When Daybreak pulled itself from bed and took its first peek over the city wall of Oohl, a gruesome sight met its eyes. The streets were strewn with fallen bodies as if some great plague had struck down man, woman, and child with one terrible blow.
They lay in great communal heaps and small family groups. Some lay on their backs with hands folded sedately on their breasts. Others in contorted postures suggestive of great agony. Some lay in pools of blood or vomit. Many were naked.
Daybreak was relieved when it saw some of the figures begin to shift and stir. The citizens of Oohl were far from dead, it realized. The scene of carnage was nothing more than the aftermath of another Blue Horse revel.
Blue Horse warriors were not, by nature, an energetic bunch. Unless an opportunity for battle came their way, they were typically given to sloth. Had members of a rival tribe appeared, they would have been in the saddle in an eye-blink, lance in hand. But without such stimulus, they found it much more rewarding to simply lie wherever they had dropped the night before.
So, it was well into the afternoon before the town got to its feet. Once up, however, the warriors shook off the effects of the previous night’s excesses. They were, to a man, seasoned revelers who recovered quickly from drunkenness. Vanarians were muddle-headed most of the time anyway.
After so many hours without food or water, the prisoners were in worse shape than their hungover captors. Thurmond lay in a stupor—weakened, nauseous, apathetic. In no mood for what was about to happen.
The enclosure gate banged open, and a dozen spearmen surged inside. Shouting in their unintelligible tongue, they jabbed at the stuporous captives, forcing them to rise and stumble out through the gate. Thurmond found his feet and snagged Sarah’s elbow and helped her up. They then followed the others out the gate.
Both sides of the narrow street were lined with townspeople—young mothers with babes at their breasts, toothless grandams, snot-encrusted children, dim-eyed old gaffers. Behind them, on horseback, Blue Horse lancers discouraged any thought of escape.
The crowd jeered, taunted, and spat at the captives as they shuffled down the street. Rosy-cheeked girls pelted them with rotten cabbages. Their younger brothers threw horse turds, and their grandfathers brandished knives.
Thurmond stayed close to Sarah, attempting to shield her from the bombardment, but that was impossible. There were too many townspeople hurling too many unpleasant things—sticks and stones, putrefied entrails, a dead hedgehog.
A bald, scar-faced man suddenly reached out and gave the young Adventurer a hard shove. Unbalanced by the unexpected blow, he stumbled sideways against Sarah, sending her sprawling against a rotund, gray-haired matron. Infuriated by this affront, the woman snarled and pushed her violently back into the street.
There was no sign of Drax or Brodar, the warchief. Today, the ugly tattooed brute was clearly in charge. His arrogant swagger and haughty manner proclaimed him a personage of some importance. More animal than man, he rode among the warriors, roaring commands in his inhumanly loud voice, gobs of spittle flying from his lips.
He was as eager as the townspeople to terrorize the captives. Seizing a heavy spear from one of the warriors, he swung it as lightly as a willow wand, and used the butt end to deliver hard thrusts to the faces and bellies of the passing prisoners. Crowded together, unarmed and surrounded by a hostile crowd, there was little they could do to escape the painful jabs.
Tiring of this game, the bellowing beast smashed the spear’s thick shaft on the shoulder of one of Bart’s men. As his victim crashed to the ground, he brayed like a mule, laughing so hard that he choked on his own spit and was seized by a violent fit of coughing. When the spasm ceased, he hawked up a tremendous wad of phlegm and spat it into the group of captives, striking Wat.
The lines of shouting townspeople extended all the way to the city gates. The spearmen forced the prisoners forward until they were outside the town wall. Here they were thrust into a circle of stones as big as a good-sized farmyard. Behind them, the townspeople streamed out of the gates and crowded around the circle’s outer edge, eager for the pending spectacle.
The guards motioned for the captives to sit. Sarah took hold of Thurmond’s sleeve and drew him into the center of the group where they were somewhat shielded from view. With one quick motion, she pushed something up the sleeve of his doublet.
He reached for it, exploring the shape through the cloth. It was a short-bladed knife.
“Where’d you get it?”
“From that big woman with the long gray hair, the one who pushed me. I pretended to fall against her, then slipped it from her belt while she was distracted.”
“Well done!”
Brodar and the elders now appeared. Many were reeling drunk, having imbibed heavily during the long debate. Then Drax pushed his way through the throng of gawkers.
