Читать книгу The Complete Tamuli Trilogy: Domes of Fire, The Shining Ones, The Hidden City - David Eddings - Страница 28

The addition of a dozen female Atans added to the subterfuge of a courtly gathering on the hilltop, although it was difficult to persuade the Atan girls that their faces would not break if they smiled or that the Gods had issued no commandment against laughing. Berit and a number of other youthful knights entertained the ladies while casually clearing inconvenient – and not a few convenient – bushel-basket sized rocks from the kind of natural amphitheatre at the top of the hill. The back-side of the pile of boulders was more precipitous than the front, and the rim of the hilltop on that side formed a naturally defensible wall. The young knights piled up enough rock to form a crude kind of breastwork around the other three sides. It was all very casual, but within an hour some fairly substantial fortifications had been erected.

There were many cooking-fires around the base of the hill, and their smoke laid a kind of blue haze out among the white tree trunks. There was a great deal of clanking and rattling and shouting back and forth as the oddly-assorted force made some show of preparing a meal. Engessa’s Atans gathered up large piles of firewood – mostly in ten-foot lengths – and all of the cooks stated a loud preference for wood chips for their fires rather than chunks. It was therefore necessary to chop at the ends of the birch logs, and there were soon neat piles of sharpened ten-foot poles spaced out at regular intervals around the hill, ready for use either as firewood or a palisade that could be erected in a few minutes. The knights and the Peloi tethered their horses nearby and lounged around the foot of the hill while the Atans were evenly dispersed a bit further out under the trees. Sparhawk stood at the top of the hill surveying the progress of the work below. The ladies were gathered under a broad canopy erected on poles in the centre of the depressed basin on the hilltop. Stragen was strumming his lute and singing to them in his deep rich voice.

‘How’s it going down there?’ Talen asked, coming up to where Sparhawk stood.

‘It’s about as secure as Khalad can make it without being obvious about it,’ Sparhawk replied.

‘He’s awfully good, isn’t he?’ Talen said with a certain pride.

‘Your brother? Oh, yes. Your father trained him very well.’

‘It might have been nice to grow up with my brothers.’ Talen sounded a bit wistful. He shrugged. ‘But then …’ He peered out at the forest. ‘Any word from Engessa?’

‘Our friends are still out there.’

‘They’re going to attack, aren’t they?’

‘Probably. You don’t gather that many armed men in one place without having something military in mind.’

‘I like your plan here, Sparhawk, but I think it’s got a hole in it.’

‘Oh?’

‘Once they finally realise that we aren’t going to move from this spot, they might decide to wait and then come at us after dark. Fighting at night’s a lot different from doing it in the daytime, isn’t it?’

‘Usually, yes, but we’ll cheat.’

Talen gave him a quizzical look.

‘There are a couple of spells that brighten things up when you need to see.’

‘I keep forgetting about that.’

‘You might as well get used to it, Talen,’ Sparhawk told him with a faint smile. ‘When we get back home, you’re going to start your novitiate.’

‘When did we decide that?’

‘Just now. You’re old enough, and if you keep on growing the way you have been lately, you’ll be big enough.’

‘Is magic hard to learn?’

‘You have to pay attention. It’s all done in Styric, and Styric’s a tricky language. If you use the wrong word, all sorts of things can go wrong.’

‘Thanks, Sparhawk. That’s all I need – something else to worry about.’

‘We’ll talk with Sephrenia when we get to Sarsos. Maybe she’ll agree to train you. Flute likes you, so she’ll forgive you if you make any mistakes.’

‘What’s Flute got to do with it?’

‘If Sephrenia trains you, you’ll be submitting your requests to Aphrael.’

‘Requests?’

‘That’s what magic is, Talen. You ask a God to do something for you.’

‘Praying?’ the boy asked incredulously.

‘Sort of.’

‘Does Emban know that you’re praying to a Styric Goddess?’

‘More than likely. The Church chooses to ignore the fact, though – for practical reasons.’

‘She’s a hypocrite then.’

‘I wouldn’t mention that to Emban, if I were you.’

‘Let me get this straight. If I get to be a Church Knight, I’ll be worshipping Flute?’

‘Praying to her, Talen. I didn’t say anything about worshipping.’

‘Praying, worshipping, what’s the difference?’

‘Sephrenia will explain it.’

‘She’s in Sarsos, you say?’

