“I told you he would be alive,” Fisher shouted joyfully.
Marak’s eyes flew open, and he saw the Khadoran spy flanked by Gunta and Halman. The three faces grinned back at him as the Khadorans raced forward to stand before the Torak.
“You did it,” smiled Gunta. “You defeated the Motangans.”
“Not that we ever had any doubts,” Halman added quickly.
“We have had a great victory,” Marak replied softly, “but the war is not over. Fighting still awaits us in Fakara.”
“The Khadorans are going into Fakara?” asked Gunta.
“I cannot ask the Khadorans to go to war in Fakara,” declared the Torak. “They have already suffered much, and they have a country to rebuild, but we are going.”
“You have but to ask them,” frowned Fisher. “They will deny you nothing.”
“Their loyalty warms my heart,” Marak smiled tautly, “but it is their faith in Kaltara that I seek, not their desire to make me a deity. I will leave their actions up to their own hearts.”
“As you should,” King Avalar smiled as he walked towards the group with his daughter by his side. “You may urge a people to war, but it is worthless unless victory is in their own hearts.”
“Which is why the elves will be going to Fakara with you,” grinned Princess Alastasia.
“That pleases me greatly,” smiled the Torak. “The elves are always welcome wherever I may be. From the air I witnessed the results to those who would stand before the elves in battle. You make a formidable foe.”
“From what I have seen of this roadway of death on my way here,” replied King Avalar, “the Motangans had many formidable foes in this battle. The Chula are already forming ranks to head to Fakara, as are my people. You have no need to even ask them. We who travel by foot need the head start. The Chula and the elves will meet you on the other side of the Fortung Mountains.”
“You have spoken to the Chula?” Marak asked with surprise.
“Tmundo and Ukaro were searching for survivors as we passed by,” nodded the king of the elves. “I introduced myself. We agreed to travel to Fakara together.”
“Then you both will travel in good company,” grinned the Torak. “I will return to the berm and inform the Lords’ Council of my destination. Perhaps some of them will choose to join me.”
Emperor Marak nodded to the elves and turned his horse around. King Avalar and Princess Alastasia watched as the Torak rode northward, his three shadows on foot hurrying to keep up.
“He impresses me each time we meet,” King Avalar said softly as he turned to head back to his people.
“He has that effect on everyone,” smiled the princess. “I will not be surprised to find out that the entire Khadoran nation has followed him over the Fortung Mountains.”
“I agree,” smiled Avalar, “but they still have much work to do here burying the dead. Let us get our people moving to the next battlefield.”
The elves walked southward to join their people. They were unaware that their words had been overheard. Moments later a tall, stony creature slid out of the forest. Deep black eyes scanned the road in each direction before the demon bent over and picked up the head of Premer Shamal. The demon hissed and spat on the road, smoke rising from the acidic saliva as it ate into the surface of the road. The creature slid back into the trees and disappeared.
* * *
Smoke billowed upward over the foothills of the Fakaran mountains, creating a stain in the flawless blue sky. Xavo looked up at the smoke and frowned.
“Our position is too clearly marked,” he declared. “It is time to move on before the tribes come to investigate.”
“And where will we find the next caravan?” asked Lady Mystic as she gazed at the charred remains of twelve wagons.
Xavo blinked and stared at the corpses littering the road around the wagons. “There will be no more caravans,” he finally replied. “I took count of the wagons when we were in Meliban. The Motangans have no more to send.”
“They could build more wagons,” offered Lady Mystic.
“They could,” agreed Xavo, “but we are not going to sit idle and wait for them to do so. Besides, I do not think they would build more wagons without discovering what happened to the old ones first.”
“Then we are to ambush their soldiers coming to investigate the reason for the wagons not returning?” questioned Vand’s daughter.
“No,” Xavo sighed heavily. “There is no point in putting ourselves between the tribes and the Motangans. The time has come for us to go to Vandegar.”
“Surely my father will have learned of our treason by now,” balked Lady Mystic. “Going to Vandegar is not the brightest suggestion you have ever made. We will never get close to Vand.”
“Perhaps not,” shrugged Xavo, “but it is our destiny, or at least mine.”
“Your destiny is mine,” Lady Mystic smiled thinly. “If Vandegar is where you must go, I will go with you, but I want you to be aware of what awaits us there.”
“The same thing that has awaited us wherever we went,” replied Xavo. “We have cheated death quite a few times already. Why let potential consequences disturb us now?”
“Just because one successfully cheats death,” frowned Lady Mystic, “is not an excuse to keep tempting it. We could just forget this war and escape to someplace where we can live in peace.”
“Can we really?” Xavo shook his head. “Can I really abandon my daughter at the time of her greatest need? Can you walk away from the destruction that your father is foisting upon the world? How can we have an expectation of living in peace while the whole world is dying around us? No, my dear, we cannot flee from this savagery, not while we have any ability to stop it. Do not fool yourself for a single minute. There can be no peace in our hearts until Vand is vanquished.”
“At least you are not going to Vandegar merely to commit suicide,” Lady Mystic smiled weakly. “I will go with you and help you defeat my father, but promise me that you will not throw your life away. Promise me that you will try to give me the life of peace that I desire.”
