by Tim Marquitz
Swords and shields at the ready, the soldiers stood in a loose semi-circle. Three were positioned behind the main force with five foot spears set strategically between their cohorts, ready to thrust should Arrin act aggressive. All were armored in the standard Lathahn border patrol outfit. Hardened leather jerkins covered their torso and hung to mid-thigh beneath the tabards. They wore no helmets, visibility and speed far more important than heavy armor that would impede their movement. Not meant to engage hostile forces, they were simply a warning mechanism designed to return to Lathah should they encounter enemy forces.
Their presence so far from the city confirmed what Arrin had already surmised: they knew nothing of the Grol invasion of Fhen. He raised his arms, fingers spread wide in a gesture of peace, keeping them from his sword. He had no desire to add their lives to his conscience.
“I intend you no harm.” With no one specific to address, he told them all, uncertain of who had spoken and unable to see any obvious rank or insignia on any of the soldiers. “I bear grim tidings for Lathah. I must speak with Prince Olenn.” The man’s name was poison on his tongue.
A dark-skinned warrior from the front rank drew a step closer, distinguishing himself from his men. “I am Sergeant Barold. If you’ve a message for the prince, I can deliver it for you.” He met Arrin’s eyes. “You still, however, haven’t told me who you are.”
Arrin sighed. While he felt certain the young sergeant hadn’t been around long enough to know who he was, there were several aged veterans amongst his men who eyed him with a cold wariness that seemed to go beyond simple suspicion. He thought he recognized one he might have served with, but he was unsure. It had been a long and hard road since then, such memories ancient history in the grand scheme of his sorrowed past.
He contemplated lying, but he knew it would only compound their distrust and possibly delay his warning. There was also no way to disguise the obvious fact he was Lathahn and living outside the walls. That alone marked him as outcast.
Seeing no path but the one forward, Arrin gave it into the hands of fate. “My name is Arrin Urrael, exile of Lathah.”
He watched as one of the older soldiers leaned into the sergeant’s ear and whispered. Another, the familiar one, gave him a shallow nod from the back ranks.
His eyes never leaving Arrin, Barold listened until the soldier was done speaking. “It seems as though there is some confusion as to what is expected of me. Orders from the prince are that you are to be killed on sight.” He gestured toward the veteran who had plied his ear. “However, it also appears that there are long-standing, and contradictory, orders from the king himself regarding what should be done were you to ever return to Lathah.” He motioned for Arrin to rise. “There is no uncertainty, however, to the fact you are not welcome upon Lathahn soil.”
Arrin had expected no less.
“Given my conflicting orders, I think it best you be about your way and we both simply forget about your accidental transgression.” He pointed the way toward Fhen and motioned with his head.
Grateful he hadn’t yet been forced to kill the soldiers, Arrin shook his head. His message needed to be delivered. Though he could easily send it on with Barold, he knew there would be doubt. The prince wouldn’t believe a word passed from Arrin, expecting it to be some elaborate scheme at revenge. As such, it would likely place Barold in the position of unwanted messenger, which could get the sergeant hurt, or worse, ignored.
If there was any chance the prince would accept that the Grol were coming with the means to batter down the walls of Lathah, Arrin would have to deliver the message personally. Even the dimmest of fools would have to take his word seriously were Arrin to willingly deliver himself to the prince, even after all these years.
“I’m sorry, sergeant. I cannot simply leave.” He gave Barold a curt bow. “The prince must hear what I have to say, and it must come from my mouth alone if it is to be believed.”
Barold sighed, frustration at Arrin’s choice written in the lines of his face. “So you would have us both killed for your determination?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I have been nothing if not generous. Give me your missive and I swear to you it will reach the prince.”
“No.” The word came out harsh. Though he hadn’t meant it, there was a challenge in Arrin’s tone. Years in the wilderness, thought second to the quickness of his blade, his nature had grown hard, aggressive. In his travels, he so seldom found the need for civility. He had lost its knack.
