“You’re too tense, Northerner,” Kharad remarked rather maliciously, his bird running almost right next to Hadjar’s. “It feels your fear.”
Hadjar couldn’t even respond.
The head scout smiled triumphantly and left to rejoin the vanguard of the squad. Shakh, following after Hadjar, expressed his solidarity with all his might. Hadjar couldn’t see the young man, but he felt his sympathy all the same.
A gust of wind from his right nearly knocked Hadjar out of the saddle. From a cloud of dust and sand, Ilmena emerged. She was in her element — the speedy beast and the equally speedy girl had immediately found common ground.
“Don’t try to control it, barbarian,” pure joy and excitement emanated from the warrior. Bathed in the rays of the rising sun (their mad trip had taken three days now), she looked like a sand fury or a nymph. “Trust your bird. The reins are there for you to guide it, not control it.”
Hadjar looked at his mount’s beak. It turned its head, staring at him with its black, beady eye. For some reason, Hadjar instantly realized that if he followed her advice, it would immediately throw him off.
At such speeds, from atop a high dune, it was unlikely that even a strong practitioner would be able to survive the fall. If Einen had also decided to join in the fun, Hadjar would’ve definitely thrown all caution out the window. The idea of jumping onto the sand and using the ‘Ten Ravens’ Technique appealed to him. Maybe he wouldn’t have enough power to move at a decent speed for more than an hour, but that hour would be heaven for him, as no creature would have a say over the fate of his ass and neck in that time.
Right as he was contemplating this, Kharad’s fist soared into the air. Despite the distance between them and their different mentalities, some gestures were universal between cultures. Or simply too logical for people to bother coming up with alternatives.
All the members of the squad stopped without any issues, except for Hadjar. He pulled on the reins too sharply and almost flew head over heels off his ‘hen’ when it stopped instantly.
“Demons and Stars,” Hadjar cursed like a local.
At the last second, he managed to pull his foot out of the stirrup and jump off it and onto the sand. Straightening up, Hadjar looked proudly at his ‘hen’ standing nearby. It seemed to snort contemptuously in response.
Admittedly, it was possible that one of his uninvited riding instructors — Ilmena and Kharad — had made the noise. Hadjar was ready to explain why they were wrong with the help of his blade, but there was no time for that right now.
“We haven’t reached the border of the Dead Mountains yet,” Shakh said, pulling his colorful scarf off his face.
Nobody listened to him, looking instead at one of the people riding the huge lizards — a skinny, gray-haired man. He extended his left hand, which was encased in a thick leather glove.
Suddenly, a lingering, falconine scream pierced the air. A black dot came hurtling down from the sky like an arrow. It grew, turning into a huge bird of prey with a wingspan of at least thirteen feet.
This falcon could’ve easily carried away not just a sheep, but an adult as well. What struck Hadjar as even odder was the way the man was communicating with the bird. They looked into each other’s eyes silently, but Hadjar clearly felt the energy flowing between them. That same energy he couldn’t define or explain. Perhaps when he reached a school or academy in the Empire he would be able to rip off the veil of secrecy that had been tormenting him for more than a year.
The conversation between the man and bird didn’t last longer than a minute. When it was over, the falcon flapped its wings, kicking up a miniature sandstorm, and disappeared back into the sky as quickly as it had appeared.
“There are bandits in the north, among the Sandstones,” the man said. His voice was oddly reedy. “About half a day’s walk from here.”
Kharad shook his head.
“Will our caravan come across them on our current path?”
The man just nodded.
“Faded Stars!” Kharad cursed.
Hadjar’s expression clearly showed that he didn’t know what was happening. Ilmena took pity on him. Sticking to the rules of their ‘passionate game’, she whispered in his ear: “You missed everything by being late. In the Dead Mountains, according to Sular, resides a large Bedouin tribe. At least three thousand adult riders. Along with children and old people.”
“And the Dead Mountains...”
