“Who was worried?” Glabrio muttered.
” . . . along with two bodyguards and that barb Three-Spire from the Harbor,” Froggie continued. “These bodyguards look like monkeys, but they’re big and they’ve got spiked gloves.”
A trooper spit on the ground and grinned.
“There was two axemen besides from the town,” Froggie added with a gesture back the direction they’d come, “but they won’t be there this time.”
“There may be messengers from the other locations, however,” Slats said. “This same portal can serve many local sites. I would expect our rivals to keep in touch with all thirty locations to which detachments from your legion were sent.”
Froggie shrugged. “Regardless,” he said. “There’s not room inside for more than maybe a dozen people, and they won’t be expecting us. Glabrio and I lead in, then the rest of the squad by pairs till the job’s done. Lucky, you watch our rear. There’s the off chance that a few of the barbs got loose back at the town. They could be waiting for us to get focused on what’s inside the cave before they weigh in.”
“Pollux, Froggie!” Lucky said. “I ought to be in front with you. It’s my squad!”
“Lucky,” Froggie said, “if I thought you had anything to prove, you wouldn’t be here. Now, carry out my orders or it won’t be your squad.”
Lucky nodded. “Sorry, Top,” he said through tight lips.
Froggie drew his sword and walked close enough to the rock that he could touch it with the outstretched blade. He hefted his shield, making sure that the heavy oblong was balanced to swing or smash. A shield was a better weapon than a sword, often enough.
“All right, Slats,” he said calmly. “Do it!”
Solid basalt dissolved into a cave. The vanishing rock gave Froggie an instant of vertigo: his mind told him he’d plunged over a cliff. He strode forward.
The Commander looked up angrily and said, “You’re off your sched—”
His face blanked. He shrieked and dived behind his bodyguards.
Three-Spire was talking to the barbs behind the Commander. Two were axemen like the batch who’d been running things at Kascanschi, but the third was a real local with strings of quartz and coral beads woven through his topknot. He was taking a cake of tarry-looking stuff from the sack he held.
A guard drove a spiked fist at Froggie. Froggie raised his shield a hand’s-breadth and twisted his body out of the line of impact.
It was like being punched by a battering ram. Froggie heard two boards of the outer lamination split; the shield’s lower edge rocked up, using Froggie’s grip as a fulcrum and absorbing the force of the blow. Froggie thrust at the ape’s knee, feeling the thin armor over the joint separate an instant before gristle and spongy bone did.
The ape bellowed. He swung with his other fist but he was already toppling toward his crippled leg. The spike that brushed Froggie’s helmet gouged through the bronze and even nicked the leather harness within.
Bald Lucius, a pace behind Froggie, stabbed for the ape’s head. His blade sparkled into the upright of the helmet’s T opening, grinding on teeth and then the creature’s spine. Baldy put his right boot on the helmet and tugged his sword free with both hands.
Glabrio was down but twisting as he grappled with the other guard. Two troopers stood over the pair, chopping at joints in the ape’s backplate. Three more troopers had sprinted past that part of the melee to get at the mercenaries beyond. Velio blocked an axe with his shield as his two companions hacked at the barb from either side.
At Froggie’s feet, the Commander tried to squirm around a console of translucent blue ice. Froggie grabbed him by the throat and pulled him upright.
“You cannot—” the Commander shrilled. Froggie punched his sword home, all the way to the hilt. He felt ribs grate, then a snap! and a shock that numbed his arm. He’d driven his point into the ice beyond.
The Commander’s eyes rolled up. The blood that spewed from his mouth was as red as a man’s.
Froggie couldn’t grip his sword. Ice was boiling away from where the steel pierced it; the Commander’s staring body toppled backward, no longer supported by the blade.