"We were debating the choice of victim, but you have spared us the tiresome inconvenience of a lottery," Mardus informed Alec pleasantly.

"This is only a preliminary sacrifice, of course. The blood of this ignorant lump has neither the power nor purity of, say, a half Aurenfaie boy or an Oreska wizard, but it's sufficient for our purposes today."

"That's why I'm still alive?" Alec managed, his voice scarcely more than a dry croak.

"Certainly," Mardus assured him, as if promising him some gift. "You and Thero are being reserved for the supreme moment. The power of your blood, Alec! The long years sacrificed. Yours will be deaths of highest honor. You should pay careful attention to this ceremony. Yours will be very much the same."

Gossol was thrown down on his back and held by four marines marked apart from their fellows by white headbands.

A fifth man knelt holding a gag across the condemned man's mouth.

In the midst of his fear, Gossol suddenly locked eyes with Alec and shot him a look of pure hatred. The power of it tightened Alec's throat and he quickly averted his eyes, hating the guilt washing through him.

As the incomprehensible chanting went on, he looked instead at Thero, trying to guess what was going on in the wizard's addled mind. Thero stood motionless, locked mute by whatever magicks the necromancers had placed over him. Only the spasmodic twitching of his fingers clutching the front of his cloak suggested that he comprehended anything around him.

Irtuk spoke again and the second necromancer lifted something from where she sat. As he passed it to Ashnazai, Alec saw it was a strange axlike weapon. The heavy, curving head had been chipped out of black obsidian and bound onto an iron haft. Despite its obvious weight, Vargul Ashnazai raised it above his head with practiced ease. With no other paean than Gossol's strangled scream, he struck and the black blade cleaved open the doomed man's breastbone as neatly as a wood cutter would split an oak stave.

Alec turned his head quickly, squeezing his eyes shut until his head throbbed. But he could not escape the sounds that followed. Gossol's screams rose to a squeal before they choked off to a gurgle. There was the dry-stick sounds of bones breaking, and the wet suck of a carcass being opened. Eyes still closed, Alec remembered the feel of Vargul

Ashnazai's cold finger tracing a line down his bare chest.

He suddenly felt very light. Opening his eyes, he saw the sanded planks of the deck rushing up to meet him.

40

Beka's scouts spotted the convoy of horse-drawn wagons that morning and trailed it as it wended south through the coastal foothills. There were only ten of them, Gilly reported, and only one decuria of cavalry to guard them, a fact that confirmed Beka's assumption that they were deep in the Plenimarans' northern territory now.

The country they'd come into was steep and well wooded. Beka let the scouts keep the wagons in sight, biding her time until they stopped for the night.

The wagoneers made camp in a little forest hollow by a stream just before sundown. Leaving her main group of riders a quarter of a mile down the road, Beka chose her fastest runners, Zir, Tobin, and Jareel, to accompany her, and left Rhylin with orders to disrupt the camp as soon as she had accomplished her mission.

Darkness fell, and the wagoneers lit cook fires for the evening meal. Their escort posted a few guards up and down the road.

Beka and her raiders stole through the darkness toward the supply wagons, each of them armed with jars of firestones they'd captured in a similar raid two days before. Reaching the wagons, Beka looked underneath the nearest and saw unsuspecting wagoneers cooking their evening meal less than twenty feet away.

With Zir keeping watch, Beka and the others split up and scattered firestones over the crates and bales in the wagon beds. Ribbons of smoke curled up quickly, but the wind was in their favor, blowing it away from the camp.

Rhylin had been watching for it as his signal, however. Beka's group had hardly finished their work before a frantic whinnying came from the Plenimaran horses picketed nearby.

Whooping and waving torches, Rhylin and his decuria drove the draft animals into the camp, scattering startled soldiers and drivers. Flames shot up in the wagons, adding to the confusion.

Before the Plenimaran guards had time to act, Braknil's decuria charged in with bows and loosed a hail of arrows to cover me retreat of the others.

Beka and her group skirted the camp to meet Tealah, who was holding horses for them down the road.

An enemy shaft nicked Zir in the shoulder as he swung up into the saddle. Tobin took an arrow through the heart before he'd reached his horse.

Beka saw him fall but there was nothing she could do but look after the living.

"Retreat! Come on, before they get their horses back," she yelled. A Plenimaran swordsman charged at her, only to fall with a Skalan arrow in his back.

Leaving the camp in flames behind them, her riders thundered back down the dark road with victorious whoops and catcalls. Among the last to leave, Beka listened to the Plenimaran's angry outcry with satisfaction.

"Do you know what they called us?" Tare called out with a wild laugh as they rode away.

"Urgazhi! Wolf demons."

An eerie chorus of yells and wolfish howls erupted from the others.

"Well done, Urgazhi Turma!" Beka laughed, as elated as the others.

"I say we've earned the honor," Sergeant Braknil added.

They were like wolves now-traveling by night, employing stealth and speed to attack any target weak enough to be taken, then fading back into the darkness before the enemy could get a clear look at how few of them there actually were.

Over the past two weeks they'd made nine raids, harrying small convoys, burning barns and way stations, and fouling wells as they worked their way south through the hills toward the sea.

Their plan was to strike the coast and follow it north again in the hope of meeting a friendly force.

What Beka wasn't certain of was just how far south their raiding had driven them, or where the Skalan line currently was. Whatever the case, they'd have to fight like true urgazhi to get back.

"It's only me, Lieutenant!"

Beka opened her eyes to find Rhylin's long, homely face just inches above hers.

"It's almost sundown. You said to wake you," he said, hunkering down beside her.

Beka sat up and rubbed a hand over her face. "Thanks. I wasn't sleeping so well anyway."

Rhylin handed her his drinking skin, then ran a hand over the brown scruff of beard covering his jaw.

"The fever hasn't come back on you, has it?"

"No, the leg's fine." Beka took a drink and handed it back.

They'd made camp in a beech grove. Buds were just breaking out on the branches overhead and through them she could see the first golden streaks of sunset.

"But you've still got the dreams, eh?" he asked, then shrugged when Beka glanced up sharply. "You've been thrashing and muttering some in your sleep."

"Well, I wish you'd tell me what I'm saying," Beka replied, hoping it was dark enough not to betray the color that rose in her cheeks. "I don't remember a damn thing when I wake up. Any word from Mirn or Gilly yet?"

"That's what I came to report. Kallas and Ariani just got back from tracking them. It looks like they've been captured."

"Damn." From what they'd seen so far, the Plenimarans weren't keeping prisoners alive, and her urgazhi had suffered losses enough already.

Getting to her feet, she glanced around the clearing. In Braknil's decuria only Kallas, Ariani, Arbelus, and one-eyed Steb were left. Rhylin had Nikides, Syra, Tealah, Jareel, Tare, Marten, Kaylah, and Zir. Of those, Tealah had suffered a sword cut during the third raid and couldn't use her left arm. Zir and