“Nothing would please me more,” Xavo smiled as he embraced his lover, “but there are no guarantees in life. Vand most certainly will be expecting us. It will be tricky to stay alive long enough to kill him.”
“If we are even capable of killing him,” Lady Mystic warned softly. “There is no mage more powerful than Vand, and he will not be alone in his defense. He will surround himself with the most powerful mages available.”
“No one is indestructible,” replied Xavo as he broke the embrace. “We will head north from here to avoid anyone coming to investigate the smoke. We will also need to take a long, circuitous route to Vandegar to even get close to it without being detected. Come. Time is wasting.”
* * *
The weary Motangan army marched southeast, following Bakhai’s directions. The soldiers were tired and jittery. They had not had a decent night’s sleep in three days. Many of them still scratched welts from the insect attack two nights earlier. Others had been wounded in the fighting the night before when the Fakaran tribes attacked without warning. All of the soldiers were hungry, as no food had been delivered in over a week. The meager rations that were left from previous caravans were guarded jealously by the soldiers assigned to dole them out. There was not a smile on a single one of the two hundred thousand faces.
“The jungle,” General Luggar pointed as he rode alongside Premer Cardijja.
“Just where Bakhai said it would be,” nodded the premer. “Do you still take him for a spy?”
“I don’t know,” sighed the general. “We have had nothing but bad luck since he joined us. Then he miraculously disappeared during the raid on our camp. What else am I to suspect?”
“I imagine that he got scared and ran,” shrugged the premer. “I had promised him protection, but he must have known that I could not provide it. In his place, I might have run, too. As for bad luck pursuing us, the attack of the tribes ha
d nothing to do with luck. It was a well coordinated and planned attack. They knew exactly where we were and chose their moment of attack at our weakest moment.”
“And the insects?” asked the general.
“Bad luck,” shrugged the premer, “but you can hardly lay that at Bakhai’s feet.”
“You miss him, don’t you?” asked the general, his eyebrow rising in sudden understanding.
“I do,” conceded the premer. “He was not a very bright lad, but he was likeable. Plus his knowledge of this strange land was invaluable. I hope he survived the attack of the tribes.”
“You had best not let too many know of your feelings for the lad,” warned the general. “All of the Fakarans are to be exterminated. That will include Bakhai in the end. If you attempt to alter the emperor’s orders to save the lad, your fate will be worse than his.”
“I know the emperor’s orders well,” scowled the premer. “I do not need you to remind me of them.”
“But you don’t agree with them?” questioned the general.
“We have known each other for many years, Luggar,” the premer said as he stared at his friend. “You know me well enough to understand that I favor other methods of defeating an enemy other than killing him. I have voiced my opinions to Tzargo before, so he knows where I stand. I have never understood why we could not just conquer and rule this new land. Why must we destroy it?”
“And how did Tzargo answer?” inquired the general.
“Harshly,” frowned Cardijja. “He threatened to remove me from command if I could not carry out his orders.”
“So we kill everything in our path,” Luggar nodded.
“Indeed,” agreed the premer, “but that does not mean that I have to like it. Even Bakhai will fall before our swords soon enough. I hope that he understands when the time comes.”
“Would you understand if you were in his place?” asked General Luggar.
The premer rode on in silence for a long time as he earnestly considered the question. Finally, he shook his head and sighed.
“I would like to think that I would try to understand,” admitted the premer, “but the truth is that I doubt that I would be able to. What harm would it be to overlook one death in all the thousands that we must kill?”
“Careful, Cardijja,” cautioned the general. “Such thinking will get you killed. Do not even consider such thoughts.”
Premer Cardijja opened his mouth to speak, but he quickly thought better of it. Instead he rode on in silence, staring at the approaching jungle. After a few minutes, he pushed Bakhai from his mind and addressed the general forcefully.
“I want all of the men into the jungle before dark,” ordered Premer Cardijja. “Make sure that the vanguard penetrates deep enough into the jungle to accommodate everyone behind them. Once we are all off of this infernal plain, I want to make camp for the night. Send out scouts to find food, and post a serious watch along the edge of the jungle. Quadruple the normal guard. If a single tribesman is seen on the plain, I want the entire camp to know about it.”
“I will see to it,” promised the general.
Premer Cardijja watched General Luggar ride towards the vanguard to deliver his orders. His mind started to drift to thoughts of Bakhai, and the premer forcefully fought to focus on the jungle instead, but it was a losing battle. What Cardijja had not shared with his friend was that Bakhai reminded the premer of his own son. His son would have been around Bakhai’s age had he not been attacked and killed by a krul gone mad years ago. Tears formed in the corners of the premer’s eyes, and he hastily wiped them away before anyone could notice. The premer knew that he had to snap out of his current thinking. He suddenly wheeled his horse and rode off to perform an inspection of his troops.
