Gord tied Windeater to a scrubby bit of brush a hundred paces away, in a place where an upthrust fold of ground would conceal the stallion's presence unless someone came within ten or so yards. Moving quietly down the slope and then working to his left, the young thief began moving toward the veiled warriors who were besieging the camp. The Arroden strategy was a logical and unsurprising one; by encircling their enemy, they could contain them and also gain maximum sniping advantage, just so long as the attackers were careful not to hit the allies on the other side of the circle with their crossbow fire. The Arroden camels were ground-reined in small groups along the outside edge of the circle, but the animals' senses had already been assaulted by so much commotion that they paid no heed to another man in their vicinity. And, as Gord soon found out, the attackers themselves did not even consider that someone might be coming up behind them…
It was so easy as to be almost laughable. Each of the Arroden warriors was stationed roughly one hundred fifty feet from the fringe of the Yoli encampment, and more importantly each one was at least seventy-five feet, sometimes as much as a hundred, away from his nearest neighbor – not enough space for the Yoli to attempt an escape as a group, but plenty of room for Gord to work undisturbed.
He picked a spot in the loosely spaced circle to begin, and then moved relentlessly along the Arroden rank. He killed as silently as the whisper of an owl's wings, as swiftly as that nocturnal predator does when its great talons strike an unsuspecting rat. From one of the first men he felled, Gord appropriated an attractive-looking necklace. Then, as he went on, he amused and revenged himself by stripping many of his victims of the silver bracelets they wore, stringing them on the necklace as he went along. Old habits die hard, Gord thought to himself as he did this – but the Arroden were certainly dying a lot more easily.
One of the men he did in was Yahoud himself, and he was careful to take this man with a dagger thrust in the neck so that he could reclaim his mail shirt in whole and unharmed condition. Gord's only regret was that he had had to strike the shaik from behind to kill him quickly, and thus the Arroden leader never knew by whose hand he died. He lost exact count after a time, but Gord thought that he had managed to slay no fewer than a score of the veiled men, and had worked his way around about a quarter of the circle. Then his presence was noticed – but not by those whom he was killing.
It was his own success that proved his undoing. The lack of missile fire from the segment where Gord had been wreaking his revenge must have become apparent to the besieged Yoli. A brief, tentative movement in that direction by a group of Yollites failed to bring any reaction from the attackers, and, unbeknownst to those along the circle, some intelligent leader among the defenders' ranks managed to spread the word of this development.
As for the attackers, they were so widely spaced, and one side of the circle was so far from its opposite section, that they remained oblivious to the fact that their ranks had been thinned. The closest Gord came to discovery was when an occasional warrior remarked to himself that the comrade on his right must have used up his crossbow bolts – just before that man himself fell to Gord's blades.
There was a sudden burst of activity in the center of the beleaguered encampment, but much of what went on was shielded from the view of outsiders by tents and large canvas shields. Some of the Arroden continued to fire indiscriminately into the mass, but most of them held their fire and did what they could to prepare for what was sure to be a last, desperate rush. Then the rush began – but it went in two directions at once. While expendable animals were driven out toward the side opposite Gord, a rush of men and animals headed toward the unguarded portion of the circle. The ploy was detected by the veiled nomads within a couple of minutes, when those on the still-intact side of the circle realized what they were being "attacked" by. Shouts and cries traveled along the arc, and an Arroden shaman stationed close to the gap in the circle brought forth a globe of light to show his brethren what was happening.
The brilliant sphere sprang into being not far from where Gord was crouching. An Arroden warrior who would have been Gord's next victim got to his feet nearby, shifting his attention from the on-rushing Yoli to the strange sight the globe revealed. "It is the prisoner!" the veiled nomad shouted, pointing his small crossbow at Gord and jerking the trigger to release a hasty shot at the young adventurer. "He has escaped the camp and slain Thotir!"
The shaft plucked at the baggy robe that covered Gord, but did him no harm. Gord shouted a curse at the fellow, ran forward, and attacked without thinking. By this time he was mad with fighting lust and blood madness. The Arroden dropped his crossbow and defended himself with his sword, and before he died the man managed to keep Gord occupied long enough to enable another and then another of his tribesmen to join in the melee.
Even as this occurred, the escaping Yoli saw that not only were their enemies caught totally unaware, but that the Arroden were not nearly as many in number as they had made themselves seem to be. This knowledge offered the Bakluni fighters an opportunity to revenge themselves upon their hated foes. Spread out as they were, the Arroden would find it hard to regroup to counter the nucleus of warriors who had just broken through the encirclement and were now ready to fight ferociously again. While the noncombatants among their number rode pell-mell to escape, the warriors of Yoli began to fan out along each side of the broken circle, riding down upon their dismounted enemies and trampling and stabbing as they went.
As the sound of hooves came toward him, Gord disengaged from the two Arroden who fought him and darted away from the scene. A half-dozen mounted Yoli descended upon the place where he had been but a moment before. The two veiled warriors managed to unseat one of the Yollites, but they lived only long enough to see him trampled beneath the hooves of his cohorts' mounts.
All of the Arroden now knew what was happening, and many of them had regained their own mounts and begun to form into groups. The fight was far from over, and it was anyone's guess as to what the final outcome would be, but Gord had no interest now. It was time for him to forget about thoughts of revenge, to get clear of the confused battle and ride away. He had no trouble getting back to the spot where he had left Windeater. Gord mounted the steed and rode off, heading along a route that angled away from the direct line of escape that most of the fleeing Yoli noncombatants had taken. He could not avoid the flight of these dozens of people entirely, for they had fanned out once they were away from the Arroden circle and were heading in many different directions at once.
Gord hadn't gone far when he saw the shape of a fallen horse outlined against the lighter-colored ground ahead of him. Farther in the distance he heard the sound of several other horses, camels, and shouting riders heading away from where the fallen animal lay. The sound of steel on steel rang out intermittently from this cluster, and Gord assumed that some of the Arroden had broken off from the main battle to chase down the Yollites who were riding away. He slowed Windeater's pace; he saw no sense in coming too close to the fighting at this point. The frenzy of killing had left him now, and Gord felt disgusted, nauseated, and exhausted. He was drained of emotion and strength, and what he wanted most now was a place where he could rest and regain his energy.