He started off at a trot and they had no trouble following Tarch's trail. The devil was tearing a broad swath through the rhododendrons, angling up the slope toward the cliffs at the mouth of the basin. The slave master appeared to be carrying one daughter under each arm, as the stalkers never saw any tracks but his. Even so, he was moving so rapidly they never seemed to catch a glimpse of him.
After a quarter hour of running, they climbed out of the forest, emerging onto one of the talus fields that tumbled down from the basin walls. Tarch was nowhere in sight. It was impossible to follow his trail across the field of jumbled boulders, but there was no question about where he was going. A mile ahead loomed the Turquoise Cliff, its face pocked by the dark mouths of the Caves of Blue.
"Got to catch him before he gets into them caves again," huffed Yago.
The ogre bounded up the talus field at an ungainly sprint, quickly drawing away from his companions. Atreus followed as best he could. His weak leg began to ache from the exertion, but he clenched his teeth and hobbled up the mountain, inspired by his friend's example. Yago soon vanished behind a jumbled crest of stone. Tarch's silhouette appeared farther up the hill, running along a flat boulder with a beautiful Langdarma girl tucked under each arm.
For the next few minutes, the chase continued with Yago and Tarch vanishing and reappearing at odd intervals, the ogre steadily closing the distance as the devil drew nearer to the Caves of Blue. Rishi hung back for a while, then finally cursed Langdarma for rubbing off on him and danced up the hill ahead of Atreus. Atreus tried to match the Mar's pace, but found it impossible and resigned himself to watching the first part of the battle from below.
Yago was still twenty paces behind when Tarch reached the Turquoise Cliff and, tucking both girls under one arm, began to scurry up the rocky face as easily as a spider. Yago grabbed a melon-sized rock and hurled it on the run.
The stone caught Tarch square between the shoulder blades. The devil grunted loudly, let his captives tumble free, and pushed off the cliff. He spun around in mid-air and landed facing his attacker. The battle was on, with Atreus still a hundred paces down the slope.
The fury of Yago's assault belied his dread of facing Tarch again. The ogre stepped in swinging, bringing the scythe around in a two-handed sweep that caught the devil in his midsection and launched him across the slope. Tarch landed a half dozen paces away, clattered down between the boulders, and disappeared. For one long moment, Atreus dared to hope Yago had ended the battle with a single bloody stroke.
As the ogre stomped over to finish what he had started, a goat-sized boulder came flying up at him. He raised his scythe to block. The rock smashed through the wooden handle and caught him full in the chest, bowling him over backward. He came down hard, a sharp crack echoing off the cliff as his head struck the flat of a stone.
Tarch clambered into view and staggered toward his groaning foe, a flap of scaly hide dangling from the gruesome wound in his side. Rishi was a dozen paces behind the devil, creeping across the boulder pile as silently as a cloud. Atreus wanted to shout at him to hurry but did not dare. The Mar's only advantage was surprise.
Tarch stopped a pace shy of the groaning ogre and lifted a hand, preparing to incinerate him. Atreus opened his* mouth to shout. In the same instant Rishi braced himself and flung his net, wrapping the devil's arm in a mesh of coarse rope.
Rishi gave the draw line a terrific jerk and leaped down behind a boulder. Tarch was spun around, his hand spraying a crescent of flame across the talus field.
"Filthy Mar!" The devil shook his arm free of the net's charred remains, then started toward Rishi's hiding place. "That's the last time you skrag me!"
"Then it's…" Yago paused, drawing in a breath so deep Atreus heard it fifteen paces away,"… my turn!"
The ogre sat up, heaving the boulder on his chest toward Tarch. The devil brought his arm up and spun around, but the stone's momentum blasted through the block and sent him tumbling headfirst down into the talus.
Yago was up in an instant, flinging himself across the jumbled stones with scythe in hand. A scaly hand emerged from between the boulders. The ogre stopped short, twisting aside just as a long gout of orange flame shot past.
Then Atreus was there, climbing over the talus from the opposite side, holding the kettle lid in front of him like a shield. Tarch lay down in a hollow between three boulders, one leg trapped under the heavy stone he and Yago had been hurling back and forth, struggling to twist around so he could bring his crackling flames to bear on the ogre. Though his side lay flayed open from sternum to spine, his scaly face betrayed nothing but anger. Atreus leaped down, turning the iron lid flat and lowering it over the devil's hand.
The flame stream reversed itself and roared back into the hollow and billowed up in a huge, orange halo. The acrid smell of scorched leather filled the air. Tarch howled in anguish. Atreus dropped the lid and leaped away, one arm raised to protect his face from the searing heat.
The roar died as abruptly as it had begun, as Tarch started to rise from his fiery grave.
Atreus jumped down to meet him, wielding his axe with both hands. Tarch, now a withered and blackened thing that seemed nothing but scorched claw and charred fang, lashed out with both claws. Atreus slipped the first attack and caught the second on his axe head, then brought the sharp blade around and buried it deep in the devil's shoulder.
Tarch bellowed and brought his uninjured arm up to unleash another of his conflagrations. Yago's scythe arced down from above, severing the scaly hand at the wrist. A gummy syrup of fire oozed from the stump, rolling back down the devil's arm and engulfing it in flame.
Tarch's blazing arm went limp and fell back toward his scorched chest. Atreus and Yago were on him with their flashing blades, hewing and chopping and slicing until the battered devil finally stopped struggling and lay in his hole charred and bleeding, barely conscious and clinging to life only by the thinnest strand of wicked will.
Atreus stepped over next to Tarch's mangled head and raised his axe, preparing to finish the battle. The devil glared up at him out of one blood-shot eye, his vicious stare expressing the hatred his tongue was too weak to speak. Atreus bent his knees, gathering the strength he would need to chop through the tough sinews and thick bone of Tarch's neck. Then a pair of small voices gasped from the edge of the hollow.
He looked up to see Tarch's kidnap victims standing on a boulder above him, staring down at him with two pairs of horrified brown eyes. They were as beautiful as all the children of Langdarma, and in their puzzled expressions he saw both the innocence and the peaceful repose that had first attracted him to Seema.
Rishi rushed up from behind the two girls. "What are you doing?" he said. "This is not for the eyes of little girls."
The Mar pulled the girls back from the edge of the hollow, but Atreus could not bring the axe down. Instead, he motioned Yago to his side.
"The Sannyasi should be here soon." Atreus handed the axe to the ogre. "Until then, you're in charge."
The ogre frowned, then glanced in the direction of the retreating girls and seemed to understand. He hefted the axe over Tarch's throat, sneering down at his prisoner.
"I doubt you can move," he said. "But just so you know, I'd enjoy taking your head off if you try."
CHAPTER 15
By the time Seema arrived at the Turquoise Cliffs, all the streams in the basin had turned the color of blood. The stain was creeping down into the main valley, lacing its way through the trees as though some huge spider was spinning a scarlet web over Langdarma itself. Atreus could see by the alarm in Seema's eyes that such a thing had never before happened, and that she blamed herself for this horror. Had she known what would come of bringing strangers into paradise, he wondered if she would still have saved his life.