by Tim Marquitz
There had been no ranged weapons amidst the Sha’ree dead, which worried Arrin. It was yet another obstacle that only added to the already near-insurmountable disadvantage of numbers. As good as he felt with the O’hra sting in his veins, Arrin had to face the reality of what they were up against. This would be no border skirmish, but an all-out-war. The Grol faced extinction should they lose. They would fight to the very last beast despite their cowardly nature. If Ahreele were to ever know peace, the Grol must be killed off…every male, female, and cub. There could be no exception.
He knew the Grol would feel the same of them.
Empowered Lathahns and Yvir would also fight to the end because an even greater enemy awaited beyond. The Hull and Ruhr were mobilizing and would need to be taken out or driven back to their rocky homes in the north. Arrin and his forces could leave no Grol at their heels for they could be certain of being harried until the Hull crushed those who remained.
The Grol must die.
Arrin sliced through the sinewy neck of a serpent, sending its shrieking head tumbling to the sand. The body writhed and squirmed, following after the rest. Blood oozed from its wound once it crumpled to the earth, the cut at its neck clean and nearly cauterized by the shimmer of the Sha’ree sword.
All around him, the Yviri fighters laid waste to the mutated beasts of the Funeral Sands. They were a frightful blur of viciousness, maintaining a huge perimeter around the Velen and making sure nothing came within a handful of horse lengths. A number of the pale warriors crept within the Velen ranks, listening to the ground in search of lurkers waiting to pop into their midst.
It was an effective system. Though the creatures had no sense of fear, their numbers dwindled nevertheless. Be it from the simple fact of the empowered force culling the sands of its predators or the rank stench of death warning the rest away, fewer and fewer of the creatures assailed them as they moved north toward solid earth.
Braelyn had since stopped circling the group and had settled in to a casual run alongside Arrin and Kirah. Cael ran a ways behind them.
“What do we face ahead?” she asked. “More of the stone beings?”
Arrin shook his head. “Not at first, I hope. They may well have come south from their homes, but the river and the Barren Lake will keep them from driving too deep into Pathra territory. They can likely stroll through the depths of the water, but it would leave them exposed as they attempted to exit its steep depths. The Pathra could use the Hull’s weight against them and keep them in the water indefinitely.”
“What about those little volcanoes? Can they use those?”
“No. There aren’t any in the western lands, at least as far as I know.”
“And the Grol? Where will they be?”
Kirah sighed. “They will be burning our jungles, trying to draw our forces out into the open. They’ll fail. Pathrale is lined with tributaries from the river, all prepared to be used to douse fires and separate the land from invaders should they make it inside.”
“The Grol will most likely be stalled at the border of Lathah and Pathrale. They won’t want to close into javelin range until they’re certain they’ve cleared the Pathra from the nearby trees.” A smile cracked his lips. “That is also unlikely.”
“Don’t forget the Korme,” Cael chimed in from his place behind them, sadness tingeing his voice.
Arrin nodded, casting his eyes behind him. “True. They also harry the Pathra, though I suspect it is like a fly to horse’s ass as to how effective they are against an enemy that knows they’re coming.”
Kirah giggled, her voice vibrating with a purr.
Braelyn went quiet as they continued on, her eyes locked on the distant horizon. The battle around them had slowed to almost nothing. A trickle of creatures still dared to make the travelers a meal, but the group had lost only five warriors and one Velen since leaving the mausoleum. It gave Arrin hope they might well be strong enough to wreak havoc upon the Grol even if they could not win out. He plotted their course in his head, factoring in the Lathahn landscape in an effort to plan the safest approach, which gave them the greatest element of surprise.
~
The time passed quickly. Arrin pushed the travelers forward, taking no breaks along the way. He knew the O’hra would keep the group strong and delay the need for food and drink as well as rest. As they neared the end of the Funeral Sands, its denizens having long since given up interest in them, Arrin was glad to see the Fortress Mountains casting its shadowed presence into the sky. They were nearly free of the desert.
