The Crimson Legion Page 7

  Soon the square was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with unarmed Tyrians, all clamoring for water and struggling to reach the cistern at its center—as the mul’s generals had instructed them to do. The Urikites previously standing guard at Kled’s wall now ringed the square, their shields and spears pointed toward Rikus’s warriors.

  As the last Tyrians were escorted into the plaza, Jaseela and Neeva were brought to Rikus’s side, along with Caelum. Only the templars and K’kriq, gathered in a small group beneath the arch, remained outside the village.

  Ignoring their absence for the moment, Maetan peered at Neeva from between two burly bodyguards. “An excellent girl,” he said, catching Rikus’s gaze with his pearly gray eyes. “Did she also come from my father’s pens? Or doesn’t your mul-brain allow you to remember that much?”

  As the mindbender asked the question, a hated memory flashed into Rikus’s mind. In a dark corner of the Lubar pits, a young mul, his body already knotted with muscles and covered with scars, stood alone before a man-sized block of white pumice carved into the semblance of a gladiator.

  “Hit it,” growled a familiar voice.

  The boy, Rikus at ten years, looked over his shoulder. Neeva stood at his back, a six-stranded whip in her hand. He started to ask her what she was doing in his memory, at a time where she did not belong, but, before his eyes, she changed from an attractive woman to a fat, sweating swine of a trainer.

  Rikus shook his head, trying to free himself of the memory. Once before, a mindbender had slipped into his head by hiding behind a memory. Thanks to Neeva’s inappropriate appearance, the mul had no doubt that Maetan was using a similar attack against him now.

  The trainer cuffed the side of young Rikus’s head, snarling, “Do as you’re told, boy.”

  Rikus tried to ignore the trainer and focus his thoughts on the present, but the memory had a life of its own. The gladiator found himself, as a young mul, facing the punching dummy and tapping it with his fist. The rough surface grated the soft skin of his hand, opening a line of tiny cuts across his knuckles.

  The six-strands of the trainer’s whip snapped across Rikus’s bare back, opening a line of cuts that burned like viper bites. The boy clenched his teeth and did not cry out. He had already learned that to show pain was to invite more of it.

  “Harder!” the trainer spat. “I swear I’ll strip the hide off your scrawny little bones.”

  Rikus punched the statue again, this time with as much force as he could. The blow tore the skin off his knuckles and sent a sharp pain shooting from his hand clear to his elbow.

  “Again!” the trainer sneered. His whip cracked and ripped another strip of flesh off the boy’s back.

  The young mul hit the dummy again, this time imagining it was the trainer that he was attacking. He struck again and again, throwing his weight behind each blow. Soon he had reduced his hands to unfeeling masses of raw meat and painted the pumice statue red with his blood.

  Rikus’s awareness of the present returned, and Maetan looked away. Unfortunately, the mindbender’s probing remained strong enough that the mul could not shut out the painful images inside his mind.

  Maetan looked to Neeva and Jaseela, then motioned to the arch where Styan and his black-robed men waited. “Aren’t your templars thirsty?”

  “They refuse to come down until they see how you treat us,” Jaseela offered.

  “Everyone else is here,” Neeva added, glancing at Rikus.

  The mul knew what his fighting partner was hinting at: the Tyrians were ready to attack. Rikus opened his mouth to give the order, but Maetan’s head snapped around and the mindbender fixed his gray eyes on those of the mul.

  Inside Rikus’s mind, the fat trainer clamped a pudgy, begrimed hand over the young mul’s mouth. Rikus grasped at the arm and tried to pull it away, but he was still young and far from a match for the older man’s bearish strength. The trainer opened his lips to speak, revealing a mouthful of rotten and broken teeth.

  “Forget about the plan,” the trainer said. “We’re really surrendering.”

  To Rikus’s surprise, he heard himself repeating the words. Neeva scowled in anger, and Jaseela’s jaw dropped open.

  “What?” they demanded.

  Caelum looked from the mul to the two women, rubbing a hand over the bony crest of thickened skull atop his head.

  Hoping to alert the two women to his plight, Rikus tried to shake his head—and found himself unable to move. In his mind, the fat trainer’s powerful hand was locked over the boy’s chin, keeping it held firmly in place.

