Amber and Blood - Margaret Weis [93]
He set the time for the ambush at twilight, when the shadows of night stealing among the trees vied with the last rays of the sun. At this time, tricks of the waning light could fool the eye, make finding a target difficult even for elven archers.
Galdar and his troops hid themselves among the trees, waiting until they heard the party moving along the trail, which was little more than a goatherd’s path. The small band was still some distance away, time for Galdar to give his minotaur band some last-minute whispered orders.
“We are to take the Walking God alive,” he said, laying heavy emphasis on the word. “This command comes from Sargas himself. Remember this—Sargas is the god of vengeance. Disobey him at your peril. I for one am not prepared to risk his wrath.”
The other minotaurs agreed wholeheartedly and some glanced uneasily at the heavens. Sargas’s retribution against those who thwarted his will was known to be as swift as it was brutal.
“What if this so-called Walking God chooses to do battle, sir?” asked one. “Will the Gods of Wimps fight for their own? Should we expect lightning bolts to strike us down?”
“Gods of Wimps, is it, Malek?” Galdar growled. “You lost the tip of your horn to a Solamnic knight. Was she a wimp, or did she kick your sorry ass?”
The minotaur looked chagrined. His fellows grinned at him, and one nudged him with an elbow.
“So long as we threaten no harm to the Walking God, the Gods of Light will not intervene. So the priest of Sargas assured me.”
“And what do we do with this Walking God once we have him, sir?” asked another. “You haven’t told us that yet.”
“Because I don’t want to burden your brain with more than one thought at a time,” Galdar told him. “All you need worry about now is capturing the Walking God. Alive!”
Galdar cocked an ear. The voices and the footfalls were drawing nearer.
“Take up your positions,” he ordered and dispersed his men, sending them running to the ditches on either side of the road. “Don’t move a muscle and keep upwind of them! These blasted elves have a nose for minotaur.”
Galdar crouched behind a large oak tree. His sword remained sheathed. He hoped he would not have to use it, and rubbed the stump of his missing arm. The wound was an old one. The arm was fully healed, but sometimes, strangely, he felt pain in the limb that was not there. This evening the arm burned and throbbed worse than usual. He blamed it on the damp, but he had to wonder if it hurt because he was thinking of Mina, recalling their first meeting. She had reached out her hand to him and her touch had healed him, given him back his severed limb.
The limb he’d lost again, trying to save her.
He wondered if she remembered, if she ever thought of their time together, the happiest and proudest time of his life.
Probably not, now that she was a high muckety-muck priestess.
Galdar rubbed his arm and cursed the damp and listened to the voices of elves coming closer.
Hunkering down among the dead leaves and shadows, the minotaur soldiers gripped their weapons and waited.
Two elven warriors walked in front, four came behind. Valthonis and the druid of Chislev walked in the center of the group, absorbed in their conversation. Elspeth kept very close to him, almost at his heels. Usually she would have been far in the rear, several paces behind the rear guard. This sudden change added to the uneasiness the others felt at being so near the accursed valley of Neraka where the Dark Queen had once reigned. They had questioned Valthonis about why he had chosen to come here, to this dread place, but he would only smile and tell them what he always told them in answer to their questions.
“I do not go where I want to go,” he would say. “I go where I need to be.”
Since they could elicit no information from the Walking God, one of the Faithful took it upon himself to question Elspeth, asking her in a low voice what was wrong, what she feared. Elspeth might have been deaf, as well as mute, for she did even glance