Lorin snorted.
‘I know what’s going to happen if we ever get out of here. I’m going to Sussadar, and then to Armadell. Then back to Sussadar. Those two cities and the road between them, between my fine ladies. That’s going to be my world.’
‘Sounds like a noble plan,’ Manadar smiled. He glanced at Brennan. ‘What about you? You need some of my tender tending?’
‘No,’ Brennan said.
He had packed some bandaging in under his jerkin, tight over the knife wound. It was not a deep cut as far as he could tell. Messy, but not dangerous. He was more interested in watching the slavers moving to and fro at the base of the hill. Close to a hundred of them in all, by his count. A few had herded a crowd of captives into the cluster of trees and were presumably guarding them there out of sight. That left at least eighty or ninety who were arraying themselves in groups on the lower slopes. Some had ridden away, rounding the hill and out of sight.
‘Seems to me they’re going to try us before night falls,’ he observed.
‘Most likely,’ Lorin agreed. ‘Don’t suppose they like fighting in the dark. That sort never do.’
‘We going to get out of the way?’ Manadar asked.
‘These people aren’t going anywhere fast or easy,’ Lorin said.
He meant the villagers they had freed. Twenty-five of them. They were sitting around the cairn, feasting on the last of the food and water Manadar had given them. All of their food, in fact. There was nothing of that left for the morrow. Enough water to quench the thirst of this number for perhaps one day.
‘And I know you don’t mean to leave them in our wake,’ Lorin continued pointedly. ‘They’re the reason we’re here. To fight for them. So that’s what we do.’
‘I know,’ Manadar nodded. ‘I’m just curious about how we’re going to do it. There being three of us and… oh, I don’t know, what do you reckon, Brennan?’
‘Ninety or thereabouts.’
‘There you are. Ninety of them.’
‘We don’t do it alone, that’s how,’ said Lorin. ‘We’ve got a lot of their coin sitting up here with us in those twenty-five bodies over there. As long as they think they’re only against the three of us, they’ll stay here and make the attempt. All we need to do is keep them here, trying to kill us, until Yulan and the rest get here.’
‘Oh,’ Manadar said. ‘Yulan’s coming, is he?’
‘He will be once you light a fire.’
‘With what?’
‘You’ve got flint and steel, haven’t you?’
‘Yes.
‘Well, then. Cut up one of the bedrolls. Fray it apart. It’ll take a flame if you get it ripped up fine enough. Then burn whatever you can. Your clothes, anything, I don’t care. If we don’t get smoke in the sky before darkness falls, we’re all dead. And we’ve won nothing, worse than nothing, if we just moved the place these people die up a bit of a hill.’
The villagers watched Manadar struggling to get a fire going for a while. Eventually, one of the women went to him and gently but insistently took the task over. Soon enough, she had a little blaze started, crackling and spitting through the wreckage of one of the bedrolls. Brennan had a feeling it was his bedroll in fact. He should have watched more closely when Manadar was making the selection.
Manadar must have told the villagers the purpose of the fire, for they began shedding any odd pieces of inessential clothing they had left to them. Headscarves and thin shawls. Ruined shoes. Strips torn from the hems of skirts. It all went into the flames. A black line of smoke, thin but strong, climbed into the dimming sky. Just in time, perhaps. A fast dusk was close upon them.
Marweh came to Lorin and Brennan.
‘We can fight,’ she said levelly.
‘You’ll have to,’ Lorin replied.
He worked his knife a little clumsily out from its sheath in his boot.
‘Here. Give that to someone. You’ve a couple of spears. The rest of you should gather rocks. Anything small enough to throw, big enough to hurt. Take the cairn apart.’
They did. Brennan watched for a time. However long it had stood there for, the cairn ended in a few minutes. The villagers roughly dismantled it, making many small piles of stones from that one larger. A dozen good archers would have been much better, but still Brennan found it an encouraging sight. A rain of stones, thrown from on high, might be enough to discourage an assault, depending on the temper of the attackers. It might even crack a few heads.
‘You spotted this tyrant of theirs yet?’ Lorin asked him quietly.
Brennan shook his head. He had been searching for any distinguishing sign that might mark out the leader of the slavers. The distance was just too great to be sure.
‘If you do, put an arrow in him, would you?’
‘Of course,’ Brennan said.
He had his bow ready by his side, and the quiver resting against a rock within easy reach. He could see men moving slowly and cautiously up the slope below them. They were rushing from boulder to boulder, just as he and Lorin had done when they first climbed this hill. They used every wrinkle in the land to conceal their approach. Soon, soon, they would be close enough for him not to worry that a shot was a wasted arrow. He had counted his shafts. Twenty-seven. Every one might have to count if things went badly.
‘You want me to stay here or cover a different approach?’ he asked Lorin.
The older man heaved himself onto his feet with a groan of pain.
‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘Think you’ve got most of them on this side, and that’s where the archer should be.’
‘The closest thing you’ve got to an archer,’ Brennan said.
‘As you say.’
Brennan waited. He watched slavers coming closer and closer, inch by careful inch. Many of them.
He was not at all certain he was sufficient for the task fortune had allotted to him. Not strong enough, not brave enough, not skilled enough. But that task was advancing upon him anyway. His doubt would not stay it.
He reached for an arrow. He could smell the fire and the smoke behind him. It was a dense and acrid stench. Things that were not really meant for burning were going up in flames. That was good. It made for good smoke.
XII
Just before he loosed his first arrow, Brennan finally spotted what he thought might be the tyrant. Sitting on a big horse, alone, way down beside the trees. A stocky, motionless figure. Staring up towards the hilltop.
It was hard to tell but it looked as though he was wearing a helmet-the only one Brennan had noticed among any of the slavers. The horse he was astride had sheets of padding over its neck and flanks. A crude kind of armour. Something in the man’s posture, even at this distance, spoke to Brennan of arrogance. He was just out of an arrow’s reach. I’ll kill you later, Brennan thought.
He drew back the bowstring and sighted down the length of the arrow. He imagined a line, extending out from the sharp point of the arrow to the nearest of the advancing slavers. The man was bent almost double, working his way across a steep bit of slope, making for the lee of a big, split boulder.
Brennan waited. One step, another. Close enough. He let the arrow fly. It darted downhill, skimming low over the ground. Because the man was so hunched over, it hit him in the top of his shoulder. It seemed to find the notch between the bones, because it looked to go deep, punching into his upper chest. The man howled and fell.
Brennan paid him no more heed after that. He reached at once for the next arrow. Men were scattering on the slope below him, suddenly desirous of better cover now that they knew what was coming. Brennan tracked one of them-just for a few heartbeats-then let his aim drift a little ahead of the scampering figure and loosed the arrow. It darted down and smacked into his thigh.
‘Close enough to an archer,’ Brennan murmured to himself.
He could hear rocks rattling down on the other flanks of the hill. He ventured a quick glance over his shoulder. The villagers had scattered from where the cairn had once been. Many of them, even the children, were flinging stones down at attackers Brennan could not see. He could not see Lorin either, but Manadar was there, crouched low, sword at the ready. He saw Brennan looking and smiled. Then he peered down the far side of the hill, picked some unfortunate target and ran. Brennan lost sight of him.