“It’s almost like they were inviting us to enjoy ourselves,” Rikus muttered, starting toward the casks of wine.
When he saw the mul coming, Styan filled two mugs and stepped toward him. “Here’s Rikus!” the templar cried. “Let’s drink his health!”
An immediate chorus of voices cried, “To Rikus!”
As he moved through the crowd, dozens of warriors slapped the mul’s back, congratulating him on the victory at Makla. When he reached Styan, Rikus took the cup, but did not drink from it.
“Where did you find this?” the mul demanded.
The templar’s face fell. “In the foyer of this house,” he answered, motioning at the mansion behind him. “It was all stacked up, ready to be carried into the cellar, I suppose.”
“Or ready for us to find,” Rikus snapped. He had no doubt that Maetan had left the wine in plain sight on purpose, hoping that the Tyrians would be too drunk to fight when the Urikites took positions outside the town. Rikus threw his mug to the ground, exclaiming, “Isn’t it obvious to you that Lord Lubar’s trying to corner us?”
Styan looked at the shattered mug as though the mul had tossed it in his face. “I was only trying to make amends.”
Rikus ignored the templar and turned to the crowd. “Now is no time for drinking,” he yelled, running his gaze over the crowd.
Several gladiators chuckled, and someone called, “Saving it all for yourself, are you, Rikus?”
No one dumped their cups. In fact, many of them quaffed down what they had and passed their mugs to the templars to be refilled.
“I mean what I say!” Rikus yelled, knocking the mug from the hand of a nearby gladiator. “Pour out the wine. We have much to do, and little time to do it!”
This time, no one laughed. “What’s wrong, Rikus?” called a female human. “Have you lost your need for wine?”
“We are free men,” cried a burly tarek. Like the mul, he was muscle bound and hairless, with a square head and sloping brow. “We can drink what we want!”
Rikus turned to Gaanon. “Smash the casks.”
A storm of protest rose from those near enough to hear, but the half-giant hefted his club and waded through the crowd to carry out his orders. Several men stepped in front of Gaanon as if to stop him, but a threatening glance from the huge gladiator was enough to clear them out of his way.
“Listen to me!” Rikus called, raising his arms for silence.
The crowd paid him no attention. Gaanon’s club came down on the first cask, and rich red wine flooded the square. An angry outburst of shouting and screaming erupted around Rikus.
“We’re not templars!” cried the tarek. His flat nose was flaring in anger and the lips of his domed muzzle were drawn back to reveal his sharp fangs. “You can’t treat us like this!”
The gladiator stepped toward Gaanon, clearly meaning to stop him from destroying any more casks. Behind him came two human men.
Rikus lashed out at the tarek, striking his throat with stiffened fingers. The stunned gladiator collapsed immediately, choking and grasping at his damaged larynx. When even that did not stop those following him, Rikus delivered a powerful side-thrust kick to the ribs of the next man in line, simultaneously unsheathing the Scourge of Rkard. “The next man will feel my blade!”
The area fell abruptly silent.
“Good,” the mul said. “Now listen carefully-we don’t have much time. Maetan should have been inside this village with a fair-sized army, but he wasn’t. My guess is that he’s moving to attack while we quaff down the wine he left to keep us occupied!”
The gladiators remained absolutely silent, their eyes fixed on Rikus and their mouths hanging open in astonishment. Though the reaction was more extreme than what the mul had anticipated, he counted himself lucky that they were no longer preoccupied with the wine.
“If we don’t want to be trapped, we’ve got to sack the town and leave-fast!” Rikus continued. He gestured at a mob of about thirty gladiators. “You’re our lookouts. Go to the wall and report back when you see any sign of Maetan’s army. The rest of you, fill your waterskins, then find what food you can and burn everything else.”
Instead of obeying, the gladiators started to back away, staring at Rikus’s chest and murmuring to each other in frightened tones. Even Gaanon had fallen speechless, and, with a look of utter betrayal, simply stared at the mul.
Rikus looked down and saw that, during his scuffle with the tarek, his robe had fallen open. Now, the ulcerous wound on his breast lay fully exposed and oozing yellow ichor. Worse, a scintillating red light shone from the ruby in its center.
Rikus pulled his robe back over the wound, silently cursing the tarek who had caused him to expose the magical gem.
“What magic is that?” Gaanon asked, half-consciously taking a step away from the mul. Like many gladiators, the half-giant distrusted sorcery.
“It’s nothing that will hurt you,” Rikus answered, speaking loudly enough for those gathered around him to hear. “Now, do as I ordered.”
As the astonished gladiators slowly began to obey, Rikus started toward the eastern end of the village, intending to open an escape route through the stockade.
The mul had taken no more than two steps when Styan caught up to him. “Where are you going?” asked the templar.
“I’ll tell you when the time comes,” Rikus replied, wondering if the old man had asked the question so he could pass the information on to Maetan. “Until then, stay here. Don’t give anyone any orders, don’t pour any more wine, and don’t make me regret that your punishment last night was so merciful.”
TWELVE
CRATER OF BONES
The Tyrian legion was making camp in a small, volcanic caldera filled with thousands upon thousands of skeletons: dwarves, tareks, even half-giants and elves. Bones lay everywhere-piled against the base of crater walls in dune-sized mounds, heaped in yellow masses over sulfur-spewing steam vents, even packed into a fire-belching fissure that ran down the center of the basin.
The Tyrians had dubbed the place the Crater of Bones, but so far no one had guessed the reason for its existence. On three sides, the basin was surrounded by sheer cliffs. On the fourth, it was blocked by a manmade wall of porous, lime-crusted blocks of stone. The gate could only be closed and locked from the outside. Beyond that, there was no hint as to the place’s purpose. The skeletons seldom showed any sign of injuries, and they lay scattered at random across the caldera, so that it seemed the inhabitants had died where they stood, with no chance to flee or to fight.
After several moments of watching his warriors clear bones from small circles of ground, Rikus turned away and looked in the opposite direction. Below him, a lava flow had cut a mile-long channel straight down the ash-covered mountains of the Smoking Crown. The sheer canyon ended in a delta of jagged rock that spilled into the steaming waters of the vast Lake of Golden Dreams. On that delta waited Maetan and several thousand Urikite soldiers.
As he studied his enemy’s camp, Rikus could not help sighing in regret. If he had opened his escape route at the western end of Makla’s stockade instead of the eastern, the Urikites would not be camped upon the delta-and his legion would not be trapped in the Crater of Bones.
Rikus’s tactics in the village had worked well. He and his army had left Makla well ahead of the Urikites, then trudged their way along the lakeshore, intending to circle around it until they found a suitable site in which to confront the enemy. Unfortunately, the terrain of the Smoking Crown had not been cooperative. After only a full day and night of marching, their way had been blocked by a river of burning rock. They had been forced to turn back, reaching the delta just ahead of the mindbender’s forces.