The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [20]
“No use in you dying with me, Rhoddo,” Gerontos said. “Either of you.”
Rhodorix helped his brother sit down among the boulders. Gerontos’ leg, snapped below the knee by a savage ax, had turned purplish-black; blood oozed from under the bandages Rhodorix had improvised from strips of their tunics. He helped Gerontos settle himself, then got up and looked down the long slope of the hill to the valley below. Somewhere among the tall grass and the patches of forest waited their clan and safety, somewhere too far to see. Unfortunately, he could all too clearly see a small mob of their enemies, still some distance below them, but coming inexorably up the hill.
Just after dawn that morning, Rhodorix, eldest son of the Dragon clan, and his warband had been guarding Galerinos as he dowsed for water. Instead of a spring they’d discovered a trap set by the white savages. All fourteen of his men lay dead down in the valley; only he himself, his brother Gerontos, and the druid had survived the attack. Unhorsed, desperate, they had taken too many wrong paths during their attempt to escape.
I made too many bad decisions, not anyone else but me, Rhodorix thought. “The shame’s mine,” he said aloud. “Better I just die with you here. Even if we got back, what am I going to tell the vergobretes?”
Neither Galerinos nor his brother could look him in the face. Neither said a word.
“But, Gallo, you can hide or suchlike,” Rhoddo went on. “Get away after they kill us.”
“If Great Bel wants me to die, then die I will,” Galerinos said. “There’s no use in running.”
“Well, how, by the hells, do you know what he wants? You keep praying, and we keep getting more and more lost.”
“That’s why I think he wants us to die. If he’d only led us to water right away—”
A cry drifted up on the hot and dusty air, a shriek of triumph, an answering howl from a band of men.
“They’ve spotted us,” Rhodorix said. “Naught else matters now.”
“Help me up!” Gerontos said. “Cursed if I’ll die sitting down.”
Between them Rhodorix and Galerinos hauled him up and helped him prop himself against a boulder. Gerro’s face had gone pale under the smears of dust. Sweat plastered his dark hair to his forehead. Had his leg been sound, Rhodorix knew, the two of them could have scored some kills before the superior numbers against them brought them down. As it was, they could no longer fight back to back. Not long now, he thought. Soon we’ll all be drinking in the Otherlands.
Twelve men were making their way uphill through the rocks and the underbrush, twelve savages with manes of dark hair and milk-white skin, scored with the black lines and dots of tattoos. Ten of them carried spears; the others bore the heavy war axes that had so efficiently shattered the Devetians’ wooden shields that morning. Some hundred yards downhill they paused to argue among themselves, pushing each other in their eagerness to be the first to attack.
“Gallo, run!” Rhodorix snarled. “Get out of here now!”
“I won’t.” The young priest stepped forward and raised his staff to the sky. “I’ll beg Bel’s help and try to curse them.”
“A load of horseshit would do us more good than that.”
Galerinos ignored him and took another step forward. He stared straight at the enemies and began to chant, a low rumble of sound at first, then louder and louder. His words came punctuated with deep breaths, and every breath seemed to draw power from the very air around him. Each curse vibrated like a swarm of angry wasps as it streamed toward the enemy below. Rhodorix had never heard such a sound out of any man’s mouth. He felt himself turn cold as the chant rose and fell. More to the point, their enemies seemed as transfixed as he. They stood and listened, weapons slack in their hands as Galerinos cursed them, their women, their offspring, their clans, their future offspring, their crops, their herds, and anything else they might touch or cherish.
With one last bellow of sound, Galerinos cried out, “Begone!