‘I didn’t say that.’ Sparhawk silently cursed his careless tongue.

‘Yes, as a matter of fact you did.’

‘All right, but keep it to yourself.’

‘That’s why we came overland, isn’t it?’

‘One of the reasons, yes. Haven’t you got something else to do?’

‘Not really, no.’

‘Go find something – because if you don’t, I will.’

‘You don’t have to get all huffy.’

Sparhawk gave him a steady stare.

‘All right, all right, don’t get excited. I’ll go entertain Danae and her cat.’

Sparhawk stood watching the boy as he returned to the festivities under the canopy. It was obviously time to start being a little careful around Talen. He was dangerously intelligent, and a slip of the tongue might give away things that were supposed to be kept private. The discussion had raised an issue, however. Sparhawk went back to the group gathered on the hilltop and took Berit aside. ‘Go tell the knights that if those people out there decide to wait until after dark to attack, I’ll take care of giving us light to work by. If we all try to do it at the same time, we might confuse things.’

Berit nodded.

Sparhawk considered it further. ‘And I’ll go talk with Kring and Engessa,’ he added. ‘We don’t want the Atans and the Peloi going into a panic if the sky suddenly lights up along about midnight tonight.’

‘Is that what you’re going to do?’ Berit asked.

‘It usually works out about the best in cases like this. One big light’s easier to control than several hundred little ones – and it disrupts the enemy’s concentration a lot more.’

Berit grinned. ‘It would be a little startling to be creeping through the bushes and have the sun come back up again, wouldn’t it?’

‘A lot of battles have been averted by lighting up the night, Berit, and a battle averted is sometimes even better than one you win.’

‘I’ll remember that, Sparhawk.’

The afternoon wore on, and the party on the hilltop became a little strained. There were only so many things to laugh at, and only so many jokes to tell. The warriors around the base of the hill either spent their time attending to equipment or pretending to sleep.

Sparhawk met with the others about mid-afternoon out near the road.

‘If they don’t know by now that we aren’t going any farther today, they aren’t very bright,’ Kalten noted.

‘We do look a bit settled in, don’t we?’ Ulath agreed.

‘A suggestion, Sparhawk?’ Tynian offered.

‘Why do you always say that?’

‘Habit, I suppose. I was taught to be polite to my elders. Even the best of spells isn’t going to give us the same kind of light we’ll have before the sun goes down. We know they’re out there, we’re in position and we’re rested. Why don’t we push things a bit? If we can force them to attack now, we can fight them in daylight.’

‘How are you going to make somebody attack when he doesn’t want to?’ Patriarch Emban asked.

‘We start making obvious preparations, your Grace,’ Tynian replied. ‘It’s logical to start on the field fortifications about now anyway. Let’s put up the palisade around the foot of the hill, and start digging ditches.’

‘And cutting trees,’ Ulath added. ‘We could clear away some avenues leading out into the woods and pile all the tree trunks up where they’ll hinder anybody trying to come through the forest. If they’re going to attack, let’s make them attack across open ground.’

It took a surprisingly short time. The logs for the fence around the base of the hill were already sharpened and stacked in neat piles where they were handy. Digging them in was an easy matter. The birch trees in the forest were all no more than ten inches thick at the base, and they fell quickly to the axes of the warriors and were dragged into the surrounding forest to form large, jumbled piles which would be virtually impossible to penetrate, even for men on foot.

Sparhawk and the others went back up to the hilltop to survey their preparations. ‘Why don’t they attack us now, before we’re ready?’ Emban tensely asked the knights.

‘Because it takes time to organise an attack, your Grace,’ Bevier explained. ‘The scouts have to run back and tell the generals what we’re doing; the generals have to sneak through the woods to have a look for themselves; and then they all have to get together and argue about what they’re going to do. They were planning an ambush. They aren’t really ready to attack fortified positions. The business of adjusting one’s thinking to a different tactical situation is what takes the longest.’

‘How long?’

‘It depends entirely on the personality of the man in charge. If his mind was really set on an ambush, it could take him as long as a week.’

‘He’s dead then, Bevier-Knight,’ Engessa told the Cyrinic tersely. ‘As soon as we saw the warriors in the woods I dispatched a dozen of my people to the garrison at Sarsos. If our enemy takes more than two days to make up his mind, he’ll have five thousand Atans climbing his back.’

