by Brian Daley
“Sworn oath kept Sandur from taking up your offer of combat at the chasm. I am come to see if you still offer battle and the medicine wand.”
That somehow aroused Ravager’s suspicions. “Does Sandur know you’re here, foolish boy?”
Again the impulse to lie; again the sudden decision to attempt no dissembling before this man. Crassmor stared up at the hard, broken-nosed face. “No. And my name is Crassmor of Tarrant, my lord. I will carry your wand to Sandur the Outrider if you’ll send it, but I doubt he’ll take it any other way. He is my brother.”
The Warlord’s smirk showed his teeth and twisted the scars on his face. “Now that he knows I can win in war, Sandur the Traitor has rethought the challenge, eh? Nothing to lose, is that it?”
Crassmor saw with sinking heart that he’d made Sandur sound the coward. His brows knit; he countered, “And what would you do, Oh Ravager?”
The lizard riders muttered angrily at that, but, after a moment’s surprise, the Warlord threw his head back and exploded in brief laughter. He thumped Crassmor’s chest with the back of his great fist, not unkindly. Crassmor was obliged to take a half-step backward to retain his balance.
“Just the same thing!” the Warlord proclaimed with a sly nod. Then the humor left his face and Crassmor suddenly found the medicine wand thrust at him.
He took it in wonderment It was as he recalled, whittled of dun-colored wood in unintelligible symbols and esoteric, curling script and glyphs, inlaid with precious stones and lizard ivory, beaded and corded. It was rudely polished and smudged by much handling, not quite the length of his forearm. He knew from Sandur that each lizard rider created his own medicine wand with much thought, painstaking ritual, and soul swearing. Here was an object of great power.
Now the Warlord scowled; Crassmor found his mouth dry. “Guard it well, young Crassmor,” Ravager warned. “I trusted him, Sandur, even liked him, and he betrayed me. I want him here. It may be that I would have done the same thing in his place, but I was not in his place. Your Singularity will be mine in short order, but I won’t have your brother dying in battle and cheating me of my revenge. See to it that—”
A furor had risen during his speech, coming from without the ziggurat tent. Now there were screams and yells of rage, the brief clash of steel, a cry of pain, and the unmistakable pounding of a horse’s hooves. The curtains flew apart and Sandur plunged into view astride the war horse Bordhall, an appropriated lance in one hand, his broadsword in the other. A guard clung to his saddle, trying to pull him down.
Ravager and all the other barbarians in the place howled, reaching for swords, lances, and darts. Sandur leaned aside as a two-lined dart passed over his head. He struck the clinging lizard rider with the butt of his lance; the man fell away, clutching a bleeding scalp.
Lances came up. The Outrider had to rein in Bordhall cruelly to avert a death on the thicket of wicked points. Men were hauling back their arms to hurl more darts. Crassmor was pulling Shhing, shouting to Sandur in words he himself didn’t understand. A half-dozen barbarians threw themselves on the younger Tarrant, dragging him down and holding him immobile, only prevented from slaying him by the medicine wand he bore.
Ravager drowned out his men with a gigantic shout of command. The lizard riders spared a glance aside, then refrained from the hurling of darts and the thrusting of lances. They made a ring around the knight, though, primed to slay. The Warlord bellowed for silence in a voice that hurt Crassmor’s eardrums. A quiet settled over the tent, except for the panting for breath that came in the wake of the action, Bordhall’s snorting and stamping, and the lizards’ hateful noises.
An almost nonchalant gesture from Ravager made the lances fall away, the barbarians drawing aside to let him pass. There were now many weapons ready to fly at any provocation. The Warlord paced across the rich carpet and fixed his enemy with narrowed eyes.
“So Sandur the Traitor is returned.” The knight’s face twitched at the insult. “Could you not await your pitiful herald? Are you so eager to die?”
Shhing had been wrenched from Crassmor’s hand, his parrying dagger taken from its sheath. He saw a man rearing back to cast, expecting the Warlord’s order. He shrieked, “No! I have the medicine wand! I have the wand!” He held it up as far as clutching hands would let him, showing it to all sides. “It is Sandur’s safe-conduct!”