Three hours later, the last of the Motangan troops entered the jungle. Two hundred thousand men occupied a wide swath of the jungle and the perimeter guards numbered over ten thousand just to watch the edge of the jungle. General Luggar decided to forego guards on the other three sides of the encampment, as he wanted as many men to rest as possible. Hundreds of scouts were sent deeper into the jungle to forage for food, and many of them returned with roots, berries, and fruit. Encouraged by the findings, Luggar organized groups of soldiers to penetrate even farther into the dense jungle.
The bulk of the soldiers trampled the vegetation at the edge of the jungle as they tried to find places to bed down for the night. Occasionally curses rang out as men were pricked by sharp-leaved plants, or stumbled into a nest of swarming bugs, but as the sky darkened with the coming night, the camp started to settle down peacefully. Little did the Motangans realize that the serenity of the jungle that they had sought as protection from the tribesmen was little more than an illusion of tranquility.
* * *
Far from the edge of the jungle, the foragers delighted in the variety of fruit and berries. They stuffed their mouths as they filled sacks to carry back to the camp for others to enjoy. So intent were they at harvesting the edibles that they failed to hear the soft clicks of the approaching tyriks. One of the tyriks seized a Motangan soldier in its mandibles. His scream of horror and pain tore through the air. The other soldiers in the group spun to see what the problem was. Mouths and eyes widened in terror as they stared at the huge spider. Sacks fell to the ground abandoned, and fruit fell from their hands.
Several of the soldiers drew their swords and moved cautiously forward to help their comrades, but most of the soldiers turned and ran for their lives. They ran without regard of paths, their screams trailing behind them. Some of them rushed into murky bogs that sucked them downward with every movement and struggle. Others ran blindly into huge webs, unable to free themselves or do anything other than shout for help and curse.
Within moments of the appearance of the first tyrik, screams ripped through the jungle from one side of the encampment to the other. The soldiers in the camp who had been bedding down for an early night of rest rose quickly. They stared into the darkness of the jungle and wondered what was happening to their comrades.
Premer Cardijja exited his tent, which sat in a section of the jungle that had been cleared for it. He gazed at the soldiers and listened to the distant screams. Recognizing that his entire army was frozen with fear, he moved quickly to tackle the situation. He strode purposefully towards the nearest tents and commanded the attention of the officers there.
“Get together a group of a thousand men,” ordered the premer. “Take them deeper into the jungle to discover what is happening to the foragers. Report back to me immediately when you find out what is going on.”
Premer Cardijja did not wait for a response from the officer. He turned and walked back towards his tent. Only then did he turn around to make sure that his orders were being carried out. As he watched the officer rally the group of unwilling explorers, General Luggar arrived at the tent.
“Do you know what is going?” asked Luggar.
“I just ordered a thousand men to find out,” replied Cardijja. “The men cannot take another night of sleeplessness.”
“I have ordered sentries for the jungle perimeter,” stated General Luggar. “I had thought that we would not need them tonight.”
“It can’t be another Fakaran attack,” the premer sighed in frustration. “The tribesmen would never give up the element of surprise by attacking a few hundred foragers.”
“Could it be kruls?” asked the general. “They do inhabit the jungles on Motanga.”
“Kruls are not natural beings,” Cardijja shook his head in disgust. “They are animals given human qualities by Vand’s mages. They are despicable creatures, but they do not exist outside of Motanga.”
“I noticed that none were attached to our army,” commented Luggar. “Is there a reason for that?”
“A very good one,” replied the premer. “Neither Shamal nor I would have them in our armies. We convinced Tzargo that the Sakova was the appropriate place for their use. Doralin got stuck with them all, and as we now know,
they did little to help his cause.”
The screams finally stopped, and the jungle grew disturbingly silent. For a long time the camp remained staring into the jungle, but eventually some of the soldiers began to return to their sleeping mats. Slowly, the encampment began to return to normal, and Cardijja sighed with relief. The silence barely lasted half an hour. Screams once again filled the air, and the soldiers were quick to get to their feet and draw their swords. Cardijja cursed under his breath.
“This cannot continue,” scowled the premer. “I will not allow my men to be terrorized.”
“There is little that you can do,” soothed General Luggar. “You can order the men to retire, but you cannot make them fall asleep. Perhaps we should move out of the jungle?”
“Onto the open plains?” balked the premer. “How can you suggest such a thing after last night?”
“At least the Fakarans are an enemy that we can fight,” shrugged the general. “What is in this jungle cannot even be identified.”
“We will identify it,” retorted the premer. “As soon as those thousand men return, we will know what we are up against. All I want is one good night’s sleep for my men, and we will march through this jungle killing everything in it.”
General Luggar did not reply that he thought that sleep was not going to be had by anyone. Instead he remained quiet and waited for the screaming to stop. The screams did start to diminish, and eventually they stopped completely. Premer Cardijja waited for another half an hour for the patrol to return, but no one appeared.
“They are not returning,” General Luggar finally said softly.
“Inconceivable,” snapped the premer. “Who can kill a thousand armed men without showing themselves?”
“I do not mean to disagree with you,” sighed the general, “but there has been ample time for one of those thousand men to report back here.”
“Then I shall send out two thousand,” snarled the premer. “I will know what my army is up against.”
“Make it five thousand,” suggested General Luggar.
“Five thousand men for a patrol?” balked the premer.
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