‘Sound thinking, Atan Engessa,’ Tynian approved. He pondered it. ‘A thought, Sparhawk. If our friend out there gets all caught up in indecision, we can just continue to strengthen our defences around this hill – ditches, sharpened stakes, the usual encumbrances. Each improvement we add will make him think things over that much longer – which will give us time to add more fortifications, which will make him think all the more. If we can keep him thinking for two days, the Atans from Sarsos will come up behind him and wipe out his force before he ever gets around to using it.’

‘Good point,’ Sparhawk agreed. ‘Let’s get to it.’

‘I thought that being a military person just involved banging on people with axes and swords,’ Emban conceded.

‘There’s a lot of that involved too, your Grace,’ Ulath smiled, ‘but it doesn’t hurt to outsmart your enemy a little too.’ He looked at Bevier. ‘Engines?’ he asked.

Bevier blinked. Ulath’s cryptic questions always took him by surprise for some reason.

‘As long as we have some time on our hands, we could erect some catapults on the hilltop. Attacking through a rain of boulders is always sort of distracting. Getting hit on the head with a fifty pound rock always seems to break a man’s concentration for some reason. If we’re going to set up for a siege, we might as well do it right.’ He looked around at them. ‘I still don’t like sieges though,’ he added. ‘I want everybody to understand that.’

The warriors set to work, and the ladies and the young men attending them renewed their festivities, although their hilarity was even more forced now.

Sparhawk and Kalten were re-enforcing the breastworks atop the hill. Since his wife and daughter were going to be inside those fortifications, their strength was a matter of more than passing interest to the prince consort.

The party under the pavilion had begun to show gaps, and Stragen was increasingly obliged to fill them with his lute.

‘He’s going to wear out his fingers,’ Kalten grunted, lifting another large rock into place.

‘Stragen enjoys attention,’ Sparhawk shrugged. ‘He’ll keep playing until the blood runs out from under his fingernails if there’s anybody around to listen.’

Stragen’s lute took up a very old air, and he began to sing again. Sparhawk didn’t really have much of an ear for music, but he had to admit that the Thalesian thief had a beautiful voice.

And then Baroness Melidere joined in. Her voice was a rich contralto that blended smoothly with Stragen’s baritone. Their duet was perfectly balanced, smooth and rich with the dark tones of their deeper voices. Sparhawk smiled to himself. The baroness was continuing her campaign. Once Aphrael had alerted him to the blonde girl’s designs on Stragen, Sparhawk could see dozens of artful little ploys she was using to keep her intended victim’s attention. He almost felt sorry for Stragen, but he concluded that Melidere would be good for him. The pair concluded their duet to loud applause. Sparhawk glanced toward the pavilion and saw Melidere lay one lingering hand almost caressingly on Stragen’s wrist. Sparhawk knew just how potent those accidental-seeming contacts were. Lillas had explained it to him once, and Lillas had been the world’s champion seductress – as probably half the men in Jiroch could have sworn to.

Then Stragen turned to another traditional air, and a new voice lifted in song. Kalten dropped the rock he had been lifting. It fell onto his foot, but he did not even wince. The voice was that of an angel, high, sweet, and as clear as glass. It soared effortlessly toward the upper reaches of the soprano range. It was a lyric voice, uncontaminated by the subtle variations of the coloratura, and it seemed as untaught as bird-song.

It was Ehlana’s maid, Alean. The doe-eyed girl, always so quiet and unassuming, stood in the centre of the Pavilion, her face luminous as she sang.

Sparhawk heard Kalten snuffle, and he was astonished to see great tears streaming down his friend’s face as the blond Pandion wept unashamed.

Perhaps his recent conversation with the Child Goddess had alerted Sparhawk to the potentials of intuition, and he suddenly knew, without knowing exactly how he knew, that two campaigns were in progress – and, moreover, that the one being waged by Baroness Melidere was the more overt and blatant. He carefully concealed a smile behind his hand.

‘Lord, that girl’s got a beautiful voice!’ Kalten said in stunned admiration as Alean concluded her song. ‘God!’ he said then, doubling over to clutch at the foot he had unwittingly injured five minutes earlier.

The work progressed until sunset, and then the combined army pulled back behind the reinforced palisade and waited. Sir Bevier and his Cyrinic Knights retired to the hilltop, where they completed the construction of their catapults. Then they amused themselves by lobbing large rocks into the forest seemingly at random.