“Are right in front of the Kurkhadan oasis,” someone in the back answered. Of course, it was Shakh that had spoken out. Boys were boys everywhere, even in the desert. Hadjar wondered if he would’ve been the same if not for Primus. “It’s impossible to go around the Dead Mountains because it’ll take us an extra month and we’ll run out of water.”
“Are we going to fight the nomads?” Einen, emerging from the shadows, joined the conversation. Or maybe he’d been standing nearby all this time. Usually, as soon as Hadjar looked away from the islander, he immediately disappeared.
“Let’s hope that we manage to negotiate with them,” Kharad said tiredly.
Hadjar rubbed his nose. Was it acceptable in the desert for people to randomly join other people’s conversations without so much as a nod?
“It’ll be a glorious battle,” Einen said hazily, as if talking to himself, and his gaze was a million miles away.
Hadjar was sometimes a little jealous of the bald man’s insanity. If this kept up, he would soon lose the right to the ‘Mad’ part of his nickname. He liked ‘Northerner’ more anyway. Judging by Kharad’s skeptical gaze, he had a similar opinion of the islander.
“But there is no way to negotiate with the bandits,” the head scout continued. “So it’ll be your turn, barbarian, to demonstrate your skills. If you have any, that is.”
Bandits... Small skirmishes had never been the strong point of Hadjar’s tactics and strategy. He loved to think and act on a large scale. In this case, if he’d had the Moon Army behind him, he would’ve ordered an artillery salvo. Ten salvos, to be exact. Using all their cannons. That would have been enough to scatter any bandits in their path. Unfortunately, they didn’t have that kind of luxury.
“How many of them are there?”
Kharad repeated the question for the falcon’s owner.
“They occupied the entire gorge,” the man answered. “At least a dozen tents and twenty caves.”
“That means there’s about three hundred of them,” Hadjar grumbled. “Three hundred against two dozen people...”
“A glorious battle,” Einen repeated.
Everyone looked at him skeptically.
“Well,” Hadjar shrugged. “I need three brave and strong warriors. Four is enough to take care of these bandits, and the rest can go on ahead to the Dead Mountains. We’ll meet them there.”
Damn that feels good! Hadjar was pleased to see everyone staring at him with their mouths agape. He’d missed the feeling.
Chapter 274
Hadjar looked at the Sandstone Gorge through the dim, cracked glass of his telescope. Despite its strange name, plain, brown rocks lay in front of him. There wasn’t much variety to be found in the desert.
“They’re just ordinary rocks,” Hadjar said loudly.
“Barbarian,” Ilmena and Shakh hissed in unison. They looked at each other. Shakh smiled broadly and his face lit up like a small star; Ilmena rolled her eyes, cursed, and hastily turned away.
“Look closely, Hadjar,” Einen also had a telescope with him. He pointed at the top of one of the rocks.
Hadjar almost pressed the lens into his eye, but eventually managed to see what Einen had noticed.
“What the hell?” Hadjar whispered.
The tops of the rocks were moving and sand flowed down from them. The streams of sand ran down to the ground, creating bizarre patterns that Hadjar had at first mistaken for crevices. When they reached the ground, they slowly trickled back to rush down once again, flowing in an endless cycle. It was a kind of natural sand
fountain with caves hidden inside it. Some of the caves were covered with mats. One of them had bars on it, made from the fangs and bones of some huge creature.
Hadjar hoped that the fangs had been obtained after the monster had died. His plan would certainly fail if there was a cultivator among the bandits because a simple practitioner could’ve never killed such a beast.
There were green tents at the bottom of the gorge. The same kind of fangs were used as the central posts for those tents. The central, largest tent had a wooden picket fence around it. Human skulls adorned the length of the fence. White and smooth, they had long been polished to a shine by the wind, sand, and sun.
There were also watchtowers next to the makeshift gate, but they were empty.
“A cunning ploy.”
Hadjar nodded respectfully to Einen and explained what he meant to the confused Ilmena and Shakh.
“The watch towers are a decoy. They have watchmen, but they’re in the caves. If you look closely, you’ll see the occasional flashes of their telescopes. Two at each level.
