‘I must advise thee that I will not participate in this night’s work.’
‘We are bound by our pledge to Anakha, Adras,’ Ekrasios reminded him. ‘Our Anari hath sworn to this, and we are obliged to honor his oath.’
‘I cannot, Ekrasios!’ Adras cried, sudden tears streaming down his face. ‘I cannot bear what I have done and must do again should I enter yon city. Surely Edaemus did not intend for us to so use his dreadful gift.’
There were a dozen arguments Ekrasios might have raised, but he knew in his heart that they were all spurious. ‘I will not insist, Adras. That would not be the act of a friend.’ He sighed. ‘I am no less unquiet than thou, I do confess. We are not suited for war, Adras, and the curse of Edaemus makes our way of making war more horrible than the casual bloodletting of other races, and, since we are not fiends, the horror doth tear at our souls.’ He paused. ‘Thou art not alone in this resolve, art thou, Adras? There are others as well, are there not?’
Adras nodded mutely.
‘How many?’
‘Close to a hundred and fifty, my friend.’
Ekrasios was shaken. Nearly a third of his force had quite literally defected. ‘You trouble me, Adras,’ he said. ‘I will not command thee to forswear the dictates of thy conscience, but thine absence and that of they who feel similarly constrained do raise doubts about our possible success this night. Let me think on’t.’ He began to pace up and down in the muddy forest clearing, considering various possibilities. ‘We may yet salvage some measure of victory this night,’ he said finally. ‘Let me probe the extent of thy reluctance, my friend. I do concede that thou canst not in conscience enter the ruin which doth lie before us, but wilt thou abandon me utterly?’
‘Never, Ekrasios.’
‘I thank thee, Adras. Yet mayest thou and thy fellows further our design without injury to thy sensibilities. As we discovered at Norenja, the curse of Edaemus extends its effects to things other than flesh.’
‘Truly,’ Adras agreed. ‘The gates of that mournful ruin did collapse in decay at our merest touch.’
‘The east wall of Synaqua is constructed of logs. Might I prevail upon thee and thy fellows to pull it down whilst I and the remainder of our force do enter the city?’
The mind of Adras was quick. His sudden grin erased the estrangement which had marred their friendship for the past several days. ‘Thou wert born to command, Ekrasios,’ he said warmly. ‘My friends and I will most happily perform this task. Do thou and thy cohorts enter Synaqua by the front gate whilst I and mine do open a huge back gate to the east that they who reside within yon city may freely depart. Both ends are thus served.’
‘Well said, Adras,’ Ekrasios approved. ‘Well said.’
27
‘They’re out of sight now,’ Talen hissed. ‘Go grab their cart.’
Kalten and Sparhawk rose from the bushes, appropriated the half-full wood-cart, and pulled it back out of sight. It was about noon.
‘I still think this is a really stupid idea,’ Kalten grumbled. ‘Assuming that we don’t get stopped when we try to go through the gate, how are we going to unload our weapons and mailshirts without being seen? And how are we going to get out of the slave-pen to pick them up?’
‘Trust me.’
‘This boy’s making me old, Sparhawk,’ Kalten complained.
‘We might be able to pull it off, Kalten,’ Bevier said. ‘Xanetia told us that the Cynesgan overseers don’t pay much attention to the slaves. Right now, though, we’d better get this cart away from here before the fellows it belongs to come back and find that it’s gone.’
They pulled the wobbly, two-wheeled cart along the narrow track toward the spot where Xanetia and Mirtai were concealed in the bushes. ‘Lo,’ Mirtai said dryly from her hiding place, ‘our heroes return with the spoils of war.’
‘I love you, little sister,’ Sparhawk retorted, ‘but you’ve got an overly clever mouth. Kalten’s got a point, Talen. The Cynesgan overseers themselves might be too stupid to notice what we’re doing, but the other slaves probably will, and the first one to open his mouth about it will probably get a lot of attention.’
‘I’m a-workin’ on that port, Sporhawk,’ the boy replied. He dropped to his knees and scrutinized the underside of the cart.
‘No problem,’ he said confidently, rising and brushing off his bare knees. They had modified the Cynesgan robes they had bought in Vigayo by removing the sleeves and hoods and cutting the tails off just above the knees. The resulting garments now resembled the smocks worn by the slaves who labored in the fields and woods surrounding Cyrga.
While the rest of them fanned out through the woods to pilfer firewood from the stacks cut by the slaves, Talen remained behind, working at something on the underside of the cart. They had amassed a sizeable pile by the time he had finished. Sparhawk returned once more with an armload of wood to find the boy just finishing up.
‘Do you want to take a look at this, Sparhawk?’ he asked from under the cart.
Sparhawk knelt to examine the young thief’s handiwork. Talen had wedged the ends of slender tree-limbs between the floorboards of the cart and then had woven them into a shallow basket that fit snugly under the bottom of the stolen conveyance.
‘Are you sure it won’t come apart if we hit a bump?’ he asked dubiously. ‘It might be a little embarrassing to have all our weapons and our mail-shirts come spilling out just as we’re passing through the gate.’
‘I’ll ride in it myself, if you want,’ Talen replied.
Sparhawk grunted. ‘Tie the swords together so that they won’t rattle, and stuff grass in around the mail-shirts to muffle the clinking.’
‘Yes, oh glorious leader. And how many other things that I already know did you want to tell me?’
‘Just do it, Talen. Don’t make clever speeches.’
‘I’m not trying to be offensive, Mirtai,’ Kalten was saying. ‘It’s just that your legs are prettier than mine.’
Mirtai lifted the bottom of her smock a little and looked critically at her long, golden legs. Then she squinted at Kalten’s.
‘They are rather, aren’t they?’
‘What I’m getting at is that they won’t be quite as noticeable if you smear some mud on them. I don’t think the gate guards are blind, and if one of them sees the dimples on your knees, he’ll probably realize that you aren’t a man, and he might decide to investigate further.’
‘He’d better not,’ she replied in a chill tone.
‘There are not so many of the dens of the man-things in this place as there were in the place Sepal or the place Arjun,’ Bhlokw noted as he and Ulath looked down at the village of Zhubay. It had seemed that they had been travelling for several days, but they all knew better.
‘No,’ Ulath agreed. ‘It is a smaller place with fewer of the man-things.’
‘But there are many of the dens-of-cloth on the other side of the water hole,’ the Troll added, pointing at the large tent city on the far side of the oasis.
‘Those are the ones we hunt,’ Ulath told him.
‘Are you certain that we are permitted to kill and eat those?’ Bhlokw asked. ‘You and Tin-in would not let me do that in the place Sepal or the place Arjun or even in the place Hat-os.’
‘It is permitted here. We have put bait out to bring them to this place so that we can hunt them for food.’
‘What bait do you use to lure the man-things?’ Bhlokw asked curiously. ‘If the minds of the Gods ever get well again and they let us go back to hunting the man-things, it would be good to know this.’
‘The bait is thought, Bhlokw. The man-things in the dens-of-cloth have come to this place because certain of our pack-mates put it in their thought that the tall man-things with the yellow skin will be here. The ones in the dens-of-cloth have come here to fight the tall ones with yellow skin.’
Bhlokw’s face contorted into a hideous approximation of a grin. ‘That is good bait, U-lat,’ he said. ‘I will summon Ghworg and Ghnomb and tell them that we will go to the hunt now. How many of them may we kill and eat?’