Sea of Death (11 page)

Near the end of the day, Gord detected a line of undulating darkness on the faraway southern horizon – a stretch of hills, he suspected. The nomads stopped and went through the usual camping routines. Gord watched for an opening as usual, but the Arroden guards were as alert as they had always been. The young adventurer forgot about thoughts of escape for the time being and slept as comfortably as his bonds permitted; tomorrow was another day. The veiled nomads swung southward the next morning, riding perhaps two leagues in that direction. Now Gord noticed mountains to his left hand – perhaps the Barring Ridge, but he wasn't sure. Then the Arroden abruptly turned and headed their camels west, sweeping back toward the area they had come from. Gord was perplexed by this, and decided to probe Brodri for information.

"Do we now ride for Karnoosh?" he asked.

The nomad stared hard at Gord for a moment. Then his visage softened slightly and he said, "It is only because you might have our blood, the blood of the Arroden, that I speak to you… I would not wish to die in slavery either, outlander. Karnoosh lies to the south, several days' ride. We will make for the city, but as we do we will travel eastward and westward as well. Our shaik seeks prey, so we sweep the land for Yoli or others who are so bold as to ride through the land of the Arroden."

There are others who are your foes here, then, too?"

"Of course. Many come and go to and from Lake Karnoosh and the rich markets of the bazaar there. Bayomens, Yoli, and the dark Jahindi all travel to and from that place. Even the folk of Sa'han and Be-how are seen at Karnoosh. We abide most of these visitors, requiring only that they pay us in goods and livestock when we run across them. But when the dogs of Yoli dare to pass over our lands, they are subject to our special tariff."

"Tariff?"

"Plundering and death," Brodri said with a thin, grim smile.

The very next day just such an encounter occurred. Running camels, their curious side-to-side gait still seeming strange to Gord despite the time he himself had been riding one, brought a handful of the veiled Arroden scouts back to the main body. They shouted that Yoli were coming toward them from the north.

There are many animals laden with goods, shaik!" one warrior called, and then added, "Many slaves – women slaves! But the dogs have many guards with them, too."

Yahoud immediately called in his lieutenants and held a council. When this broke up, Gord overheard the plan that was passed down to his guards by their leader. "We will wait for darkness, for those cowardly mongrels do not like to fight when they can't see to use their bows. When we halt at dusk, keep that one wrapped well," the veiled warrior said, nodding toward Gord. "All but one of you four must come with us when we attack."

"No one wants to lose honor and spoils," one of the guards remarked. "Which of us must stay?"

The other groups of sentries are drawing lots," said the lieutenant as he turned to ride away. "You can do the same, or settle it any other way you wish, so long as no one is injured."

The guards decided to leave the question to chance, and the other three insisted that Brodri draw last since he was the youngest. To no one's great surprise, Brodri lost. He was furious and insisted he had been cheated, but of course the others would not admit to such a thing. Gord did not say a word during the rest of that day's ride, knowing full well that Brodri was in no mood for talking.

That night, Gord stayed awake but silent until several minutes after the Arroden horde had ridden out to take on the Yoli. He knew that Brodri was still furious, but tried to approach him with a question anyway – and got a kick in the ribs for his trouble. "Keep that wagging tongue still, or by Lightning and Wind I'll tear it out of your head!" the young guard screamed. So, Gord thought, it wasn't going to be possible for him to draw Brodri into talk and then persuade the guard to loosen his bonds a bit. He would have to play a waiting game instead – and, as it turned out, the wait was not a long one.

Gord kept his peace for another few minutes while Brodri sat nearby, facing his prisoner and brooding. Then the guard's expression changed to one of resignation. He stood up, looked around, went a few paces over to his gear, and pulled out a small pot. Gord could smell the heady odor of date wine as Brodri sat down in front of him again and swigged occasionally from the container. The container was drained in less than half an hour. Brodri stood, belched, heaved the empty wine-pot disgustedly to one side, then stumbled heavily off to Gord's left, looking for a place to relieve himself!

