Rinda’s voice was shaking. In this dark moment the weight of Guin’s absence had fallen heavily on the twins. The two gazed fearingly at each other and embraced without words. Roused by the commotion, Suni sat up and looked at the three humans with round, questioning eyes.
“Go, right away!” Istavan hissed at Rinda. “You cannot waste any time!”
“I-I understand.”
The princess pushed her brother away, and knelt beside Suni. Hurriedly she began to explain to the wildling girl that she needed to talk to Loto in secret. The twins’ ability to converse with the wildings had greatly improved over the past couple of days, since their main diversion while traveling with the diminutive barbarians was studying the Sem language, and they had found plenty of time between the battles in which to practice what they learned. However, their power to convey the relatively complex instructions Istavan had given them was limited by the simple vocabulary of gestures that formed a part of the Sem way of communicating.
The mercenary stood nearby sweating and staring at them with obvious impatience. After a short while he seized the hilt of his sword and turned to walk away. Remus, who had begun gesticulating to Suni alongside Rinda, stopped short and looked at Istavan with round eyes.
“Where are you going, Istavan?”
“I am going scouting,” he spoke with uncharacteristic bluntness.
“Oh?” At this, Rinda too paused. Istavan may not have been a warrior of Guin’s caliber, but the Crimson Mercenary was now the royal twins’ chief defense. “Didn’t you say that even scouting would not be good?”
“Sending out scouts would attract attention, yes. So I am going to do it for you guys,” Istavan explained plausibly. “If I get caught, I can make an evasive answer. Tell that to Loto too.”
Remus nodded. “That makes sense,” he said.
Without waiting for further discussion Istavan hurried away.
Rinda and Remus watched him go, then turned back to Suni. They had finally made the Sem girl understand what was happening, and now they hurried with her to give the news to Loto. None of them stopped to consider why Istavan had volunteered to carry out such a dangerous task. The three did not know of the mercenary’s role in the Mongauli disaster at the valley of the Karoi, for Guin had told them nothing of Istavan’s secret mission, and for his part the Valachian never said anything that might ever put him at a disadvantage. If the Raku had known of his recent exploits, even innocent folk such as they might have wondered why such a cautious, self-interested man would put himself in the path of a Mongauli army hungry to punish its betrayer. But the twins and their wildling friend never doubted the mercenary’s words. Trusting his instructions, they went to Loto as swiftly as they could and did their best to explain to the Raku chief what was going on.
Meanwhile the majority of the Sem remained asleep, oblivious to the stealthy tread of destruction approaching from beyond the oasis. Istavan for his part slipped carefully through the outer circle of the sleeping Raku. He had taken a bearing on the distant crags to the north and was working his way in the direction of Dog’s Head Mountain instead of scouting the area where the Mongauli force would soon arrive.
Not even Istavan could sneak away from his companions without a guilty conscience, but he told himself again and again that it was his own life that mattered most. If he needed to fight to defend it, well, his valor could surprise even himself—but there wasn’t much point in bravery unless it was strictly necessary. That’s right, Guin’s the one who took off and left us behind! Is there any reason why I need to tackle the Mongauli army in his place? As soon as he was free of the Sem encampment, the mercenary broke into a run, moving quickly up onto rocky high ground. There he found a hiding spot behind a large boulder, and after stabbing his sword into the ground to make sure there were no yidoh, sand leeches, or other creatures concealed there, he hugged his blade to his chest and hunkered down. His intention was to remain there until the battle was over instead of needlessly showing his face to the Mongauli.
Istavan shut his eyes and tried to sleep, but even he could not be so shameless. Behind his eyelids his thoughts seemed to race in every direction, fears and worries mixing with uneasy plans—and always at the back of his mind was the certainty that hiding behind a rock in the Nospherus waste meant the constant risk of encountering the creatures of the desert, a risk almost as great as the battle he was avoiding. It was not long before Istavan found himself shifting around restlessly, anxiously opening and closing his eyes. Finally he decided to remain awake. Absently chewing on a piece of rock moss, he contemplated his circumstances.
