by Troy Denning
The willows beside the barge shook briefly, and the nose of a dugout emerged to gently bump the hull. A pair of slavers jumped aboard and rushed aft, not bothering to glance forward or even to tie their boat to an eye hook. Atreus frowned, but made no move to attack. The two men carried swords instead of whips and padded clubs, and he heard more voices murmuring out in the swamp. Fighting seemed less wise than simply trying to slip away once the slavers entered the barge's ramshackle cabin.
But the pair did not go to the cabin. Instead, they divided and circled around it from both sides.
"Tarch!" yelled one. "Over here!"
"We've got her!"
A slender figure emerged from behind the cabin and began to flee up the mountainside, her black braids and dark tabard leaving no doubt that it was Seema. Atreus threw off his blankets and pulled on his frozen boots, then grabbed Sune's map from his belongings and ran aft. As the slavers disappeared around behind the cabin, Rishi emerged from the front door, blurry-eyed and wrapped in blankets.
"What is all this noise?" Rishi asked. "What has become of everyone?"
"They left us," Atreus told him as he crossed the rear deck in two strides and pushed his way into the cabin. "Are there any weapons in here?"
The interior was murky and rank, with no bed except a pallet of filthy straw. A cask of foul-smelling grog sat in one corner, and a tangled mound of shackles and chains lay heaped against the back wall There were no true weapons in sight, but several sets of smithy's tools sat by the door,
"The barge is ours?" Rishi gasped, still trying to comprehend what Atreus had told him. Then we can recover the gold!"
"I'm afraid not" Atreus went to the back wall and rummaged through the chain heap. Tarch is after Seema. There are a pair of slavers chasing her now."
"All the better. While they are pursuing her, we can slip away."
Atreus whirled on the Mar, pulling a six-foot length of chain from the heap. "How can you say such a thing? She saved our lives."
Rishi eyed the chain nervously, backing toward the door. "I am only thinking of the good sir," he lied.
"I thought you were done with me," Atreus replied. He stepped over to the pile of smithy tools. "I recall something about what happens when a pretty slave girl smiles at me."
Rishi's face darkened. "Many harsh words are spoken when people are tired and cold, but there is no reason for us to be angry with each other. After we recover the gold, everything will be as before. We can resume our journey and find Langdarma, certainly in a very short time."
"Certainly?" Atreus scoffed. He picked up a heavy forge hammer and stepped toward the door. "You know where to find the gold if you want it I'm going after Seema."
Outside, the swamp was filled with calling voices, but the two slavers were not answering. The pair needed all their breath to keep pace with Seema. She was racing up the mountainside toward the waterfall beneath the glacier, holding her long skirt with both hands, bounding from rocks to grass tufts as lightly as a gazelle.
Atreus leaped off the barge and rushed across a grassy flat to the base of the mountain. After so much time in the swamp, the ground felt solid and good beneath his feet, but he found himself gasping for breath as soon as he started to climb. His legs grew weighty and slow, and they burned with fatigue. The chain and hammer became as heavy as boulders, and his wounds began to throb miserably. No matter how quickly he pumped his knees, he fell farther behind, and it took an effort of will to launch himself from each grass tuft up to the next one.
Seema continued to dance effortlessly up the slope, the two slavers clambering at her heels. Excited cries began to rise from below, and Atreus knew she had climbed high enough to be seen from the swamp. Tarch and his men would be swarming toward the barge now, but Atreus did not look back to see them. With his lungs burning and a ferocious headache pounding at his temples, it was all he could do to keep running. Seema did not stray from her course until the mist of the waterfall began to spray her, and even then she turned only toward a drier section of cliff.
As shallow as the angle was, the two slavers made good use of it, closing to within half a dozen steps of her. Atreus's knees began to tremble with exhaustion, and his aching chest filled with phlegm, but he forced himself to go on. What was a monster good for, if not to save beautiful damsels cornered by bestial slavers?
