Neeva’s black blade flashed in front of Rikus’s face, snapping the spear just above the head-and sending another surge of fire through the mul. At the same time, K’kriq grabbed the mul’s attacker and sank his mandibles into him, filling the Urikite’s veins with poison.
Neeva narrowly avoided being stabbed by another Urikite, parrying with her dagger. She opened the attacker’s throat with a flick of the same blade that had turned the spear. “If you think we can save Drewet from here, you’ve taken leave of your senses,” she said, allowing a broad-shouldered gladiator in a four-horned helmet to take her place. “I’ll send someone to shout a warning from the rim. Maybe she can fight her own way free.”
Rikus and K’kriq fought side-by-side for a few moments longer, but the mul’s wound was taking its toll. His reaction slowed to the point where he found himself lurching about in clumsy dodges, and the Scourge of Rkard felt as heavy in his hand as a half-giant’s club.
“Cover my retreat, K’kriq,” Rikus yelled, stumbling away from the clamor of the battleline.
The extra room only made the four-armed thri-kreen a more dangerous opponent. He tore into the approaching soldiers with renewed vigor, their speartips clattering harmlessly off his hard carapace.
Holding his sword under his arm, Rikus reached into his belt pouch and touched the stone Caelum had given him. Though it scorched through the mul’s flesh, he did not remove his hand. Instead, looking toward the dark canyon where Drewet’s company was waiting, he let the pain build for a few seconds.
At last, he whispered, “I’m sorry. You deserve a better death.”
Rikus pulled out the rock and threw it high over the heads of the Urikites. It disappeared into the night. Then a loud boom drowned out the furor of the battlefield. A ball of orange flame flared over the enemy’s ranks. The mul glimpsed rank upon rank of Urikite faces staring up at the blazing globe. They were packed into the area in front of the canyon shoulder-to-shoulder, and there were still more of them marching out of the darkness.
“Hundreds and hundreds,” Rikus gasped, once again taking the hilt of the sword. “We never had a chance.”
The burning sphere descended and incinerated a dozen Urikites unfortunate enough to be trapped beneath it, but the loss hardly seemed noticeable in the midst of the great company.
Rikus stepped back to the battleline, ignoring the raging pain caused by the spearhead embedded in his shoulder and fighting without regard for the risks he took. Soon, Urikite corpses were heaped so high that the mul’s foes began to jump down at him as if leaping from a wall. It made no difference to the gladiator. His sharp blade sliced through them at all angles, and the mound continued to grow.
Rikus was jolted back to his senses when a horrific boom sounded from the Crater of the Bones. A crimson light flashed across the sky a moment before the ground began to buck. The mul’s feet were swept from beneath him, and he fell to the ground, landing atop a half-dozen bleeding corpses. A pair of stunned Urikites tumbled down the body pile toward him, scattering their shields and spears behind him.
In the next instant, shrill whistles and screeching cries filled the night. Hissing streaks of flame dropped out of the sky, bringing with them the stench of sulfur. As the fiery globes crashed to the battlefield, agonized pleas for help rang from both sides of the line.
The two Urikites that had been coming at Rikus returned to their feet before the wounded mul could regain his. They threw themselves on top of him, one grabbing the shaft in his shoulder and the other pinning his sword arm to the ground.
The mul howled in pain, then smashed his forehead into the face of the Urikite pinning his arm. As the soldier rocked backward, Rikus ripped his hand free and pulled the Scourge across the bodies of both attackers.
Covered in fresh, hot blood, the mul pushed the wounded men away and rolled to his knees. The situation around him was the same in all directions, with Urikites and Tyrians wrestling on the ground while the reinforcements jumped into the melee from both sides. Long streamers lit the sky as burning blobs of molten rock dropped to the ground and burst into red sprays of liquid flame.
A sizzling whoosh sounded from above the mul’s head, then a streak of orange light momentarily stunned him. Tiny droplets of liquid fire spattered over his body, filling his nostrils with the stench of his own burning skin. Screaming in pain and blind rage, the mul threw himself on the men he had just wounded and rolled over their bodies to suffocate the embers charring his flesh.
“Rikus hurt?”
The gladiator looked up and saw K’kriq standing over him. Although the thri-kreen’s carpace was scorched and burned in a dozen places, the mantis-warrior seemed to be enduring the rain of fire with far less discomfort than the mul.
“I’ll live,” Rikus muttered, gritting his teeth at the pain.
“Then come.”
The thri-kreen pulled Rikus to his feet with two arms. With the other two he pointed to the mouth of Drewet’s canyon.
A broad river of white-hot rock was pouring out of the gorge, sweeping onto the delta in a glowing, steadily flowing river. The Urikite troops not in the front lines of the battle were caught by the lava. Panicked, they clambered over each other in an effort to flee, but to little avail. The molten stone pursued the screaming soldiers relentlessly, lapping at their heels and overtaking those who fell. As Rikus watched, hundreds of soldiers burst into columns of yellow flame, flaring for a brief instant before they vanished in a wisp of smoke and ash.
Caelum had won the battle for him, but Rikus could not help wondering what the real price would be.
FOURTEEN
PARLEY
“Rikus … Rikus … Rikus …”
The mul straightened the sling holding his left arm, then hung the Scourge of Rkard from the scabbard hooks on the Belt of Rank. The company outside had been droning his name for two days, and now that he had recovered from his wounds enough to stand, Rikus was prepared to face them.
“Would you like me to stand with you?” asked Neeva. No one else had been brave enough to follow Rikus up into the room.
“No, I’d better do this alone,” he answered.
After stepping onto a small balcony that overhung Makla’s central plaza, he looked down upon the company of chanting corpses. Some were naked, with bits of singed cloth clinging to their blistered hides and blackened stubs of bone where their hands and feet should have been. A few others had lost their legs from the waist down, and supported themselves only by clinging to huge boulders that hovered in the air before them. The largest part of the crowd had been reduced to whirlwinds of ash crowned by the vague outline of a pain-racked face. All had been part of Drewet’s doomed company.
At the head of the crowd, over a small circle of blackened and cracked cobblestones, burned an orange pillar of flame. The grisly undead band had appeared in Makla only hours behind the Tyrian legion, and neither Caelum’s magic nor threats of violence had convinced them to move.
“Rikus … Rikus … Rikus …”
Their rasping chant did not change tone or inflection, and the mul could not even tell if they knew he had come to answer their call. He forced himself to stare at their gruesome forms for several moments, determined not to show the fear he felt it inside.
Rikus raised his good arm for silence, but the warriors continued to chant his name. “I’m sorry you died,” he called, speaking above them. “I tried to save you.”
The orange flame, which the mul assumed to be Drewet, advanced a pace. The entire company followed, angrily shouting, “Hurray for Rikus!”