Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 2 - The Crimson Legion (36 page)

Behind Rikus, Neeva yelled, “Caelum, no!”

The mul turned his head just enough to glimpse the dwarf slipping past Neeva's larger
form. In his raised hand, the dwarf held a dagger of crimson flame.

Little backstabber!
Tamar exclaimed.
You were correct. He is the spy!

Rikus lashed out with a rear stomp kick that took Caelum square in the chest. The dwarf's
eyes opened like red saucers, and he sailed past Neeva, crashing to the ground more than
two yards away. His hand opened and the fiery dagger fell to the ground. It slowly rolled
away, changing from a weapon to a flaming ball.

The fiery globe began to pulsate, then erupted into a blazing sphere that filled the
narrow alley top to bottom. It roared away down the lane, leaving nothing but ash and
cinder in its path.

“You tricked me!” Rikus cried, trying to shut out the screams of his dying warriors.

The dwarf must die,
Tamar replied simply.
Finish him, or there will be more accidents.

“No!” Rikus cried.

He turned and charged away, leaving behind Caelum, Neeva, and another dozen dazed
survivors. In front of him, a pair of Urikites called upon Hamanu's magic, then each
hurled a glowing pebble in his direction. The stones streaked straight at the mul,
trailing flames and smoke.

Rikus's stomach knotted with fear, and he let out a panicked bellow. Although the mul had
worn the Belt of Rank through enough battles to know its enchantment would protect him
from normal arrows, he had no idea whether it would shield him from the fiery missiles now
streaking at him.

The rocks struck him square in the midsection and exploded. The impact knocked the mul off
his feet, hurled him a dozen steps backward, then dropped him roughly to the street. His
breath blasted from his lungs and a sharp pain shot though his back. Rikus opened his
mouth to scream, then choked on the stench of sulfur as a storm of golden fire erupted
less than a foot over his face.

As the yellow blaze roiled above him, the mul feared he was going to burst into flames
himself. The inferno vaporized his robe and seared his bronzed skin. Rikus closed his eyes
against the brilliant glare, convinced that they would never open again.

Nevertheless, the glow died away a mere instant later, and the mul was surprised to find
that he remained completely conscious. His back ached from his tailbone to his neck, his
body stung as though it had been scrubbed raw with a whetstone, and the inside of his
lungs burned from breathing hot, sulfurous air. To Rikus, the pain hardly mattered. If the
belt had not protected him from all the effects of the blast, it had at least stopped the
fire rocks from penetrating his flesh and erupting inside his body.

Roaring his battle cry, the mul resumed his charge. The stunned Urikites barely managed to
raise their crossbows before Rikus reached the thorn barrier. He threw himself over
head-first. As he somersaulted through the air, he swung his sword at the nearest templar
and separated the woman's head from her shoulders. He landed in a rolling fall and lashed
at a pair of legs concealed beneath a yellow robe, then shouted in pain as his wounded
shoulder rolled over the hard stones paving the street.

Rikus came up dizzy, his vision blurred and his mind numbed by agony. It did not matter,
for he was now fighting on instinct and rage. Something yellow moved in front of him. He
swung his sword, and it collapsed to the ground.

A foot scraped the stones at his back. The mul tucked the blade under his armpit and
thrust it backward. A Urikite screamed and died.

“In the name of HamanÑ”

Rikus's foot drove the air from the man's lungs in midsentence, smashing several ribs over
his heart. The templar fell, clutching his chest.

For a moment, the mul could not find the last templar, then he beard a frightened woman's
labored breathing as she fled down a side street. Shifting the Scourge to his bad arm,
Rikus pulled a dagger from the belt of the man he had just killed. Calmly, he turned and
threw it.

The blade disappeared between the woman's shoulderblades, sending her sprawling face-first
onto the ground.

A loud crack sounded from the other side of the thorn wall. Rikus looked over his shoulder
in time to see the orange-white tail of a fiery whip lash down on the barricade. It cut a
smoking swath through the hedge, then Neeva and a handful of gladiators poured through the
gap.

“Rikus, are you hurt?” demanded Neeva, rushing over to him.