  Rikus decided to switch tactics. Remembering how, during the battle to capture the argosy, Agis had rescued him from Phatim’s mental attack, the mul substituted his own image for the one Maetan had introduced into his mind. Instead of a young boy, he saw himself as a mature gladiator, stronger than the trainer and hardened by hundreds of fights.

  He felt a queasy feeling in his stomach as a surge of energy rose from deep within himself, changing the young mul in his thoughts from a boy to a man. This new Rikus slapped a hand over the grimy fingers covering his mouth, then used the heel of his other hand to drive his captor’s elbow into the air. Keeping the trainer’s pudgy hand damped over his lips, the mul ducked under the entangling arm, then snapped it at the elbow by pushing down with one hand and pulling up with the other.

  As soon as the trainer’s hand left his mouth, Rikus screamed, “Now, Neeva!” The words sounded both in Rikus’s mind and in the dwarven village.

  Neeva raised her brow and Jaseela shook her head in confusion. Caelum peered at the mul as if he had gone sun-mad, then slowly shifted his gaze to Maetan. The mindbender was wincing as though his own arm had been broken.

  Hoping to spur his companions into action, Rikus kicked at Maetan’s guards, gasping, “He’s taken over my—”

  The mul’s attack and his explanation came to an abrupt end as Maetan recovered from the shock of Rikus’s mental counterattack. Inside the mul’s mind, the trainer whirled around, changing from a man to a vulgar, hairy spider. The immense, bulbous thing lashed out with two clawed legs, forcing Rikus to retreat, then snapped at him with two pincers dripping brown venom.

  Rikus dodged to the side, trying to change himself into an equally large scorpion. The effort was too much for him. A spurt of energy rose from deep within his stomach, then abruptly faded away. The mul felt queasy and weak, his legs trembling with exhaustion and his heart pounding at his ribs like a smith’s hammer. He barely managed to keep his feet as the spider attacked again.

  In the plaza, Neeva and Jaseela realized what was happening. Neeva dislocated the knee of the nearest bodyguard with a lightning-fast kick, ripping his steel sword from his hands. She drew the blade across the rope that bound Rikus’s hands, cutting him free, then turned and sliced a second guard open in one fluid motion. Jaseela grabbed this man’s blade and raised it to the sky crying, “Now, Warriors of Tyr!”

  A great shout rose from her retainers and the gladiators. The plaza broke into a clamor of thuds, cracks, and pained cries as the Tyrians moved to strip the weapons from their captors’ hands.

  Seeing this, Caelum raised a hand toward the sun and uttered a series of words in a strange, rasping language that vaguely resembled the sound of a crackling fire. His bronze arm turned blazing crimson. He pointed at Rikus’s head, saying, “This will protect you, Tyrian.”

  Rosy light steamed from the dwarf’s fingers and gathered around the mul’s head in a scintillating sphere. Inside Rikus’s mind, a fiery wall sprang up between him and the spider, just as the horrid thing leaped at him. The beast disappeared into the flames, screeching in anger.

  Instantly, Rikus’s mind was free of the mindbender’s attack, his attention returning to the plaza and the present. The mul’s legs felt as heavy as iron, his breath came in deep gasps, and his arms ached with fatigue—but he was free to act.

  Looking past Maetan’s two surviving bodyguards, Rikus grinned at the mindbender. “Now it’s
my turn,” he said, stepping forward.

  The Urikite’s face, already betraying the pain he had suffered from the fire inside Rikus’s mind, went pale. “Kill him!” Maetan ordered, stepping back. “The dwarf, too!”

  Rikus dodged the clumsy lunge of Maetan’s first guard, twisting away as the sword thrust past his body. He grabbed the man’s arm with both hands, holding it steady as he brought a knee up to break the bone. The mul caught the sword as it dropped to the ground. Then he spun around and smashed the pommel into the next Urikite’s jaw. The soldier collapsed into an unconscious heap.

  Realizing he had left his back exposed, Rikus glanced over his shoulder and saw the last bodyguard stepping toward him with a raised sword. Without bothering to face his attacker, the mul leveled a vicious thrust kick at the soldier. The heel of his foot drove square into the man’s ribs. The Urikite stumbled backward, gasping for breath and holding his side.

