The Crimson Legion

by Denning, Troy

  “It looks like K’kriq has this part of the fight well in hand,” the mul said, turning his gaze toward the terrain behind the battle. “Let’s find the commander.”

  “This is no time to think of vengeance,” objected Neeva.

  “Sure it is,” Rikus countered. He spotted a small group of figures upon the shoulder of a small sand dune that had spilled down from rocky bluffs of the valley wall. Several messengers were running from them toward the growing rout in front of K’kriq’s mekillots. “At the most, we can kill only a few thousand Urikites. The rest will flee, regroup, and probably attack Tyr later. But if we slay their commander today, we’ll finish the battle for good.”

  With that, Rikus returned to the rear of the wagon and gathered a small force of gladiators from the long line still pouring through the wall of darkness. He sent the rest to the other side of the argosy to reinforce the warriors who did not have the benefit of K’kriq’s mekillots, then started toward the sand dune with his company.

  They reached the base of the dune at a run, sweating heavily. Rikus charged straight up the steep side, stopping to rest only when they were within a few dozen yards of the top. At the crest waited a small line of Urikites, their spears pointed down at the gladiators. They peered over the tops of their shields as they nervously awaited the Tyrian attack.

  Rikus ordered his followers to spread out, deciding to let the Urikites contemplate their fate and give his warriors a few moments to rest. He took the opportunity to look over his shoulder and saw that the battle was going better than he had dared to hope. Jaseela had turned her flank back toward the main attack. The sands between her company and the argosy were red with Urikite blood and littered with more than two thousand Urikite soldiers. Many thousands more were fleeing the field in a long stream, pursued closely by howling knots of Tyrian gladiators.

  On the far side of the argosy, the scene was not so lopsided. Even with the extra reinforcements Rikus had sent their way, the Tyrians were badly outnumbered and barely holding their own in the vicious combat. Styan and his templars were doing little to help the situation, merely harassing the Urikite flank with half-hearted forays that were easily turned back.

  Nevertheless, the mul was not worried. Having routed half the enemy legion, K’kriq was moving toward the troubled spot as fast as his lumbering beasts could carry him. Yet as Rikus watched, the thri-kreen suddenly guided the mekillots into a knot of gladiators. The reptiles began crushing and biting not Urikite soldiers, but Tyrian warriors.

  “He betrayed us!” cried Gaanon, taking a step back down the dune.

  Rikus caught the half-giant’s arm. “That makes no sense. Why would he have bothered to help us in the first place?” asked the mul. He studied the thri-kreen’s distant form more carefully, and was barely able to see that K’kriq’s head was turned toward the crest of the dune.

  The mul looked to the top of the dune again, and quickly found what he was searching for. In the middle of the enemy line, standing between a pair of burly bodyguards, was a small bald man of feeble build and delicate features. His pale lips were pinched tight in concentration, and his gray eyes were fixed on K’kriq’s form. Over the bronze breastplate that covered his gaunt chest, the sickly looking man wore a green cloak bearing the two-headed Serpent of Lubar.

  “Maetan!” Rikus hissed.

  “What?” asked Neeva.

  “Maetan of Family Lubar,” the mul explained, pointing at the little man. Rikus had last seen Maetan over thirty years ago, when Lord Lubar had brought his sickly son to see the family gladiator pits, but the mul had no trouble recognizing the pointed chin and thin nose that had distinguished the boy’s face even then. “His father was a master of the Way. My guess is that he is, too.”

  “He’s taken control of K’kriq’s mind,” Neeva surmised.

  Rikus nodded, then waved his gladiators forward, hoping to disrupt the mindbender’s concentration and free the thri-kreen again. “Attack!”

  A Urikite officer barked a sharp command, and a dark cloud of spears descended from the ridge above. Rikus ducked. Neeva did the same, using her axe handle to deflect a low flying shaft. Like dozens of others, Gaanon was not so quick. One of the javelins struck him in the leg, causing the half-giant to bellow out in pain.

  Cursing the effectiveness with which his enemy had stalled the charge, Rikus looked over his shoulder in Gaanon’s direction. The half-giant lay on the steep slope, clutching his leg.

