Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams

expedition had reached agreement.
    As the others moved off to their companies, Grax looked up at Aristide on his rock
    “You’re authorized a double share if you accompany us to the Temple,” he said.
    “I wouldn’t miss it,” Aristide said. “You’re in command of this expeditionary force, I assume?”
    “Of course!” The troll showed his yellow teeth.
    “Congratulations on your expanded responsibilities. My captives—for different reasons admittedly—are willing to lead us to the Venger’s Temple.”
    Grax studied them with his golden eyes. “They show wisdom.”
    The older bandit curled his lip. Perhaps he’d run low on saliva.
    “May be,” Aristide said. “But I regret to tell you that it may be that our fight against these people may be more difficult than we’ve expected.”
    “Yes?” Grax didn’t seem troubled. “Where is the Temple,” he asked, “and how far?”
    “Back up the valley. Fifteen or twenty glasses.”
    “Damn. We’ll have to wait for this lot to get by us, then.” He lumbered off to give orders to the elements of his new army, and to pass the word to the caravans that they should begin to move. The huge caravan picked itself up and began to trudge its way down the path to Gundapur’s plain.
    The story of the brief battle must have spread through the caravan, because Aristide found that many pointed at him as they passed, or huddled together and whispered. He saw Souza ride past on a mule, leading two more mules shared by the three children he’d salvaged for the College, and he and the scholar exchanged salutes.
    Finding his celebrity tedious, and unable to move out of public scrutiny on a narrow track filled with carts and camels, Aristide spoke with his prisoners and found the younger bandit talkative, as he’d anticipated. He learned that the Venger’s Temple was in a broad cleft in the mountain, with its own water supply, and with powerful natural defenses.
    “It’s like a pool of life, really,” the young man said. “There’s a waterfall on both sides of a stone pillar, and a pool below.”
    “Does it have the properties of a pool of life?” Aristide asked.
    “No. It’s just rocks and water. Quite pretty, really.”
    The long serpent of the caravan continued its crawl past the swordsman’s perch. Aristide looked up at the sight of a young blue-eyed woman on a palfrey, but she had drawn a veil over her face, and kept her eyes turned from his.
    He bowed as she passed. She kept her face turned away.
    She had demonstrated that she was afraid of sorcery, and of the College. Certainly anyone who could wield such a weapon as Tecmessa must be a powerful wizard, worthy of trepidation.
    Aristide’s expression confirmed he was not pleased to be such an object of fear.
    The caravan finally passed, leaving behind colossal amounts of fresh dung, and Grax organized his force of sixty warriors. They had few spare mounts: their comrades were deliberately making it difficult for the party to abscond with much of the loot. Aristide gave Grax the older bandit as a guide, and kept the talkative one for himself. Both captives were tied onto saddles that had been placed on mules.
    The mounted force could move much more quickly than the caravan. After a brief march up the valley they came to the ridge where the band of caravan guards had been left to face a group of enemy on the opposite ridge. Their lieutenant descended to greet Grax.
    “I was coming to report,” he said. “The bandits we were watching have gone.”
    “Gone where?” asked Grax.
    “Back over that ridge they were on. We don’t know any more than that.”
    “Survivors must have told them we’d wiped out their main force, and they decided it was pointless to stay.”
    “There’s a goat track back there,” said the younger bandit. “It leads to the Venger’s Temple.”
    Aristide raised his eyebrows. “A back entrance?” he asked.
    “More like a side entrance. But the defenses are less formidable than