The gallery abruptly emptied before them, as Admon Faye’s crew finally responded to their leader’s screams for retreat and got moving in the right direction.
“Follow them!” Gerrig shouted, flourishing his sword. Though he’d often brandished blades coated with imitation blood, this weapon wore a patina of the real substance. They had experienced real battle and Genig had found that he liked it.
“Let them go,” Pelmen ordered, and his tiny troupe stopped their pursuit.
“But we’ve got them on the run,” Gerrig protested.
“Quiet,” Pelmen snapped, and he cocked his ears to listen.
They’ve gone around to the left-hand gallery. Back up twenty yards and to your right. You’ll cut them off.
“Did we lose anyone?” Pelmen demanded briskly. The troupe took a quick roll call in the dark.
“No,” Danyilyn answered, “though we’ve got some cuts and scrapes mostly from each other.”
“There do seem to be a number of bodies scattered around, though,” Jamnard said, and Pelmen nodded.
“I expected that. Most of them killed by their own mates. They’re trying to get around behind us back that way.” As the power shaper herded his charges backward to their new position, he couldn’t shove from his mind the implications of the past few moments. Could one of those bodies be that of a young woman? For the first time in many weeks, he missed the gentle life of the monastic and the morning had barely begun.
Only a few minutes separated the clashes, but the second skirmish had a far different flavor from the first. Slavers were accustomed to this type of warfare, though they were normally the ambushers, not the ambushed. This time they were ready and, when the fray was finally rejoined, fewer swords scraped the walls and more rang on steel. Pelmen and Gerrig, though untouched by enemy metal, were driven steadily backward by waves of fresh warriors. As one pair tired, Admon Faye sent another pair past them. Soon the two players could no longer effectively return their attackers blows, and Pelmen shouted, “Break off!” The actors behind him quickly vacated the corridor, and it was Admon Faye’s turn to hold his troops back from pursuit.
“Slowly!” he shouted to the men on the point. “There’s no telling how many warriors Joss has scattered through this cavern, and this retreat may only be a lure into further ambush.” The pressure of this pitch-black struggle with what he assumed were superior forces had given him a horrible headache, but he shook it off and endeavored to plan his next move. They couldn’t turn back there was only one boat.
Of course, he thought, one was plenty for him. “Bronwynn!” he shouted. “Someone get Bronwynn up here to me!”
After a minute of chaotic discussion, the news was finally passed back to him:
“The Princess is no longer with us.”
“So you failed to apprehend him again?” Ligne asked as she soaped her beautiful arm with perfumed bubbles.
“I cut his raiding party to half its size, my Lady. Admon Faye wasn’t with them.”
“Joss, I’m very unhappy with this. I’m to be married tomorrow noon had you heard?”
“The Prime Minister informed me.”
“And I want the mood to be lavish, cheery, and romantic. I won’t be pleased if my party is interrupted by attacks on this castle. Soap my back,” she ordered a maid, who swiftly obeyed.
Joss ignored the Queen’s bathing. It pleased the woman’s vanity to summon him here and berate him from her scented tub. But her vanity was no greater than that of the King who preceded her, nor of Talith’s father, who had ruled when Joss was but a page. The General expected quirky behavior from his monarchs. He tried not to let it interfere with security.
“I apologize, my Lady, that I’ve not as yet caught the slaver. I do know that he’s in the city, and my forces are combing the streets and sewers, searching for him.”
“You told me yesterday that my borders were secure,” she snapped.
“Yesterday, my Lady, they were,” Joss replied patiently.
“Yet today?”
“Today I am securing them.”
A slave girl entered the bath chamber, bowing as she came, obviously uneasy with her role as the bearer of bad news. “My Lady, Lord Joss there’s been another report of an attack west of the city ”
Joss was across the tiled floor and gone before Ligne could say another word. “I didn’t dismiss you!” she shouted after him, then she whirled around to face the timid slave, sloshing water across the tiles. “You!”
she ordered, pointing with a bar of soap. “Send in that strange character in the blue robe who arrived this morning, then go have yourself beaten for interrupting my bath!”
“Yes, my Lady,” the young slave mumbled, as she bowed herself backwards out of the presence of the queen.
The tiny troupe had taken up a new position and waited breathlessly for the slowly advancing column of slavers to reach them again. Pelmen listened intently as the Imperial House kept him posted on their approach.
Twenty yards from you now, but around several sharp turns.
“Can’t you do anything?” Pelmen asked.
“What?” Gerrig answered, puzzled. Pelmen laid a finger across the brawny man’s bearded lips to still him, as the House replied: Such as?
“I’m open to any suggestion.”
“Maybe we could ” the perplexed Gerrig began, but JOJ
Pelmen again covered his mouth. He jerked Pelmen’s hand away. “Why ask for suggestions if you ”
“Hush!” Pelmen ordered. “I’m talking to someone else.”
“Oh,” Gerrig replied. He shrugged elaborately and made a face at the darkness.
No suggestions come to mind.
“Well, friends,” Pelmen sighed, “perhaps we should quit doing what we’re not good at and try doing what we do well.” For the next few minutes he murmured quiet instructions.
“How did we get in front of this line?” Pinter asked Tibb tremulously.
He suddenly had serious doubts about being an outlaw.
“I just want to know how we get to the back of it again,” his comrade replied.
“Move ahead,” someone behind them called, and Pinter called back:
“Why don’t you? We’d be happy to let you…” But those behind them just pushed them forward, ever forward into the dark. They marched tentatively, stepping, stepping
“At them! At them now!” cried a voice from very nearby on their left, and another voice, that of a woman, shrilled from their right:
“I command you, Joss! Kill every last one of them!”
There was a blood-curdling screech from directly ahead, and the sound of metal-shod feet sprinting toward them.
“Back!” Pinter cried out in terror. “Tibb, go back!”
“Oww!” Tibb screamed, and Pinter heard his fellow clank to the ground.
“Are you hit? Are you hit?” Pinter yelled hysterically.
“Somebody just kicked me in the shins!”
“Somebody wha Oww!” Pinter hollered, as his own shins became targets.
“Bring up the reserves! Finish them off!” shouted the woman, and Tibb heard as someone far down the corridor relayed the message on.
“There are hundreds down here with us!” he gasped.
They could hear swords whizzing before their faces, and one whispered across Pinter’s hand. He swung that fist blindly at his attacker then stopped, puzzled, for somehow the sword it had held was gone. It took a moment for him to realize that he’d lost the hand as well. He screamed in shock. The passageway once again rang with the chaotic clamor of a rout.
Naquin hid his eyes from this woman who seemed intent on exposing her body to him. Nothing in his experience in the temple of the dragon had prepared him for this. Never had he seen a woman so brazen nor so beautiful.
“What’s the matter, my friend?” Ligne teased. “Haven’t you ever seen a woman before?”