“Release my brother,” Sandur ordered Ravager in a low voice, gesturing with his sword, bringing Bordhall around by the pressure of his knees. “You have me here now; your fight is with me.” Lance heads came up again to hem him in.
The Warlord went to look down at Crassmor in thought. “My fight is with whosoever bears arms for the Singularity,” he said over his shoulder to the knight. Crassmor was held up before him. Ravager snatched the wand from Crassmor’s hand; the younger Tarrant abandoned all hope then and there. The Warlord thrust the medicine wand into Crassmor’s belt, motioned to his men, and stepped back. Crassmor was pulled out of the way, but then unhanded.
Ravager went to where he’d been sitting, to draw a short heavy, hiked yataghan from its place at his arming belt, which also carried his control whistle, battle pipe, and belt knife. He thrust the yataghan through the carpet, buckled on his belt, and took up the weapon again. He carried no darts. “Come down off that horse, traitor, coward!”
Sandur carelessly tossed aside the lance, limberly pulling one leg up over his pommel. He slid down, alighting with sure agility, sword ready. His only armor was a light haubergeon, about the same protection as the Warlord wore. He went to Crassmor; Ravager didn’t object. At Sandur’s peremptory glance, the barbarians near his brother drew back a pace, or two.
“I’m all right,” Crassmor assured him. “How come you’re here?”
“Word of the marshaling had already gone abroad,” was the reply. “Most of my work had been done for me. It chanced that I passed Lateroo, to hear that you’d been there and taken Kort into the Beyonds. Thinking back on things that passed between us, I found the rest not so hard to piece together.” Sandur shook his head sorrowfully. “I should have kept my own counsel. I tried to catch you, to stop you short of the camp. I only arrived in time to see you being led in.”
“I await you, Sandur,” the Warlord reminded him.
It had all gone wrong. Crassmor began, “Sandur, I never meant for—” He couldn’t finish.
“This duel is welcome, brother,” the knight told him. “It’s as I would have wished it. You did no wrong.”
“Turn and fight!” Ravager commanded. Sandur gripped his brother’s shoulder once, then turned his attention to his foeman, shaking his red mane back out of his way.
“This is a challenge-in-arms of the hordes,” the Warlord declared, striding toward the knight. “You know our rules, which is to say: none. Any weapon may be used that comes to hand.”
Nor was there any formal signal to begin. Ravager launched himself at Sandur, yataghan held high. They clashed for a moment; the barbarian showed a surprising nimbleness for a man of such bulk. He demonstrated all the power of wrist that his size implied. But he made no inroads against the knight. After a moment’s defense, Sandur brought his length of blade into play, driving the other back.
Both Sandur and Crassmor had been surprised that the Warlord had allowed himself such a disadvantage in weapons. But the first conversation of blades had only been a preamble; a moment later, Ravager broke off the match for a moment, stepped back, and casually pulled a sword out of the hand of one of his men. The lizard riders were all grinning maliciously. Crassmor realized that every weapon in the tent except for Sandur’s own was, in effect, the Warlord’s. Sandur snatched out his long, heavy parrying dagger to even the match.
Swords crossed, to be intersected by parrying blades, the metal rasping and ringing. The two held the pose for a moment, trying their brawn. Neither man gave as weapons strained hilt and hilt. If Ravager was surprised at that, he gave no sign; from Sandur’s red beard came the flash of his grin, as fer
ocious as any barbarian’s.
All at once the static scene became a whirl of motion, cut and parry, thrust and block. Blades circled and hacked and stabbed; any stroke could have ended the duel with a beheading or disembowelment. The two attacked and withdrew in split-second campaigns. Soon the combat moved back and forth over a wider area. The onlookers had to be quick to keep out of the combatants’ way. Even the pampered riding lizards, sibilating their displeasure, moved aside or were tugged or prodded by their masters, whose cheeks bulged at the control whistles, their fingers racing across the stops and keys. A flock of the parasite-eating bird things rose from the agitated reptiles with a racket of tiny wings.
The Warlord circled a mound of cushions, then bounded over it to attack unexpectedly. Sandur evaded, locking blades in a corps-à-corps, and held his ground. Then he assailed Ravager in a flurry of strokes, driving him from one carpet to the next. Baying lizard riders—Crassmor, now forgotten, among them—swarmed to follow the action at a cautious distance.
