"A spy," Stormlight repeated, this time with more certainty.
Tamex stepped into the firelight.
The hawk cried out, and raised his wings high, his hooked beak open and threatening.
At one moment, the firelit margins of air seemed to waver and glimmer, and then Tamex was among them, visible, tangible. Silently he moved into full view, his black silk tunic shimmering. He shook the dust from the tops of his boots and scanned the circle of rebels indifferently. The firelight glowed through his skin, and for a moment, the sharp-eyed Northstar thought that the warrior's fingers seemed crooked and arched, like talons.
Who was this man, born of the midnight desert?
"The dark man," Stormlight breathed. "Who is not what he seems."
Larken shot him a sullen look. And then she flushed, uncertain why she wanted to defend this man.
Tamex turned to meet them, black eyes angry and glittering like polished onyx. Gormion, Rann, and Aeleth, never true loyalists to Fordus or his officers, rose to stand beside Tamex, their hands already on the hilts of their weapons.
"Where have you been, warrior?" Stormlight asked, his voice cold and low.
Tamex shrugged. The bandits closed behind him.
At a nearby campfire, three Plainsmen rose and, clutching their spears, walked slowly, menacingly, toward Gormion, casting wavering shadows over the warring lights.
Something brushed Stormlight's shoulder. North-star had appeared beside him. Though more scout than warrior, the young man was ready to do his part-knife drawn and keen eyes shifting alertly over the dark man and his bandit following.
Larken watched with rising alarm, and Lucas whistled uneasily.
The two warriors-the elf and the pale, mysteri shy;ous Tamex-were locked in a stare that could end only in combat.
Then the cry of a sentry fractured the tense silence, and nearly all eyes whipped toward the sound. The young Plainsman atop the Red Plateau pointed north and shouted.
"Cavalry! Two hundred from the north!"
Tamex broke off the stare with Stormlight and smiled wickedly. So they had come, after all.
Trained by the Solamnics over the three centuries of their alliance, the Istarian cavalry were almost as brilliant, as swift and effective as their teachers. Accomplished swordsmen and deadly bowmen, they fought from horseback, frequently tied to the saddle to keep them astride their mounts in close combat. They were also much more ruthless than the Solamnics. A Solamnic Knight stayed his hand in occasional mercy against the enemy, whether man or elf or dwarf or even ogre, for his Oath told him "Est Sularus oth Mithas"-"My Honor is My Life."
Istarians, on the other hand, followed neither Oath nor Measure. The stories of their raids were horrible.
Stormlight's heart sank at the sentry's alarm. For a brief moment he struggled for a plan, for the words to express it.
When Tamex seized that moment to begin shout shy;ing, the rebels jumped at his words.
"Smother the campfires!" the black-cloaked man ordered. Quickly Rann kicked sand over Gormion's banked fire, and throughout the campsite, the smoke disappeared from the night air.
"To the Plateau!" Stormlight ordered, but his words were lost in Tamex's bellowing cry-a voice inhumanly loud.
"Back to the Tears!" the dark man ordered. "We'll fight them from the rocks!" The old and the young abandoned their campfires and did what they were told, hurrying to the safe maze of standing crystal.
Stormlight called to the surrounding Plainsmen, but they were already moving, following Tamex and Gormion toward the eerie field. It was five hundred yards from the campsite to the rocks, over level and open ground, but Tamex led the way, gathering bar shy;barians and bandits as he skirted the edge of the salt flats. More campfires winked out to darkness, and then, at the edge of the camp, a column of Istarian torches wavered and bobbed and advanced.
"Plume! Stardancer!" Stormlight shouted, but the two young men lingered foolishly, ardent to shed Istarian blood. Desperately Stormlight grabbed for Stardancer, but the lad was too quick as he brushed past. A group of young Plainsmen and younger ban shy;dits, whooping and beckoning to the approaching torches, girded themselves for battle.
"You fools!" Stormlight shouted.
Then the sound of hoofbeats, distant at first, became deafening, inevitable. The first horse breasted into view, the bronze Istarian armor glistening in the torchlight. With a cry, Northstar wrestled the rider from his saddle, but the ropes that tied the Istarian in place tightened and held, and the startled horse galloped through the ashes of a smothered fire, dragging both men over the hard ground.
Stormlight crouched in his fighting stance as a dozen cavalry took shape in the darkness. Bursting into the camp, swords drawn and spears readied, the riders tore into their quarry like leopards into a helpless herd of sheep. Young Plume fell with a scream, impaled on an Istarian spear, and an even younger boy, an orphan named Lightfoot, fell beside him. Indifferent as a storm or a desert wind, the horsemen hurdled the dying bodies on their way toward a handful of bandits clustered around Aeleth at the edge of the Tears of Mishakal.
"No!" Stormlight shouted, as the rebel resistance broke into rout and panic. Plainsman and barbar shy;ian-women, old men, and children, exposed in the open country between the campsite and the salt flats-fell before the swords of the Istarians as they scrambled through ash and sand and rubble.
Their swords blooded with threescore innocents, the cavalry closed with Aeleth's bandits in a racket of war cries and clashing metal. The Tears echoed dolefully with the screams of the wounded and dying.
Where are you, Fordus? Stormlight thought, rac shy;ing toward Mishakal's Tears. You would know what to … what to …
He stopped in horror as a dark wind passed over him.
Tamex appeared and, hook-bladed kala raised aloft, rallied the rebels against the circling Istarians. The mysterious warrior, whose bravery and inven shy;tiveness had rescued two hundred noncombatants
from the merciless cavalry, had apparently returned to avenge the deaths of those he could not save.
As veiled and unsavory as the black-robed man might seem, at least he fought like a hero. The first strong sweep of his weapon drove an Istarian lancer from horseback, the saddle cords snapping with the force of the blow. Tamex wheeled like a ritual dancer, slowly and confidently blocking two spear thrusts and the downward swipe of a sword that seemed to pass through his arm but obviously did not, the blade shimmering bloodless and ineffectual in the firelight.
With a laugh that rang through the crystals, Tamex hooked his blade into the chest of the attacking swordsman, through shield and bronze and leather and bone. The Istarian fell, and the cavalry scattered before the strange and formidable champion.
Like a mythic figure from the Age of Huma, Tamex pivoted amid the horsemen, pulling one, two, a third from their saddles. Aeleth's bow felled another two, and Rann, his battle-rage enkindled by Tamex's valor, leapt up behind the saddle and slit the throat of a hapless officer.
Suddenly, the brazen call of a trumpet rose from the chaos of battlesound and resounding laughter. The Istarian commander rose in his stirrups, signal shy;ing frantically at his disorganized troops. One of Gormion's black:feathered arrows flashed through the moonlight and lodged in his shoulder, and the officer cried out and wheeled his horse back into the darkness.
Nor was Stormlight idle, as Tamex and the bandits turned the tide of the battle. Breathing a prayer to Branchala, the wiry elf raced between galloping horses and, with a powerful, high kick, drove his heel soundly into the helmet of an Istarian spearman,