67

 

The sun was painfully hot on the fearmaster’s back. The swamp’s putrid stink was bad already, and would grow worse as the heat grew worse. Things crawled on his skin. He enjoyed discomfort. It proved he was alive, and a man. The dead did not suffer. The weak did not endure.

He was stretched out on his belly, his chin resting on his two forearms. The edge of the pavement was only three spans away. He could see the east road and the west road without moving his head perceptibly. A tuft of reeds in front of him trembled when he breathed, but even the patient buzzards waiting up there with Poul would not see that. Immobility was the secret of invisibility, of course. Every man in the sect could lie still for hours. They trained on anthills.

There was very little traffic on the highway. A large contingent of Mokthian soldiers had gone by a little while ago—incompetent part-men, riding right through a troop of Faceless without the slightest idea they were there. Had Ozion’s orders been to kill Mokthians, they would have died without knowing how. HQ would be interested to hear about that delegation, though. Tonight he would send a runner back with the news. He was not short of spare bodies. Seven sevens were more than plenty to exterminate no more than thirty-five Nurzians. Given this sort of surprise, two hundred would still be a bloodbath. At three hundred he might start to worry.

He realized that there was a man lying close by him on his left. He began to turn his face that way, very slowly. Complete immobility destroyed men’s ability to fight, so he had prescribed the usual exercises. Every man must report to his immediate superior at least once a day, and once to the fearmaster himself, and so on. They all knew what would happen to them back in camp if he saw as much as one reed twitch.

He studied the skull face at his side. He knew this one—the baby of the troop, face not healed yet, although he was actually two or three years older than some of the others. Promising lad. Took his medicine well. Wouldn’t hurt to comment.

“Good,” Ozion whispered. “That was very good, killer. I didn’t hear a thing.”

The boy knew better than to speak. He closed his eyes in rapture at the praise.

He opened them again, quickly. Ozion heard it too—hooves. His eyes shifted. A double line of riders coming from the west… pennants, too far off to make out the color.

“Stay!” he breathed.

Blue pennants.

“This is the prey. You get the honor. Repeat the drill.” He was annoyed to feel his heartbeat rise.

A red tongue-tip passed over the whitened lips. “Saj, you say, ‘Kill!’ I jump up and throw my spear. First man this side.”

“Correct. Relax now. Breath slow.”

He could envy the kid. No man ever forgot his first kill. There was never anything quite like it again, and being point man would make it even better. The frozen horror on the victims’s faces as death sprang up out of the ground, with the certainty that where that lone one had appeared there must be many more… Ozion savored memories.

A spear was a wonderful weapon. It could be thrown. It could jab. It could out-reach a sword or a quarterstaff. Swords were kids’ stuff compared to spears.

The riders were coming at a fast trot, looming enormously high from this worm’s vantage. Nurzian cavalry, all flashy trappings, dressed up like dowagers. Didn’t even have their bows strung! Only eighteen or twenty, which was hardly enough for the boys to cut their teeth on. He’d been hoping for more. The one in front on the far side was a jackanapes in red, with a rootin’ great plume on his hat. If Ozion only had time to spare, which he didn’t, he would enjoy making the popinjay eat that plume before he died.

Some were civilians, all men. They looked like Zarda farmers, which was a disgusting concept in itself. The one in front, next to Red-pants, was a gross old white-beard. Why should a dozen of Nurz’s best be escorting peasants and why did the dreadlord want them dead? Ozion had no interest in either question. His but to do, theirs but to die.

Here they came…

Feeding time for buzzards. Now! He loosed the slaughter. “Kill!” he said quietly.

Nothing happened.

He turned his eyes. The kid’s jaw hung open.

“Kill!” Ozion said sharply, almost at a full speech level.

Still nothing.

Fates! He’d have to do it himself. He gripped his spear. His muscles tightened.

Then the kid came to life. He was up and throwing in a flash. The victims’ eyes turned in disbelieving horror toward this death that had risen out of the ground. His move was the signal. All around, similar skull-faced warriors sprang up from the sedge and the air was filled with spears. Horses reared and screamed. Horses and riders stumbled and pitched. Men fumbled for sabres, for bowstrings, but not an arrow was notched. Faceless raced forward with swords out. A few blades clanged, but the surviving troopers were hopelessly outnumbered. Hamstrung horses collapsed beneath them and then they were dead like the others. Blood, lots of blood. Two men made a break for it, heading back west. Spears soared and impacted. A few last shrieks. One riderless horse disappeared over horizon.

All done.

Not bad—it couldn’t have taken as much as a minute. A babble of excited laughter rose as the tension dissolved. Men had retrieved their spears and were running around, finishing off horses, repeatedly jabbing the human corpses to make certain they were thoroughly dead.

Fearmaster Ozion strode forward, carrying shield and spear. The kid had not gone far. He was wandering around the slaughter, staring down at the corpses—just the civilian corpses, apparently.

“Killer!”

The lad jumped and wheeled around. “Saj!”

Ozion went close, spoke low. He hadn’t quite decided… “You didn’t move when I gave the order.”

The boy’s lips curled back in fear.

“Well?” Ozion said. “Any excuse?”

“Er… Buck fever, Saj.”

There was gore on his sword; his limbs and face were well splattered. Once he’d started, he’d fought hard.

“And you didn’t throw at the nearest. You threw at the officer.”

If he denied that—if he said he’d aimed at the peasant—then he was a liar, and a dead one.

The kid’s eyes rolled around and stared down at the nearest body. It was a youngish man, very large, very dead. They came back to Ozion.

“Near side leader was a civilian, Saj. I mean, he didn’t have a bow. I was told—”

Fates! “You override my orders?” He’d been a good recruit so far.

“No, Saj!”

“That horse blood on your sword?”

The boy looked at his sword. “No, Saj. One of the troopers. Two of them Saj, but one I just wounded, I think.”

“You got objections to killing civilians, killer?”

He shook his head quickly. “No, Saj. But these ones… They were… No, Saj.”

Well, it had been a good little killing apart from that. Pity to waste good material. Maybe Ozion was getting soft in his old age. He would let the kid live. He wouldn’t let him forget, though. “Report for punishment when we get back!”

Saj!”

Ozion reached for his whistle to signal withdrawal.