Free DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) by R.A. Salvatore Page B

hills to the field where Andacanavar and his fellows had set up camp. Might the huge barbarian have baited him, feigning friendship so that he could decapitate the Vanguard forces?
    Midalis swallowed that distrust and forced himself to focus instead on poorAbbot Agronguerre and the other forty monks of St. Belfour and the three hundred commoners holed up within the abbey’s walls.
    At the edge of the field, the pair were met by a trio of huge muscled men, the shortest of whom stood nearly half a foot taller than the nearly six-foot Midalis. Huge spears in hand, the barbarians walked right up before the horses of the visitors, one going to each horse and grabbing the reins just below the beasts’ mouths, pulling down forcefully.
    “Which is Midalis?” the third of the group, standing back a couple of steps, asked.
    The Prince reached up and pulled back his hood, shaking the wetness from his straight brown hair. “I am the Prince of Honce-the-Bear,” he said, noting that all three of the barbarians narrowed their eyes at the proclamation.
    “Your leader bade me to come to him,” Midalis went on, “under a banner of alliance.”
    The barbarian in the back nodded his head quickly to the side, indicating that the pair should dismount; then, while his two companions walked the horses away, he motioned Midalis and Liam to follow him.
    “They should be unsaddled and brushed down,” Prince Midalis remarked.
    The barbarian turned back on him skeptically.
    “They’re not knowin’ much about horses,” Liam whispered to his companion. “The folk of Alpinador ain’t much for ridin’.”
    “But we have eaten more than a few,” their huge escort promptly added. He looked at Liam and snickered, for Liam’s voice, like his frame, was quite delicate.
    Midalis and Liam exchanged skeptical glances; this wasn’t going to be easy.
    They were led to a large tent in the middle of the encampment. Both noticed that few eyes were upon them throughout the march, and when their escort pulled aside the flap, they understood why.
    More than three hundred barbarian warriors—all tall and most with long flaxen hair, some with braids, others with ornamental jewelry tied in—filled the tent, hoisting great foaming mugs and making such a general ruckus that Midalis was amazed that he and Liam hadn’t heard them a mile away or that the goblins outside St. Belfour hadn’t taken note and sent scouts to investigate.
    Or maybe they had, Midalis realized, when he looked to the side and saw a row of goblin heads staked out like macabre party decorations.
    “Tunno bren-de prin!”
their escort cried above the tumult in his native tongue, a rolling, bouncing language that the Vanguardsmen jokingly referred to as “bedongadongadonga.”
    Almost immediately, the hall quieted, all eyes turning toward the two smaller men at the entrance. The Prince heard Liam swallow hard, and he shared that nervous sentiment completely. Though it was late fall, and cold, most of the barbarians were wearing sleeveless tunics, revealing their huge, muscled arms, as thick around as Midalis’ thigh.
    The barbarian ranks slowly parted then as an older man, his face weathered bymore than fifty winters, scooped up an extra pair of goblets and started to walk slowly across the tent. He was huge, his muscles taut despite his age; and though there were others his size or even larger, and though most of the men in the hall weren’t half his age, from his balanced gait and stern visage, from the obvious respect he commanded from everyone in the hall, Midalis understood that this man Andacanavar could best any two of the others, perhaps any three, in battle.
    Without a word, without a blink, he strode toward the pair of visitors, but stopped some dozen paces away. He lifted his own flagon and drained it in one huge swallow, then took the other two, one in each hand, and came forward slowly, the rustling of his deerskin breeches the only sound in the hall—other than the