The Seven Altars of Dusarra

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

For an instant, Garth considered his position. His primary goal was to get out of Dыsarra alive; a secondary goal was to get Frima, Koros, and his loot out with him. It would be pleasant if he could also kill some Aghadites, both because it would discourage pursuit and because it would be enjoyable; he had no moral compunctions about that, since the cult was responsible for any number of murders. However, he was at a disadvantage here; the Aghadite was concealed, presumably in a good defensive position that he had had plenty of time to establish, and Garth had no idea of the number of his foes. There might be the single priest, or the entire cult, or even several cults. Direct battle was therefore inadvisable. Returning to his primary objective, he considered the best way to achieve it; the Aghadites could not have known when he would emerge from the temple of death, unless they had oracles or seers available, and even then they'd want confirmation. At this instant, messengers of some sort were most likely carrying word across the city; the Aghadites wouldn't rely on a single ambush. There were probably people waiting for him at the stable and at the city gates.

If he could reach them before the messengers did, surprise would be on his side. Accordingly, he made no answer to the taunting voice, and paid no further heed to the ancient priest of the Final God, but took to his heels, running full speed straight down the Street of the Temples, ignoring the few startled pedestrians who scattered before him.

He had reached his decision in far less time than required to explain it; by the time the Aghadite had finished his second sentence, Garth was a dozen yards down the avenue, the great broadsword still in his right fist. The long blade was awkward, and slowed him as he ran, but it was his only weapon.

It occurred to him that there might be enemies lurking in the temples along the way; at the first opportunity he turned right and dashed down a side street. He had not forgotten his experience of being lost in the maze of narrow streets that made up most of the city, but considered the risk less important than being unpredictable. A person could not be ambushed or apprehended unless his path was known in advance.

There was one very definite problem that he foresaw; the city had only the single gate, and he knew of no other way past the wall. Also, of course, he wanted to get Frima and his other booty. Koros could take care of itself.

He turned left after he had put two blocks between himself and the Street of the Temples, and found himself in a relatively straight lane paralleling the avenue; he followed it as far as he could, and found himself in a familiar alleyway, one he had traversed before. He slipped from a full run into an easy jog, and headed for the Inn of the Seven Stars.

Dыsarrans who happened to be out on the streets gave him a wide berth; an overman with naked sword in hand was nothing to argue with, particularly when he seemed to be in such a hurry.

The long run across the city tired him rather more than he had hoped; he had apparently not fully recovered from the battle with the worm and the blow on the head. His pace had slowed perceptibly when he turned onto the street where the house he had broken through faced.

He was not entirely sure why he had chosen to approach from this direction; the Aghadites would undoubtedly have it guarded. But they would also have the archway entrance to the stable guarded, and the route through the house would offer more cover and less opportunity for his foes to overcome him by sheer numbers. That it would also offer more cover for an ambuscade had not escaped him; still, he chose to risk it.

The street was not empty as it had been on previous occasions; a handful of men and women, in the usual dark robes and hoods, stopped and stared as he broke again into a full-speed charge toward the door midway in the block.

There was a hiss, and an arrow embedded itself in the hard-packed dirt of the street; it had not come anywhere near him. There was an ambush-but he had taken them by surprise.

He did not bother to try the door when he reached it; only fools would have neglected to lock it. He took the sword in both hands and hewed mightily, hoping the blade would prove sturdy enough.

Another arrow swished past his ear to shatter on the stone of the house's facade.

The sword struck the heavy wooden door and cut into it like a knife into cheese; the hilt suddenly felt hot in Garth's hands. He dismissed it as a trick of his imperfectly healed palms. He ripped the blade free and struck again.

The door exploded inward in shattered fragments, and Garth stepped through; he knew that something beyond his understanding was at work, as he had not the strength to so destroy the door with just two blows, but he had no time to worry about it. Two more arrows flew somewhere behind him.

The room inside was much as he remembered itthe stairway along one side, the archway to the kitchen at the back, the ceiling so low he was forced to stoop. There were details that were different, however; primarily a corpse that lay sprawled before the door, its skull split by a chunk of oak from the demolished door. It had been a man clad in helmet, mail, and breastplate, armed with sword and short spear.

The sword in Garth's hands twisted sideways, and he found himself chopping horizontally; there was a short scream as the blade cut through the belly of a second man who had lurked beside the door, a rattle as he dropped his sword, and a dull thud as he fell forward into a pool of his own blood.

The red gem in the sword's pommel blazed up as bright as a lantern in the dim room. Garth could no longer pretend that the weapon was nothing but simple steel; he had neglected to consider another ambusher at the door, and the sword had disposed of that possibility for him. The thing was not to be trusted. It was still his only weapon, though, and he still had no time for such considerations.

An arrow came in through the door and stuck in the leg of the corpse; Garth moved rapidly across the room. More cautious this time, he wielded the sword with his own will in sweeping around the corners of the kitchen arch and succeeded in wounding another man, who gasped and dropped his weapons as the blade cut his arm open.