The Warlord, drawing on weight and thews and speed, stopped the knight’s advance with a determined counterattack. They stood hacking at each other’s defenses. Men roared; Bordhall, shrilling and kicking, retreated to a corner of the tent, where she kept the savages at a distance with teeth and hooves.
The barbarians howled encouragements to their lord; Crassmor did the same for the Outrider. Few of the lizard riders noticed him; none tried to silence him. Overhead, side, and backhand came the blows. Parries made the blades sing.
A sudden thrust from Sandur’s parrying dagger nearly passed through Ravager’s abdomen. The Warlord was forced back a step, but took advantage of an opening in the knight’s guard. Sandur parried the counterstroke, stepping backward, nearly tripping over a ceremonial gong. The Warlord thought to pounce on him; Sandur avoided it with a tremendous leap backward, clearing the fallen gong.
The ziggurat tent was a madhouse of snarling lizards, wailing, cheering barbarians, and flickering blades. A sweep of the Warlord’s sword carried Sandur back. On his recovery, the knight disengaged his dagger from the savage’s yataghan, to open a deep slash in his forearm between thick bracelets. At the same time the Warlord reached with the yataghan and, parting the light mail, laid open the flesh of the knight’s shoulder.
All four blades engaged once more. The hilts of Ravager’s sword were oddly curled and curved; now he used them in a secondary office. Entwining one around Sandur’s parrying dagger, he brought his sword around with all his might. The reinforced hilt gave him purchase on the knight’s trapped dagger; with a much-practiced twist, the Warlord sent the dagger flying from Sandur’s grip, in among the crowd, lost.
Sandur backed off, taking his broadsword in both hands, defending himself with a succession of frenzied strokes. The Warlord advanced, meeting the blows with two weapons, able now both to parry and to attack while his enemy must choose between the two. Sandur dodged; Ravager’s sword point opened a vertical rent in the tent wall behind him. The knight leaped, and a slash missed his legs. He nearly opened the Warlord’s skull then, the barbarian having become impetuous. Ravager parried with the yataghan. Sandur had to retreat once more.
Crassmor, choking back sobs, thought to throw his own sword or dagger to his brother, then remembered he’d been disarmed. Tears of futility blurred his vision. Then something different from mere bravery seized him, something more substantial, undeniable.
Plucking up the mallet that had fallen along with the gong, he threw himself at the nearest lizard rider, swinging once, twice, and a third time, even as the man went down. Crassmor was instantly upon him, tugging at the weapons at his belt. Tentative cries went up as the bystanders took notice. Crassmor and the barbarian were a tangle of limbs, but the Tarrant son had yanked a long, stout hunting knife from the other’s sheath.
He flailed himself free, hacking at those about him to keep them back. He somehow eluded their grasp, uncaring of the cries of pain he drew. The clangor of the duel came to him clearly.
“’Rider!” he yelled, voice breaking, as hands reached for him and weapons began to appear. He saw his brother’s head turn as Sandur skipped back to keep clear of the Warlord for the split second it took to risk a glance. Crassmor could say no more; fists and clawing fingers and blades were near. He lofted the knife into the air. He didn’t care when he was pulled back, pummeled, and kicked. He had no sense of pain as he went down, having seen Sandur jump high and catch the knife by its handle.
Crassmor was pinned to the carpet with two-pronged lances jammed down over his arms and legs. Rough-soled boots and sandals were set on his neck and back. Sandur went at the Warlord again, the knife equalizing them, the barbarian yielding ground to the knight’s white-hot anger. Then Sandur spun and sprang at the lizard riders who were preparing to carve into his brother.
They wavered and yipped in alarm at the red-haired demon charging at them with blades gleaming and nothing short of murder in his eyes. Their lances came up.
Again that tremendous bellow went up from Ravager; a relative quiet returned to the tent. Sandur, panting, paused and glanced from those holding his brother back to the Warlord. At an angry gesture from their Warlord, all but those men pinning Crassmor drew back.
