hold the lance as the creature drove itself upon the tapered shaft, then return with his seventh kill. His deeds would be sung in Castle Nidus, in the villages among the foothills, and by huntsmen as far away as Sanction and Zhakar.
So the hunt would have ended, had not Verminaard's pursuit distracted the beast.
Wheeling awkwardly on its forelegs, scattering gravel and earth as it turned, the centicore stumbled toward the charging youth. Alarmed, seeing the danger to his master's son, Osman spurred his horse forward, riding beside the centicore, seeking a soft spot, a vulnerable place in the filthy array of scales along the monster's back.
Suddenly the beast lashed out with its thick, macelike tail. The barb whistled through the air and crashed into the side of Osman's helmet with a ring that Robert's pursuing column heard a hundred yards from the mouth of the canyon.
Osman toppled from the saddle and fell heavily to the ground. For a moment, he tried to rise, his arms extended weakly above his lolling head, but then he shivered and lay still just as Verminaard's lance drove deeply, with a crackling of gristle and bone, into the breast of the centicore.
The impact of lance against the monster thrusted the young man back into the bracings of his saddle, and the breath fled from him as the air spangled with red light. He remembered only falling and being caught by the cords.
Then he remembered nothing at all.
Aglaca was kneeling beside him when Verminaard came to his senses. The huge hulk of the centicore lay not ten yards away, the broken lance embedded deep in its vitals. The shadows of horsemen surrounded him, and as he tried to stand, the seneschal Robert grabbed him under the arms, lifting him and bracing him.
'What happened here?' Daeghrefn's sharp voice asked, like a distant humming in his ears.
'The centicore is dead, sir,' Aglaca volunteered. 'And it was Verminaard's brave charge that killed it.'
'And not only the centicore,' Daeghrefn declared icily. 'Osman has fallen to the same rash assault. Attend to his body and leave the centicore here for the ravens and kites. The beast is a shameful kill.'
Verminaard could not believe his bad fortune.
He'd had scarcely a second's exulting, scarcely a moment to look across the churned and broken ground to the steamy, hulking body of the beast, to revel in his courageous act.
It was Aglaca's fault, the Voice soothed, gliding into his deepest thoughts as he sulked in the saddle. He could have joined the ceremony, closed the circle of the hunt with a simple cast of the spear. He refused, out of a stupid and blind loyalty to a vanished god
… and Osman died for Aglaca's pride and his helplessness. If he'd been man enough to kill the centicore…
Verminaard rode home in the middle of the column, Aglaca beside him. Over the mile and a half from the box canyon to the edge of the plains, the smaller lad never spoke, but when they reached the foothills and the narrow pass that led through Taman Busuk and south toward Castle Nidus, Aglaca finally addressed him. The brisk wind that met them erased all memory of the grasslands, the rank smell of centicore, and the sweat of terror-stricken horses.
'Your father will come around, Verminaard,' Aglaca soothed. 'He's wounded over the loss of Osman, but he'll see soon enough that your act was courageous, that you were only trying to help me out.'
Verminaard winced at this new needling but kept silent, his eyes fixed on the path in front of them. Once, maybe twice, Aglaca thought that his companion was ready to speak, but each time the other lad shook his head and sank back into a gloomy quiet.
They passed over a stone bridge, wider by far than Dreed, where the horses walked three abreast and the riders, forced to dismount and lead the animals, trudged over the causeway of rock and gravel, exchanging muted conversation and stories about Osman's bravery.
'What's this bridge called, Verminaard?' Aglaca asked.
'Bandit's Bone' came the answer, muttered and clipped.
'Is there some burial ground here?'
Verminaard was about to loose a tirade upon Aglaca, to berate him for his pride and smugness and self- righteous, bloody-minded ways, when suddenly the air bristled with arrows. Rising from the rocks on the far side of the bridge ahead, a dozen archers aimed, fired, and reloaded as the rider at the front of Daeghrefn's column toppled over the bridge and into the gorge, the black shaft of a Nerakan arrow run through his back.
'Nerakans!' Daeghrefn roared. 'Ambush!'
From the rocks behind them came a second group of bandits, also armed with bows, and instantly another deluge of arrows poured down on Daeghrefn's party. The relentless barrage eclipsed the midday sun, and the warriors on the rock bridge milled in confusion, while men before and behind Verminaard toppled into the gorge, some shot through several times.
Daeghrefn whirled in the saddle and shouted orders to his men. Verminaard strained to hear his father through the strange, aggressive yells of the Nerakan archers as they launched volley after volley upon the trapped hunters. But then the lad's eyes brought him the news as all the men turned their shields toward the far
Chapter 5
side of the bridge and, risking the arrows that whined and clattered on the stones behind them, lurched angrily toward the homeward side of the gorge like a long, armored serpent.
Slowly they moved toward the bandits, toward the ragged men who now discarded their bows and drew forth long knives and rusty maces. When Verminaard reached solid ground, there were ten of his party ahead, swords locked with their Nerakan adversaries, and the drift of battle was already shifting toward Daeghrefn, toward the commander of Castle Nidus.
Verminaard looked behind him. Aglaca leapt off the stone bridge and found safer footing, but past him lay a sprawl of bodies. A dozen of Daeghrefn's men slumped, dead or dying, on the stone bridge, and three more had fallen into the gorge. Fifteen in all, a dreadful blow to the castle garrison.
Ahead of the young men, the Nerakans made another vicious assault. Crouching and sidling like maniacal crabs, they would have been ludicrous if it hadn't been for their long knives, sharp and glittering. Daeghrefn's men backed unsteadily to the bridge, their shields raised again and their swords waving fruitlessly. Another man fell to Nerakan knives-Edred, it was, and he called out only once as the bandits swarmed over him. Soon the whole party, from Daeghrefn down to Verminaard and Aglaca, were huddled together behind their horses at the edge of the gorge, their feet slipping in rubble, their swords held narrowly before them. They braced themselves against the Nerakans, who regrouped not twenty feet from their makeshift lines, preparing for yet another charge.
Cramped against Aglaca on one side, with Robert on the other, Verminaard looked over his shoulder, past the huddle of horses to the bridge. There, amid the cluttered corpses, the first Nerakan archers had set foot on the rocky span.
Far behind them, on the other side of the chasm, a girlish form burst forth from the rocks, galloping on a roan mare, chased by two mounted bandits. Hooded and slight, her red robes kirtled around her thighs, she seemed diminished, almost elflike before her two hulking pursuers.
On her right leg was a prisoner's tattoo, the hand-sized silhouette of a dragon's black head.
The girl raised her hands toward the battle, and Verminaard noticed the ropes that bound her wrists together.
A captive, he thought. And a lovely one. She is blond and fair, I'm sure…
What am I thinking of, here at sword's point? He shook his head to fling loose the distracting thoughts as the men around him stumbled forward. Overtaken by the bandits, the girl and her horse moved into the rocks. When Verminaard looked back, she was gone.
Finally the bandits had taken account of numbers. They were turning, retreating before Daeghrefn's superior forces, and the Lord of Nidus's troops were driving them, pressing in with their swords and shouting the names of the fallen.
Over the rocks and the gravel they chased the Nerakans, leaving the bridge, rushing up the mountain pass until the bandits vanished among the branching paths and the crags of the towering cliff face.
