Raika rode up to where Bakar lay, unmoving. She lifted one leg over the saddle and dropped to the ground.
“Fool,” she said bitterly. “Never turn your back on the enemy!”
She threw down her sword with disgust. It landed across Bakar’s back. He groaned.
“What? Alive?” She rolled the farmer over. Bakar’s face was white as milk, but he was breathing.
“You’re hitting me again,” he moaned.
“Shut up!” Raika stood. “Where are those healers? We have a wounded man here!”
Seeing the bandits ride sedately back to camp, Howland slowly let out the breath he was holding. Khorr presented himself with his men, saying, “We beat them again, Sir Howland!”
“So we did.”
“Will they come again today?” Robien wondered.
“Yes.”
Elf and minotaur looked crestfallen.
The Knight explained. “If Rakell keeps to the strategy he’s been following, he’ll mount spoiling attacks all day to keep us off guard and prevent us from repairing our defenses.”
Robien uttered a Kagonesti curse. Khorr asked, “What can we do?”
“Carry on despite them. Any show of weakness will bring on an even more serious assault.”
Suddenly Howland had a thought. “Where’s Ezu?”
“Here.”
Ezu was sitting cross-legged on the well wall right behind him.
“How long have you been there?”
“Since you said, ‘Fall back to the well.’ Am I not where you wish me to be?”
“Yes, fine. Don’t budge from that spot!”
While weary farmers struggled to rebuild the broken-down barricades between the huts, others used Khorr’s cart to clear away the enemy dead.
Raika, pleased with the fine horse she’d acquired, rode out sixty yards from the village and in full view of the bandits’ south camp thrust a broken lance deep into the dry turf. She propped a battered, blood-smeared helmet on the end of the lance, spat on the ground, and rode back to Nowhere.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Four times more before sunset the bandits tested the defenders of Nowhere, pushing, probing, looking for any weakness that could be exploited. Before the sun was low and red in the west, the farmers were speechless with exhaustion, and Howland’s fighters had survived from one crisis to the next, throwing the enemy back each time with skill, determination, guile, or sheer will.
After the last attack, everyone collapsed where they stood. Only Howland remained on his feet, endlessly circling the village, ever-vigilant for the enemy’s next move.
Flat on her back Raika said, “How does he do it? How does that old man run and fight and command all day and not fall over dead from weariness?”
Seated nearby, Robien put his face in his hands and mumbled, “He was bred to battle, like a hound to the hunt. He’ll keep going as long as his heart beats.”
Raika gazed at the sky, still blue overhead but streaked with feathery, scarlet clouds. It was indescribably beautiful, and Raika stared at the heavens as though she’d never seen them before. At sea, the sky was always laden with portents for good or ill, mostly ill. A bank of clouds in the wrong place, the color of the horizon at dawn or dusk held meaning for the success or failure of a long voyage. On land, the sky said nothing to her, but it was beautiful.
“Why am I here?” she mused aloud.
Lying on his belly a few feet away, Wilf stirred and raised his head. His freckled face was spattered with mud and blood.
“You’re here to fight this fight,” he said.
“What good will it do? Tomorrow, or the next day, we’ll all die. The longer it takes, the harder we’ll go …” Her voiced trailed off.
“Nonsense!”
Everyone around Raika sat up. Howland was standing over them, hands on hips. “We’re doing well!” he declared.
Raika pushed herself up on her elbows. “Think so, old man?”
“I do. The worst attack was the second, and every one since then has been weaker and more tentative. Their last attack was positively feeble! Carver and the children could have driven it off by themselves!” He gestured to the growing heap of bandit dead laid out by the trench. “We’ve killed thirty of the enemy and lost only nine killed and eleven wounded. Now’s the time to launch our stratagem. Before the sun sets completely, I will ask Rakell for a parley.”
Robien got stiffly to his feet. “Do you really think the bandits will flee if their leaders are killed, Sir Howland?”
“I do. They’ve taken a hammering today.”
Raika sank back with a sigh. “So have we!”
“Remember we’re dealing with warriors who could not take the discipline of a true army. They chose banditry to have an easy life. Today they’ve learned that not everyone will bow down to them.” He looked away to the brigands’ north camp. “I’ll wager some have deserted already.”
Amergin walked up, looking wan but unflappable as ever. Howland gave him a message scrawled on a slip of goatskin, which the Kagonesti tucked into his belt. Next Howland asked for the frailest, most frightened-looking villager still capable of walking to Rakell’s camp and back. Caeta offered to go herself, but Howland insisted on a less hardy representative. He finally chose a stooped old man named Tuwan, Bakar’s uncle. He was scrawny to the point of emaciation, in part because of a long-standing illness. Tuwan had only two teeth in his head. When he smiled, he looked like Death walking.
Caeta supplied a swath of faded linen, which Howland tacked to the haft of the bandit’s lance as a flag of truce. Amergin and Tuwan left the village by crossing the trench, then turned left and made for the bandits’ southern camp, the biggest of the three.
“Afraid, old fellow?” asked Amergin as they crossed open ground.
Tuwan showed both teeth. “A poor man who’s lived as long as me has seen everything awful there is,” he replied. “Done a lot, too. One thing I ain’t done is spit in the eye of a lord.”
“Don’t do it today unless you’re tired of living,” the elf said.
Tuwan cackled, sucking air through cracked lips.
From his place atop the well, Howland watched the Kagonesti forester and the gaunt old farmer slowly merge into the brown expanse that was once thick with growing barley. A quartet of riders galloped out from the camp, ringing Amergin and Tuwan with lance tips. For a few seconds Howland held his breath. If the bandits were too angry, they might slay his emissaries rather than listen to them.
Robien’s eyes were keener than his. Howland asked him, “Can you see what’s happening?”
The bounty hunter stood beside the Knight, shading his eyes from the scarlet rays with his hands. “Amergin is showing them your message,” he said. “They’re reading it.… What did you write, Sir Howland?”
“I told them a column of two hundred armed men was on its way to relieve us and that I expected them in two or three days.”
Robien dropped his hands and gazed in awe at Howland’s brazen lie.
“Even if Rakell doesn’t believe it, some of the more faint-hearted bandits might bolt.” He gave his second in command a wink. “I signed the message ‘General Howland uth Ungen, Knight of Solamnia.’ ”
“Maybe they’ll just surrender!”
Howland looked solemn. “Jesting aside, this is our last, best chance to come out of this with our hides-and honor-intact. While I’m gone, keep everyone on their toes. Rakell’s just as capable of treachery as he ever was.” He straightened his dusty clothes and removed the scarred helmet.
Distant movement drew Robien’s attention. “The pickets are returning, and so are Amergin and Tuwan!”
Howland saw the two slight figures coming back to Nowhere. “Message delivered,” he murmured. Now it was time to prepare.