Sorcery in Shad

Chapter One "Your gold or your gizzard!" a hoarse, desperate voice called out through sooty twilight, from bushes at the foot of the bottleneck up ahead, where the pass cut through a stony cleft. "I can slit either your purse or your throat, so take your pick---only quick now, 'cos my finger's itchy on the trigger of this crossbow!" "Hold!" the lone camel rider sent back a shout, reined in his jittery beast. "Now hold there, friend!" He made a dusky silhouette against the indigo sky with its first fistful of stars. And he'd have made a fine target, too, if his ambusher had a crossbow! That wasn't the case, but no way the rider could know it. "Put up your hands," the would-be thief now commanded, "so's I can see there's no weapon in 'em." "What?" his intended victim replied. "And would you really take a man's life for nothing? Highwayman, you've picked a wrong 'un tonight, I'm afraid---where loot's concerned, anyway. Man, I'm broke! So stay your hand on that weapon. I've a loaf we can share, if you like, and a skin of passable wine. But that's all . . ." The ambusher's ears pricked up: he was starving! And there was something in this lone wayfarer's voice, too. Memories stirred, of a time not too far past in Chlangi the Doomed . . . "Who are ye, sitting there so nice in my sights?" he hoarsely inquired. Astride his camel, the Hrossak tried to locate the other; no good, he was a shadow in the darker shadows of the bushes. But where- and whoever he was, his voice had seemed strangely familiar. He could be any one of a dozen brigands the rider had tangled with along his mazy way. The steppeman had put his hands up on the other's barked instructions; but behind the right one, hanging down along his wrist from a point trapped between index and next finger, a balanced knife poised for swift release. Only let him get a precise fix on his ambusher's whereabouts, and--- "What's your name, I said?" the furtive owner of the gruff voice once more demanded. "I'm a Hrossak," the rider replied, shifting a little in his saddle. Was that a movement there in the bushes, by the bole of that gnarly tree? Aye, it was that---the outline of a crouching man! "Khash, by name, after my father, naturally," he continued, letting his throwing arm drift back a little, "---though the gods alone know why, for he never had any either!" A gasp from the gloom. "Tarra Khash!" Tarra threw himself forward and out of the saddle, threw his knife, too. Only at the last, hearing that gasp and the other speaking his name, had he managed to deflect knife's flight---else the lurker in the bushes were a goner. Then he was rolling in dust, hurling himself headlong into the blackest shadows, snarling his rage in the darkness even as he snaked the curved ceremonial sword from its scabbard strapped to his back. In another moment he crashed through brittle bushes, found a boulder and slid himself over to its safe side, there came to a crouching halt . . . Close at hand, a wheezy, frightened panting. The Hrossak listened, grinned a humourless wolf's grin, called out: "And now it's your turn, friend. Seems you know me, which might or might not be a good thing. So in the dozen or so heartbeats you've left to live, best tell me who you are. That way I'll be able to say a few words over you, to let the gods know who I'm passing theirLumley, Brian is the author of 'Sorcery in Shad ' with ISBN 9780765310774 and ISBN 0765310775.