by Garry Spoor
“If that’s true, we don’t stand a chance,” Tullner said.
“How long do we have?” Jax asked.
“Not long,” Kile replied. “I’m afraid the information could be hours old by the now.”
“Understood,” Jax said with a heavy sigh. He ran his fingers through his hair and stared up at the sky for a few moments. Was he praying, Kile wondered? She had never been very religious herself, but it seemed appropriate at the moment.
“Raf, take a couple of men, get down to Sumsor, let him know what is happening. Tell him to get his gear together and get the wounded up here as quickly as possible. Tullner, along here, there used to be a large meeting hall. Get some men, clear out the debris, and see if you can gain access to it. We can place the wounded in there if it’s still usable, it may even be our last line of defense.”
Tullner was already gathering soldiers together before Jax even finished giving the young man his orders.
“He’ll make a good officer someday,” he added with a grin.
“Let’s hope so,” Kile replied.
“How reliable is this information?”
“I can’t see any reason Bakara would lie to me, assuming Lindear actually sent him.”
“Lindear? Who’s Lindear?”
“Oh… Lindear. She was an old vulture I met in the wastelands last year.”
“Of course she was.”
-Something bothering you?-
Grim asked as they stared out at the valrik who still waited.
The smoke was finally lifting, and the day was upon them. They could see the enemy as they filled the Cliff Road from one side to the other, and still they waited. More men were pulled from the wall to help clear out the old meeting hall which Tullner uncovered. The floor sloped badly, and the far wall was a pile of rubble, but it was better than nothing. The wounded were already starting to fill up the corners and Sumsor was not too happy with his change of address. He made sure to let Jax know about it. All the while the enemy waited.
“What are they waiting for?” Kile asked.
-As you said, they are waiting for the second force to arrive.-
“But how do they know?”
There was no way, she could think of, for the valrik to send information to the second army, which was now marching on Moran, or what was left of Moran. Information sent through Marcin’s Pass would take too long, and she personally made sure the skies were clear of any birds which could carry messages. Although, it wasn’t like the valrik would use birds since no bird would be used by them. The only things flying were the ravens, and they kept a watchful eye on the progress of the second army.
-Do you suppose they have some of those… mystics among them?-
Grim suggested.
“I suppose, it is possible, but I really can’t see it. The mystics refused to get involved.”
-Not all mystics-
A raven circled once around her before she extended her arm for him to use as a perch. He landed on it rather gracefully, digging his claws into the old cloth she wrapped around it for protection. It only took one raven landing on her exposed arm before she decided to use the cloth.
“Show me.” She said, looking into the raven’s eyes, and she was flying again.
The trip wasn’t very far. The valrik were a lot closer than where the last raven placed them. They were moving faster than she anticipated. It wouldn’t be long before they were spotted by the lookout on the east wall.
When the vision ended, the raven took flight. He would fly the same route he had already flown and return to her with updated information. She had several routes which extended farther and farther east and several ravens on each route. It was a rather efficient means of keeping the information up to date. They were not only watching the advancing valrik army, but were also keeping an eye out for reinforcements, if they should come.
She turned Grim toward the last barricade, where Captain Jax moved his headquarters.
“What’s the update?” he asked.
“Latest report shows the valrik forces are still about an hour out. We should be hearing from the watch soon.”
Jax closed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair. He looked exhausted. “They’re moving a lot faster than I had hoped for,” he said.
“Will the east gates hold?” she asked.
“Hardly,” he replied. “The east gate was never meant to hold against an invading force. I guess the architect never thought there would be much danger coming from that direction.”
“It’s not like anyone ever expects to be attacked from their own homeland,” Raf added.
“It’s too wide to defend anyhow,” Sandson replied. “If we try to defend the wall, we’ll be spreading our forces too thin.”
“So what? That’s it. We’re giving up?” Tullner asked, looking at each one of them.
Kile kind of felt sorry for him. He had never asked to be here, but then again, none of them did.
“Nobody is giving up,” Jax said, gripping the young man’s shoulder. “We’ll fight them to their last saladog if that’s what it takes, mark my words.”
“Saladogs,” Kile exclaimed.
“Where?” Raf shouted, grabbing for his pike, which clattered to the ground.
“Saladogs, that’s how they’re communicating. They must be using the saladogs.”
“What are you on about?” Jax asked.
“The saladogs aren’t of this world, not really anyway. There’s a connection between them, that’s why I keep losing myself in them, because their minds are linked.”
“I don’t follow.” Jax said, shaking his head.
“That’s all right, neither do I,” Kile replied. “The point is, if I can prevent them from communicating, maybe we can upset their plans. If the western force doesn’t know the eastern force has arrived, they may not attack.”
“That will at least give us a shot at reducing the eastern force.” Jax replied. “We can take every third man off the barricade and reinforce the wall.”
“You can’t,” Tullner shouted at Kile. “You know what will happen if you try to do… well, whatever it is that you do.”
-The kid’s right. You’re going to go loopy again if you try to tangle with those things.-
Grim added.
