CHAPTER 27

‘They’re out of sight now,’ Talen hissed. ‘Go grab their cart.’

Kalten and Sparhawk rose from the bushes, appropriated the half-full wood-cart, and pulled it back out of sight. It was about noon.

‘I still think this is a really stupid idea,’ Kalten grumbled. ‘Assuming that we don’t get stopped when we try to go through the gate, how are we going to unload our weapons and mailshirts without being seen?

And how are we going to get out of the slave-pen to pick them up?’

‘Trust me.’

‘This boy’s making me old, Sparhawk,’ Kalten complained.

‘We might be able to pull it off, Kalten,’ Bevier said. ‘Xanetia told us that the Cynesgan overseers don’t pay much attention to the slaves. Right now, though, we’d better get this cart away from here before the fellows it belongs to come back and find that it’s gone.’

They pulled the wobbly, two-wheeled cart along the narrow track toward the spot where Xanetia and Mirtai were concealed in the bushes.

‘Ho,’ Mirtai said dryly from her hiding place, ‘our heroes return with the spoils of war.’

‘I love you, little sister,’ Sparhawk retorted, ‘but you’ve got an overly clever mouth. Kalten’s got a point, Talen. The Cynesgan overseers themselves might be too stupid to notice what we’re doing, but the other slaves probably will, and the first one to open his mouth about it will probably get a lot of attention. ’

‘I’m a-workin’ on that port, Sporhawk,’ the boy replied. He dropped to his knees and scrutinized the underside of the cart. ‘No problem,’ he said confidently, rising and brushing off his bare knees. They had modified the Cynesgan robes they had bought in Vigayo by removing the sleeves and hoods and cutting the tails off just above the knees. The resulting garments now resembled the smocks worn by the slaves who labored in the fields and woods surrounding Cyrga. While the rest of them fanned out through the woods to pilfer firewood from the stacks cut by the slaves, Talen remained behind, working at something on the underside of the cart. They had amassed a sizeable pile by the time he had finished. Sparhawk

returned once more with an armload of wood to find the boy just finishing up.

‘Do you want to take a look at this,

Sparhawk?’ he asked from under the cart.

Sparhawk knelt to examine the young thief’s handiwork. Talen had wedged the ends of slender tree-limbs between the floorboards of the cart and then had woven them into a shallow basket that fit snugly under the bottom of the stolen conveyance.

‘Are you sure it won’t come apart if we hit a bump?’ he asked dubiously. ‘It might be a little embarrassing to have all our weapons and our mailshirts come spilling out just as we’re passing through the gate.’

‘I’ll ride in it myself, if you want,’ Talen replied.

Sparhawk grunted. ‘Tie the swords together so that they won’t rattle, and stuff grass in around the mailshirts to muffle the clinking.’

‘Yes, oh glorious leader. And how many other things that I already know did you want to tell me?’

‘Just do it, Talen. Don’t make clever speeches.’

‘I’m not trying to be offensive, Mirtai,’ Kalten was saying. ‘It’s just that your legs are prettier than mine.’

Mirtai lifted the bottom of her smock a little and looked critically at her long, golden legs. Then she squinted at Kalten’s. ‘They are rather, aren’t they?’

‘What I’m getting at is that they won’t be quite as noticeable if you smear some mud on them. I don’t think the gate guards are blind, and if one of them sees the dimples on your knees, he’ll probably realize that you aren’t a man, and he might decide to investigate further.’

‘He’d better not,’ she replied in a chill tone.

‘There are not so many of the dens of the manthings in this place as there were in the place Sepal or the place Arjun,’ Bhlokw noted as he and Ulath looked down at the village of Zhubay. It had seemed that they had been travelling for several days, but they all knew better.

‘No,’ Ulath agreed. ‘It is a smaller place with fewer of the manthings. ‘ ‘But there are many of the dens-of-cloth on the other side of the water hole,’ the Troll added, pointing at the large tent city on the far side of the oasis.

‘Those are the ones we hunt,’ Ulath told him.

‘Are you certain that we are permitted to kill and eat those?’ Bhlokw asked. ‘You and Tin-in would not let me do that in the place Sepal or the place Arjun or even in the place Hat-os.’

‘It is permitted here. We have put bait out to bring them to this place so that we can hunt them for food.’

‘What bait do you use to lure the manthings?’ Bhlokw asked curiously. ‘if the minds of the Gods ever get well again and they let us go back to hunting the manthings, it would be good to know this.’