The jagged range snaked upward, to their left, as the promise of solid earth grew nearer. Smiles littered the faces of the Velen as their Yviri guardians told them what the mountains meant. Arrin smiled as the excitement filtered through the group. They had lost a great many warriors on the way to the mausoleum, and they would most certainly lose a great many more before the journey was done, but they had survived. There was comfort in this, however small or shallow.
The good feelings ended moments later. Braelyn pointed a ways into the distance. The chattered voices of the group faded as Arrin’s focus followed her extended finger. A brown cloud of dust swirled at the edge of his vision. Even with the O’hra, he could not clearly see what caused the turbulence, but a lifetime of military service gave him the answer without needing to spy it directly.
He growled, calling for the group to halt. “An army approaches at haste,” he stated, pushing his voice so that it carried across the ranks.
“Your people?” Braelyn asked Kirah.
She shook her head without hesitation. “My people would never kick up dust.” Her voice was filled with disgust. Her whiskers lay flat along her cheeks, purple eyes seething above.
Arrin cupped a hand over his eyes to as he stared the short distance into Fhen. The cloud was building, the brown of it twirling and being whipped into a frenzy. He looked behind them and sighed as he spied their own trail of dust kicked up in their passage.
“They’re coming faster,” Braelyn announced.
“They’ve seen us,” Arrin answered.
“They who?” Cael drew alongside Kirah, looking toward the growing cloud. She set a hand on his arm and nodded, her shoulders slumped, but she did not answer his question.
Arrin stared on, doing his best to assess the approaching force before they came too close. It was the Grol, he had no doubt. Their muffled howls drifted on the wind, whispers of it fluttering to his ears in guttural stutters.
“Is it the Grol?” Cael insisted on an answer.
“I thought they would be fighting your—” Braelyn let her question go, her face twisted with regret as she glanced at Kirah.
Their presence could only mean one thing: the Pathra were dead. Arrin went to Kirah and pulled her in close. To her credit, she remained quiet, her strength evident in her silence. Her whiskers trembled and twitched, pinned against her cheeks, but her purple eyes were clear of tears. Arrin could see his reflection in their depths. It stood alongside her rage. She would know revenge before she gave in to grief.
Arrin knew the O’hra fueled her emotions, so when she stiffened and seemed as though she would charge, he locked his hand about her elbow. “Look closer before you throw your life away, Kirah.” He motioned with his chin toward the closing enemy.
She stared off without saying a word, the tenseness evident in her posture, her arm straining ever so slightly against Arrin’s grip.
“This is not the fight for us,” he told her, despite his own ire surging through his veins. “Not now.”
“We may not have much of a choice,” Braelyn cut in, slipping her swords from their scabbards.
Arrin and Kirah turned to her. She pointed along the horizon, focusing their attention on the growing clouds of a hurried passage. The howls of the Grol filled the sky like thunder. Its sound boomed across the intervening space.
Ar
rin growled low in his throat. “We need to fall back; deeper into the desert if we have to.”
The Grol were spreading their forces. Fielding nearly ten thousand warriors, the beasts were blocking all avenues of escape from the Funeral Sands. Though only a small percentage of them carried O’hra, it didn’t matter. There were simply too many of the creatures to take head on. There was no victory in that fight.
A lifetime of conflict and consistent victories led the Yvir to see differently. Unlike when the Hull sieged their land, there was no inherent fear of the Grol. The Yviri’s shouted responses boiled over into action. Without anything resembling organization, the warriors split from the group and charged toward the approaching Grol mass.
“No!” Arrin screamed after them. His voice was drowned in the crush of sounds coming from the two converging forces.
His stomach hardened into a knot. This was not a fight they could win. He looked to the glowing O’hra the Yvir wielded and sickening reality draped over him as though it were a funeral shroud. The pale warriors’ impetuousness was putting all of Ahreele at risk. The O’hra they bore was the last of its kind. Were the Grol to claim it, there would be no stopping the creatures. It would be the end of them all.
“Rout the Yvir,” he shouted to Braelyn and Kirah. The woman darted off without hesitation. Arrin grabbed Cael’s wrist when the boy went to follow. “Stay here and wait for us. If you see us fall…run.”