“Maybe not. Not if the dogs are with me.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Tullner replied.
“Son, it’s no more dangerous than what we’re all about to face,” Jax added.
Kile made herself comfortable in the back of the wagon while the dogs set up a perimeter around her. It wasn’t exactly the most convenient place, but it was better than sitting in the middle of the courtyard. The last thing she needed was to be run over by the battle.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Tullner asked, for what had to be the eleventh time. At first it was endearing, now it was just getting annoying.
“There’s no more time to discuss it,” she said. “By all accounts, they should be in view of the watch shortly.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Tullner added.
Why start now, she thought, closing her eyes and falling into her Edge.
She wasn’t sure how this was going to work or what she could accomplish. She needed to cause as many problems with the valrik communications as possible, and if there was one thing she excelled at, it was causing problems.
Her first priority was to establish connections with the hounds, making sure her safety net was well in place and well grounded. She felt their concerns, and with each connection she made, she felt more in control.
Letting her mind wander, she stretched out her consciousness. Turning it to the east, were the Callor soldiers were prepared for the assault on the gatehouse. Although she could feel their presence, they were only ghosts to her. They were there, she knew they were there, but they had no substance. They were just memories. The dogs, however, were like glowing beacons which seemed to recognize her and acknowledge her when her mind passed thro
ugh theirs.
Stretching her consciousness, even further, she began to sense more living things. There were rats in the fallen places of Moran and the birds still filled the skies. There was a black fox on the far side of the wall as well as two badgers a few dozen squirrels and a sleeping possum, who had no regard for what was going on outside his hole.
Turning her mind from the natural world, she looked into the shadows and that’s when she saw it, the Maligar. It was all around her, a living, breathing form of darkness. It touched every mind and every life, as if it was searching for something, or someone. It was there, and yet it wasn’t. It had form, but no shape. It existed, not only in the natural realm, but in the mortal world, and realms beyond those. A black mass which blotted out the sky, looming over the outpost, its dark tendrils stretch both east and west. The saladogs, the reptilian wolves, whatever they were, they were a part of it, like black smudges on the landscape.
This was so much beyond anything she could ever image. How was she supposed to go up against something like that? Where would she start? A head-on attack was out of the question. Even with her mind anchored to the hounds around her, she would lose herself to the darkness. Her mind and her psyche would be absorbed before she had a chance to make a difference.
She turned her attention to those smudges, the saladogs. They could be the weak links. And they were the only chance she had. It would have to be a hit and run. Poke the saladog’s mind and keep moving. It wouldn’t do for her to engage them. That would be futile.
Concentrating on the nearest one, she reached out to it, trying to break down its will and control it. But the saladogs were not wholly of the natural world like the Maligar they served. She could only grasp a small portion of its mind, and as their consciousness merged, her head was filled with visions of dark places and distant times, with temples and forests long since forgotten. She couldn’t risk going any deeper and threw her command into its mind as fast and as hard as she could, before pulling out. It was a single word, but with any word, in the natural world, it was filled with meaning.
Pulling away, she felt the long black tendril, which connected the saladog to the darkness, break. It was free, but it could never truly be free. She understood, from the brief moment of their joining, the saladog wasn’t being controlled by the Maligar, but was a physical part of it. She wasn’t sure how it was possible, or what it meant, or how she even came to understand it, she only knew it was true.
Free from the Maligar, the saladogs was mindless and uncontrollable. It did the only thing it knew how to do, and that was to kill. It quickly turned on its valrik handlers. Kile couldn’t see what was happening, what it was doing, but she knew. The raw emotion of the saladog poisoned the world around it. It was not what she wanted. But what choice did she have?
The second saladog, or Valgar, was easier. It didn’t take nearly as long to break down its will and merge with it. Within the dark recesses of its mind, she once again saw the long abandoned temple, deep in some unnamed jungle, but this time, she was allowed to see the interior. A room of immense size with a deep well in the center and writing, which she could not read, nor identify, scribbled around the outer walls. She tried to translate it, to understand it, but the more she strained, the darker it became.
-KEEP IT TOGETHER-
Grim’s voice filled her head, bringing her back to her senses. She almost let herself be sucked into the darkness again. It was all she could do to throw her single word command into the Valgar’s mind before breaking the connection.
Now there were two of them running amok. Was it enough, she wondered? She wasn’t sure if she could do it again, what with barely getting out the last time, but what else could she do? She needed to buy Jax, and his men, as much time as possible.
Searching the horizon, she picked out a third black smudge and was about to merge with it when, what appeared to be a streak of light, flew past her. That was something new. Whatever it was, it was heading directly for the outpost. She watched as the light flew up and over the wall, and then another one followed it and then a third. There were two more moving across the landscape, and one nearly ran her down. Of course, that might not have actually been possible, since she wasn’t really there to begin with, but it passed through her consciousness, and when it did, she caught the faint scent of lavender.