Hoping to avoid the needless bloodshed of innocent men, Arrin continued. “I cannot leave, for to do so means the death of all that I love. It would mean the same for you; all of you.”
“You dare threaten us?”
“I offer no threat, sergeant, only a sad truth. A force like none seen before rides upon my heels and threatens to engulf all of Ahreele. Thick with the certainty of Lathah’s walls, your prince will seal the gates and your doom with his ignorant stubbornness.”
Barold lifted his blade, the sharpened tip just inches from Arrin’s cheek. “You’ve crossed the line of my kindness.”
“Then take me to your prince. Would he not richly reward the man who brought me before him humbled, to be slain by Olenn’s own hand?” Arrin slowly moved his left hand to his belt and undid the clasp. The belt slithered down his legs, his sword dropping to the dirt. “If the prince wishes me dead, he can ask for no better fortune than to do the deed himself. I surrender to you, sergeant.”
Barold growled, his eyes narrowing. He glanced at the soldier who counseled him earlier. The older man nodded. The sergeant looked back to Arrin with grim resignation lining his face. He gestured his men forward. “Search him, and then bind him tight.” He sheathed his blade with a snapping clank as his men closed around Arrin. “I’ll grant your wish, exile. I pray you’re wrong about what you say, even though it will mean your death.”
Arrin nodded and gave himself over to the soldiers, one of which patted him down with quick hands. “I too pray I’m wrong, for if I’m not, it will mean all of our deaths.”
Barold retrieved Arrin’s weapon. He slid the sword loose of its sheath and saw the thick blood that still stained the blade. He raised his face to meet Arrin’s stare. Arrin said nothing as Barold sheathed his sword, the man’s dark cheeks paling. The sergeant spun on his heels and motioned for his men to follow. He headed off with quickness in his step.
Arrin fell in with the soldiers who held his bound arms. He looked toward Lathah as leaden knots formed in his stomach. This was not the homecoming he’d dreamed of.
Chapter Six
Commander Feragh led the charge into the Grol village, jumping from his horse in a graceful bound, his sword free of its scabbard before the pads of his feet hit the ground. He growled low in his throat as a skeleton crew of old and maimed warriors burst into view and barreled as best they could toward him in ragged defense of their home.
“Kill them all. Show these loathsome dogs no mercy,” Feragh called out as a decrepit Grol lunged at him, its short blade overtaken by the burnt umber of rust.
The commander shook his head as he batted away the Grol’s pathetic slash. The tip of its sword already missing, the blade shattered against the fine steel of Feragh’s broadsword and exploded in a cloud of dusty brown shards.
The warrior hissed and stumbled back, but not before the commander sunk his blade deep into its protruding chest. The point slid clean between the ribs, it found its home inside the Grol’s heart. Black blood gushed from the wound and the warrior collapsed without another sound, Feragh’s blade pulling free with ease.
He looked over at his warriors and smiled grim as they followed his lead with vicious precision, mowing down the last of the Grol resistance. It was slaughter, not combat. He counted the kills as the bodies fell to the dirt; there’d been little more than a dozen. It was hardly worth the effort.
Feragh cleaned the blood from his sword with lazy wipes as he surveyed the now quiet Grol village. Tiny huts made from overlapping tree branches and
sealed with an abundance of shit and mud littered the cleared circle of land that made up the village. The wooden pens the Grol used to hold their prisoners, the walking meals, stood open and empty. Only the scent of its occupants remained. Fetid and foul, it was the vile smell of fear and excrement.
Feragh listened as he had at each village before, thinking perhaps there was a trap yet to be sprung along his path, but no sound drifted to his ears as he scanned the huts for more of the vermin Grol. His sword ached for the blood of a true battle.
“Do a sweep.” He motioned for his men to search the village, but he knew what they would find; nothing.
This was the third village they’d encountered on their way through the country of Gurhtol. It had been the same at each. Only the old and frail met them as they rode up, throwing away their pitiful lives in a futile attempt to bring down the Tolen. It made Feragh laugh.
