The words meant nothing. The only thing she realized was the hand had gone from her face, and the brutal pain was slowly ebbing. Gentler hands gripped her arms and lifted her to her feet. She felt her body moving, but she could do nothing to help. She could find no strength left in her muscles. Her aching head lolled forward, and she watched as a line of filthy, pathetic looking men were led into the court. She could not see well enough to recognize any of them.
The Tarmaks shouted an order, and the two groups of prisoners were herded into the ancient storehouse.
Linsha staggered as best she could between the two Legionnaires who helped her, but as soon as they reached the shade of their prison, her legs buckled and she could not stand. Dizziness overwhelmed her. She had a vague feeling she was being laid down on cold stone, but she didn’t care. She was lying down and didn’t have to move.
The pain and dizziness eased just a little. Someone put a folded cloth under her head, and she to rolled her side, curled into a ball, and wept.
8
Night in the Wadi
By the time night returned to Scorpion Wadi, the silence had been replaced by the sounds of scavengers. Vultures, magpies, crows, wild dogs, jackals, and an old lion too lame to kill his own food had found their way to the Wadi and the ample supply of decaying bodies. When darkness came, the birds settled on nearby roosts to wait for the sun and another chance to feed, while the ants, the carrion beetles, the lion, and the wild dogs helped themselves. Their snarls, yaps, and growls jarred the quiet of the canyon.
A particularly loud ruckus between the aged lion and a small pack of dogs erupted near midnight near the smoldering ruins of the camp. The noise bounced from the canyon walls and reverberated into the caves where many of the dead lay. Faint echoes of the barking and roaring reached deep into several caves and finally found the ears of a small girl. Shaking with fear, she reached out in the intense darkness and clutched the arm of her companion.
He came awake with a start, his hand automatically fumbling for his sword. Only when his fingers touched the empty space at his side where his belt usually hung did his memories come hack of the nightmare. The slaughter. The pain in his side.
“Oh, dear gods,” he groaned. He pushed his back up against the rock wall until he was sitting up, then he gathered the small girl close. “What is it? What’s wrong, Amania?”
She whimpered something and pushed herself deeper into his arms. “Sir Hugh,” she whispered. “There’s things out there.”
He listened to the distant sounds long enough to recognize them and realized it was time to go. Still holding the girl, he leaned over and felt for the third person in the crevice. “Fellion, wake up,” he hissed.
The Knight he called moaned and sagged toward him. “Hugh, fetch me an ale. There’s a good fellow.”
Sir Hugh wished he could oblige. He couldn’t think of anything that sounded better to his parched throat. But they’d have to settle for water, if they could find it.
“Let’s go.”
“Go?” Sir Fellion boomed. “Go where? I want an ale.”
His voice rang in the narrow space and startled the girl. She cowered back, her small body trembling in fear.
Sir Hugh held her close as he reached his hand out in the blackness and found his friend’s arm. He touched the sling that supported the broken arm close to Fellion’s body and the bandages that covered the skin torn by the bad break. That break worried him. A mystic healer in the camp had tried to mend the bone, but his power failed him, and he had been forced to use the crudest poultices and rough splints. Sir Fellion had been healing well enough the past few days, until he’d taken a heavy fall on his arm during their frantic escape into the depths of the cave. There was no telling what further damage had been done. Hugh’s fingers traveled up Fellion’s shoulder and found the man’s bare neck. He winced when the heat of Fellion’s skin registered on his fingertips. The young man was burning with a fever.
Hugh knew he could not leave the girl or the man alone in the cave. The girl was too terrified, and Fellion was delirious. Mindful of his own wound, he climbed over Fellion’s legs and, with Amania’s help, he hefted the Knight to his feet and led him out of the crevice where they had sought refuge. Taking both by the hand, he guided them through the narrow, twisting passage that returned to the main cavern. He had to feel his way out with his feet and his elbows, and twice he slammed his shins against sharp protrusions of rock.
