Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 2 - The Crimson Legion (16 page)

“I don't know,” he said. “With the Scourge, I can hear them whistling and chirpingÑbut I
can't see them any more than you can.”

The mysterious watchers fell silent.

Rikus cursed under his breath and brought his sword into a defensive position. “Be ready,”
he said, no longer bothering to whisper.

They slowly backed away, stopping when they reached the stony bed that Neeva had prepared
for them. Still, the watchers did not move or attack.

“Maybe its a pack of wild thri-kreen,” Neeva said.

Unlike K'kriq, most thri-kreen were not civilized. They roamed the desert day and night,
hunting for prey to sate their ravenous appetites. Sometimes, if they were desperate, they
would resort to eating sentient creatures.

Rikus peered all around them, searching the dusky terrain for some sign of an insect-man.
The dying rays of the sun only made it more difficult to see, for they lit the tops of the
rocks in muted red light. It was impossible to distinguish colors, and even shapes were
soft and fuzzy, but he did not see anything large and angular enough to be a thri-kreen.

Rikus shook his head. "There's nothing big enough.

The mul had no
sooner spoken than a soft chirp sounded at their backs. A small foot brushed against the
rocky ground and padded toward them. Rikus spun around and glimpsed the three-foot
silhouette of a bushy-hatred man dropping behind a small boulder.

His stomach knotted in cold fear. "Halflings!' Rikus hissed, pressing his back against
Neeva's.

“I wish you'd said thri-kreen,” Neeva replied. She remained quiet for a moment, then
added, “If I fall, don't let them eat meÑat least not alive.”

“Then don't fall,” the mul answered. “If you do, I doubt I'll be in any position to stop
them.”

Rikus and Neeva had faced halflings before, when they had ventured into the halfling
forest to recover the spear and wand that they had used to kill Kalak. The small hunters
had felled them both easily, and Agis had barely been able to talk the tribe's chieftain
out of eating the entire party.

They waited, back to back, for the halflings to move again. After what seemed an eternity,
Rikus suggested, “Maybe they've decided against attacking us.”

“You can't believe that,” Neeva countered. “This isn't just any halfling hunting party.
They're Urikite assassins.”

As much as he didn't want to, the mul had to agree with his fighting partner. Halflings
left their forest too rarely for this to be a chance encounter.

From beside them, Rikus heard the soft scrape of a foot on stone, followed quickly by the
high-pitched twang of a tiny bowstring. “Down!” The mul screamed. He pushed Neeva to the
ground and dropped at
her side.

An instant later, a tiny arrow clattered against a rock near Rikus's side. Though the
missile was hardly longer than his hand, the mul knew from his previous experiences that
it would be tipped with an effective poison that knocked its victim unconscious within a
few seconds. Likely as not, the unlucky victim would never wake, and if he did it would be
to the sight of several halflings preparing to eat his liver.

“How are we going to get out of this?” Neeva asked. Her voice was muffled because her
mouth was pressed to the ground.

Rikus lifted his head enough so that he could look around. A dozen yards to his right, he
could hear a pair of halflings chittering and whistling to each other, but they remained
hidden from sight. The mul could not hear or see any other man-eaters.

The gladiator dropped his head back to the ground. “Crawl,” he whispered.

Neeva reluctantly left her bulky steel axe behind and they started forward. They pulled
themselves along inches at a time, silently grimacing as the jagged stones scraped long
gashes into their torsos. Within a few yards, warm blood coated them from their
collarbones to their knees, and grating sand filled the dozens
of
cuts lacing their chests and stomachs.

Although Rikus was careful to keep his sword from banging against a rock, the pair could
not help making more noise than the halflings. They drew heavier breaths and created soft
rasps as they drew their larger bodies across the ground. Every now and then, there was a
muffled clack when one of them accidentally dislodged a stone and it bumped into another.
Rikus had no doubt that the halflings could track them by the sounds they were making, but
he did not know what option they had except to crawl.

A pair of twangs sounded from their left, then two more darts clattered into the rocks
ahead of them. Rikus cursed and used the tip of his sword to flick the arrows away. He
suspected that even a scrape along the poisoned tips would be enough to knock either him
or Neeva unconscious.

