Kingdoms of the Night (The Far Kingdoms) (50 page)

“Five... no ten or more,” he whispered. “They’re lyin’ in wait for the traders,” for so Quatervals had also decided the caravan to be. “Bandits.”

He looked at me, hope shining in his eyes for a moment. “For once we’ll just sit here and watch the slaughter, right, Lord Antero? Think neutral and all?”

I stared at him.

“We’ve got our own troubles here, sir,” he tried next. “If we go and start takin’ sides we could be gettin’ into somethin’ we know nothin’ about that’ll make sure we have more enemies on our plate.”

I said nothing.

“My Lord, we don’t even know if they’re a member of your guild or not so how’ll we know what price to ask for the rescue!” he joked feebly.

“Now,” I said softly, “now
we
are the tiger and it’s our turn to give the warning.”

But Quatervals had known better than to expect me to sit and watch. Damned to all the hells if I would, seeing travelers who looked peaceable cut down as they rode. I’ve been attacked too many times by brigands and lost too many fine people to have any use for highwaymen except to measure a rope that’s suspended from a tall tree with their necks.

Quatervals warbled a whistle that sounded like some sort of bird or perhaps a hunting lizard and all around the wash my people slid out of their packs and readied their weapons. Janela, crouching a few yards away, looked at me askance, then grinned, shrugged and set her own pack aside. The gods
never
favor those who take no side but their own and even if they did who would want to be counted as such?

“They’ll hit them just... there,” Quatervals said, pointing. “Four minutes, perhaps.”

“Bowing to the judgment of a man who knows more about highway robbery than I ever shall,” I said, “would you give them a warning just before they’re hit?”

Quatervals smiled at my chaffing and found a bit of cloth in his kit, tied it around an arrow, unraveled the end a bit and struck flint and steel until sparks smoldered up. It flamed and he nocked the arrow drew and fired high into the air just seconds before the ambush would be sprung.

The arrow, trailing a wisp of smoke, lifted across the ravine the ambuscade was mounted in and sailed over the heads of the caravan riders.

It was seen and horses reared and I heard shouts in the still air and then the bandits attacked. The men in the bushes fired a volley of arrows at the travelers, intended to shock rather than kill, just as the raiding party rode out of the gully. There were thirty men on horseback and they were whooping and shouting. They spattered arrows, then abandoned their bows and charged forward. They brandished javelins, ready to throw and their intent would have been to close on the caravan without warning, launch their spears, then close in the confusion and destroy the travelers in the first shock of battle.

But Quatervals arrow had given a few seconds for the riders to ready their weapons. Better-aimed arrows went whistling out and there were empty bandit saddles.

I could no longer speculate, as Quatervals shouted and we charged forward into the rear of the brigands. They’d turned from their first charge and were regrouping when they saw us. Now they were caught between the two forces.

They may have been careless in setting the ambush with no rear watch but they weren’t inexperienced soldiers. Their leader cried orders and they charged directly at us. The best way to survive an ambush is to attack straight into it.

“Kill their horses,” I cried, knowing this would be unexpected and terrifying.

On the plains, horses or whatever the mount may be, are life itself. Men fight and die but take great pains to keep their horses alive, both for safety and for trading purposes. We cared nothing about such customs and arrows thudded home and horses reared, screaming, and other arrows went into them and they fell, sending their riders tumbling.

“On them,” Quatervals shouted and we ran on.

A man, wearing some sort of dirty cloth tunic that camouflaged his mail came to his feet in front of me, still wheezing from the fall from his horse. He blocked my lunge and we closed, hilt to hilt, and I shoved him away, booting him hard in the stomach as he stumbled back. He staggered and I drove my sword into his side, wrenching it free as he fell.

I saw Otavi, rumbling on with his ax in both hands, as unstoppable a force as one of the oxen we’d seen. A lithe man darted at him, swinging a morningstar. Otavi held out his ax, let the star’s chain wrap itself around his ax-haft and pulled the star, handle and all, from the man’s grasp, then crushed his attacker’s skull with his weapon’s point.

The caravan’s guards were firing arrows rather promiscuously, one skittering across the ground not far from where I was and I cursed at the thought of being slain by those we were trying to rescue.

The bandits reformed and attempted another charge, trying to break past us into open country, no doubt willing to abandon their brothers on foot. They rode close together, forcing their mounts into the gallop, spears leveled.

There can be little more fearsome a sight for a person on the ground, feeling very small, particularly if he isn’t — like most my party —
really
a soldier, when a horseman rides down on him intent on the kill. But Quatervals had trained us for that.

“Spearmen forward,” he shouted. “Stand firm! Stand firm!”

And my people did gritting their teeth and setting their spearbutts firm against the ground, kneeling to brace the shafts. The bandits’ horses raced on, as if they would overrun us. But in some ways a horse is smarter than a man. A man will charge a spearwall and spit himself bravely in the doing. A horse will either try to leap over such a barrier or more likely balk or turn.

So these robbers’ mounts did and there was a milling and a falling and then the horde was fleeing for their lives. The men afoot ran after them, screaming for succor, and some of the braver robbers pulled their fellows up beside them before riding on. But others were left in the dust.

We reformed and moved toward the caravan. As we did I heard shouts of pain and saw the travelers were showing no more mercy to the freebooters’ wounded and abandoned than they themselves would’ve been shown.

We’d taken but one casualty — one of the Cyralian brothers had been pinked in the arm by an arrow. But since it wouldn’t be near-fatal he was laughing and singing as foolishly as a young blood on the town with his father’s purse as he broke the shaft off at the head and pulled it free. Another brother, just as cheery, tore off a strip of his tunic to bind the wound. Other than that we were unscathed — the shock of our presence and immediate attack had been the best armor imaginable.