‘What are they shooting at, Sparhawk?’ Ehlana asked after supper.

‘The trees,’ he shrugged.

‘The trees aren’t threatening us.’

‘No, but there are probably people hiding among them. The boulders falling out of the sky should make them a little jumpy.’ He smiled. ‘Actually, Bevier’s men are testing the range of the engines, dear. If our friends in the forest decide to attack down those avenues we’ve provided for them, Bevier wants to know exactly when to start shooting.’

There’s a great deal more involved in being a soldier than just keeping your equipment clean, isn’t there?’

‘I’m glad you appreciate that, my Queen.’

‘Shall we go to bed then?’

‘Sorry, Ehlana,’ he replied, ‘but I won’t be sleeping tonight. If our friend out there makes up his mind and attacks, there are some things I’ll have to do rather quickly.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Danae?’

‘She and Talen are over there watching Bevier’s people throw rocks at the trees.’

‘I’ll go get her. You’ll probably want to keep her close to you tonight.’ He crossed the basin to where Bevier was directing the activities of his knights. ‘Bed-time,’ he told his daughter, lifting her into his arms.

She pouted a little at that, but raised no other objections. When Sparhawk was about half-way back to his wife’s tent, he slowed. ‘How much of a stickler are you for formality, Aphrael?’ he asked.

‘A few genuflections are nice, father,’ she replied, ‘but I can live without them – in an emergency.’

‘Good. If the attack comes tonight, we’re going to need some light to see them by.’

‘How much light?’

‘Sort of noonish would be good.’

‘I can’t do that, Sparhawk. Do you have any idea of how much trouble I’d get into if I made the sun rise when it wasn’t supposed to?’

‘I wasn’t really suggesting that. I just want enough light so that people can’t sneak up on us through the shadows. The spell’s a fairly long one with a lot of formalities involved and many, many specifics. I may be a little pressed for time, so would you be terribly offended if I just asked you for light and left the details up to you?’

‘It’s highly irregular, Sparhawk,’ she chided him primly.

I know, but just this once maybe?’

‘Oh, I guess so, but let’s not make a habit of it. I do have a reputation to maintain, after all.’

‘I love you,’ he laughed.

‘Oh, if that’s the case, it’s perfectly all right then. We can bend all sorts of rules for people who really love us. Just ask for light, Sparhawk. I’ll see to it that you get lots and lots of light.’

The attack came shortly before midnight. It began with a rain of arrows lofting in out of the darkness, followed quickly by attacks on the Atan pickets. That last proved to be what might best be described as a tactical blunder. The Atans were the finest foot-soldiers in the world, and they welcomed hand-to-hand combat.

Sparhawk could not clearly see the attacking force from his vantage-point on the hilltop, but he firmly controlled his curiosity and held off on illuminating the battlefield until such time as the opposing force was more fully engaged. As they had anticipated, their enemies used the cover of these first probing moves to attack the log-jams designed to impede their progress through the belts of trees set off by Sir Ulath’s avenues radiating out from the base of the hill like the spokes of a huge wheel. As it turned out, Bevier’s Cyrinics had not been lobbing rocks out into the forest entirely for the fun of it. They had rather precisely pin-pointed the range of those jumbles of fallen trees with their catapults, and they hurled basketfuls of fist-sized rocks into the air to rain down on the men attempting to tear down the barricades or to widen the narrow gaps which had been deliberately left to permit the Peloi to ride out in search of entertainment. A two-pound rock falling out of the sky will not crush a man, but it will break his bones, and after ten minutes or so, the men out in the woods withdrew.

‘I confess it to you, Sparhawk-Knight,’ Engessa said gravely, ‘I had thought your elaborate preparations a bit silly. Atans do not fight so. Your approach does have certain advantages, though.’

‘Our societies are different, Atan Engessa. Your people live and fight in the wilderness where enemies are encountered singly or in small groups. Our wilderness has been tamed, so our enemies come at us in large numbers. We build forts to live in, and over the centuries we’ve devised many means to defend those forts.’

‘When will you make the light come?’

‘At a time when it’s most inconvenient for our enemy. I want him to commit a large part of his force and to have them fully engaged before I sweep away the darkness. He won’t expect that, and it takes time to get orders through to men who are already fighting. We should be able to eliminate a sizeable part of his army before he can pull them back. Defensive warfare has certain advantages if you make the proper preparations.’

