“We’ve run across quite a few.”
“And you saw they were carrying prisoners, correct?”
“Yes.”
She frowned. “I had hoped what we speculated on was wrong, but it appears to not be the case.” She paused. “The armies are heading toward your capital.”
“That’s were Pa’s going,” gulped Zadok.
“It’s not just that. It’s where all this mess started,” Ava said gesturing to the world around them.
Apparently, she and Myra hadn’t been wrong in their hunch.
Galya frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Ava filled them in on how the Geneshan War ended, the confiscated artifact, and how it went off in Hol because of people tampering with it. She gave a quicker recap of their journey and how Tyrus and an army were heading back in that direction to fight another war.
Chadar and Galya listened intently. When Ava finished, they exchanged a look. Chadar cleared his throat, having finally recovered. “That explains much.”
“It explains what we overheard the Malduks discussing,” Galya added. “They know about the artifact. I think the Geneshans are going to retrieve it.”
Why would they want to retrieve it? They see the destruction it caused. Gods, they warned us what it could do. Seems like they would be running away from the thing like everyone else. Everyone but Balak’s army.
Gods-be-damned, they’re heading right to you, Tyrus.
She paused in her thinking. Unless they think they can stop the destruction.
Is that what the sacrifices are for? Appease their god and bring the artifact under control?
“So you got caught in the middle of this mass movement of sacrifices then?”
“Yes. The Malduks had never seen our likes before and believed that we in particular would be received favorably by their god due to our appearances.”
She rubbed the side of her face, tired, but unable to keep her mind from racing. Something seemed off in regards to the behavior of the Geneshans. She was missing something, but gods if she could figure out what it was.
Maybe in the morning after some sleep.
She cleared her throat. “Your story raises a lot of questions.”
“Yeah,” said Zadok. “I know I—”
She raised a hand. “But they’ll need to wait until tomorrow at the least. It’s too late to start hypothesizing.”
Chadar and Galya looked relieved.
“That being said, I do have one more question that can’t wait.”
“Which is?” asked Galya.
“What is the best route south?”
“I’m not sure.” She shrugged, looking helpless. “We are still in unfamiliar lands with nothing like the maps we once had at our disposal. We got lost several times before our capture. Perhaps once we get farther south and closer to the Southern Kingdoms, then we could be of more help.”
Ava sighed. We have to get there first.
She had a feeling this would come back to bite her. Instead of gaining an advantage in knowledge to direct the people she was already responsible for, she only gained two more mouths to feed.
Ava looked around at the rest of camp as most everyone had settled in except for those on watch.
Gods, what is everyone going to say once they learn we gained little that will help us?
* * *
“Aunt Ava, wake up,” said Myra.
The girl’s hand roughly shook her shoulder.
“What’s going on?” said Ava as she sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Is there trouble?”
“Why didn’t you tell me last night what Chadar and Galya said?”
Ava sighed. “You talked to Zadok?”
“Yes.”
She yawned and stood. A twinge in her bladder caused her to shift her stance. “Let me go relieve myself.”
A couple minutes later, she was back in camp. Myra waited for her, pacing over a small stretch of dead grass.
“Why didn’t you tell me what Chadar and Galya said?”
“Because you were busy with Damaris. How is she, by the way?”
Myra softened. “Doing better.”
She paused, waiting for Ava to start explaining.
“Look, I wasn’t purposefully keeping anything from you. I just wanted to wait until morning since we got no insight on a new direction to follow, which means we’re still running blind to the river. Everything else, although interesting, is not essential to our survival.”
“What about Pa? Ira and Dekar? The others?”
“What about them?”
“Don’t play dumb Aunt Ava! Don’t tell me you didn’t think about the implications of what Galya and Chadar said. They’re going to face a massive convergence of enemy forces, and possibly the artifact as well. If the Geneshans rein in its power with the planned sacrifices, they could try to use it as a weapon themselves.”
“I did think of that.”
She had nightmares about it, actually. Gore and bloody deaths to the worst degree. She felt sick just recalling those images in her waking moments.
“So what are we going to do about it?”
“Nothing. We’re going to get on the road and stick to our plan.”
Exasperated, she asked, “We’re just going to let Pa die?”
Ava blinked. “Did someone hit you over the head in the middle of the night and knock all sense out of you? I know you’re worried about your Pa. I am too, but what could we do to help him at this point?”
“We could find a way to warn him.”
“How? They’re weeks of travel ahead of us. By the time we’d reach them, if by some miracle we were able to reach them before the battle occurs, they’d already know anything we’d tell them.”
“I thought you could try to do a transfer portal.”
Ava barked a laugh. “A transfer portal? Just like that? You don’t think that if there was a way for me to create a transfer portal, I wouldn’t have done so by now? It’s one of the most difficult spells imaginable. And I’ve only done it once when I went to Denu Creek before the first eruption. Even then, I had the Sky Tower helping concentrate my power.” She paused. “After months, I’m just now starting to get any level of consistency in my ability to perform basic sorcery. There is no way I could create a portal right now. Or, if somehow luck smiled on me, I’d not want to risk using it since I doubt I’d be able to accurately place the exit. We could end up five hundred miles from where we wanted to be. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do for Tyrus except hope for the best.”