Possibly Brodri believed that the many loops of cord and complex knots were sufficient to secure the prisoner. Possibly the potent wine had made him incautious. Whatever caused him to be careless in the first place, Brodri made an even greater mistake when he heard the sounds of fighting coming faintly over the still night air of the arid land. When his ears picked up the distant yells and din of battle wafting in from the north, the warrior ran several dozen yards farther away from Gord, in the direction of the sounds, in hopes of hearing more clearly.

Gord had already managed to loosen his bonds somewhat during the two minutes when Brodri had been busy relieving himself – literally the only occasion on which the young thief had been left un-supervised since he was captured. In the time it took Brodri to cover the additional distance and then stand for a moment with his ear cocked toward the faraway sound, Gord finished the job of getting free, then quickly and noiselessly crept up behind the careless guard, one of the ropes that had tethered him held fast in his hand.

A barely audible choking noise was the last sound Brodri made, just before the rope Gord had drawn around his throat cut off the noise and his breath all at once. Gord felt a slight pang of regret as Brodri's body slumped to the ground, for this Arroden was the closest he had had to a friend during his captivity. But even at that, thought the young thief, it was certainly not the sort of friendship that was bound to last. Strengthening his resolve to its fullest once again, he bent over the corpse and claimed the nomad's long sword and heavy-bladed dagger. Now Gord felt a lot better. He owed these Arroden much, and tonight he would repay them for their kind hospitality.

He wanted to get back his belongings, and using his special night-sight and his keen ears he did not see or hear any guards around the warriors' tents – including the one belonging to Shaik Yahoud, where he supposed his gear would be stored. But Gord didn't go there immediately. He assumed that there would be sentries stationed with the pack animals and horses to keep them from hurting themselves or straying away, and he wanted no men in the camp left alive when he searched the shaik's cloth shelter for his precious gear.

His reasoning was correct. After creeping along the perimeter of the camp, using tents and shrubs to conceal his movements, he detected two guards in the area where the remaining camels and the horses were tied on a long line. The first he struck from behind, using the unfamiliar but deadly sword. The nomad never knew what happened, and he was dead before his body fell to the sandy ground he had been walking on a moment prior. The sound of his collapse alerted his comrade, however, and the other Arroden warrior called out.

"What is wrong, Lafdan?"

"Hsssst…" Gord replied, allowing the indistinct sound to trail off.

The nomad crouched and came cautiously toward the noise that had risen out of the darkness. He moved with all the stealth of any of his kind, and his sword was held ready before him as he advanced. That maneuver did him no good, for Gord had already flanked him and came to the attack from his left. The Arroden, sensing the young thiefs silent rush, tried to bring his blade around at the last second, but both sword and dagger struck before he could defend himself. Choking on his own blood, the veiled warrior followed his comrade to wherever dead warriors of the Arroden go.

There, slaver, is your pay for the work you have done," Gord muttered bitterly. Not bothering with either dead sentry further, Gord went swiftly to the rows of tents and sought out the largest one, which was Yahoud's. In his haste, he pulled aside the flap covering the entrance – and almost ran directly into the sword of the warrior on guard inside.

The man's sword slashed through the air as he lunged forward, and Gord had to throw himself sideways to avoid a mortal wound. As it was, he suffered a long, shallow cut. The nomad followed up his advantage, slashing and stabbing so furiously that it was all the young adventurer could do to avoid another wound while he retreated back out of the cramped confines of the tent's entryway. Once the battle was carried to the outside, Gord's opponent got his blade caught for a moment in one of the ropes that held a nearby tent, and as he freed it, Gord managed to spring back and take a proper position. Then the two engaged in a fencing match.

The contest was silent except for the ring of steel on steel. The Arroden must have known that either the noise of fighting alone would be sufficient to summon his fellows, or that no amount of noise would help, so he saved his breath and fought without outcry. Within seconds, both combatants realized that no other men remained in camp – no live ones, at any rate. The nomad was a little taller than Gord and very skilled. Whether or not a contest in daylight with equal weapons would eventually have gained the warrior a victory, Gord wasn't sure – but the young adventurer was in no mood for gallantry and honorable tests of arms at this point. The Arro-den had taken him, stolen all of his precious possessions, and thought to sell him into a short life of slavery and death for a few bits of silver. Revenge and recovery of what was his were the only thoughts in Gord's mind as he acted.

