He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Of course, you’ve realised that if two go together —”
“The others might as well, yes. There was no time to try it.”
“There is now.”
He reached for one of the other stars. Then checked himself. What stopped him was a rustling in the undergrowth beside them. They stood up.
Bushes parted and a figure stepped out, no more than two yards away.
“You!”
Coilla exclaimed, hand flying to her sword.
“What the
hell?
” Stryke thundered.
“I promised we’d see each other again,” Micah Lekmann reminded them.
“Good,” Coilla seethed, regaining her poise. “Now I can finish the job properly.”
The bounty hunter disregarded her threat and looked down at the stars. “Very considerate of you, having these ready for me.”
“You want them, you come and take them,” Stryke replied coldly.
“Hear that, Greever?” Lekmann called out.
A second human emerged from the thicket on Stryke and Coilla’s other side. His false hand had a saw-toothed blade projecting from it; his real hand held a knife.
“What is this,” Coilla sneered, “an assembly of bastards?”
Aulay glared at her, radiating pure hatred.
“See, Greever?” Lekmann said. “Divide and conquer.”
Pointing his sword attachment at Coilla, Aulay growled, “It’s time for payback, bitch.”
“Whenever you’re ready, one-eye. Or should that be one-hand? Or ear?”
His face boiled with rage.
“Where’s the stupid one?” Stryke wondered.
“The
other
stupid one,” she corrected.
Another clump of scrub was breached and Blaan erupted in a shower of leaves. He carried a hefty club of seasoned wood, topped with sharpened studs.
There was no sign of any of the other Wolverines.
“All we want is your heads,” Lekmann stated matter-of-factly, “and them.” He indicated the scattered stars. “So let’s not make too much of a fuss, eh?”
“In your wildest dreams, poxbag,” Coilla told him.
Weapons slid from greased sheaths.
Stryke and Coilla moved back-to-back. She faced Aulay, by preference. He took Lekmann and Blaan.
The bounty hunters moved in.
Stryke hit out at Lekmann’s probing sword. Once, twice, three times their blades met, briskly clattering. A small retreat by Lekmann gave Stryke the chance to turn swiftly and kick Blaan hard in the stomach. The big man half doubled and almost stopped coming. Stryke returned to beating metal with the leader.
On Coilla’s side a four-bladed storm raged. To match her adversary she had armed herself with sword and knife. Now she engaged in a blurring round of strokes and counterstrokes. Swipes glided over heads and just short of guts. Jabs were sidestepped, chops deflected. Their blades locked and she booted his shin like a mule to part them. He hobbled back, fury bursting. His quick recovery almost had her throat, but she swatted aside his pass and repaid it with her own.
Blaan was crowding Stryke again. Dodging Lekmann’s blade, Stryke spun and whipped his sword the big man’s way. It was a close miss, but enough to repel him for a moment. Then it was back to hacking at the swordsman.
Aulay braved Coilla’s flashing blades and got himself through. A backhand swipe of his dagger barely missed her face, and she was lucky to escape a thrust to her chest. Rallying, she sent out a combination of blows that forced him to retreat. While he was still off-balance she leapt forward and took a swing with her sword that by rights should have split his trunk. Instead it glanced off his artificial hand, striking blue sparks and adding to his frenzy.
Stryke had to make a choice. Both his opponents were near enough to cause real grief, and it was a question of who to deal with first. Blaan decided it. His club came down in an arc that would have crushed Stryke’s skull if his footwork hadn’t defied it. Stryke’s blade whipped out like a viper and laid open Blaan’s arm. The human roared, rage outweighing his pain.
Coilla and Aulay had fought to something like a stand-off. They fell into pure slog, each battering away to breach the other’s guard, both possessed by stubborn bloodlust.
Taking advantage of Stryke’s diversion with Blaan, Lekmann charged in, speed hazing his blade. Stryke stood his ground, repulsing every stroke. Then he went on the attack, powering into the human, driving him back pace by pace. The chance of a kill was good. Blaan spoilt it. Blood streaming from his wound, club swinging, he barged into the fray again. Stryke directed a side-sweep at him. It didn’t strike home, but it did send him reeling back to crash against the bushes.
