Aristide slept a few hours, the tail of his headdress drawn across his eyes. When he woke, he found Ashtra seated near him, contemplating the silver ripples of the water through the trailing leaves of the willows. He paused for a moment to regard the woman sitting next to him on the bank—Ashtra, raised in a preliterate world blind even to its own possibilities, brought up in a society founded by swashbucklers, warriors, and gamesters all for their own glorious benefit, but who condemned their descendants to an existence bereft of choice. Married at twelve to a youth who was a relative stranger, now traveling at nineteen to meet a husband who was even more a stranger than that youth. To live in what Gundapur considered luxury, and bear her husband, and bear him children, as many as possible until childbirth broke her health.
"Come with me, Ashtra," he said.
For a moment he didn't know whether she had heard. Then she said, "Where would you take me?"
"Wherever you desire. Eventually to the Womb of the World."
"You belong to the College?" She turned to look at him in alarm, and shifted slightly away from him.
People often feared the magic of the College and its missionaries.
"I'm not of the College," Aristide said, and watched as she relaxed slightly. "Still, one does not have to be of the College to travel to the Womb."
"There are said to be sorcerers of great power at the Womb of the World. And monsters."
"There are monsters here."
She turned away, and for a long moment regarded the lake.
"I have a family," she said finally.
"What do you owe to this husband who you barely know?"
"It's what my family owes him. If they had to refund my bride-price, they would be destitute."
"I could pay the price myself."
Ashtra turned to him, amusement in her blue eyes. "You do not travel as a prince travels. Are you a prince in disguise?"
"I travel simply because simplicity appeals to me. And though I am not a prince, I have resources."
Again she turned to face the waters. "I have a husband. And what you offer me are fantasies."
For a moment the swordsman contemplated the many ironies of this last statement, and then he sat up and crossed his legs.
He was not without experience. He knew when he had been dismissed.
Some people remember virtue and a spouse rather late, when it no longer really matters.
"It's extremely unlikely there will be a child," he said, "but if there is, I desire you to send it to the College. Give them my name."
Again she turned, again alarm widened her eyes. "I thought you said—"
"I'm not of the College," he said, "but I have done them service, and they know me. You may request this in my name." His tone took on a degree of urgency. "Particularly if it is a girl."
"I hope there is not a child." Ashtra rose. "I want to remember this as a beautiful fantasy, not as a burden I will bear for the rest of my life." She picked up the strap of her water bag and shouldered it.
"I'd prefer not to be the subject of gossip by those in my caravan," she said. "If you would wait half a glass before following, I would thank you."
"As you like, my lady," said Aristide. "Though I would gladly carry your burden."
Ashtra made no reply. Swaying beneath the weight of the water bag, she made her way from the glade.
Aristide stretched again on the grass and watched the willow branches moving against the dim sky. Gusting wind brought him the scent of flowers. There was a rustle in the grass, and he turned to see the black-and-white cat moving toward him.
"Your attempt at chivalry is duly noted," Bitsy said.
"Sentimentality more than chivalry," said the swordsman. "I liked her." He rubbed his unshaven chin. "You know, she's braver than she thinks she is."
"Brave or not, did you really mean to take that bewildered child to the Womb?"
"If she desired it. Why not?" He sat up. The cat hopped onto his lap. Her upright tail drew itself across his chin.
"I hope you appreciate my help in getting you laid," Bitsy said.
He sighed. "I couldn't have done it without you."
He stroked Bitsy for a few idle moments, then tipped her out of his lap and rose.
"Perhaps I'll ensure my next incarnation," he said.
Bitsy gave him a narrow-eyed look. "Is there so much on this journey," she asked, "that you wish to remember?"
Aristide shrugged. "Ants and spiders. And a pleasant interlude on a grassy bank."
As the swordsman passed through the camp, he saw the people had been stirred, like those selfsame ants with a stick. People were stowing tents and rugs, mending harness, sharpening weapons. Towering over everyone, Nadeer walked about giving orders. Voice booming, bells tinkling.
Inside the caravanserai, the pool of life had a crowd of visitors. Some chanted, some prayed, others meditated. Some, men and women both, waded naked into the pool, their lips murmuring devotions. Aristide removed his clothes, handed the clothing and Tecmessa to an attendant, and walked into the pool.
