Sisay pried the dead hand from her neck and retreated among shouldering Jhovalls.
The party was fighting perhaps twenty of the flesh eaters. The ghouls were impervious to mortal wounds. They bore on, regardless of the injuries they suffered. Survival did not matter to them, only destruction of their foes. Despite their obvious mindlessness, the ghouls seemed to attack in concert. Two ghouls would slash at adjacent Jhovalls, opening a space into which a third could charge. It was as though they were the dumb pawns of a much larger mind, playing out the battle like a game of chess. And every good chess player guards his king.
"They fight with a vengeance!" Gerrard shouted above the melee. As his sword split the head of another creature, he yelled, "They fight like guardians!"
He heard a shriek to his right and saw that one of the ghouls had plunged a rusting sword into the heart of Fewsteem's Jhovall. The great tiger sank to its knees, its head jerking back and forth as lifeblood poured out. Fewsteem was flung from his saddle, and a pair of ghouls dragged the hapless crewman toward the swamp beyond the road. His eyes rolled back in panic.
With a shout, Gerrard leaped from his own mount, which was hemmed in by a circle of slashing, clawing ghouls. He vaulted over their heads. Even as he did so, he heard a squeal of agony from his Jhovall. It too fell victim to the bloodbath. The Benalian reached the fen. He swung his sword and cut in half one of the ghouls holding Fewsteem. Sisay ran up behind him and disposed of the other creature. They dragged Fewsteem out of the muck.
On the road above, the situation was improving. The crew had destroyed a dozen attackers, at the cost of three Jhovalls. The other ghouls continued to press forward without hesitation, but the tide of the battle had clearly turned.
Despite a dozen small cuts on his chest and arms, Tahngarth scooped up a ghoul and threw it some twenty feet away to smash against a twisted tree. Takara cut the legs out from beneath another at the same moment that Ilcaster chopped its head from its shoulders. The severed head bounded along the road into the ditch, where it sank beneath the muck, its eyes rolling in their sockets.
Gerrard, Sisay, and Fewsteem rejoined the others to destroy the remaining beasts. In a few minutes, the crewmen were panting, wiping their weapons, and binding up each others' wounds. Without visible effort, Tahngarth picked up the various pieces of ghoul left on the road and tossed them into the festering swamp. Gerrard looked sadly at the mangled body of his Jhovall. The two surviving Jhovalls were so seriously injured that their suffering called for mercy. At a nod from Gerrard, Tahngarth walked them to the side of the road and swiftly, efficiently dispatched them.
Sisay looked at Gerrard and sighed. "Well," she said philosophically, "I suppose we could all do with a long walk to get back in shape."
"Did you notice how the ghouls fought?" Gerrard asked amazedly. "I got the distinct impression they were servants of some higher being."
Sisay worried her lip a little. "Cho-Manno had warned me that the road to Ouramos was protected by the dead comrades of Ramos-his soldiers who were burned alive when he fell flaming from the sky. I'd just taken the comment as a bit of folklore, but perhaps he meant these ghouls. I should have passed on the warnings."
Gerrard smiled appreciatively, patting her shoulder. "Your reticence was understandable, but from now on, if you remember any more of Cho-Manno's warnings, make sure you tell us. In a legendary land, myth may prove truer than truth."
None of the party was seriously injured, but the claws and teeth of the foul beings had evidently been infected with the water of the swamps. Next day, Sisay and Fewsteem both ran high fevers. The party camped in the shadow of cliffs far removed from the fens. Gerrard soaked a rag in canteen water and pressed it to Sisay's forehead. Chamas performed a similar service for Fewsteem. They spent a miserable, uncomfortable day and night before the two ill travelers had recovered sufficiently to move on.
The next day, much to their relief, they left both swamps and cliffs behind. They had reached the top of a large plateau. The land stretched before them, dotted with clumps of trees and other vegetation. On the far horizon was a ridge of mountains, their tops capped with snow. Looking back, the party could see they had come through a long series of broken defiles that led down to the eastern plains. That night, they found plenty of wood for a fire and built a cheerful blaze to guard against the brisk wind that swept over this higher land.
Sisay and Fewsteem huddled close to the fire. Both had recovered from their infection, but neither was as hardy as before the ghoul attack. Against the darkness, the flames made fantastic, leaping shapes. Tahngarth picked up a long stick from the ground and stirred the fire. A shower of sparks spat and leaped up, rising into the ebony sky. To himself, the minotaur chanted softly a Talruum battle song. Gerrard looked at him with affection.
"What are you smiling about?" asked Sisay, a blanket wrapped tightly about her.
"I was just thinking," Gerrard returned.
She moved a bit closer to him on the log. "About what?"
Gerrard rubbed his chin, feeling the rough bristle of his beard. "I've forgotten how much I miss this."
"Miss what? Sitting miles away from your home with nothing to eat but dry rations, nothing to do but hope you'll make the next day's march without some disaster, nothing to wear but the clothes on your back that you haven't washed for a week." Sisay wrinkled her nose. "I hope to the gods we find a stream tomorrow. You need a bath."
Gerrard laughed. "I know. You're pretty ripe yourself. No, that's not what I meant."
"What, then?"
He waved a hand around him. "All this. Companionship. Searching for something but not knowing whether you'll ever find it." He shook his head. "Nothing. Never mind."
Sisay put a hand on his arm. He could feel the tough calluses on her palm. "I know what you mean. Believe me, I do. There's something special about the search itself, even if you don't find what you're looking for. I think sometimes that's what I was really looking for, rather than for the Legacy. I was looking for… for the looking itself. Is that stupid?"
"No. No, it's not." Gerrard turned and looked Sisay full in the face. Since he'd found her in Volrath's Dream Halls, this was the first time he'd looked closely at her. Fine lines surrounded her eyes. A tiny streak of gray had appeared in her hair. A delicate scar-almost a decoration, it was so fine-ran from the edge of her mouth back along the line of her jaw to her ear. Her skin was weather roughened, not the fine blush that mantled Hanna's face. Yet it had a kind of unearthly beauty that was all Sisay's own. Her eyes were brown, set deep in her face, filled with pain, with joy, with a kind of wild hope.
"Do you know something?" Gerrard asked. "Rath made you stronger. Made you wiser. More beautiful."
"It's the power of hate," interrupted Takara, sitting nearby, tossing pebbles sullenly in the fire. "Hate makes you stronger, wiser, more beautiful."
Without looking at the Rathi, Gerrard shook his head. "No. There you're wrong. Hate eats you up from the inside. It makes you weak and stupid and ugly. It's hope that makes you strong. There were two ways to survive Rath-hate and hope. Only hope makes heroes."
The next two days, the road wound among trees of increasing girth and height, with branches that began fifty or sixty feet up the trunk. They were of a kind completely unfamiliar to anyone in the party. In some places, the path was completely overgrown. It took all of Tahngarth's and Sisay's tracking skills to keep them going in the right direction.
From the lower branches of the trees, moss draped like tattered clothing, casting mysterious shadows across the path. Wherever upper branches let" sun penetrate to the forest floor, lizards scuttled across the roadway or sunned themselves on rocks.