Troy Denning - Faces of Deception

"Yago!" Atreus yelled. "Come back!"

"Can't!" came the reply. "Got myself walled off!"

Atreus cursed, and the three riders kicked their ponies, urging them into a charge.

"Yago, break off!" Atreus yelled. "Run!"

Atreus turned and hurled himself out of the ponies path, rolled, and came up sprinting. He saw Rishi already at the yaks, just climbing onto the lead beast's back.

"Rishi! If you leave me, I swear you'll wish-"

"Leave you?" Rishi called, as though the thought had not even occurred to him. "I would never do that!"

The little Mar spun, already flinging one of his daggers. Atreus ducked, then heard a pained cry behind him.

"You see, I am very faithful!"

Rishi raised another knife, but did not throw it, his eyes darting back and forth between the riders behind Atreus. Having witnessed the Mar's accuracy many times, neither man felt like risking an attack, and Atreus raced the last few steps to his mount in relative safety. He jumped on his yak, slapped its neck with the flat of his blade, and they were quickly splashing through the water at a trot.

When Atreus heard no sign of pursuers, he paused to look back. Naraka's man were scurrying over the hummock, tending to their wounded and struggling to calm their panicked mounts. Atreus saw no sign of Yago, but neither did he hear any hint that the battle was continuing on the far side of the hummock.

"Did you see what happened to Yago?" Atreus asked. "Did he get away?"

Rishi furrowed his brow. "I saw no more than you, but did you not hear him?"

Atreus shook his head. "Things were too confused," he said.

"Yago told us to go," Rishi said, glancing up the channel. "I suggest we obey, before they recover their wits and realize what an advantage they have."

Atreus narrowed his eyes, far from certain that he believed the sly Mar. "What were his words, exactly?"

Rishi frowned. "I cannot be sure I heard him right. It sounded like, "Both eyes, front and back!"

Atreus sighed in relief. "Okay, let's go."

"You are not worried about your friend?" Despite his question, Rishi wasted no time starting up the channel.

" 'Both eyes' is an old ogre saying. It means he's whole," Atreus explained as he scooped a shard of broken ice out of the water and pressed it to his wound to stop the bleeding. "And I think 'front and back' means he's going to follow the patrol. If there's trouble again, he'll attack from behind."

Rishi nodded. "Very sensible, but what happens when Naraka turns around?"

"That's not going to happen. Not now," Atreus replied, glancing back. Naraka's patrol was already lost in the willows. "Not until one of us is dead."

"You see?" asked Rishi. "Is that not what I told you back in Bharat's wagon?"

The Mar looked forward again, leaving Atreus to tend to his wound. His shoulder felt stiff and throbbing, but there were no broken bones, and he could still move his arm. As these things went, he had been lucky. Though he felt terribly weak and would certainly suffer a fever later, he could keep traveling.

Of more immediate concern was his guide's loyalty. "Rishi, you do know what will happen if you try to open that coffer without me?"

Rishi twisted around. "Why would I ever try such a thing?" he asked. "Until we reach Langdarma, the gold is not even mine."

"I'm glad to hear you have not forgotten," Atreus said. "You were in an awful hurry to leave back there."

"Not at all! No, never!" said Rishi. "It was only that some-one had to untether the yaks if we were to make a swift escape, and you were doing so well. Did I not come to your aid when you called?"

Though Atreus was not entirely sure the Mar's knife had been meant for the man behind him, he reluctantly nodded. "You may have saved my life. Allow me to repay you by mentioning that there are many traps on my coffer, the least of which is the one that blinded Bharat."

Rishi's eyes grew unreadable. "It is very considerate of you to mention this, but it hardly matters to me."

"Of course," said Atreus.

"The gold will be mine soon enough," Rishi added. "Now that Naraka is wounded, the patrol will certainly leave us to continue our journey in peace."

"Certainly."

But Naraka did not turn back. Within minutes they heard the patrol splashing through the water behind them, though somewhat more slowly than before. As the sun neared its zenith, the ice finally vanished from the channels. Rishi doubled back, guiding them down a tunnel-like passage so shallow that at times they were passing over new growth, then struck off in a new direction.

The splashing of the patrol grew abruptly distant, and Atreus began to worry about finding Yago again. The swamp was turning out to be vastly larger than it looked from the other side of the gorge. If they were lucky enough to lose Naraka, it seemed all too possible that they would also lose Yago.

The pony began to nicker and snort more often, lamenting the growing separation from its mates. Atreus cut the beast loose. There was every chance the poor creature would lose its way and freeze to death that night, but he could not afford to be compassionate. After the wounds the two sides had inflicted on each other during the last ambush, the chase had taken on a new intensity, and Atreus knew the next fight would be to the death.

They continued deeper into the swamp. The high willows blocked their view of the mighty peaks to the east, but every now and then the view opened up as they passed an intersecting channel or an expanse of open water. It did not escape Atreus's notice that in these places Rishi stopped to study the sky-scraping mountains for ever-increasing periods of time.

High sun came and went, and still they saw no sign of the road. If anything, the swamp seemed to close in around them. Sightings of the mountains became less frequent, and when they did occur, Rishi frowned and sometimes muttered to himself. They began to hear Naraka's patrol shouting in the distance. The hummocks grew uncommon, and the willows thickened to the point that the two fugitives had to plow through, leaving a furrow of broken and bent stalks in their wake.

The sun lost its warmth and sank lower in the sky, and the same icy breeze Atreus had felt the evening before started to rise. His wound began to throb and burn, while the rest of him grew so cold he started to shiver. His feet ached with a wet chill, and no amount of swinging seemed to warm them. Though the pain was safer, he longed for yesterday's numbness.

A tiny shout went up in the distance behind them. It was quickly answered by several others, and the flurry of voices that followed left no doubt that one of Naraka's men had stumbled across their trail. Atreus tried to console himself with the thought that Yago would not be far behind.

Rishi stopped his yak and stood, balancing himself precariously on its shoulder hump. He did not look back in the direction of the shouts, but eastward toward the hidden mountains.

"What a relief!" Despite his words, he did not sound relieved. "We are certainly almost there."

"Certainly?" Atreus scoffed. "You have no idea where we are, do you?"

"The good sir may certain-ah-he may have every faith in his guide," said Rishi. "The road is very near. I have seen it."

Scowling, Atreus swung his numb feet up, then stood wobbling on the yak's back and looked toward the massive mountains in the distance. He saw nothing ahead but a ribbon of open water.

"There's no road out there!" he snapped. "There isn't even a dry place to spend the night."

Before Rishi could reply, a distant voice cried out behind them. Atreus looked back to see a tiny pony rider in the bend of a channel, pointing a lance in his direction. The man turned his mount toward Atreus and disappeared into the willows, and a moment later the whole thicket began to quiver.