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Cerk listened as the killing ground fell silent. Even the animals had succumbed to Brother Kakzim's mind-bending might. Then elder brother began his harangue against Urik and its templars generally, and the yellow-robed villains about to emerge onto the killing ground. It was truth and falsehood so tightly interwoven that Cerk, who'd been in the cavern when the attack began and knew all the truth there was to know was drawn toward the gallery with his fists clenched and his teeth bared. He stopped himself at the door and closed it.
The closed lacquered door and his own training gave Cerk the strength to resist Brother Kakzim's voice. No one else in the abattoir would be so lucky.
He was filling a second shoulder-sack when the room began to shake. It was as if the ground itself were shuddering, and even though he knew the Dragon had been slain, Cerk's first thoughts were that it had come to Codesh to consume them all.
The scrap of white-bark—the scratched lines and landmarks that had guided him to Urik a year ago and that he'd been about to stuff into the sack—floated from Cerk's fingers. He tried to walk, but a gut-level terror kept his feet glued where they stood, and he sank to his knees instead.
"Listen to them!" Brother Kakzim exclaimed as he shoved through the door. "Failed brilliance; brilliant failure. My voice freed their rage. Yellow will turn red!" He did a joyous dance on the quaking floor, never once losing his balance. "They're tearing down the gates, setting fire to the tower. They'll all die. I give every yellow-scum death to my nemesis! Let his spirit be weighed beneath the roots!"
Stunned, Cerk realized that the shuddering of the walls and floor was the result of mauls and poleaxes biting against the abattoir walls and the base of the watchtower where the templar detachment stood guard day and night. When he took a deep breath, he could smell smoke. His feet came unglued, and he bolted for the doorway where the scent was stronger. Dark tendrils filled the stairwell. He didn't want to be in Codesh when the templars emerged from the little building.
"We're trapped!"
"Not yet. Have you gathered everything?"
The maddest eyes in creation belonged to Brother Kakzim who'd loosed a riot beneath his own feet and didn't care. Cerk grabbed the sacks as they were on the table. He threw one over each shoulder.
"I gathered everything," he said from the doorway. "It's time to leave, elder brother. Truly, it's time to leave."
* * *
When Elabon Escrissar led his hired cohort against Quraite, there had been blood, death, and injury all around. There'd been honest heroism, too. Pavek had been an honest hero when he'd fought and when he'd invoked the Lion-King's aid, but he wasn't Quraite's only hero. Ruari knew he'd done less that day and risked less, too—but he'd been at Pavek's side at the right time to give Pavek the medallion and defend him while he used it. Ruari had been proud himself that day. He was proud of himself still.
But not for today's work.
Maybe there could be no heroics when your side was the stronger side from the start, when only your own mistakes could defeat you. The war bureau templars hadn't made any mistakes, and aside from one fleeting touch of Unseen doubt, there'd been no Codeshite heroics. Two templars had gone down. Another two were walking wounded. The red-haired sergeant collected medallions from the dead and put the wounded to work guarding their prisoners.
Maybe they were the lucky ones.
Ruari wasn't sure. He'd brought the sack of balsam oil from the Urik passage and helped pour its fragrant contents into the five glamourous bowls. His mind said they were doing the right thing, the heroic thing, when they lit the purging fires. Kakzim and Elabon Escrissar had been cut from one cloth, and the Codeshites had earned their deaths as surely as the Nibenay mercenaries had earned theirs on the Quraite ramparts. Ruari's gut recalled the wounded prisoners, and as a whole, Ruari wasn't sure of anything except that he'd lost interest in heroes.
He'd have been happy to call it quits and return to Urik or, preferably, Quraite, but that wasn't going to happen. He and the priest had watched a lantern weave through the darkness at the start of the skirmish. They'd seen it disappear, and when the fighting was over they'd found a passage among the deep shadows. The wounded templars were heading home. The prisoners, their hands bound behind their backs with rope salvaged from the scaffolds, were headed for the obsidian pits. And Ruari was headed for Codesh, walking between Zvain and Mahtra, ahead of the templars and behind Pavek, the sergeant, and the priest.
They were on their way to meet another war bureau maniple. They were on their way to kill or capture Kakzim. Ruari should have been excited; instead he was nauseous— and grateful when Mahtra's cool hand wrapped around his.
The Codesh passage was much longer than the Urik passage. Caught in a grim, hopeless mood, the half-elf began to believe they were headed nowhere, that they were doomed to trudge through tight-fitting darkness forever. At last the moment came when he knew they were nearing Codesh, but it came with the faint scent of charred wood, charred meat, and brought no relief. Evidently, Ruari's companions caught the same aroma. Mahtra's grip on his hand became painful, forcing him to pull away, and Zvain whispered:
"He's burning Codesh to keep us away." The first words Ruari had heard his young friend say since they left the elven market.
"No one would do that," the priest countered.
"He'd poison an entire city," Pavek said, "and more than a city. A mere village wouldn't stop him. If it's Kakzim. We don't know anything, except that we smell something burning. It could be something else. We're late, I think, the other maniple could have finished our work for us. We won't know until we get there." Pavek might have left his shiny gold medallion behind, but he was a high templar, and when he spoke, calmly and simply, no one argued with him.
The sergeant organized them quickly into a living chain, then gave the order to extinguish the lanterns. Ruari, his staff slung over his back where it struck his head or heel at every step, fell in with the rest. It was slow-going through the dark, smoky passage, but with hands linked in front and behind there was no panic. Taller than those ahead of him and endowed with half-keen half-elf vision Ruari was the first to notice a brighter patch ahead and whispered as much to those around him. Ediyua called for a volunteer, and the first templar in the column went forward to investigate.
Ruari watched the templar's silhouette as he entered the faint light, then lost it when the man rounded the next bend in the passage. The volunteer shouted back to them that he could see an overhead opening, and screamed a heartbeat later. After giving them all an order to stay where they were, the sergeant drew her sword and crept forward. Mahtra, next in line behind Ruari, pulled her hand free for a moment, then gave it back to him. He heard several loud crunching sounds, as if she were chewing pebbles, and was about to tell her to be quiet when instead of a scream, the clash of weapons resounded through the tunnel.
Ediyua hadn't rounded the bend; Ruari could make out her silhouette and the silhouettes of her attackers, but it was someone else farther back in the column who shouted out the word, "Ambush!"
Panic filled the passage, thicker than the smoke. Discipline crumbled into pushing and shoving. Templars shouted, but no one shouted louder than Zvain:
"No! Mahtra, no!"
A tingling sensation passed from Mahtra's hand into Ruari's. It was power, though unlike anything he'd felt in his druidry. He surrendered to it, because he couldn't drive it out or fight it, and a peculiar numbness spiraled up from the hand Mahtra held. It ran across his shoulders, and down his other arm—into Pavek, all in the span of a single heartbeat. A second pulse, faster and stronger than the first, came a heartbeat later.
Time stood still in the darkness as power leapt out of every pore of Ruari's copper-colored skin. He felt a flash of lightning, without seeing it; felt a peal of thunder though his ears were deaf. He died, he was sure of that, and was reborn in panic.
"Cave-in!"
