Rikus looked to Agis, Sadira, and Neeva. “You three leave the battle and go back to keep Tithian in line.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Neeva.
“Finish the Urikites-and kill their commander,” Rikus answered, glancing at the hill. The wall of darkness had descended more than halfway and was now less than a quarter mile away from his legion. “I’ll catch you after the fight.”
Agis’s jaw dropped. “I can’t believe you’re saying this,” the noble gasped. “How can you expect to win the battle now?”
“Because I have to,” Rikus snapped. “Even if I could convince the gladiators to run, the Urikites would only chase us down. By fighting, at least we’ll buy you the time you need to reach the city.”
“We will win,” declared Gaanon. The half-giant was sunburned, with a flattened nose and a gap-toothed mouth. Like many half-giants, he was a consummate mimic who tried to adopt the habits and appearance of those he admired. At present, he had shaved all the hair from his body and, like Rikus, wore only a hemp breechcloth. “To lose is to die,” Gaanon said, repeating a favorite gladiatorial saying.
“I’ll stay, too,” Neeva said.
“So will I and my retainers,” added Jaseela.
The mul looked to Styan. To his surprise, the templar gave a reluctant nod. “The king’s orders were explicit,” said the old man. “We’re to stay with the legion.”
“What did you do to anger our wonderful king?” Jaseela asked, raising the brow over her undamaged eye.
“Your jokes are not amusing,” sneered Styan.
Next, Rikus turned to K’kriq and explained the situation in Urikite, suggesting that the mantis-warrior accompany Agis and Sadira back to Tyr.
“No!” the thri-kreen cried. “Stay with hunting pack. Drive wagon for you, smash black wall.”
“You can pilot the argosy?” Rikus asked.
“Phatim make K’kriq steer when he sleep,” the thri-kreen explained. “Start, stop, turn.”
“Then you stay,” he said, warmly slapping the thri-kreen’s hard carapace. The mul checked on the advancing wall of darkness and saw that it had reached the bottom of the hill, only two hundred yards away. He ordered Gaanon and the gladiators to throw the Urikite water on the burning argosy, then turned to Agis and Sadira. “You two had better go now.”
“Fight well,” Agis said, holding his hands palm up in a formal gesture of farewell. “I will be hoping that Hamanu’s soldiers do not.”
“It won’t matter,” Rikus answered, returning the noble’s gesture by clasping both upturned hands. “They’ll fall.”
“We can only hope,” Sadira said. She stepped to the mul’s other side and squeezed his arm. “Do what you must, love, but be careful.” She glanced at Neeva, then added, “I want both you and Neeva back alive.”
“We’ll be fine,” Rikus replied. He took her head between his hands and gave her a lingering kiss. “You and Agis are the ones who should be careful. After all, we’re only out-numbered. You two are facing Tithian.”
With that, Agis and Sadira trotted away from the battle. Rikus turned to Styan and Jaseela, assigning the templar to take his company to the left flank of the wall of darkness and Jaseela to take hers to the right.
When he issued no further instructions, Styan asked, “And what do you wish us to do there?”
“Fight,” Rikus answered, scowling. “What do you think?”
“Your battle plan doesn’t seem very complete,” ventured Jaseela. “Are we to push the flanks in on themselves, slip past to attack from the rear, hold our positions, or what?”
“How can I tell you that? I don’t know what will happen any more than you do,” Rikus answered, motioning for them to return to their companies. “You’ll know what to do.”
After Jaseela and Styan left, Rikus ordered the gladiators to fall in behind the argosy, then turned toward the wagon himself. The muffled hissing and sputtering of dying fires sounded from inside the wagon, and huge billows of white steam poured from every opening. Gaanon’s helpers were hefting the huge water casks into the cargo door. Inside, the vapor was so thick that Rikus could barely make out the half-giant’s form as he grabbed a keg and disappeared deeper into the wagon.
From what Rikus could see, the back of the wagon had been burned down to its frame of mekillot bones. Forward of the cargo door, the argosy was still more or less intact, with gray fumes rising from the upper levels and steam from the lower. Clearly, the wagon would never carry supplies again, but it might serve to bull through a line of Urikites-assuming that was what the Tyrians found on the other side of the dark wall.
“Smash those casks and take up your weapons,” Rikus yelled, sweeping his arm at the large number of water barrels that had not yet been hoisted into the wagon. “The argosy will hold together long enough for what we need.”
As the warriors obeyed, he led Neeva and K’kriq into the steaming wagon. They stumbled forward, coughing and choking, finding their way toward the pilot’s deck by green halos of light shining from the glass balls on the walls. Although Gaanon had already put out most of the flames in this part of the wagon, the walls and floors were still flecked with the orange embers of smoldering fires. The heat in the corridors was thick and oppressive, scalding Rikus’s bare skin and searing his nose and lips with each cautious breath.
Paying the heat no attention, K’kriq led the way up to the pilot’s deck. As they climbed the ladder, Rikus heard the hiss of evaporating liquid and saw Gaanon throwing water from a large barrel as though it were a mere bucket. The half-giant’s efforts were to little avail, for the fire had already burned through the back wall in numerous places, with yellow flames shooting between the planks in many more. Fortunately, the air on the deck was now clear, for any smoke drifting into the room was sucked back through the holes in the rear wall.
“That’s enough, Gaanon,” Rikus called. “Get your club.”
The half-giant breathed a sigh of relief and smashed the water barrel, still half-filled, against the burning wall. Gaanon disappeared in the resulting cloud of steam, but his heavy footsteps let the mul know that the huge gladiator was moving toward the ladder.
Rikus followed K’kriq to the pilot’s chair. After pausing long enough to stomp on Phatim’s half-charred body, the thri-kreen stood motionless and stared out over the mountainous shells of the mekillots. Fifty yards beyond the great reptiles was the Urikites’ curtain of blackness.
After the thri-kreen had concentrated for a moment, all four mekillots raised their shell-covered heads and started to lumber forward. The argosy lurched once, then settled into its familiar, swaying rhythm. The distance between the wagon and the Urikite wall closed quickly.
When the black curtain showed no sign of adjusting to the advancing argosy, Rikus asked, “What’s wrong with them? They can’t just let us punch through their formation.”
“Maybe they can’t see us through the black wall,” suggested Neeva. “For all we know, there might not be anyone on the other side.”
A brilliant flash of silver erupted from the wall, and Rikus decided she was wrong.
“Magic!” the mul cried.
K’kriq spun around, using two of his hands to grab each gladiator and pull them into the shelter of his carapace. In the same instant, the sound of shattering glass crashed over the deck, drowning out even the thunder of the magical bolt that had demolished the window. Shards scraped along one of the mul’s shoulders that had been left exposed, opening several long but shallow lacerations in his tough hide. Neeva escaped without injury.
When the attack passed, Rikus stepped away from K’kriq. The mantis-warrior stood ankle deep in broken glass, but there was not even a scratch on his tough carapace.
A pair of smoking red balls shot from the dark wall ahead. Instead of streaking toward the pilot’s deck, however, the flaming spheres sizzled straight at the lead mekillots. All four reptiles stopped in their tracks, retracting their heads as the crimson spheres hit. Great rivers of flame washed over their shells, then the earth rumbled and the argosy lurched to a stop as the great beasts dropped to the ground.