They were all heading toward outpost. Whatever they were, and what their purpose was, the soldiers would have to deal with them. She had the Valgar to contend with. She couldn’t let herself become distracted again.
Kile turned her attention back to the black smudge, but it was gone, and so were all the other life forces. The landscape was unnaturally barren and dark. The shadows began to close in on her. The Maligar had found her. She wasn’t exactly trying to hide from it. Unfortunately, it never occurred to her, it would try to defend itself.
The sticky black strands of the Maligar reached out, wrapping themselves around her and entangling her. There was no place she could go, no place she could hide. She tried to break free, but it was no use, they were pulling her toward the darkness, pulling her toward the laughter, and away from her own reality.
The more she resisted, the more tangled she became. The Maligar was too strong for her here. She got careless. She somehow wandered into its domain, if that was even possible. She could feel her grasp on her sanity, slipping away. She needed to protect her identity, to regain connection to reality. Reaching out to the dogs, which surrounded the wagon, she found only silence. There was an empty void where their minds once existed. She lost her anchor, her safety net. Something was happening back in Moran, and she was helpless to stop it. She reached out for anything she could connect with, but there was nothing, or almost nothing.
-Kile-
“Vesper?”
The voice was soft, barely above a whisper, but it was enough. As long as she could hold on to it, as long as she could keep remembering who she was, she couldn’t be absorbed into the darkness completely. It was one tether, one line which kept her grounded in reality, until the second voice came.
-Don’t you dare leave me here alone with these damn vir.-
Grim’s voice was so powerful she almost laughed out loud, and she probably did, but the sound fell into the darkness.
Then the other voices came, the ones she didn’t realize she connected to. The rats in Moran, the red shouldered hawks, the black hoofed deer, the ravens, the badgers, the black fox, the squirrels, even the sleeping possum, which was now wide awake. She felt them, she heard them, and now she was connected to them. Finally the dogs returned. She wasn’t sure where they ran off to, but she was glad they came back. With so many lines, so many connections, she was able to pull herself free of the Maligar, snapping back into her own mind.
Her psyche was stretched thin and her head was spinning as her identity came crashing down on her. She barely opened her eyes, when the wagon she was lying in was struck from the side and the sound of battle rang in her ears.
“About time you woke up, Hunter.”
Kile quickly sat up, which was a mistake as the world began to spin and she had close her eyes for a moment, until it stopped.
“Do you always sleep in the middle of a battle?” The woman asked.
She was standing beside the wagon with her sword drawn. She seemed out of breath. Her hair may have been longer and her clothes a bit tattered, but there was no mistaken who she was.
“When did you get here? How did you get here?” Kile ask
Turning, Erin looked at her.
“I may not do it much, but I can still wind-run with the best of them,” she said, jumping up onto the wagon. She extended a hand to Kile, who was at first reluctant to accept it, for fear this was some kind of illusion.
“You found her.”
A young man called out, running up to the wagon’s side.
“Steele, is that you?” Kile asked.
“The one and only,” Steele said with that same flirtatious grin. “We heard you migh
t need a hand.”
“We, who’s we?” she asked.
“I’m afraid there are only six of us at the moment.” Erin replied. “But the rest aren’t far behind.”
“We weren’t even sure if we could get past the valrik, even with our Edge.” Steele added. “We only managed to slip through when those funny dogs turned on one another.”
“Heads up guys. Second wave coming in.” A young man called out from behind Steele. He had short blonde hair sticking out from under a bandage which was tightly wrapped around his head. He looked at Kile and smiled.
“Long time, no see,” he added.
“I know you?” she asked.
“You should. We were at the Academy together, although… I can understand why you wouldn’t want to remember me. I kind of gave you a hard time.”
“Lionora.”
“Figures you’d remember my horse’s name before mine,” He laughed
“I’m sorry. It’s just that…”
“No time for reminiscing.” Erin said, stepping between them. “We have to hold off the valrik, give Captain Jax time to clean up the eastern gate so Folkstaff can get through.”
Kile jumped down from the wagon. Steele gabbed her when she stumbled.
“You sure you’re all right?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m sure. It usually takes a few moments to get my bearings.”
“Okay, but… what about your eyes?”
“What about my eyes?”
“They’re, well… a bit… scary looking.”
“Oh, are they still stuck? I thought I got that cleared up.” She replied “Nothing I can do about it at the moment.”
Kile looked around the field and was a bit unnerved by what she discovered. Twelve hounds of Moran, and six Callor soldiers, lay dead beside the wagon. There were also several valrik and three reptilian wolves. It would appear the valrik sought her out and the dogs defended her with their lives. Did she actually cause that much of a disturbance with her Edge, they felt the need to stop her? She knelt down beside one of the dogs, stroking it gently.
It just didn’t seem fair. War didn’t seem fair. The dogs never wanted this war, it wasn’t their fight, and yet they were willing to die to defend her. Did the valrik want this war? They seem to blindly follow their leader into battle with no real thought of their own safety. The men of Moran certainly didn’t want this war. It came to their front door uninvited.