Myra stared at the ground. “I thought that might be the case, but I was hoping you would tell me otherwise.” She looked away. “I feel so helpless. Like I did when I was four, and you and Pa first left. Worse really. I thought I was helpless then because I was too young, too small. But here I am more than a decade older and bigger, supposedly smarter, and still I can’t do a thing about the fact that I might never see him again.”
A tear rolled down her check.
Molak-be-damned.
She wanted to say something to make Myra feel better, but nothing came to mind, nothing anyway that did not sound pandering or condescending. So she walked up and wrapped Myra in her arms.
Myra leaned in close and cried.
Ava fought back tears of her own.
Ao’s bloody teats.
CHAPTER 26
I thought I was flying.
A moment later, when I struck mud, I realized I had been falling.
Something slammed hard into my chest after I hit the mud on my back. It took what remaining air I had left in my lungs. Ribs cracked from the pressure. Between the immense pain and my lack of breath, I blacked out.
Sometime later, I came to, wheezing. I forced my eyes open. The dead eyes of a D’engiti stared back at me.
The
sight startled me. Had I the breath to scream, I might have.
I told myself to calm down. Nothing was ever as bad as it seemed.
I tried to move my right arm, but the D’engiti had pinned it. I tried to move my left and a jolt of pain rushed into my shoulder. It was broken. I had been too distracted by my ribs and the giant corpse on top of me to notice sooner.
I tried to leverage my legs next in order to help me roll the dead Geneshan off me, but my legs wouldn’t cooperate and what little they did, hurt in ways I could barely comprehend. I could feel pain, which was a good thing, but based on the pain itself and the fact that bile inched up my throat, I was certain they were broken as well.
My ears started to work. What I heard, didn’t make me feel any better. Dozens, no hundreds of muffled Geneshan voices. All panicked, all swarming to where the D’engiti tent had been. I couldn’t speak the language well, but I knew enough that I determined the destruction globe had accomplished what it was supposed to have.
Well, except the part where I was going to die.
I heard of people who in their last minutes of life, relaxed. They no longer fought, they simply accepted their fate and passed peacefully away. There was something strangely beautiful about those stories. I had always hoped I’d do the same one day.
But then I felt myself sink deeper into the mud, the liquid from the latrine rising higher up my body and face. When realization set in that I would die in the piss and waste of the Molak-be-damned enemy, the last thing I thought about was relaxing.
In fact, I panicked.
Despite the waves of pain coursing through my body at the slightest of movements, I kept moving. I couldn’t die. Not there and not with my wife and kids at home waiting for me to return.
My efforts only made things worse.
Liquid entered my ears. It began to slosh over my chin. My heart beat faster.
Curse the gods, but I’d rather die being tortured by the enemy. Tears ran from my eyes as I opened my mouth wide to scream.
A hand clamped over it, muffling my efforts.
* * *
I woke with a hand over my mouth that I immediately bit down on while reaching for my sword.
“Gods-be-damned, Tyrus!” Dekar shouted over what sounded like . . . singing?
Dekar pulled his hand back and examined it. I blinked rapidly and tried to calm my racing heart.
I turned my head and realized what had happened more so from Ira’s laughing at his brother’s hurt look than from anything else.
Reuma smacked Ira in the back of the head and hissed, “Cut it out.”
The singing continued though as I caught Boaz with his arm around several other men from Dekar’s unit. He led them in a tavern song about drinking and whoring. As a former innkeeper, I’m sure he knew quite a few of those.
Despite the early morning hour, not many of the other soldiers nearby seemed to mind. Many looked their way upon waking, and chuckled or shook their heads.
“What’s going on?” I muttered. Then I saw Dekar looking at his palm. “I’m sorry. You scared the crud out of me. You all right?”
Dekar shook his hand. “I’m fine. You didn’t draw blood.”
I felt myself redden.
“The bigger question is if you’re all right?” asked Reuma.
“Like I said, Dekar just scared me is all.”
“More going on than that, Ty,” said Ira.
He looked concerned which had me worried. Ira usually let things roll off his back unless they got really bad.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Dek had his hand on your mouth because you wouldn’t wake up when he tried to shake you. You were practically crying in your sleep. Sobbing, choking.” He paused and wiped sweat from his brow. “Prax’s balls, we thought you were dying at first. We didn’t want a whole lot of other people to hear you so Dek tried to muffle the sounds you were making while Boaz got the rest of our unit singing in order to drown you out.” Ira snorted. “Not a bad idea. He doesn’t have that bad of a singing voice either.”
I swallowed, hard. “Sorry. Not much else to say.”
