With a sweeping gesture to silence his men, he said, “Throw down your weapons, people of Arku-peli!”
“I want guarantees first,” Amero told him, over renewed raider cheers. “You must protect my people from the ogres.”
“I guarantee nothing. Ungrah-de expects certain rewards in exchange for his help. I can’t go back on my agreement with him.”
Amero’s disgust was evident. “How can you treat with ogres? You know what they are, what they’ll do!”
Zannian drew his bronze elven sword, holding it up to let the bright sunshine flash off the naked blade. “A warrior uses whatever weapon he can to win. The ogres are just weapons.”
“You can’t believe that! What’s to stop them from returning to their country and bringing back more of their kind? Will you be strong enough afterward to resist an attack by a horde of ogres? You must know the ancient tales—how their kind enslaved all of humanity, and scores of our people died seeking freedom. It’s said they devour their enemies!”
His words struck home, at least among Zannian’s men. None of them had been happy to find ogres in their midst, allies or not. Amero’s words reinforced their fears.
They could be heard muttering among themselves. Their leader glared at them.
“No more talk!” Zannian shouted. “And no guarantees. Surrender or die!”
“That’s no choice,” Amero replied. “To surrender is to die.”
“Very well.” Zannian walked confidently back to his waiting warriors. He donned his skull-mask again and, whipping a hand over his head, signaled the attack to resume.
There followed an eternal interval of bloody struggle, a seemingly endless clash over possession of the last barricade. Dismounted raiders climbed the apple trees to bolster Zannian’s assault while those on horseback peppered the villagers with thrown spears. The defenders dwindled. Soon Amero and Lyopi had only a handful of wounded comrades around them.
More horns blared out in the valley. Amero felt his heart shrivel with despair. Were even more raiders coming to trample them into the dust? Where did Zannian get his endless supply of men?
Packed shoulder to shoulder, the raiders pushed and heaved harder at the barricade. Afraid of being trapped when everything fell, Lyopi grabbed Amero by the collar and dragged him to the ramp. Grunting in unison, the raiders as one slammed against the tottering barrier.
The horns sounded again, closer. Lyopi pushed sweat-drenched hair from her face and peered out over the wall. Columns of horsemen filled the eastern valley. She felt numb as she watched them charging down from Cedarsplit Gap. Numb and hopeless. It was all over now.
What was this? She blinked suddenly, not crediting the evidence of her eyes.
Were the horsemen fighting each other?
She shook the dazed Arkuden. “Look, Amero!” she cried. “Look!”
He forced himself to follow her pointing hand. A mass of riders, most on tall, light-colored horses, were pouring into the valley. The mid-afternoon sun showed their faces were clean of paint, and many wore bright bronze on their heads. With sword and spear and ringing cries they attacked the mounted raiders already pressed against the walls of Yala-tene. To his confusion and shock, Amero saw many of Zannian’s men fall from their horses as though clubbed, yet no enemy was close enough to strike them. What spirit power was at work here?
Then the barricade came down with a crash, and Amero, Lyopi, and the surviving villagers were forced to concentrate on the battle closer to home. They braced themselves for a final onslaught.
It never came. A few intrepid raiders leaped over the ruined barrier, now a heap of rubble, but the majority hung back, shouting and pointing at the battle raging beneath them. One by one they abandoned the wall, streaming across the baffle to the tree-ladders. Amero saw Zannian himself urging his men away from Yala-tene and back to their tethered horses.
“By all our ancestors,” Lyopi said, sinking to her knees, tears glistening in her hollow, dark eyes. “We are saved!”
“But who can it be?” murmured a battered man behind her.
“Spirits, elves... I cannot tell, and I do not care,” she said weakly, then slumped to the parapet, unconscious.
Though equally exhausted, his wounded leg throbbing with every beat of his heart, Amero flung his arms wide and shouted, “No, not spirits! Not elves! Nomads! They’re nomads! Nianki’s band has come at last!”
From the moment he’d risen, Hoten knew the day was an ill-omened one. Raider dead, slain in the previous day’s battle, lay in heaps outside the camp. Though it was a grim sight, he’d seen much death since joining Zannian’s band. It was the eerie silence hanging over everything that had halted him in his tracks. Crows and vultures should have been circling, but the sky above was as empty of scavengers as it was of clouds. It was as though nature itself was rejecting the dead, and this troubled Hoten deeply. Such a thing had never happened. Never, until the ogres came.
After washing himself in the river, Hoten had awakened his mate and found her different this morning. Nacris came to life unusually animated. She told him of a wager the men had going, on whether it would be Zan or the ogres who entered Arku-peli first. Though betting favored Ungrah-de, Nacris wagered on her son.
“Losing faith in your allies?” Hoten asked, helping her rise and placing the crutch in her hand.
“Gaining faith in myself,” she replied. “I will lead my Jade Men to Arku-peli today. With them as his spearhead, Zan will prevail.”
“But Zannian commanded the Jade Men to remain in camp.”
“A stupid order. I shall lead them to victory!”
All the remaining raiders were summoned to Zannian a short time later. Hoten lingered at the rear of the formation, watching Nacris in her litter and the Jade Men surrounding her. Though Zannian offered him command of this attack, Hoten let the fiery young captains lead the morning’s assault. Shouting war cries, they galloped off to the north baffle to help storm the fading village defenses.
Still Hoten hung back. Nacris did not follow the horsemen when they turned toward the town. She led her twenty-two surviving Jade Men into the center of the valley and halted, facing the rising sun.
Hoten cantered to her. “What are you doing?” he called. “The battle is there. Why have you stopped out here?” Nacris’s lean, lined face was alight with rapturous excitement. Her normally cold, flinty eyes glowed with a strange happiness. She looked years younger. It was astonishing how the emotion transformed her, yet the sight only added to Hoten’s feeling of nameless worry.
“She’s coming,” his mate said. “She’s coming, and I’ll be here to greet her.”
“Who’s coming? Nacris, what are you talking about?”
She looked up at him with shining eyes. “Karada.”
“Karada’s dead and gone, like her brother,” he said with a disgusted snort. Then, in spite of himself, he asked, “What makes you think she’s coming?”
“I feel it. Here.” The crippled old woman pressed a fist to her heart. “All night I dreamed I could hear the hoof-beats of Karada’s band, riding and riding. When I awoke I could still hear them. I know it is true, Hoten. The Great Spirits have granted me this boon. This is the day I will see Karada again, and one of us is fated to perish!”
He couldn’t tell if she was mad or inspired. In either case, Hoten felt he was losing the woman he loved. He palmed the sweat from his blistered brow and made one last attempt to reach her.
“If what you say is true, then you shouldn’t be standing out here, alone. Karada always led a band of superb warriors. If she comes, you and the Jade Men will be trampled into the dirt.”
Nacris drew a light javelin from a socket in the frame of her litter. She laid the weapon across her lap. In the same strange, lilting voice, she replied, “We will fight and we will win. The spirits are with me. Haven’t you understood this? Everything that has happened in my life has been done so to bring me here! You don’t believe me?