  “Should have broken him in two,” Rikus said, realizing for the first time how much energy he had expended in his mental battle against Maetan.

  The mul stepped toward the gasping Urikite, who raised his sword into a defiant guarding position. Snorting in derision, Rikus feinted an attack, then slashed the bodyguard’s hand off at the wrist. With his free hand, the mul grabbed the back of the soldier’s head and pulled downward, smashing it into his knee. There was a loud crack. Blood sprayed over the mul’s leg, and the lifeless Urikite fell to the ground with a cracked forehead.

  Rikus looked around and saw that he was no longer in danger. On all sides of the plaza, the Urikites were already retreating down the narrow lanes between the dwarven huts, pressed hard by the Tyrian warriors who had stolen their spears and obsidian short swords. Every moment or two came a pained scream from deep within the warren of stone huts, attesting to the fact that the dwarves were taking vengeance on their former captors.

  Rikus returned his attention to the immediate vicinity, searching for Maetan. He spotted the mindbender twenty-yards away, at the end of the one of the sun plaza’s curving salients. He stood between two huts, his gray eyes fixed on the mul.

  When Rikus stepped toward the mindbender, Maetan’s bitter voice echoed inside his head. Don’t be a fool, boy. As he spoke, the Urikite’s frail-looking body grew translucent before Rikus’s eyes. I will find you when I’m ready to end our fight.

  With that, Maetan faded entirely from sight. Rikus started to yell for a search party, then decided against it. Remembering how the mindbender had ridden a whirlwind away from their first battle, the mul realized that the Urikite would not have shown himself without being sure of his escape. It would take more than cornering a part of the Urikite legion to kill Lord Lubar.

  Caelum came to the mul’s side. “Only in the words of our storytellers have I heard of men who fight like you, Tyrian,” he said. He held his hands toward Rikus, palm up in the sign of friendship. “I am named Caelum.”

  “I’m Rikus,” the mul said, putting his sword beneath his arm so he could return the dwarf’s greeting. “Without your help, I’d be dead. I owe you a life.”

  “And we owe you many,” the dwarf replied, gesturing toward the plaza.

  Now that the battle had moved away from the circle, Rikus could see that their quick victory had not come without a price. Nearly two-hundred gladiators, and more than a few of Jaseela’s retainers, lay bleeding and groaning around the perimeter of the plaza. Already, the dwarven men and women who lived closest to the square were bringing bandages and satchels of soothing herbs to help the wounded.

  As they studied the scene in the plaza, Neeva, who was standing a dozen yards away, screamed, “Look out!”

  She snatched a spear from a dead Urikite and threw it in Caelum’s direction. The weapon streaked to the ground about a yard behind the dwarf, striking something soft and fleshy. A man’s voice cried out in pain, then an obsidian dagger clattered to the ground at the dwarf’s heels. Rikus peered over Caelum’s shoulder and saw that his fighting partner had killed a Urikite who had been preparing to attack the dwarf from behind. Caelum looked from the dying soldier to Neeva, his mouth opened in astonishment. “I’ve been saved by a queen!”

  “Not quite,” Rikus chuckled, motioning Neeva over. She had no sooner joined them than Caelum seized her hands and fell to his knees. “You saved my life,” he said, kissing her palms. “Now I give it to you.”

  “You can have it back,” Neeva said, regarding the dwarf with an expression as amused as it was leery. She disentangled her hands, adding, “You’d do the same for me.”

  “For you, I would do that and much more,” Caelum replied, still not rising. “You must accept my gift. I could not live if I did not repay you—”

  “Maybe there’s a way for you to do that,” Rikus said, taking the dwarf by the arm and pulling him to his feet. “The mindbender who attacked me used his art to disappear. Can you find him for me?”

  Tearing his red eyes away from Neeva, the dwarf shook his head regretfully. “I can offer some protection from the Way, but my powers are those of sun. They are of little help in seeking out a mindbender who wishes to remain hidden—though I wish matters were otherwise. For what he did to our village, the Urikite must be punished.”

  “He will be,” Rikus promised. “He’ll pay for what he did to Kled, and for much, much more.”

