Rhune Shadow Page 21

  The main wooden gate swung open. Exiled Karchedonians began to march out three abreast.

  “Go back!” Elissa shouted.

  If anything, the exiles marched faster. They must believe she yelled for them to hurry.

  Since the initial decision to fight, the plan had undergone refinements. Before they attacked the caravan, the old soldier wanted his men formed in a phalanx. The idea was to wait just below the hill and charge the caravan as it climbed the opposite side of the hill. Because it took time to marshal one hundred men into a phalanx, the magistrate had agreed that the soldier’s was the better tactical plan. Elissa’s running downhill was the signal to begin forming the phalanx.

  By the time she was halfway to the mud wall, Elissa heard drumming hooves behind her. She looked back. There was nothing but the soft breeze blowing palm-fronds on the top of the hill. She kept running. Then yipping cries alerted her as Nasamons galloped over the hill and poured down after her.

  She didn’t know how, but Himilco had tricked them. Elissa sprinted faster than any exiled Karchedonian could have done. Behind her, the nimble horses galloped like gazelles.

  This was the wrong place for her kind of fighting. Even so, a throwing dagger appeared in Elissa’s fist. If the riders made even one error, she would make them pay. She no longer sprinted for the gate where the Karchedonians formed ranks, but for the wall in front of her. The trail down the hill twisted like a snake before it reached the main gate. It was almost as if the Nasamons were chasing her to keep her from delivering her news to the Karchedonians.

  A louder cry caused Elissa to look back. A javelin arched through the air. It was a long wooden thing, a distance javelin, propelled by the speeding horse and the expert thrower. Elissa swerved. The javelin thudded into the sandy soil where she had just been.

  Now a shower of javelins flew through the air. Only one had the distance. Elissa evaded it. The mud wall loomed before her. With a catlike leap, she vaulted atop the six-foot wall, caught a mud turret and spun down behind it. The Nasamons already veered right and left, hurling their javelins while making their U-turns.

  On the wall, Elissa panted. She wished one of them would come close enough so she could hurl a dagger into a neck. Instead, the horsemen galloped back up the hill.

  Elissa jumped off the wall into town and sprinted for the main gate to warn the others about her premonition.

  -5-

  Himilco took a gnarled staff of gopher-wood out of his storage chest. In the bottom lay several packets of black lotus. He hesitated as he stared at the packets. The edge of desire nibbled at him. It wasn’t yet need for the drug…

  With a pang of regret, Himilco shut the chest. Things could go wrong. That was a truism of battle. Even clumsy Karchedonians, many of them old men, could upset Ophion’s plan. The Rhune was another complication. He doubted the trap had worked against her.

  Himilco hefted the staff. He felt the power pulsating in it and congratulated himself on the staff’s creation for a day like today.

  The Gray Wolf stuck his head in the wagon. “We’re almost ready,” he said.

  “We’ve reached the hill?”

  Instead of answering, the Gray Wolf gazed at him, which annoyed Himilco. The chieftain had developed the habit of keeping silent whenever Himilco said a thing a second or third time or asked a question to which he’d already received the answer.

  Himilco kicked off his slippers and put on boots. He swept past the curtain and looked out. Behind them, one hundred and fifty barbarians waited. They wore temple mail and spiked helms, and carried spiked shields. None used long-swords; all carried archaic scimitars. Himilco studied the Gepids in the front rank. Some seemed dull-witted. A few rubbed their foreheads where the beetles had kept their stingers embedded. Others passed a jug, guzzling from it. Ophion said the liquor would fire their veins.

  “It is time,” the Gray Wolf said.

  Himilco jumped down. The two of them walked around the wagons and started up the hill.

  Through the ground, Himilco felt the tramp of feet behind them. He was supposed to be dulled by the black lotus. So, he turned to the Gray Wolf and asked, “We’re to go alone?”

  “Look behind you.”

  Himilco glanced over his shoulder. The front-rank Gepids had livelier features than before, if more animalistic. Then a few contorted their faces and shuddered. Foam bubbled from some mouths. Others chewed the edges of their shields. The noise from that was an ugly, clacking sound: teeth on wood. Too many grunted. One howled as if demented.