Blaan was about to rejoin the fight when a great shudder ran through him. He moved away from the bushes, walking stiffly, eyes glazed. A further step revealed his fate.
He had an axe buried in his back.
The spectacle stopped the duellists in their tracks. Coilla and Aulay, Stryke and Lekmann, backed off and gaped as Blaan shambled, the club still in his hand.
Haskeer exploding from the thicket broke the spell. Jup and two or three grunts were close behind.
Lekmann and Aulay turned and fled, plunging into the copse several yards distant. Jup and the grunts belted after them. Coilla joined the chase.
Stryke and Haskeer stayed where they were, mesmerised by Blaan. The axe head was sunk deep between his shoulder blades, with rivulets of blood running down his back, yet he kept on walking. His ire was aimed at Haskeer. Somehow he lifted his club. Lurching forward, he made to brain the orc with it.
Haskeer and Stryke acted simultaneously. One planted his sword in Blaan’s chest, the other in his side. Tugging their blades free they watched the giant sway, then fall heavily, face first. The ground shook.
There was a commotion in the thicket. Mounted on horses, Aulay and Lekmann tore out, swiping at the orcs chasing them on foot. Stryke and Haskeer threw themselves aside and the riders thundered through. Coilla ran up and lobbed a knife. It whistled over Aulay’s shoulder. The bounty hunters put on a burst and rode hell for leather along the inlet.
“Do we go after them?” Coilla said. She was panting.
“By the time we got to our horses there’d be no point,” Stryke judged. “Let ’em go. There’ll be another time.”
“Bet on it,” she replied.
Stryke gathered the stars, then turned to Haskeer. “Good work, Sergeant.”
“My pleasure. Anyway, I owed him.” He walked to Blaan’s corpse, put his foot on its back and pulled out the axe. Stooping, he began to wipe its head with handfuls of grass.
Jup wandered over and stared down at the mountainous body. “Well, at least the carrion eaters are going to feed well today.”
“This is getting to be one hell of a crowded inlet,” Coilla complained.
“Yes,” Stryke agreed, “we do seem to have a lot of unwanted suitors at the moment.”
“Don’t expect it to get any better,” Jup told them.
It was early evening when the band arrived at Ruffetts View.
Their first sign of the settlement came when they spotted a hillside with an acutely angled slope. Chalk figures had been cut into the surface: a stylised dragon, an eagle with spread wings and a simple representation of a building fronted with pillars. The markings were fresh, their lines almost luminously bright in the gathering dusk.
The settlement was in a small valley close to the shore. A tributary snaked past it, and a wooden landing-stage had been built on the encampment-side bank. Several canoes and dugouts were tied up by it.
A vigilant approach took the band to a hill overlooking the colony. Stryke assigned a couple of grunts to tend the horses, then led the rest of the Wolverines to the hill’s peak.
Ruffetts View had grown over the years to occupy a fair portion of the valley. It was a walled settlement. Tall timber uprights surrounded the whole sprawling community. Here and there, watchtowers poked above the walls, like modest cabins elevated beyond their status. There were several pairs of gates, and they were open.
“They don’t seem to think they’re under any threat,” Coilla remarked, indicating the gates.
“But it’s obviously designed to be defended,” Stryke said. “They’re not complete fools.”
“That’s one hell of a weird-looking place,” Jup decided.
What they saw inside the perimeter bore out his opinion. A track of compacted shard ran just inside the walls, following their lines. On the other side of that was a jumble of shacks and humble lodges, mostly built of wood, though some were stone, slate and even wattle-walled. Others seemed to be dwellings, but on a finer scale than those in the outer rim.
The centre of the settlement held the most bizarre sights. It was made up of three enormous adjoining clearings. In the one on the left stood Ruffetts’ second-highest structure, a stone pyramid taller than the outer walls. Rather than having a pointed tip, it was crowned with a plateau and low ramparts. Recent light rain had made its surfaces shine.
In the levelled space on the right stood a building still under construction. Through scaffolding, the upper part of its timber skeleton could be seen. The area below had been faced with what might have been grey and white marble. Pillars were being erected. It was obvious that the chalk etching they had seen earlier was a crude likeness of this structure. They took it to be the temple mentioned by Katz.