  FOUR

  TOWER OF BURYN

  RIKUS’S EYES WERE FIXED ON THE HAND OF CAELUM, which was glowing fiery red and smoking from the fingertips. It shone so brightly that it was translucent, save for the dark network of thick bones buried beneath the flesh.

  “Hold him tightly,” the dwarf said. “For its magic, the sun demands payment in pain.”

  Rikus pulled Gaanon into his lap, slipping his hands beneath his friend’s massive arms and locking his thighs around the half-giant’s thick waist. “You’re sure this will work?” asked the mul.

  Caelum glanced at the disk of flame hanging in the olive-tinged sky. “Each morning, do you also doubt that the sun will burn itself free of the Sea of Silt?”

  “No, but this is—”

  “May I proceed?” Caelum interrupted, using his free hand to point at his glowing palm, “This is quite as painful for me as it will be for your friend.”

  At the other end of Gaanon’s long body, Neeva gripped an ankle under each of her muscular arms. “I’m ready.”

  Rikus nodded to Caelum, and the dwarf plunged two smoking fingers into the half-giant’s ulcerating wound. Tongues of light shot outward from the wound like the strands of a spiderweb. Gaanon’s leg grew as translucent as Caelum’s hand, his veins showing through his skin like thick cord.

  The gladiator’s eyes popped open. A thunderous bellow roared from his lips and echoed off the huts of Kled. He instinctively tried to sit up, and it took all of Rikus’s abundant strength to hold him down. At the half-giant’s ankles, Neeva repeatedly bounced on the flagstones as she struggled to keep his legs relatively motionless.

  Gaanon pulled against Rikus’s arms, trying to reach down and knock the dwarf away from his wound. The mul held him, but only barely. Keeping a wary eye on the screaming half-giant, Caelum continued to hold his fingers in the wound. Slowly, the color faded from his hand and the flesh once again grew opaque. When all the fire had left his fingers, the dwarf withdrew them and stuffed a wad of cloth into the freshly scorched puncture.

  The half-giant’s leg continued to glow, and Rikus fancied that he could even see tiny flames flickering along the sinews and veins. Gaanon stopped screaming and laid his head back in Rikus’s arms. A moment later, he closed his eyes and fell to breathing in the heavy rhythms of deep slumber.

  “It’s safe to release him now,” Caelum said. He secured the plug in the half-giant’s thigh by wrapping a bandage around the leg, then glanced at Neeva. “You’re very strong. Because you held him so well, my work was much easier than it could have been.”

  Neeva wrinkled her brow and did not reply, unsure of how to accept the compliment.<
br />
  “What now?” Rikus asked, laying the half-giant’s head on the ground. “Do we pour water down his throat?”

  “Too soon,” said Lyanius, shaking a crooked finger in Rikus’s direction. The old dwarf, who wore a bloody bandage around his head, was the one who had spoken out to warn Rikus against surrendering. Lyanius was also Caelum’s father and the village uhrnomus, a term that seemed to mean “grandfather” sometimes, but also, in a context of grave respect, “founder.”

  Lyanius took Rikus by the arm and guided the mul to his feet. “You will wait for a day before he awakens.”

  “A day?” Rikus gasped. “That’s too much time.”

  K’kriq, who had been assigned leadership of the scouts, had already sent a runner to report that the survivors of the morning’s combat were moving toward a large group of stragglers from the first battle. There was no sign that Maetan was with the Urikite army, but now that the legion had filled its waterskins, Rikus wanted to resume their pursuit as soon as possible.

  “The sun will do its work in its own time,” Caelum said. “I am sorry, but there is nothing I can do to hurry your friend’s recovery.”

  “Cast another spell on him,” the mul demanded. “Even if it takes you a few hours to look it up in your spellbook and memorize it again—”

  “I am no sorcerer,” the dwarf snapped, the corners of his mouth turned indignantly downward. “I am a cleric of the sun.”

  “What’s the difference?” asked Neeva, placing herself between Rikus and the dwarf.

  Caelum’s expression softened when he spoke to her. “Sorcerers steal their magic from plants,” he explained. “Mine is a gift of the sun. Using it takes nothing from any living thing.”