"Your father will come around, Verminaard," Aglaca soothed. "He's wounded over the loss of Osman, but he'll see soon enough that your act was courageous, that you were only trying to help me out."
Verminaard winced at this new needling but kept silent, his eyes fixed on the path in front of them. Once, maybe twice, Aglaca thought that his companion was ready to speak, but each time the other lad shook his head and sank back into a gloomy quiet.
They passed over a stone bridge, wider by far than Dreed, where the horses walked three abreast and the riders, forced to dismount and lead the animals, trudged over the causeway of rock and gravel, exchanging muted conversation and stories about Osman's bravery.
"What's this bridge called, Verminaard?" Aglaca asked.
"Bandit's Bone" came the answer, muttered and clipped.
"Is there some burial ground here?"
Verminaard was about to loose a tirade upon Aglaca, to berate him for his pride and smugness and self-righteous, bloody-minded ways, when suddenly the air bristled with arrows. Rising from the rocks on the far side of the bridge ahead, a dozen archers aimed, fired, and reloaded as the rider at the front of Daeghrefn's column toppled over the bridge and into the gorge, the black shaft of a Nerakan arrow run through his back.
"Nerakans!" Daeghrefn roared. "Ambush!"
From the rocks behind them came a second group of bandits, also armed with bows, and instantly another deluge of arrows poured down on Daeghrefn's party. The relentless barrage eclipsed the midday sun, and the warriors on the rock bridge milled in confusion, while men before and behind Verminaard toppled into the gorge, some shot through several times.
Daeghrefn whirled in the saddle and shouted orders to his men. Verminaard strained to hear his father through the strange, aggressive yells of the Nerakan archers as they launched volley after volley upon the trapped hunters. But then the lad's eyes brought him the news as all the men turned their shields toward the far
Chapter 5
side of the bridge and, risking the arrows that whined and clattered on the stones behind them, lurched angrily toward the homeward side of the gorge like a long, armored serpent.
Slowly they moved toward the bandits, toward the ragged men who now discarded their bows and drew forth long knives and rusty maces. When Verminaard reached solid ground, there were ten of his party ahead, swords locked with their Nerakan adversaries, and the drift of battle was already shifting toward Daeghrefn, toward the commander of Castle Nidus.
Verminaard looked behind him. Aglaca leapt off the stone bridge and found safer footing, but past him lay a sprawl of bodies. A dozen of Daeghrefn's men slumped, dead or dying, on the stone bridge, and three more had fallen into the gorge. Fifteen in all, a dreadful blow to the castle garrison.
Ahead of the young men, the Nerakans made another vicious assault. Crouching and sidling like maniacal crabs, they would have been ludicrous if it hadn't been for their long knives, sharp and glittering. Daeghrefn's men backed unsteadily to the bridge, their shields raised again and their swords waving fruitlessly. Another man fell to Nerakan knives-Edred, it was, and he called out only once as the bandits swarmed over him. Soon the whole party, from Daeghrefn down to Verminaard and Aglaca, were huddled together behind their horses at the edge of the gorge, their feet slipping in rubble, their swords held narrowly before them. They braced themselves against the Nerakans, who regrouped not twenty feet from their makeshift lines, preparing for yet another charge.
Cramped against Aglaca on one side, with Robert on the other, Verminaard looked over his shoulder, past the huddle of horses to the bridge. There, amid the cluttered corpses, the first Nerakan archers had set foot on the rocky span.
Far behind them, on the other side of the chasm, a girlish form burst forth from the rocks, galloping on a roan mare, chased by two mounted bandits. Hooded and slight, her red robes kirtled around her thighs, she seemed diminished, almost elflike before her two hulking pursuers.
On her right leg was a prisoner's tattoo, the hand-sized silhouette of a dragon's black head.
The girl raised her hands toward the battle, and Verminaard noticed the ropes that bound her wrists together.
A captive, he thought. And a lovely one. She is blond and fair, I'm sure…
What am I thinking of, here at sword's point? He shook his head to fling loose the distracting thoughts as the men around him stumbled forward. Overtaken by the bandits, the girl and her horse moved into the rocks. When Verminaard looked back, she was gone.
Finally the bandits had taken account of numbers. They were turning, retreating before Daeghrefn's superior forces, and the Lord of Nidus's troops were driving them, pressing in with their swords and shouting the names of the fallen.
Over the rocks and the gravel they chased the Nerakans, leaving the bridge, rushing up the mountain pass until the bandits vanished among the branching paths and the crags of the towering cliff face.
Just ahead of Verminaard and Aglaca, drawing his sword and casting his bulky shield aside, old Robert shouted and redoubled his pursuit of a scraggly, bearded Nerakan, who ducked into a tight passage and vanished.
"Follow me!" the seneschal cried, and when Aglaca hesitated, the veteran turned and scowled at him comically.
"After me, Lord Aglaca!" Robert rumbled. "Lest that sword of yours is good only for slicing beetles in the garden!"
Recklessly the old man pivoted and lurched after the retreating Nerakan, and Verminaard and Aglaca, soon lost amid the maze of rock and rubble, followed.
Verminaard's thoughts outpaced his feet, and he fell behind. The girl… I should have rescued her, burst back over the bridge like a questing knight. I could have found the way amid the archers and carried her off from her captors. She would have…
He blinked stupidly. It was the Voice that spoke to him now, entirely enmeshed with his own thoughts. Ahead, Robert turned, slipped between two narrow rocks…
And immediately there came an outcry, the sound of too many voices. Instead of one Nerakan, there were three.
Bursting through the narrow passage after Aglaca, Verminaard saw the old seneschal hemmed in by a pair of bandits. One had forced him against a black rock face, while another, dagger in hand, had scrambled into the rocks above. He was coiled like an adder, waiting his chance to strike. The third, crouched not ten feet away, produced a poniard from a long sleeve and drew back to throw it.
With a ringing cry, Aglaca sprang toward the rocks, his feet and short sword whirling. The perched Nerakan started, lost his footing as he clutched vainly for the rock face, and fell, breaking his neck. Aglaca's small sword broke the arcing poniard in midair, and he was on its owner in an instant. Verminaard circled the struggling pair, sword at the ready but somehow locked out of the combat. Robert took the second man down with a neat cut to his hamstring.
Aglaca wrestled gamely with the bandit, who was far larger and stronger. The Solamnic couldn't get leverage to use his sword. All the while, the dark Voice continued to Stir Verminaard's deepest imagining…
Let them be. What if the bandit wins? Surely Laca would do nothing to Abelaard if his son met with… an accident of battle. And Aglaca brought it on himself with his arrogant refusal to cast the ceremonial spear…
Verminaard stopped, the sword tilted uncertainly in his hand. The bandit rolled free, braced his back against the obsidian rock face, and, setting his feet to Aglaca's chest, launched the lad into the air with a compact, powerful push of his legs.
Aglaca rattled against the far wall of the passage, his sword loosed and clattering across the rock floor. Stunned by the blow, he groped vainly for the long knife at his belt. The bellowing Nerakan leapt to his feet, skidding crazily over gravel, and sprang toward the Solamnic lad, another glinting poniard seeking his throat.