  “They are your men,” Himilco said.

  The Gray Wolf glanced at him.

  “It is wrong for a dragon to misuse your men with alien elixirs,” Himilco said. “That must anger you.”

  At that moment, Dabar rode up on his horse. He pointed a javelin uphill. “It is time to use your spell, Suffete.”

  Himilco composed himself as he began to chant and watch the top of the hill. The tips of gaudy feathers appeared first. Himilco knew that some of the exiles bore their old armor and helmets. Soon, the helmets appeared and then the armored men. The exiles marched two dozen wide and possibly four deep. They bore great bronze shields and leveled spears. They marched like professional soldiers. Ah, a few of the town fools had joined them. Robed bandits with shields and swords guarded the flanks. And look at this! A priest in a black robe rode a chariot, the only vehicle on the battlefield. The driver looked like the magistrate’s son.

  On top of the hill, the small phalanx ground to a ragged halt. Likely, it was because of surprise at seeing so many Gepids. Himilco expected some of the exiles to turn and run. None did. Maybe it was the old commander at the front of the phalanx. He wore golden armor and defiantly raised his spear. At the signal, those in front banged the edges of their shields against their neighbors’ shields. Spears bristled as desperate men readied themselves to charge.

  Before that occurred, Himilco finished chanting his spell. Balefire whooshed from his staff in a fiery ball of sulfur that blasted the lone chariot cart. The horses screamed and bolted. Both the son and the priest fell onto the sand as human torches. Himilco sent another blast. It trailed fire and smoke, the ball of fire splashing against two Karchedonian shields. The balefire showered against armor, cloaks, helmets and faces. Karchedonians fell screaming to the ground, trying to claw the balefire off their burning faces.

  “Charge!” shouted the old soldier. “Kill the Gepids! Kill the traitorous priest!”

  The tiny amount of black lotus in his veins affected Himilco’s judgment. Normally, he would have run away and left the battle to the soldiers. Now, he coolly stood at the bottom of the hill and blew away clumps of men as if he were a catapult raining fireballs. Then, the Gray Wolf hauled Himilco aside and sheltered him as Gepids charged uphill. The warriors ran with great bounding leaps as if they were stags chasing does.

  The one hundred-man phalanx had shattered under the balefire. Burning soldiers lay on the ground. Others ran away. Some Karchedonians attacked raggedly in ones and twos. The old soldier lay dead on the ground, his golden armor smoldering. Perhaps, united behind their large shields and with bristling spears in the civilized manner, the Karchedonians could have faced the crazed Gepids. Man-on-man, they had little chance as the Gepids hit like an avalanche, sweeping the Karchedonians into oblivion.

  -6-

  Mogador burned as the stars twinkled with indifference. Berserk killers butchered the town’s bewildered citizens.

  Like a panther, Elissa watched from the roof of a mud-brick storehouse. She had warned the old soldier that this was a trap. He had shrugged and told her to keep the information to herself. He was tired of running and believed the rest of the exiles felt likewise. Maybe. They were all dead now. Elissa had witnessed the first balefire-attack that had obliterated the priest of Ankey and the magistrate’s son. After that, she had raced to the magistrate’s house to tell him the bitter news. She had been too late. The magistrate had died in his sleep.

  Elissa a
lmost fled to the rock two miles out of town. It was time to fly elsewhere. That’s what the Elissa of two years ago would have done. It wasn’t that rage gripped and provoked her to stay and die fighting. That would have negated her Rhune training. No, she decided to find out what was so important about Mogador that Himilco needed to come. Then, she would kill him if the chance arose. There would be nothing suicidal about it, although she was ready to take risks. She was only half-Rhune, after all. Tonight she planned to use that half and make the murderers realize that one of the blood warred against Bel Ruk and his fanatics.

  Below, in a flame-drenched lane, a barbarian bounded after a merchant. The merchant’s robes flapped wildly. He sobbed in terror, with his arms held out and his ringed fingers spread wide as if imploring the night to save him. The barbarian had lost his spiked helmet and his humanity. His leaps were like that of some conjured beast, and his speed belied anything human. With a demented howl, the barbarian crashed upon the merchant’s back. He bore the man to the dusty lane like a beast downing its prey, and bit the man’s neck. The merchant thrashed and screamed. The barbarian snarled, and kneeling, drove his scimitar deep into the merchant’s back and into the hard-packed dirt underneath.

