A few steps later, he stopped in his tracks. In front of him stood four halflings, all pointing arrows in his direction. Their bowstring snapped simultaneously.
Rikus cursed bitterly and dived to the side with all the grace he could muster.
The mul felt the soft thud of four tiny darts before his feet had even left the ground. He had time enough to realize that, again, they had struck him in the Belt of Rank, then he smashed into the rocks.
In the same instant, a tremendous peal of thunder deafened Rikus, and a brilliant orange light flooded the night. It washed out the mul’s dwarven vision and cast strange, quavering shadows over the entire field. A searing blast of wind washed over him. Blinded by a brilliant glare and pained by the heat, Rikus covered his eyes and curled into a fetal position.
With his ears ringing and his vision clouded, Rikus realized that he was more vulnerable than ever to the halflings. He lay as still as he could, convinced that he would never know the answer to the many questions flooding his mind about what had just happened. At any moment, he expected a halfling’s dagger to slip into his kidneys, or a dozen tiny arrows to prick his exposed back. Still, as much as his instincts cried out for him to stand and fight, the mul knew that moving would only draw attention to himself. Until his senses returned, he was helpless.
To his surprise, when his ears finally stopped ringing it was Neeva’s voice he heard. “Rikus, are you hurt?”
The mul looked up and, through his slowly clearing vision, saw his fighting partner standing over him. She was silhouetted against a wall of flame that still burned where the four halflings had been a few moments earlier.
“Neeva, you’re safe!”
“Of course,” she said. “You’re the one they were trying to kill.”
Rikus frowned. “Me?”
“When you screamed, they all but left me alone,” Neeva explained. “The question is, are you hurt?”
“I don’t know, and now is no time to find out,” Rikus said, rising. “Let’s go-”
“Don’t worry, the halflings are gone-at least for now,” Neeva said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Now, are you injured or not?”
Rikus frowned, but decided to take her at her word. If there were still halflings about, they would have struck by now. In answer to Neeva’s question, the mul said, “I’ve been hit by half a dozen poison arrows, but the Belt of Rank stopped them all.” He pointed at the four darts still stuck in the girdle. “Otherwise, I’d be dead by now.”
“Let me have a look, just to be sure,” said another familiar voice, this one at the mul’s back. “Sometimes, a wounded man does not feel his injuries until much later.”
Rikus peered over his shoulder and saw a dwarf’s lanky form standing behind him. “Caelum?” he gasped.
“Who do you think created the wall of flame that saved you?” Neeva asked.
Rikus ignored her and scowled at the dwarf. “What are you doing here? I told you and everyone else to leave Neeva and me alone.”
The dwarf dropped his eyes. “It was a coincidence. I was performing my sundown devotions.”
“I’ve never seen you perform any devotions,” Rikus grunted. He narrowed his eyes and studied the dwarf’s dark eyes. “You’re lying.”
“Why would he do that?” Neeva demanded.
“Maybe it wasn’t the Kes’trekel who warned Maetan about our ambush,” Rikus said, grabbing the dwarf by the throat. “Maybe it was Caelum!”
“That’s madness!” snapped Neeva, prying the dwarf from Rikus’s grasp.
“No, it’s not,” Rikus insisted. “He followed us out there so he could show the halflings where we were sleeping.”
“No,” Caelum rasped, rubbing his throat. “It was a coinidence, as I said. You’ve never seen my devotions because I must perform them alone.”
“You don’t expect me to believe that,” Rikus sneered.
“It makes more sense than what you’re thinking,” Neeva snapped. “If Caelum’s a traitor, why’d he save you from the halflings?”
Rikus scowled, unable to think of a good reason. “How do I know? He’s the spy!”
“Whatever you choose to believe about my devotions, you must see that I have as much reason as you to hate Maetan. I am no spy,” Caelum said, meeting the mul’s gaze evenly. “Now, let me inspect your stomach. If you have been scratched, the sun’s vigor will burn the poison from your blood.”
When the mul did not do as the dwarf asked, Neeva reached over and unclasped the buckle. “I think we should return to the legion before sunrise,” she snapped.
Caelum immediately set about inspecting the mul for wounds.
As Neeva stretched out the Belt of Rank to inspect it, Rikus saw that there were two more halfling darts in the back. Though they had probably struck him while he was crawling through the rocks, he had not even felt them through the thick leather.
“And you called it a worthless piece of leather,” Rikus said, motioning at the girdle.
Neeva shook her head in amazement. “All the arrows hit you in the belt,” she said. “How lucky can you get?”
“I doubt that it was luck,” Caelum said. He paused his ministering to pluck a poisoned dart from the leather. “I’d say it was magic.”
SEVEN
UMBRA’S RETURN
Rikus woke to a sharp jab in the ribs.
“Stop lying on ground,” said K’kriq. “Find Urikites.”
Opening his eyes, the mul saw that the green tendrils of first light were just shooting across the starlit sky. He rolled away from Neeva’s warm body and looked up at the thri-kreen’s towering form.
“Huh?” he asked groggily.
“What wrong?” K’kriq clacked his mandibles impatiently. “Why so stupid?”
“I was sleeping,” Rikus yawned.
“Sleep,” the thri-kreen snorted, disgusted with the mul’s weakness. “Waste good time for hunt.”
“It’s no waste,” Rikus grumbled. Taking one of the cloaks he and Neeva had been using to insulate themselves from the cold night wind, he rose to his feet and stepped away. “What about the Urikites?”
K’kriq pointed all four arms westward, toward the jagged, black wall of the Ringing Mountains. “Find many Urikites. Not far.”
Rikus raised a hand. “Wait.”
The mul looked out over a dusty camp, where a thousand murky, inert lumps lay snoring and growling in their sleep. “Everyone up!” he yelled. “Move!”
Half the gladiators leaped to their feet with weapons in their hands, and the other half hardly stirred. “Wake your fellows,” Rikus ordered, stepping to Neeva’s side and nudging her with his foot. “We march in a quarter-hour.”
Neeva rose, pulling her cloak over her shoulders and stifling a yawn. “What’s happening?”
Rikus took her by the hand and started toward the templar’s camp. “I’ll explain later. Now, we’ve got to wake our leaders.”
Within a few minutes, they had roused both Styan and Jaseela. When Rikus asked K’kriq to explain what was happening, however, Neeva objected. “What about Caelum?”
“He’s probably off on a morning devotion,” Rikus answered sarcastically. The dwarf’s unexplained appearance the night before still angered the mul. Although he had to agree with Neeva that a traitor would not have saved them from the halfling assassins, he remained convinced that Caelum had followed them to their campsite for some other purpose.
“We’d better find him,” said Jaseela. She yawned, then winced in pain when her crooked jaw opened too far for its mangled socket. “If you’re expecting a battle, we’ll need the dwarves.”
Rikus reluctantly agreed, then led the way to where the dwarves had slept. They had made their orderly camp between two spires of sandstone, on a bristly carpet of moss that reflected the faint rays of predawn light in glimmering silver and gold.
Caelum met the leaders in the center of the camp, offering them each a handful of small serpent eggs. Only Styan refused the breakfast.
“K’kriq found a Urikite campsite,” Rikus explained, pointing at the distant gulch the thr-keen had indicated earlier.