The Hidden City

reined in and looked back. The masked giants had given up their pursuit and were running due west now, staggering toward an outcropping of rocky hills several miles away.
    ‘That’s the part that has everybody baffled,’ he told Sephrenia. ‘From what Aphrael told me, the others have encountered the same thing. Klael’s soldiers chase after us for a while, and then they break off and run toward the nearest cluster of hills. What can they possibly hope to find that’s going to do them any good?’
    ‘I have no idea, dear one,’ she replied.
    ‘This is all very fine, I suppose,’ Vanion said with a worried frown, ‘but when we begin our final advance on Cyrga, we won’t have time to run those brutes into exhaustion. Not only that, Klael will probably start massing them in units larger than these regiments we’ve been coming across out here in the open. If we don’t come up with some way to neutralize them permanently, our chances of getting to Cyrga alive aren’t very good.’
    ‘Lord Vanion!’ one of the knights cried out in alarm. ‘There are more of them coming.’
    ‘Where!’ Vanion looked around.
    ‘From the west!’
    Vanion peered after the fleeing monsters. And then he saw them. There were two regiments of Klael’s soldiers out there on the flats. The one they had encountered earlier was reeling and staggering toward the hills jutting up from the horizon. The other was coming toward them from the hills, and the second regiment showed no signs of the exhaustion which had incapacitated their fellows.
    ‘This is ridiculous,’ Talen muttered, examining the lock on his chain with sensitive fingertips.
    ‘You said you could unlock them,’ Kalten accused in a hoarse whisper.
    ‘Kalten, you could unlock these. They’re the worst locks I’ve ever seen.’
    ‘Just open them, Talen,’ Sparhawk told him quietly. ‘Don’t give lectures. We still have to get out of this pen.’
    They had merged with the other woodcutters and had passed unchallenged through the gates of Cyrga just as the sun was setting. Then they had followed the slaves to an open square near the gate, unloaded their cart onto one of the stacks of wood piled there, and leaned the cart against a rough stone wall with the others. Then, like docile cattle, they had gone into the large slave-pen and allowed the Cynesgan overseers to chain them to rusty iron rings protruding from the rear wall of the pen. They had been fed a thin, watery soup and had then bedded down in piles of filthy straw heaped against the wall to wait for nightfall. Xanetia was not with them. Silent and unseen, she roamed the streets outside the pen instead.
    ‘Hold your leg still, Kalten,’ Talen hissed. ‘I can’t get the chain off when you’re flopping around like that.’
    ‘Sorry.’
    The boy concentrated for a moment, and the lock snapped open. Then he moved on, crawling through the rustling straw.
    ‘Don’t get so familiar,’ Mirtai’s voice muttered in the darkness.
    ‘Sorry. I was looking for your ankle.’
    ‘It’s on the other end of the leg.’
    ‘Yes. I noticed that myself. It’s dark, Atana. I can’t see what I’m doing.’
    ‘What are you men doing there?’ It was a whining, servile kind of voice coming from somewhere in the straw beyond where Kalten lay.
    ‘It’s none of your business,’ Kalten rasped. ‘Go back to sleep.’
    ‘I want to know what you’re doing. If you don’t tell me, I’ll call the overseers.’
    ‘You’d better shut him up, Kalten,’ Mirtai muttered. ‘He’s an informer.’
    ‘I’ll deal with it,’ Kalten replied darkly. He slipped away through the rustling straw.
    ‘What are you doing?’ the slave with the whining voice demanded. ‘How did you—’ The voice broke off, and there was a sudden thrashing in the straw and a kind of wheezy gurgling.
    ‘What’s going on out there?’ A harsh voice called from the overseer’s barracks. The barracks doorway poured light out into the yard.
    There was no answer, only a few spasmodic rustles in the straw. Kalten was breathing a little hard when he returned to his place, quickly wrapped his chain around his ankles again and covered it with straw. They waited tensely, butt the Cynesgan overseer evidently decided not to investigate. He went back inside, closing the door behind him and plunging the yard into darkness again.
    ‘Does that happen often—among slaves, I mean?’ Bevier whispered to Mirtai as Talen was unchaining him.
    ‘All the