‘Ulath-Knight does not like it.’

‘Ulath doesn’t have the patience for it. Bevier’s the expert on defence. He’d be perfectly willing to wait for ten years if need be for the enemy to come to him on his terms.’

‘What will the enemy do next? We Atans are not accustomed to interrupted fights.’

‘He’ll draw back and shoot arrows at us while he thinks things over. Then he’ll probably try a direct assault down one of those avenues.’

‘Why only one? Why not attack from all directions at once?’

‘Because he doesn’t know how much we can hurt him yet. He’ll have to find that out first. He’ll learn in time, but it’s going to cost him a great deal to get his education. After we’ve killed about half of his soldiers, he’ll do one of two things. He’ll either go away, or he’ll throw everything he’s got at us from all sides at once.’

‘And then?’

‘Then we’ll kill the rest of his soldiers and be on our way,’ Sparhawk shrugged. ‘Assuming that everything goes the way we’ve planned, of course.’

At two hundred paces and with only starlight to see by, the figures were hardly more than shadows. They marched out into the centre of one of Ulath’s corridors and halted while others filed out to join them and to form up into a kind of massed formation.

‘I can’t believe that!’ Kalten exclaimed, gaping at the shadowy soldiers at the end of the corridor.

‘Is something wrong, Sir Kalten?’ Emban’s voice was a little shrill.

‘Not in the least, your Grace,’ Kalten replied gaily. ‘It’s just that we’re dealing with an idiot.’ He turned his head slightly. ‘Bevier,’ he called, ‘he’s forming up his troops on the road to march them into place.’

‘You’re not serious!’

‘May all of my toenails fall out if I’m not.’

Bevier barked a number of commands, and his knights swung the catapults around to bring them to bear on the unseen avenue leading toward the road. ‘Give the word, Sparhawk,’ the young Cyrinic called.

‘We’re going on down now,’ Sparhawk called back. ‘You can start as soon as we reach the bottom. We’ll wait so that you can pound them for a while, and then we’ll charge. We’d take it as a kindness if you’d stop about then.’

Bevier grinned at him.

‘Look after my wife while I’m gone.’

‘Naturally.’

Sparhawk and the other warriors began to climb down the hill. ‘I’ll break my men into two groups, friend Sparhawk,’ Kring said. ‘We’ll circle around and come up onto the road about a half mile behind them on either side. We’ll wait for your signal there.’

‘Don’t kill all of them.’ Engessa cautioned. ‘My Atans grow sulky if there’s fighting and they aren’t allowed to participate.’

They reached the bottom of the hill, and Bevier’s catapults began to thud, launching large rocks this time. There were sounds from off in the direction of the road indicating that the Cyrinic Knights had found the proper range.

‘Luck, Sparhawk,’ Kring said tersely and melted off into the shadows.

‘Be careful, Sir Knights,’ Khalad cautioned them. ‘Those tree-stumps out there are dangerous in the dark.’

‘It won’t be dark when we charge, Khalad,’ Sparhawk assured him. ‘I’ve made some arrangements.’

Engessa slipped quietly through an opening in the palisade to join his warriors out in the forest.

‘Is it just my imagination, or does it seem to the rest of you that we’re dealing with someone who’s not really very sophisticated?’ Tynian said. ‘He doesn’t seem to have any conception of modern warfare or modern technology.’

‘I think the word you’re groping for is “stupid”, Tynian,’ Kalten chuckled.

‘I’m not so sure,’ Tynian frowned. ‘It was too dark for me to make out very much from the hilltop, but it looked almost as if he were forming up his troops into a phalanx. Nobody’s done that in the west for over a thousand years.’

‘It wouldn’t be very effective against mounted knights, would it?’ Kalten asked.

‘I’m not so sure. It would depend on how long his spears are and the size of those overlapping shields. He could give us trouble.’

‘Berit,’ Sparhawk said, ‘go back up the hill and tell Bevier to shift his catapults a bit. I’d like the enemy formation broken up.’

‘Right.’ The young knight turned and scrambled back on up the hill.

‘If he is using a phalanx formation,’ Tynian continued, ‘it means that he’s never come up against mounted troops before and that he’s used to fighting in open country.’

Bevier’s catapults began to hurl boulders at the shadowy formation at the far end of the cleared avenue.