“There is,” said Dekar. “Say what’s been on your mind. What have you been dreaming about? This isn’t the first time. And it’s getting worse.”
I shrugged, my mind starting to clear as I processed things. “Now isn’t the time to have that discussion.”
“Ava would disagree.”
“She would. As would a lot of other people, including Lasha if she were alive. Putting guilt on me isn’t going to change the fact we’ve got a battle to win though. That’s what we need to worry about.”
“I really think—”
“Drop it, Dekar. Seriously.”
He looked at me flatly. “For now.”
That took me aback. Dekar wasn’t one to argue or negotiate with a command. That spoke of how worried he must be. I appreciated the sentiment, but not what it would mean later.
Boaz’s singing stopped and he came over with the others, “How are you feeling?”
“Doing great. Let’s get at ‘em,” I said while finding my feet.
I eyed Dekar, Ira, and Reuma. None looked convinced. But then, they didn’t have to be.
An alarm sounded.
Heads turned my way. I swore to myself.
“Everyone form ranks! On the double!” I shouted. “Move! Now!”
* * *
Molak-be-damned Master Sorcerers.
I thought I had my men ready to face one, but I thought wrong. The enemy’s blasted Master Sorcerer managed to hide the movement of over two hundred Geneshans that snuck into our camp. It seemed their goal was to do two things, kill as many of our officers as possible, and create chaos. They succeeded in both which helped mask their forming of lines on the battlefield before daybreak.
We lost over twenty officers along with another one hundred and fifty soldiers before our men recovered and discipline took over. In the time it took to repel the enemy, the Geneshans charged with cavalry while a regiment of infantry marched at double time close behind. Their strategy was more than sound. Our advantage in numbers wouldn’t mean anything if we were a sloppy mess.
I grabbed any and every man in reach, regardless of rank. I had no time to wait for a true messenger to appear. In such chaos, I was running almost purely on instinct.
“Private!” I yelled, snatching a man by the shoulder as he ran by.
“Sir?”
“Find Captain Asif and tell him to get his platoon at the center. Rally all others to form around him.”
“Sir, I think Captain Asif is dead.”
I swore. “Then his second, Lieutenant Bram. Now.”
As he ran off, I shouted to him. “And if he’s dead, then Lieutenant Dor! Just get our blasted lines formed!”
I echoed those orders several times, sending off several more messengers to bring up my best companies to establish a strong first line of defense for others to form around. Despite yelling orders as loudly as I ever had, I thought we’d continue to be a sloppy mess. Then a small bit of luck finally shone through the pile of crap that had been my morning thus far.
Captain Urion got to yelling with me, and some of the men once under his command stepped into the vacant officer roles. I don’t know how, but they managed to form some semblance of a line, spears in hand, just before the cavalry struck.
The sounds, smells, and panicked emotions I imagined those men feeling washed over me. Old memories of my brief time on the front lines wanted to push themselves up in my mind. Thankfully, I managed to keep them at bay.
Holding firm for those extra few moments allowed me to kick rears all over the place, pushing and shoving our men into formation before the double-timing Geneshan infantry arrived.
When the Geneshan infantry struck, we bent and buckled, but we did not
break.
Etan sensed the lessening of chaos too as he bent down and took the moment to remove my shackles. I gave him a surprised look.
“No sense in you dying because you can’t move fast enough in those things. Now, let’s get back to a safer position.”
“But—”
“Balak’s orders, Tyrus. I’ve already give you more leeway than I was supposed to, but the men are holding now. No need for you to be this close to the action.”
I grit my teeth in anger for Balak’s interference even if he had the right of things. There was a time and a place for a commander to put himself in a dangerous position, and this was no longer one of them.
I took the mount Etan offered me, and we moved back to a small rise where the land sloped upward, a place that allowed me a better view of the battlefield. Immediately, I started sending out runners with messages to company officers and platoon leaders.
Balak joined me. He didn’t say a word, but with a quick glance, I saw the worry on his face.
Shortly after the last runner left our area, several companies of longbowmen formed on our left and right flanks. They released long, high shots toward the rear of the Geneshan infantry’s lines.
“Dangerous strategy, Tyrus,” said Balak finally.
“It is.”
“Your lines are holding. Putting pressure on their rear is only going to have them push harder forward.” He raised his spyglass. “And it looks like less than half are hitting their targets.”
“It’s a risk,” I said, pushing out the breath I had held in while watching.
“It’s a waste of resources.”
“I was told to use what I had.”
He surveyed the field a bit longer then said. “Is this for the Master Sorcerer?”
“It is.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It should become clear soon.”
I hoped.
A couple of minutes later, it did as dozens of fireballs took to the air and came toward the rear of our lines. I anticipated that response. The Geneshans were never known as great bowmen and often underutilized that strategy. Instead, they used their sorcerers for long-range attacks as even their lowest level magic-users were capable of such skills.
Resurrected Soldiers: The Tyrus Chronicle - Book Three Page 25