The noblewoman did not immediately move to obey. Instead, she looked toward the gate, where the templars reluctantly remained on guard. “Someone warned Hamanu to expect us,” she hissed. “That’s why the Urikites moved so quickly to seal us off!”
“There’s no time for that now!” Rikus snapped. “Do as I ordered.”
Despite his command, the mul was thinking the same thing as Jaseela. The ease with which Hamanu had slipped his forces into place certainly suggested that the sorcerer-king had been expecting the attack. Not wishing to believe that his attack on Urik had been a predictable one, the mul preferred to think his enemy’s foreknowledge had come from magical divination-anything except his own imprudence.
The mul looked toward the gate. Styan and his templars remained at their posts. Many were casting nervous glances at Rikus and at the woman on the wall, who was still booming her call for surrender. Behind the templars, Caelum’s dwarves had already taken up their arms and stood in disciplined formation. Neeva stood with Caelum at the head of the company, her eyes fixed on the templars in front of her.
Satisfied that nothing onimous was occurring there, Rikus looked back to the slave pens. He was just in time to see a long shaft fly from the pits and sail straight toward the woman’s torso. A few inches shy of its target, the spear struck an invisible barrier and came to an abrupt halt. A stunned cry rang across the enclave. As the spear fell harmlessly away, the templar threw her arms up and retreated from sight.
Taking advantage of the quiet that followed, Rikus yelled, “Warriors of Tyr, freed men of Urik. The choice is yours. You can live for a few short years toiling in Hamanu’s quarries, or you can take up weapons and fight!”
A restless murmur rustled through the pens, but Rikus did not hear the resounding cheer for which he had hoped.
He raised a hand for silence and continued. “You know what to expect if you return to your pens. If you take up the fight, I can only promise that, win or lose, you will die free.”
There followed a long and painful silence as each slave pondered the value of life in chains. Here and there, Rikus saw frightened men and women retreating to the shelter of their pens, but most of the Urikite slaves and all of the Tyrians remained in their companies.
At last, a haggard old man cried, “Live or die, I fight with Tyr!”
Six templars appeared at the top of the fortress wall. In the next instant, they began raining white flashes of lightning and golden balls of fire down into the slave pens. Rikus had no sooner picked out Rasia than he saw her raising a hand in his direction.
“Jump, K’kriq!” he yelled.
The thri-kreen leaped straight out of the tower. Rikus dropped through the trap door, his good hand slapping the ladder’s rungs in a barely successful attempt to break his fall. He had no sooner slammed into the ground than an enormous roar shook the tower and a tongue of yellow flame shot down the ladder after him. He scrambled away just as the tower collapsed in a charred heap.
K’kriq grabbed Rikus with all four hands and dragged him behind the burning remains of the tower, where he would be out of sight to the Urikite templars. “Hurt?”
“No,” Rikus answered. “I’m-”
The mul’s reply was cut short by the sound of dwarves screaming from his left. He looked in the company’s direction just in time to be blinded by a brilliant flash of golden light erupting in their midst. A terrific boom rolled across the cobblestones, followed in short order by a chorus of Urikite war cries. The angry shouts of dying dwarves came an instant later.
As the mul’s vision cleared, he saw that a stream of Hamanu’s Imperial Guard was pouring through the gate and dispatching Caelum’s company with cruel efficiency. The half-giants wore full suits of inix-scale armor. In one hand they carried long wooden lances, and in the other drik-shell shields. From their belts hung huge obsidian swords.
“What happened to Styan?” demanded Rikus, searching in vain for sight of any of the templar’s men.
“I think we owe Caelum an apology,” said Jaseela, stepping to his side. “Styan’s whole company has betrayed us.”
“But slaves with us,” K’kriq said, peering around the edge of the burning tower.
Rikus followed the line of the thri-kreen’s gaze and noted that most of the slave companies were anxiously pressing forward to join the battle.
“Those quarry slaves will never fight through the half-giants at the gate,” Jaseela said, shaking her head at the situation in the slave pens.
“Let’s give Hamanu something to worry about,” Rikus said. He turned around and pointed at the wall separating the slave compound from the templar quarter. “Take the slave companies and scale that wall.”
“And then what?” Jaseela asked.
“Send the first ten companies into the other quarters of the city. They’re to destroy everything they can-clog wells, topple bulidings, burn tents, anything that causes problems. If they meet a Urikite company, they’re to run, not fight. The more chaos we spread through the city, the better.”
Jaseela nodded. “And with the rest?”
“Take the rest of the army and attack across the slave boulevard. Drive into the noble quarter and sack it, too. The more Hamanu has to worry about, the easier it will be for me to ambush him.”
“To what?” Jaseela gasped, glaring at the mul from the scarred side or her face. She shook her head as if he were mad, then added, “The gladiators are right: you’ve either lost your mind, or it’s been taken over by the thing in your chest.”
Rikus was too hurt to respond immediately. Though he had been aware of the gladiators’ resentment since the episode in the Crater of Bones, he had not heard anyone else put their doubts into words. “Is that what my warriors are saying?”
“Yes,” Jaseela answered. “And who can blame them? It was madness to bring us into Urik-and now this!”
“I brought the legion here because it’s the only way to save it,” Rikus snapped. “The slave revolt will force Hamanu to recall his army-so our warriors can go home.”
Jaseela shook her head. “I don’t believe it. You don’t have to attack Hamanu to start the revolt.”
“Maybe not,” Rikus admitted. “But if I kill him, Urik’s slaves will be free and Tyr will have one less enemy. If he kills me, the time I buy in fighting could make the difference between starting the revolt or not.”
The color rose to Jaseela’s unmarred cheek. After a short pause, she asked, “Do you expect to come back?”
Rikus grinned. “I hope to,” he said.
The noblewoman closed her eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry for what I said,” she offered. “And I’m sorry that your warriors doubt your motivations. You don’t deserve that.”
Rikus frowned, unsure of how to accept the apology and not sure that it was necessary for Jaseela to make. “Thanks,” he said awkwardly. “Now, go get your companies.”
Jaseela nodded, then drew her sword and ran toward the first of the slave companies. Rikus turned toward the dwarves in time to see one of Caelum’s crimson sunballs erupt in the gateway. A pair of half-giants bellowed in agony, then collapsed in a pile of charred bone and ash.
Several of Styan’s templars appeared on the other side of the gateway, backing away from an enemy Rikus could not see. The mul frowned, for if they had changed sides, he could not imagine from whom they were retreating. An instant later, he heard a tremendous clatter as a handful of small boulders sailed into sight and struck the men dead.
Two of Hamanu’s yellow-robed templars took the place of Styan’s men, pointing their hands into the battle. Lightning bolts crackled from their fingers, shooting from dwarf to dwarf. More than a dozen of Caelum’s warriors fell, filling the air with the stink of singed flesh. Finally, the sizzling streaks crashed into the ground, spraying shattered cobblestones everywhere. As the shards rained back to the ground, Rikus was relieved to see Neeva and Caelum among those still alive.