He followed broad steps downward until the silver liquid rose to his chest. His skin tingled at its touch. There were bodies at the bottom of the pool, and he felt for these with his feet to avoid treading on them. He waded between the devotees and touched the black menhir with one hand. The smooth surface felt prickly, as if a thousand tiny needles had pierced his fingertips.
He eased himself backward into the fluid. It was the temperature of blood. The silver liquid lapped over his ears, his throat. He closed his eyes.
In his ears he heard a deep throbbing. The throbbing was regular, hypnotic. His breathing shifted to match the rhythm of the throbbing.
He slept. He sank, the silver fluid of the pool of life filling his mouth and nose.
A few forlorn bubbles rose, and that was all.
The glass turned twice before Aristide rose to the surface. He opened his eyes, took a breath of humid air. Slowly he swam to the rim of the pool, found a step beneath his feet, and rose.
As he stepped from the pool the silver liquid poured off him in a single cascade, the last rivulets draining from his legs onto the flags, then slipping into the pool like some covert boneless sea creature seeking shelter beneath a coral ledge. Not a drop was left behind. There was a salty taste in his mouth. Aristide accepted his clothes from the attendant and donned them. He slipped Tecmessa's baldric over one shoulder, shouldered his pack, and tipped the attendant.
"May the pool give you many lives, warrior," the attendant said.
"And you."
He stepped out into a courtyard filled with dust and noise. A turbulent circle of gesturing travelers had formed around the towering figures of Nadeer and Captain Grax, both of whom were gesturing for order.
Nadeer's patience was exhausted. "Silennnce!" he bellowed, each hand drawing a curved sword that sang from the scabbard.
The crowd was struck dumb by sheer force of character. In the sudden hush Aristide shouldered his way through the crowd, and laid eyes on a bruised, bleeding young man kneeling before Nadeer, surrounded by Free Companions brandishing arms. The seneschal stood by, watching in silence.
Grax looked at Aristide and grinned with his huge yellow teeth. "Your advice was good, stranger. We caught this spy riding from camp to alert the bandits."
The young man began what was obviously a protest, but Grax kicked him casually in the midsection, and the man bent over, choking.
"Confess!" roared Nadeer, brandishing both swords close over his head. The prisoner sought for resolve, and somewhere found it.
"You but threaten to send me to my next incarnation," he said through broken lips. "I welcome such an escape."
Nadeer snarled around his tusks, then replied in his booming lisp.
"You miss the point, spy. We don't threaten to send you to the next incarnation, we threaten to make this incarnation an extremely painful one."
With a flick of the wrist, he flashed out one sword, and the flat of it snapped the prisoner's elbow like a twig. The prisoner screamed, clutched his arm, turned white. Sweat dripped slowly from his nose as he moaned.
The seneschal watched this in silence, his expression interested.
"Who are you?" Grax asked. "Who sent you? What are your orders?"
The captive's breath hissed between clenched teeth. "It won't make any difference," he said. "I may as well talk." He seemed to be speaking more to himself than to his audience.
Though speak to the others he did. His name was Onos. He was a younger son from the Green Mazes, his only inheritance a sword, a horse, and a few bits of silver. In a spirit of adventure, he and some friends joined the army of Calixha. At this point the horse disappeared from the narrative. Finding service during the siege of Natto not to his taste, he and his friends stole horses, deserted, and became caravan guards. Finding this tedious as well, they became robbers.
"He isn't good even at that," Grax remarked. "What the lad needs is discipline." He looked down at the captive. "If he were in my company, I would make a proper soldier out of him."
Onos bled quietly onto the flagstones. "I thought a life of adventure would be more fun," he muttered.
Grax kicked him once more in the midsection. "It's fun for me," he said. "Perhaps you lack the proper attitude."
The captive gasped, spat, and swore. Nadeer looked down at him. "You have my leave to continue," he said.
Onos wiped blood from his mouth with the back of a grubby hand. "Our gang joined another gang," he said. "We weren't given a choice. So now we're servitors of the Brothers of the Vengeful One."
"Never heard of them," said the seneschal, the first words he had spoken.
"Neither had we," said Onos. "Neither had anyone, until a few months ago, and then all the freebooters heard of them." He grimaced and put a hand to his ribs. "We joined them or we died."
"Who are they?" Grax asked.
"Priests. Monsters. Monsters and priests."
"Monsters how?" asked Aristide.