‘The bait is thought, Bhlokw. The manthings in the dens-of-cloth have come to this place because certain of our pack-mates put it in their thought that the tall manthings with the yellow skin will be here. The ones in the dens-of-cloth have come here to fight the tall ones with yellow skin.’ Bhlokw’s face contorted into a hideous approximation of a grin. ‘That is good bait, U-lat,’ he said. ‘I will summon Ghworg and Ghnomb and tell them that we will go to the hunt now. How many of them may we kill and eat?’

‘All, Bhlokw. All.’

‘That is not a good thought, U-lat. If we kill and eat them all, they will not breed, and there will not be new ones to hunt in the next season. The good thought is to always let enough run away so that they can breed to keep the numbers of their herd the same. If we eat them all now, there will be none to eat by-and-by. ’

Ulath considered that as Bhlokw cast the brief Troll-spell that summoned Ghworg and the others. He decided not to make an issue of it. The Trolls were hunters, not warriors, and it would take far too long to explain the concept of total war to them.

Bhlokw conferred at some length with the enormous presences of his Gods in the grey light of No-Time,

and then he raised his brutish face and bellowed his summons to the rest of the herd. The great shaggy mass flowed down the hill toward the village and the forest of tents beyond the oasis in the steely light of frozen time as Ulath and Tynian watched from the hilltop. The Trolls divided, went around the village, and moved in among the Cynesgan tents, fanning out as each of the great beasts selected its prey. Then, evidently at a signal from Bhlokw, the chill light flickered and the sunlight returned.

There were screams, of course, but that was to be expected. Very few men in the entire world will not scream when a fullgrown Troll suddenly steps out of nowhere immediately in front of them. The carnage in that vast slaughtering-ground beyond the oasis was ghastly, since the Trolls were bent not on fighting the Cynesgans but on tearing them to pieces in preparation for the feast to follow.

‘Some of them are getting away,’ Tynian observed, pointing at a sizeable number of panic-stricken Cynesgans desperately flogging their horses southward.

Ulath shrugged. ‘Breeding stock,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘It’s a Trollish concept, Tynian. It’s a way to guarantee a continuing food-supply. If the Trolls eat them all today, there won’t be any left when supper-time rolls around tomorrow.’ Tynian shuddered with revulsion. ‘That’s a horrible thought,

Ulath!’ he exclaimed.

‘Yes,’ Ulath agreed, ‘moderately horrible, but one should always respect the customs and traditions of one’s allies, wouldn’t you say?’

At the end of a half-hour, the tents were all flattened, the breeding stock had been permitted to escape, and the Trolls settled down to eat. The Cynesgan threat in the north had been effectively eliminated, and now the Trolls were free to join the march on Cyrga.

Khalad sat up suddenly, throwing off his blankets. ‘Berit,’ he said sharply.

Berit came awake instantly, reaching for his sword.

‘No,’ Khalad told him. ‘It’s nothing like that. Do you know what firedamp is?’

‘I’ve never heard of it.’ Berit yawned and rubbed at his eyes.

‘I’m going to have to talk with Aphrael then - personally. How long will it take you to teach me the spell?’

‘That depends, I guess. Can’t you pass what you have to tell her through me?’

‘No. I need to ask her some questions, and you wouldn’t understand what I’m talking about. I’ve got to talk with her myself. It’s very important, Berit. I don’t have to understand the language to just repeat the words, do I?’

Berit frowned. ‘I’m not sure. Sephrenia and the Styric who replaced her at Demos wouldn’t let us do it that way, because they said we had to think in Styric.’

‘That could just be their peculiarity, not Aphrael’s. Let’s try it and find out if I can reach her.’

It took them almost two hours, and Berit, sandy-eyed and definitely in need of more sleep, began to grow grouchy toward the end.

‘I’m going to be mispronouncing words,’ Khalad said finally. ‘There’s no way I’ll ever be able to twist my mouth around to make some of those sounds. Let’s try it and see what happens.’

‘You’ll make her angry,’ Berit warned.

‘She’ll get over it. Here goes.’ Khalad began to haltingly pronounce the spell, and his fingers faltered as he moved them in the accompanying gestures.

‘What on earth are you doing, Khalad?’ Her voice almost crackled in his ears.

‘I’m sorry, Flute,’ he apologized, ‘but this is urgent.’