With a lightninglike flick of his wrist, Gord brought the heavy dagger down. His arm shot outward as he did so, and the weapon flew from his hand, point first. The sharp point of the blade hit where he had aimed, imbedding itself in the bicep of the veiled man's sword arm just as he was bringing forward his weapon for a sweeping cut targeted at Gord's neck.

"Aargh…" the nomad cried, a half-stifled sound of pain as the dagger pierced his flesh. The stroke could not be held, and neither could the warrior's grip on his sword hilt. Gord ducked, but need not have done so. The long blade went flying on an incline into the darkness, sailing well over and past the young adventurer's head with a whirring sound. The Arroden tried to continue the fight, standing his ground and reaching for his dagger with his sound left arm, but with two sword slashes and a final dagger thrust, Gord cut him down.

It took only a little time for Gord to locate the Arroden shaik's hidden wealth. It was buried, of course, and kept safe in a locked chest. Gord had it out from under the carpet and the dirt quickly. He used the long sword to hack the container open, for he feared that poisoned needles protected its lock and he had no time or desire to try to use his skill as a thief to defeat any protections that might have been built into the nomad chiefs strongbox. Inside were all of his treasures except for his shirt of magical elfin mall.

"So, Yahoud, you like my armor, do you?" he said aloud as he buckled on his shortsword and tucked his enchanted dagger back into its sheath. "Let us see how much good it does when my long-fanged poniard here kisses your lousy body!" His ring, his armband, his sling, and all of his other possessions were here as well, and he savored each thing as he reclaimed and donned it. Adding a largish leather pouch full of coins to what he had recovered of his own, Gord ran out of the tent and headed back for where the animals were kept. He was curious about what was happening in the battle to the north, and besides that he was not yet done with revenge. With luck, it might be possible to find Yahoud in a position where he had only a few of his warriors around him. If that happened, Gord vowed he would risk the odds to even the score with the Arroden shaik.

Windeater recognized him as soon as he came near the stallion. It was a simple matter to untether him, then find and put on his saddle. Just before Gord broke camp, so to speak, he cut the rope that held the camels and other horses together. Then he galloped Windeater along their length, hooting and waving his arms as he went. Frightened dromedaries and equines ran off in all directions, and horse and rider pounded off toward the sounds that still came faintly from the north.

After about twenty minutes of hard riding, Gord brought Windeater to a halt atop a low rise. A few hundred yards in the distance he could see the Yoli encampment. Spread out in an arc along the flat ground were clusters of Arroden; from this vantage point, Gord could see that the camp was about two-thirds surrounded. Inside the camp, several unwinking lights glowed brightly. They looked like magical globes of illumination, evidently cast by the Yoli sometime during the combat. There had probably been more, but Gord supposed that the Arroden had priests and shamans of their own to counter such light with magically wrought darkness. A few burning tents added a flickering glow to the steady brightness of the enspelled light spheres. Even though his night-sight did not operate at such long distances, Gord could discern what was going on in the camp, and some of what had transpired, thanks to this strange combination of illumination.

It appeared that at one point the attacking force must have been right among the defenders. There were bodies dressed in the pale ochre robes of the Arroden strewn throughout the camp. Many Yollites had died there, too. Because of what he was now witnessing, the young adventurer assumed that the defenders had managed to push back the first onslaught of the veiled warriors. He saw no combat activity within the camp, but with every passing minute the Arroden were expanding the ends of their arc and clearly intended to encircle the Yollite encampment. The beleaguered Yollites were lying low, for the attackers were sending buzzing bolts from their crossbows toward the camp. Any figure that showed itself in or against a light source was a target. Before, the Yollites had needed the light to use their bows, just as the Arroden had suspected they would prefer to do, but now the illumination was a liability, and the lit areas were being generally shunned. Gord could make out burned and smoking patches of ground here and there around the camp. If any spell-workers still lived among the defenders, no sign of this was evident. Either their magic was exhausted, or these men had died after casting their spells. Gord wondered how many Yoli warriors remained. It was hard to tell from this distance.