Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 2 - The Crimson Legion (26 page)

Before the sentry could free his axe, Rikus passed the dwarf to K'kriq, saying, “If he
calls out or draws that axe, kill him.”

The thri-kreen accepted the sentry with three arms, clacking his mandibles in
anticipation. The dwarf moved his hand away from his weapon, but did not give up on trying
to stop Rikus from entering camp. “You're to wait here until Styan prepares a proper
reception,” he said.

Rikus ignored the dwarf and went to the half-elf gladiator laboring to build this section
of the wall. Taking a heavy boulder from her hands, he asked, “What's happening, Drewet?”

The half-elf frowned in confusion. “We're building a wall,” she said.

“What for?” Rikus asked. “And why are gladiators the only ones working on it?”

Drewet shrugged. “Because those are the orders Styan gave.”

“Styan!” Rikus bellowed. He turned and threw the boulder he had taken from Drewet,
knocking a great hole in the section of wall that she had been laboring to build. All of
the gladiators nearby stopped working and looked toward the disturbance. “Why would anyone
do what he says?” Rikus demanded.

The half-elf raised her peaked eyebrows. “Because he's your second-in-command, of course.”

“Second-in-command!”
Rikus thundered. “Is that what he told you?”

“He told us that after you disappeared into the citadel,” she said, her brown eyes now
flashing with anger. “With Neeva and Caelum staying behind to wait for you, it seemed
natural.”

“Natural? You thought I would put a
templar
in charge of my legion?” Rikus yelled. “So he could treat you like a bunch of slaves?”

Without waiting for a response, he faced the gladiators nearby. “The days when we build
walls for templars are gone!” he roared. “Pass the word and come with meÑStyan has some
apologies to make!”

Leaving K'kriq to hold the dwarven sentry at the edge of camp, Rikus took Drewet and
marched toward the templars. As word of Styan's deception was passed, a long series of
angry shouts sounded around the perimeter of camp. By the time the mul neared Styan's
company, an angry mob of gladiators was following him, and the templars had turned to face
outward. When Rikus approached, they drew their short swords.

“Stand aside or die,” Rikus said. He did not draw his own weapon, fearing that, as angry
as he was, he would use it. “I'm in no mood for defiance.”

“Styan's orders are to let only youÑ”

Rikus lashed out and smashed the speaker's nose with a fist. As the astonished templar
fell to the ground, the mul raised his blood-covered hand and said, “Styan is not in
commandÑI am. The next man who questions that will die.”

Drewet stepped to one side of the mul, then Gaanon pushed his way forward to stand at the
other. Like Rikus, they did not draw their weapons. After a moment's hesitation, the
templars reluctantly opened a narrow lane through their ranks. Flanked by Gaanon and
Drewet, Rikus pushed his way through the crowd, widening the path as he went.

At the center of the crowd, the mul found Styan seated on a large, square stone that
someoneÑno doubt a gladiatorÑ had moved into place to serve as a stool for the templar.
The mul was glad to see that Jaseela, Neeva, and Caelum had not chosen to lend Styan's
usurpation legitimacy by joining him at his camp.

As Rikus stepped toward the fire, Styan looked up and fixed his sunken eyes on the mul's
face. “It pleases me that you have caught up to us,” he said, his face washed in orange
firelight. “We would have missed you at tomorrow's battleÑ”

“Stand up,” Rikus ordered.

Styan glanced around the crowd, his brow furrowed as he tried to judge the mood of both
his templars and Rikus's gladiators. Finally, he waved his wrinkled hand at a place near
the foot of his rock. “Sit,” he said.

Rikus grabbed the templar by his unbound gray hair and jerked him to his feet.

“You misbegotten spawn of an elven gutter wench!” Styan yelled. Several templars stepped
forward to defend their leader, but the old man waved them off. Instead, he looked to
Rikus and demanded, “What do you think you're doing?”

Rikus jerked Styan forward, then thrust him toward Drewet and the rest of the gladiators.
“Apologize, and tell your templars to do the same.”

“For what?” the templar demanded. “For keeping the waterskins of our warriors full and not
wasting their lives on foolish attacks?”

“For treating my gladiators like slaves,” Rikus snarled. “Tyr is a free city, and this is
a free legion. One warrior does not labor while another tells jokes by the fire.”

“Well said!” shouted a gladiator.