When they reached the front cave that opened out to the Wadi, Hugh halted to listen and to catch his breath. The animal sounds of fighting had ended, and now all he heard was the rustle of carrion beetles and an occasional distant yap. About thirty feet away he could just make out the cave entrance, filled with a misty moonlight. He wanted to light a lamp, a candle, a torch, something that would help him find his way through. The sleepers in this cave had been awakened by the sounds of fighting in the camp and put up a ferocious defense when the Tarmaks slipped in to attack them. There were numerous bodies stretched over the stony floor amid scattered blankets and belongings.
Yes, a light would be handy, but somewhere in this bloody carnage lay Amania’s mother and brother, and Hugh could not subject the little girl to that scene. He lifted the girl into his arms, gripped Fellion’s elbow, and began a slow, careful shuffle toward the faint light that glimmered through the cave opening. Amania buried her face in his shoulder. Fellion muttered feverishly to himself and stumbled alongside.
They managed to make it outside without falling over a corpse or stepping on body parts, and Hugh breathed a sigh when they finally left the cave behind. After the intense darkness of the underground passages, the pale moonlight seemed as bright as day. He cast a wary look around at the busy scavengers and at the empty camp in case the Tarmaks had left a guard. At last he helped Fellion to a seat on a nearby rock. He paused a moment himself to get his strength back. Sir Hugh was a compact man, athletic and well-muscled, but he was wounded and thirsty and already exhausted from his exertions.
“I’ve got to find some water,” he said softly to Amania. “Will you stay with Sir Fellion and watch him until I come back?”
In earlier days, Amania would have obeyed and done her best to help her friend, Sir Hugh. But not this night. She was only seven, and she had suffered through a horrendous nightmare. She would not let go of the one familiar and living person she had left. She wrapped her arms tighter around his neck and whimpered.
Hugh knew how she felt. In spite of the pain in his side, he continued to hold her, and taking Fellion’s sound arm again, he led the feverish Knight down the trail to one of the camp’s wells.
There were only two wells in the big camp, both dug into the lowest depressions of the ancient river bed. They tended to be muddy and yielded barely enough water to supply the basic needs of the population. But they were certainly better than nothing.
As soon as Hugh reached the closest well, he let go of Fellion, pulled off the cover, and reached for the bucket to lower into the well shaft.
“The well’s been poisoned,” a voice said out of the darkness.
Both Knights jerked at the unexpected words. Hugh whirled into the shadows, putting the cliff wall to his back. His eyes searched the path and the rocks around him.
Fellion laughed. “Fill ’em up again, boys!” he shouted, and he waved an imaginary mug. “Hugh! Dammit, where’s that ale?”
There was a long silence, then, “Sir Hugh? Is that you?” the strange voice called.
This time, Hugh thought he recognized the speaker. Her voice was lower than normal and husky, affected no doubt by shock, caution, or grief.
“Mariana?” he called and stepped out into the moonlight again.
Five forms clambered out of the rocks and surrounded the three survivors. Hugh heard familiar voices talking and questioning. The newcomers touched him as if to reassure themselves and him that he was all right. Others took Fellion and gave him water from a skin.
A tall, lean figure came
to Hugh. She pulled off her helmet, revealing a head of pale silvery hair cut short. The long braids she had worn before the war were gone, hacked off in a gesture of defiance and grief.
He grinned a weak semblance of a smile. “Captain, glad I am to see you.”
The half-elf nodded once, and Hugh thought he saw moonlight glitter on a rivulet of tears on her cheeks. She helped him sit and pressed a waterskin into his hands. Using the lure of water, she encouraged Amania to let go of his neck and sit beside him.
The militia captain studied them both in the dim light and shook her pale head. “I have seen this camp. How did you three survive?”
Hugh could only shrug. He tried to explain. “I still don’t know. I was sitting up with Fellion when I heard Sir Remmik yell something. I thought he was shouting at a guard or a dog or something. A few moments passed, then all chaos broke loose. It was dark in the cave.” He shuddered, remembering the shrieks and the panic in the darkness. “Amania came to me. She couldn’t stop screaming. Fellion tried to help me. A Tarmak attacked us. He drove us back… his sword slashed me… Fellion and I killed…Amania pulled us back into a passage. We fled…” His voice faltered and failed to silence. He could feel tears running down his cheeks and could do nothing to stop them. He buried his face in his hands.