“That’s right, it’s all Guin’s fault.” He sat up and hugged his knees, trying to justify himself. “If Guin was here, it would be all right, but that leopard decided he’d rather escape by himself and dumped all his duties on me. It makes sense. If I were him, I wouldn’t put my life in danger either. Of course the reason he took off was that he couldn’t carry on his shoulders the heavy load of saving the twins.”
Istavan raised his voice argumentatively as he talked. “That’s right. It’s not my fault! First of all, I am not abandoning the twins. I am merely hiding from the Mongauli for a moment because I would become their most wanted man for the rest of my life if they saw my face now. No matter what I might tell them, if they were to find me, a human soldier, among the Sem who ambushed their blue knights—I hate to think of what they’d do to me! And I didn’t even want to betray them.
“Count Marus, if you could hear me! Count Marus, it was Guin who made me carry out the plan! Please, I beg you, if you must hold a grudge against anyone, hold it against Guin, not me. Oh, I didn’t hate you! I never wanted your departed spirit following me around! It’s not fair…
“Oh!” Abruptly the Valachian interrupted his monologue as a distant sound caught his ear. Freezing where he was, he listened keenly for a moment, then grasped his sword with white-knuckled force as he whispered to himself. “I hear them, I hear them! It’s begun! The battle has begun! By the whistling horn of the battle goddess!”
Istavan found that he could not stop shaking. His hiding place became unbearable, and he crept out slowly from behind the boulder until he was crouching in the open. From this new vantage point he could hear the sounds in the distance much more clearly. The clanging of swords, the clack of crossbows, the insect hiss of hundreds of flying blow darts; Mongauli shouts, the neighing of horses, the Sem’s characteristic cries— aieee, aieee, hiaaaa—like a tide it swept over him, the unmistakable deafening roar of battle, the sounds of the living and the dying. It seemed that the battle had already reached its height, the full Mongauli army throwing its weight against the gathered tribes of the Sem.
Still the night lingered, and Istavan grasped his sword like a cane, leaning on it as he listened intently to the darkness. He wanted desperately to know which side was winning, but his ears alone could not tell him. The screams of the Sem and the Mongauli were intermixed, almost indistinguishable amidst the cries of wounded horses and the crash of metal on stone, until all blended into a murky cacophony of noise. Without thinking the mercenary moved out further into the open, overcome with frustration at not being able to follow the progress of the fighting. Finally he climbed up on top of the boulder that had sheltered him and gazed out towards the battlefield. Yet dawn had not yet broken, and darkness hid the oasis somewhere out in the desert expanse. The first glimmer of sunrise would be sure to show him the rising dust from the fighting and pinpoint where the battle raged, but for now he could see nothing whatsoever, and it was playing havoc with his nerves. Any number of times he jumped down from his rock, on the verge of running off to join the battle, but each time he stopped short in a fluster. His mind was in turmoil, his instincts of cunning, selfishness and self-preservation struggling with a deeply buried streak of kind-heartedness that had unexpectedly emerged.
And so Istavan remained where he was, listening keenly, while his thoughts filled with worry for the fourteen-year-old twins trapped in the middle of the battle. Once again he looked at the sky and realized that at last the night was disappearing. The sky was no longer totally dark—it had changed to an ultramarine color and, little by little, pale light was pushing the darkness away from the east.
Lifting his sword in his sweaty hand he gazed southward towards the battle, as if at last resolved to act—but an instant later he screamed at himself: “Oh, shit! What am I thinking? Istavan of Valachia, you are a fool indeed! Here you are hiding safely. If you sneak back into that battle, how much attention will you get? What has happened to all your ambitions? Your plan to become a king? You shall not die for down-and-out children and monkeys!”
Once the morning came, the situation would be a little clearer—he told himself that. Once the morning came, once the morning came… Surely the light of morn would bring some conclusion to the mortal combat that continued in the darkness. That moment would soon arrive. The dawn would also mark the beginning of the fourth day, the day on which Guin had promised to return by sundown with reinforcements for the Sem.