Duel, Part 2

Walking apprehensively among the scattered horse bits, the members of the group retrieved what they could from the saddlebags, tied the contents inside the breastplate and backplate, and slung them over their shoulders. Pavel and Hals hung theirs on the spears they had taken from the garden of horrors to replace those they had lost fighting the Norse warriors. With all possible speed, they set off along the broad path that led up from the ledge where the convent stood and into the mountains. The column of Nordic raiders was less than a kilometer behind them.

Reiner was somewhat comforted by the fact that, due to the slow pace of the slaves, the column was advancing at half speed. Reiner and the companions would easily get the upper hand on them, but he was not at all encouraged to see that the trail they were following also showed signs of being well traveled. What if they encountered another descending column and got caught between the two? In that case, speed would not matter.

It was less than an hour before nightfall. A cold wind whipped through them and swept high clouds past the setting sun. The trail was alternately bathed in reddish-gold sunlight or plunged into cold purple shadows as the path meandered along steep ravines or through narrow gorges. Most troubling was that it did not fork. It continued to be a single path that curved and twisted, with no detours or junctions, and although they found a few places where two men could hide, or even three or four, there was nowhere big enough to hide them all, nor far enough off the path to keep the mastiffs from sniffing them out.

When they had gone a few miles, Reiner sent Giano back along the trail to see if the Norsemen had camped at the convent. He returned just as the sun touched the horizon, wiping the sweat from his brow.

"They're still moving on," he said between gasps. "They passed the convent. And faster than we thought. They're forcing the slaves to march fast."

Reiner furrowed his brow.

"Are they closing the distance?"

"No, but we'd better keep moving."

The nine companions continued marching in the increasingly darkening twilight. Reiner was getting nervous. The wind was getting colder and the clouds were getting thicker. They were slowing down because of fatigue. The day had been long and everyone had taken a beating in the fight against the barbarians. Pavel, who had not yet recovered from the fever, was leaning on Hals and sweating as if he were in the desert. Ulf was limping.

They needed to find a safe place to camp.

Reiner cursed Barrister for dying. The old bear would have found a way out of that predicament in the blink of an eye. If he hadn't died, the duel would never have taken place. He would have put Erich in his place with one fierce look, and they would have been long gone down the mountain before the Norsemen came in sight.

Although he was adopting a brave attitude for the sake of the men, Reiner was panicking. He didn't know what he was doing. The only reason he had accepted command was that following Erich would have led to disaster. Of course, he himself seemed to be leading them to disaster at full speed.

Half an hour later, as the purplish twilight turned to dark blue, the trail finally split. They had rounded a steep slope that then widened into a broad, boulder-strewn rise that ascended on the other side into a razor-sharp hill. The trail split around it, with the path to the left describing a wide turn to descend the outer slope of the hill while the path to the right ascended to enter the gorge between it and the mountain. To Reiner's annoyance, both paths were wide enough to accommodate the column marching behind them. The men examined the ground in the dim half-light.

"Lots of hoof prints on this side!" Hals shouted.

"Here too!" announced Oskar.

Reiner grunted. why couldn't it be a simple decision? Why couldn't he boldly say, "This is ours, boys. It's clearly the one less traveled by"? Now he would have to guess, bet with fifty-fifty odds. I never made a bet with those odds. Chance was for fools. Although fools often called Sylph the god of gamblers of chance, in reality the Swindler's followers played as little as possible with chance. Manipulating the odds in one's favor was a sacred duty, a sacrament. One never participated in a game of chance without some kind of advantage: loaded dice, marked cards, an ace up one's sleeve, an accomplice. Here there was no way to gain an advantage. There was no mark, no ace to keep in the palm of his hand. He had to play dice with fate like a rustic peasant, and hope.

"What do you think, boys?" he asked. "Which way seems to be the more promising?"

"They're both the same." Giano replied, shrugging his shoulders.

"Maybe this one is a little safer." Hals commented uncertainly. "But it also might not be, I'm not a Ranger."

"What if we wait at the bifurcation?" proposed Franz. "We see which way they're going to go and leave the other way."

The company turned to stare at him, and Reiner gawked at him.

It was a good idea.

"But they'll see us," Oskar said.

"No. They won't see us." He was contradicted by Reiner, whose heart was pounding from renewed hope. "They'll have lit torches by now. We'll stay in the dark, hidden. And the road splits early enough that we'll know which way they're headed long before they reach us." He clapped Franz on the shoulder. "Good thinking, boy."

Franz gave him a broad smile in return.

Reiner turned his gaze down the road. It was so dark he could barely see five meters away.

"We'll sit here. Drape your cloaks over your shoulders and wrap your weapons. Leave no steel in sight that reflects the light of their torches. We might as well get something to eat while we wait."

