The whip coiled around his waist and whirled him to the ground.
“Play!” the voices shouted raggedly together.
But when he stumbled to his feet again, he heard the sound of hooves. And a moment later, Mehryl's whinny cut through the gibbering voices. It touched Troy's heart like the call of a trumpet. He jerked up; his head, and his ears searched, trying to locate the
Ranyhyn.
The voices changed to shouts of hunger as the ` hooves charged. “Ranyhyn!” “Kill it!”
“Meat!” Hands grabbed Troy. He grappled with a fist that held a knife. But then the noise of hooves rushed close to him. An impact flung his assailant away. He turned, tried to leap onto Mehryl's back. But he only put himself in Mehryl's path. The shoulder of the Ranyhyn struck him, knocked him down.
Then he could hear bare feet leaping to the attack. The whip cracked, knives swished. Mehryl was forced away from him. Hooves skittered on the stone as the Ranyhyn retreated. Howling triumphantly, the creatures gave chase. The sounds receded.
Troy pushed himself to his feet. His heart thudded in his chest; pain throbbed sharply in his face. The noises of pursuit seemed to indicate that he was being left alone. But he did not move. Concentrating all his attention, he tried to hear over the beat of his pain.
For a long moment, the open space around him sounded empty, still. He waved his arms, and touched nothing.
But then he heard a sharp intake of breath.
He was trembling violently. He wanted to turn and run. But he forced himself to hold his ground. He concentrated, bent all his alertness toward the sound. In the distance, the other creatures had lost Mehryl. They were returning; he could hear them.
But the near voice hissed, “I kill you. You hurt my foot. Slayer take them! You are my meat.”
Troy could sense the creature's approach. It loomed out of the blankness like a faint pressure on his face. The rasp of its breathing grew louder. With every step, he felt its ambience more acutely.
The tension was excruciating, but he held himself still. He waited. Interminable time passed.
Suddenly, he felt the creature bunching to spring.
He snatched Manethrall Rue's cord from his belt, looped it around the neck of his attacker, and jerked as the creature hit him. He put all his strength into the pull. The creature's leap toppled him, but he clung to the cord, heaved on it. The creature landed on top of him. He threw his weight around, got himself onto the creature. He kept pulling. Now he could feel the limpness of the body under him. But he did not release his hold. Straining on the cord; he banged the creature's head repeatedly against the stone.
He was gasping for breath. Dimly, he could hear the other creatures charging him.
He did not release his hold
Then power crackled through the air. Flame burst around him. He heard shouts, and the clash of swords. Bowstrings thrummed. Creatures screamed, ran, fell heavily.
A moment later, hands lifted Troy. Rue's cord was taken from his rigid fingers. First Haft Amorine cried, “Warmark! Warmark! Praise the Creator, you are safe!” She was weeping with relief. People moved around him. He heard Lord Mhoram say, “My friend, you have led us a merry chase. Without Mehryl's aid, we would not have found you in time.” The voice came disembodied out of the blankness.
At first, Troy could not speak. His heart struggled through a crisis. It made him gasp so hard that he could barely stand. He sounded as if he were trying to sob.
“Warmark,” Amorine said, “what has happened to you?”
“Sun,” he panted, “is-the sun-shining?” The effort of articulation seemed to impale his heart.
“Warmark? Ah, Warmark! What has been done to you?”
“The sun!” he retched out. He was desperate to insist, but he could only stamp his foot uselessly.
“The sun stands overhead,” Mhoram answered. “We have survived the vortex and its creatures. But now Fleshharrower's army enters Doriendor Corishev. We must depart swiftly.”
“Mhoram,” Troy coughed hoarsely. “Mhoram.” Stumbling forward, he fell into the Lord's arms.
Mhoram held him in a comforting grip. Without a word, the Lord supported him until some of his pain passed, and he began to breathe more easily. Then Mhoram said quietly, 'I see that you slew one of the Despiser's birds. You have done well, my friend. Lord Callindrill and I remain. Perhaps seventy of the Bloodguard survive. First Haft Amorine has preserved a handful of her warriors. After the passing of the vortex, all the Ranyhyn returned. They saved many horses. My friend, we must go.'
Some of Mhoram's steadiness reached Troy, and he began to regain control of himself. He did not want to be a burden to the Lord. Slowly, he drew back, stood on his own. Covering his burned forehead with his hands as if he were trying to hide his eyelessness, he said, “I've got to tell you the rest of my plan.”
“May it wait? We must depart at once.”
“Mhoram,” Troy moaned brokenly, “I can't see.”
Twenty: Garroting Deep
Two days later-shortly after noon on the day before the dark of the moon-Lord Mhoram led the Warward to Cravenhaw, the southmost edge of Garroting Deep. In noon heat, the army had swung stumbling and lurching like a dying man around the foothills, and had marched northward to a quivering halt before the very lips of the fatal Deep. The warriors stood on a wide, grassy plain-the first healthy green they had seen since leaving the South Plains. Ahead was the Forest. Perhaps half a league away on either side, east and west, were mountains, steep and forbidding peaks like the jaws of the Deep. And behind was the army of
The Giant-Raver drove his forces savagely. Despite the delay at Doriendor Corishev, he was now no more than two leagues away.
That knowledge tightened Lord Mhoram's cold, weary dread. He had so little time in which to attempt Warmark Troy's plan. From this position, there were no escapes and no hopes except the one Troy had envisioned. If Mhoram were not successful-successful soon! — the Warward would be crushed between the Raver and Garroting Deep.
Yet he doubted that he could succeed at all, regardless of the time at his disposal. In a year or a score of years, he might still fail. The demand was so great-Even the vortex of trepidation had not made him feel so helpless.
Yet he shuddered when he thought of the vortex. Although Troy had saved virtually all the Warward, the men and women who had remained in the masterplace had paid heavily for their survival. Something in Lord Callindrill had been damaged by Fleshharrower's attack. The strain of combat against bitter ill had humiliated him in some way, taught him a deep distrust of himself. He had not been able to resist the fear. Now his clear soft eyes were clouded, pained. When he melded his thoughts with Lord Mhoram, he shared knowledge and concern, but not strength; he no longer believed in his strength.
In her own way, First Haft Amorine suffered similarly. During the Raver's onslaught, she had held the collapsing remains of her command together by the simple force of her courage. She had taken the terror of her warriors upon herself. Every time one of them fell under the power of the vortex, or died in the talons of the birds, she had tightened her grip on the survivors. And after that, when the sirocco had passed, she began a frantic search for Warmark Troy. The perverted, manlike creatures that rushed into the ruins — some with claws for fingers, others with cleft faces and limbs covered with suckers, still others with extra eyes or arms, all of them warped in some way by the power of the Stone-steadily brought more and more of the city under their control. But she fought her way through them as if they were mere shades to haunt her while she hunted. The idea of following Mehryl was hers.
But the Warmark's blindness was too much for her. The cause of it was clear. The slain bird's corrosive blood had ravaged his face, and that burning had undone the Land's gift of sight. Neither of the Lords had any