Another added, “Since you disappeared, Rikus, they've been sleeping while we work!”

“Apologize,” Rikus said. He put his mouth close to the templar's ear and added, “Then I'll
punish you for usurping my command, and for all the lies you've told.”

Styan's face went pale and, in a trembling voice, he said.

“Never!”

Somewhere in the crowd of templars, a man's voice called, “I'll not beg forgiveness of any
slave!”

“Then you'll die!” came the immediate response.

The chime of clashing weapons followed, and the unseen templar voiced his death scream.
The night was filled with angry shouts and shrieks of pain as the two Tyrian companies
tore into each other. Bodies began to fall one after the otherÑmore of them templar than
gladiator.

Styan spun around to face Rikus, leaving a handful of his hair in the mul's grasp. “See
what you've done?” he demanded. “We should be fighting Urikites, not each other.”

“From what I've seen, your men are as bad as Urikites. I won't miss them, and neither will
Tyr.”

“It's not that simple,” spat the templar. “What of the dwarves? They follow me.”

“Then they die with you,” Rikus answered, reaching for his steel dagger. “It's all the
same to me.”

“Wait,” Styan said, gently laying a hand on the mul's wrist. He stared at Rikus for a
moment longer, listening to his templars cry out as they fell to the mul's angry
gladiators. “You'd do it,” he said. “You'd sacrifice half your legion to retain command of
it.”

“Only the useless half,” Rikus answered, drawing his dagger.

Styan sneered at the weapon. “That won't be necessary.” He turned around and raised his
hands, then yelled, “I apologize, freed men of Tyr!”

When only a few of the combatants stopped fighting, Rikus bellowed, “That's enough! Stop!”

Rikus's powerful voice reached the ears of many more warriors than had Styan's, and, as
they passed the mul's command on to their fellows, the melee gradually subsided. Soon,
templar and gladiator alike were facing Styan, and the only sounds that could be heard in
the mob were the moans of the wounded.

“I apologize,” Styan said, his weary eyes on Drewet's face. My templars apologue. We did
not mean to offend you or any other freed slave."

Drewet glanced at Rikus with a questioning look in her eyes. When the mul, nodded, she
looked back to the templar. “I accept your apology, for myself and for my fellows.”

A tense silence hung over the crowd. No one moved to help the injured. Both companies
seemed to sense that, although a truce had been reached, the matter of the Legion's
leadership had not yet been resolved. Rikus kept his black eyes fixed on Styan, waiting
for the old man to acknowledge his defeat.

Finally, Styan faced the mul and, in a weak voice, he asked, “As for usurping your
command, what shall my punishment be?”

Someone in the ranks of the gladiators threw a coiled whip forward, and it landed at the
templar's feet. "The lash!'

Rikus nodded, then bent down and handed the whip to Drewet. “Twenty-five strokes,” he
said. “And when you give them, remember all the times a templar has whipped you.”

“I will,” Drewet said, taking the coiled strap.

Gaanon took Styan to the boulder the templar had been using as a throne. There, the
half-giant pulled the old man's cassock off, then laid him over the stone.

As Drewet took the first stroke, the crowd began to turn away. The matter had been decided
and, gladiator and templar alike, they had seen enough men whipped during Kalak's reign
not to enjoy the sight of flayed skin.

*****

At the base of the ash-covered mountain stood Makla, a small hamlet surrounded on three
sides by a high stockade of mekillot ribs. Inside this barrier lay dozens of slave pits,
each enclosed by a mudbrick wall capped with jagged shards of obsidian. Scattered
haphazardly among the pens were the long barracks that housed the garrison, as well as the
slovenly huts of the craftsmen who kept the slave-keepers supplied with whips, ropes, and
other utensils of bondage.

At the core of the village, a trio of marble mansions marked three sides of a public
square. There was a great cistern of steaming water at its center. A clay duct ran from
this basin toward the fourth side of the plaza, ending at the tip of a short wooden pier.
The pier sat over the shallows of the Lake of Golden Dreams, a body of water whose
vastness was lost in the clouds of foul-smelling steam that rose from its boiling depths.

“It seems awfully quiet,” Rikus said, glancing upward. Fingers of predawn light were
already shooting across the sky, casting a faint, eerie glimmer over the mountainous
terrain below.

