From the south came shouts and the tramp-tramp-tramp of trudging feet. Craning his neck and getting his left ear pierced by a thorn, Fost saw some of what was happening. A file of people, men, women and children, in drab clothing rendered drabber still by sun and dust and toil, dragged themselves up to the wooden gates of the compound. The Vridzish guards hurried them along with strokes of lizard hide whips and switches made from thornbush, chivvying them in wheezy pidgin manspeech. The lizard men were eager to get their captives penned up before the cool evening rendered them torpid. The Vridzish could function after dark, but their reflexes slowed.
When the last straggling child was whipped through the gates, they thumped closed and Fost heard a bar rumbling into place across the outside. New guards replaced the old; a mental signal from Moriana confirmed that the setup was the same as before, two on the gate, two patrolling the perimeter.
Night settled in to stay. Crickets tuned up off in the scrub, their chirping joined by the warbling of night lizards distending purple throat sacs to sing plaintively. The ofilos closed their lovely, treacherous blooms and some night blooming succulents released sticky sweet perfumes. Though Fost found their odor cloying, he wasn't allergic to them.
Some of the buildings in the Watchers' main camp had been left standing by the new occupiers, and Moriana reported that most of the soldiers who had escorted the prisoners went into them for the night. There were fewer of the lizard men than she'd expected. From the patrol activity of the day before – and today, as well, when they had dodged skyrafts floating around the mountain – Moriana reckoned there must be several times as many camped around Omizantrim as were bivouacked in the Watchers' village. Probably the rest were posted around the flows to keep out intruders, and concentrated around the mines themselves.
Fost was glad of that. It'd be no easy task to sneak even a few of the Watcher captives out from under the noses of two hundred sleeping Hissers.
Knowing something of Zr'gsz military routine, Moriana waited until midway through the new watch, giving the evening cool sufficient time to weigh down the limbs of the patrolling Hissers and render them drowsy. Then she beamed her readiness to Fost.
He listened until the lizard men's sandalled feet crunched through the dust and gravel of the arroyo running along the western wall of the compound. When they passed, he started counting again. He counted two-twenty- five. The Hissers would be midway along the northern wall unless something had disrupted their routine. He'd heard no disturbance and Moriana informed him that the lizard men needed to relieve themselves less frequently than humans. Now! he thought.
From her bubble cave, Moriana put a compulsion on the two armed guards at the gate. When she'd outlined that part of her plan, Fost expressed his surprise. He thought the mental compulsion worked only on her fellow Sky Citizens, who were steeped in the magics of their City and thus susceptible to them.
'The magics of the City,' she'd replied, 'are closely allied to those of the Zr'gsz.' The peculiar light in her green eyes had discouraged further questioning, not that he cared. Fost knew as little of magic as he did of hydraulic engineering. Now he hoped fervently she was right.
He wished she could have compelled the lizard folk on the gate to slay their fellow guards. But she lacked the ability to impose so drastic an act as the murder of a comrade. She could turn them into living statues for as long as it took Fost to eliminate the patrolling pair and get to the gate, but that was all.
His heart thumped in his throat as the two appeared around the corner, two lumps of black against fainter darkness. He heard the crisp sounds of their steps, fancied he heard their breathing over the animal sounds of the prisoners on the far side of the wall. On the count of one-fifty he eased his sword from its scabbard. He shifted his hand to make certain of his grip on the wire-wound handle. Fear danced in his veins and pounded in his temples. He knew all too well the horrible speed with which the Zr'gsz reacted. He had to pit his merely human reflexes against two of them.
Part of him expected Erimenes to sing out a challenge at any moment. But the genie stayed silent as the footfalls drew nearer. Gleams of reflected starlight danced by in time to the footsteps. Fost sucked in a huge breath and sprang.
He landed with feet widespread and sword swinging, held two-handed in a madman's grip. He struck left and right with hysterical speed and power, crazed with fear that the lizard men's preternatural reflexes would cut him down before he could act. But even Zr'gsz reflexes take time to react; these Hissers were slowed by the soporific caresses of the chill night. When the pale creature materialized between them with his star-gleaming blade blazing a deadly trail through the darkness, they had no time to react.
