Hugh Cook - The wizards and the warriors

At the camp they made that evening, the right opportunity arose, for Elkor Alish unbuckled his sword to give him complete freedom of movement for a difficult climb up a cliff face to raid a bird's nest. Andranovory let him make the climb – he fancied an egg as much as anyone – but moved his men into position with a nod or a wink.

When Alish descended, he noticed nothing odd, for his concentration was devoted to treasuring down the half-dozen bird's eggs he was carrying in a string bag, gripping the draw-strings in his teeth.

When Alish jumped the last little bit to the ground, he found a half-circle of men confronting him, and Andranovory holding his sword-belt.

'Good evening,' said Andranovory.

And smiled.

As adrenalin armed him for action, Alish glanced around, noting men standing guard over Garash, Gorn and Hearst. How easily they had been taken! They must have been half-asleep. The wizard Garash, despite his power, was helpless when someone was holding a knife at his back – as Alish had proved during their first confrontation at Castle Vaunting.

Beside Hearst stood a man who held the battle-sword Hast, and was gloating over the firelight steel. Hearst gave Alish a little nod, and Alish, giving no answering signal, waited just long enough for Andranovory to begin to speak.

'The boys and me,' said Andranovory, drawing the Melski blade, 'Have been thinking, and – '

Alish smashed the eggs into his face and butted him in the stomach. Then pushed him, sending him reeling back into the crowd. And Gorn and Hearst were moving, smashing fists and elbows into the nearest faces. Hearst tossed a weapon through the air. Alish grabbed for the hilt, snatched the sword from the air, and screamed: 'Ahyak Rovac!'

Gorn and Hearst, both now armed with weapons not their own, broke free from the mutineers and danced into position, moving with an effortless grace in which there was not the slightest hint of a swaggering boast or bluster – only the perfect economy of absolute professionalism.

'Three against forty,' said Alish. 'The odds are even!'

And some of the mutineers fell back, as if believing him. The more clear-sighted saw that Alish was simply making war on them with words, but, all the same, none wanted to be the first to die. And nobody, watching Our Lord Despair flanked by Gorn and Hearst, could for a moment have believed that those three warriors would surrender, whatever happened from now on.

Andranovory, pushed forward by the others, hesitated, then picked up the Melski blade which he had dropped when Alish had butted him.

Alish moved.

Light blurred through the air. Steel halted a fraction from Andranovory's throat. Then Alish withdrew the blade.

'What have you got to say to me now?' said Alish. Andranovory looked around. 'Come on, boys,' he said. Nobody moved.

'I think you'll find they're suddenly hard of hearing,' said Alish.

'Then it seems I must surrender to your… justice!'

And with the last word, Andranovory swung at Alish, putting all his strength into the blow. The Melski sword slashed through the air.

Elkor Alish moved like a dancer. One hand gripped the hilt of Hast. The other slid along the flat of the blade so that his arms were widespread, bracing the sword. Andranovory's full-strength swing sent the Melski blade slamming into this barrier, cutting edge impacting with flat steel.

The Melski blade shattered.

And Elkor Alish was moving again, sidestepping, pirouetting, outflanking Andranovory with nimble steps which suggested that he could have made a spectacular career for himself as a dancing master in one of the courtly cities of the Cold West.

The mutineer, still holding the Melski sword with its jagged stiimp of blade, tried to turn to meet him. Alish tripped him expertly. Andranovory went sprawling. The battle-sword Hast sliced down – and sheared away part of his scalp.

Alish dug the point of the sword into the bloody piece of skin and hair, flicked it into the air and fielded it. The piece he had cut away was half the size of the palm of his hand. Andranovory lay on the ground, dazed, half-persuaded he was dead. Alish gave a small bow, and offered him the trophy, saying: 'Madam, you seem to have mislaid your wig.'

The joke allowed the tension in the air to dissipate with a roar of raucous laughter, leaving the chief mutineer hurt, bloody, humiliated, discredited – but alive.

After a certain amount of swearing and threatening, meant mostly to flatter the rebellious fighting men by making them think he took them seriously, Alish had the camp settle down for the night, and returned the battle-sword Hast to its rightful owner. To replace the broken Melski sword, he claimed Andranovory's blade: a cutlass, the kind of weapon favoured by the Orfus pirates.

Alish went to sleep that night on a piece of high ground at the most northerly point of the campsite, so that anyone who chose to walk south during the night would not have to step over him. Gathered together on that high ground were, apart from himself, Gorn, Hearst, Garash and Blackwood.

Those last two did not suspect what was going to happen, but both Gorn and Hearst knew, though Alish had not said so much as a word to them. The Rovac warriors knew that, if Alish had seriously meant to quell the mutiny, he would have killed Andranovory, roasted the corpse, extracted oaths of loyalty from all present, then made them eat dead flesh in a ceremony that would have marked their minds with unforgettable horror.

As it was, Alish had clearly decided that, on this trek north, the fighting men, in their present mood, would be more trouble than they were worth.

When they had left the High Castle, the presence of a Collosnon army in Trest had made it wise to take as many armed men with them as possible. And when they had encountered the Melski on the Fleuve River, armed force had allowed them to speed their journey by seizing rafts to use the waterway which would otherwise have been barred to them.

But now, their main challenge was distance. Numbers would not make their journey any faster -and the foraging would be better for a small party. And Comedo's men, easy enough to intimidate and bring to heel on the early stages of the journey, were a different proposition now that they had been hardened by the nightmare underground river journey.

Hearst woke in the night, and heard small mutter-ings, a faint clinking of steel against rock, sounds of searching and finding, a grunt, a hiss… Blackwood coughed heavily in his sleep. Silence. And then again the noise started, the muttering, the scrape of boots on stone, the sound of steel.

In the night, men were gathering up their possessions and slipping away. Now, if ever, was the time for Hearst to challenge Alish's judgment. But he did not. For, quite apart from anything else, with so few travelling companions left, Hearst would have a better chance to renew that friendship which had once flourished so: and which had then failed, suddenly, after the siege of Larbreth.

Come morning, Garash was dismayed to find that the soldiers had deserted: he went so far as to order Alish to bring them back, only to find his orders were dismissed with scornful laughter.

Gorn and Blackwood did not care one way or the other; Alish declared that a small group could travel more safely than a large one, at least in this dragon country, and they trusted his judgment.

Their march north took them past the heights of the volcano known as Barg, and from then on the volcanic nature of the terrain grew more pronounced.

They passed hot springs, with water which was still drinkable, although heavily contaminated with chemicals from the bowels of the earth. They encountered more of the smoking fumaroles which they had seen at the Araconch Waters, and also things which were new to them: pools of boiling mud, land where the ground shook and rumbled incessantly, places where smoke and sulphur made the air almost too foul to breathe, and huge pits plunging down to depths where the earth seethed and muttered.