"Get him!" the Red Wizard screamed. "Get him, and we'll divide up all his jewels! But take him alive! A true bard will be useful!"

The guards readied their weapons and closed in from all sides. Bareris whipped out his sword and struggled to hold back panic and think. If they hoped to take him alive, that would hamper them a little. If he could somehow seize another horse-

Why then, he thought, the wizards would simply blast the animal out from under Tammith and him as they tried to ride away, or else the guards would shoot it full of arrows. Before the enemy readied themselves for battle, there had existed a slim chance of fleeing successfully on horseback, but it was gone now.

"Give me a knife," Tammith said. He could hear the fear in her voice, but only because he knew her so well. He handed her a blade and she positioned herself so they could protect one another's backs. "I'm sorry you came for me, sorry this is happening, but glad I got to kiss you one last time."

"It wasn't the last time."

In fact, he knew it very likely had been, but he wouldn't abandon hope even in his private thoughts, wouldn't defeat himself and save the enemy the trouble. Maybe he and Tammith could at least kill a few of the bastards before the remainder overwhelmed them.

Blood orcs shrieked their harrowing cry and charged. Bareris chanted, and power stung and shivered down his limbs. Tammith gasped as she experienced the same sensation.

The world, including the onrushing orcs, slowed down, or at least that was how it appeared. In reality, Bareris knew, he and Tammith were moving more quickly. The enchantment had given him a critical advantage in other combats, and he could only pray it would again.

A whip whirled at his calves. Had it connected, it would have wrapped around his legs and bound them together, but he leaped over the arc of the stroke and slashed the eyes of an orc armed with a cudgel. That put another guard behind him, in position to bash his head with the pommel of its scimitar. It was too sluggish, though, compared to his unnatural celerity. He pivoted, sliced its belly, turned, stepped, and hacked open the throat of the brute with the whip while it was still drawing the rawhide lash back for a second stroke.

That finished all the foes immediately in front of him, and it was then that he heard Tammith half cry, half gasp his name. It was possible she'd been screaming for a moment or two, and he'd been too intent on the blood orcs to hear.

He turned. Another guard, a human on horseback, had looped a whip around Tammith's neck and was lifting her off her feet, essentially garroting her in the process. She flailed with her knife but couldn't connect. Neither her bravery nor the charm of speed sufficed to counter the warrior's advantages of superior strength and skill.

Bareris sprang in and cut at the guard's left wrist, and his blade bit to the bone. The horseman dropped the whip and Tammith with it. Blood spurting from his gashed extremity, features as bestial with rage and pain as the tusked, piggish face of any of the orcs, he prompted his mount-a trained war-horse, evidently-to rear and try to batter Bareris with its front hooves.

Bareris sidestepped and thrust his point into the animal's side. The destrier fell sideways, carrying its rider with it. They hit the ground hard and lay motionless thereafter.

Bareris cast about and found Tammith, a raw red welt now striping her neck, standing just behind him. "I'm sorry," she said.

He realized she meant she was sorry she hadn't managed to kill the rider with the whip, sorry Bareris had needed to save her. "It's all right." It occurred to him that the two dead horses sprawled on the ground constituted obstacles of sorts. If he and Tammith stood between them, it would make it difficult for very many of their foes to come at them at once. "Come on." He scrambled to the proper position, and she followed.

There he began another song. It would strengthen and steady them, and he could weave specific spells through the melody as needed. Pivoting, he peered to see who meant to attack him next.

A rider with a net spurred his mount into a canter. Crouching, blood orcs circled as if they hoped to clamber over the top of one of the dead horses and take their adversaries by surprise.

Then the wizard with the tattooed face shouted, "Stop! You imbeciles are next to useless, but I can't afford to lose all of you. Forget about taking the minstrel alive, and don't go within reach of his sword, either. Shoot him and his whore, and So-Kehur and I will smite them with spells." He gave Bareris a vicious smile. "Unless, of course, you prefer to surrender."

"Don't," Tammith whispered. "I don't know what they'll do to us if we give up, but I'm sure it will be terrible."

Bareris suspected she was right, yet what was the alternative? To condemn her to die here and now? For while the two of them had evaded capture and injury thus far, it was obvious they no longer had any chance of getting away. It was only the Red Wizard's order to take them alive that had provided even the illusion of hope, and that was no longer in effect.

"We have to surrender," he said, "and hope we can escape later on. Set the knife on the ground." He stooped to do the same with his sword, and then someone gave a startled yell.

Bareris looked around to see slaves scrambling in all directions. Evidently they shared Tammith's conviction that some ghastly fate awaited them at the end of their trek, and they'd decided to take advantage of their keepers' distraction to make a break for freedom.

"Stop them!" the necromancer with the flabby midsection-evidently his name was So-Kehur-wailed.

Some of the guards obeyed. Horsemen galloped and wheeled to cut the thralls off. A blood orc dashed after a group of fleeing men and started slashing them down from behind, evidently on the assumption that if it killed enough of them, the slaughter would cow the rest into giving up.

Of course, not every warrior turned his back on Tammith and Bareris, but as best the bard could judge, even those who hadn't seemed momentarily flummoxed. So, for that matter, did the necromancers. Perhaps he had a hope left after all.

"Follow me!" he said to Tammith. He bellowed a battle cry and charged.

For an instant, he considered running at So-Kehur. Evidently worthless in a crisis, the round-bellied mage had yet to cast a spell and was surely an easier mark than the skull-faced warlock. He must possess an extraordinary aptitude for some aspect of sorcery, or else exceptionally good family connections, to account for his induction into an order of Red Wizards despite the lack of iron in his soul.

The problem was that even if they were of equivalent rank, it was plainly the necromancer with the tattooed face who'd taken charge of the caravan. Should they find themselves at odds, he was the one the warriors would obey, and just to make matters worse, he obviously held his fellow mage in contempt. Bareris could easily imagine himself grabbing So-Kehur, using him as a shield, threatening him with his sword, and having the tattooed wizard laugh and order his underlings to go ahead and shoot them both.

No, if Bareris was going to take a hostage, it had to be the skull-faced mage himself, and so he ran straight at him. He prayed Tammith was still following close behind him but didn't dare waste the instant it would take to glance back and find out.

An arrow whistled past his head. An orc scrambled to block his path, and he split its skull. For a moment, his sword stuck in the wound, but then he managed to yank it free, flinging drops of blood through the air in the process.

Realizing his peril, the skull-faced necromancer brandished the talisman that had killed Bareris's horse, a round medallion, the bard now observed, fashioned of ebony and bone. He wrenched himself to the side, and the jagged blaze of shadow missed him by a finger length.