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subside.
    “I’m disappointed that there’s no one among you with courage,” Aristide said. “It will make it all the easier for us to slaughter you.”
    In response came more laughter, some obscene suggestions, and a few more rocks.
    “Just,” Aristide said casually, “as we slaughtered those friends of yours, up there on the ridge a few leagues back. They’re lying on the rocks for the vultures to peck at. Surely one of you had a friend among them, and now possesses a burning desire to avenge his life?”
    “ I do,” said a voice. The figure that jumped on the barrier was vast, grey-skinned, and female. She was as large as Grax and had an additional pair of arms: the upper pair carried two throwing spears, the lower an axe and a target shield with a spike in the center. Her grin revealed teeth like harrows. She stood on the barrier, acknowledging the cheers of the bandit force.
    “You present a formidable appearance, madam,” said Aristide. “Perhaps you will make a worthy opponent.”
    “ Perhaps?” the troll demanded. She jumped down from the barrier and advanced. Chain skirts rang under armor of boiled leather. Her crude iron helm was ornamented with horns and a human skull. Cheers and laughter echoed from the bandits. She advanced fifty paces and then halted. She paused and said, in a theatrical voice, “Prepare to meet thy doom.”
    “You first,” Aristide suggested, and tossed the arrow with its white rag to the side.
    The troll crouched and came on, preceded by a wave of body odor. The upper arms held the two spears which she declined to throw, instead reserving them as thrusting weapons. The axe clashed on the shield.
    In a single motion, Aristide drew Tecmessa. The sword flashed beneath the dim sun.
    There was a sudden crack, as of thunder, that echoed off the rocks. Observers had an impression that something had twisted into existence, then out of it, too fast for the eye quite to follow. A wave of air blew out toward the bandits, visible as swirls of dust in the air.
    Of the troll, there was no sign.
    Silence fell upon shocked ears.
    “ Uh-oh, ” said a bandit clearly, in the sudden stillness.
    Aristide whirled his sword up, then down, in an impatient Come-on-let’s-charge motion that he hoped would remind the caravan guards of what they were supposed to be doing at this moment.
    “Anyone else care to fight?” he asked.
    Arrows whirred down from above. Tecmessa’s point rotated slightly, there was another crack and a blast of wind, and the arrows vanished.
    “Anyone else?” the swordsman called.
    There was a deep-voiced bellow behind Aristide, and then shouts, the clatter of armor, and the rush of feet. Apparently Nadeer had finally remembered his assigned role.
    “Oh well,” Aristide said, “if you won’t come to me …”
    Aristide began trotting forward at a pace calculated to bring him to the barrier about the same time as Grax and his Free Companions. He didn’t want to get trampled by his own side, but neither was it wise to face the whole body of the enemy at once—Tecmessa’s powers had their limits. The sword was held in both hands, the point moving in a circle.
    More arrows came. More arrows disappeared in claps of thunder and whirls of dust.
    Behind him, Aristide heard the sound of animals splashing through the shallow freshet, and increased his pace.
    The stone barrier was breast-high, topped by ranks of spears and figures in helmets. As the swordsman approached, the bandits in front shrank back, while those in the rear—who hadn’t seen what had occurred—pressed forward. There was an incoherent shouting and the sound of spears rattling against one another, sure signs that the morale of the bandits was not ideal.
    Before Aristide quite reached the barrier he heard a roar and a ferocious reptilian shriek, and Grax appeared on his lizard, his lance lowered. The lizard cleared the barrier in one bound—Grax dropped the lance that had skewered a tall man with a scalp