The sword thunked home in the neck of the second sentry by the time Fost's nerves recorded the impact with the first. The leading Hisser fell, his head lolling from the half-severed neck that spewed dark blood onto the volcanic sand. The second's head simply sprang from its shoulders, launched by a powerful jet of blood.
Fost was so astonished that he just stood there staring for several heartbeats, his sword seeming to pulse like a living thing in his hands. Stinking black blood dried quickly on clothes and hair and skin. 'I'm alive,' he whispered. 'I'm alive!'
'Shrewdly struck,' observed Erimenes. It was true. Fost had read about mighty warriors, generally great- thewed barbarians from the equatorial forests of the Northern Continent, who decapitated foes with a single swordstroke. Once he'd started learning swordcraft he'd dismissed the tales as mythic. A horizontal headcut was too chancy to be useful – a shoulder or upraised arm was too likely to get in the way. And it was hard to cut through a human neck, even with a well-honed steel blade.
In his panic, Fost had been unable to do anything but lash out horizontally and hope the sentries kept their arms by their sides. They had, and he'd chopped one of their damned heads off. Maybe he was a hero.
'Don't get carried away.' Erimenes advised him sourly, picking up the thought from his brain.
Grinning, Fost jogged down the arroyo. He felt a laugh rising in his throat and pushed it back down sternly. He hadn't honestly expected to survive the ambush. Reaction to finding them dead while he still lived made him giddy.
He reached the end of the wall where the arroyo wall was only a few feet high, scrambled up and peered around cautiously. The buildings beyond were black and silent like so many crypts; the garrison had finished its meal and gone to bed, wrapped in heavy cloaks against the cold. Two more sentries stood as rigid as statues exactly where Moriana had predicted.
But the Zr'gsz could stand motionless far longer than a human. Were these under Moriana's compulsion or just standing their usual watch? Fost knew only one way to be certain.
He dropped from the wall and slowly walked around the corner. Nothing. The sentries might have been carved from basalt. He repressed a lunatic urge to whistle as he glanced around. Far away a pink glow stained the eastern horizon. The lesser moon was poised to fling itself into the nighttime sky. Fost picked up his pace.
Affecting a boldness he didn't feel, he walked directly between the sentries to the gate. Neither Hisser stirred. He reached for the wooden beam securing the gate. 'Kill them, idiot,' hissed Erimenes.
Fost paused to consider. Neither sentry showed any more life than the blocks of lava in the wall, but there wasn't any guarantee Moriana could hold them much longer. Fost had considerable cause to fear and loathe the lizard men, but he didn't like killing helpless beings.
But he saw no alternative – and time passed. He made two swift jabs with his dagger and turned back to moving the massive wooden bar.
The creak it made coming free of the brackets could be heard all the way to Port Zorn. But as soon as Fost had freed Moriana of her need to hold the sentries under compulsion, she'd shifted her attention to the buildings where the Hissers slept. She relayed via Ziore and Erimenes that no movement occurred at his slip. With a grunt of satisfaction, Fost heaved the bar away and opened the gate.
If the Zr'gsz hadn't heard him removing the bar, the captives had. A knot of men and women in ragged smocks clustered about the gate. Their reaction surprised him. A gasp of fear raced through the small group. Then it passed and he saw furtive expressions of hope dawn on their haggard faces.
Their gauntness appalled him. Obviously, the Zr'gsz fed their slaves only enough to enable them to drag their bodies down to the skystone mines every morning and toil the day away. That their slaves' numbers diminished every sundown made no difference to the reptiles.
A man pushed his way through the crowd. Not a tall man, he walked erect despite the air of deprivation, exhaustion and despair that swirled about him like a cloak. He'd once been a stocky man, Fost judged from the folds of loose skin on the scarecrow frame. But his eyes blazed clean, firm.
'I am Ludo, Chief Warden of the Watchers of Omizantrim. Who are you and what is the meaning of this?'
