“Rikus, are you hurt?” demanded Neeva, rushing over to him.
“I’m well enough,” the mul answered, inspecting himself. Other than his reddened skin, he found no sign of fresh injury.
“What happened?” Neeva asked. “It was like you went mad!”
Though the mul did not know whether she referred to the attack on Caelum or the leap over the barricade, he nodded. “I think I did,” Rikus answered. “But it’s too late to worry about that now. How’s the dwarf?”
“He’ll survive,” she replied. “He’s waiting with the others. I didn’t want him coming through until …”
When she let the sentence trail off, Rikus finished it for her. “Until you found out whether I was going to murder him.”
“Yes,” Neeva said. “What’s wrong with you? Back in Makla, you agreed he might not be the spy, and now you’re trying to kill him-even when it’s clear he’s a great help!”
“I told you to leave him with Jaseela,” Rikus snapped. The mul turned, then added, “Bring him through, but make sure he stays away from me.”
“We won’t have to worry about that,” Neeva answered.
She waved the rest of the survivors past the gap. As the stepped through, each gladiator glared at the mul as though he were some sort of monster.
Caelum brought up the rear. With one hand, he clutched his chest where Rikus had kicked him. In the other, he held a coiled whip of crackling fire. The lash was made of three distinct flames, one red, one white, and one yellow, all braided together in a single tail. Its bone handle glowed red with blazing heat. From the grimace on Caelum’s face and the pain in his eyes, the mul could tell that holding it caused the dwarf great pain.
“Tell him to set fire to anything he can with that thing.” Rikus said, pointing at the whip. “The more the Urikites have to worry about, the better.”
With that, he turned and led the way toward the wall, keeping a careful watch for another templar ambush. They soon reached a ramp leading to the top of the city walls. It ran beneath a small tower, with a portcullis of thick mekillot ribs blocking the way. A dozen arrow loops overlooked the approach ramp, and in each one Rikus saw a Urikite with a crossbow.
At the top of the walls, the archers were all firing into the cul-de-sac is front of the slave gate. Rikus could hear men and women screaming on the other side, and he knew that Jaseela had arrived with the rest of the army. If he didn’t reach the top of the wall and do something about the archers, his legion would be slaughtered.
“Neeva, wait here until I breach the gate,” Rikus ordered. He pointed at the arrow loops in the side of the tower. “In the meantime, see if Caelum can’t do something about the Urikites inside the tower.”
“What are you doing?”
Rikus didn’t want to explain the rest of his plan, for he knew it would be obvious once he put it into action. Instead, he rushed across the short distance separating him from the portcullis. The crossbows clacked. Instinctively, the mul dodged, though he knew his belt would provide far better defense than his reflexes. Most of the bolts missed and clattered against the stone pavement, and several more glanced off his belt or simply stuck in the heavy girdle.
Caelum’s whip cracked over Rikus’s head. Then the mul smelled the caustic stench of charred flesh. A man screamed, and Rikus shuddered. The searing that he had suffered earlier still caused him enough pain that he could not stop himself from thinking of the dying man’s agony. The dwarf’s whip cracked again.
Rikus reached the gate and began hacking at the mekillot ribs. The magical blade bit deeply each time, and within moments he had torn away the first one and was working on the second. Caelum’s whip continued to pop over his head, and soon smoke was spilling out of the tower in black clouds.
Finally, Rikus cut away the third rib and stepped through the portcullis, motioning for Neeva and the others to follow. As he passed beneath the tower, he paused for a moment to look up into the murderholes lining the ceiling of the arch. When the mul saw no sign of anything except flames and smoke, he continued to the other side of the tower and waited for his companions.
They caught up to him a moment later, then he led the way up the ramp at their best pace. As they neared the top, a handful of archers appeared along the wall and began firing. Neeva and the others had to stop and take shelter along the base of the wall, but Rikus continued forward. Several arrows hit him in the belt, then Caelum cracked his whip, searing one of the archers completely in half.
The mul leaped onto the wall and a pair of archers moved forward to meet him with their swords. Rikus finished them with an effortless parry and two quick slashes, then moved on to attack the next Urikites in line. They took their bows and fled, screaming for help.
Now that the way was clear for his companions, Rikus rushed over the wall and cut down an archer. He saw that he and his small group of gladiators had emerged at the outer end of the battlements, overlooking the front edge of the cul-de-sac before the slave gate. All down the line, archers stood every four to five yards, firing down onto the causeway below.
There, hundreds of warriors-gladiators, dwarves, quarry slaves, even templars-lay scattered upon the road, their blood spread across the white stones in puddles. More of Rikus’s legion were pouring into the cul-de-sac with each moment, only to meet a hail of dark shafts that struck them down in waves. Despite the heavy losses, a constant stream of men and women reached the gate and hurried through to the boulevard beyond.
“For Tyr!” Rikus yelled, lifting his sword.
The warriors looked up and, when they saw the mul standing along the wall, echoed his cheer. “For Tyr!” They pressed toward the gate with renewed vigor, oblivious to the rain of arrows being showered down upon them.
Rikus rushed the wall, screaming a battle cry at the top of his lungs. The next archer in line turned to face him, swinging his empty bow at the charging gladiator. The mul ducked the blow, then drove the Scourge of Rkard through the Urikite’s heart. He kicked the man’s body off his red-dripping blade and started toward his next victim.
Neeva rushed to his side and wrapped her arms around the mul’s shoulders. “Wait,” she said. “Caelum has a faster way.”
His bloodlust already stirred, Rikus tried to break away. Neeva, however, gripped the mul’s sore shoulder and stopped him. “Let him try.”
Caelum stepped foreward and threw his whip to the ground. It seemed to come alive, shooting down the wall like a snake. When it passed the first archer, a tongue of crimson flame lashed out and left a smoking hole in the back of the man’s leg. After the snake passed, a yellow flame spewed out of the puncture and transformed the Urikite into a pillar of flame.
When the snake slithered to the next archer and repeated the attack, the third man in line noticed what was happening and stepped away from the wall. As the fiery serpent moved toward him, he nocked an arrow and fired at it. After passing through the thing’s blazing body, the shaft clattered off the stones. The blazing viper struck again.
The fourth and fifth archers fled, screaming for their companions to do likewise. Rikus sent his gladiators down the wall after the snake, instructing them not to let any of the Urikites escape alive. Caelum followed a short distance behind the gladiators, keeping the fire serpent in sight so that he could control it.
Rikus led Neeva forward until they could see the mass of Tyrian warriors gathering on the slave boulevard below. Now that the archers had been chased away, there was no sign of opposition anywhere near the gate.
“Do you still think this is a trap?” Rikus asked, motioning at the clear avenue ahead of his legion.
“I don’t know,” Neeva said, her eyes searching the distant boroughs of the city. “My answer depends on what we find in the slave quarter.”