There were no real warriors, no women, and no supplies. The Grol had taken everything of any value and left the dregs of their society behind to die. The commander was happy to oblige them, however unsatisfying it might be.
Feragh turned his gaze to the dead Grol at his feet as he returned his blade to its sheath. Missing an eye before Feragh and his legion had arrived the corpse looked pathetic, even in the peace of death. Its puckered socket stood in sharp contrast to the wideness of its other eye, which stared without seeing. It lay with its mouth agape, its blackened and blistered tongue lolling. A number of its teeth were little more than jagged remnants like broken shards of pottery poking from its blackened gums.
Feragh had done it a favor by putting it to his steel, but the arrival of his men was a mercy wasted on the Grol.
The commander shook his head and spit a mouthful of yellow phlegm on the dead Grol’s cheek. It made him sick looking at its withered face. No matter how he rationalized it, he couldn’t imagine how the Grol had once come from the loins of his great people. Distant cousins, so far removed from the glory of the Tolen, the Grol were mutts compared to the pure wolfen bloodlines of the Tolen. Nothing more than shit, tangled in the fur of a Tolen’s ass.
“They’re all gone, commander,” the deep bellow of General Wulvren told him as he came to stand before Feragh. “It’s exactly the same as the last two villages. They’ve cleared out, only leaving their trash and infirm behind, as if there were a difference.”
Feragh nodded as he met Wulvren’s red eyes. “They’re up to something.” He drifted from the general’s side and into the village square, such as it was.
Gnawed bones carpeted the area nearest the central fire pit, picked so clean as to reflect the day’s light. A charred and withered Grol body hung from a makeshift spit over the still flickering flames, its arms missing, gnawed off at the elbow. A bent, bronze spear was skewered through its torso, its point bursting from the Grol’s gaping mouth and propped upon a stand of piled stones. The scent of burnt meat competed with the rancid smell of Grol occupation, neither an appealing accompaniment to the other.
Feragh watched as his men fired the huts. He snarled as the odor of burning feces was added to the list of offensive smells that soured in his nose. He regretted his earlier command to raze the villages, leaving nothing for the Grol to return home to, should he fail to learn of their purpose. It was an order given out of spite that he likened did more to offend him than it would the Grol, should they ever return.
The commander moved away from the billowing clouds in search of fresh air and strode toward the far side of the village. Wulvren followed. Once there, Feragh glanced at the dusty ground and gestured for his general to take a look.
“They’ve put no effort into covering their tracks. They don’t care if anyone follows or knows where they go,” Wulvren commented. He pointed toward the distant woods. “If their path holds true, it would appear they’re headed toward Fhen.”
“But why?” Feragh scratched at his long snout, following the trail with his eyes and agreeing with his general’s assessment of their direction. “Ever since the Fhen fell in line with the Lathahns and enclosed their cities behind stone walls, the Grol have been turned back, bloodied at each encounter.”
“Maybe it isn’t the Fhen they are after.”
“Lathah,” Feragh said barely above a whisper as he met his general’s eyes. The name was a lead weight that sunk into his skull, stirring up his thoughts in violent eddies.
It made a strange sense, yet still it didn’t ring quite true. The Grol had been spending their forces against the defenses of Lathah ever since they had forced the Lathahns’ backs against the Fortress Mountains. Sworn enemies of Lathah, the Grol took every opportunity to slay its people, but the beasts had been on the losing end of every major battle for the last two hundred years. Why would they suddenly think things would turn out different?
Something had changed, but what? That was the question that haunted Feragh. Something had happened to embolden the Grol or drive them into a rage beyond all sense of their already limited reason.
Even though he didn’t know what, he thought he knew when. Feragh had been alerted to curious Grol movements, by his spies. They had spotted a Grol force leaving Ah Uto Ree, where Gurhtol and the Sha’ree country touched, just south of the Tolen border. While not reported as a large group, they were said to be well-burdened, a number of armored palanquins carried between them. They were said to be moving fast.