‘Berit’s not hurt, is he?’ she demanded with a note of concern. ‘No. He’s fine. It’s just that I need to talk with you personally Do you know what firedamp is?’

‘Yes. It sometimes kills coal-miners.’ ‘You said that Klael’s soldiers breathe something like marsh-gas. ’

‘Yes. Where are we going with this? I’m sort of busy just now.’

‘Please be patient, Divine One. I’m still groping my way toward this. Berit told you that we saw some of

those aliens run into a cave, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, but I still don’t ‘I thought that Klael might have filled the cave with marsh-gas so that his soldiers could go there to breathe, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe the gas was already there.’

‘Would you please get to the point?’ ‘Is it possible that firedamp and marsh-gas are anything at all alike?’

She sighed one of those infuriating long-suffering sighs. ‘Very much alike, Khalad - which sort of stands to reason, since they’re the same thing.’

‘I do love you, Aphrael,’ he said with a delighted laugh.

‘What brought that on?’

‘I knew there had to be a connection of some kind. This is a desert, and there aren’t any swamps here. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where Klael might be getting marsh-gas to fill that cave. But he didn’t have to, did he? If marsh-gas is the same thing as firedamp, all he had to do was find a cave with a seam of coal in it.’

‘All right, now that I’ve answered your question and satisfied your scientific curiosity, can I go?’

‘In a minute, Divine Aphrael,’ he said, rubbing his hands together gleefully. ‘is there some way that you can blow some of our air into that cave so that it’ll mix with the firedamp those soldiers are breathing?’

There was another of those long pauses.

‘That’s dreadful, Khalad!’ she exclaimed.

‘And what happened to Lord Abriel and Lord Vanion’s knights wasn’t?’ he demanded. ‘This is war, Aphrael, and it’s a war we absolutely have to win. If Klael’s soldiers can run into those caves to catch their breath, they’ll be coming out and attacking our friends every time we turn around. We have to come up with a way to neutralize them, and I think this is it.

Can you take us back to that cave where we saw those soldiers?’

‘All right.’ Her tone was a little sulky.

‘What were you talking with her about?’ Berit asked.

‘A way to win the war, Berit. Let’s gather up our things. Aphrael’s going to take us back to that cave.’

‘Are they still coming?’ Vanion called back to Sir Endrik, who was trailing behind the other knights.

‘Yes, my Lord,’ Endrik shouted. ‘Some of them are starting to fall behind, though.’

‘Good. They’re beginning to weaken.’ Vanion looked out across the rocky barrens lying ahead. ‘We’ve got plenty of room, he told Sephrenia. ‘We’ll lead them out onto those flats and run them around for a while.’

‘This is cruel, Vanion,’ she reproved him.

‘They don’t have to follow us, love.’ He rose up in his stirrups. ‘Let’s pick up the pace, gentlemen,’ he called to his knights. ‘I want those monsters to really run.’

The knights pushed their horses into a gallop and moved out onto the barren flats with a vast, steely jingling sound.

‘They’re breaking off.’ Endrik called from behind after about half an hour.

Vanion raised his steel-clad arm to call a halt. Then he reined in and looked back. The masked giants had given up their pursuit and were running due west now, staggering toward an outcropping of rocky hills several miles away.

‘That’s the part that has everybody baffled,’ he told Sephrenia. ‘From what Aphrael told me, the others have encountered the same thing. Klael’s soldiers chase after us for a while, and then they break off and run toward the nearest cluster of hills. What can they possibly hope to find that’s going to do them any good?’

‘I have no idea, dear one,’ she replied. ‘This is all very fine, I suppose,’ Vanion said with a worried frown,

‘but when we begin our final advance on Cyrga, we won’t have time to run those brutes into exhaustion.

Not only that, Klael will probably start massing them in units larger than these regiments we’ve been coming across out here in the open. If we don’t come up with some way to neutralize them permanently, our chances of getting to Cyrga alive aren’t very good.’

‘Lord Vanion!’ one of the knights cried out in alarm. ‘There are more of them coming.’

‘Where!’ Vanion looked around.

‘From the west!’ Vanion peered after the fleeing monsters. And then he saw them. There were two regiments of Klael’s soldiers out there on the flats. The one they had encountered earlier was reeling and staggering toward the hills jutting up from the horizon. The other was coming toward them from the hills, and the second regiment showed no signs of the exhaustion which had incapacitated their fellows.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Talen muttered, examining the lock on his chain with sensitive fingertips.