The caravan hadn’t been so lucky — at least half of their men were down, all too many of them not stirring where they lay. There was a flurry of dust and shouts as they regrouped and calmed or put their horses out of their pain.

Janela joined me and I called for Quatervals, Kele, Otavi and Pip and we went to meet the travelers.

Four people came away from the others to meet us. The foremost was a man my age — I mean a man who appeared to be my actual age in years, not as I now looked. He had a weather-seamed face, a yellowing beard that was plaited in two long ropes that hung to either side of his chest. On his head he had a stiff leather cap that would have served as armor. He wore a leather tunic stripped with metal, an elaborately-embroidered shirt under it, tight leather breeches and knee boots. A long curved sword was sheathed on one side of his belt and a matching dagger on the other.

The second man was dressed similarly, although he carried a strung bow with a quiver of war arrows at his belt as well as a knife.

The other two were women. The rearmost was very old but carried herself rigidly, as if she were royalty. She wore a black blouse that fit closely, buttoning high on the neck, and a skirt split for riding, with dark undergarments visible when she walked. Her white hair was tied back in a queue and on her head she wore a leather tiara. Her expression was sour, unforgiving, and I sensed it had been that way since she’d first realized what a man’s intent might be with her when he lowered his breeches.

The third caught and held the eye. She was very pretty and quite young, no more, I guessed than sixteen, likely less. Pert breasts pushed a low-cut leather vest out and a silk high-necked blouse in turquoise showed under it. She wore a matching skirt that I realized was pantaloons, cut full before being bloused into riding boots. She had a silver belt buckled about a slender waist and a small dagger that looked like a toy, but I suspected could be used quite effectively.

She had a small, pointed face with all of the intelligence and wit of a fox gleaming in her eyes. Her dark blonde hair was braided and then bound in a ring around the back of her hair.

“I greet you, strangers,” said the older man and his rumbling voice was exactly what his imposing bulk deserved. “You are truly wolves, having driven off the jackals of Ismid who thought themselves rulers of the steppe.

“We are thine.”

He knelt, holding out both hands out palms up, his head bowed. The others followed, the younger man first, the old woman last, after giving me a look that suggested this certainly wasn’t
her
idea. The young woman flickered a smile at me before kneeling.

“Please stand,” I said. “We are your equals, not your conquerors.”

The man looked up, complete puzzlement in his face. He started to speak but shut his mouth and they obeyed.

The younger man looked amazed. “You’re foreign,” he said, “but speak our tongue.” The older one looked aghast, as if he expected me to put the other to the sword for daring to speak.

“Our wizard,” and I indicated Janela, “has given us the power to speak as those we meet.”

“We are honored to be the slaves of so gifted a group of men... and women,” he added hastily.

“What makes you think you are my slaves?”

Before the old man could answer the young woman stepped forward.

“I am Sa’ib, of the Res Weynh,” and she paused, expecting me to know one or another name and be impressed. Not wishing to show ignorance yet, I smiled politely but made no answer. “My father, Suiyan, sent me to be schooled by the courtesans of Tacna in the skills a wife should bring to her wedding bed. A wonderful time it was. I finished and was honored a month ago and am returning to the tent of my father, where he will seek a proper husband for me, knowing what a fine brideprice I shall bring.”

“No doubt,” I said as neutral as I could.

“That slime eating eunuch Ismid, that bent-cocked barbarian who honors neither his father because he knew him not for begetting him on a wandering mongrel, that bandy-legged lizard of a man who knows not the laws of the gods or men learned of my departure from Tacna and determined he would have me to bed as his slave.

“But you saved me. So now I am yours, to do with as you wish. I can only ask that you extend mercy to my fellow slaves, and allow them to serve you as well or if you decide to sell them to find mild masters.” Once more she knelt, and the others followed suit.

I stepped forward and lifted her and then the old man by the hand.

“I said before we are your equals. I do not take slaves, I do not own them. All of us are free.”

The four travelers goggled at us. It was as if I had announced the three-score of us were desert demons.

“You do not take slaves,” the young man managed. “Then how do you live? How do you prosper?”

“I prosper by my own hand,” I said. “Those who work for me are paid for their work in gold and silver. No man can serve another well if he is property, nor can that slave’s master ever be free himself so long as he permits such bondage to endure.”

I felt, just for an instant, a flash of shame from the distant past, for when I was a youth Orissa had held slaves and it was only Janos Greycloak bringing the light to me that had made me the tinder that set the torch of freedom alight in my lands. I also felt a bit like a pompous ass for my speech.

The old man was perplexed. A bit of what I’d said sunk into the younger man.

“I am Ziv,” he said. “My captain, here, is Diu. If we are not your slaves than what
are
we?”

“Men and women whom I’ve been fortunate enough to help and who are now free to go their way,” I said. “I ask only that you give us what information you have about these regions we travel through.”

Now there was a babble of joy and we were embraced by three of the four. I thought that Sa’ib held the embrace longer than the others but perhaps, being youngest, was the happiest and least restrained. As we returned to the other travelers and Quatervals beckoned our party to follow, but gave secret signals for them to maintain their alertness, I learned that Diu was the officer sent by Suiyan to bring his daughter back, Ziv was his son and the old glowering woman was Tanis, who’d been Sa’ib’s nursemaid since birth.

I wondered idly what
she
had thought when Sa’ib flung herself into that “wonderful time” in the brothel.

We asked many questions of them and discovered a great deal, but not nearly enough. The steppe we were crossing was the home of at least a dozen always-warring nomad tribes, the Res Weynh being the mightiest. Or so we were told by Ziv and naturally agreed with him. They did but little trading with the other inhabitants of this land and that mostly for weapons and jewels, the tribes living on their sheep and by hunting.