Just daring to cross the border into Ah Uto Ree was a sign that the Grol were up to something. Not even the pious Velen entered the sacred land for fear of what the Sha’ree might wreak upon them for their trespass. For the Grol to have done so, the reward had to far outweigh the risk. It was difficult to imagine anything worth provoking the fury of the ancient Sha’ree.
For Feragh, the Grol violation gave credence to the long held rumor the reclusive Sha’ree had returned to Au Uto Ree so long ago not to be free of the other races, but instead, to die. Though he had little more than myths to go by, the Sha’ree of legend would never have allowed the beasts to soil their land without brutal retribution. History had been written in the blood of those who’d opposed the mystical race.
By the time Feragh’s spies reported in, the Grol force had long since disappeared back into the wilds of Gurhtol. Feragh wasted no time in assembling a legion of his finest warriors to investigate what the Grol had done. To tempt the Sha’ree wrath, whether they be ghosts or not, it had to be terrible.
He and his men swung south, skirting the border of Ah Uto Ree, in hopes of discovering what the Grol had been up to. Not willing to enter the sacred land, they found nothing that might explain the Grol movement. Having expected that, however frustrated, Feragh turned his forces west and drove his men through the heart of Gurhtol, following the presumed path of the Grol force.
This had led him to the first of the nearly abandoned villages, and the two shortly after. Though there was much evidence of mobilization, there was none of what the Grol intended.
That’s what concerned the commander the most.
He turned to his general. “Assemble the men. We’re already too far behind the beasts to accurately assess their motives. I need to know what they’re up to.”
Feragh dismissed Wulvren and returned to his mount. An easy leap and he was astride it, glancing off into the distance. He could see nothing through the thick cluster of trees that stood between him and the country of Fhen. He growled and spurred his horse forward, knowing his men would be at his heels in moments. It was his only certainty.
If the Grol had plans to attack Lathah, Feragh wanted to be there to see the insanity first hand.
Chapter Seven
Sultae strolled from the twisted trees of the Dead Lands, her dark cloak clutched tight about her, its tail flowing loose behind her. She moved without a sound through the waist-high grass that surrounded the Y’var encampment that sat a short distance away. As she drew closer, she purposely stepped on a dead limb, breaking her silence just before she entered the clearing.
The nearest Yvir
i guard spun about and raised his spear with a shout, his eyes wide. The veins on his face, colored a somber black, only emphasized his surprise. He spied Sultae and lowered his weapon fast, calling out to calm his fellow warriors alerted by his cry. He bowed low and kept his eyes on the dirt as she approached.
Sultae smiled behind the dark veil that hid her face from the world. She said nothing as she strode past the warrior, toward the large tent that housed the tribe’s leader. A number of Yviri warriors circled near the perimeter, but came no closer. Their spears hung respectful at their sides. Sultae ignored them, her attention on the near naked warlord who slipped from behind the tent flaps and came to stand before her.
The warlord bowed deep. “Hail, daughter of Ree.”
Sultae suppressed a grin at the Yviri’s obeisance. It was as it should be. “Rise, Erdor.”
Erdor raised his face and Sultae stood quiet for a moment, examining the warlord. Like the guard she startled, Erdor was clothed only in a tight-fitting loincloth that did nothing to hide his thickly muscled frame. Also like the guard, the distinctive veins of his race stood out against his ghostly-pale skin. Tattooed black, as was the custom of the Yvir who had long ago forsaken their weak-willed brethren of Y’Vel, it looked as though he had rotting vines growing beneath his flesh. His ice blue eyes stared at her chin with practiced patience, the lines about his eyes like blackened stars. He stood at ease, the barrel of his chest rising and falling with slow breaths.
Sultae let him wait a moment longer. Primitive and ignorant, the Yvir were hardly a worthy mate, but their natural tendency toward obedience, combined with their impressive frame, was a temptation Sultae found herself having to push away. Savagery and single-mindedness had no place in fathering progeny, but where simple, unbridled pleasure was concerned, they had their uses.
“Come, walk with me, Erdor.” Sultae spun and glided back toward the tall grass.