  The sight brought bitter memories to Elissa of a time two years ago in her father’s palace. Enchantments had driven the Gepids then, but nothing like what she witnessed now. Himilco’s sorcery had grown.

  With a snarl of glee, the barbarian withdrew his bloodied scimitar from the merchant. Then the warrior licked blood from the blade.

  Down the same lane, a woman screamed at the sight. She held a child’s hand. The Gepid laughed like a demon, rose and stepped in the woman’s direction.

  From the roof, Elissa hurled a dagger. It sank into barbaric flesh where neck met collarbone. Like a nightmare, the barbarian snarled and his head whipped around. He spotted her. Leaving the dagger in his flesh, he ran and leaped with crazed power. The fingers of his free hand clutched the edge of her two-story roof.

  While staring into the snarling face, Elissa knelt and hacked with a dagger, severing fingers. The barbarian lost his grip and crashed onto the lane below. Elissa watched in horrified fascination. The warrior licked his maimed hand, looked up at her and released his scimitar. He leaped again. In mid-leap, he stiffened. He thus never grappled the edge of the roof for a second chance. He crashed upon the lane again, and in slow motion, he began to contort.

  The poison coating Elissa’s thrown dagger finally began to affect him. What had taken the quick-acting poison so long to work?

  The Gepid snarled weakly as he glared at her. Even while dying, all he desired was to kill.

  Elissa retreated toward the center of the roof. The woman and child were gone. More demonized barbarians bounded onto the street, searching for things to kill. Donkeys, camels, merchants, beggars; the Gepids slaughtered everything.

  Elissa refused to let it sicken her. She observed. She pondered, and she used the roofs and the darkness of the night to keep ahead of the butchery. What kind of enchantment or metamorphosis allowed a man to resist graybloom for so long? The barbarian hadn’t even pulled the dagger out of his neck.

  Why are they killing everyone in Mogador?

  Elissa slunk through the burning town like a wraith. The demonized Gepids hadn’t reached the lowest terraces yet. From various rooftops, she watched them in action. She didn’t try to intervene again. They were ground-bound killers, seldom looking up as she watched. She feared them, but her training held.

  Maybe fear was like cluthe. Too much in one dose killed, but take a tiny daily amount and one became immune to all but the heaviest doses. She had taken many doses of fear throughout the years.

  “Himilco Nara,” she whispered, freezing at the sight.

  The traitor sat on the buckboard of a gargantuan wagon. It truly could have hauled elephants, as she’d wondered before when she’d seen it through the spyglass while flying her skay. It was like a small sailing ship. The wagon had wooden walls and a stout roof. Ten pairs of mules pulled it. The wagon had eight giant wheels each the height of a tall man. What did the wagon hold? It must be vitally important.

  The Gray Wolf was driving the wagon, and a detachment of Nasamons rode in front and behind. A chieftain with a braided ponytail and a tattooed head led them. They moved through the burning street, heading down.

  What could they want? What did Mogador hold that was worth sending Himilco?

  Elissa crawled near the edge of a roof, trailing them, watching. If the opportunity arose, she could use a blow-dart on Himilco. She preferred, however, to garrote the priest and feel him squirm as he died.

  Howls filled the night. The Gepids closed toward the center of town. It was time to move to the lower terraces, toward the lagoon. She glanced over her shoulder. Smoke billowed into the darkness as the upper terraces burned. This was just like two years ago, and that made her bitter.

  -7-

  Himilco swayed on the buckboard as the dragon’s massive wagon trundled toward the onion-shaped Temple of Ankey.

  Mogador burned and provided spectacularly morbid illumination. Giant shadows writhed on the nearing temple wall. The wall was yellow marble, not the ubiquitous mud-brick. Titanic flames reflected their dancing light off the lagoon’s waters. Screams punctuated the night. The stink of roasting flesh added to the horror of the barbarian howls.

