Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 2 - The Crimson Legion (4 page)

“The Serpent of Lubar!” Rikus gasped. The beast resembled the crest of the noble who had
bred the mul, the family in whose cruel pits the young mul had been trained in the arts of
killing.

As Rikus stared at the living crest of his first owner, the snake's heads both turned
toward Agis and struck simultaneously. The noble's giant arms stretched outward,
preventing the fangs from reaching him. The snake lengthened its body, and the arms
stretched farther. An extra set of long-clawed hands suddenly grew from the giant's rib
cage, then seized the snake behind each of its heads. Moving with lightning speed, the
sharp claws tore great gashes along the length of the snake's body, reducing it to a
bloody mess of shredded scales and minced flesh.

Agis threw the snake into the mud, then watched it wither into a desiccated husk. “Why
didn't you defend yourself?” he asked, glancing at Rikus.

“I have no training in the Way,” Rikus answered, stung by the giant's chiding tone.

“You don't need any to form a basic defense,” the giant countered. “It's instinctualÑor
should be. Everyone has some ability with the Way. Your mistake was emphasizing strength
over form. The Way is more subtle than that.”

Agis changed from a giant into a leather-winged bird with a sharp, hooked beak. “Next
time, use your imagination.” With that, he launched himself into the air and flew away.
Rikus opened his eyes and saw that he was back in the argosy, lying at the base of the
ladder. The nobleman sat beside him, breathing in shallow gasps.

“Agis!” the mul gasped. “Are you hurt?”

The noble smiled and shook his head. “Tired,” he whispered. “Go on, before the pilot
recovers.”

After glancing into the corridor to make sure Agis was in no imminent danger, Rikus left
the noble to rest and climbed the ladder. Near the ceiling, the pilot's deck was filled
with a thick smoke that had seeped through the planks separating it from the rest of the
argosy. By dropping to his hands and knees, however, the mul could crawl forward without
scorching his lungs on the caustic fumes.

Rikus found the pilot's deck to be a spacious platform with a large panel of thick glass
overlooking the dune-sized shells of the lumbering mekillots. Before this window sat a
well-padded chair, no doubt where the pilot, a master of the Way especially trained to
dominate the creatures, would sit.

The mul advanced on the pilot's chair, laying his cahulaks aside. Despite his fear of the
mindbender, he had to take the man alive if he wanted to halt the argosy. From what he had
heard about mekillots, if the stupid beasts were suddenly freed of their mental reins,
they would be just as likely to continue trudging forward as to stop.

A long black blade flashed toward Rikus's eyes, a man-shaped blur dropping out of the
smoke behind it. The mul crossed his wrists and thrust them over his head, catching the
attacker's arm between the backs of his hands. Before the mindbender could withdraw his
dagger, Rikus turned his palms over and grabbed his attacker's arm, then slammed his
victim to the floor.

“If I even suspect you of meddling with my thoughts, I'll finish the job, Phatim,” Rikus
threatened, snatching the obsidian dagger and pressing its tip to the man's throat.

The pilot's gray eyes widened at the sound of his own name spoken in his own language. The
gaunt man nodded his head of unkempt hair to show he understood, then looked down his
hooked nose at the dagger pressed to his throat.

“If you want to live, stop the mekillots,” Rikus said. “But I warn youÑ”

“I'm too tired to betray you with the Way,” the pilot said.

Phatim closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment. The argosy lurched to a violent
stop. Rikus flew over the mindbender's prone body and slammed into the back of the chair.

The pilot was on him in an instant, using one hand to pin the mul's dagger arm to the
floor and, with the other, drawing a shorter knife from his boot. Rikus barely managed to
slip his head out of the way as Phatim's steel blade sliced down at him.

“Die, slave!” Phatim hissed, spraying Rikus's face with warm spittle.

“Freed
slave,” Rikus replied.

The mul brought his knee up, striking Phatim in the back of the thigh. The blow propelled
the pilot forward and knocked him off-balance. At the same time, Rikus ripped his arm free
and thrust the dagger under Phatim's ribs. The pilot cried out, then abruptly fell silent
as the tip of the long blade found his heart. Hot, red blood ran down Rikus's fingers, and
Phatim collapsed.

