Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 2 - The Crimson Legion (18 page)

“Tell them the truth!” Rikus yelled.

“But I already have,” answered Styan. “Killing me will not change that.”

Rikus pressed on the blade, and blood began to trickle down the papery skin of Styan's
neck.

“Stop it!” said Jaseela. She grabbed the mul's arm and tried to pull it away, but the
noblewoman was not nearly strong enough. “You're playing into his web.”

“He said nothing to me about any half-elf seeing anyone leaving the oasis!” Rikus spat.

“Of course not,” Jaseela said. “There were no figures, and there probably isn't any
half-elfÑbut you're making it look like you're the one who's trying to hide something.”

Neeva grabbed Rikus's wrist and slowly moved it aside, then nudged Styan so hard that she
almost kicked him. “Get up before he kills you,” she said. “Not that I'd care.”

The templar showed his gray teeth in a poor imitation of a smile. “Thank you, my dear.”

When Rikus turned away to sheathe his sword, he was surprised to see the dwarves falling
into line and marching out of camp. “What are they doing?” he demanded, scowling at Caelum.

The tall dwarf looked away, obviously ashamed. “They're going to the oasis,” he said.
“Please do not blame them. It is not that they doubt your word, but they cannot understand
why Styan would lie about something so important. Under such circumstances, fighting this
battle would violate their focus, and they cannot do that.”

“Fine,” Rikus snarled. “We don't need them, either.”

“Rikus, you can't mean you still intend to attack!” Styan gasped. He was careful to stay
out of the mul's reach.

“I'm not going to let them get away,” Rikus answered.

The templar looked to Jaseela. “Surely, under such circumstances, you'll reconsider your
decision.”

The noblewoman scorned the templar by turning the disfigured side of her face to him. “So
far, Rikus has won every battle,” she said. “I'll trust to his instincts.”

*****

Rikus heard the clatter of stones ahead. He drew his sword, then motioned for those behind
him to ready their weapons as well.

The mul was leading Neeva and the rest of his gladiators through a deep ravine filled with
pink groundstar and barbed thickets of amber tarbush. On one side of the furrow, rose the
stony foothills of the Ringing Mountains, and on the other the great dunes of the sand
wastes. Directly ahead, the trench was blocked by a delta of stones, sand, and other
debris spilling from the mouth of a dry gorge. It was in that gorge, according to K'kriq,
that the Urikites had been camped last night.

Before climbing out of the trough, Rikus paused to look at the crimson sun. It hung at its
zenith, a fiery orb that hovered in the exact center of the blazing white bowl of the
midday sky.

“White sky,” Neeva said, also studying the sun. “Jaseela should be in position.” Under
K'kriq's guidance, they had the sent the noblewoman and Caelum to circle around behind the
enemy.

“She'd better be,” the mul said, motioning toward the gorge ahead. Now that he had the
Scourge of Rkard in his hand, he could hear officers barking orders to their subordinates.
“It sounds like the Urikites are on the move.”

The mul scrambled up the slope at the end of the trough, motioning for Neeva, Gaanon, and
the rest of the gladiators to do the same. As Rikus charged over the top he saw that the
enemy was marching down the canyon in an unruly jumble. The mob was a stark contrast to
the disciplined legion the mul remembered from the first battle. Without exception, the
Urikites' red tunics were tattered and filthy, only half carried their bone shields, and
even fewer still possessed their long spears. Most were armed only with obsidian short
swords, and their faces were pale and rigid with fear.

Behind them came a towering figure of absolute blackness, herding the ragged force before
him like a phantom shepherd driving his flock to slaughter.

“Umbra!” gasped Neeva.

“Good,” said Rikus, rushing straight toward the shadow monster.

“What's good about this?” Neeva asked, falling into step at his side.

“If Umbra's here, then Maetan probably is too.”

Good,“ said Gaanon, his heavy footsteps jarring the ground as he echoed the mul's words.
”I'll kill them both."

Behind the trio came hundreds of screaming gladiators, spreading out to meet the mass of
Urikites head-to-head. Already, Rikus could see this fight would be to his company's
liking: a grand combat with no tactics and no tricks, blade
a
gainst blade and warrior against warrior.

The two mobs quickly closed to within a dozen yards of each other, and the mul's concerns
were quickly forgotten as battle cries filled his ears.