  “I’ll be fine,” Gaanon said, plucking the weapon from his leg. “Just give me a moment.”

  “Stay here,” Rikus said, taking the spear from him. “You’ll only get hurt.”

  He spun around and threw the weapon at Maetan. A bodyguard pushed the mindbender to the ground, putting himself in front of the spear. The Urikite grunted loudly, then dropped off the dune crest and slipped down the slope in a limp heap.

  Maetan glared at Rikus for an instant, then returned to his feet and stepped back from the crest until only his gray eyes showed over the top. The mul glanced at K’kriq long enough to see that the thri-kreen and his mekillots remained under the mindbender’s control. Growling in anger, the mul raised his cahulaks and resumed his charge. This time, with no more spears to throw, the Urikites could only draw their obsidian short swords and await the onslaught.

  When he reached the summit, Rikus pulled away from the flashing tip of a low strike. He countered by swinging a cahulak at the Urikite’s legs, slicing the veins behind the knee. As the screaming soldier grabbed for his savaged leg, Rikus pulled the man off the crest and sent him tumbling down the sandy slope.

  Seeing the disadvantage of this location, the Urikite officer shouted another command and the entire line took two steps backward. Followed by Neeva and the rest of the gladiators, Rikus scrambled over the crest of the dune, being careful to keep one hand free to protect himself. The Tyrians had no sooner crawled onto the ridge than the enemy officer ordered his men forward again, thinking to push the gladiators off the dune.

  His strategy might have worked against normal fighters, but gladiators were accustomed to fighting from disadvantaged positions. As the soldiers stepped forward, the Tyrians cut them down in many different ways. Rikus blocked his attacker’s swing with a cahulak, then hooked the other one behind the man’s back and used the Urikite’s own momentum to send him flying off the crest. Neeva swung her big axe and chopped her opponent off at the ankles before he could strike. Other gladiators rolled at the enemy’s feet, protecting themselves with a whirl off lashing blades. Still others leaped up with amazing speed, then beat the astonished soldiers back with sheer strength. When the initial clash ended, half the Urikite company lay bleeding in the sand, and only a handful of Tyrian soldiers had been pushed off the dune.

  The survivors backed slowly away, their fear showing in their faces. The gladiators stood with predatory grins on their faces, allowing the Urikites’ fear to work against them. Rikus used the momentary lull to search for Maetan’s diminutive form and, following the resentful gazes of several enemy soldiers, found the mindbender running down the gentle side of the dune.

  The mul glanced over his shoulder and saw that K’kriq’s mekillots were turning back toward the argosy. Looking back to the line of frightened Urikites standing ahead, the mul yelled, “Kill them!”

  As the gladiators moved forward, the Urikites began dropping their shields and running after their fleeing commander. In their panic, they opened a surprisingly large gap between themselves and the shocked gladiators, who were not accustomed to seeing their opponents flee in terror. The officer frantically chased after the line, cursing their cowardice and cutting his own men down from behind. After the initial surprise of the rout wore off, the Tyrians joined the chase with a chorus of thrilled howls.

  Maetan paused near the base of the dune and looked up at the mass of soldiers trailing behind him. The mindbender’s shadow began to lengthen, spreading across the sands like a dark stain of ink across a parchment. It retained the b
asic shape of a man, but not the proportions. Its limbs were long and ropy, with a serpentine body that seemed more appropriate to a lizard than a man. When it reached a length of four or five times Maetan’s height, a pair of sapphire eyes began to shine from the head. A long azure gash appeared where the mouth should be, and wisps of ebony gas drifted skyward from this slit.

  A gap opened between the shadow’s feet and those of Maetan. The shadow beast rolled onto its stomach, then its body began to thicken and it moved into a kneeling position. When it had assumed a full, three-dimensional form, it rose to its feet. The thing stood as tall as a full giant, towering over the men below it like the great trees of the Baffling Forest.

  The Urikites stopped their retreat, frightened murmurs of “Umbra!” rising from their disorganized ranks.

