The mul jumped off the ladder and landed at Agis’s feet. Falling to his knees, he dropped his cahulaks and clutched at the tendril. His fingers sank through it like air.
“Rikus!” Agis cried.
The noble’s voice seemed distant and faint. Rikus’s vision went black.
To his surprise, the mul did not pass out. Instead, his consciousness turned inward, to the terrain of his own mind. He saw himself kneeling on a featureless plain of mud, the great tentacle of some horrid beast extruding from the wet earth, wrapping itself around his throat. It was trying to pull him into the soggy ground, to suffocate him in the muds of oblivion.
Rikus’s stomach tightened with fear. He realized he was being attacked mind-to-mind, and that knowledge only frightened him more. The mul was a master of physical combat, but when it came to the Way, he was not even a novice.
Rikus fought back by trying to imagine himself hauling the tentacle from the mud. No matter how hard he pulled, the beast was too strong for him. It bent his torso back, kinking his spine until he feared it would snap.
The mul grabbed the tentacle and pulled with as much strength as his oxygen-starved body could muster. He slowly managed to turn himself over and braced one arm against the muddy ground. He used the other to dig, hoping to dredge the slimy creature from its burrow. Though he excavated a hole several feet deep, he found nothing but an endless tendril that continued to pull him downward. Rikus bit the thing. It’s blood burned his mouth like acid.
Then the mul grew aware of great, sloshing footsteps approaching from behind. He twisted around to meet the new horror his attacker had sent to destroy him. If there had been breath in his lungs, he would have sighed in relief. Standing before him was a familiar figure, save that it now towered overhead in the massive form of a full-giant.
“Agis?” Rikus gurgled.
The giant nodded. “What have we here?” he boomed, stooping over to grasp the tentacle.
Agis the giant pulled the tendril from the ground effortlessly, freeing the mul’s throat. The writhing thing was nothing but a long gray tentacle. As Rikus watched, both ends flattened out and a set of eyes appeared on the top side. Below each pair of eyes, a long slit opened into a broad mouth filled with wicked fangs.
“The Serpent of Lubar!” Rikus gasped. The beast resembled the crest of the noble who had bred the mul, the family in whose cruel pits the young mul had been trained in the arts of killing.
As Rikus stared at the living crest of his first owner, the snake’s heads both turned toward Agis and struck simultaneously. The noble’s giant arms stretched outward, preventing the fangs from reaching him. The snake lengthened its body, and the arms stretched farther. An extra set of long-clawed hands suddenly grew from the giant’s rib cage, then seized the snake behind each of its heads. Moving with lightning speed, the sharp claws tore great gashes along the length of the snake’s body, reducing it to a bloody mess of shredded scales and minced flesh.
Agis threw the snake into the fluid, then watched it wither into a desiccated husk. “Why didn’t you defend yourself?” he asked, glancing at Rikus.
“I have no training in the Way,” Rikus answered, stung by the giant’s chiding tone.
“You don’t need any to form a basic defense,” the giant countered. “It’s instinctual-or should be. Everyone has some ability with the Way. Your mistake was emphasizing strength over form. The Way is more subtle than that.”
Agis changed from a giant into a leather-winged bird with a sharp, hooked beak. “Next time, use your imagination.” With that, he launched himself into the air and flew away.
Rikus opened his eyes and saw that he was back in the argosy, lying at the base of the ladder. The nobleman sat beside him, breathing in shallow gasps.
“Agis!” the mul gasped. “Are you hurt?”
The noble smiled and shook his head. “Tired,” he whispered. “Go on, before the pilot recovers.”
After glancing into the corridor to make sure Agis was in no imminent danger, Rikus left the noble to rest and climbed the ladder. Near the ceiling, the pilot’s deck was filled with a thick smoke that had seeped through the planks separating it from the rest of the argosy. By dropping to his hands and knees, however, the mul could crawl forward without scorching his lungs on the caustic fumes.
Rikus found the pilot’s deck to be a spacious platform with a large panel of thick glass overlooking the dune-sized shells of the lumbering mekillots. Before this window sat a well padded chair, no doubt where the pilot, a master of the Way especially trained to dominate the creatures, would sit.
The mul advanced on the pilot’s chair, laying his cahulaks aside. Despite his fear of the mindbender, he had to take the man alive if he wanted to halt the argosy. From what he had heard about mekillots, if the stupid beasts were suddenly freed of their mental reins, they would be just as likely to continue trudging forward as to stop.
A long black blade flashed toward Rikus’s eyes, a man-shaped blur dropping out of the smoke behind it. The mul crossed his wrists and thrust them over his head, catching the attacker’s arm between the backs of his hands. Before the mindbender could withdraw his dagger, Rikus turned his palms over and grabbed his attacker’s arm, then slammed his victim to the floor.
“If I even suspect you of meddling with my thoughts, I’ll finish the job, Phatim,” Rikus threatened, snatching the obsidian dagger and pressing its tip to the man’s throat.
The pilot’s gray eyes widened at the sound of his own name spoken in his own language. The gaunt man nodded his head of unkempt hair to show he understood, then looked down his hooked nose at the dagger pressed to his throat.
“If you want to live, stop the mekillots,” Rikus said. “But I warn you-”
“I’m too tired to betray you with the Way,” the pilot said.
Phatim closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment. The argosy lurched to a violent stop. Rikus flew over the mindbender’s prone body and slammed into the back of the chair.
The pilot was on him in an instant, using one hand to pin the mul’s dagger arm to the floor and, with the other, drawing a shorter knife from his boot. Rikus barely managed to slip his head out of the way as Phatim’s steel blade sliced down at him.
“Die, slave!” Phatim hissed, spraying Rikus’s face with warm spittle.
“Freed slave,” Rikus replied.
The mul brought his knee up, striking Phatim in the back of the thigh. The blow propelled the pilot forward and knocked him off balance. At the same time, Rikus ripped his arm free and thrust the dagger under Phatim’s ribs. The pilot cried out, then abruptly fell silent as the tip of the long blade found his heart. Hot, red blood ran down Rikus’s fingers, and Phatim collapsed.
Rikus pushed the pilot’s lifeless body off him, shaking his head at the man’s foolishness. The mul had hoped to question the mindbender about his choice of the Serpent of Lubar as an attack form.
Phatim’s death did little to dampen Rikus’s joy at stopping the argosy, however. Without the fortress-wagon and the drik-mounted siege engines, the Urikites would find it much more difficult, perhaps even impossible, to capture Tyr. The mul even dared to hope that he had just brought the war to an early end.
After a quick inspection to make sure there were no more surprises lurking on the smoky pilot’s deck, Rikus returned to the ladder to make sure Agis was well. On the floor below, he saw both Neeva and Sadira standing with the noble. In her hands, Neeva held a green cloth.
Rikus collected his cahulaks and started down the ladder. “What did you find in the other room?” he asked.