One showed himself, immediately, to be more skilled. Duwan concentrated on that one, while holding off the other with his parrying shortsword. This one had a dangerous straight lunge that followed a feint with the shortsword, and Duwan was forced backward as metal clashed on metal. He gained a new respect for the Enemy. He knew that he was going to be hard pressed, for the pass was opening, and soon the last two could pin him between them. He had to make a move. He lunged and parried and spun away from the more skilled swordsman and in his spinning sent his longsword hissing horizontally to decapitate the lesser of his two enemies, continued the whirling spin just in time to parry a lunge with his shortsword. Then he gained ground, looked upon his foe with his orange eyes full of fire.
"Come," he said, "come to me, Enemy."
"Who are you?" the other gasped.
"Your death," Duwan said, leaping, feeling a great shock in his right hand as his mighty blow was parried, but with quick, instinctive movement, half falling, thrusting his shortsword to its hilt into his opponent's stomach. He narrowly avoided a downswing of the fighter's dying, last stroke, and then all was quiet.
"Duwan, behind you," he heard Jai scream, and he spun, bringing up both swords to the ready, to see so many others that, at first, his heart quailed, then rallied as he lifted both his swords high.
"Du," he roared, using his full voice. The sound echoed and reechoed from the hillsides. "Du, be with me."
"Peace, warrior," a male cried, holding up both of his hands, empty.
"Peace."
Duwan's chest was heaving. His orange eyes lanced fire.
"We are not the Enemy, warrior," the man said, his hands still exposed in a plea for friendship. "Who kills the Devourer is not our enemy." Duwan panted, his eyes took in the ragged, scarecrow ranks of the males who faced him, more than twenty of them, crude bows on their shoulders and, in some cases, in hand, but no arrows pointed toward him.
"Who are you, warrior?" the spokesman asked.
He was full of elation, his heart still pounding with the heady joy of the fight. They had called him warrior, and warrior he was. In the back of his mind he called out to his trainer, to Belran the Leader, a great, unspoken shout of thanks, and then, because he, at last, had discovered the reason for all those long, long hours of drudgery in training, he lifted his face to catch the last red rays of a sinking Du and roared, "Duwan! Duwan! I am Duwan the Drinker."
His roar echoed, became a loud, slowly diminishing growl of sound that reverberated, then sank into a murmur and then silence.
A small, emaciated male stepped forth from the ranks of the newcomers, fell to his knees.
"Lord," he said. "Master."
And then, one by one, the others followed suit.
Chapter Seven
The ragged, emaciated group of males shifted uneasily in the face of Duwan's triumphant roar. Only one stood, a bit taller than the others, thin but with stringy, powerful muscles in his arms and legs. When the others fell to their knees he was the last to kneel, and even then his face was up, his dull gray eyes wide.
"Rise," Duwan ordered. "There is no need to kneel to me." The tall one rose, stepped forward. "Master, we wish no harm to you, nor to anyone."
The newcomers had no weapons other than the obviously inferior bows.
"Who are you?" Duwan asked.
"We are free runners. I am Tambol, called The Hunter, for the accuracy and strength of my bow."
"Let me see the bottom of your foot." Duwan said, stepping closer, both hands still filled with his bloodied weapons.
Tambol did not look surprised. He stood on one leg and lifted his left foot. Duwan saw the telltale pores. "Are the others like this?"
"How, Lord?"
"With the small, dark pores, thus," Duwan said, brushing the sole of Tambol's foot with the tip of his longsword.
"I—I—don't know," Tambol said.
"Have them sit upon the ground and lift their feet," Duwan ordered, and it was done, and he saw the pores on all and then stood, facing them.
"You have escaped the slave pens of the enemy?"
"Only a few living have," Tambol answered. "Most are sons of those who escaped long ago."
"Are you many?" Duwan asked.
"No, not many, Master," Tambol said.
"And do you kill the Enemy?"
Tambol shivered. "No, Master. In fact, we must run from this place, but first we must bury the masters, and their sniffers, hoping that they will never be found, for to kill a master brings the army of Farko. This has not happened in my lifetime, but once it did, and only a few free runners survived."
Duwan looked thoughtfully at the sky. Du was nearing the midpoint.
"Do it, then," he said. He walked to the slope and called up to Jai, who descended nervously. The runners were busying themselves in digging. Tambol, seeing Jai, came hurrying to bow before Duwan and cast suspicious glances at the female.
"This is a pong female, Master," Tambol said.
"This is a Drinker female," Duwan said.
"She was being chased by the masters with sniffers," Tambol said. "We are in great danger. We must run, and we will have to abandon our homes to flee farther into the west."
"I escaped long ago," Jai said. "Those whom my master killed were not chasing me, but him."
"Master," Tambol said, "I know not who you are. Now I think you are Devourer, and again not. You are mighty, and I beg your mercy. There are those among us who fear that you are a pong-catcher, and that your actions are designed to trick us, to influence us to lead you to our homes so that all free runners may be taken to be peeled on the stakes of Farko."
"He came from the earth," Jai said, "as in the prophesy of old." Tambol's eyes widened.
"It is true," Jai said. "For as he grew from the earth like a divine flower I guarded him, and even kept him from being devoured by a farl. Is this not true, master?"
Duwan hid a smile. "It is true."
Tambol bowed low. As the digging to hide the bodies of the Devourers had begun, he had received much whispered advice. "We must kill him," he'd been told. "Obviously he is a Devourer," another had said. "That he has not killed us means nothing. He waits to ensnare all, our females, our young."
"And who will face one who can kill four masters with such ease?" Tambol had asked.
"All will leap upon him at once," someone said.
"And many will die," Tambol had said.
Now the bodies were buried, branches had been used to erase tracks and the signs of struggle, and the free runners were moving uneasily toward the point where Duwan and Jai faced Tambol. Tambol turned to face his fellows. "We will run swiftly now," he said, "to put distance between us and this place of death."
Duwan and Jai found it easy to keep the pace set by Tambol. Behind them, however, the weaker members began to straggle, so that when Tambol called a halt, in a hidden valley where there was water, it took some time for all twenty of the free runners to join the main group.
"Now I will speak to you," Duwan said, standing on a rock beside the stream. "You need not fear me. I am Drinker, and I come from far to the north. There we, too, are free. I am not of the Enemy." He lifted one foot.
"Look. See the small, black pores that mark the Drinker, then examine your own feet. We are of a blood, you and I. There are secrets I will tell you, secrets hidden from you by your masters, the Enemy. Listen to me, and hear me with an open mind, and you will no longer be hungry. Listen to me and it may be that in the future we, the Drinkers, will fight side by side with the free runners to take back this Land of Many Brothers that was once ours."
"Madness," someone muttered.
"I have learned much about you in this short time," Duwan said,