“I'm well enough,” the mul answered, inspecting himself. Other than his reddened skin, he
found no sign of fresh injury.

“What happened?” Neeva asked. “It was like you went mad!”

Though the mul did not know whether she referred to the attack on Caelum or the leap over
the barricade, he nodded. “I think I did,” Rikus answered. “But it's too late to worry
about that now. How's the dwarf?”

“He'll survive,” she replied. “He's waiting with the others. I didn't want him coming
through until...”

When she let the sentence trail off, Rikus finished it for her. “Until you found out
whether I was going to murder him.”

“Yes,” Neeva said. “What's wrong with you? Back in Makla, you agreed he might not be the
spy, and now you're trying to kill himÑeven when it's clear he's a great help!”

“I told you to leave him with Jaseela,” Rikus snapped. The mul turned away, then added,
“Bring him through, but make sure he stays away from me.”

“We won't have to worry about that,” Neeva answered.

She waved the rest of the survivors past the gap. As they stepped through, each gladiator
glared at the
mul as though he were some sort of monster.

Caelum brought up the rear. With one hand, he clutched his chest where Rikus had kicked
him. In the other, he held a coiled whip of crackling fire. The lash was made of three
distinct flames, one red, one white, and one yellow, all braided together in a single
tail. Its bone handle glowed red with blazing heat. From the grimace on Caelum's face and
the pain in his eyes, the mul could tell that holding it caused the dwarf great pain.

“Tell him to set fire to anything he can with that thing,” Rikus said, pointing at the
whip. “The more the Urikites have to worry about, the better.”

With that, he turned and led the way toward the wall, keeping a careful watch for another
templar ambush. They soon reached a ramp leading to the top of the city walls. It ran
beneath a small tower, with a portcullis of thick mekillot ribs blocking the way. A dozen
arrow loops overlooked the approach to the ramp, and in each one Rikus saw a Urikite armed
with a crossbow.

At the top of the walls, the archers were all firing into the cul-de-sac in front
of
the slave gate. Rikus could hear men and women screaming on the other side, and he knew
that Jaseela had arrived with the rest of the army. If he didn't reach the top of the wall
and do something about the archers, his legion would be slaughtered.

“Neeva, wait here until I breach the gate,” Rikus ordered. He pointed at the arrow loops
in the side of the tower. “In the meantime, see if Caelum can't do something about the
Urikites inside the tower.”

“What are you doing?”

Rikus didn't wait to explain the rest of his plan, for he knew it would be obvious once he
put it into action. Instead, he rushed across the short distance separating him from the
portcullis. The crossbows clacked. Instinctively, the mul dodged, though he knew his belt
would provide a far better defense than his reflexes. Most of the bolts missed and
clattered against the stone pavement, and several more glanced off his belt or simply
stuck in the heavy girdle.

Caelum's whip cracked over Rikus's head. Then the mul smelled the caustic stench of
charred flesh. A man screamed, and Rikus shuddered. The scaring that he had suffered
earlier still caused him enough pain that he could not stop himself from thinking of the
dying man's agony. The dwarf's whip cracked again.

Rikus reached the gate and began hacking at the mekillot ribs. The magical blade bit
deeply each time, and within moments he had torn away the first one and was working on the
second. Caelum's whip continued to pop over his head, and soon smoke was spilling out of
the tower in black clouds.

Finally Rikus cut away the third rib and stepped through the portcullis, motioning for
Neeva and the others to follow. As he passed beneath the tower, he paused for a moment to
look up into the murderholes lining the ceiling of the arch. When the mul saw no sign of
anything except flames and smoke, he continued to the other side of the tower and waited
for his companions.

They caught up to him a moment later, then he led the way up the ramp at their best pace.
As they neared the top, a handful of archers appeared along the wall and began firing.
Neeva and the others had to stop and take shelter along the base of the wall, but Rikus
continued forward. Several arrows hit him in the belt, then Caelum cracked his whip,
scaring one of the archers completely in half.

The mul leaped onto the wall and a pair of archers moved forward to meet him with their
short swords. Rikus finished them with an effortless parry and two quick slashes, then
moved on to attack the next Urikites in line. They took their bows and fled, screaming for
help.