  Neeva grabbed Rikus by the shoulder and stopped him. “Wait!” she cried. “You can’t do this alone.”

  The mul slowed enough to look around and see that Umbra’s appearance had stopped his gladiators as well. The warriors were standing motionless on the slope, their jaws slack with astonishment and their eyes locked on the huge shadow beast. Rikus would have hesitated to say that they were frightened, but they were certainly spellbound.

  Umbra pointed a finger at the routed Urikites, then, in a throbbing voice so deep it seemed bottomless, he said, “Fight! Stand and fight, or I swear I’ll take you with me when I return to the Black!”

  As if to emphasize the threat, the thing strode halfway up the dune in two steps, then reached down and closed his sinuous fingers around the torsos of two Urikites. Their chests and midsections disappeared in darkness. In vain, they cried for mercy as Umbra’s shadow crept down to their feet and up over their heads. Within an instant, their forms had simply melted into the creature’s black shape.

  “Now, form your lines!” Umbra cried. He pointed toward the Tyrians. “For the defense of Lubar and the glory of Urik, die like heroes!”

  The Urikites turned around and dressed their lines, pointing their black swords toward the Tyrians.

  “For the freedom of Tyr!” Rikus yelled, charging.

  Neeva followed close behind, screaming, “For Tyr!” An instant later, a hundred voices were crying the same thing.

  Rikus reached the enemy before they had completely reformed their wall, tearing into it in a maelstrom of whirling cahulaks and kicking feet. Almost before he realized it, he had ripped the swords from a pair of Urikites’ hands and felled two more with crippling kicks to the knees. To Rikus’s right, Neeva hacked a defender nearly in two, then killed another with the backswing as she pulled her axe from the body of the first.

  No sooner had Rikus and Neeva cleared their opponents away than a tremendous crash reverberated across the sandy dune as the rest of the gladiators hit the enemy line. The clatter of bone and obsidian weapons filled the air, followed by a growing chorus of pained cries. A handful of enemy soldiers threw down their weapons and turned to flee. Umbra prevented the rout from spreading by snatching the cowards and absorbing them into his shadow.

  Rikus caught sight of a black blade streaking toward his ribs. He blocked with the shaft of a cahulak, then raked his other weapon across the soldier’s throat. The man dropped his sword and turned away, grasping at the bleeding wound below his chin.

  The mul spun around to attack the person who had slammed into his back, then stopped when he realized that she was one of his own gladiators, a red-haired half-elf named Drewet who had earned her fame in the arena by killing a full giant single-handedly. At the other end of her two-pronged lance hung a gasping Urikite, but beyond her were nothing but more Tyrians.

  The mul faced the other direction and saw that, on the other side of Neeva, Tyr’s gladiators were beating the last of the Urikites into the sand. At the bottom of the dune, Maetan had not moved. He stood alone, watching the battle with no indication of concern.

  Rikus was about to start down the slope when a rustle of astonished cries rose from the Tyrian ranks; Umbra had opened his blue mouth and was facing the battlefield. A wispy stream of blackness shot from between the thing’s lips and poured over the gladiators like a thick, sticky mist. As the billowing mass spread over the slope, Umbra shrunk as if he were spewing his own body over the dune. Horrified screeches and anguished screams rose from whomever the black haze touched.

  “Run!” Rikus yelled. He grabbed Neeva’s wrist and sprinted forward, angling toward the bottom of the dune and away from the spreading vapor.

  As fast as they ran, it was no use. The black fog caught them only a few steps later, lapping at their legs like the waters of an oasis pond. Instantly, an icy wave of pain shot through Rikus’s feet and up into his thighs. The closest thing he had ever felt to it were frigid rains in the high mountains, but this pain was a hundred times worse. The rain had been uncomfortable and made him shiver, but the darkness stung his skin and numbed his flesh to the bone. His joints stiffened and would not move, reducing his legs to dead, aching weights.

  Rikus felt himself falling, and Neeva cried out at his side. He shoved her forward with all his strength, sending her sprawling half a dozen steps ahead of himself. An instant later, the mul landed face-first in the sand.

