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‘All right,’ Sparhawk said. ‘I’ll go see what they want.’ He spurred Faran into a gallop and thudded up the long slope of the road towards the hilltop. The two mounted men wore black Pandion armour, but they gave none of the customary signs of greeting as Sparhawk approached, and neither of them raised his visor. Their horses were peculiarly gaunt, almost skeletal.
‘What is it, brothers?’ Sparhawk asked, reining Faran in a few yards from the pair. He caught a momentary whiff of an unpleasant smell, and for some reason a chill ran through him.
One of the armoured figures turned slightly and pointed a steel-clad arm down into the next valley. He did not speak, but appeared to be pointing at a winter-denuded elm grove at one side of the road about a half-mile farther on.
‘I don’t quite –’ Sparhawk started; then he caught the sudden glint of sunlight on polished steel among the spidery branches of the grove. He shaded his eyes with one hand and peered intently at the cluster of trees. He saw a hint of movement and another flash of reflected light. ‘I see,’ he said gravely. ‘Thank you, my brothers. Would you care to join us in routing the ambushers waiting below?’
For a long moment, neither black-armoured figure responded, then one of them inclined his head in assent. They both moved then, one to either side of the road, and sat their horses, waiting.
Puzzled by their strange behaviour, Sparhawk rode back down the road to rejoin the others. ‘We’ve got some trouble up ahead,’ he reported. ‘There’s a group of armed men hiding in a grove of trees in the next valley.’
‘An ambush?’ Tynian asked.
‘People don’t usually hide unless they’ve got some mischief in mind.’
‘Could you tell how many there are?’ Bevier asked, loosening his Lochaber from its sling on his saddlebow.
‘Not really.’
‘One way to find out,’ Ulath said, reaching for his axe.
‘Who are the two Pandions?’ Kalten asked nervously.
‘They didn’t say.’
‘Did they give you the same kind of feeling they gave me?’
‘What kind of feeling?’
‘As if my blood had just frozen.’
Sparhawk nodded. ‘Something like that,’ he admitted. ‘Kurik,’ he said then, ‘you and Berit take Sephrenia, Flute, and Talen to some place out of sight.’
The squire nodded curtly.
‘All right then, gentlemen,’ Sparhawk said to the other knights, ‘let’s go and have a look.’
They started out at a rolling trot, five armoured knights mounted on war horses and wielding a variety of unpleasant-looking weapons. At the top of the hill they were joined by the two silent men in black armour. Once again Sparhawk caught the unpleasant smell, and once again his blood ran strangely cold.
‘Has anybody got a horn?’ Tynian asked. ‘We should let them know we’re coming.’
Ulath unbuckled one of his saddlebags and took out the curled and twisted horn of some animal. It was quite large and had a brass mouthpiece at its tip.
‘What kind of an animal has horns like that?’ Kalten asked him.
‘Ogre,’ Ulath replied. Then he set the mouthpiece to his lips and blew a shattering blast.
‘For the glory of God and the honour of the Church!’ Bevier exclaimed, rising in his stirrups and flourishing his Lochaber.
Sparhawk drew his sword and drove his spurs into Faran’s flanks. The big horse plunged eagerly ahead, his ears laid back and his teeth bared.
There were shouts of chagrin from the elm grove as the Church Knights plunged down the hill at a gallop with the grass whipping at the legs of their chargers. Then perhaps eighteen armoured men on horseback broke out of their concealment and rode out into the open to meet the charge.
‘They want a fight!’ Tynian shouted jubilantly.
‘Watch yourselves when we mix with them!’ Sparhawk warned. ‘There may be more hiding in the grove!’
Ulath continued to sound his horn until the last moment. Then he quickly stuffed it back into his saddlebag and began to whirl his great war axe about his head.
Three of the ambushers had held back; just before the two parties crashed together, they turned tail and rode off at a dead run, flogging their horses in sheer panic.
The initial impact might easily have been heard a mile away. Sparhawk and Faran were slightly in the lead, with the others fanned out and back in a kind of wedge formation. Sparhawk stood up in his stirrups to deliver broad overhand strokes to the right and the left as he crashed into the strangers. He split open a helmet and saw blood and brains come gushing out as the man fell stiffly out of his saddle. On his next stroke his sword sheared through an upraised shield, and he heard a scream as his blade bit into the arm to which the shield was strapped. Behind him he could hear the sounds of other blows and shrieks as his friends followed him through the mêlée.
Their rush through the centre of the ambushers left ten down, killed or maimed, but, as they whirled to attack again, a half-dozen more came crashing out of the grove to attack them from the rear.
‘Go ahead!’ Bevier shouted as he wheeled his horse. ‘I’ll hold these off while you finish the rest!’ He raised his Lochaber and charged.