Now that the way was clear for his companions, Rikus rushed over to the wall and cut down
an archer. He saw that he and his small group of gladiators had emerged at the outer end
of the battlements, overlooking the front edge of the cul-de-sac before the slave gate.
All down the line, archers stood every four or five yards, firing down onto the causeway
below.

There, hundreds of warriors -gladiators, dwarves, quarry slaves, even templarsÑlay
scattered upon the road, their blood spreading across the white stones in puddles. More of
Rikus's legion were pouring into the cul-de-sac with each moment, only to meet a hail of
dark shafts that struck them down in waves. Despite the heavy losses, a constant stream of
men and women reached the gate and hurried through to the boulevard beyond.

“For Tyr!” Rikus yelled, lifting his sword.

The warriors below looked up and, when they saw the mul standing along the wall, echoed
his cheer. “For Tyr!” They pressed toward the gate with renewed vigor, oblivious to the
rain of arrows being showered down upon them.

Rikus rushed down the wall, screaming a battle cry at the top of his lungs. The next
archer in line turned to face him, swinging his empty bow at the charging gladiator. The
mul ducked the blow, then drove the Scourge of Rkard through the Urikite's heart. He
kicked the man's body off his red-dripping blade and started toward his next victim.

Neeva rushed to his side and wrapped her arms around the mul's shoulders. “Wait,” she
said. “Caelum has a faster way.”

His bloodlust already stirred, Rikus tried to break away. Neeva, however, gripped the
mul's sore shoulder and stopped him. “Let him try.”

Caelum stepped forward and threw his whip to the ground. It seemed to come alive, shooting
down the wall like a snake. When it passed the first archer, a tongue of crimson flame
lashed out and left a smoking hole in the back of the man's leg. After the snake had
passed, a yellow flame spewed out of the puncture and transformed the Urikite into a
pillar of flame.

When the snake slithered to the next archer and repeated the attack, the third man in line
noticed what was happening and stepped away from the wall. As the fiery serpent moved
toward him, he nocked an arrow and fired at it. After passing through the thing's blazing
body, the shaft clattered off the stones. The blazing viper struck again.

The fourth and fifth archers fled, screaming for their companions to do likewise. Rikus
sent his gladiators down the wall after the snake, instructing them not to let any of the
Urikites escape alive. Caelum followed a short distance behind the gladiators, keeping the
fire serpent in sight so that he could control it.

Rikus led Neeva forward until they could see the mass of Tyrian warriors gathering on the
slave boulevard below. Now that the archers had been chased away, there was no sign of
opposition anywhere near the gate.

“Do you still think this a trap?” Rikus asked, motioning at the clear avenue ahead of his
legion.

“I don't know,” Neeva said, her eyes searching the distant boroughs of the city. “My
answer depends on what we find in the slave quarter.”

The Crimson Legion

Rikus did not understand how he could feel so lonely. He stood atop a guardtower
overlooking Hamanu's vast slave pit. Before him, standing in the lanes between long rows
of shabby mudbrick pens, waited more than ten thousand men and women, all of them chanting
his name. His own warriors were briskly moving along the streets, organizing the newly
liberated slaves into companies.

On the far side of the squalid pits, barely visible through the thick clouds of smoke
drifting in from the templar quarter, rose the high stone wall of the king's central
compound. Along the crest of the imposing barrier stood dozens of soldiers and templars,
all watching Rikus's preparations with great interest. In the fortress behind them lay the
high bureaus of the templars, the gladiatorial arena, and the barracks of the Imperial
GuardÑa large company of half-giants led by experienced templars of war. From the sounds
drifting over the wall, it seemed likely that the guards would soon leave the safety of
their fortress.

Rikus did not think the imminent threat of a counterattack was the reason for his glum
mood. So far, the battle had gone more or less as he had foreseen, despite the heavy
losses. The trouble with the archers had cost him three hundred warriors, but after that
the legion had encountered only minor resistance as it worked its way into the slave pens.
The Tyrians now controlled both the templar district and the slave pensÑnearly a quarter
of the city.