Rikus pushed the pilot's lifeless body off him, shaking his head at the man's foolishness.
The mul had hoped to question the mindbender about his choice of the Serpent of Lubar as
an attack form.

Phatim's death did little to dampen Rikus's joy at stopping the argosy, however. Without
the fortress-wagon and the drik-mounted siege engines, the Urikites would find it much
more difficult, perhaps even impossible, to capture Tyr. The mul even dared to hope that
he had just brought the war to an early end.

After a quick inspection to make sure there were no more surprises lurking on the smoky
pilot's deck, Rikus returned to the ladder to make sure Agis was well. On the floor below,
he saw both Neeva and Sadira standing with the noble. In her hands, Neeva held a green
cloth.

Rikus collected his cahulaks and started down the ladder. “What did you find in the other
room?” he asked.

“The commander's wardroom,” answered Sadira.

Rikus jumped the rest of the way to the floor. “Did you kill him?” the mul asked eagerly.

“The general wasn't there” Neeva said, tossing the cloth to the mul. “We found this
hanging over his bed.”

Rikus unfurled the pennant. It was emblazoned with the red emblem of a two-headed snake,
the mouths at each end of its body gaping open to reveal a mouthful of curved fangs.

“The Serpent of Lubar,” Rikus hissed, his mood changing from victorious to murderous.

The Black Wall

The scalding wind had died away, leaving the fumes from the burning argosy to rise skyward
in arrow-straight trails. Rikus stood in the shade of the fortress-wagon, drinking from
one of the water casks his warriors had thrown from its cargo hold. Also gathered around
the keg were Neeva, Sadira, Agis, and the commanders of the legion's three different
contingents: the templar Styan, the noblewoman Jaseela, and a freed half-giant gladiator
named Gaanon. The thri-kreen K'kriq waited patiently at the mul's back, showing no
interest in the water or the company.

The rest of the legion stood nearby, clustered in a hundred small assemblies of fifteen to
twenty warriors. At the center of each group rested a keg of Urikite water, upon which the
Tyrians were gorging themselves. Soon Rikus would give the order to drain the casks into
the barren Athasian sands, and it was only natural for them to use as much of the precious
liquid as they could.

“Are you mad, Rikus?” Agis snapped, throwing his wooden dipper back into the open water
barrel. He waved an arm at the dead half-giants, crippled driks, and disassembled siege
engines littering the valley's red sands. “It's one thing to burn an argosy
or
kill a few driks, and quite another to assault a trained legion of Urikite regulars.”

Rikus looked westward, toward the sandy hill over which the enemy's army had disappeared a
short time earlier. So far, none of the observers he had sent after the Urikites had
returned, and he took their absence to mean the column was continuing toward Tyr. The mul
was as distressed as he was surprised that his enemy had not stopped to
fight. To him, their willingness to abandon their siege engines and the argosy suggested
that they were confident they could sack Tyr without these things.

“Our attack comes from the rear,” Rikus said, his eyes narrowed in determination. “That
gives us an advantage.”

“Being outnumbered five-to-one is no advantage!” Agis exclaimed. The three company
commanders lowered their gazes to the packed sand of the road, wanting no part of an
argument between Agis and Rikus.

Lowering his voice, Agis continued, “This has less to do with protecting Tyr than taking
your petty vengeance on Family Lubar.”

“A slave's vengeance is never petty,” said Neeva. “You'd know that if your back had ever
felt the lash.”

Before the argument could continue, K'kriq pointed two chitinous arms at the sky. “Who
that?” he demanded.

Rikus looked upward and gasped. There, hanging far up in the blistering pink sky, was the
cloudlike head of King Tithian. It looked to be made of misty green light, though its
vaporous nature did not prevent the king's sharp features and hawkish nose from appearing
anything less than distinct.

As Rikus's companions turned to see what he was looking at, Tyrian warriors began to cry
out in delighted astonishment. As they watched, the head dropped like a meteor, until it
hung less than a hundred feet overhead and blocked out so much of the sky that the day
faded to the purple hues of dusk. The entire legion broke into a rousing cheer that the
mul knew would not soon end. Like the rest of Tyr, most gladiators credited the crafty
king with freeing them. They had no knowledge of Agis's role in forcing Tithian to issue
his famous First Edict.

