Empire Rising by Sam Barone Page B

gate. The riderless horses all turned back at the sight of the carts, the dumb beasts racing back the way they’d come. For the moment, the area in front of the gate stood empty. Eying the horse wandering a few paces outside the gate, the bandit leader made a dash for the opening.
    Eskkar blocked the way. “Put down your sword!”
    The bandit chief showed himself a true warrior, and flung himself at Eskkar with all the speed and force he could muster, his sword striking at Eskkar’s head. Trapped, the man knew there might still be a chance to escape, if he could get outside the village.
    Eskkar’s sword, made from the finest bronze, flashed up to parry the blow, and the loud clank as the two blades clashed carried over the other battle noises. In the same instant, before the man could recover, Eskkar lowered his shoulder and thrust himself into the bandit leader’s chest.
    The two men met with a crash. The bandit, moving at a run, had momentum behind him, but Eskkar was the bigger man, and he put the force of his body behind his shoulder. Gasping as the air was knocked from his lungs, the bandit went down, and before he could get up, one of the soldiers from the gate leapt upon him, pinning his sword arm until Eskkar could stomp his sandal on the blade just past the hilt. The man let go of the useless weapon and grabbed for a knife at his belt, but Eskkar pushed the point of his sword against the man’s neck. He stopped moving, though his eyes darted from Eskkar to the sword.
    Before the prisoner could change his mind, Eskkar’s soldier ripped 36
    SAM BARONE
    the prisoner’s knife from his belt, then used its hilt to strike the man hard across his forehead. That stunned the bandit for a few moments, and before he could begin to resist, the soldier cut free the man’s sandal straps, rolled the prisoner onto his stomach, and started binding the prisoner’s wrists behind him. Eskkar kept the sword against the bandit’s neck until the man’s hands were bound.
    “Captain! Over here.”
    Eskkar turned to see the other soldier who’d helped defend the gate.
    He’d scrambled over the carts and had the wounded bandit on his feet, the arrow still protruding from the man’s shoulder. That prisoner grimaced in pain either from the arrow or from the fact that the guard had twisted his other arm up behind his back and had a knife at the man’s neck.
    Eskkar shoved one of the carts out of the way so that the two could enter.
    Hamati arrived, bow in hand with an arrow to the string, his step as assured as if he strode on Akkad’s training ground. He had a big grin on his broad face.
    “I saw him take that cut at you, Captain,” he said. “Not many men could have parried that blow.”
    Eskkar glanced down at the weapon still in his hand, then raised it up to Hamati. A tiny gouge in the metal showed where the two blades had met, but nothing of consequence, though Eskkar knew that a common sword might have shattered under the impact of such a ferocious blow.
    “Trella’s gift keeps me safe.” The great sword, painstakingly cast from the strongest bronze by the best craftsmen in Akkad, had taken months to forge. Trella had ordered it cast especially for him, and it had saved his life once before.
    “How did it go, Hamati?” Eskkar asked.
    “As we expected. As soon as they rode into the marketplace, we put seven arrows into the horses. That put them in a panic. The poor beasts started rearing and twisting, and two men were pitched right off their mounts. My men just kept shooting. Each of us got off at least five arrows.
    That took the fight out of them.”
    Eskkar wasn’t particularly adept at counting, but some numbers came to him more easily than others. Horses, men, arrows, these kinds of things he could count quickly enough. Thirty-five arrows from Hamati and his six men, in about twelve or fifteen seconds. In those same fifteen seconds, Mitrac, standing on the rooftop, had fired at least seven shafts, since he was