"They're—" Grimacing. "Another species. Ones I'd never heard of, or seen. Blue skin, eyes like fire. And they sacrifice captives, and anyone else who disappoints them."
There were gasps from the listeners as this terrifying rumor was confirmed.
"Your mission?" Grax asked in the sudden silence.
"We knew the caravans were delayed here for fear of us. I was told to travel to the caravanserai and report on your plans—whether you'd come on, or try to retreat."
"Would you attack us either way?"
"That wouldn't be for me to decide." Grax raised a foot. "Probably!" Onos said quickly. "Probably we'd attack!"
The questions turned to the bandits' strength, and where they would most likely strike at the caravan. The bandits were said to have two hundred riders, though not all of them would be available at any one time, since they raided not just the caravan routes but the plain of Gundapur, below the great desert plateau. The route down from the plateau, through the Vale of Cashdan, was the usual ambush site.
Aristide stepped forward. "I would like to ask some questions of the prisoner, if I may."
Nadeer looked at him. "You may proceed."
Aristide looked at Onos. "How long have you been here at the caravanserai?"
"Fifteen or twenty days."
"You have a mount?"
"I have a horse, yes."
"And during that time," Aristide said, "you could have left for Lake Toi whenever you desired. You could have abandoned your fellow bandits and those disagreeable priests and got away with your skin. And yet you remained . . ." He let this thought linger in the air for a moment.
"Why?" he asked finally.
Onos swiped at his brow, leaving a dusty track on his skin. "I'm afraid of them. They'd come after me."
"You could have asked the seneschal, or some other official, for protection."
Onos looked at the seneschal. "He'd just hang me from the tower and announce a great success at suppressing the bandits."
Aristide's brief acquaintance with the seneschal had not been such as to make this implausible. The seneschal himself, looking on, declined to be offended, and in fact seemed amused.
"My point," said Aristide, "is that you could have run, and you didn't. Therefore you aren't merely a thief whose gang was annexed by a more powerful outfit, but a willing member of the organization."
Onos looked at Aristide with a kind of sulky resentment. The others glared at Onos with increased malevolence.
"How many caravans have you plundered?" Aristide asked.
"Eleven, while I've been with the brotherhood."
"And the people in the caravans killed or sacrificed by the priests?"
"All those we could catch," Onos said. "Yes."
"What happened to the loot?"
"It's still there. At the Venger's Temple."
There was a stir among the onlookers. A calculating look appeared on the faces of Grax, Nadeer, and the other caravan guards.
"The Venger's Temple is your headquarters, I take it?"
An affirmative nod.
"The spoil is there with the other loot, from the raids onto the plains?"
"Except for that which was used to purchase supplies, yes."
Aristide looked at Nadeer. "I imagine that avarice is never far from our friend Onos' mind," he said. "A share of that loot would give him a comfortable life far from here, perhaps even make him rich. That is why he hasn't fled from his monstrous priests."
Onos, defeated, slumped on the flagstones, did not bother to deny it.
Grax turned to the seneschal. "He is convicted out of his own mouth. Shall we turn him over to you, to dispense the sultan's justice?"
The seneschal began to walk through the crowd to his office. He waved a hand in dismissal.
"Why bother me with it?" he said. "Do what you will."
Grax looked at Nadeer, and they both shrugged. Nadeer's shoulders had barely returned to their normal position before one of his swords sliced out to separate the bandit's head from his shoulders.
The body was wrapped in an old cloak and given to the pool of life, to feed the chthonic spirit believed to dwell in the menhir. The head was stuck on a spear in front of the caravanserai's gate.
The head bore a disappointed look. Onos had probably expected more excitement than this.
"I wonder if his next incarnation will have learned anything," Aristide asked, as he and Nadeer paused to view the head on its spear.
Nadeer only snorted at the swordsman's question.
"May I have the bandit's mount?" Aristide asked. "I would be more useful in this adventure if I were mobile."
"It's that barb yonder."
The horse was a cream-colored gelding, a little long in the tooth but deep in the chest and strong of spirit. The saddle and tack were serviceable. Aristide took the barb for a brief ride over the desert to get acquainted, then fed the animal and watered him. He sorted through the bandit's belongings but found nothing of interest.
He helped himself to another of the sultan's free meals, then slept in the bandit's tent for a few hours, until the sound of trumpets, conchs, and ram's horns told the travelers to ready their mounts and assemble.