The mul's companions did not answer, for they were all stating spellbound at the
sulfur-colored lake. No one in the legion had ever seen so much water in one place before,
and the spectacular sight had taken their minds off the coming battle.

“By now, the outbound quarry gangs should be readying to leave,” Rikus said, trying to
direct his lieutenants' attention to the matter at hand.

“Maybe nobody's going out,” Gaanon offered. In imitation of the robe Rikus wore to conceal
Tamar's ruby, the half-giant had sewn two wool blankets together and slung 'hem over his
shoulders like a cape. “The highlands look dangerous today,” he continued, pointing a huge
finger east of the village.

In the direction Gaanon indicated rose a range of fire-belching mountains covered by thick
layers of cinder and coarse-grained rocks. Near the summits of many peaks, lakes of molten
stone cast a dome of orange light into the dark sky. In the winding canyons, fiery
curtains of red incandescence hung over slow-moving rivers of burning rock. It was in that
barren wilderness of cinder and lava that the quarry gangs wandered for days at a time,
searching out and chipping away long ropes of glassy black obsidian.

Rikus said, “The Smoking Crown always looks dangerous, Gaanon. That wouldn't stop the
quarry masters from sending out their gangs.”

“What does it matter?” Neeva demanded, casting a sour look at Rikus. Though Caelum had
healed the wound on her stomach, it was still marked by an ugly red scar. “You marched us
up here in the dark so we could attack at dawn. Let's not lose the advantage of surprise
you kept tailor about.”

“Fine,” Rikus snapped. “Let's get on with it.”

The mul stepped to the top of the ridge, then looked down the other side at his silent
legion. With the exception of the dwarves, who stubbornly remained standing, the warriors
all lay on their backs, their feet braced in the loose ash to keep from sliding down the
steep slope. In the entire group, no one stirred or even uttered so much as a whisper.

“Get ready!” Rikus ordered, keeping his voice low enough that the morning wind would not
carry it over Makla. As the warriors struggled to their feet, the mul went back down the
hillside and sent his subcommanders up the slope to organize the army. Neeva started to
follow, but Rikus stopped her. He had tried to talk to her last night, but, apparently
angry about her injury, she had refused to speak with him.

The mul waited for the others to move out of earshot, then said, “I don't want to go into
this battle with bad blood between us.” He gestured at the long scar on her stomach. “You
know I'd never attack you on purpose.”

“I know you didn't mean to cut me,” Neeva answered, meeting his eyes with a cold gaze.
“That doesn't mean you wouldn't hurt me.”

“I wouldn't!” Rikus snapped. “What do I have to do to prove it?”

“Explain yourself,” Neeva said. “Who were you yelling at when you attacked me? It was like
you were in a trance.” She pointed at his left breast, where the robe hid the festering
sore on his chest. “And why can't Caelum rid you of that ruby?”

The mul dropped his gaze to his feet. “I didn't tell you the truth before. The gem has
nothing to do with Umbra,” he said, almost mumbling.

Neeva was silent for a moment, then demanded, “Why'd you lie to me?”

“Because Caelum was there,” Rikus said, meeting her gaze. “If I say how I came by this
stone, you've got to promise not to tell him.”

“You let Caelum try to cure you without knowing what he faced?” Neeva gasped.

Don't tell her!
Tamar urged, her voice coming to Rikus on the rhythm of his own heart.

Quiet!
Rikus commanded. To Neeva, he said, “Swear, or I can't tell you.”

Neeva snorted in disgust, but touched her hand to the waterskin dangling from her
shoulder. “I swear on my life.”

If she knows, she'll tell the dwarf,
warned the wraith.
I'll kill her before I allow it.

No!
Rikus objected.

And I'll do it with your hands,
the wraith assured him.
That's why I made you wound her with your sword
Ñ
so you'd know I could.

“Well?” Neeva demanded.

The mul looked away. “I can't tell you.”

Neeva scowled. “I swore on my life,” she said. “Isn't that good enough?”

“It is, but I was wrong to think I could tell you,” Rikus said. “It doesn't matter what
you swear on.”

One corner of Neeva's mouth turned down in a derisive sneer.
“This
is what's wrong between us. If you don't trust me, then there's nothing more to say.” She
started to leave.

“Wait,” Rikus said, grabbing her arm. “I do trust youÑ this is for your own good.”