Mariana sat and watched wordlessly to allow him time to regain his composure.
Fiercely he wiped his eyes on his sleeve and took another long swallow of water. “Thanks,” he said with a thick voice. “How did you know we were here?”
“We didn’t. Varia found us and told us about the massacre. We came to see for ourselves. Some of my men-” she gestured to the militia men helping Fellion- “have friends and family here.”
“Is anyone else still alive?”
“None but you so far. We found General Dockett by the Post.” Her voice remained cool and contained-too much so, Hugh thought-as she said, “We found his head jammed on a stake. Vultures have been at it.”
“What about Knight Commander Remmik? Or Falaius?”
She repeated everything Varia had told her about the Solamnic prisoners and the absence of the Legion commander. Thus far her patrol had not found Falaius either.
“That’s odd,” Sir Hugh murmured.
Mariana left him by the well with Amania, Sir Fellion, and one of her men with strict orders not to touch the water from the well. The Tarmaks, in their efforts to destroy everything useable to the defenders, had poisoned both wells. While the men tended Fellion and treated Sir Hugh’s slash wound, the rest of the patrol finished their search of the caves and the canyon.
They came back tightlipped and silent. No one else was with them “We will have to come back and bury them,” one soldier said in a voice wracked with pain. He clutched a light-colored hair scarf often worn by women.
Sir Hugh shook his head. “Seal them in the caves,” he suggested. “There aren’t enough of us left to bury them all.”
“We were lucky to get in here tonight,” snapped the captain. “The Tarmaks may decide to post a watch to catch a burial detail. We’ll have to leave them for now.”
A misty hint of light edged the eastern horizon, and the late moon dropped toward its rest. Mariana eyed the sky and ordered her charges to move. The militia, what was left of it, was gathering at Sinking Wells miles to the east. She wanted her patrol out of the canyon and out of sight of any Tarmak hunters.
Reluctantly they gathered what little they could of anything salvageable and constructed a litter for Fellion. They left the Wadi at the mouth’s entrance. As soon as they were gone, the wild dogs and the old lion slunk out of their hiding places and resumed their feeding.
9
The Brute Prison
Linsha came awake abruptly. From only a few feet away a bony face stared down its aristocratic nose at her. Shadows cast from the torchlight outside their prison lay in sharp relief along the edges of its features. The steely gray eyes stared at a point somewhere beyond her left cheek as if their owner could not bear to look her in the eye.
“Your friend is back,” Sir Remmik said in a curt tone. “You may want to take a look at him.”
Having done what he felt was necessary, Remmik withdrew, leaving her lying in confusion.
Her mind, still drugged with sleep, did not grasp his meaning right away. Her friend? Which friend? She opened her mouth and tasted the acrid aftertaste of the general’s magic. Gods, how did he do that? Even worse she felt a stinging sensation on her neck where the gold chain had cut into her skin. Her hand flew unbidden to her throat. She touched the empty space where the scales had hung and felt the bloody weal on the back of her neck. The scales were gone.
She felt as though the Tarmak had ripped away the only connection she had left with both dragons. What was left felt like a gaping raw hole in her heart. She would have curled back into a ball and tried to escape back into sleep again, except Sir Remmik’s words resurfaced in her groggy memory. Her friend was back. What friend? Then another bit of memory returned, and she sat up and looked around.
Lanther lay close to the barred doors where the guards had dumped him, sprawled on his back and still as death. No one else moved to help him because most were sleeping the sleep of the mentally and physically exhausted, and apparently Sir Remmik did not want to be bothered any further.
Careful of her aching head, Linsha rolled to her hands and knees and crawled to the Legionnaire’s side. He didn’t move when she checked his pulse, but she felt his heartbeat slow and steady under his jaw. The man had a constitution of steel. She fetched water from a bucket the Tarmaks had left and bathed his face until he regained consciousness enough to drink some water.