Other men responded with attacks of their own; three men with drawn swords faced him, abandoning any attempts at stealth or surprise.

Behind him he heard steps descending the staircase; there was no time to waste. As his right-hand foe made a slashing feint, Garth brought the sword of Bheleu up from beneath; the man's sword was driven back sideways into his own forehead. The curving quillon snapped, leaving a ragged gash, and there was the crack of snapping bone as the thumb that gripped the hilt was crushed against the harder bone of the skull.

A second opponent's blade scraped across Garth's mail as he continued the upward sweep of the great broadsword, freeing it from the shorter sword of the man who was even now collapsing in agony; the tip of the weapon scratched a line in the wooden ceiling as it swept over the head of the central swordsman, its upward momentum too great to be checked immediately. Then it came sweeping down, and cut halfway through the left-hand man, entering his neck and chopping down into his chest.

The central opponent, seeing his comrades defeated in a matter of a very few seconds, made a wild lunge at Garth's unarmored throat; the overman dodged aside, yanking his blade free from the new-made corpse. Seeing his lunge unsuccessful, the man simply released his grip and let his sword fall, raising his hands in surrender; Garth checked his swing as best he could, but the sword cut deep into the man's side anyway, slicing through mail as if it were cloth. The Dыsarran's breastplate stopped it before the blade struck bone, and Garth hoped the wound would not prove fatal. The man slumped to the floor, and Garth stepped over him.

Ahead of him the doorway to the little yard was open; nothing had been done to replace the door he had ruined earlier. There might, he knew, be more men outside, waiting in a third ambush. Hoping to take them by surprise, he charged out, sword thrust out ahead of him, and whirled about when he reached the center of the tiny yard.

The little court was empty; unfortunately, the ones on either side were not. Men armed with crossbows peered up over the six-foot walls. Garth saw them in time to keep moving, to provide as poor a target as possible.

Bolts whirred and clattered against the walls as he stooped and dashed back into the kitchen, to find himself facing the men who had been upstairs. Two were archers, armed only with short bows, bent and strung but with no arrows nocked; they presented no immediate threat, and he ignored them. The others, three of them, were armed with swords. All five were bent over their fallen comrades, unready for combat; none made any threatening move when confronted with an angry overman holding a six-foot broadsword.

Taking no chances, Garth bellowed, "Drop your weapons!"

With varying amounts of reluctance, the five complied.

"Now, out of the house! Take your wounded and go! Hesitantly, they obeyed. Of the six men Garth had defeated, three were dead; the one who had been made to gash his own forehead was unconscious, but not seriously injured; the one who had been last to fall was alive but in bad shape, still bleeding despite makeshift bandaging; and the one who had had his arm cut while lurking in ambush was ambulatory but unarmed, the muscles of his right hand slack under rough bandages. The newcomers carried out the wounded, two to a man, with the man still on his feet aided by his remaining comrade. Garth watched them go.

He had lost the element of surprise; instead, he now had a defensible position.

There was a loud roar behind him; he whirled, sword ready, then recognized the sound.

Koros! The warbeast was fighting. Its battle cry was loud enough to be heard for half a mile, but by the volume Garth judged it to be much nearer; probably in the stableyard, defending Frima and Garth's supplies.

The roar sounded again, mingled with a human scream. Garth wished he were able to see what was happening, but he dared not venture out into the waiting crossfire again.

The roaring continued, and other sounds mixed with it: the clatter of weapons, hoarse shouts, piercing screams. With a start, Garth recognized the snapping of crossbow strings.

That could be serious; thick as the warbeast's hide was, at close range a crossbow bolt might pierce it. If a marksman got lucky and put a quarrel in the beast's eye or mouth it could do real damage. Garth did not want to let his faithful beast face danger alone. He peered out the door to the little yard, just to verify the continued presence of the crossbowmen on either side.

There was no sign of them. No faces or weapons showed above the walls. Startled, he took a cautious step outside, expecting the crossbowmen to reappear at any instant.

They didn't. The warbeast's roaring had died to a low growl, and the sounds of resistance had ceased; whoever it had been fighting, it had apparently won. Garth listened, and realized the sound was coming not from directly ahead, beyond the wall of the stable, but from his right. He turned and took a few steps, so that he could look over the stone wall that came to about the level of his mouth.

Koros was in the next yard, its head lowered out of sight; the warbeast's back was low enough that he had not noticed it before. Two crossbow bolts were lodged in its fur, but Garth saw no sign that it was seriously injured.

That explained what had happened to half the crossbowmen; the other half must have fled in terror, he surmised. It left the whereabouts of Frima and his supplies a mystery, though. He kept a cautious watch as he crossed the yard and leaned against the wall, watching his mount.

Koros was eating ravenously, and Garth remembered, with a trace of chagrin, that he had neglected the beast's feeding since arriving in Marra. There were corpses or fragments of five or six men scattered at the monster's feet; Garth judged that that would be plenty, as it had not been all that long since it was fed. Ordinarily it would not have disobeyed his orders so soon. It must have been irritable with hunger, and became annoyed enough with the Dыsarran soldiery to forget its order to stay and guard.