‘Let’s get started,’ Sparhawk decided. ‘I was going to wait a while, but let’s see what we’re up against.’ He hauled himself up onto Faran’s back and led the knights to a position outside the palisade. Then he drew in a deep breath. ‘We could use a bit of light now, Divine One.’ He cast the thought out without even bothering to frame it in Styric.

‘That’s really improper, Sparhawk,’ Aphrael’s voice in his ear was tart. ‘You know I’m not supposed to respond to prayers in Elenic.’

‘You know both languages. What difference does it make?’

‘It’s a question of style, Sparhawk.’

‘I’ll try to do better next time.’

‘I’d really appreciate it. How’s this?’

It began as a kind of pulsating lavender glow along the northern horizon. Then long streaks of pure, multicoloured light spread upward in seething, curtain-like sheets, wavering, undulating like a vast curtain shimmering against the night sky.

‘What is it?’ Khalad exclaimed.

‘The northern lights,’ Ulath grunted. ‘I’ve never seen them this far south – or quite so bright. I’m impressed, Sparhawk.’

The shimmering curtain of light, rising and falling, crept up and up into the darkness, erasing the stars and filling the night with rainbow light.

A huge groan of consternation and awe rose from the army massing near the road. Sparhawk looked intently down the stump-dotted avenue. The soldiers facing them wore antique armour – breastplates, horse-hair crested helmets and large, round shields. They wore short swords and carried twelve-foot spears. Their front rank had evidently been formed with overlapping shields and advanced spears. Bevier’s catapults, however, had broken those tightly-packed ranks, and the rain of boulders continued to smash down among men so jammed together they could not flee.

Sparhawk watched grimly for a few moments. ‘All right, Ulath,’ he said at last, ‘sing the Ogre’s song for them.’

Ulath grinned and lifted his curled Ogre-horn to his lips and blew a single, deep-toned blast.

The massed foot-troops, their ranks broken by the catapults and their minds filled with wonder and dismay by the sudden brilliant light covering half the sky, were in no way prepared to meet the awesome charge of the armoured knights and their massive horses. There was a resounding crash, and the front ranks of the massed foot-soldiers fell beneath the churning hooves of the war-horses. The knights discarded their lances, drew their swords and axes and fell to work, carving great swathes through the tightly-packed ranks.

‘Ulath!’ Sparhawk bellowed. ‘Turn loose the Peloi!’

Sir Ulath blew his Ogre-horn again – twice this time.

The Peloi war-cries were shrill and ululating. Sparhawk glanced quickly along the road. The warriors Kring’s Peloi were attacking were not the same as the ones facing the knights. Sparhawk had led a charge against infantry, men in breastplates and horse-hair crested helmets who fought on foot. Kring was attacking mounted men, men wearing flowing robes and cloth head-coverings, all armed with curved swords much like the Peloi sabres. Quite obviously, the attacking force was comprised of two different elements. There would be time later to ponder those differences. Right now, they were all very busy.

Sparhawk swung his heavy broadsword rhythmically in huge overhead strokes that sheared down into the sea of horsehair-crested helmets surrounding him. He continued for several minutes until the sounds from along the road indicated that the Peloi were fully engaged. ‘Sir Ulath!’ he roared. ‘Ask the Atans to join us!’

The Ogre-horn sang again – and again – and yet once again.

Sounds of fighting erupted back among the trees. Enemy soldiers who had fled the charge of the knights and the slashing attack of the Peloi found no sanctuary in the woods. Engessa’s Atans, silent and deadly, moved through the eerie, multi-coloured light streaming down from the pulsating sky, seeking and destroying.

‘Sparhawk!’ Kalten shouted. ‘Look!’

Sparhawk jerked his head around, and his heart froze.

‘I thought that thing was dead!’ Kalten exclaimed.

The figure was robed and hooded all in black, and it was astride a gaunt horse. A kind of greenish nimbus surrounded it, and waves of implacable hatred seemed to shimmer out from it. Sparhawk looked a bit more closely and then let out his breath relieved. ‘It’s not a Seeker,’ he told Kalten. ‘It’s got human hands. It’s probably the one we’ve been fighting, though.’

Then another man in black rode out from farther back in the trees. This one wore exaggeratedly dramatic clothing. He had on a black, wide-brimmed hat and wore a black bag with ragged eye-holes over his head.

‘Has this all been some sort of joke?’ Tynian demanded. ‘Is that who I think it is?’