Ravager’s words resounded through his tent. “Let the man who would not help a brother kill that boy for doing so!” The look on his face told what would happen to such a man in the tent of Ravager. Everyone stood absolutely motionless. There was only the shifting and spitting of the lizards, Bordhall’s nervous tramplings, and the slow billowing of the walls. It was a moment in which Crassmor was amazed to feel no fear.
Sandur, satisfied, broke the tableau. With sword and knife, he sped back across the tent. The duel resumed at an even more savage pitch. Ravager didn’t bother to attempt his disarming trick again; Sandur wouldn’t fall prey to it twice. The knight drove hard. The Warlord gave way, waiting for this prodigal waste of energy to run its course, confident that he would finish the other as soon as it did. The retreat carried them to where the Warlord’s lizard and those of his generals had been staked out with chains chased in silver. The animals squirmed nervously as the duelists struggled in their midst.
Sandur’s advance faltered; the Warlord judged that his moment had come. In attacking, though, he opened his guard. The knight instantly sought to take advantage; the falter had been a ploy on Sandur’s part. With a titanic swing, he struck Ravager’s sword from his grip, gambling everything on that one blow. The Warlord lost his footing and fell, avoiding a second slash, as lizards snapped and filled the air with their stridence. They showed forked tongues, crowding against one another, some moving away from the Warlord, coming Sandur’s way.
Ravager lay with only the hilled yataghan against the knight’s broadsword and knife. Crassmor, straining to see from where he lay transfixed, tried to croak a war cry for House Tarrant: “No end but victory!”
But Ravager plucked from his belt his silvery control whistle. He blew desperately, fingers flying on the stops and keys. The lizards heard; the command was to kill.
As suddenly as that, Sandur found himself surrounded by maddened reptiles avid to sink long fangs into the first thing they could reach, enraged to slay. Plated heads snaked and darted around him; jaws gaped and snapped. Tails thrashed; red eyes glared. Sandur whisked his broadsword’s edge around; a scaly head flew, spattering blood. He laid open the ventrals on the throat of a second with his backhand stroke; it fell back to die. A third he impaled through the chin shields under its jaw as it sought to rip his left arm off, then he ducked past it. Men with lizard prods were trying to hold the creatures at bay, playing calming notes on their whistles, but several of them had already been mauled. Crassmor, not in immediate danger, was held where he was.
Ravager didn’t retreat to let the lizards do his work, or call for another weapon. He was in among them, chancing death, waiting. Sandur, concentrating on steel-trap jaws, drew close, not hearing Crassmor’s torn wail of warning. The Warlo
rd came at him from the side, before the knight was aware. There was a split second of struggle, the beginning of a defense on the Outrider’s part.
Ravager drove the yataghan through mail, into Sandur’s side, gripping him close. Blood gushed across them both. Sandur’s head lolled back; the weapons fell from his hands. Crassmor closed his eyes and said his brother’s name in immeasurable grief. Ravager let loose his hold and the knight’s body slid to the carpet.
Lizards were being beaten and prodded and whistled back by handlers. The Warlord turned from the body of his enemy, heaving for breath, wounds flowing, near the end of his own limits. He came back to himself, spying Crassmor as if for the first time. Ravager stepped near, snapped his fingers once or twice, and the younger Tarrant was released.
Crassmor picked himself up, sobbing, gazing at Sandur and then at the Warlord in a daze. He was groggily pondering the correct course of action now, as if it were some lesson he’d forgotten. Surely it was his duty to die attempting revenge? He knew with great fear that he was about to give up his life. Crying, nose running, he looked around for some weapon. Finding none, he concluded that his only alternative was to attack with bare hands; his brother’s blood was still on the yataghan.
Ravager had read his thoughts. Shaking his head, the Warlord indicated Sandur’s body. “It’s not for you to die today, boy,” he told Crassmor quietly, as lizards bickered and men began to restore calm. “Your obligation is to bear your brother home, and not leave his funeral to his enemies. Keep my medicine wand for now; my war parties will recognize it, and you will go unhindered. The Singularity’s greatest champion is slain; no other man of the Charmed Realm will stand against me if he wishes to live.”
He let fall the yataghan tiredly. “Bear your brother home, Crassmor. And tell them Ravager comes.”
Chapter 6
