Had he been smart, the Vridzish would have waited for his men to come up and had them finish Fost with darts and slung stones. But either he lusted for personal revenge or was simply headstrong. He gripped his mace in both hands and swung at Fost.
Fost knew how fortunate he was that the officer had immediately attacked, but his heart dropped just the same. He recalled his last duel with a mace-wielding Vridzish noble.
Even the mace's long haft had a hard time reaching across the crack. Fost avoided the first swing simply by leaning back. He couldn't retreat from the brink, however, without allowing the lizard man to jump across. With the Vridzish's advantage in reach, Fost doubted his own ability to win should the lizard man succeed in crossing the gap.
The Zr'gsz swung again, leaning dangerously far out. Fost staggered as the volcanic glass head of the mace brushed across his belly. He cut recklessly at the Vridzish. The lizard man jerked away. The rest of the patrol had come up to join their leader. Only a half dozen could stand with the officer on the narrow lava ramp. The others milled behind, one of the javelin men hopping impatiently from foot to foot hoping for a clear cast.
Savagely, man and Zr'gsz duelled over the abyss. Fost held out longer than he thought possible and even managed to chop a feather from his opponent's green metal helmet. But the lizard man was quicker and stronger and could commit himself further due to taloned feet gripping the rock. They traded blows, wood cracking on steel with impacts that jarred Fost's arm. Then the inevitable happened. Fost extended his blade too far; the Vridzish swung with awful force and knocked the broadsword to the side, almost tearing it from Fost's grip.
Time flowed like the molten rock as the heavy mace swung back at Fost's unprotected body. He didn't have time to even duck. He took a breath and braced himself for the impact, the stabbing of shattered ribs through lungs and heart, oblivion.
A lava tide washed over the officer and swept him and his death-giving mace away like a twig in a mill race. Fost heard awful croaking cries as the molten stone engulfed the other Vridzish. He stumbled back, tears welling in his eyes from the awful heat. He saw Moriana rise from the shelter of a boulder. She smiled. 'Did you bring down the lava?' he asked.
'No. The mountain did that.' The smile widened. 'But I diverted it where I wanted it to go.'
She took his hand and led him off across the badlands. The lava river gurgled at their backs.
CHAPTER SIX
Morning found the volcano quiet, at least in comparison to the prior day's cacophony. But its tip still smoked like a North Keep forge. The greasy smoke trailed off toward Lake Lolu in the north, but it was unadorned black smoke without lightning or glowing clouds or hurtling bombs. A constant peevish grumbling rolled from the depths of the mountain, as if it suffered indigestion. Erimenes, who claimed knowledge of volcanoes, said that the rumblings would subside over the next few days until the mountain lay quiet again. Unless, of course, it decided to once again erupt. Neither Fost nor Moriana found the tidings particularly cheering.
They had reconnoitered cautiously, Moriana alert with her bow, Fost ready to snatch out his sword at the first hint of danger. As expected, Erimenes derided him for not going forth with naked blade in hand like a proper hero. Fost decided it would be unheroic for a rock to turn under his foot and cause him to fall on his sword, as was likely to happen in such treacherous landscape.
They had worked their way well south of the smouldering mountain, both in the hopes that any fresh lava flows wouldn't extend so far and to come on the Watchers' village from above rather than from below. Otherwise, they'd have had to pass near the ledge where the Ullapag had kept watch over the skystone mines and the steaming fumarole into which Felarod had cast the Heart of the People. Moriana had a total horror of the place. Since yesterday they had exchanged snippets of their respective stories when they stopped to rest or eat, and Fost had learned enough of what had happened at that spot to understand why Moriana dreaded it so.
The sun had barely struggled above the humped flows to the east when they came upon the first new stream of lava. They guessed it to be the one which had swallowed the Hissers the day before. The surface had already hardened into a crust that showed rusty black in places through its coating over the ubiquitous gray ash. It looked solid enough.
Fost and Moriana exchanged looks, then Fost said, 'There's only one way to make sure it's really hard enough to support us.' He took a deep breath, then boldly stepped out, only to find the thin crust cracking beneath him at the same instant the stench of burning leather rose. He jackrabbited back to solid ground, scalding his feet thoroughly in the process.
'Look at him dance. Have you ever seen such a fine tarantella, even in the courts of High Medurim?' Erimenes howled in laughter which infuriated Fost even more.
'Fost,' said Moriana over the genie's ridicule, 'we must get across. The Zr'gsz will be after us. And I… I am uneasy in this place.'
He agreed with her. He sat beside the solidified but still hot river of rock and thought. Eventually, he hit on the plan of lashing bits of loose lava to their feet and walking across using them as insulation.
'Yes,' she cried, 'it'll work. It has to! If the pieces of lava we use are wide enough, it will be like snowshoeing. The larger the stone, the better our weight will be distributed.'
'And we won't break the crust,' Fost finished. 'Do you think the insulation from the rock will be enough?'
'Certainly,' said Erimenes in his best professorial tones. 'The thermal gradient in such a portion of the stone will be sufficient to prevent a repetition of your hotfoot.' The genie began snickering again.
With her archer's skills, Moriana deftly wove strong cord from the tough bunchgrass that grew among the dogthorn bushes. Then the two tied the chunks to their boots using projections to anchor the cords so they wouldn't come in contact with the hot crust more than necessary. Before they set off, Moriana insisted that each cut two stout staves of ofilos wood to use for balance. Reluctantly, Fost agreed. They spent an hour hunting for relatively straight limbs. Fost's allergy to the ofilos caused his hands to break out in a rash but this discomfort was offset by his enhanced ability to balance. With the ofilos poles to prop him, he made it to the other side with a minimum of flailing, cursing and heartstopping attempts to go facefirst onto the hot stone crust.
In less than an hour they came to another flow, the one into which their raft had dived. Fost was amazed at the distance between the two flows. Either they had diverged considerably in their course down the mountainside or the fleeing pair had made record time crossing the saw-toothed terrain.
'The same trick should work,' stated Fost, gently prodding the tip of his ofilos pole into the semi-solid rock beneath the hardened surface. He pulled out the shaft when it began smoking. He beat out a tiny blaze, then began tying new lava rock to his boots.
Halfway across, the lashings on Fost's right foot burned through. He stood with one leg upraised like a nesting stork. His mind raced, trying to decide what to do next. Fate decided the issue for him. The other set of cords burned through, leaving him stranded twenty yards from cool, safe gound.
'Fost!' yelled Moriana. She had safely reached the far side of the frozen stream.
'Dark Ones take Fost,' shrieked Erimenes. 'Save me! I'll be marooned in this rock for all eternity. And gods, it is hot!'
'Of course it's hot,' cried Fost. 'It's molten stone. I thought you knew all about vulcanism.'
'Don't drop my jug,' pleaded the genie. 'I don't want to roast for a thousand years!'