‘Help him, Kalten!’ Sparhawk called to his friend, then led Tynian, Ulath, and the two strangers against the dazed survivors of their first attack. Tynian’s broadsword had a much wider blade than those of the Pandions and thus a great deal more weight. That weight made the weapon savagely efficient, and Tynian cut through flesh or armour with equal ease. Ulath’s axe, of course, had no finesse or subtlety. He hewed at men as a woodsman might hew at trees.
Sparhawk briefly saw one of the two strange Pandions rise in his stirrups to deliver a vast overhand blow. What the knight held in its gauntleted fist, however, was not a sword, but rather that same kind of glowing nimbus that had been given to Sephrenia in the shabby upstairs apartment in Chyrellos by the insubstantial ghost of Sir Lakus. The nimbus appeared to pass completely through the body of the awkward mercenary the Pandion faced. The man’s face went absolutely white, and he stared down at his chest in horror, but there was no blood, and his rust-splotched armour remained intact. With a shriek of terror, he threw his sword away and fled. Then Sparhawk’s attention was diverted by another enemy.
When the last of the ambushers had fallen, Sparhawk wheeled Faran to go to the aid of Bevier and Kalten, but saw that it was largely unnecessary. Three of the men who had come charging out of the elm grove were already down. Another was doubled over in his saddle with both hands pressed to his belly. The other two were trying desperately to parry the blows of Kalten’s sword and Bevier’s Lochaber axe. Kalten feinted with his sword then smoothly slapped his opponent’s weapon out of his hand, even as Bevier lopped the head off his man with an almost casual backhand swipe.
‘Don’t kill him!’ Sparhawk shouted to Kalten as the blond man raised his sword.
‘But –’ Kalten protested.
‘I want to question him.’
Kalten’s face grew bleak with disappointment as Sparhawk rode back across the littered turf towards him and Bevier.
Sparhawk reined Faran in. ‘Get off your horse,’ he told the frightened and exhausted captive.
The man slid down. Like that worn by his fallen companions, his armour was a mish-mash of unmatched pieces. It was rusty and dented in places, but the sword Kalten had knocked from his hand was polished and sharp.
‘You’re a mercenary, I take it,’ Sparhawk said to him.
‘Yes, my Lord,’ the fellow faltered in a Pelosian accent.
‘This didn’t turn out too well, did it?’ Sparhawk asked in an almost comradely fashion.
The fellow laughed nervously, looking at the carnage around him. ‘No, my Lord, not at all the way we expected.’
‘You did your best,’ Sparhawk said to him. ‘Now, we’ll need the name of the man who hired you.’
‘I didn’t ask his name, my Lord.’
‘Describe him then.’
‘I-I cannot, my Lord.’
‘This interview is going to get a lot less pleasant, I think,’ Kalten said.
‘Stand him in a fire,’ Ulath suggested.
‘I’ve always liked pouring boiling pitch inside their armour – slowly,’ Tynian said.
‘Thumbscrews,’ Bevier said firmly.
‘You see how it is, neighbour,’ Sparhawk said to the now ashen-faced prisoner. ‘You are going to talk. We’re here, and the man who hired you isn’t. He might have threatened you with unpleasant things, but we’re going to do them to you. Save yourself a great deal of discomfort and answer my questions.’
‘My Lord,’ the man blubbered, ‘I can’t – even if you torture me to death.’
Ulath slid down from his saddle and approached the cringing captive. ‘Oh, stop that,’ the Genidian said. He raised a hand, palm outstretched, over the prisoner’s head and spoke in a harsh, grating language Sparhawk did not understand but uneasily suspected was not a human tongue. The captured mercenary’s eyes went blank, and he fell to his knees. Falteringly and with absolutely no expression in his voice, he began to speak in the same language as Ulath had.
‘He’s been bound in a spell,’ the Genidian Knight reported. ‘Nothing we could have done to him would have made him talk.’
The mercenary went on in that dreadful language, speaking more rapidly now.
‘There were two who hired him,’ Ulath translated, ‘a hooded Styric and a man with white hair.’
‘Martel!’ Kalten exclaimed.
‘Very likely,’ Sparhawk agreed.
The prisoner spoke again.
‘It was the Styric who put the spell on him,’ Ulath said. ‘It’s one ‘I’m not familiar with.’
‘I don’t think I am either,’ Sparhawk admitted. ‘We’ll see if Sephrenia knows it.’
‘Oh,’ Ulath added, ‘that’s one other thing. This attack was directed at her.’
‘What?’
‘The orders these men had were to kill the Styric woman.’
‘Kalten!’ Sparhawk barked, but the blond man was already spurring his horse.
‘What about him?’ Tynian pointed at the prisoner.
‘Let him go,’ Sparhawk shouted as he galloped off after Kalten. ‘Come on!’
