then started across the mile of rocky terrain separating them from the rest of the legion. In the burgundy light and deepening shadows of dusk, it was difficult to see, and Neeva began to stumble over loose stones before she had taken three steps. Despite the likelihood of spraining an ankle, she continued onward, cursing Rikus as though he had personally placed every stone between her and camp.
Rikus grabbed his Belt of Rank and buckled it on. “Wait, Neeva. If you break a leg, it’ll slow down the entire army.”
Her only answer was a curse.
The mul picked up his sword and started to follow, but abruptly halted. Instead of his hiss of scales and the beat of lizard wings that he heard earlier, the field was ominously silent—save for the hushed chorus of contrived chirps and whistles. The noises were so soft that, had he not held the Scourge of Rkard in his hand, Rikus would never have heard them.
“Neeva, stop!” he hissed, clattering over a jumble of rocks as he rushed to catch up.
“Why?” she demanded.
“There’s something out there!” the mul answered.
Neeva stopped immediately, hefting her axe into a guarding position. “This had better not be a ploy, Rikus.”
“It’s not,” the mul assured her, stepping to her side.
He searched the ground ahead, looking for the slightest indication of movement. All he saw was an endless field of motionless rocks, flecked here and there with equally motionless boulders. Unfortunately, he could not use his dwarven vision to pick out whatever was making the sound, either. The sun, all but sunken behind the Ringing Mountains, was bathing the field with just enough fiery light to wash out all traces of ambient heat.
Rikus took Neeva’s arm. “They’re between us and camp,” he whispered.
“What are they?” she asked, dropping the cape from her shoulders.
“I don’t know,” he said. “With the Scourge, I can hear them whistling and chirping—but I can’t see them any more then you can.”
The mysterious watchers fell silent.
Rikus cursed under his breath and brought his sword into a defensive position. “Be ready,” he said, no longer bothering to whisper.
They slowly backed away, stopping when they reached the stony bed that Neeva had prepared for them. Still, the watchers did not move or attack.
“Maybe its a pack of wild thri-kreen,” Neeva said.
Unlike K’kriq, most thri-kreen were not civilized. They roamed the desert day and night, hunting for prey to sate their ravenous appetites. Sometimes, if they were desperate, they would resort to eating sentient creatures.
Rikus peered all around them, searching the dusky terrain for some sign of an insect-man. The dying rays of the sun only made it more difficult to see, for they lit the tops of the rocks in muted red light. It was impossible to distinguish colors, and even shapes were soft and fuzzy, but he did not see anything large and angular enough to be a thri-keen.
Rikus shook his head. “There’s nothing big enough.”
The mul had no sooner spoken than a soft churp sounded at their backs. A small foot brushed against the rocky ground and padded toward them. Rikus spun around and glimpsed the three-foot silhouette of a bushy-haired man dropping behind a small boulder.
His stomach knotted in cold fear. “Halflings!” Rikus hissed, pressing his back against Neeva’s.
“I wish you’d said thri-kreen,” Neeva replied. She remained quiet for a moment, then added, “If I fall, don’t let them eat me—at least not alive.”
“Then don’t fall,” the mul answered. “If you do, I doubt I’ll be in any position to stop them.”
Rikus and Neeva had faced halflings before, when they had ventured into the halfling forest to recover the spear and the wand that they had used to kill Kalak. The small hunters had felled them both easily, and Agis had barely been able to talk the tribe’s chieftain out of eating the entire party.
They waited, back to back, for the halflings to move again. After what seemed an eternity, Rikus suggested, “Maybe they’ve decided against attacking us.”
“You can’t believe that,” Neeva countered. “This isn’t just any halfling hunting party. They’re Urikite assassins.”
As much as he didn’t want to, the mul had to agree with his fighting partner. Halflings left their forest too rarely for this to be a chance encounter.
