AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It was as good a defense strategy as they'd collectively been able to devise. Pavek would have given all the gold stashed beneath Telhami's hut for a few bows and the men to shoot them,
but there was no sense longing for what they couldn't have. Escrissar and his fifty allies would march undisturbed through the fields and the ring of trees and find an unpleasant surprise waiting for them.
Pavek only hoped the wheel of fate would give him just one opportunity to slip his sword between the interrogator's ribs.
He felt a tug on his shirt and spun around.
"What about me, Pavek?"
Ruari, with his staff.
"You know your place."
"Pavek, I can do better than that-"
"You can't. Gather your weapons, your water, and the cloth for bandages. Take them and yourself to your place on the rampart and stay there!"
"I want to fight"
"You're going to fight, scum. Now-Go!"
He and Ruari stared at each other, then Ruari stalked away. Pavek hoped-prayed to whatever nameless power might listen to a one-time templar, not-quite druid-that Ruari's bile wouldn't get him killed in the first assault wave. Quraite needed everyone, and Ruari was proficient with that staff of his; he set the standard for the fanners around him. They'd lose heart if Ruari went down in some fool's burst of bravery.
He'd lose heart.
Except for Yohan, none of them were veterans, none of them had fought a pitched battle-including himself. Stalking Dovanne's attacker or breaking the heads of petty criminals in his inspector days didn't count. The closest he'd come to combat was skirmishes on the streets of Urik against the Tyrian hooligans years ago.
Inside, he was scared to the marrow and desperate to see another sunrise. He almost envied Ruari his blind anger and commitment.
Waiting was worse than he imagined it could be, knowing that the circle fighters were looking over their shoulders at him and curbing their fears because he looked calm. Yohan, sitting beside him on the stoop of Telhami's hut, looked calm as he examined the edge of his obsidian sword.
But maybe, as Yohan's eyes met his, not calm at all. Maybe Yohan's panic went even deeper, because there was no one at all for him to turn to.
Then, without warning, the mind-bending began: a black fist thrusting through his mind. Everyone jerked backward; a few cried out in shock or terror before Telhami launched her counterattack, and the black fist became a memory.
Pavek slapped his hand against Yohan's and pulled himself to his feet. "Better you than me." Which was a lie. He had no idea what templars said to each other.
But Yohan laughed and shook his hand heartily. "That's good. I'll remember that."
"See that you do."
They released each other's hand and took a step backward toward the quadrants of the circle they'd selected for themselves. For a moment Pavek wanted to say something more, something sincere, then Yohan turned away and the moment was gone.
* * *
Escrissar brought his force through the trees in a compact group: a dozen fighters in the front rank and three or four in each of the files. If Telhami's estimate of their enemy's strength was correct-and Pavek saw no reason to doubt it -the interrogator was committing himself personally to a single thrust and holding nothing in reserve.
On second glance, the interrogator wasn't committing himself to anything, unless he was the black-haired half-elf marching second-from-the-left. There wasn't a black enamel mask to be seen, like Telhami and Akashia, Escrissar was holding himself out of the battle, mind-bending from a safe distance.
And that wasn't the worst thing Pavek saw, or didn't see. He spotted Rokka and a few other templars he recognized from Urik, about ten in all, just as he'd figured. They'd left their yellow robes behind-no surprise; heavy sleeves were a dangerous obstacle to a swinging sword-arm-and marched in such oddments of weaponry and armor as they'd scrounged from the templarate armory and private armorers in the elven market. Their rag-tag panoply stood in considerable contrast with the fighters who marched around them.
Escrissar had filled his force not with the ill-equipped rabble from the market he'd hoped for, but with some three dozen hardened fighters, each of whom carried a polished wooden shield, a javelin, and a yard-long knobkerrie club all carved from bronze-hard agafari wood.
The agafari tree grew near Nibenay, and, as far as Pavek knew, no where else in the Tablelands. Nibenay's templarate was composed of the Shadow-King's wives only, so he was either looking at army conscripts-which didn't seem likely given the way they marched-or one of the numerous mercenary companies Nibenay's ruler employed to augment his harem.
But whether the Shadow-King knew that his mercenaries were here, far northeast of Urik, was a question only Elabon Escrissar could answer.
Nibenay's mercenaries threw their single javelin before they descended into the trench around the outer rampart. Two farmers went down. One took a shaft through his left arm; he might recover from the shock to fight again. The other was gut-struck, and bis screams were horrible to hear.
