LITMIR.BIZ

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time.

      The Peloi war-cries were shrill and ululating. Sparhawk glanced quickly along the road. The warriors Kring’s Peloi were attacking were not the same as the ones facing the knights. Sparhawk had led a charge against infantry, men in breastplates and horse-hair crested helmets who fought on foot. Kring was attacking mounted men, men wearing flowing robes and cloth head-coverings, all armed with curved swords much like the Peloi sabres. Quite obviously, the attacking force was comprised of two different elements. There would be time later to ponder those differences. Right now, they were all very busy.

      Sparhawk swung his heavy broadsword rhythmically in huge overhead strokes that sheared down into the sea of horsehair-crested helmets surrounding him. He continued for several minutes until the sounds from along the road indicated that the Peloi were fully engaged. ‘Sir Ulath!’ he roared. ‘Ask the Atans to join us!’

      The Ogre-horn sang again – and again – and yet once again.

      Sounds of fighting erupted back among the trees. Enemy soldiers who had fled the charge of the knights and the slashing attack of the Peloi found no sanctuary in the woods. Engessa’s Atans, silent and deadly, moved through the eerie, multi-coloured light streaming down from the pulsating sky, seeking and destroying.

      ‘Sparhawk!’ Kalten shouted. ‘Look!’

      Sparhawk jerked his head around, and his heart froze.

      ‘I thought that thing was dead!’ Kalten exclaimed.

      The figure was robed and hooded all in black, and it was astride a gaunt horse. A kind of greenish nimbus surrounded it, and waves of implacable hatred seemed to shimmer out from it. Sparhawk looked a bit more closely and then let out his breath relieved. ‘It’s not a Seeker,’ he told Kalten. ‘It’s got human hands. It’s probably the one we’ve been fighting, though.’

      Then another man in black rode out from farther back in the trees. This one wore exaggeratedly dramatic clothing. He had on a black, wide-brimmed hat and wore a black bag with ragged eye-holes over his head.

      ‘Has this all been some sort of joke?’ Tynian demanded. ‘Is that who I think it is?’

      ‘I’d guess that it’s the one in the robe who’s been in charge,’ Ulath said. ‘I doubt that Sabre could successfully herd goats.’

      ‘Savour thine empty victory, Anakha,’ the hooded figure called in a hollow, strangely metallic voice. ‘I did but test thee that I might discern thy strength – and thy weaknesses. Go thy ways now. I have learned what I needed to learn. I will trouble thee no further – for now. But mistake me not, oh man without destiny, we will meet anon, and in our next meeting shall I try thee more significantly.’ Then Sabre and his hooded companion wavered and vanished.

      The wailing and groaning of the wounded enemies all around them suddenly broke off. Sparhawk looked around quickly. The strangely-armoured foot troops he and his friends had been fighting were all gone. Only the dead remained. Back along the road in either direction, Kring’s Peloi were reining in their horses in amazement. The troops they had engaged had vanished as well, and startled exclamations from back among the trees indicated that the Atans had also been bereft of enemies.

      ‘What’s going on here?’ Kalten exclaimed.

      ‘I’m not sure,’ Sparhawk replied, ‘but I am sure that I don’t like it very much.’ He swung down from his saddle and turned one of the fallen enemies over with his foot.

      The body was little more than a dried husk, browned, withered and totally desiccated. It looked very much like the body of a man who had been dead for several centuries at least.

      ‘We’ve encountered it once before, your Grace,’ Tynian was explaining to Patriarch Emban. It was nearly morning, and they were gathered once again atop the rocky hill. ‘Last time it was antique Lamorks. I don’t know what kind of antiques these were.’ He looked at the two mummified corpses the Atans had brought up the hill.

      ‘This one is a Cynesgan,’ Ambassador Oscagne said, pointing at one of the dead men.

      ‘Looks almost like a Rendor, doesn’t he?’ Talen observed.

      ‘There would be certain similarities,’ Oscagne agreed. ‘Cynesga is a desert, much like Rendor, and there are only so many kinds of clothing suitable for such a climate.’

      The dead man in question was garbed in a flowing, loose-fitting robe, and his head was covered with a sort of cloth binding that flowed down to protect the back of his neck.

      ‘They aren’t very good fighters,’ Kring told them. ‘They all sort of went to pieces when we charged them.’

      ‘What about the other one, your Excellency?’ Tynian asked. ‘These ones in armour were very good fighters.’

      The Tamul Ambassador’s eyes grew troubled. ‘That one’s a figment of someone’s imagination,’ he declared.

      ‘I don’t really think so, your Excellency,’ Sir Bevier disagreed. ‘The men we encountered back in Eosia had been drawn from the past. They were fairly exotic, I’ll grant you, but they had been living men once. Everything we’ve seen here tells us that we’ve run into the same thing again. This fellow’s most definitely not an imaginary soldier. He did live once, and what he’s wearing was his customary garb.’

      ‘It’s impossible,’ Oscagne declared adamantly.

      ‘Just for the sake of speculation, Oscagne,’ Emban said, ‘let’s shelve the word “impossible” for the time being. Who would you say he was if he weren’t impossible?’

      ‘It’s a very old legend,’ Oscagne said, his face still troubled. ‘We’re told that once, a long, long time ago, there were people in Cynesga who pre-dated the current inhabitants. The legend calls them the Cyrgai. Modern Cynesgans are supposed to be their degenerate descendants.’

      ‘They look as if they come from two different parts of the world,’ Kalten noted.

      ‘Cyrga, the city of the Cyrgai, was supposed to lie in the central highlands of Cynesga,’ Oscagne told him. ‘It’s higher than the surrounding desert, and the legend says there was a large, spring-fed lake there. The stories say that the climate there was markedly different from that of the desert. The Cyrgai wouldn’t have needed protection from the sun the way their bastard offspring would have. I’d imagine that there were indications of rank and status involved as well. Given the nature of the Cyrgai, they’d have definitely wanted to keep their inferiors from wearing the Cyrgai costume.’

      ‘They lived at the same time then?’ Tynian asked.

      ‘The legends are a little vague on that score, Sir Tynian. Evidently there was a period when the Cyrgai and the Cynesgans co-existed. The Cyrgai would certainly have been dominant, though.’ He made a face. ‘Why am I talking this way about a myth?’ he said plaintively.

      ‘This is a fairly substantial myth, Oscagne,’ Emban said, nudging the mummified Cyrgai with his foot. ‘I gather that these fellows had something of a reputation?’

      ‘Oh, yes,’ Oscagne said with distaste. ‘They had a hideous culture – all cruelty and militarism. They held themselves aloof from other peoples in order to avoid what they called contamination. They were said to be obsessively concerned with racial purity, and they were militantly opposed to any new ideas.’

      ‘That’s a futile sort of obsession,’ Tynian noted. ‘Any time you engage in trade, you’re going to encounter new ideas.’

      ‘The legends tell us they understood that, Sir Knight. Trade was forbidden.’

      ‘No commerce at all?’ Kalten asked incredulously.

      Oscagne shook his head. ‘They were supposed to be totally self-sufficient. They even went so far as to forbid the possession of gold or silver in their society.’

      ‘Monstrous!’ Stragen exclaimed. ‘They had no money

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