But Seema had other ideas. She hit the cliff at a run, leaping up to thrust her hands into a crevice so narrow it seemed a mere line. Pulling herself up with her arms, she swung her feet onto a pair of nubby toeholds and began to clamber up the rocks like a spider.
So astonished was Atreus that he almost stopped running, but the slavers were not surprised at all. Reaching the cliff only a few seconds behind Seema, they dropped their swords and began to jump, grabbing for her feet When this did not work, the heavier one cupped his hands and boosted the lighter one up. The man caught Seema by the ankle and began to tug.
"Come along… girl," he puffed. "Don't bruise yourself. You don't want to do that, or Tarch'll start getting ideas about… keeping you."
Seema began to kick, trying to free her ankle. "Just pull her down!" urged the bottom man.
"N-no!" Atreus gasped, now only five paces below.
Both slavers glanced down and their eyes grew wide. Leaving his partner to hang from Seema's ankle, the bottom man snatched his sword and stepped down to attack. With the blow arcing down from above, Atreus had no choice but to twist out of the way and fling his chain up in a wild, backhand block. The steel links struck with a metallic clatter and wrapped themselves around the blade. Atreus jerked the sword from his attacker's grasp.
In the next instant, a booted heel crashed into Atreus's jaw. He saw stars, then his knees went limp, and he found himself rolling down the mountainside with no memory of having fallen. He rotated onto his back, swinging his feet around to kick his heels into a tuft of soft grass. He lurched to a stop and heard his foe clattering down the slope above. Atreus rolled over to find the slaver almost upon him, now holding the smithy's hammer he did not remember dropping.
Atreus staggered to his feet, head spinning and spent muscles trembling. Somewhere along the way the sword came untangled from the chain and scattered itself down the slope in three broken pieces. Atreus whirled the chain above his head. The slaver slowed, circling around to approach from the side.
Head still spinning, Atreus lurched across the hill. The astonished slaver stumbled back, eyes darting toward the chain still whistling above his foe's head. Finally, he seemed to collect himself and stopped. He cocked his arm and planted his forward foot, then hurled the heavy hammer.
There was no time to duck or dodge. Atreus sprang into a charge, snapping his arm up to protect his head. The hammer glanced off his wrist and tumbled away. Then Atreus was on the slaver, swinging the heavy chain into the man's head.
The fellow's eyes went dull and gray, but somehow he kept his feet and came up with a belt dagger. He attacked low, shooting the knife in toward Atreus's groin.
Atreus skipped backward and slapped the weapon down, bringing his blocking hand up in a vicious back-fisted strike. The slaver's jaw clacked shut He spit out the tip of his tongue and stumbled back, blind with pain and slashing his dagger about madly. Atreus whirled the chain down across his attacker's wrist, entangling the fellow's arm and knocking his knife loose. The slaver howled and tried to jerk free but succeeded only in drawing Atreus closer.
Atreus grabbed him behind the neck and pulled, at the same time slamming a knee to his foe's chest. There were two muffled cracks, and the man groaned and dropped to the ground, wheezing and clutching at his side.
Atreus kicked the slaver down the slope and saw Rishi scrambling up the mountainside, moving quickly despite his limp and the large bundle slung over his shoulder. Farther below, Tarch and a dozen men were just starting across the narrow flat that separated the mountains from the swamp. Staggering along in front of them, covering six feet a step despite a numb-footed limp, was Ya
go.
The ogre's face and cloak were caked with ice and mud, and a veritable copse of broken willow stalks jutted up from inside his belt and collar. He looked as if he had passed the night wallowing in the swamp, but Atreus knew better. Yago understood the value of concealment as well as any good hunter, and his camouflage suggested he had spent the night trailing Tarch and his slavers. They had probably not even realized he was there until he broke from the willows and started across the flat.
Too breathless to call out to his friend, Atreus merely waved, then scrambled up the mountainside, his lungs burning so badly he feared he had bruised them tumbling down the hill. On the cliff above, the slaver finally released Seema's ankle and dropped to the ground. She started to climb higher, looked down at Atreus, and stopped where she was.