Rikus sprinted straight for a pair of Urikite spearmen, intending to lop the heads from
their weapons and barrel past them into the throng beyond. At the last moment, however,
they lifted their spears from the braced position and threw the weapons at his heart.
Reacting instinctively, the mul blocked one of the spears with his sword. To his surprise,
even though it struck only a glancing blow, the Scourge sliced the shaft in two.

The other spear slipped past the arcing blade but abruptly dropped and struck in the lower
abdomen. Rikus cried out and staggered under the impact of the sharp point, but did not
feel the deep burning of a puncture wound. He looked down and saw that the spearhead had
not penetrated his Belt of Rank.

Rikus plucked the weapon from his belt and tossed it aside, grinning at the two petrified
Urikites who had attacked him. The men backed away and fled into the enemy mob, screaming
about magic and sorcery.

“Cowards!” Rikus yelled, rushing after them. “Running won't save you!”

He crashed into the Urikite mass, his magic blade slashing and slicing through enemy arms
and bodies as easily as it had the spear shaft. Neeva followed on his right, clearing a
wide swath with her axe. Gaanon came on the left, his great club launching shattered
Urikite bodies in all directions.

The three gladiators tore deeper and deeper into the Urikite mass, a maelstrom of death
ripping its way across enemy territory like a wind-storm whirling across the salt flats of
the Ivory Plains. Now and then, Rikus raised the Scourge of Rkard to block or parry
instead of attack. Each time, when his attacker's obsidian blade crashed into the ancient
steel of the mul's sword, it shattered.

Soon, Rikus was aware only of what he sensed: his own voice screaming in glee, the sour
smell of opened entrails, the flash of his sword, and the spray of blood hitting his bare
skin. He reacted without conscious thought, his blade dancing as if it were pan of his
arm, his legs and his free hand lashing out of their own accord to push some enemy into
the path of Neeva's axe or Gaanon's club. He loved battle as a thri-kreen loved the hunt,
as an elf loved to run, as a dwarf loved to toil.
It was for this that the mul had been born: to fight, to kill, to win.

As the battle progressed, Rikus was vaguely aware that, all around him, Tyrian warriors
were slashing and hacking at the confused and outmatched enemy. Like him, they had spent
their lives training for personal combat, and, if their talents were not quite a match for
those of the mul, neither could the enemy's skill compare to theirs. Even in Rikus's own
ears, the screams of dying Urikites drowned out his jubilant shouts. Out of the corner of
his eyes, he glimpsed red tunics falling by the dozens. The coppery smell of blood, rising
off the red-stained rocks of the battlefield, filled his nose.

It ended all too soon. Suddenly, Rikus found himself lashing out at his foes' backs,
stumbling over dead bodies as he tried to keep up with the fleeing Urikites.

“Fight,” boomed Umbra's voice. “Fight and die, or I will have you as my slaves!”

The shadow giant grabbed a few of the fleeing Urikites, absorbing them into his dark body
as he had the first time Rikus saw him. This time, his threat had little effect. Hamanu's
soldiers continued to flee, or, when they did heed Umbra's words, Tyrian gladiators cut
them down as quickly as they turned to fight.

“After the cowards!” Rikus screamed, finally working his way free of the tangle of bodies
littering the battlefield.

“Death to the coward Urikites!” echoed Gaanon, his voice thundering almost as loudly as
Umbra's.

Now that the Urikites had stopped fighting, Rikus found that
the joy was gone from the battle. Nevertheless, he set off after the fleeing enemy. Even
their rout was working to the Tyrians' advantage; from the direction they were fleeing,
the Urikites would soon run into Jaseela and Caelum. Although the noblewoman's company was
not large enough to stop so many panicked soldiers, it would slow the mob of cowards long
enough for the gladiators to finish it off.

As the mul ran, his sharp blade struck down a foe with nearly every step. Because of their
heavier weapons, Gaanon and Neeva could hardly keep up with Rikus, but they loped along
behind him, finishing off the soldiers that the mul had only wounded.

Suddenly, Rikus found himself staring at a huge shadow. A black hand descended on his
right, grasping both a Tyrian gladiator and a fleeing Urikite. A pair of blood-curdling
screams sounded above the pained cries of those suffering more mundane deaths, then the
bodies of the two men melted into Umbra's darkness.