From beside them, Rikus heard the soft scrape of a foot on stone, followed quickly by the high-pitched twang of a tiny bowstring. “Down!” the mul screamed. He pushed Neeva to the ground and dropped at her side.
An instant later, a tiny arrow clattered against a rock near Rikus’s side. Though the missile was hardly longer than his hand, the mul knew from his previous experiences that it would be tipped with an effective poison that knocked its victim unconscious within a few seconds. Likely as not, the unlucky victim would never wake, and if he did it would be to the sight of several halflings preparing to eat his liver.
“How are we going to get out of this?” Neeva asked. Her voice was muffled because her mouth was pressed to the ground.
Rikus lifted his head enough so that he could look around. A dozen yards to his right, he could hear a pair of halflings chittering and whistling to each other, but they remained hidden from sight. The mul could not hear or see any other man-eaters.
The gladiator dropped his head back to the ground. “Crawl,” he whispered.
Neeva reluctantly left her bulky steel axe behind and they started forward. They pulled themselves along inches at a time, silently grimacing as the jagged stones scraped long gashes into their torsos. Within a few yards, warm blood coated from their collarbones to their knees, and grating sand filled the dozens of cuts lacing their chests and stomachs.
Although Rikus was careful to keep his sword from banging against a rock, the pair could not help making more noise than halflings. They drew heavier breaths and created soft rasps as they drew their larger bodies across the ground. Every now and then, there was a muffled clack when one of them accidentally dislodged a stone and it bumped into another. Rikus had no doubt that the halflings could track them by the sounds they were making, but he did know what option they had except to crawl.
A pair of twangs sounded from their left, then two more darts clattered into the rocks ahead of them. Rikus cursed and used the tip of his sword to flick the arrows away. He suspected that even a scrape along the poisoned tips would be enough to knock either him or Neeva unconscious.
“Why don’t they show themselves?” Neeva whispered, looking around for the source of the arrows. When Rikus did not answer, she asked another question, “How many do you think there are?”
“Two or a dozen,” the mul answered. “It’s impossible to tell. Just keep crawling.”
“Why?” There was an edge of fear in Neeva’s question that Rikus had never heard in her voice before.
“They may be able to hear us move, but as long as we stay down they can’t see us any better than we c
an see them. One of us should be able to reach the rest of the legion and warn it.”
“The halflings are after us, not the rest of the legion,” Neeva whispered. “Even I can tell that there aren’t enough of them to attack two thousand men, but they don’t need many warriors to assassinate a commander.”
Seeing the wisdom of Neeva’s words, Rikus silently cursed the Kes’trekels, suspecting the slave tribe had advised Maetan to set up this ambush.
“You’re right, but let’s keep moving anyway,” the mul whispered. “We won’t help ourselves by waiting until they come to us.”
As the two gladiators crawled forward, the halflings mirrored their progress, chittering and whistling to keep track of each other and their prey. Occasionally, one or two of them would fire a dart, and twice the little arrows struck within a foot of the mul’s head. By the time they had crossed fifty yards of rocky ground, both gladiators were breathing hard—though Rikus suspected their weariness had more to do with nerves than muscle fatigue.
“Maybe I should yell for help,” the mul whispered.
“Are you out of your mind?” Neeva hissed. “No one but the halflings will hear you!”
“It was just an idea,” Rikus answered defensively.
He crawled forward again, stopping to listen every two or three yards. Most of the time, the halflings were silent, but every now and then, a chitter or a chirp let him know the assassins were closing in.
It was during one of these pauses that he heard the faint clatter of stones far past the range of the assassins’ tiny bows. At first, the mul thought a halfling might have slipped, but the sound was followed by another rattle, and he knew that was not the case.
“Someone’s out there behind the halflings,” he whispered.
“Someone from the legion?” Neeva asked hopefully.
Rikus shook his head. “We said we didn’t want to be disturbed,” he said. “It has to be a Urikite.”
The Crimson Legion Page 12