“And three secret tunnels at the base of the gorge so they can escape.”
The islander was strange. Without his years of experience, Hadjar would’ve never noticed the sentries or the tunnels. He wondered how Einen had spotted them.
Still, Hadjar didn’t care about the islander’s life before. The important thing was that his Shadow Technique had hid them from the watchmen successfully.
“Your plan is crazy, barbarian,” Shakh murmured. “They’ll kill you before you even unsheathe your sword.”
“I’ve often been told that, young man, but, as you can see, I’m still alive.”
“We’ll end up meeting our ancestors!” the boy almost cried out. Realizing that he wouldn’t get a response from Hadjar, he turned to Ilmena. “How about I go with you instead? He won’t lift a finger to protect you! You’ll be safer with me...”
“Forgive me, Shakh,” the girl’s voice was stern, “But I’ll feel safer with a man at my side than with a boy.”
Shakh’s face flushed with barely restrained rage. His ‘Sand Dogs’ Technique was really potent. If Hadjar hadn’t possessed the Spirit Sword, he would’ve probably lost their battle, he’d freely admit to it. Still, thinking with your brain and not with another organ was too hard at that age and Shakh could only focus on the slight.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Hadjar sighed.
He would’ve happily taken someone else along instead of Shakh. Not because of his reckless passion, but because the boy made everything tense. But Kharad hadn’t been able to spare anyone else. Moreover, Shakh was the only one out of the four of them who knew the way to the Dead Mountains, wherever they were.
Standing up, Hadjar went over to Ilmena. He tied her hands behind her back and put a gag in her mouth while the girl rubbed herself against him like a cat. She did it so blatantly that even the unflappable Einen turned away.
Hadjar tried not to look at the young man. He felt sorry for Shakh. He remembered how the girls from ‘Innocent Meadow’ (the brothel where he’d lived for five years) had been able to drive young men crazy.
“You certainly know how-”
The gag stopped Ilmena’s teasing. While Hadjar felt sorry for Shakh sometimes, the girl simply annoyed him. Hadjar had even started feeling old as he found himself grumbling about ‘kids these days’ way too often, despite the fact that he was only a few years older than them.
“Let’s go,” he said and pulled Ilmena along with him.
Without trying to hide his approach, with a pre-prepared, torn waterskin on his back, Hadjar walked toward the bandits’ camp. Ilmena followed after him, yanking on the rope and pretending to try and break free.
Her bracelets rang and droplets of sweat glittered in the sun as they ran down her smooth, bronze skin. She wore only a pair of translucent silk pants. Hadjar tried not to turn around or think too hard about the show the watchmen were getting.
Ilmena’s body was so perfect that many men would’ve given their left eye for the chance to see this sort of perfection every day for the rest of their lives.
Hadjar was almost at the gate when a crossbow bolt pierced the sand in front of his feet.
“One more step and the next shot hits your balls!” a guard said from somewhere among the rocks. It was difficult to make out his exact position due to the constant echo.
“If I don’t take a step,” Hadjar wheezed, using the acting abilities that he‘d developed over the years, “I’ll die of thirst.”
“Then die! But do so far away from our camp!”
“I have money!” Hadjar shook his purse.
This time, the echo brought the sound of an arrogant laugh.
“Well, drink that, then!”
Hadjar sighed, turned to Ilmena, and devoured her body with his gaze. Gods and demons, he needed to lay with a woman soon or his body would take control of his will. As he seared the image into his memory, Ilmena pretended to be disgusted by his look, but a triumphant gleam flashed in her eyes.
Hadjar pulled the rope forward with such force that he nearly made the girl fall into the sand. She stumbled but was able to maintain her balance.
“I offer an exchange: three liters of water for this demoness! One liter for each of her holes.”
His words disgusted Ilmena, and Hadjar hated saying them just as much.
“Maybe we can sew one of yours shut and give you a liter less?”
“Two and a half?” Hadjar pleaded with an expertly faked whine.
“Two and not a drop more.”
Hadjar pretended to think about the proposal and then shook his head in mock dismay.