The slaver retrieved his sword and met Atreus five paces below the cliff, using his uphill advantage to attack with a vicious overhand strike. Too exhausted to dodge or feint, Atreus simply dropped to the ground and swung his chain around in an overhand strike.
The surprised slaver stumbled forward off-balance, and the chain caught him across the wrist, twining itself around his forearm. Atreus spun downhill, whipping his foe overhead like a stone in a sling. The chain reached the end of its length and untwined, hurtling the fellow down the slope like a catapult The slaver hit a dozen paces below, crashing headlong into a boulder and tumbling down the mountainside in a limp heap: Atreus retrieved his dropped sword and rushed up the slope to Seema.
"are you…" he started to say, but was too out of breath to finish.
1 am fine," Seema replied, sounding rather aloof. "Have you injured yourself again?"
"I don't think so. Unless you count… being out of breath."
Atreus turned to see Rishi taking the dagger from the second slaver's weapon belt Instead of slitting the man's throat, he surprised Atreus by simply adding the knife to his bundle of goods. Fifty paces below, Yago was climbing up the slope, steadily opening the distance between himself and the rest of the slavers.
"I'm sorry for the trouble waiting with us caused you," Atreus said, motioning to the barge.
"Yes, so am I," Seema said, glancing toward the two slavers lying motionless below. "Be quiet now and rest. When your friend gets here we will have to move quickly, or there will be more bloodshed."
Atreus braced his hands on his knees and struggled to catch his breath between fits of coughing. His wounds were throbbing, but the pain was nothing compared to the agony in his pounding head and burning chest. He silently thanked Vaprak, god of the ogres, for looking after his bodyguard. Without Yago, he could not imagine where he would find the strength to defeat Tarch and his men.
Rishi arrived gasping and trembling, hardly able to hold the blanket bundled over his shoulder.
"So you decided to forget about the gold after all," Atreus observed.
"It was… decided for me," Rishi wheezed. "But perhaps… the gods will see fit to… leave it there until we return."
"Which will not be until your next life, if we do not leave before Tarch's giant catches us," said Seema.
"Tarch's giant?" Atreus turned toward Yago, who was only twenty paces below. "That's no giant, that's Yago… my bodyguard."
Seema raised her brow at this, but seemed to take no comfort in the fact that they had an ogre on their side. She simply turned away, eyed the cliff above their heads, and said, "I suppose you two and your ogre friend cannot climb."
"Not that!" Atreus exclaimed, astonished she would even suggest such a thing. "It must be five hundred feet high."
"I suppose we must go around," Seema said, taking the bundle from Rishi. "What is in here?"
"Blankets and food," the Mar replied. "Other things we might need."
Seema fished through the bundle, then withdrew the dagger he had taken from the second slaver and pitched it down the mountainside.
"We will not need that," she said, motioning to the sword and chain in Atreus's hands. "Or those."
Atreus glanced down the slope at Tarch and his warriors. He shoved the sword into his belt and draped the chain over his shoulders. "It will do me no harm to carry it," he told her.
"If you must."
Yago arrived stinking of swamp mud and sweat. Too exhausted to offer greetings, the ogre simply braced his hands on his knees and filled the cold air with clouds of white breath.
"It's good to see you again," Atreus said, and clasped his friend's big shoulder. "It's about time."
The ogre's head snapped up, then he saw Atreus's grin, gave him the evil eye, and said, "You could of left a boat for me!"
"Oh, you have no business blaming us for that." Rishi grinned, then added, "We had to get our own. Certainly, a big fellow like you should have had no trouble doing the same thing."
Yago snarled and looked as though he would bite the Mar. Seema grabbed Rishi's supply bundle and shoved it into the ogre's waist.
"Now that you are here, make yourself useful," she said. "It is going to be difficult enough to save all of you without wasting any more time."
With that, she whirled away and started along the base of the cliff, moving so swiftly and gracefully that Atreus felt as if he was stumbling along after her. Rishi was almost skipping, and even Yago had to scurry to keep pace.