  “Don’t they ever get tired?” Himilco asked the Gray Wolf.

  As they descended through the dying town, the giant beside him had become quieter and stonier.

  “Those who drank Ophion’s brew hardly seem human anymore,” Himilco said.

  The chieftain breathed heavily through his nose.

  “I’ve read about berserkergang,” Himilco said. “It leaves the warrior limp afterward, weak, spent, hardly able to move. It makes one wonder.”

  The Gray Wolf turned toward him.

  “If normal berserkergang leaves a warrior limp,” Himilco said, “what will the aftereffect of turning into a demon be like?”

  Something flickered deep in the Gray Wolf’s eyes.

  “Will it kill them, do you think?” asked Himilco.

  “No,” emanated a sibilant whisper through the wooden wall of the wagon. “My enchantments and the alchemy of the beetles’ stingers will revive them after a suitable rest in the coffins.”

  “Berserk vampires,” Himilco told the Gray Wolf.

  “Fully human,” whispered Ophion. “Now desist your line of inquiry, Himilco Nara, or you will ride in here with me. I cannot watch you as I prepare for battle.”

  As the threat wilted his courage, Himilco managed to loft a sardonic eyebrow in the Gray Wolf’s direction.

  The giant’s hands tightened around the reins. The barbarian chieftain stared fixedly at the nearing temple.

  After that, Himilco remained silent. He hadn’t realized Ophion listened to him. Knowing the dragon did was worthwhile information, even at the cost of having alerted Ophion to his needling. What did the monster mean about readying himself for battle? What battle? The fight was over.

  Himilco glanced at the emerald in his hands. In it, he spied the Rhune sired from Zarius’s loins. It was difficult to tell, but he believed she was following them. That took more courage than he had realized she possessed. He might have told the dragon about her. He would have told Ophion if he thought Elissa could poison him. But he had taken precautions against that. He was a sorcerer. She was just a half-trained half-Rhune assassin. He’d also decided it might come in handy to know she was here when Ophion did not.

  Himilco gave a startled cry as a blue nimbus suddenly appeared like a shimmering dome. It covered the temple and the temple grounds like a protective shield.

  The Gray Wolf drew rein. The mules came to a halt as they eyed the shimmering dome. The giant wagon swayed and then settled to a stop. Dabar and his Nasamons milled in confusion behind them.

  The back door of Ophion’s gargantuan wagon opened like a castle gate, causing Himilco
to jerk around in surprise. With a flap of leathery wings, the dragon launched itself airborne.

  Nasamons cried out in fear. Many pointed at the monster. Through slitted eyes, the Gray Wolf watched the impressive beast. As he sat hunched on the buckboard, Himilco licked his lips and gripped his staff tighter. This was amazing. The wing-beats were loud and ominous. How could a thing that large fly?

  An eerie hum emanated from the temple, and the blue nimbus thickened in color and now hid the onion-shaped dome and grounds. Ophion screeched like some prehistoric monster, and his powerful wings clapped together in a thunderous noise. He glowed with a red color like firelight through a ruby as his wings beat faster. A blood-red nimbus now surrounded him. Another screech deepened the color. Then Ophion swooped upon the temple.

  “What happens when the two colors meet?” Himilco whispered.

  The answer was swift in coming. Ophion swooped upon the temple, and his glowing red sphere of color touched the blue glow. Blue and red sparks showered into the night as static sounds grew in volume. Ophion screeched once more as he hung in the air. The blue color stopped him from advancing. That was incredible. The sparks intensified, as did the temple’s hum and the loud zapping sounds.

  With a wounded-sounding screech, Ophion flapped his wings and gained height. His red nimbus was duller-colored than before, while the blue around the temple seemed undimmed. Ophion soared, clapping his wings, screeching and slowly deepening the color of his nimbus once again.

  “What otherworldly sorcery does he practice?” Himilco whispered.

  The dragon swooped upon the temple once more. As the colors touched, sparks showered and the awful noises increased. Himilco found the hairs on his arms standing straight up.

  “The air is charged as during a lightning storm,” the Gray Wolf said, sounding awed.