Just ahead of Verminaard and Aglaca, drawing his sword and casting his bulky shield aside, old Robert shouted and redoubled his pursuit of a scraggly, bearded Nerakan, who ducked into a tight passage and vanished.
'Follow me!' the seneschal cried, and when Aglaca hesitated, the veteran turned and scowled at him comically.
'After me, Lord Aglaca!' Robert rumbled. 'Lest that sword of yours is good only for slicing beetles in the garden!'
Recklessly the old man pivoted and lurched after the retreating Nerakan, and Verminaard and Aglaca, soon lost amid the maze of rock and rubble, followed.
Verminaard's thoughts outpaced his feet, and he fell behind. The girl… I should have rescued her, burst back over the bridge like a questing knight. I could have found the way amid the archers and carried her off from her captors. She would have…
He blinked stupidly. It was the Voice that spoke to him now, entirely enmeshed with his own thoughts. Ahead, Robert turned, slipped between two narrow rocks…
And immediately there came an outcry, the sound of too many voices. Instead of one Nerakan, there were three.
Bursting through the narrow passage after Aglaca, Verminaard saw the old seneschal hemmed in by a pair of bandits. One had forced him against a black rock face, while another, dagger in hand, had scrambled into the rocks above. He was coiled like an adder, waiting his chance to strike. The third, crouched not ten feet away, produced a poniard from a long sleeve and drew back to throw it.
With a ringing cry, Aglaca sprang toward the rocks, his feet and short sword whirling. The perched Nerakan started, lost his footing as he clutched vainly for the rock face, and fell, breaking his neck. Aglaca's small sword broke the arcing poniard in midair, and he was on its owner in an instant. Verminaard circled the struggling pair, sword at the ready but somehow locked out of the combat. Robert took the second man down with a neat cut to his hamstring.
Aglaca wrestled gamely with the bandit, who was far larger and stronger. The Solamnic couldn't get leverage to use his sword. All the while, the dark Voice continued to Stir Verminaard's deepest imagining…
Let them be. What if the bandit wins? Surely Laca would do nothing to Abelaard if his son met with… an accident of battle. And Aglaca brought it on himself with his arrogant refusal to cast the ceremonial spear…
Verminaard stopped, the sword tilted uncertainly in his hand. The bandit rolled free, braced his back against the obsidian rock face, and, setting his feet to Aglaca's chest, launched the lad into the air with a compact, powerful push of his legs.
Aglaca rattled against the far wall of the passage, his sword loosed and clattering across the rock floor. Stunned by the blow, he groped vainly for the long knife at his belt. The bellowing Nerakan leapt to his feet, skidding crazily over gravel, and sprang toward the Solamnic lad, another glinting poniard seeking his throat.
Aglaca's senses cleared, and he found the hilt of his knife. In the split second after the bandit left his feet, the boy drew the weapon, raised it swiftly and certainly…
And met the bandit's last charge as he tumbled fiercely upon Aglaca's blade. The bandit's mouth went slack, and his eyes grew wide. Aglaca gazed up at him, coolly and straight on, until he slumped over in a heap.
Robert, meanwhile, had disposed of his hamstrung opponent. Dazed, kneeling in the rubble, he gathered himself and weaved dizzily to his feet, looking with amazement at the young man who had come to his rescue.
Verminaard, his weapon shamefully clean, shrank into the shadows, hoping somehow that the darkness would swallow him, hide him from blaming eyes…
'You surely plucked those two off of me, Master Aglaca,' the seneschal muttered.
Aglaca smiled and dusted off his breastplate and tunic. Dripping with sweat and scraped by his scuffle among the rocks, he leaned against a large stone until he had gathered balance and breath. 'They weren't much different from any other kind of pest, Robert/' he replied with a chuckle. Robert, too, broke into a laugh as he recalled his previous taunt. As the battle tension drained from them, they noticed Verminaard, who stood between the narrow rocks, drawn sword still frozen in his hand.