Aristide walked his new horse through the bustle. Dust rose, obscuring the sun, and he drew the tail of his headdress over his mouth and nose. By chance Aristide passed by Ashtra, who was struggling to lift her heavy water bag to its place on her palfrey's saddle-bow.
"Permit me, madam," he said. He performed the task, bowed, and departed, his senses alert in case she called him back.
She didn't. He walked on.
The caravan, big as a small army, didn't actually get under way for another three turns of the glass. Once it moved, it moved slowly. The guards were mounted on horses, bipedal lizards, or the red six-legged lizards that moved with a side-to-side motion, like giant snakes. The lizards were cold-blooded, but in the high desert, beneath an unmoving sun, that scarcely mattered.
The others in the caravan rode horses or Bactrian camels, mules or asses. There was one forest elephant. Their carts and wagons were drawn by oxen, horses, or ridge-backed dinosaurs. No small number proceeded on foot, sometimes accompanied by a dog pulling a travois.
Aristide had his own difficulties, in that his new horse was afraid of his cat, snorting and backing away whenever Bitsy approached. It was an unfortunate fact that many animals disliked Bitsy—perhaps she didn't smell right—and in the end Aristide had to hide her, making her a nest on the saddle blanket behind the high cantle of his saddle, where the horse couldn't see her. The horse still scented her from time to time, snorted and gave a nervous look backward, but these alarms only increased its desire to move faster along the trail.
Nadeer and the other leaders worked in a desperate fury to get the huge convoy ordered, and to move them at a steady pace. A huge cloud of dust rose above the column and turned the sun red.
"The bandits will see this for fifty leagues," Grax said, as he and Aristide rode ahead of the column. "We may as well have let the spy live."
"He won't be able to tell them how we're organized."
Grax showed tombstone teeth. "We're organized?"
The caravan only made five leagues before Nadeer called a halt, but at least the day had been useful as a training exercise. The guards had got used to working with one another, and had developed a system for scouting ahead. As the caravan laagered, as guards were posted, the last of the dust drifted away on the wind, and the curses of the drovers and the captains and one large, green ogre echoed through the camp, Aristide thought that perhaps the little army had done better than Nadeer knew.
The glasses turned sixteen times before the trumpets blared again, and the vast column heaved itself onto its feet and began its trek. Everyone had got practice by now, and though the caravan didn't move appreciably faster, it was more orderly and better-behaved. The guards were efficient, organized into an advance guard, flankers, and a rear guard that complained of wandering in the dust. Patrols regularly trotted ahead to the next hill, or rocky outcrop, to make certain no ambush was lurking therein.
The principal delays occurred at water holes. It took hours to water the animals.
The terrain grew rougher and began to descend. Each hill gave a broader view than the one before it, though the farthest views were always hidden by heat-haze.
After eight or nine leagues the group came upon a battlefield, the water hole where the bandits had routed three caravans and their sixty guards. Dead animals and bodies lay in the sun amid broken wagons, flesh turning to leather, lips snarling back from teeth. It looked as if the caravans had been attacked when in camp, their tents strewn across a valley floor in no particular order.
"A lesson in forming a proper laager," Aristide told Nadeer. But Nadeer was busy shouting down those who wanted to stop and give the bodies a proper burial.
"Do you want to join them in death?" Nadeer demanded. "Our lives depend on moving quickly through this place!"
Nadeer lost the argument, chiefly because the convoy took so long to re-water that there was time for the burials anyway.
The caravan rolled on. Halfway to the next water hole Nadeer called a halt, and the laager was formed by grim-faced drovers who made sure their weapons were within easy reach. Aristide wandered through camp until he found Ashtra. He observed her as she brewed tea over a paraffin lamp. She was in the company of a family moving to Gundapur, the father, a pregnant mother, and three children traveling in a two-wheeled cart. They were sharing their bread and dried fruit with her.
Aristide watched for a few moments, then left unobserved.
The next watering hole was a spring that chuckled from the foot of a great slab of basalt that towered like a slumbering giant over its little dell. Guarding the source of water was a deserted military fort, its tumbled walls having been breached at some point in the dim past. A black and unnaturally flawless menhir stood above the empty pool of life. Though the gates had long since been burned for firewood, the fort nevertheless provided more protection than the open desert for the most vulnerable members of the caravan.