“Tithian! What's he doing here?” demanded Neeva, yelling to make herself heard above the
tumult.

“How did he get here?” asked Rikus. “I thought he didn't know magic!”

“He doesn't,” Sadira answered. She gestured at the apparition and uttered an incantation.
A moment later, she added, “And that doesn't feel like normal sorcery to me.”

“It isn't the Way, either,” said Agis, rubbing his temples. “I can sense the presence of
Tithian's thoughts, but their power is boosted far beyond anything he's capable of.”

Agis and Sadira studied each other with troubled expressions, while Rikus and Neeva
nervously awaited their conclusion. Finally, Agis dared to speak the possibility that
troubled the four. “It could be dragon magic.”

“Dragon magic? What's that?” asked Jaseela. The silky-haired woman's words were slurred,
for, in a battle preceding Kalak's overthrow, a half-giant had hit her in the head. Now,
one hazel eye drooped low over a smashed cheekbone, her nose wound down her face like a
snake's tail, and her full lips were twisted into a lop-sided frown that dipped so low it
touched the broken line of her jaw.

“Dragon magic is sorcery and the Way used together,” Sadira explained.

“Tithian can't do thatÑcan he?” gasped Neeva.

The king spoke, preventing an answer. “Soldiers of Tyr, I have been watching,” said
Tithian. His voice echoed over the battlefield like a peal of thunder, instantly silencing
the warriors. “Well have you executed my plan!”

“His
plan!” Rikus snorted. His remark was lost in the cheer that rose again from his legion's
ranks.

“You have struck a great blow for Tyr,” Tithian continued. “When you return you shall find
your reward.”

This time, even the king's voice could not be heard over the din of the screaming warriors.

A few moments later, the king's thin lips began to move again, and the legion fell quickly
silent. “Our enemies are foolish to return,” Tithian boomed, his beady eyes turning toward
the hill. “You shall drive the Urikites before you like elves before the Dragon.”

An alarmed murmur rustled through the legion's ranks as the warriors looked west. To
Rikus's astonishment, he saw that a high wall of absolute darkness now ran across the
crest of the small hill. He had no way of telling what lay behind it, but he immediately
guessed that the Urikites had returned to salvage what they could of their siege engines
and the argosy. Before the mul could give the order to drain the water casks, Tithian
continued his speech. “Kill the Urikites, and remember what awaits you in Tyr!” the king
cried, his radiant form dissipating into translucent wisps of yellow steam. “With the
strategy I have given to Rikus, Tyr cannot lose!” All eyes turned toward the mul.

“He didn't tell me anything,” the mul said, speaking quietly, so only those standing next
to him could hear.

“Of course not,” Agis said, his brown eyes glimmering with anger. “He's trying to get us
killed.”

“The king would not do such a thing!” objected Styan. The templar was a weary-looking man
with sunken eyes and unbound gray hair that hung down to his shoulders. Like the rest of
his company, he wore a black cassock that identified him as a member of the king's
bureaucracy. “To suggest he would is treason!”

As Styan spoke, Rikus noticed him slip a small crystal of green olivine into the pocket of
his black cassock. Instantly, the mul knew how the king had learned of their initial
triumph so quickly. He had once seen another of Tithian's spies use such a magical crystal
to communicate with his master.

“Styan, did the king tell
you
his strategy?” Rikus asked.

“No. How would he do that?” Like most templars, Styan was a practiced fraud. The only sign
he gave that he was hiding the truth was to remove his hand from his pocket.

“If that's true, Agis must be right about our king's intentions,” Rikus said. He glanced
to the west and saw that the wall of darkness descending the hill at the pace of a slow
march.

“I also think Agis is right,” agreed Jaseela, one of the few citizens of Tyr who
instinctively sensed the truth about the king. “Without Agis and you three to counter his
influence, Tithian will find it easy to force his self-serving edicts through the Council
of Advisors.”

Rikus looked to Agis, Sadira, and Neeva. “You three leave the battle and go back to keep
Tithian in line.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Neeva.

“Finish the UrikitesÑand kill their commander,” Rikus answered, glancing at the hill. The
wall of darkness had descended more than halfway and was now less than a quarter mile away
from his legion. “I'll catch you after the fight.”