Say nothing, the Voice urged. Whatever you do, do not say it…, They do not know you were here. He has no idea…
Verminaard did as he was told.
The Solamnic lad looked Verminaard over carefully, then wiped his brow. 'So at last you found us, Verminaard!' he said curiously. ''Twas tight quarters here. We could've used your arm.'
'Indeed we could,' Robert grumbled, eyeing him skeptically. He could have sworn he'd seen Verminaard earlier in the fray. Hobbling a bit from the basting he had suffered at the hands of the Nerakans, he limped past the young man back onto the mountain trail, headed toward the bridge and the rest of his companions.
'No matter,' Aglaca quickly added, his voice cheerful and melodious. 'No matter, because, as you see, there was no harm in your delay, no bruise in your waiting.'
They found Daeghrefn not far from the bridge, gathering his men and reckoning his losses.
Of the forty retainers who had embarked on the morning's hunt with the Lord of Nidus, only two dozen remained. Osman, of course, had fallen in the encounter with the centicore. The Nerakan ambush had killed fifteen of Daeghrefn's finest troops.
When two of the retainers, rough farm boys from Kern, returned from the chase bearing two Nerakan heads on pikes, Daeghrefn turned away and said nothing, for he shared their bitterness and anger. Aside from that pair of especially unfortunate bandits and the three slain by Aglaca and Robert, the skirmish had brought no recompense for Daeghrefn's forces. The Nerakans had vanished into the rocks, leaving dead men and disarray on the paths behind them.
And the girl, Verminaard thought, standing in the background while Robert told Daeghrefn how Aglaca had shown mettle and speed in the struggle with the bandits. Whoever she was… bound and captive and … and in deep distress, I know.
Daeghrefn nodded brusquely at Robert's speech. Aglaca might be Laca's son, but despite the ancient quarrel, the boy had conducted himself with exceptional gallantry. He glanced from the disheveled, amiable Solamnic youth to the other, the darker, larger, and decidedly unfa-tigued presence, who sat atop his horse now, lost in a labyrinth of thought.
Verminaard didn't notice that Daeghrefn had looked at him, for his mind was elsewhere, high on the far and sunlit side of the stone bridge.
Had I but the chance to prove it, she… she would…
He couldn't imagine what would happen.
Trapped in his own reflections, communing with the dark Voice that arose from his thoughts and from somewhere deeper than his thoughts, he rode back to Castle Nidus, trailing the column.
From the battlements of Castle Nidus, sentries watched the approach of Daeghrefn's beaten line of riders. Almost at once, the sharper-eyed among them began to count, and counted again, as two dozen men rode in from the waning light of the foothills, torches already lifted against the oncoming evening.
Quickly, with rising apprehension, the sentries alerted the castle. Soon, with murmurings and rumor, everyone assembled in the bailey yard. There the kitchen sweep shifted from foot to foot next to the old astrologer from Estwilde, and the falconer leaned uneasily against the wall of the keep, exchanging hushed words with the cook. None had foreseen this grim news. Never had a routine hunt been so disastrous, and only twice before had the Nerakans attacked anyone this close to Nidus.
Aglaca turned over the day's unhappy events in his mind and knew that it would be a long time before he could go home to East Borders. Eight long years past… how many more to go until some sort of peace would release him from Nidus? His youth was being poured out in the gebo-naud, and by now he should have attained his knighthood. Or maybe even his most secret desire-to serve Paladine with all his being.
Perhaps Daeghrefn had been right about his needing a guard to keep him from answering the call of East Borders. Like the dead of the day, Aglaca had not chosen his fate nor his company.
Perched at the mouth of a high cave, almost a mile above the three lofty turrets of the castle, there was one who understood more clearly. Cerestes shielded his golden eyes against the red slant of sun and counted the approaching troops. Then his gaze narrowed and focused, and the birds around the mouth of the cavern hushed in a sort of fearful expectancy.