“It ain’t lookin’ good. I told ‘em how you didn’t mean ‘em no harm comin’ here—how you was just lookin’ for some wizard name of Malachai. And ‘cause I did such a good job of explain’ things, and tellin’ ‘em how brave you all was, Brodar was about convinced that you was all worthy warriors. I thought maybe they’d let you go.
“But Vanar warchiefs ain’t like kings back home. They can’t do just whatever pleases ‘em. They gotta listen to the elders and obey custom and not offend the gods. They got lots and lots of old-fashioned ideas.
“Well, the elders decided you gotta be sacrificed at the Blooding—it’s about a month away.”
These words kindled a small flicker of hope in Thurmond’s heart. Many things could happen in a month. Perhaps they could change the elder’s minds or arrange an escape. These hopes were dashed when Drax continued.
“Problem is, see, they don’t want all of you. They sacrifice nine of everything at Blooding—nine goats, nine pigs, nine horses, nine men. So now you gotta fight one another ‘til there’s only nine of you left. Look over yonder—they got all your armor and weapons piled up over there. They’ll take you over one at a time and let you choose whatever weapon you want except bows. And you can’t have no armor or shields—them’ll just slow down the killin’.”
Roscoe’s face assumed the same flat, blank expression as is had the day before.
“What comes next, Drax? What do they want us to do?”
“That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Fight it out. They’ll pair you up two at a time until there’s only nine of you left. They’ll be the worthiest warriors and most pleasin’ to the war god. So whoever’s still breathin’ will be kept until Blooding.”
Roscoe glared at Drax.
“What about you, boyo? What happens to you?”
“Like I told you—I’m part of the tribe. So they wouldn’t sacrifice me unless I asked ‘em to. It’s funny—some of these crazy buggers actually ask for it. I never could figure that out.”
Bart had been strangely quiet since their capture. Now his rage exploded.
“You treacherous bastard! You led us right into this trouble. I’ll kill you!”
Drax shook his head.
“Nay, that ain’t gonna happen, not with all my Blue Horse brothers standin’ by. You gotta believe me, I didn’t want none of this to happen. I warned you these parts are dangerous, but you wanted to come up here anyway. And I done my best to get you set free, but the elders wouldn’t listen. Nothin’ else I can do. So no hard feelins, okay?”
Thurmond harbored plenty of hard feelings. He had always distrusted the perfidious scout, and he did not believe that he had truly advocated their release. It seemed more likely that Drax had urged their destruction in order to evade a later reckoning with himself.
Then, out of nowhere, the faint shadow of an idea crept shyly across the surface of his brain. He hated to have to speak to Drax, but he had no other option. Reluctantly, he pointed his thumb toward the tattooed brute, who was swilling from a drinking horn.
“Drax, tell me—that big barrel of guts over there, who might he be?”
Drax glanced at the subject in question.
“They calls him Grinder, and he’s a bad ‘un. Strongest man in the whole tribe. A fearsome bloke, he is. They say he can tear a man apart with his bare hands. Nobody messes with Grinder.”
“His own people are afraid of him?”
“For good reason, I say. He turns hisself into a bear when he fights—at least he thinks he does.”
The conversation aroused Roscoe’s interest.
“How do you know so much about him, boyo?”
“They was discussin’ him in the longhouse. They’re thinkin he’s sure to challenge Brodar to be chief of the tribe. A duel to the death kinda thing—it happens from time to time. That’s exactly how Brodar got to be warchief, by challengin’ the old one.”
This information raised both of the old Adventurer’s eyebrows.
“So Brodar and this Grinder fella ain’t exactly friends.”
“God’s bollocks, nay. Brodar would kill him if he could, but he’s gotta be careful ‘cause Grinder’s part of a big, powerful clan. Killin’ him would start a blood feud inside the tribe, and that’s the worse crime a Blue Horse can commit.”
Roscoe saw the possibilities of this situation.
“This Grinder—if he’s lookin’ to become the chief, maybe he’d be lookin’ for allies. Could you talk to him for us? Maybe see how he’d feel about the idea.”
Drax’s face turned crafty.
“I know what you’re thinkin’. You’re tryin’ to figure a way to start a feud so maybe you could escape somehow. Forget it! Nobody wants the tribe to start killin’ its own warriors—not Brodar, not Grinder, not nobody.”
“The Blue Horse got rules for how their chiefs get chosen. It ain’t like down south where you can kill your neighbor any old way. Everybody’s gotta follow the old customs in these parts—you included.”
“So that’s why you’re gonna have to fight each other. There ain’t nothin’ you can do about it.”