“Why don't they show themselves?” Neeva whispered, looking around for the source of the
arrows. When Rikus did not answer, she asked another question, “How many do you think
there are?”

“Two or a dozen,” the mul answered. “It's impossible to tell. Just keep crawling.”

“Why?” There was an edge of fear in Neeva's question that Rikus had never heard in her
voice before.

“They may be able to hear us move, but as long as we stay down they can't see us any
better than we can see them. One of us should be able to reach the rest of the legion and
warn it.”

“The halflings are after us, not the rest of the legion,” Neeva whispered. “Even I can
tell that there aren't enough of them to attack two thousand men, but they don't need many
warriors to assassinate a commander.”

Seeing the wisdom of Neeva's words, Rikus silently cursed the Kes'trekels, suspecting the
slave tribe had advised Maetan to set up this ambush.

“You're right, but let's keep moving anyway,” the mul whispered. “We won't help ourselves
by waiting until they come to us.”

As the two gladiators crawled forward, the halflings mirrored their progress, chittering
and whistling to keep track of each other and their prey. Occasionally one or two of them
would fire a dart, and twice the little arrows struck within a foot of the mul's head. By
the time they had crossed fifty yards of rocky ground, both gladiators were breathing
hardÑthough Rikus suspected their weariness had more to do with nerves than muscle fatigue.

“Maybe I should yell for help,” the mul whispered.

Are you out of your mind?“ Neeva hissed. ”No one but the halflings will hear you!"

'It was just an idea," Rikus answered defensively.

He crawled forward again, stopping to listen every two or three yards. Most of the time,
the halflings were silent, but every now and then, a chitter or a chirp let him know the
assassins were closing in.

It was during one of these pauses that he heard the faint clatter of stones far past the
range of the assassins' tiny bows. At first, the mul thought a halfling might have
slipped, but the sound was followed by another rattle, and he knew that was not the case.

“Someone's out there behind the halflings,” he whispered.

“Someone from the legion?” Neeva asked hopefully.

Rikus shook his head. “We said we didn't want to be disturbed,” he said. “It has to be a
Urikite.”

Neeva changed directions. “Let's find him and kill him. It might be the halflings'
commander.”

Rikus followed. Like his fighting partner, he wanted nothing quite so bad as to find an
enemy that they could fight. Of course, the halflings would never let themselves be caught
in hand-to-hand combat, but with a little luck whoever was overseeing them would not be so
careful.

The pair's change in direction caused a flurry of chittering and scuffling. Rikus detected
at least nine different halflings relaying messages and adjusting their positions.
Normally, he would not have considered nine warriors much of a threat, but the prospect of
facing so many halflings sent a shiver down his spine. He did not tell Neeva the bad news.

They had traveled no more than ten yards when Rikus heard the soft tick of an arrow being
nocked into a bowstring. Less than a yard away, a scrawny halfling rose from the rocks and
pointed a small arrow at Neeva's back.

“Roll!” Rikus yelled.

The bowstring popped. Neeva cried out in alarm and barely managed to roll away as the
arrow shot into the ground where she had been lying.

Rikus launched himself at the halfling, driving the tip of his sword into the assassin's
stomach. The Scourge passed through his foe's body with surprising ease, not stopping
until the tip protruded more than a foot from his back. The halfling's sallow eyes opened
wide, but he did not cry out. Instead he reached into his hip-quiver for a dart and drove
himself forward onto Rikus's blade, slashing at the mul with the poisoned tip.

Rikus leaned away, then punched the halfling with his free hand. The blow crushed the
assassin's skull and popped an eye from its socket. Casually, the mul kicked the body off
his blade.

The twang of bowstrings sounded from directly ahead, then Rikus felt two taps as a pair of
arrows sank into his belt. He dropped to the ground instantly, a panicked scream escaping
his lips.

“Rikus!” cried Neeva.

Another bowstring popped and the mul heard an arrow clatter to the ground near Neeva. She
rolled away, then whispered, “Are you hit?”

