Dirken was quick to answer. “He went on ahead, to the fort at the top of the pass.”
“Oooh!” Brown John’s brow crinkled.
“He’s gone after the girl,” Bone added.
Dirken pointed at a Kitzakk tower mounted above the pass. “They’ve got signal towers all the way to their fort.”
“They’ll see him coming hours before he reaches it,” the old man muttered to himself, “but that may be to his advantage.”
He stepped up onto the wagon seat with extended arms and in stentorian tones demanded attention. When he got it, his voice resounded through the hushed crowd.
“You are to be congratulated. All of you.” Cheering interrupted him, and he paused, smiling, until it stopped. “There is an entire Kitzakk column lying dead back there in the pass. A full sixth of the Kitzakk Desert Army.” There was more cheering, but he continued, shouting over the rapturous response. “The Outlanders have not suffered such a defeat in a hundred years!”
The group went wild, hooting and whistling, and he let them. When the hysteria had subsided somewhat, he raised a triumphant finger to the sky and bellowed, “From this day forth, our champion, Gath of Baal, is going to be known forever for what he truly is. The Lord of the Forest! Invincible.”
The Grillards cheered and chanted. “Gath! Gath! Gath!”
Dirken frowned nervously at his father, and whispered, “That’s crazy. If the Kitzakks are up there waiting for him behind palisade walls, not even a nine-armed god would stand a chance.”
“We will see,” Brown John replied. “We will see.”
There were tears welling in his eyes, and his sons shifted uncomfortably. But they knew why. His Grillards were no longer merely strutting actors, but real men who had worked the brutal stage of life. The equals, perhaps even the best, of all the men in the forest.
Dirken fidgeted, then brought his father’s indulgent musing to an abrupt stop. “Are we just going to stand around and cheer, or do something?”
Brown John blinked, then wiped a cheek with the back of a hand and looked sternly at his sons. “You stay here, Dirken. When the army arrives, keep it moving at a steady pace and don’t let any of the Wowells, Cytherians or Barhacha get ahead of you. They are desperate to rescue their women and children, but if they race ahead and try to do it by themselves, we are lost. The army must be held together.”
Dirken asked respectfully, “What do we do with the prisoners?”
“There aren’t any.” The bukko watched with satisfaction as Dirken’s and Bone’s mouths dropped open. They both swallowed hard, then Dirken hurried off to meet the arriving army as Brown John hollered at a group of strongmen, “You five, get up in the wagon. The work’s up ahead.”
The Grillards piled aboard. Bone cracked the whip and the wagon rumbled south across High Bridge waving its tail of dust behind it like a proud banner.
Fifty-one
Gath stood motionless in the deep shade. He was several hundred feet from the heights of the cataracts. Here the trail no longer followed the gorge. It zigzagged up through rock walls to an opening about twenty feet wide and thirty feet high at the top of the pass. The mouth of The Narrows. It was closed by a wooden palisade and gate that glowed with the orange-gold light of the evening sun.
The helmet sagged heavily in front of his heaving body so that he looked like a bull ready to charge. His chain mail steamed. His eyes, hard slices of white within the shadows of the metal, were active and wary. Sensing danger, yet not seeing it.
A wall-walk formed the top of the gate. It was crenellated, as were the palisades running along the tops of the cliffs on both sides of him. No soldiers stood on the ramparts. No glitter of steel betrayed any hiding behind them. Above the gate and along the palisades poles stood at regular intervals. Dangling from them were smouldering shreds of cloth; charred, stringy remnants of Kitzakk regimental flags. They fluttered timidly on the light breeze. Their modest flapping gave the silence size and weight.
Beyond the gate spires of smoke rose against the yellow sky, caught the breeze and were carried down the pass. Gath sniffed at the familiar cedar aroma, then his eyes focused on the top of the signal tower rising beyond the gate. It was only a small open-topped wooden box standing on a single tall wooden pole, and there was no sign of anyone there, either.
He looked back down the pass at an identical signal tower where the gorge turned away from the road. He had seen no sign of life in it before, and there was none now.
The prospect of having no one to fight maddened his blood, and his muscles convulsed as smoke drifted from the helmet’s eye slits. Then his head began to throb with pressure, and he strode recklessly to the gate with his axe slightly to the front, eager for blood. He pushed at the gate, but it was locked. Frustrated, he hammered it with the blunt end of his axe, then kicked it. No one responded. He slung his axe on his back, and drew two daggers. Holding them overhead, he jumped up and drove one into the wood. With that dagger bearing his weight, he lurched higher, driving in the second with his other hand. He pulled the first dagger free, stabbed it higher into the wall. The muscles of his back bunched; the tendons of his arms corded with power. The chain mail shirt kicked up like metallic wings around his hips as he lurched and swung. Reaching the crenellations above the gate, he hauled himself onto the wall-walk. Panting, with sweat dripping from the edges of his chain mail, and smoke drifting from the helmet, he studied the interior of the fort.
Billowing smoke obscured the center of its large courtyard, but he could make out a second gate at the far side. It was open, and a section of the palisade beside it had been torn down to widen if. Beyond it the flat bone-brown body of the desert spread toward a distant horizon where golden dust clouds tumbled in the fading sunlight. Former residents leaving in a hurry.
Apart from a few vultures perched on the walls, the fort appeared deserted and barren. The corrals, stalls and shops built under the palisade ramparts appeared empty, as did scattered piles of cages. Abandoned sacks of grains, baskets of eggs, dried meat, hay and wine jars spilled from the storehouses. Here and there were hastily discarded saddles, harnesses and wagons. Fires had been started under racks of spears and a wagon full of crossbows and bolts in an attempt to destroy them. But they had been built too hastily and gone out. Only the one at the center of the fort smouldered with dense smoke.
Gath waited until the pressure in his head abated, then jumped into the yard and entered a storehouse. He poured a half-dozen raw eggs into his mouth, smearing the sticky mess over the face of the helmet. He pushed in two handfuls of dry meat while emptying a wine vessel. Gorged and sated, he looked around uncertainly for a cistern to wash off the mess, but saw none. Unnerved by the silence and lack of movement, he lumbered impatiently toward the smoke-filled center. A wind swept in through the desert gate and, with a swish, lifted the cloud of smoke like a curtain to reveal a muscular black stallion standing on a dirt mound at the precise center of the yard.
The animal was huge and thick chested, with legs the size of knotty tree trunks. A powerful, rounded neck supported the short-nosed, blunt head. Its eyes were intelligent but wild. Its forelegs straddled a dead Kitzakk officer clasping a pole mounted with two red horsetails.