They all huddled together at the top of the hill, munching on near-frozen bread and drinking from canteens, which they had to bang against the rock to break the icy surface that clogged the gullet. Fast-rushing clouds almost covered the sky, and rising moons were seen only occasionally. Finally, almost an hour after full dark, the host of Norsemen arrived. The men heard them before they saw them, a faint rumbling like that of a distant avalanche that never ceased: the sound of boots and horse hooves on stone, chains dragging across the gravel, the crack of whips and the guttural marching cadence of the Norse infantry.

By the time the men had finished putting away the food and prepared to depart, a faint orange glow was beginning to silhouette the trail where it curved around the mountain. The glow grew brighter and the rumble louder, until at last the column came around the bend. They were preceded by three slaves, bound with long scourges and armed with long antlers topped by torches that cast a funereal light on the Nordic horsemen who followed them. Reiner swallowed at the sight of them, and heard Franz shudder beside him.

Although from that distance it was difficult to establish anyone's dimensions, all the mounted barbarians looked huge, bigger even than the monstrous men they had faced in the temple, but in the center of the front rank rode a true giant. Mounted on an armored warhorse that made even the largest steed Reiner had ever seen look like a pony was a Norse hero, if such a noble title could be given to a demon-worshipping Norse vandal, fully clad in armor lacquered in the dark red color of blood. His head was completely covered by an elaborate helmet in the shape of a dragon's head. The resemblance was enhanced by the two double-edged axes that protruded from behind the massive shoulders like wings of steel, and which must have been as long as a man was tall. The mere sight of that Nordic man chilled Reiner's blood. The Norse Hero seemed to radiate fear like a stove radiates heat. He felt like running for cover, curling up to cry.

The entourage following him was only less frightening by comparison. If the evil Norse hero had not been present, the Norse champions, who surrounded the hero, alone would have been enough to make Reiner shiver. They were huge, muscular Norsemen, most of them with horned helmets and chain mail, leather, and the occasional gorget or breastplate. Some were bare-chested, and their sinewy arms and muscular torsos seemed immune to the cold. But they all had the same cruel look. Their eyes remained shaded and hidden. Not the slightest trace of light reflected in them, not even in the case of those who did not wear helmets to cover them, and they were staring straight ahead, looking neither left nor right, though Reiner's hair stood on end because he had the feeling that the riders' senses were examining every inch of his being like the gaze of a glittering eye. Every fiber of his body was telling him to make a run for it.

"Hold on, boys." He whispered as quietly as he could, "Hold on."

The riders continued around the bend five deep until there were more than a hundred behind the knight, and then came the infantrymen, a ragged group that entered the valley walking, rather than at a marching pace.

"Look at them," Hals sneered. "Not one of them is in step. They have no discipline."

Just as the ranks of slaves began to appear shuffling and the head of the column reached the widening of the hill, one of the hero's lieutenants broke away from the squadron of riders and turned back. As the others rode on, he raised a hand and began bellowing orders in a bestial voice.

"Are they going to camp?" asked Erich, uneasily.

Reiner hoped so, as it would give the group some time to find a way around them, but no such luck. There was movement in the ranks: captains shouting orders to their companies, overseers roaring at slaves, wagon drivers berating each other, and for a moment it all seemed chaos and confusion.

Hals squinted to better make out the column that was forming again.

"What are they doing? Oskar, you have better eyesight, what are they doing?"

"They're..., they're..." said the gunner as he tried to make out what was going on. But, by then, it was clear to everyone what the Norsemen were doing. As the mounted lieutenant stood in the stirrups and gesticulated and shouted, the column began to split left and right like a river circling an island, one part heading one way and the other the other. Reiner's soul fell to his feet.

"Damn barbarians!" He lamented. "They're splitting up. They're going both ways."

"May the gods protect us." Ulf said. Oskar muttered to himself.

Reiner felt like running away, but he suppressed the fear with all his might and stayed where he was. Erich turned to look at Franz.

"Stupid boy, we could be far away from here, by now. Now we've got them on top of us."

"Leave him alone," Reiner said. "He suggested it, but I ordered it."

"But which way will we go?" asked Gustaf in a plaintive voice.

"To where he won't go" muttered Hals, and no one needed to ask who 'he' was. They felt the hero's appalling presence growing stronger as he approached.

"We'll go where the slaves go." said Reiner, relieved to be able to give an order in which he had some confidence. "They'll slow the march."

The slaves went to the right, and the group let out a simultaneous sigh of relief that the Norse hero and most of his entourage had headed to the left followed by half of the foot soldiers. A smaller mounted company led the march of slaves and the rest of the infantry.

"Right, boys." Reiner said as he let his shoulders shake free of the tension. "That's settled. Let's get moving."

The group stood up and hurried forward along the path to the right, towards the dark gorge. As much as he hated to admit it, they did not so much hurry as run.