As they rode over the hilltop, Sparhawk looked back. The two strange Pandions were nowhere in sight. Then, up ahead, he saw them. A group of men had surrounded the rocky knoll where Kurik had hidden Sephrenia and the others. The two black-armoured knights were sitting on their horses coolly between the attackers and the knoll. They were making no effort to fight, but merely stood their ground. As Sparhawk watched, one of the attackers launched a javelin which appeared to pass directly through the body of one of the black-armoured Pandions with no visible effect.
‘Faran!’ Sparhawk barked. ‘Run!’ It was something he seldom did. He called upon Faran’s loyalty instead of his training. The big horse shuddered slightly, then stretched himself out in a run that quickly outdistanced the others.
The attackers numbered perhaps ten men. They were recoiling visibly from the two shadowy Pandions blocking their path. Then one of them looked around and saw Sparhawk descending upon them with the others rushing along behind him, and he shouted a warning. After a moment of stunned paralysis, the shabby attackers bolted, fleeing across the meadow, fleeing in a kind of panic Sparhawk had seldom seen in professionals. He charged up the side of the outcrop with Faran’s steel-shod hooves striking sparks from the stones. Just below the crest, he reined in. ‘Is everybody all right?’ he called to Kurik.
‘We’re fine,’ Kurik replied, looking over the hasty breastwork of stone he and Berit had erected. ‘It was touch and go until those two knights got here, though.’ Kurik’s eyes looked a bit wild as he stared at the pair who had warded off the assailants. Sephrenia came up to the breastwork beside him, and her face was deathly pale.
Sparhawk turned to the two strange Pandions. ‘I think it’s time for introductions, brothers,’ he said, ‘and some explanations.’
The two made no reply. He looked at them a bit more closely. The horses upon which they sat now appeared even more skeletal, and Sparhawk shuddered as he saw that the animals had no eyes, but only vacant eye sockets, and that their bones protruded through their tattered coats. Then the two knights removed their helmets. Their faces seemed somehow filmy and indistinct, almost transparent, and they, too, were eyeless. One of them appeared very young, and he had butter-coloured hair. The other was old, and his hair was white. Sparhawk recoiled slightly. He knew both of them; he knew that they both were dead.
‘Sir Sparhawk,’ the ghost of Parasim said, his voice hollow and emotionless, ‘pursue thy quest with diligence. Time will not stay for thee.’
‘Why have you returned from the House of the Dead?’ Sephrenia asked the two in a profoundly formal tone. Her voice was trembling.
‘Our oath hath the power to bring us out of the shadows if need be, little mother,’ the form of Lakus replied, his voice also hollow and void of all emotion. ‘Others will also fall, and our company will increase ere the Queen returns to health.’ The hollow-eyed shade turned then to Sparhawk. ‘Guard well our beloved mother, Sparhawk, for she is in grave peril. Should she fall, our deaths are without purpose, and the Queen will die.’
‘I will, Lakus,’ Sparhawk promised.
‘Know also one last thing. In Ehlana’s death, thou shalt lose more than a queen. The darkness hovers at the gate, and Ehlana is our only hope of light.’ Then the two of them shimmered and vanished.
The four other knights came charging up the rocky slope and reined in. Kalten’s face was pallid and he was visibly trembling. ‘Who were they?’ he asked.
‘Parasim and Lakus,’ Sparhawk replied quietly.
‘Parasim? He’s dead.’
‘So’s Lakus.’
‘Ghosts?’
‘So it would seem.’
Tynian dismounted and pulled off his massive helmet. He was also pale and sweating. ‘I’ve dabbled at times in necromancy,’ he said, ‘though not usually by choice. Usually a spirit has to be summoned, but sometimes they’ll appear on their own – particularly if they left something important unfinished.’
‘This was important,’ Sparhawk said bleakly.
‘Was there something else you wanted to tell us, Sparhawk?’ Ulath asked then. ‘You seem to have left a few things out.’
Sparhawk looked at Sephrenia. Her face was still deathly pale, but she straightened and nodded to him.
Sparhawk took a deep breath. ‘The spell that sustains Ehlana and keeps her sealed in that crystal was the result of the combined efforts of Sephrenia and twelve Pandions,’ he explained.
‘I’d been sort of wondering how you did that,’ Tynian said.
‘There’s only one problem with it,’ Sparhawk continued. ‘The Knights will die one by one until only Sephrenia is left.’
‘And then?’ Bevier asked, his voice shaking.
‘Then I will also depart,’ Sephrenia replied simply.
A stifled sob escaped the young Cyrinic. ‘Not while I have breath,’ he said in a choked voice.
‘Someone, however, is trying to speed things up,’ Sparhawk went on. ‘This is the third attempt on Sephrenia’s life since we left Cimmura.’