‘I’d guess that it’s the one in the robe who’s been in charge,’ Ulath said. ‘I doubt that Sabre could successfully herd goats.’

‘Savour thine empty victory, Anakha,’ the hooded figure called in a hollow, strangely metallic voice. ‘I did but test thee that I might discern thy strength – and thy weaknesses. Go thy ways now. I have learned what I needed to learn. I will trouble thee no further – for now. But mistake me not, oh man without destiny, we will meet anon, and in our next meeting shall I try thee more significantly.’ Then Sabre and his hooded companion wavered and vanished.

The wailing and groaning of the wounded enemies all around them suddenly broke off. Sparhawk looked around quickly. The strangely-armoured foot troops he and his friends had been fighting were all gone. Only the dead remained. Back along the road in either direction, Kring’s Peloi were reining in their horses in amazement. The troops they had engaged had vanished as well, and startled exclamations from back among the trees indicated that the Atans had also been bereft of enemies.

‘What’s going on here?’ Kalten exclaimed.

‘I’m not sure,’ Sparhawk replied, ‘but I am sure that I don’t like it very much.’ He swung down from his saddle and turned one of the fallen enemies over with his foot.

The body was little more than a dried husk, browned, withered and totally desiccated. It looked very much like the body of a man who had been dead for several centuries at least.

‘We’ve encountered it once before, your Grace,’ Tynian was explaining to Patriarch Emban. It was nearly morning, and they were gathered once again atop the rocky hill. ‘Last time it was antique Lamorks. I don’t know what kind of antiques these were.’ He looked at the two mummified corpses the Atans had brought up the hill.

‘This one is a Cynesgan,’ Ambassador Oscagne said, pointing at one of the dead men.

‘Looks almost like a Rendor, doesn’t he?’ Talen observed.

‘There would be certain similarities,’ Oscagne agreed. ‘Cynesga is a desert, much like Rendor, and there are only so many kinds of clothing suitable for such a climate.’

The dead man in question was garbed in a flowing, loose-fitting robe, and his head was covered with a sort of cloth binding that flowed down to protect the back of his neck.

‘They aren’t very good fighters,’ Kring told them. ‘They all sort of went to pieces when we charged them.’

‘What about the other one, your Excellency?’ Tynian asked. ‘These ones in armour were very good fighters.’

The Tamul Ambassador’s eyes grew troubled. ‘That one’s a figment of someone’s imagination,’ he declared.

‘I don’t really think so, your Excellency,’ Sir Bevier disagreed. ‘The men we encountered back in Eosia had been drawn from the past. They were fairly exotic, I’ll grant you, but they had been living men once. Everything we’ve seen here tells us that we’ve run into the same thing again. This fellow’s most definitely not an imaginary soldier. He did live once, and what he’s wearing was his customary garb.’

‘It’s impossible,’ Oscagne declared adamantly.

‘Just for the sake of speculation, Oscagne,’ Emban said, ‘let’s shelve the word “impossible” for the time being. Who would you say he was if he weren’t impossible?’

‘It’s a very old legend,’ Oscagne said, his face still troubled. ‘We’re told that once, a long, long time ago, there were people in Cynesga who pre-dated the current inhabitants. The legend calls them the Cyrgai. Modern Cynesgans are supposed to be their degenerate descendants.’

‘They look as if they come from two different parts of the world,’ Kalten noted.

‘Cyrga, the city of the Cyrgai, was supposed to lie in the central highlands of Cynesga,’ Oscagne told him. ‘It’s higher than the surrounding desert, and the legend says there was a large, spring-fed lake there. The stories say that the climate there was markedly different from that of the desert. The Cyrgai wouldn’t have needed protection from the sun the way their bastard offspring would have. I’d imagine that there were indications of rank and status involved as well. Given the nature of the Cyrgai, they’d have definitely wanted to keep their inferiors from wearing the Cyrgai costume.’

‘They lived at the same time then?’ Tynian asked.

‘The legends are a little vague on that score, Sir Tynian. Evidently there was a period when the Cyrgai and the Cynesgans co-existed. The Cyrgai would certainly have been dominant, though.’ He made a face. ‘Why am I talking this way about a myth?’ he said plaintively.

‘This is a fairly substantial myth, Oscagne,’ Emban said, nudging the mummified Cyrgai with his foot. ‘I gather that these fellows had something of a reputation?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Oscagne said with distaste. ‘They had a hideous culture – all cruelty and militarism. They held themselves aloof from other peoples in order to avoid what they called contamination. They were said to be obsessively concerned with racial purity, and they were militantly opposed to any new ideas.’