The next march took them along the watercourse. The spring water was absorbed by the ground before the convoy had gone very far, but the dry river bed was full of scrub that testified to the presence of water below the surface. The watercourse widened in time into the Vale of Cashdan, the great zigzag slash in the wall of the plateau that led down to the plains of Gundapur. White birds floated far below, like snowflakes drifting in the wind. Crags crowned with trees loomed above the narrow caravan route that wound through green patches of mountain grazing. The blue of a stream was barely visible before the Vale vanished into a huge floor of brilliant white cloud that stretched to the far horizon. Never would the convoy again be without water.
Aristide stood with the captains on the edge of a precipice overlooking the Vale, peering down and pondering their options.
"At least we no longer have to worry about a mounted charge over flat ground," Eudoxia said, her blue arms crossed on her chest. "I was troubled the whole body of them would charge in and cut us in half—they would have wrought such havoc that we might not have recovered our balance."
"Now we're going to have to worry about people rolling rocks on us," Aristide said.
"Ay," said Nadeer. His single eye glittered. "Like those fellows over there."
"Where?" Scanning the jagged walls of the valley ahead.
Nadeer bent and picked up a rock the size of Eudoxia's head. He hefted it for a moment in one green-skinned hand, then reared back and pitched the rock up into the grey sky. They all watched as it fell onto a granite pinnacle two hundred paces distant. There was a thud, and a cry, and a clatter as of a weapon dropped over the edge.
"Good shot!" said Grax, impressed rather in spite of himself.
"There's one more." Nadeer chose another rock, hurled it. There was a clang, and then they saw a body pitch off the crag, landing some thirty paces below.
Aristide looked at the ogre. "Your depth perception," he said, "is better than I expected."
Nadeer dusted his hands. Aristide turned his attention once more to the valley below.
"We're going to have to keep them from getting above us," he said. "May I suggest small parties to secure each height before the main body arrives?"
They grumbled about that, and Grax pointed out that his Free Companions were mounted soldiers, not mountain goats. But in the end they worked out an arrangement, much as Aristide had suggested, and the convoy again began to advance.
Hours passed before every beast and cart at last began the precarious descent into the Vale, and then finally a rest halt was called with the convoy stretched along the headwaters of the Cashdan River, with every beast and every person within easy reach of water. It was impossible to laager, because there was no single place level enough to hold the entire body. On the other hand the possibilities of attack were severely limited, and the air was fresh and cool. Dry tongues, dry skins, rejoiced.
The convoy continued its slow crawl down the escarpment, crossing and re-crossing a river that grew louder and more swift as streams running in from the side-canyons contributed more water. Two horses and a lizard were swept away, but their riders were saved. The clouds fled and the green hills of Gundapur, full of vines and the shimmer of olive trees, were now visible below them. The silver river cast its loops back and forth across the fields, with the sultan's road a straight brown line across the land.
Two more rest stops had been called before the caravan ran into trouble. One of the advanced parties, sent to secure a ridge above the track, was repelled by a shower of arrows and rocks. Nothing daunted, Nadeer reinforced the party and tried again. Advancing under the cover of their own archers, and aided by Nadeer's remarkable throwing arm, the party pushed the bandits off the ridge, and onto another fold of higher ground beyond, where they remained, watching and jeering.
The engagement was over by the time Aristide arrived. He had been in the middle of the convoy when the fight broke out, helping one of the immigrants with the repair of his cart, and by the time he managed to ride to the head of the column, threading between carts and camels, the fight was over. He left his horse under the care of one of Grax's lieutenants and scrambled up the ridge, where he was in time to dissuade Nadeer from launching another attack on the enemy survivors.
"They can always retreat to the next ridge beyond," he pointed out. "And they know this country better than we do. You could run into an ambush."
"Wretched bags of ratpiss!" Nadeer lisped, referring no doubt to the bandits.
An arrow protruded from one shoulder, where it had penetrated his armor but failed to pierce his hide. He wrenched it out with a petulant gesture.
"I want them crushed!" he said.
"You'll get your chance soon, I think," Aristide said. "I expect there will be more of them soon. These were intended to attack us in flank when the main body hit us somewhere else."
Nadeer's single eye turned to him. "Are you certain of this?"
"No. I claim no more than the average amount of precognition. But it's logical—these weren't numerous enough to fight our whole force, and they must have known we were coming."
Nadeer glared at the bandits on the next ridge. "If we move on, it will leave them behind us."
