Lynn Abbey - The Brazen Gambit

Except for Yohan, none of them were veterans, none of them had fought a pitched battle-including himself. Stalking Dovanne's attacker or breaking the heads of petty criminals in his inspector days didn't count. The closest he'd come to combat was skirmishes on the streets of Urik against the Tyrian hooligans years ago.

Inside, he was scared to the marrow and desperate to see another sunrise. He almost envied Ruari his blind anger and commitment.

Waiting was worse than he imagined it could be, knowing that the circle fighters were looking over their shoulders at him and curbing their fears because he looked calm. Yohan, sitting beside him on the stoop of Telhami's hut, looked calm as he examined the edge of his obsidian sword.

But maybe, as Yohan's eyes met his, not calm at all. Maybe Yohan's panic went even deeper, because there was no one at all for him to turn to.

Then, without warning, the mind-bending began: a black fist thrusting through his mind. Everyone jerked backward; a few cried out in shock or terror before Telhami launched her counterattack, and the black fist became a memory.

Pavek slapped his hand against Yohan's and pulled himself to his feet. "Better you than me." Which was a lie. He had no idea what templars said to each other.

But Yohan laughed and shook his hand heartily. "That's good. I'll remember that."

"See that you do."

They released each other's hand and took a step backward toward the quadrants of the circle they'd selected for themselves. For a moment Pavek wanted to say something more, something sincere, then Yohan turned away and the moment was gone.

Escrissar brought his force through the trees in a compact group: a dozen fighters in the front rank and three or four in each of the files. If Telhami's estimate of their enemy's strength was correct-and Pavek saw no reason to doubt it -the interrogator was committing himself personally to a single thrust and holding nothing in reserve.

On second glance, the interrogator wasn't committing himself to anything, unless he was the black-haired half-elf marching second-from-the-left. There wasn't a black enamel mask to be seen, like Telhami and Akashia, Escrissar was holding himself out of the battle, mind-bending from a safe distance.

And that wasn't the worst thing Pavek saw, or didn't see. He spotted Rokka and a few other templars he recognized from Urik, about ten in all, just as he'd figured. They'd left their yellow robes behind-no surprise; heavy sleeves were a dangerous obstacle to a swinging sword-arm-and marched in such oddments of weaponry and armor as they'd scrounged from the templarate armory and private armorers in the elven market. Their rag-tag panoply stood in considerable contrast with the fighters who marched around them.

Escrissar had filled his force not with the ill-equipped rabble from the market he'd hoped for, but with some three dozen hardened fighters, each of whom carried a polished wooden shield, a javelin, and a yard-long knobkerrie club all carved from bronze-hard agafari wood.

The agafari tree grew near Nibenay, and, as far as Pavek knew, no where else in the Tablelands. Nibenay's templarate was composed of the Shadow-King's wives only, so he was either looking at army conscripts-which didn't seem likely given the way they marched-or one of the numerous mercenary companies Nibenay's ruler employed to augment his harem.

But whether the Shadow-King knew that his mercenaries were here, far northeast of Urik, was a question only Elabon Escrissar could answer.

Nibenay's mercenaries threw their single javelin before they descended into the trench around the outer rampart. Two farmers went down. One took a shaft through his left arm; he might recover from the shock to fight again. The other was gut-struck, and bis screams were horrible to hear.

While the Quraiters hurled their first and second sharpened-stake volley, Yohan pulled every other fighter from that part of the inner circle that did not face the attack and repositioned them in the quadrant that did.

Agafari shields easily deflected those few stakes of the first Quraite volleys that were well-aimed and forceful, deflected as well the stakes of the third and fourth. Pavek hadn't expected the stakes to inflict much damage, except, perhaps, to the enemies' resolve. And perhaps they would have, if the bulk of Escrissar's force had been rabble from the elven market. But the Nibenay mercenaries were laughing as they came over the outer rampart.

With luck-a monumental amount of luck-that laughter would make them careless.

He chose a place where the right flank of mercenaries would come against the inner rampart and hurled javelins himself, aiming for the Urik templars who lacked shields. He got one, too, square in the neck. She went down and a loud cheer went up from the Quraiters.

A shrieking, blood-red streak momentarily blinded Pavek, whether in the sky or in his mind's eye, he couldn't have said. His vision cleared in an instant and the apparition wasn't repeated, but it wasn't a good omen, either, if Akashia and Telhami could be so easily distracted.

But the enemy's front rank was atop the second rampart, now, and no longer laughing. Pavek shouted for the Quraiters to take up their hand weapons. One druid, already so unnerved that she couldn't move to attack or defend, was doomed, if she didn't recover quickly. But her fate was hers to call; the Nibenay mercenaries in the second rank of the outside file charged forward, wailing the Shadow-King's war-cry, and for Pavek, the battle had begun in earnest.

There was nothing skilled or subtle to his fighting, just beat or parry-with the flat of his sword when he could, because the agafari wood was more resilient than his steel and apt to bind the blade if he struck it edge-on-and attack whenever he could.

He tried to grab himself a shield after taking his first attacker down with a bone-deep slash to the man's thigh, but the mercenaries had anchored their shields around their necks with leather thongs. Pavek only had time for a single-syllable curse before a man and a woman bearing the weapons of Nibenay surged toward him.

He beat aside both clubs, then fell back a quick half-step to survey the battle. He had room to fight only because the Quraiters around him were down and dying. The circle still held, but there were far more bodies on the inside of the rampart than on the outside.

They'd been outnumbered almost two to one from the start, and with Escrissar's foreign fighters, it was more like ten to one.

But the female mercenary-a human: all the Nibenay mercenaries seemed to be human-left him no time to consider options. Following his retreat, she swung her club, a two-handed whirling blow that, had it landed, would have taken him out. But Pavek pushed forward into her unguarded attack, and over-balancing her, got a clean, backhand cut at her neck as she went down, insuring that she'd stay down. The other mercenary, undoubtedly her partner, came at him in blind rage.

He got lucky, catching the mercenary's weapon hand above the wrist. The man dropped his club and ran screaming toward the trees. There was a five-heartbeat pause in the battling: long enough for him to reach down and pick up a club since he'd given up all hope of getting a shield.

"Yohan's dead!"

The tidings he'd dreaded, delivered by the voice he wanted least to hear.

"Hold the line!" he shouted, not daring to turn around as a Urikite templar-an instigator whose face he recognized- came forward to join battle with him.

"We can't! Not without Yohan. What do we do? Everyone's hurt. Pavek!"

He parried quickly, using the edge against an obsidian weapon that chipped against the harder steel.

"Help us, Pavek! We're losing!"

Fear touched Pavek's heart then, a cold, shivery tracing- and he would have died himself if Ruari hadn't thrust his staff between them and spun the thrust aside, exposing the instigator's flank long enough for Pavek to pierce it with the sword. As the templar fell, his medallion slipped from beneath his shirt.