For the next hour or so, she gave him water a little at a time and fed him crumbs of the dry bread their captors had given them as supper. Eventually he fell asleep with his head in her lap. She didn’t mind. The night was quite chilly, and her body needed what little warmth he could share.
She sat with her back against the old wall and listened to him breathe. At least he was still alive and here with her, not lying in the blood-drenched caves or out in the garden with arrows in his back. That was something.
For a while she watched him sleep. When sleep did not return to her, she watched the Tarmak guards pass by the doors of the prison on their rounds. She timed them as they walked by the doors, and she paid close attention when they changed the guards sometime around midnight. But soon that palled, too, and it wasn’t long after the guards resumed their stations that her mind began to wander. Although she wanted to shy away from it, she finally let her thoughts pick through the tales the Knights had told her of the massacre in Scorpion Wadi. Sir Remmik had said nothing of the catastrophe, hut several of the younger ones, Sir Johand and Sir Pieter, had talked with the horror still fresh on their faces.
She asked about Sir Hugh, General Dockett, Falaius and others, but the only death they knew for certain was the general’s, for they had seen his head on the stake staring down on them as they marched past.
The entire camp.
Even now Linsha could hardly comprehend it. The Tarmaks had barely waited for the dust of Crucible’s departure to settle before they attacked. They had probably had the attack planned and the warriors ready to go. They’d only waited for the dragon to leave. Someone must have told them, Linsha decided. Unless the Tarmaks had a spy in the camp, they would not have known so quickly that Crucible had left the Plains. Certainly they could have seen him flying the evening he departed, but without better information, they would not realize he had returned to Sanction.
The idea of a spy in their midst burned in Linsha’s mind. She had suspected it before, during the battle for the city, and the Tarmak general had admitted as much to her in his tent the night before the fight with Thunder. She had told Falaius and General Dockett about her suspicions, but they had been unable to ferret out any possible suspects. She wondered if the spy had lain low while Crucible was in the south and immediately reported to the Tarmaks
the moment the dragon disappeared. Or perhaps this informer was very clever. Perhaps he or she had been able to pass on information about the militia, the Wadi, the leaders, the gods knew what else, and still avoid detection. That would help explain the number of watching posts that had been wiped out and the ease with which the Tarmaks were able to find the sentries around the Wadi and slip in undetected. Simply put, the defenders had been betrayed.
A sound came from the prison doors-a sound so small and insignificant only a person awake and listening could have heard it, a noise that would hardly excite attention in a ruin overrun with lizards and rats. Linsha’s breath stilled. Her eyes sought the source of the sound.
Near the floor where the door met the wall, she spotted a small, round form slip furtively through the bars and come sidling into the dark room. It turned its head as it slowly studied the recumbent forms on the floor, and as the creature looked toward her, Linsha saw round creamy eye circles catch the light from the torch just outside.
Linsha and Varia recognized each other at the same moment. The owl’s “ear” feathers popped up, and she scurried over on her stubby legs to where Linsha extended her arm in greeting. Varia joyfully climbed up to Linsha’s shoulder. Murmuring softly, the two friends shared a quiet and delighted reunion.
“You are hurt,” Varia whispered. “There are clouds of blue and purple in your aura.”
Like some human mystics, Varia had the ability to translate the invisible aura radiated by most living beings. Linsha could also read auras, but she had to focus her mystic power of the heart in order to do so, and that magic had almost failed her.
She grimaced and leaned her head back against the wall. “The Tarmak general took my scales,” she said softly, voicing her greatest personal hurt.
The owl bobbed her head. “He used sorcery, too. I can sense it.”
Linsha nodded. Her mind was so tired that her thoughts slowly surfaced like random bubbles in a muddy swamp. “I don’t know where he gets his power. It is strong and seems unaffected by the problems our sorcerers are having. I didn’t think the Tarmaks had magic-wielders.”
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