‘I have no idea, dear one,’ she replied.
‘This is all very fine, I suppose,’ Vanion said with a worried frown, ‘but when we begin our final advance on Cyrga, we won’t have time to run those brutes into exhaustion. Not only that, Klael will probably start massing them in units larger than these regiments we’ve been coming across out here in the open. If we don’t come up with some way to neutralize them permanently, our chances of getting to Cyrga alive aren’t very good.’
‘Lord Vanion!’ one of the knights cried out in alarm. ‘There are more of them coming.’
‘Where!’ Vanion looked around.
‘From the west!’
Vanion peered after the fleeing monsters. And then he saw them. There were two regiments of Klael’s soldiers out there on the flats. The one they had encountered earlier was reeling and staggering toward the hills jutting up from the horizon. The other was coming toward them from the hills, and the second regiment showed no signs of the exhaustion which had incapacitated their fellows.
‘This is ridiculous,’ Talen muttered, examining the lock on his chain with sensitive fingertips.
‘You said you could unlock them,’ Kalten accused in a hoarse whisper.
‘Kalten, you could unlock these. They’re the worst locks I’ve ever seen.’
‘Just open them, Talen,’ Sparhawk told him quietly. ‘Don’t give lectures. We still have to get out of this pen.’
They had merged with the other woodcutters and had passed unchallenged through the gates of Cyrga just as the sun was setting. Then they had followed the slaves to an open square near the gate, unloaded their cart onto one of the stacks of wood piled there, and leaned the cart against a rough stone wall with the others. Then, like docile cattle, they had gone into the large slave-pen and allowed the Cynesgan overseers to chain them to rusty iron rings protruding from the rear wall of the pen. They had been fed a thin, watery soup and had then bedded down in piles of filthy straw heaped against the wall to wait for nightfall. Xanetia was not with them. Silent and unseen, she roamed the streets outside the pen instead.
‘Hold your leg still, Kalten,’ Talen hissed. ‘I can’t get the chain off when you’re flopping around like that.’
‘Sorry.’
The boy concentrated for a moment, and the lock snapped open. Then he moved on, crawling through the rustling straw.
‘Don’t get so familiar,’ Mirtai’s voice muttered in the darkness.
‘Sorry. I was looking for your ankle.’
‘It’s on the other end of the leg.’
‘Yes. I noticed that myself. It’s dark, Atana. I can’t see what I’m doing.’
‘What are you men doing there?’ It was a whining, servile kind of voice coming from somewhere in the straw beyond where Kalten lay.
‘It’s none of your business,’ Kalten rasped. ‘Go back to sleep.’
‘I want to know what you’re doing. If you don’t tell me, I’ll call the overseers.’
‘You’d better shut him up, Kalten,’ Mirtai muttered. ‘He’s an informer.’
‘I’ll deal with it,’ Kalten replied darkly. He slipped away through the rustling straw.
‘What are you doing?’ the slave with the whining voice demanded. ‘How did you—’ The voice broke off, and there was a sudden thrashing in the straw and a kind of wheezy gurgling.
‘What’s going on out there?’ A harsh voice called from the overseer’s barracks. The barracks doorway poured light out into the yard.
There was no answer, only a few spasmodic rustles in the straw. Kalten was breathing a little hard when he returned to his place, quickly wrapped his chain around his ankles again and covered it with straw. They waited tensely, butt the Cynesgan overseer evidently decided not to investigate. He went back inside, closing the door behind him and plunging the yard into darkness again.
‘Does that happen often—among slaves, I mean?’ Bevier whispered to Mirtai as Talen was unchaining him.
‘All the time,’ she murmured. ‘There’s no loyalty among slaves. One slave will betray another for an extra crust of bread.’
‘How sad.’
‘Slavery? I could find harsher words than sad.’
‘Let’s go,’ Sparhawk told them.
‘How are we going to find Xanetia?’ Kalten whispered as they crossed the pen.
‘We can’t. She’s going to have to find us.’
It took Talen only a moment to unlock the gate, and they all slipped out into the dark street beyond. They crept along that street to the large square where the firewood was stacked and stopped before stepping out into the open.
‘Take a look, Talen,’ Sparhawk suggested.
‘Right.’ The young thief melted away into the darkness. The rest of them waited tensely.
‘It’s all clear,’ Talen’s whisper came to them after a few minutes. ‘The carts are over here.’
They followed the sound of his hushed voice and soon reached the line of wood-carts leaning against the wall.
‘Did you see any guards?’ Kalten asked.
‘Who’s going to stay up all night to guard a wood pile?’ Talen dropped down onto his stomach and wormed his way under the cart. There was a faint creaking of the tightly-woven limbs of the makeshift basket. ‘Here,’ Talen said. A sword-tip banged against Sparhawk’s shin.
Sparhawk took the sword, handed it to Kalten and then leaned down. ‘Pass them out hilt-first,’ he instructed. ‘Don’t poke me with the sharp end of a sword that way.’
‘I’ll try.’ Talen continued to pass out weapons and then followed them with their mail-shirts and tunics. They all felt better once they were armed again.
‘Anakha?’ The voice was soft and very light.
‘Is that you, Xanetia?’ Sparhawk realized how foolish the question was almost before it left his lips.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Come away, I prithee. The whisper is the natural voice of stealth, and it doth carry far by night. Let us be gone ere they who watch this sleeping city come hither in search of the source of our incautious conversation.’
‘We’re going to have to wait a bit,’ Khalad said. ‘Aphrael has to blow air into that cave.’
‘Are you sure this is going to work?’ Berit asked dubiously.
‘No, not really, but it’s worth a try, isn’t it?’
‘You don’t even know for sure that they’re still inside the cave.’
‘That doesn’t really matter. Either way they won’t be able to hide in the cave any more.’ Khalad began to carefully wrap a length of oil-soaked rag around one of his crossbow bolts. Then, being careful to conceal the sparks with his body, he began striking his flint and steel together. After a moment, his tinder caught, he lit his stub of a candle, and brushed the fire out of his tinder. Then he carefully put the candle behind a fair-sized rock.
‘Aphrael seems to be unhappy about this, Khalad,’ Berit said as a chill breeze came up.
‘I wasn’t too happy about what happened to Lord Abriel either,’ Khalad replied bleakly. ‘I had a great deal of respect for that old man, and these monsters with yellow blood tore him to pieces.’
‘You’re doing this for revenge then?’
‘No. Not really. This is just the most practical way to get rid of them. Ask Aphrael to let me know when there’s enough air in the cave.’
‘How long is that likely to take?’
‘I have no idea. All the coal-miners who’ve ever seen it up close are dead.’ Khalad scratched at his beard. ‘I’m not entirely sure what’s going to happen here, Berit. When marsh-gas catches on fire, it just burns off and goes out. Firedamp’s a little more spectacular.’
‘What’s all this business about blowing air into the cave?’ Berit demanded.
‘Khalad shrugged. ‘Fire’s a living thing. It has to be able to breathe.’