To Rikus's relief, he did not feel either arrow pricking his stomach. “They hit me in the
belt,” he said, carefully plucking the darts from the leather girdle and tossing them
aside. “No harm.”

He started to crawl toward his fighting partner, but the halflings fired their bows again.
Several darts clattered down between him and Neeva. Rikus saw her roll away, then stop to
wait for him. The mul started toward her, but again the halflings fired. This time, two of
the darts nearly hit him, and two more almost struck Neeva.

“They're separating us,” Neeva cried. Another bowstring twanged and she barely saved
herself by rolling yet farther away from Rikus.

“Let them,” Rikus answered, realizing that by trying to rejoin each other, he and Neeva
would only make themselves easy targets. “Go onÑwe'll circle around and meet each other up
ahead.”

Two more bowstrings popped and Rikus rolled away. When he looked back toward Neeva, she
had disappeared into the dusky shadows.

Rikus crawled away as fast as he could. Neeva could take care of herself and, even if she
couldn't, he didn't see how getting killed himself would help her. As he moved farther
away from the halfling he had killed, the pop of bowstrings grew less frequent and the
whistled messages of the halflings sounded more urgent.

The sun sank behind the mountains completely, plunging the field into darkness. The moons
had not yet risen, so there was only the faint twinkle of the stars to help the half-lings
see. The mul breathed a sigh of relief as his dwarven vision began to outline the glowing
forms of rocks, ground, and halflings. Now he and Neeva stood a good chance of surviving,
for, unlike elves and dwarves, halflings could not see in the dark. With the advantage of
his dwarven vision, Rikus thought he could circle around to Neeva and escape without
suffering a prick from one of the halfling arrows.

His optimism was short-lived, however. From the direction in which Neeva had gone came a
halfling's astonished cry. Rikus heard the twang of a bowstring, then his fighting partner
grunted in anger. There were a couple of muffled blows.

“Don't jab that thing at me,” Neeva said.

There was a sharp snap, as though the big woman had broken a spear shaft, or perhaps a
halfling's back, over her knee. Something soft and limp collapsed onto the rocks, then
Neeva's heavy footsteps sprinted away from the altercation.

A cacophony of chirps and whistles sounded from her direction. The field near her came
alive with clacking rocks and snapping bowstrings as several halflings, glowing warm red
against the orange rocks of the field, rushed toward the sounds of Neeva's flight.

Rikus leaped to his feet and screamed his loudest battle cry, charging over the broken
ground to help his fighting partner. Unfortunately, he could not tell how she was faring.
Even with his dwarven vision, he could see no more than ten yards in the darkness.

Soon the red glow of a halfling's form appeared at the limit of Rikus's vision. The mul
raised his sword, hoping to use the man-eater's inability to see in the dark to good
advantage. As the mul closed in, however, the halfling suddenly stopped and cocked his
head as if listening, then lifted his bow and pointed the tip of an arrow directly at
Rikus's chest.

The gladiator dropped to the ground, marveling at how accurate the halfling's aim was,
considering that he was doing it by sound alone. When his kneecap smashed into the jagged
point of a large stone, the mul clamped his jaw shut to keep from crying out, biting his
tongue in the process.

The bowstring twanged, and the halfling's arrow sailed over Rikus's head in a blue streak.
The mul returned to his feet as the halfling pulled a poisoned arrow from his hip-quiver
and clutched it like a dagger. As Rikus advanced, the halfling closed his eyes, relying
solely on his ears to keep him informed of the mul's location.

Rikus picked up a rock and threw it at his foe's head, rushing forward behind the flying
stone. The missile struck with sharp crack and the halfling stumbled back. As the mul
raised his sword for the kill, the halfling surprised him by throwing himself forward in a
mad lunge.

To keep from being stabbed by the poisoned arrowhead, Rikus lunged out of the way and
landed face-first in the rocks. The halfling struck the ground a few feet behind
him. The mul spun around immediately, swinging his sword in a blind arc. As fast as he
moved, by the time he saw his attacker the assassin was almost upon him.

Rikus knocked aside the hand holding the dart, then brought his sword around in a quick
loop and flicked the attacker's head off. The halfling's hand took one last slash at the
mul, then dropped the arrow.