‘You said you could unlock them,’ Kalten accused in a hoarse whisper.

‘Kalten, you could unlock these. They’re the worst locks I’ve ever seen. ’

‘Just open them, Talen,’ Sparhawk told him quietly. ‘Don’t give lectures. We still have to get out of this pen.’

They had merged with the other woodcutters and had passed unchallenged through the gates of Cyrga just as the sun was setting. Then they had followed the slaves to an open square near the gate, unloaded their cart onto one of the stacks of wood piled there, and leaned the cart against a rough stone wall with the others. Then, like docile cattle, they had gone into the large slave-pen and allowed the Cynesgan overseers to chain them to rusty iron rings protruding from the rear wall of the pen. They had been fed a thin, watery soup and had then bedded down in piles of filthy straw heaped against the wall to wait for nightfall. Xanetia was not with them. Silent and unseen, she roamed the streets outside the pen instead.

‘Hold your leg still, Kalten,’ Talen hissed. ‘I can’t get the chain off when you’re flopping around like that.’

‘Sorry.’ The boy concentrated for a moment, and the lock snapped open. Then he moved on, crawling through the rustling straw.

‘Don’t get so familiar,’ Mirtai’s voice muttered in the darkness.

‘Sorry. I was looking for your ankle.’

‘It’s on the other end of the leg.’

‘Yes. I noticed that myself. It’s dark, Atana. I can’t see what I’m doing.’

‘What are you men doing there?’ It was a whining, servile kind of voice coming from somewhere in the straw beyond where Kalten lay.

‘It’s none of your business,’ Kalten rasped. ‘Go back to sleep.’

‘I want to know what you’re doing. If you don’t tell me, I’ll call the overseers.’

‘You’d better shut him up, Kalten,’ Mirtai muttered. ‘He’s an informer.’

‘I’ll deal with it,’ Kalten replied darkly. He slipped away through the rustling straw.

‘What are you doing?’ the slave with the whining voice demanded. ‘How did you —’ The voice broke off, and there was a sudden thrashing in the straw and a kind of wheezy gurgling.

‘What’s going on out there?’ A harsh voice called from the overseer’s barracks. The barracks doorway poured light out into the yard. There was no answer, only a few spasmodic rustles in the straw. Kalten was breathing a little hard when he returned to his place, quickly wrapped his chain around his ankles again and covered it with straw. They waited tensely, but the Cynesgan overseer evidently decided not to investigate. He went back inside, closing the door behind him and plunging the yard into darkness again.

‘Does that happen often - among slaves, I mean?’ Bevier whispered to Mirtai as Talen was unchaining him. ‘All the time,’ she murmured. ‘There’s no loyalty among slaves. One slave will betray another for an extra crust of bread.’

‘How sad.’

‘Slavery? I could find harsher words than sad.’

‘Let’s go,’ Sparhawk told them.

‘How are we going to find Xanetia?’ Kalten whispered as they crossed the pen.

‘We can’t. She’s going to have to find us.’

It took Talen only a moment to unlock the gate, and they all slipped out into the dark street beyond. They crept along that street to the large square where the firewood was stacked and stopped before stepping out into the open.

‘Take a look, Talen,’ Sparhawk suggested.

‘Right.’ The young thief melted away into the darkness. The rest of them waited tensely. ‘It’s all clear,’

Talen’s whisper came to them after a few minutes. ‘The carts are over here.’

They followed the sound of his hushed voice and soon reached the line of wood-carts leaning against the wall.

‘Did you see any guards?’ Kalten asked.

‘Who’s going to stay up all night to guard a wood pile?’ Talen dropped down onto his stomach and wormed his way under the cart. There was a faint creaking of the tightly-woven limbs of the makeshift basket.

‘Here,’ Talen said. A sword-tip banged against Sparhawk’s shin. Sparhawk took the sword, handed it to Kalten and then leaned down.

‘Pass them out hilt-first,’ he instructed. ‘Don’t poke me with the sharp end of a sword that way.’

‘I’ll try.’ Talen continued to pass out weapons and then followed them with their mailshirts and tunics.

They all felt better once they were armed again.

‘Anakha?’ The voice was soft and very light.

