By the time the small company stepped off the bridge, the sentries scattered along the butte were rushing toward them. Faenaeyon took the spear from Magnus’s hand and sent it sailing into the chest of the nearest guard, while Huyar threw his at the one approaching from the opposite direction. Seeing that the elves now had nothing but daggers, the next men in line drew obsidian short swords and rushed forward.
“Cast your spell,” ordered Faenaeyon.
“I’ll cast a spell,” Sadira said, taking a small disk of wood from her satchel.
Faenaeyon ignored her and pulled the dagger he had taken earlier from Huyar. As the chief prepared to meet the first sentry, Rhayn gave her own dagger to Huyar, then took a shard of kank shell from her satchel and began preparations for her own spell.
Sadira went to the wall and peered over the edge. She found herself looking out over endless acres of silver sandgrass, mottled with boulder-sized clumps of rock-holly. In the distance, laboring under the lash of a single half-giant overseer, a dozen slaves were using buckets to irrigate the king’s field.
As the sorceress summoned the energy for her spell, the first of the sentries arrived and attacked. Faenaeyon killed his almost effortlessly, dodging a clumsy thrust, then twisting the sword from the guard’s hand and slicing the man open with his own blade. Huyar had more trouble, dropping his dagger when he was slashed across the forearm, and Magnus finally had to intervene by knocking the sentry from the cliff.
Sadira held her disk over the edge of the wall and uttered her incantation. The wooden circle rose from her hand and hovered in midair, then slowly began to expand.
“What’s that?” demanded Faenaeyon.
“It’s how we’ll get off the wall,” Sadira explained.
A bowstring hummed and an arrow ticked into Magnus’s thick hide. The windsinger cried out in pain, but positioned himself where he would serve as shield for the others.
“Cast the other spell,” Faenaeyon ordered.
“I told you I wouldn’t,” Sadira said, using one hand to keep her disk from drifting away as it continued to expand. “This is more dangerous, but it’ll have to do.”
On the side that Magnus was not protecting, a sentry knelt and fired an arrow at the group. The shaft clattered off the stones near Sadira’s head, and the sorceress could see that several more guards were coming up to join the attacker.
Rhayn chose that moment to cast her spell, tossing her kank shell into the air. The shard disappeared and was replaced by a full carapace. Huyar immediately grabbed it and used it to shield the group. To both sides of them, sentries cursed, then put their bows aside and rushed foward to attack hand-to-hand.
“I think it’s large enough,” Sadira said, motioning Faenaeyon onto the disk. It was now the size of a large table. “Get on.”
The chief glowered, but did as ordered. Rhayn and Sadira followed next, then Huyar discarded the kank shell and joined them. Magnus came last, again positioning, his arrow-flecked bulk between the others and the attacking sentries. He shoved the disk away from the wall, then raised his voice in song. Within moments, a powerful wind rose, carrying the company over the king’s lush fields and out into the wastes of the Athasian desert.
FOURTEEN
A NEW CHIEF
In a dirt circle that the children had carefully cleared of rocks, two elven warriors stood with their shoulders pressed together and one arm locked over the back of the other’s neck. They had coated their bodies with tangy oil squeezed from fresh yara buds, shaved the hair from their heads, and stripped down to their breechcloths, Both women breathed hard, the powerful muscles of their long legs bulging with effort as they struggled to keep their feet.
The rest of the tribe stood outside the ring. The adults cheered for the warrior upon which they had wagered, while the children mimicked the contest by wrestling each other on the rocky ground. Magnus lay on his stomach at the far end of the ring. His pockmarked back was covered with a foul-smelling balm, which the elves claimed would relieve the sting of the many arrow wounds he suffered that morning. Judging from the vacant look on his face and the gray tone of his eyes, it had accomplished its task mainly by putting him into a slumber.
Faenaeyon sat atop a boulder near Magnus, a huge flask of broy in his hand. His face was contorted into a scowl, with an angry silver light burning deep within sunken, glazed eyes. He gnawed constantly at his fingernails, hardly seeming to notice as he ripped away strips of cuticle.
As Sadira watched her father, the taller of the two wrestlers slipped her free arm around her opponent’s waist and spun in beneath the other’s shoulders. “Good, Katza!” yelled Huyar, along with dozens of other tribe members. “Finish it!”
Katza, a woman with a heavily lined face and the tip of one pointed ear missing, pulled her opponent onto her back. She spun her shoulders around to finish the throw, hurling the other woman headlong toward the ground. The defender, who was a head shorter than her opponent and half again as stocky, thrust out her arms to break the fall. For a moment, it appeared she would tumble onto her back. Then, at the last instant, she brought her feet down and sprang away in a cartwheel. Landing just inside the circle, the wrestler spun around and fixed a black-eyed glower on her rival.
“Yes, Grissi!” cheered Rhayn. “Toss that kank-riding trollop into the bushes!”
Katza cast an angry glance in Rhayn’s direction. Calling a full-blooded elf a kank-rider was a terrible insult, as it implied she was not fast enough to keep up with the tribe on foot. “You’re next, tul’k kisser!” growled the wrestler.
“How you going to wrestle with a broken leg?” demanded Grissi, moving forward.
Although Faenaeyon had called the wrestling tournament to celebrate the escape from Nibenay, the tribe hardly seemed in a festive mood. If the chief had expected the contests to bring his warriors closer together, he had been miserably wrong. So far, every match had deteriorated into a rivalry between Rhayn and Huyar, with their supporters taking sides behind them. The rest of the tribe wagered more on which group would win the day than on the wrestlers themselves.
As Grissi neared the center of the ring, Katza slipped to the side and snapped her leg out in a vicious kick. The blow caught the shorter elf in the face, with the big toe striking the eyeball itself. Grissi’s knees buckled and she reached for her eye, barely managing to keep her feet. The entire crowd gasped in astonishment. Even Faenaeyon winced, but no one cried foul.
Katza moved forward with a smug expression, reaching out to grasp her reeling opponent’s arm. Grissi let her have it, apparently concentrating all her efforts on retaining her feet. The lop-eared elf pulled her stunned opponent toward her, preparing to deliver the final throw.
Just then, Grissi came alive. She retracted the arm that Katza had seized, pulling her astonished attacker along with it. Then she smashed her forehead into the bridge of Katza’s nose. The cartilage shattered with a resonant crack and blood erupted from both nostrils.
As Katza reached up to cover her face, Grissi grabbed her around the neck with one arm and squatted down to slip the other between her opponent’s thighs. She pulled Katza’s body onto her shoulders, then, in one swift motion, she stood up and catapulted the lop-ear elf out of the circle. Five of Huyar’s supporters barely managed to leap aside as Katza sailed past and crashed into a rock pile.
“I win,” Grissi growled, not bothering to see if her opponent would be capable of returning to her feet. Her eye was bloodshot and rimmed with red, but it seemed to have survived intact. “Who’s next?”
A young elf standing next to Huyar to began to strip. “Your tricks won’t fool me,” he said, throwing his burnoose to the ground. “Shave my head!”
While the youth’s friends prepared him for competition, the camp buzzed with the drone of elves settling old wagers and placing new ones. A pair of Katza’s older children dragged their mother off to rest, but no one else paid the woman any attention.