‘That’s a futile sort of obsession,’ Tynian noted. ‘Any time you engage in trade, you’re going to encounter new ideas.’

‘The legends tell us they understood that, Sir Knight. Trade was forbidden.’

‘No commerce at all?’ Kalten asked incredulously.

Oscagne shook his head. ‘They were supposed to be totally self-sufficient. They even went so far as to forbid the possession of gold or silver in their society.’

‘Monstrous!’ Stragen exclaimed. ‘They had no money at all?’

‘Iron bars, we’re told – heavy ones, I guess. It tended to discourage trade. They lived only for war. All the men were in the army, and all the women spent their time having babies. When they grew too old to either fight or bear children, they were expected to kill themselves. The legends say that they were the finest soldiers the world has ever known.’

‘The legends are exaggerated, Oscagne,’ Engessa told him. ‘I killed five of them myself. They spent a great deal of time flexing their muscles and posing with their weapons when they should have been paying attention to business.’

‘The ancients were very formal, Atan Engessa,’ Oscagne murmured.

‘Who was the fellow in the robe?’ Kalten asked. ‘The one who seemed to be trying to pass himself off as a Seeker?’

‘I’d guess that he holds a position somewhat akin to Gerrich in Lamorkand and to Sabre in Western Astel,’ Sparhawk surmised. ‘I was a little surprised to see Sabre here,’ he added. He had to step rather carefully here. Both he and Emban were sworn to secrecy on the matter of Sabre’s real identity.

‘Professional courtesy, no doubt,’ Stragen murmured. ‘The fact that he was here sort of confirms our guess that all these assorted upheavals and disturbances are tied together. There’s somebody in back of all this – somebody we haven’t seen or even heard of yet. We’re going to have to catch one of these intermediaries of his and wring some information out of him sooner or later.’ The blond thief looked around. ‘What now?’ he asked.

‘How long did you say it would be until the Atans arrive from Sarsos, Engessa?’ Sparhawk asked the towering Atan.

‘They should arrive sometime the day after tomorrow, Sparhawk-Knight.’ The Atan glanced toward the east. ‘Tomorrow, that is,’ he corrected, ‘since it’s already starting to get light.’

‘We’ll care for our wounded and wait for them then,’ Sparhawk decided. ‘I like lots of friendly faces around me in times like this.’

‘One question, Sparhawk-Knight,’ Engessa said. ‘Who is Anakha?’

‘That’s Sparhawk,’ Ulath told him. ‘The Styrics call him that. It means “without destiny”.’

‘All men have a destiny, Ulath-Knight.’

‘Not Sparhawk, apparently, and you have no idea how nervous that makes the Gods.’

As Engessa had calculated, the Sarsos garrison arrived about noon the following day, and the hugely increased escort of the Queen of Elenia marched easterly. Two days later, they crested a hill and gazed down at a marble city situated in a broad green field backed by a dark forest stretching to the horizon.

Sparhawk had been sensing a familiar presence since early that morning, and he had ridden on ahead eagerly.

Sephrenia was sitting on her white palfrey beside the road. She was a small, beautiful woman with black hair, snowy skin and deep blue eyes. She wore a white robe of a somewhat finer weave than the homespun she had normally worn in Eosia.

‘Hello, little mother,’ he smiled, saying it as if they had been apart for no more than a week. ‘You’ve been well, I trust?’ He removed his helmet.

‘Tolerable, Sparhawk.’ Her voice was rich and had that familiar lilt.

‘Will you permit me to greet you?’ he asked in that formal manner all Pandions used when meeting her after a separation.

‘Of course, dear one.’

Sparhawk dismounted, took her wrists and turned her hands over. Then he kissed her palms in the ritual Styric greeting. ‘And will you bless me, little mother?’ he asked.

She fondly placed her hands on his temples and spoke her benediction in Styric. ‘Help me down, Sparhawk,’ she commanded.

He reached out and put his hands about her almost child-like waist. Then he lifted her easily from her saddle. Before he could set her down, however, she put her arms about his neck and kissed him full on the lips, something she had almost never done before. ‘I’ve missed you, my dear one,’ she breathed. ‘You cannot believe how I’ve missed you.’