Rikus crawled away and lay on his stomach. He could do nothing but force his throbbing ribs to draw breath. The animals in their pens screeched madly, stirred into a frenzy by the sound of fighting and the smell of blood.
At length, the mul saw torchlight farther down the pathway. Anezka rushed past, pausing to drop a black bundle of cloth in front of Rikus. She kneeled beside Yarig’s body and closed the dwarf’s lashless eyes, touching her brow to each one in some halfling sign of affection that Rikus did not understand.
Neeva stepped to the mul’s side, a torch in one hand. In the other she held a pair of spears and an obsidian dagger. She wore a black templar’s cassock similar to the one Anezka had dropped.
“What happened?” she asked, laying the weapons aside and helping her partner to his feet.
Rikus pointed at the pen. “The gaj attacked Yarig,” he said. “It was lying about coming with us.”
“A little trick it learned from Tithian,” Neeva observed. She touched her heart, then held her hand out to Yarig in the gladiator’s traditional gesture of farewell.
Rikus motioned at the equipment Neeva had brought.
“What’s this?”
“We met the feeders and a pair of templar escorts at the door,” she reported. “They didn’t last long.”
Rikus picked up a spear and went to the gaj’s pen. The beast crouched in the corner, its eyes and lethal stalks turned toward the gate.
“This is for Yarig,” the mul said, flinging the spear through an opening.
The shaft struck the gaj in the center of its antennae. It let out a high-pitched squeal and pulled its head beneath its shell.
“Will that kill it?” Neeva asked, holding her torch over the cage so she could see inside.
“Not for a few hours, I hope,” Rikus answered.
You have not beaten me yet.
The squealing did not cease as the gaj sent its message, but the creature lifted its shell and pointed the tip of its abdomen at Rikus and Neeva.
“Time to leave,” the mul said. He pulled his partner away from the pen just as the gaj sprayed the corridor with fetid vapor.
Neeva helped Rikus don the black cassock she and Anezka had procured for him. It was a snug fit, but the mul hoped it would get him as far as the gate. If someone came close enough to notice how tight the robe was, Rikus felt confident he could handle any problems that might arise.
When they were ready to leave, the mul picked up Yarig’s body, certain that the dwarf would not want to be buried in Tithian’s slave pits. “Are you coming with us, Anezka?”
The halfling nodded.
The three gladiators started toward the entrance, Anezka holding the spear, and Rikus and Neeva each carrying obsidian daggers in their pockets. They left their customary weapons in their cells. Trikals, staves, and warhammers would have drawn unwanted attention to the trio.
When they stepped out of the shed, Rikus pulled the cassock’s hood over his head. Though it was early, neither of the moons sat very high in sky, so the evening was reasonably dark. In each of the towers, the mul saw the shadowy forms of a templar and two guards.
The feeder’s four-wheeled cart sat to the side of the door. A putrid stench rose from the various dead and almost dead animals lying in its wagon. “Let’s get this unloaded,” Rikus said. “We’d better feed the animals so they’ll be quiet.”
They quickly did as the mul suggested, blindly throwing different sorts of meat into the pens without regard for the beasts inside. A few minutes later, the cart was empty. Rikus laid Yarig’s body in the wagon, then traded his dagger for the spear that Anezka carried and instructed her to lie down next to her fighting partner’s corpse.
Rikus went to the front of the cart, where a single kank was lashed into the yoke. The docile beast stood a little higher than the mul’s waist. Its chitinous body was divided into three sections: a pear-shaped head topped by two wiry antennae, an elongated thorax supported by six thin legs, and a bulbous abdomen hanging from the rear of the thorax.
Though Rikus had never driven one of the creatures, he had ridden in kank-drawn wagons enough to understand the basic principal. In his free hand, he picked up a long switch lying on the front of the cart, then tapped the kank between the antennae. To his surprise, the beast took off at a trot.
“How much attention are you trying to draw to us?” Neeva demanded, jogging to keep up with the cart. “Slow down!”
“How?”
The blond gladiator snatched the switch from his hand and passed the end over the beast’s antennae several times. It immediately slowed to a more acceptable speed.
They plodded down the lane, then turned right on the broad read leading to the back gate. Several tower guards paused to peer down at the wagon, but no one showed any sign of alarm.
At last, the gate itself loomed before them. It consisted of a large wooden door hinged between a pair of small towers. This evening, each tower was manned by one guard, with a single templar supervising them both.
Neeva steered the cart directly for the gate, not varying the kank’s pace. The tower guards and the templar watched the disguised gladiators approach without comment. A guard turned a wheel inside his tower, and the gate slowly started to open.
The escapees passed into the dark shadows between the towers.
“Wait!” called the templar.
Neeva glanced at Rikus, and the mul nodded to indicate she should obey. The brawny woman passed the switch over the kank’s antennae until the cart stopped.
“Did I see bodies in there?” the templar demanded.
“Yes,” Rikus confirmed. “They insulted Tithian. We’re taking them out for the raakles.”
“I’d better have a look,” the templar sighed, climbing down the ladder.
Neeva gave Rikus a questioning look. He shrugged, then peered over his shoulder at Anezka. She was playing dead, with one hand tucked awkwardly beneath her back.
The templar reached the ground, then went to the side of the cart. He was a human with a three-day growth of beard.
“What have we here?” the templar muttered, reaching over the wagon toward Yarig’s neck. When his fingers came back sticky with blood, he grumbled with disgust and held his hand away from his body as if he didn’t quite know what to do with it. “They’re dead.”
“Of course,” Rikus answered. “I killed them myself.”
The templar regarded the mul with a disgusted look, then motioned the cart through the gate. Neeva hardly waited for it to open the rest of the way before she moved the little cart out from between the towers.
A vast plain of rocky barrenness, purple-shrouded and as silent as death itself, lay before them.
“Where do we go now, Rikus?” Neeva asked, urging the kank into a trot.
“The estate of Agis of Asticles,” the mul answered. “Wherever that is.”
ELEVEN
UNDER TYR
Ktandeo tapped the bench with his cane. “Sit.”
Sadira obeyed immediately, but Agis ignored the command and remained standing. The three of them were gathered around the stone bench in the back of the Drunken Giant wineshop. They had drawn the shimmering curtain of lizard scales for privacy.
“At last, we meet formally,” Agis said, holding both hands palms up in a formal gesture of greeting. “I am Agis of Ast-”
“I know who you are,” Ktandeo said, pointing to the bench. “Now sit.”
Sadira pulled Agis down next to her, anxious to avoid angering her contact any further. She and the noble had been trying to see Ktandeo since Agis’s conversation with Tithian. After two days of the pair making nuisances of themselves in the wineshop, the old man had finally come.