Nineteen
At the intersection of two alleys, Gath and Robin stopped. The alleys appeared deserted. One descended through shadows to ground level, then twisted toward the open yard. The other came from the direction of Market Square. Through it they could see dust swirling above the southern side of Weaver where it met the bridges.
He led her quickly across the open intersection and down through the shadowed alley to the edge of the open yard. There they stopped again, still concealed in the shadows.
The irregular oval of the open area was filled with sunshine and the familiar odors of warm dirt and straw. Stables and stalls surrounded the yard. At the opposite side of the yard two footpaths angled through the low buildings toward the high Forest Gate beyond. The stalls and stables were empty of everything but shadows. The dusty ground was cluttered with straw, stacks of buckets and several unharnessed wagons.
Gath started forward, but paused at the sound of iron tinkling against a metal bucket somewhere. It made Robin shudder, but to him it was a strangely pleasing sound, as if belonging to another time and world, like tiny silver bells tied to a child’s ankles so he cannot get lost.
Gath pushed Robin back up the alley a stride, and held her against the wall listening. The sound of the bells was replaced by the distant snorting and stomping of the retreating Kitzakk soldiers and the faint unintelligible chatter of their voices.
Gath’s body heat became so intense it made Robin’s cheeks flush, and she cringed. When he turned to her, she gulped. His eyes held no more warmth than a tomb. His cheeks were dark pulsing hollows. Black vertical gouges cut into them, drawing the corners of his lips down low.
He found a side door nearby. He opened it quietly, peered inside, and pulled her in closing the door behind them.
They stood in a small, dirt-floored room with saddles, tack and blankets hanging from the log walls. Crossing it, they moved through a doorway into an empty stable. Its roof was low, forming a hayloft above. Shadows filled it. The front doors were open, letting light from the sun-filled yard partway in. Staying in the shadows, Gath crossed to a ladder lying on the ground below an opening into the loft. He drew Robin close, pointed up at the loft. Avoiding his eyes, she nodded docilely. He leaned his axe against the wall, raised her over his head, gave her a slight toss, and she landed on the hay in the loft. He picked up the ladder, handed it up to her, and she looked down at him.
An unnatural battle hunger glittered in his eyes, and his breathing was like a starved panther cat’s. But, as she took the ladder, his hand embraced hers with a gentle but firm reassurance.
He picked up his axe, crossed the stable and the small tack room, and moved back into the alley. There he looked out into the sun-filled wagon yard and waited.
What came was the strange pleasant tinkle of metal brushed by the wind. This time Gath knew where the faint, mysterious music originated. From somewhere in the yard where there was nothing but dust and sunshine.
The first thing that informed Gath that there was indeed someone else in the area was the scent of a hardy male body odor. His nostrils wrinkled at the scent, and his eyes widened with another mystery. He recognized the smell. It was his own.
The hair on his neck stiffened. Then the world of silence, blinding light and bloody sky again consumed him. It filled the open yard. He snarled silently, feeling his blood gorge through his arms and thighs.
He shortened his grip on his axe, and marched deliberately out into the sunshine to the heart of the magic world, stopped, and the real world returned. The yard was empty. But he was on killing ground. He knew it. Every tissue in his body wanted it.
He glanced about the emptiness, body cocked and eyes wary, and peered into the shade of a covered stall. Two vague silhouettes of figures were crouched just beyond a shaft of sunshine spilling through a crack in the roof. Slowly they stood, to become two massive figures which turned toward Gath, as if he had called out to them. The spill of sunshine caught their shoulders, made one burn bright red while the other glittered as if made of coin silver. The rest was shadows.
They picked large objects off the ground, then moved out of the stall into the sunshine. They carried axe and sword. The two commanders.
One was short and thick, big jawed, and wore a red helmet with a cagelike mask of steel bars. The other was close to two hundred and fifty pounds of trouble, not counting his full-length suit of chain mail which undoubtably outweighed most men.
The two commanders looked at Gath almost with pleasure, as if he had come to polish their metal. But there was no amusement in their weapons, or the steel studs which decorated their knuckles. As if they had a single mind, each put a foot on the top rail of the stall, pushed it over slowly and stepped into the yard.
Gath moved for them, and they separated. Gath kept moving, got between them, and charged the steel suit. He blocked the giant’s sword with his axe and jabbed him with the butt end driving him back. Using his momentum, Gath pivoted and swung an arching blow at the red helmet. But Red Helmet’s axe deflected Gath’s blow, momentarily bringing him to a stop. Gath bolted sideways, but not before the tip of Steel Suit’s sword had buried itself in the meat of his left shoulder.
Gath reeled with pain, then suddenly stepped in again bringing his axe around in a backhand blow aimed at Red Helmet. The blade landed with a terrific clang flush on the steel cage, drove the owner fifteen feet back, and left Gath’s axe vibrating in his hands. The center of its cutting edge was caved in leaving a wide half-moon-shaped gap.
Gath snarled and backed up to a wall. Blood ran down the back of his arm, and dripped off his wrist in measured beats.
Red Helmet had recovered, was moving for him. The sunshine made a slight new scratch across the steel bars of his cagelike mask glitter.
Steel Suit was also advancing with a heavy plotted pace, holding his sword in two hands in front of him. He tilted it so that the blade caught the overhead sunshine and reflected it.
The bright bar of light caught Gath in the eyes, blinded him briefly. When his vision returned, both champions were bearing down on him, weapons raised over their heads. He stepped in under the blow of the sword, deflected Red Helmet’s axe with his own and again drove Steel Suit back with the butt end. Butting Red Helmet in the chest with his head, he spun and drove a shoulder into the wooden wall of a stable, splintering it, and fell through the hole into the darkness beyond.
The two commanders shared an annoyed glance and moved for the hole, but stopped short as Gath emerged from the adjacent stable. His left arm now carried an old circular wooden shield belted with iron bars. The Kitzakks grinned, then moved for him hard, weapons working.
Gath caught their blows on his shield with his arm slightly relaxed. This softened and deflected them, but the blades bit chunks out of the wood while their impact drove him backwards, allowing no counterblow.
Without breaking stride, they rained blows on him from right and left, gave him no time to do anything but block, duck, and bleed. Finally Gath’s back slammed into a wooden stable wall. He worked there awhile, blocking blows as the wall rubbed his shoulder blades and elbows raw, stitched his flesh with splinters.
Methodically Red Helmet trimmed Gath’s shield down until half the wood was gone and the iron belts looked like chewed meat. Steel Suit, with a malignant grin, let his mammoth sword play with Gath’s axe head. His blows mangled the blade and sent reverberations up, the shaft, through the Barbarian’s grip and into his arm and shoulder. Numbness spread back down his arm and into Gath’s grip. Sensing this, Steel Suit discarded his grin and struck Gath’s axe where the head joined the handle, ripping it out of the Barbarian’s numbed grip.