He counted five of them moving toward him in an irregularly spaced line across the ruins. They bobbed up and down as though their bearers were stumbling and lurching across the mounds of rubble. All shone with a flickering, yellowish glow that to Blade suggested hand-carried torches. He could not yet make out what or who carried them. But he did not wish to be detected prematurely. He lay flat on the roadway behind a thick clump of the thistles, gripped his mace, and waited.
In a minute four more torches joined the original five, two at either end of the line. The new arrivals appeared to be moving inward so that all nine would form a semicircle opening toward the river and the bridge. A moment later Blade saw movement among the piles of debris that spilled onto the far end of the bridge. Two more torches flared in the darkness, and then shrill screams rose in the wind, followed by savage howls of triumph.
What was happening up ahead might be perfectly right and proper, but Blade doubted it. In any case, he wasn't going to assume anything without taking a closer look. He rose from cover and sidled forward in a half-crouch, keeping low and hopefully invisible in the darkness until he was within fifty feet of the end of the bridge. In the area of yellow light thrown out on the rubble-strewn ground by the torches, he could see clearly what was happening.
There were eighteen men in the semicircle facing the river, nine of them holding torches and the other nine holding long pointed metal rods, spear-fashion. All eighteen had the dirty, shaggy look of the last body Blade had found. Some wore the full tunic-kilt outfit, some only the kilt, and a couple were barefoot and wore only ragged loincloths. All eighteen had their eyes turned inward, riveted on the five people in the middle of the semicircle, who seemed to be held there by fear-paralyzed limbs and the threat of the uplifted spears around them.