"We want them all behind us."
Nadeer gnashed his tusks for a few moments, then told half of the guards to hold the ridge until the convoy had passed, and the rest to rejoin the advanced guard. The caravan continued its slow crawl down the valley. Five turns of the glass later—as the rear guard passed the ridge where the skirmish with the bandits had taken place—scouts reported that the road ahead was blocked by a substantial force.
Aristide joined the captains as they viewed the enemy. From where they stood at the head of the column, the track descended and broadened into the base of a side canyon, the track cut by a stream that joined the Cashdan, and then the track rose for two hundred paces and narrowed to a pass twenty paces wide, with the river thundering past on the right. This pass had been blocked with a wall of stones, and behind the stones the dark forms of bandits milled in large numbers. More bandits perched on the rocks above, armed with bows.
"The group on the ridge were to attack our rear when this group encountered our advance guard," Aristide said. "They meant to panic us." He scratched his chin. "I wonder if this group knows we drove the others off their position. If so, we might draw them out by feigning panic."
"A formidable roadblock," Eudoxia said. "They chose well."
"Our people will be better fighters," said Aristide. "Criminals are by nature a superstitious and cowardly lot, and few choose their profession because of a love of military discipline or order."
"The same might be said of caravan guards," Grax pointed out.
"If your people need heartening, you could point out that if they don't win this fight, they'll be sacrificed to evil gods."
Grax looked at him. "That's supposed to make them feel better?"
Aristide shrugged. "Perhaps it's best to show that the enemy are, after all, mortal. Why don't I dispose of a bandit or two and raise thus morale?"
Eudoxia looked at him. "How do you plan to do that?"
"Walk up and challenge them. Grax, you should charge them the second I dispatch an enemy. Nadeer, may I advise you to personally lead the attack on the rocky shoulder above the pass? It's the key to the position."
Nadeer looked a little put out. "It's true I'm not much use in a mounted charge," he admitted. "But why don't I challenge them to single combat?"
"For the simple reason," said Aristide, "that no one would dare to fight Nadeer the Peerless."
Nadeer considered this, then brightened. "Very true," he said. He reared to his full height. "I shall lead the attack up the rocks, as you suggest."
Aristide dismounted and performed a few stretching and limbering exercises while the captains gathered their forces and arranged their assault. "One last thing," he said when they were ready. "Remember to capture a few prisoners. We want them to lead us to the Venger's Temple and the loot taken from all those caravans."
"Indeed," said Nadeer, brightening even more.
Aristide took an arrow from one of the caravan guards, stuck a white headcloth on it, and began his walk toward the bandits. He paused after a few steps, then turned and said, "Look after my cat, will you?"
He walked down the slope to the mountain freshet, waded through ankle-deep water, and began the walk upslope to the improvised wall. He stopped a hundred paces from the wall and called out over the sound of the rushing water.
"While my colleagues are working out what to do next," he said, "I thought to relieve your boredom, and come out to challenge your bravest fighter to single combat."
Among the bandits there was a general muttering, followed by jeers and scornful laughter.
"No takers?" Aristide called.
Someone behind the barrier threw a rock. Whoever threw it was no Nadeer. Aristide stepped to the side and let the rock clatter on the stones. He waited for the laughter to subside.
"I'm disappointed that there's no one among you with courage," Aristide said. "It will make it all the easier for us to slaughter you."
In response came more laughter, some obscene suggestions, and a few more rocks.
"Just," Aristide said casually, "as we slaughtered those friends of yours, up there on the ridge a few leagues back. They're lying on the rocks for the vultures to peck at. Surely one of you had a friend among them, and now possesses a burning desire to avenge his life?"
"I do," said a voice. The figure that jumped on the barrier was vast, grey-skinned, and female. She was as large as Grax and had an additional pair of arms: the upper pair carried two throwing spears, the lower an axe and a target shield with a spike in the center. Her grin revealed teeth like harrows. She stood on the barrier, acknowledging the cheers of the bandit force.
"You present a formidable appearance, madam," said Aristide. "Perhaps you will make a worthy opponent."
"Perhaps?" the troll demanded. She jumped down from the barrier and advanced. Chain skirts rang under armor of boiled leather. Her crude iron helm was ornamented with horns and a human skull. Cheers and laughter echoed from the bandits. She advanced fifty paces and then halted. She paused and said, in a theatrical voice, "Prepare to meet thy doom."