  The blackness did not overtake the rest of his body. He lay sprawled on the dune, groaning loudly as his mind struggled to make sense of the contradicting sensations of scalding sand beneath his torso and the icy numbness in his legs. Rikus looked over his shoulder and saw that Umbra was gone, or rather had spread his entire body over the gentle slope. The mul lay at the edge of the shadowy form, his legs lost in the blackness behind him. In addition to himself and Neeva, Drewet and perhaps six more gladiators had escaped the frigid cloud, some of them by narrower margins than the mul. Most of the company had been engulfed.

  Neeva limped back to Rikus, then kneeled at his head and asked, “Are you hurt?”

  “I can’t feel my legs,” Rikus answered. As he spoke, a terrible thought occurred to him. “Pull me out, please!” Rikus peered over his shoulder at the darkness beneath his thighs. “My legs must be gone!”

  “Calm yourself,” Neeva said, gripping the mul under the arms. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  She pulled him from the shadow. His legs were as white as ivory, but at least they remained attached. The mul put a hand to his thigh. It was colder than anything he had ever felt, and there was no sensation in the leg.

  “What’s wrong with them?” the mul cried, wondering if the heat would ever return to his frozen flesh.

  As he spoke, Umbra’s black shadow shrank to the size of a normal man. Where the shadow beast had lain, the sand was clean and sparkling. There was not a single corpse, stray weapon, or even a puddle of blood to suggest that there had ever been a battle on the dune.

  The shadow slipped down the slope and assumed his rightful place at Maetan’s feet. The Urikite commander hardly seemed to notice, studying the site with an air of distaste. Finally, a small sandspout rose around his body, hiding the mindbender from the mul’s sight.

  Rikus pushed off the ground and drew his numb legs up beneath him, then tried to run down the slope. His knees remained stiff as stones, pitching him face-first into the burning dune.

  Maetan’s sandspout rose high off the ground, then drifted out into the valley and hung over the heads of a throng of Urikite soldiers that was being pursued by a mob of bloodthirsty gladiators. For a few moments, Rikus feared that Maetan was awaiting an opportunity to launch some devastating mental attack, but at last the whirlwind traced a semicircle in the air and shot up the valley.

  Neeva helped Rikus to his feet. “I hate to admit it, but I’m a little surprised,” she said, slipping his bulky arm over her shoulders. “We won.”

  “Not yet,” Rikus said, watching the sandspout fade from view. “Not until we have Maetan.”

  THREE

  VILLAGE IN THE SAND

  THE THIRSTY TYRIANS STOOD BENEATH AN ARCH OF golden sandstone, taking what shelter they could from the whi
te-hot sky. Their eyes were fixed far below, on the slowly spinning sails of a small windmill. With each rotation, the mill pumped a few gallons of cool, clear water from a deep well and dumped it into a covered cistern.

  Unfortunately, the cistern stood in the middle of a small village. The plaza surrounding it was basically round in shape, with a jagged edge of curving salients that resembled tongues of flame. The circle was paved with cobblestones of crimson sandstone, and the whole thing reminded Rikus too much of the scorching ball of fire hanging in the center of the midday sky.

  The huts enclosing the plaza also resembled the sun, with rounded red flagstone walls. The buildings stood only about five feet high, and none were covered by any semblance of a roof. From his position on the hillside, Rikus could look directly down into their interiors and see the stone tables, benches, and beds with which they were furnished. Of course, on Athas there was little need to protect one’s belongings from rain, but the mul thought it foolish that the residents left themselves and their belongings exposed to the brutal sun all day long.

  The huts, standing in a series of concentric rings, were enclosed by a single low wall of red brick. At the moment, the wall was manned by eight hundred Urikite troops. Two hundred more stood at the edges of the plaza, their spears pointed inward toward a frightened mass of men and women huddling together in the circle.

  The prisoners were all short, standing only about chest high to their guards, and with squat, angular builds that made even Rikus look undermuscled by comparison. Their bodies were completely hairless and sun-darkened to deep mahogany, save for a patch of orange skin covering the ridge of thick bone along the top of their heads.