The next morning saw them up at dawn and out of the forest by lunchtime. They stopped on the edge of the forest, ate the last of their provisions, and drank the last of their water according to the ritual. The only things they were allowed to bring back were in Chainer's head. With only a few hours of daylight left, they hiked into the deserted remains of what appeared to be a large Order camp. Kamahl scanned the vast plain that stretched out before him. "Chainer," he said carefully, "do you see an army? Where would a thousand Order troops go all at once?"
"Crusat," Chainer's stomach went cold with hate. "They were massing for a huge raid on the Cabal City pits." He grabbed Kamahl's arm. "We've got to get back there."
Kamahl was looking down the road at the Order's stable. "The Order always brings more steeds than it needs. Can you ride, Cabalist?" "I rode a hellhound once, I can damn sure handle whatever those toy soldiers sit on."
Kamahl grunted. "Good. Wait here, I'll go get us some transport." He paused, then added, "Provided you don't want to whip us up a pair of three-headed horses that breathe fire, or anything."
Chainer felt an unaccountable sting of insult. He smiled, however, and said, "Don't know if I'm up to a precise-creature casting right now. And in general, my monsters don't want to be ridden, and we don't want to ride them." "Order steeds it is, then."
Kamahl was able to appropriate two strong chargers from the Order stables without interference. There were minimal guards on duty and plenty of animals to choose from. Two things were obvious to Kamahl. First, the Order had taken from the Krosan forest a hundred times what he and Chainer had. Second, wherever the troopers had gone, they had gone there on foot.
Both Order horses were white, of course. Kamahl muttered an angry spell and then singed a hand print into his mount's flank. Chainer tied three of his snake rattles into the other horse's mane, then they rode east all night long without stopping. They were good horses, fast and strong. As the first rays of sunlight revealed the skull-image of Cabal City's huge arena and the spires of the First's manor, the chargers were sweaty and foaming and beginning to stumble, and both men brought their horses to a slow trot.
"Do you see that, Chainer?" Kamahl asked. Chainer had excellent night vision, but he knew Kamahl's was even sharper.
"All I see is the skyline. And… a crowd of people at the gates. Are those arrows?"
Kamahl drew his sword. Most swords Chainer was familiar with came out of their scabbards with a crisp rasp of metal on metal. Kamahl's, however, came out with a long, protracted hiss that lingered in the air like a threat. The huge weapon looked somehow right at home in Kamahl's fist, though the sword was almost longer than its wielder.
"The Order is attacking your city," Kamahl said. "I have a problem with that. Care to join me in solving this problem?"
"Oh yes," Chainer's voice was cold. "Yes I certainly would." He shook the rattles in the mane before him. "Will they get us there?"
"They'll last at least that long." Kamahl lifted his feet to dig his heels into his mount, but Chainer took him by the shoulder and called him by name.
"What?" the barbarian growled. "The fight's started without us." "Thank you," Chainer said. He looked back toward the woods, at the battle unfolding in the distance, and finally at Kamahl's drawn sword. "Thank you for everything." Kamahl smiled for the first time in days. "Thank me after we clean house," he said, and spurred his charger forward, into the fray.
Their horses carried them as far as the main gates. There, Chainer and Kamahl dismounted. The barbarian charged forward to join the melee at the gates, where the crusat raiders were most numerous. He saluted Chainer before rushing off. Chainer himself needed to get inside, to rejoin his fellow Cabalists and determine where he could do the most good. He followed the walls of the city around to the south, where the secret tunnels were.
Cabal City was a city of over fifty thousand, but it seemed even more crowded with the entire population and over a thousand armed invaders on the streets. Chainer realized the battle at the front gate was mostly a distraction. The Order had attacked all three gates, not just the one to the east, and they were already running rampant through the city. The crusat troopers were not cutting down civilians in the street, but they were fairly trampling anything that stood between them and the Cabal strongholds at the center of the city.
Chainer had never been to war before, but he soon got the hang of it. The trick, he realized, is to treat the entire situation like a huge pit match in which you and your team were vastly outnumbered. As long as you hit what you aimed at, there was no shortage of targets. As long as you kept moving, there was no way for you to get pinned down. Also, the Order troops were focused on storming the arena, and none of them stopped to fight Chainer unless he physically blocked their progress.
After breaking a few bones and knocking a few invaders down, Chainer simply joined the headlong rush toward the arena. Cabal City's citizens were rushing there for sanctuary, or to escape via the docks, and the crusat was rushing there to bum it, or loot it, or whatever it was that righteous armies did. Chainer was headed straight for the Mirari, to defend it as he had once before. Only now, he was a full-fledged dementist instead of a pupil.
There was another crush outside of the arena as soldiers tried to get in and the door guards tried to keep them out. A few armed Cabalists grappled with sword-bearing soldiers. Chainer planted his feet, positioned his hands, and reached deep into dementia space. His hands flashed, and a carriage-sized wad of smoke and indiscriminate flesh arced high up on the arena's exterior wall, where it burst open like a balloon packed with splintered glass.
The wolf-monkeys that came out were even larger than their Krosan counterparts, and each had a small poisonous snake in place of its tongue. There were an even dozen in all, and twelve individual chains arced from the collars around their necks to Chainer's open hands. At first, the nightmare mandrills tried to attack anything that moved, but Chainer punished them with searing agony every time they snapped at a Cabalist. They quickly realized which part of the crowd was fair game, and the screams of monkeys mingled with the screams of the dismembered soldiers. Chainer even released two or three of them from theit collars, and they redoubled their efforts to rip the invaders to pieces.
Chainer darted through the momentarily unblocked entrance. A hook-handed door guard touched his weapon to his forehead in acknowledgment as Chainer rushed past. Before he turned the comer, Chainer physically and mentally pulled all of his wolf- monkeys in and rechained them all to the stone doorway. Now anyone who wanted to get in would have to get past the howling troop. Anyone who made it past them would either be Cabal or be disemboweled. Chainer sprinted toward the vault hallway.
He turned a corner and came face-to-face with a trio of troopers fighting a pitched battle against a huge, black hellhound and a four-armed cyclops, the hulking result of another dementia caster's efforts. The dog had clamped on to the end of one trooper's sword, while the other two jabbed at the cyclops with their spears.
"Chainer!" Fulla cried, stepping out from behind the cyclops. One of the Order soldiers struck at her, and she angrily turned and cast a snarling red-eyed rat into the man's face. He fell back screaming.
"Fulla." Chainer cracked a chain across the sword-bearing trooper's face. As the trooper recoiled, the hellhound tore out her throat. The big dog turned and barked once at Chainer, exasperated.
"Hello, Azza," he said. Chainer, Azza, Fulla, and the cyclops all closed in on the remaining trooper.