'We shall see,' muttered Sir Harald. He waved his arm again. 'Hugo, Tammerly, inspect the wagon.' As Stippling spoke, two knights spurred their horses forward amid a jin shy;gling of bells and approached the wagon.
In response, Led waved his arm as well. The three ogres on the trail sprang to their feet, interposing themselves between the knights and the wagon.
Led slid off the rock and stood, hand on sword hilt. 'Whaf s in that wagon is the business of the man who owns it, nobody else.' Heart pumping with excitement, Onyx got to her feet and called an incantation to mind.
Leaning forward angrily in his saddle, Stippling sputtered, 'This may be the frontier, but Knights of Solamnia are still the law. As the highest ranking knight here, I demand that you open the wagon.' His expression stormy, Stippling drew his blade and waved it in a whistling circle above his head. The remaining six knights moved to surround the wagon, the ogres, Led, and Onyx. The two called Hugo and Tammerly drew their swords on the ogres in an obvious challenge.
The air in the narrow pass thrummed with a strained silence as both sides considered how far they would go to win the standoff.
Chapter 8
The cry of a hawk wheeling in tbe gray sky above cut the brittle silence. Heads tilted up, neither knights nor Led's party moved. Even the ogres seemed to sense the strain in the air. They stood as still as their large, hunch- shouldered bodies would allow.
Stippling broke the silence at last. 'I'll warn you one last time. Open the wagon.'
Led cleaned the dirt from under a fingernail with a small blade. 'Or what?'
Led's indifference infuriated the haughty knight. For an answer Stippling snapped down the visor of his helm and clenched his fingers around the hilt of his sword. 'Or face the consequences. I would have the woman withdraw, if I were you.'
Led could feel Onyx stiffen with indignation. 'Fortunately for my troops and my cargo, you're not me,' he cut in before she could fashion a fiery reply. 'She stays.'
Truth to tell. Onyx was eagerly anticipating a battle that was, at last, not of her own making. It would give her the opportunity to compare the full measure of a human's reflexes to a dragon's. The muscles of this body felt more tightly strung than those of her dragon form. The blood did not hammer deafeningly at her temples in the usual manner. There was no acid with which to scald the flesh from a foe, no tail to deliver a killing blow. Onyx felt the blade in her right boot, cold against her calf; it was a sorry replacement for a dragon's claws. She'd have to rely heavily on her spellcast-ing. Onyx readied her two best enchantments.
Stippling seemed to be spoiling for a fight as well. He obvi shy;ously had no idea what he faced as he edged his horse for shy;ward. With swords and maces drawn, the knights followed his lead. Four knights rode past the wagon to the downhill side of the road, blocking escape. Four more, including the two Stippling had ordered to search the wagon, were still on the uphill side, spread out slightly ahead of their comman shy;der. Sensing what was to come, their horses pranced and tossed their heads in anticipation. Stippling leveled his sword at the chest of the bounty hunter.
Still Led had not drawn his own weapon. Does he intend to let the knights open the wagon after all? Onyx wondered. She'd never seen him fight, but his tactics were not what hers would have been. Then she remembered the ogres. Without moving her head, Onyx's eyes shifted to the rocky walls where they waited. Even she could scarcely make out the brutish heads peering around boulders above.
Of course Led had no intention of letting the knights see his prize. Calmly finishing his manicure, he put the blade away. 'Do nothing and stay put,' he whispered lightly to Onyx. Then, with incredible speed, he sprang forward and to the right, darting around the front of Stippling's horse. He snatched at the horse's bridle but missed. The horse lashed out its front hooves. One glanced off the greave on Led's left leg. The bounty hunter spun to the ground from the shock. He scrambled away before the rearing horse could trample him.
Led's maneuver, however little effect it had on Stippling, focused most of the knights' attention on him. They moved forward. Only three faced off with the ogres. The remainder closed in on the leather-armored man, still crouched defen shy;sively on his haunches near the horse's hooves.
An eerie wail broke over the scene. Hearing the strange sound from the rocks above, the knights looked up just in time to see several large boulders-propelled by Onyx's magic-hurtling toward them from the cliffs. It was too late to move. The rocks were slightly off target and just grazed the flanks of the stunned knights. One was bowled from his saddle. The rest raised their shields and hastily directed their shrieking mounts backward; they weren't retreating, merely trying to figure out whether the greater danger lay on the ground or in the cliffs.
The answer came when the hidden ogres rose up from their hiding places. They began pelting the road with skull-sized rocks. At first the stones hit their marks, crashing into heavy plate mail with loud clatters. The knights quickly recovered. Holding their rose-crested shields aloft, they easily deflected the stones.
'Lay on!' came a cry nearby. 'Take no prisoners!'
The bounty hunter waved his forces forward. The three towering ogres charged into the milling, confused knights, whose gazes were still turned skyward. The ogres indiscrimi shy;nately swung their clubs and thrust their rough spears at horses and knights alike.
But the trap had not been sprung in its entirety.
With the knights' attention turned to the action around them, the ogres above began to throw themselves from the cliff face like lemmings. Ogres rained down with greater force and accuracy than the boulders. Three more knights were sent sprawling from their saddles, and two of them were seriously hurt by the trampling hooves of their own horses. The horses were suffering as much from spear thrusts as their riders. Many of the steeds were down on their knees, their drapings covered in blood.
Everything was going according to Led's plan.
The knights had fallen more easily than even Led had hoped-so easy, in fact, that there had been no need for him to do anything but lean against a boulder and enjoy the spec shy;tacle. He'd held Onyx back from the skirmish with him, telling her with a wink that she was too valuable to sacrifice in a lopsided brawl. His tone was patronizing as he told her to be ready with her spells, in case the tide turned.
Onyx watched the ogres at their sport and felt cheated. She was reminded of Kadagan's parable of the sword: Onyx was like a mighty blade used only to pare apples. Soon the ogres will finish off the last knight, she reflected jealously, and I'll have had no fun at all.
Then the unthinkable happened.
A lone ogre hopped anxiously from one foot to the other on the cliff above, eager to join the fray. This exceptionally dim-witted creature grabbed its knees and flung its thirty-stone, olive-green body off the cliff without thought to where it was headed. The brute landed with the force and grace of an enormous gunstone, square on the roof of the small wagon. The monster's bulk smashed open the top and one side of the compartment. A second side splintered as he tum shy;bled to the ground, landing in a heap of broken boards and splinters.
'No!' wailed Led. 'My fortune!' He rushed forward, then stopped, paralyzed. An audible gasp rippled through the melee. All heads were turned toward the demolished wagon, and the creature huddled amid the wreckage.
Onyx knew the pathetic thing, shivering in a shabby, dirty tunic, had to be Dela. But the gray, wrinkled skin, sunken eyes, and swollen joints bore no semblance to the perfectly formed nyphid she'd seen in the maynus. Dela's tunic seemed to hold a bundle of sticks. Her hair, now dull yellow and matted and littered with straw, was barely recognizable.
Onyx silently screamed for the nyphid to run, but, sur shy;rounded by people, Dela was obviously too terrified or weak to move. Her mouth opened and closed with soundless screams. There was no place to hide in the ruined wagon. The nyphid threw her withered arms across her face and col shy;lapsed into the straw.
Do something! Onyx told herself. But what? She couldn't just grab the nyphid and run. Unless she intended to reveal her real reason for joining Led's group, she had to think of a way to make Dela help herself. A spell. She tried to think of one, but she'd concentrated for so long on enchantments that might aid in a battle, no new ones penetrated the fog of her confused thoughts.