But what was in the centre clearing, by far the biggest, awed them most.
This area was surrounded by a circle of huge, blue-tinted standing stones. Most were in pairs, tall as houses, supporting a third, horizontal stone. The impression was of a series of high, narrow arches.
“The amount of work that must have taken,” Alfray marvelled.
“Humans are mad,” Haskeer stated. “What a
waste
.”
Other lower stones, equally massive, were scattered within the circle in no obvious pattern.
Coilla gazed at what was in the circle’s core. “That’s amazing,” she whispered.
“You’ve not seen one before?” Alfray asked.
She shook her head.
“Me neither,” Jup added.
“I’ve seen one or two,” Alfray said. “But never this big.”
At the centre of the circle was a further set of the blue stones, ten of them, laid to form a pentangle.
From its heart erupted a geyser of magic.
It was silent and shimmering, like a vertical rainbow, but with a quality resembling steam that made it waver and dance. Its fluctuating edges were marked with a slightly darker, constantly changing palette of primary colours. The air around the energy spout was distorted, as though it was a hot day.
The peculiarity of it struck them dumb.
At length, Jup remarked, “The magic must be strong here, with so much escaping to soak the land.”
“But it has to be constantly replenished,” Alfray reminded him. “It belongs in the earth,
feeding
the land, not bleeding from it.”
There were plenty of people about in the settlement, and they all seemed to be moving with purpose. They thronged the streets, leading horses, driving carts, running errands. More swarmed over the temple, working on stone and wood, the sound of their labours just audible.
Coilla turned to Stryke. “So what do we do?”
He was distracted by the incredible sight of the magic flow, but drew his eyes away. “Well, these are Manis. They should be more welcoming of elder races.”
“You’re talking about humans,” Haskeer reminded him. “You can’t rely on anything they do.”
“Haskeer’s right,” Alfray agreed. “Suppose they decide to be hostile?”
“We’ve got two choices here,” Stryke judged. “Either they’re going to be friendly and maybe we can trade for the star. Else they’re hostile and there’s nothing we can do against that number. So we might as well be open and go in under a flag of truce.”
Coilla nodded. “I agree. After all, we know Katz got in there. So they’re welcoming of pixies at least.”
“But remember what Katz said,” Jup put in. “They’re building that temple to house the star. If they’d go to that much trouble they’re unlikely to part with it easily.”
“Yes,” Alfray said. “A few bags of crystal aren’t going to sway them.”
“Here’s another thought,” Coilla ventured. “If they prize their star so highly, how wise is it walking in there with four more of them?”
“We wouldn’t exactly shout about it,” Stryke assured her.
“No, but what’s to stop them forcibly searching us?”
“You could leave the stars with a couple of the band out here, Stryke,” Alfray suggested.
“I’m not happy with that. Not that I don’t trust any member of the band. It’s just, that would make whoever we left vulnerable to attack by a larger force. I’d prefer to hang on to them.”
Coilla thought that wasn’t the whole reason, and that he simply couldn’t be parted from the things, but kept the opinion to herself. “You really want all or nothing at all, don’t you?”
He didn’t answer.
Haskeer spoke up. “This is just like what happened at Trinity, ain’t it? Why can’t we go about it a similar way?”
“No,” Stryke replied, “it’s different. There were dwarfs there that Jup could mingle with. Can anybody see any dwarfs down below?” They couldn’t. “Right. No other fish to swim amongst.”
If they thought that was an odd analogy they kept it to themselves.
“So what’s the plan?”
“I reckon that, given the gates are open and there being no patrols, they’re trying to live peaceably. I say we get down there. Spy out things. See what the humans are like.”
“And try to steal their star,” Jup finished for him.
“If we have to. If they won’t trade for it, or listen to reason.”
“We have
reason
on our side?” the dwarf came back sardonically.
“I want to think on this,” Stryke told them. He looked at the sky. “We either go in right now, before it gets too dark, or wait for daybreak. I vote for daybreak.”
The others could see his mind was set. They agreed.
Though Alfray cautioned, “You said yourself there’s a lot of activity in these parts. It won’t do to linger too long here. We might have unwanted company breathing down our necks.”