"You first," Aristide suggested, and tossed the arrow with its white rag to the side.
The troll crouched and came on, preceded by a wave of body odor. The upper arms held the two spears which she declined to throw, instead reserving them as thrusting weapons. The axe clashed on the shield.
In a single motion, Aristide drew Tecmessa. The sword flashed beneath the dim sun.
There was a sudden crack, as of thunder, that echoed off the rocks. Observers had an impression that something had twisted into existence, then out of it, too fast for the eye quite to follow. A wave of air blew out toward the bandits, visible as swirls of dust in the air.
Of the troll, there was no sign.
Silence fell upon shocked ears.
"Uh-oh," said a bandit clearly, in the sudden stillness.
Aristide whirled his sword up, then down, in an impatient Come-on-let's-charge motion that he hoped would remind the caravan guards of what they were supposed to be doing at this moment.
"Anyone else care to fight?" he asked.
Arrows whirred down from above. Tecmessa's point rotated slightly, there was another crack and a blast of wind, and the arrows vanished.
"Anyone else?" the swordsman called.
There was a deep-voiced bellow behind Aristide, and then shouts, the clatter of armor, and the rush of feet. Apparently Nadeer had finally remembered his assigned role.
"Oh well," Aristide said, "if you won't come to me . . ."
Aristide began trotting forward at a pace calculated to bring him to the barrier about the same time as Grax and his Free Companions. He didn't want to get trampled by his own side, but neither was it wise to face the whole body of the enemy at once—Tecmessa's powers had their limits. The sword was held in both hands, the point moving in a circle.
More arrows came. More arrows disappeared in claps of thunder and whirls of dust.
Behind him, Aristide heard the sound of animals splashing through the shallow freshet, and increased his pace.
The stone barrier was breast-high, topped by ranks of spears and figures in helmets. As the swordsman approached, the bandits in front shrank back, while those in the rear—who hadn't seen what had occurred—pressed forward. There was an incoherent shouting and the sound of spears rattling against one another, sure signs that the morale of the bandits was not ideal.
Before Aristide quite reached the barrier he heard a roar and a ferocious reptilian shriek, and Grax appeared on his lizard, his lance lowered. The lizard cleared the barrier in one bound—Grax dropped the lance that had skewered a tall man with a scalp lock—and then Grax was among the bandits, striking left and right with a flail made out of linked iron bars.
Aristide reached the barrier, parried a half-hearted spear thrust, and swung Tecmessa horizontally. Half a dozen bandits vanished with a bang. The remainder, a many-headed monster that seemed composed entirely of staring eyes and shuffling feet, drew back.
The rest of the Free Companions reached the barrier. Some reined in and thrust with their lances, some jumped the barrier like Grax, some tried to jump and failed. In the sudden wild stampede, Aristide flattened himself against the rocky side of the pass and tried to get out of the way.
The bandits were broken in any case. Their efforts to escape were impeded by the narrowness of the pass, the mass of their fellows behind them, and the large herd of riding beasts which they had picketed just behind their position. The outlaws were packed so tightly that the Free Companions could hardly miss, and the bandits' tangled mass hampered any efforts to strike back or defend themselves. Many bandits died, many were trampled, and many threw themselves into the river and were swept away.
"Prisoners!" Aristide shouted. "Remember to take prisoners!"
The general slaughter continued without cease. Aristide glanced at the rocks above. The bandits that had been holding this key feature had seen the rout below, and many as a consequence were abandoning the fight, hoping to clamber down the steep boulder-strewn slope and reach their mounts before the Free Companions did.
There was a clattering of hooves and a cry, and Aristide saw the next company charging to the fight. The chances of getting trampled seemed stronger than ever, and a place above the fray consequently more desirable, so Aristide vaulted the barrier and began to climb the slope.
Green-skinned Nadeer reached the summit before Aristide did—bellowing, half-a-dozen arrows standing in his chest, hurling rocks left and right. The bandits broke completely. Aristide saw one bandit running past and swung Tecmessa. The flat of the blade caught him full in the face and he went down, stunned. Out of the corner of his eye Aristide saw another darting figure, a broad-shouldered man in black with a recurved bow in one hand, and he thrust the sword between the archer's legs. The bandit fell face-first onto the stony ground, and then Aristide was on his back, the edge of Tecmessa against his neck.
"Take me to your leaders," he said.