“We've got Umbra,” panted Neeva, stepping to the mul's side. “Now what?”

Gaanon stepped to the mul's other side. The half-giant was speechless; it was as if the
sight of a being twice as tall as he had taken his booming voice away.

Rikus looked up and found himself staring into the sapphire orbs of Umbra's eyes. The
shadow giant smiled, then reached down toward Neeva. “You will pay a heavy price for your
victory, Tyrian.” The breath rolled from the thing's mouth on fetid wisps of dark cloud.

Neeva screamed in defiance, hefting her dripping axe and bringing it down on the black
hand. The gore-covered blade passed through the shadow with no apparent effect, emerging
clean and bright as it hit the rocks at Neeva's feet. The weapon shattered as if it were
glass, and Umbra's dark fingers closed around her waist.

“Rikus!” she screamed, black shadow already creeping down her thighs and up toward her
neck.

Uncertain of what else to do, the mul brought his sword down on the black arm. To his
surprise, the magic blade bit into the shadow as if it were flesh. Umbra screamed in shock
and rage. Rikus hacked at the arm again, this time wielding the sword with both hands and
bringing it down with all his strength.

Umbra's hand tumbled from the end of his arm, spewing a thick black fog over the ground.
Neeva toppled over backward and lay shivering as the shadow fingers slipped from her body
and drained into the ground.

Bellowing in anger, Gaanon stepped forward and leveled his mighty club at the shadow
thing. Like Neeva's axe, it passed through the black body without harm, snapping like a
twig when it smashed into the ground. Umbra kicked at the half-giant, planting his foot
squarely in the big gladiator's chest and driving him to the ground.

Screaming in agony, Gaanon tried to roll away. His efforts were to no avail, for Umbra
kept him pinned securely in place as a pool of blackness slowly spread across the
half-giant's torso.

Rikus struck at the shadow giant's leg. Again, the blade bit into the black form. The dark
beast cursed in a series of deep-throated gurgles that no human tongue could reproduce,
then slapped the mul with his good hand. The blow knocked the Scourge of Rkard from the
gladiator's grasp, but the only thing Rikus felt was a terrible chill that took his breath
away and made his bones ache to the marrow. Rikus tried to reach for his sword, but his
cold-muted reflexes were slow to obey. The weapon clattered to the ground a few feet away.

“Vorpal steel,” Umbra hissed angrily. “Where did you come by that?”

As Umbra finished his question, the sound of sizzling and sputtering echoed off the rocky
wails of the gorge. A short distance away, a curtain of shimmering air shot from one wall
of the canyon to the other. The fleeing Urikites, more frightened of their pursuers than
the magic before them, paid the translucent barrier no attention and continued to run. As
the first wave approached the strange obstacle, they suddenly cried out and turned away.
Their efforts did not save them. The press of those following drove them forward. As each
man came close to the curtain, he burst into flame, then disappeared in a puff of black
smoke.

Umbra looked toward the commotion and again uttered a curse in his strange language. Rikus
threw himself toward his sword, passing over it in a rolling fall. He grabbed the hilt and
returned to his feet in the same swift motion, lashing our at Umbra in a sweeping
crossbody slash.

The blade sliced through empty air, for the shadow giant had already turned away. The dark
creature was striding purposefully toward the curtain of searing air, the stump of his
shadowy forearm trailing black mist.

Rikus went to Neeva's side and helped her to her feet. “Are you hurt?”

“Frozen to the bone, but not hurt,” she said. She rose and retrieved a pair of obsidian
short swords from fallen Urikites, then looked toward the shimmering curtain up the
canyon. “What's that?”

“Caelum and Jaseela, I hope,” Rikus said. He looked to Gaanon. “What about you?”

The half-giant forced himself to rise. “Just c-cold,” he answered, wavering on his
unsteady feet. “I'm not injured.” He tried to step toward Rikus, but his frozen legs
hardly moved and he fell face-first to the ground.

“Wait here. The sun will warm you,” Rikus said, motioning for Neeva to follow him.

“No, wait!” cried Gaanon, again rising. “I'm fine.”

Once more, the half-giant's legs failed him. He collapsed to the ground, still protesting
that he was ready to fight.

* * * * *

On the other side of
the curtain, Jaseela pointed at the shimmering barricade and glared down at Caelum with
her torpid eye. “This thingÑ”