“I won’t need this diamond if I die of thirst,” he sighed and pulled Ilmena forward again. “Two liters and she’ll be all yours.”
Someone laughed on the other side of the gate, then Hadjar heard rapid footsteps and a creak. When a tall, bald man stepped forward holding a shield and a classic sword in his hands, it seemed to Hadjar like the very ground had moved. Or maybe lightning had struck him and run through his every nerve, almost scorching his soul.
What were the odds?
“You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?” the bandit asked in Lidish.
Were the gods messing with him again?
“Or maybe you’re just stupid enough to think that we’ll trade with you.”
The blade in the bandit’s hand flashed with green energy, but even before that, Hadjar smiled and grabbed his own sword.
It was truly unbelievable: after almost twelve years, and in a foreign country no less, under the scorching sun of the sands, he’d come across Brom, one of the people he’d wanted to kill for a long time now.
Chapter 275
Realizing that the plan had gone sideways, Ilmena freed her wrists from the seemingly complicated knot. It wasn’t immediately obvious from what folds of her pants she’d taken out her two daggers. Scarlet eagle wings flashed into being behind her and, almost shining with sweat, she gracefully soared through the sky and charged past the open gate leading to the bandits’ camp.
A battle was raging inside. Hadjar heard people screaming and trying to scratch their own eyes out. Shakh’s Sand Dogs were tormenting them, appearing from out of nowhere and cutting the bandits with their tongue-daggers.
A dark flower blossomed. It spun, swaying in an invisible wind. Every drop of the nectar falling from its petals was a powerful blow of Einen’s staff.
Spotting that unfamiliar Technique, Hadjar had to admit that Einen had been telling the truth when he’d said that he hadn’t used all his skills in their spar.
“How many of you are there?” Brom growled, moving his sword forward.
“Enough,” Hadjar answered.
He remembered the past: almost twelve years ago, this drunken mercenary had been traveling with the freak show and had tortured him mercilessly. Every evening, he had made the boy suffer because he was unhappy with his own life.
The crip
pled Hadjar hadn’t been able to do anything to stop him. Maybe Brom would’ve even killed him if Senta, the mistress of the brothel, hadn’t visited their show one evening. Years had passed and, gods as his witnesses, Hadjar was ready to offer them a grateful sacrifice for this unexpected gift.
“You’ll die first!” The former mercenary roared out.
Life had not been kind to him: terrible, ragged scars covered his arms; an awful, ugly wound was visible across his left eye; three more scars in addition to that had made a mess of his face. Finding him here meant Brom had run from something, but Hadjar didn’t care how the gods had brought them together again.
Brom jumped up like a hare. He tucked his arms and legs in, as if about to dive into the water, and covered his body with his shield. He was trying to protect himself from a possible attack at the moment when he couldn’t dodge.
Hadjar stood still, calm like a mountain before the start of a wild storm.
Putting all his weight into it as he fell back down, the mercenary swung his sword. A cloud of emerald light slid off his blade, turning into a cannonball that tried to pierce Hadjar’s chest. The Technique struck with such power that the ground cracked and the sand seemed to roil like ocean waves.
Hadjar stared into Brom’s eyes. The bandit was celebrating his quick victory already. He was convinced Hadjar was just a common warrior who, perhaps, had been sent by Kurkhadan authorities to deal with the bandits. What could such a weak boy do to him? He wouldn’t even need to really try...
A heavy roar swept through the sky. The battle froze for a moment. Everyone felt two monstrous, terrifying eyes sizing them up like meat. It was as if death itself, assuming the form of a vicious monster, had crept up behind them and was already preparing to take their lives. Some, the most weak-willed there, even turned around.
When Brom landed on the sand, he no longer saw his opponent as an amusing insect to be crushed. Assuming a low stance, he placed his shield in front of him and put his sword atop it. He was preparing not to attack his foe, but to defend himself, to fight for his very life.
Dragon Heart: Sea of Sand. LitRPG Wuxia Series: Book 4 Page 9