It was quite likely still irritable, and Garth had no intention of bothering it until it had eaten its fill of its victims. He watched as it ripped apart sturdy mail with its fangs to get at the soft flesh beneath, and marveled anew at the sheer power of the beast.

The sound of clanking armor from beyond the stableyard wall suddenly reminded him that his goods and captive were still unaccounted for; he vaulted up onto the lower wall between the private courts, the sword of Bheleu in his hand, giving himself a good view of the red-tiled roof of the stable and some sight of the stableyard.

Men were marching; he could see little more than their helmets, but it seemed clear they were heading for the stall where he had left Frima. As if in confirmation of his conclusion, his captive's voice called out, "Koros!"

Wasting no further time, Garth launched himself up onto the roof and ran clattering across the tiles. The helmeted men looked up at the sound to see a bellowing overman, spattered with blood, swinging a huge broadsword around his head.

It provided an excellent distraction; they stopped short, the leader a pace or two from the door of the stall. That foremost man even obligingly took two steps back, the better to view this newcomer.

A cry went up. "The overman! The overman!" There was a commotion in the street and more men poured through the arch in response. Garth bellowed again, shouting, "I'a bheluye! I am destruction!" He knew that the psychologically correct action at this moment would be to leap down into the men before him, slashing about with the sword; such an assault would almost certainly drive them all back out through the archway. Unfortunately, he could not bring himself to cause such unprovoked bloodshed, and instead merely whirled the blade about his head again, so that it flashed redly as it caught the last light of the setting sun.

The men stared up at him open-mouthed; none advanced-but none retreated, either, though there were some who shuffled uneasily. He was not going to awe them into flight unless he attacked, but he could not bring himself to do so. Quite aside from his aversion to such wanton aggression, it was a long leap down from the roof; even if he made it without injuring himself, which shouldn't prove too difficult, he would most likely stumble or fall upon landing, which would destroy his dignity and ruin the effect of his entrance by revealing him as merely mortal, leaving him open to a concerted counterattack.

The solution to his quandary arrived suddenly, just as the perfect moment passed and the men began to recover their nerve; in a single silent bound, Koros cleared the stable wall, rebounded from the roof with a spray of shards of tile shattered by its weight, and landed atop three of the Dыsarrans. They died without knowing what had hit them, as the warbeast's claws shredded robes, armor, and flesh; the crunching of bone was audible throughout the stableyard over the triumphant roar that Koros released as it struck. The swords the three men had held flew from their hands and clattered on the armor of their companions behind them; one laid open a man's scalp before falling aside.

Not satisfied with the single attack, Koros leapt again, a short, powerful pounce that smashed another man to the ground so suddenly that the man behind him went down as well, his leg trapped beneath the falling body even as he turned to flee. The first man was ripped open from forehead to groin by a slash of the warbeast's fangs as the second lay screaming, pinned beneath the weight of the monster's forepaws on his companion's corpse. As an afterthought, one of those great velvet-padded paws licked out, in a motion identical with that of a kitten batting a ball of yarn, and the beast's curving claws snatched the screamer's head off, spraying blood across the heels of his fleeing comrades.

Garth stood on the rooftop, virtually forgotten, and watched as the crowd of warriors vanished back through the arch into the street. The huge broadsword hung loosely in his hands as Koros, with a brief gaze at the fleeing Dыsarrans, declined to pursue and settled down to feast on the five it had slain. It licked its claws daintily, cast a glance of its slit-pupilled eyes at its overman master, and began eating.

When a moment had passed with no further attention paid him and no sign of a renewed assault from without, Garth tossed the sword to the ground, then cautiously lowered himself over the eaves and dropped down into the yard.

The gathering dusk had shrouded the stables in semi-darkness, and he had no way of making a light; he peered through the gray gloom at the familiar stall, and made out the pale oval of Frima's face above the door. He strode up to her, and found she was staring fixedly, mouth gaping, at Koros as it chewed contentedly on a human thighbone.

"We must get out of the city," he said.

She said nothing, but continued to stare. Her mouth closed; her throat worked, making no sound, and her jaw fell open again.

"Our best hope is to ride Koros. It can probably carry both of us faster than we could move on foot, and we need not worry about separation."

She was silent for a second longer, then blinked and turned toward the overman. "Ride that?" Her voice was hoarse.

"Yes. It is the same animal you petted yesterday, and now that it has eaten, it should give us no trouble."

Her gaze turned back to Koros who, having eaten its fill, was licking its paws clean, then traveled across the fragmentary remains of its victims, to rest at last on the severed head that had rolled, unwanted and unnoticed, across the yard, to lie against the wall beside the arch. Her mouth twitched, and she turned away to vomit on the dirty straw that floored the stall.

Garth waited patiently until she had finished, then said, "It would be helpful if you would aid in loading the supplies."