When Tarch and his slavers saw where the four were going, they began to angle toward the edge of the cliff and close the distance. Seema gathered her skirt and broke into a trot, and Atreus, Rishi, and Yago were soon puffing as hard as before.
They rounded the cliff with their pursuers less than fifty paces behind, then started to pick their way up a boulder-strewn couloir-a narrow rock chute so steep that Atreus and Rishi began to grab for handholds. Seema simply leaned a little forward and sprang up the gully as though hopping stones across a stream. Atreus tried to imitate her gait and only found himself tiring more rapidly. Behind him, Yago's heavy breath sounded like a forge bellows, and Rishi's wheezing left no doubt that he found the climb just as difficult as his companions.
Atreus looked up and wished he had not. The couloir continued to climb at the same steep angle for at least a thousand paces, then vanished into the clouds.
Rishi groaned. "My lungs will burst," he complained. "I cannot keep running!"
Seema did not look back, only said, "Just a little farther."
A boulder wobbled beneath her feet, and she sprang up the gully all the more quickly.
Atreus stopped beside the rock and looked back. When he saw Tarch and his men clambering into the bottom of the narrow gully, he stepped around to the upper side of the boulder.
"Rishi! Out of… the way."
When he began to push, Seema finally stopped climbing.
"Wait!" She looked down toward Tarch, then yelled, "You must take shelter! We are going to start pushing boulders down."
The slavers looked up, confused, then suddenly seemed to realize what Seema was saying. They rushed back down the couloir and disappeared around the corner. Tarch merely scowled and started up the gully at his best sprint.
Atreus shoved the boulder.
The rock toppled free and rumbled down the couloir, gathering speed and cracking into other boulders. Each time it struck, another huge stone came loose and tumbled down the chute, until the whole lower gully seemed to be crashing down on the slavers. Tarch flung himself at the gulch wall and scrambled up the rocky face like a huge lizard, then clung there watching stones pass beneath him.
Rishi whirled on Seema, panting, "Why did you warn them? We could have had them all!"
"Not Tarch, and he is the only one that matters," said Seema. "Now you have had your rest We must go again."
With the rock-slide still rumbling, she turned and bounded up the gully.
Atreus and the others followed as best they could, but none of them could match Seema's pace. She would bound ahead, then stop to urge them on, never seeming more than a little winded. Atreus grew so exhausted that he became dizzy and had to steady himself with e
very step, and he noticed Rishi and Yago doing the same. Their trembling knees started to give out at unpredictable moments, and Rishi's wounded leg knotted itself into such a tight ball that he cried out in agony with every step. Not once did Seema lose her balance, and soon she started to hang back and pull the Mar along by his arm.
Behind them, Tarch scrambled up the couloir alone, his men having decided they were more likely to survive his wrath than the sporadic volleys of boulders Atreus kept launching. Although the rock-slides caused the slave master to keep falling farther behind, they were never a danger to him. Every time Atreus laid his shoulder to a loose rock, Seema would shout a warning.
They had almost reached the clouds when Rishi dropped to a knee, then collapsed again as he tried to get up. Tarch started to sprint up the couloir, sensing he had finally run his quarry to ground.
"Come along." Seema tugged at the Mar's arm, "We are almost in the clouds."
Rishi tried to stand, but fell as soon as he put weight on his wounded leg. "It is no good," he admitted. "I can go no farther."
Tarch continued to sprint up the gully. Atreus pressed against a boulder, but the stone would not budge.
"You must get up!" Seema said, then clasped her hand around Rishi's wrist and started to drag him up the couloir. "I do not want it on my soul if Tarch kills you."
"You should have… thought of that before you warned him about the rocks," Rishi said as he tried to jerk his hand free and failed. He was too tired. "You are a disloyal and ungrateful woman."
"Ungrateful!" Seema exclaimed, but she continued up the slope, dragging Rishi along. Atreus grabbed the Mar by the other arm and did his best to help. Yago brought up the rear, breathing harder than any of them, using one hand to steady himself and the other to hold the supply bundle.