‘Is that you, Xanetia?’ Sparhawk realized how foolish the question was almost before it left his lips.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Come away, I prithee. The whisper is the natural voice of stealth, and it doth carry far by night. Let y ‘ere they who watch this sleeping city come hither in of the source of our incautious conversation.’

‘We’re going to have to wait a bit,’ Khalad said. ‘Aphrael has to blow air into that cave.’

‘Are you sure this is going to work?’ Berit asked dubiously.

‘No, not really, but it’s worth a try, isn’t it?’

‘You don’t even know for sure that they’re still inside the cave. ’

‘That doesn’t really matter. Either way they won’t be able to hide in the cave any more.’ Khalad began to carefully wrap a length of oil-soaked rag around one of his crossbow bolts. Then, being careful to conceal the sparks with his body, he began striking his flint and steel together. After a moment, his tinder caught, he lit his stub of a candle, and brushed the fire out of his tinder. Then he carefully put the candle behind a fair-sized rock.

‘Aphrael seems to be unhappy about this, Khalad,’ Berit said as a chill breeze came up.

‘I wasn’t too happy about what happened to Lord Abriel either,’ Khalad replied bleakly. ‘I had a great deal of respect for that old man, and these monsters with yellow blood tore him to pieces.’

‘You’re doing this for revenge then?’ ‘No. Not really. This is just the most practical way to get rid of them. Ask Aphrael to let me know when there’s enough air in the cave.’

‘How long is that likely to take?’

‘I have no idea. All the coal-miners who’ve ever seen it up close are dead.’ Khalad scratched at his beard. ‘I’m not entirely sure what’s going to happen here, Berit. When marsh-gas catches on fire, it just burns off and goes out. Firedamp’s a little more spectacular.’

‘What’s all this business about blowing air into the cave?’ Berit demanded.

‘Khalad shrugged. ‘Fire’s a living thing. It has to be able to breathe.’

‘You’re just guessing about this, aren’t you? You don’t have any idea at all whether or not it’s going to work - or if it does, what’s going to happen.’

Khalad gave him a tight grin. ‘I’ve got a good working theory.’

‘I think you’re insane. You could set the whole desert on fire with this silly experiment of yours.’

‘Oh, that probably won’t happen.’

‘Probably?’

‘It’s very unlikely. I can just make out that cave mouth. Why don’t I try it?’

‘What happens if you miss?’

Khalad shrugged. ‘I’ll shoot again.’

‘That’s not what I meant. I was -‘ Berit broke off, listening intently. ‘Aphrael says that the mixture’s right

now. You can shoot whenever you’re ready.’ Khalad held the point of his crossbow bolt in the candle-flame, turning it slowly to make certain that the oily rag was evenly ablaze. Then he set the burning bolt in place, laid the forestock of his crossbow on a rock, and took careful aim.

‘Here goes,’ he said, slowly pressing the lever. The crossbow gave a ringing thud, and the burning arrow streaked through the darkness and disappeared into the narrow cave mouth.

‘So much for your good working theory,’ Berit said sardonically.

Nothing happened. Khalad swore, banging his fist on the gravel. ‘It has to work, Berit. I did everything exactly -‘ The sound was beyond noise when the hill exploded, and a ball of fire hundreds of feet across seethed skyward out of the crater that had suddenly replaced the hill. Without thinking, Khalad threw himself across Berit’s head, covering the back of his own neck with his hands. Fortunately, what fell on them was small gravel for the most part. The larger rocks fell much further out into the desert. It continued to rain gravel for several minutes, and the two ‘young men, battered and shaken, lay tensely clenched, enduring the cataclysmic results of Khalad’s experiment.

Gradually, the stinging rain subsided.

‘You idiot!’ Berit screamed. ‘You could have killed us both.’

‘I must have miscalculated just a little,’ Khalad conceded, shaking the dirt out of his hair. ‘I’ll have to work on it a bit before we try it again.’

‘Try it again? What are you talking about?’

‘It does work, Berit,’ Khalad said in his most reasonable tone of voice. ‘All I have to do is fine-tune it a little bit. Every experiment’s got a few rough places around the edges.’ He stood up, thumping the side of his head with the heel of his hand to shake the ringing out of his ears. ‘I’ll get it perfected, my lord,’ he promised, helping Berit to his feet. ‘The next time won’t be nearly so bad. Now, why don’t you ask Aphrael to take us back to camp? We’re probably being watched, so let’s not arouse any suspicions. ’