The battle between fear and the desire to fight alongside played out on Cael’s face, but obedience won out. He nodded. Arrin had no time to question the honesty of the boy’s promise. He turned and ran after the zealous Yvir. If he could not turn them, Cael would be watching them all die.
A piercing whistle split the din as a fiery streak arced away from the back ranks of the Grol and hurtled into the sky. The battle had been joined. The two forces collided, the clash of steel and the butcher shop sounds of meat falling beneath the blade rang out. Arrin sped his pace despite thinking it may well be too late to stop the conflict now.
He crashed into the Grol lines just after the Yvir. Bodies already littered the ground, both enemy and ally alike. It was a grim testament to how easily they could die. The sand squished beneath his boots as he drew his swords and set them to their morbid work. Grol fell away with every blow, the last of their lives spewing warm across his knuckles. Arrin veered toward the closest of the battling Yvir.
“Fall back!” he shouted, clearing a path with silvered trails of his blades.
Caught up in their battle lust, the Yviri fighters ignored him, bringing their swords about in broad arcs, cleaving away the Grol who stood before them. The O’hra had added speed to their brutality, honing their deadliness. The pale warriors cut through the ranks with ease, but Arrin could see it would not be enough to stem the tide of the beasts.
Braelyn and Kirah strafed the lines to the east of Arrin’s position. He heard their voices piercing the clatter of combat, urging the Yvir to turn away, but like with him, the pale berserkers fought on in a rage.
Obviously surprised by the tenacity of their enemy, the Grol slowed at first, but quickly regained their momentum. Shrieked commands whipped at their backs, driving them onward. Like ants, they swarmed. Crowded amidst them, Arrin cut away anything that came close, decorating the field with the limbs and bodies of beasts.
An explosion jarred the ground. Arrin felt a wave of heat wash past. Yviri screams rose up at his back only to be silenced by fire. He cast a furtive glance behind to see the first of the Grol’s ranged attacks had struck true. Pale bodies lay crippled and broken in a three horse length circle of blackened earth. The O’hra glimmered on the dead and dying, but the warriors stayed down.
That was an ill omen. Arrin cut his way through more of the Grol, their slavering jaws barking out incoherent threats. They were invigorated, the push growing bolder. The screech of magical fury launched at their backs only drove them harder. He glanced over at Kirah and Braelyn and waved them to him, sinking his blade into the skull of a beast that grew too bold.
Two more of the fiery missiles crashed to ground, drowning the world in brilliant flashes and searing away the lives of yet more of the Yviri warriors. They slowed their charge as their companions roiled around them, the gurgled death rattles of their friends and families sinking in at last. For the first time since the battle started, they responded to Kirah’s shout for their retreat. They slowly began to draw back as more of the Grol artillery lighted the sky.
“Retreat!” Arrin screamed, adding his voice to the chaos of echoing cries.
“It’s the Lathahn!” a guttural bark called out. Dozens, and then hundreds, of roughened throats took up the cry, passing it through the ranks. The mass of beasts closed upon him, a sudden frenzy of activity swirling around Arrin as the Grol advanced.
He loosed his blades and cut a gory swath before him, but the Grol kept coming. Kirah and Braelyn joined him, the bodies piling up on the dirt. It did nothing to deter the Grol. Emerald flickers of O’hra cast a sullen glow over the dead, but still the guttural shouts for Arrin continued, the creatures pressing forward with no concern for their lives.
The Grol leader had been willing to trade Lathah for Arrin before the city had fallen, and it seemed the beast still wanted him. For what purpose, he could not imagine, but it was clear the Grol had every intention of fighting until Arrin was theirs.
He glanced up at a disturbance in the ranks, behind the front line, and spied one of the Grol approaching through the cluster of soldiers. This one wore a collection of O’hra, the beasts moving aside to let him pass. The Grol’s yellow eyes were locked on his own. This must be the commander.
Explosions at his back snatched his attention away. More of the Yvir had fallen to the blasts. In retreat, their lack of discipline was making them easy targets for the Grol barrage. They were clustered tight in an effort to form a defensive half-circle, but it only made the Grols’ jobs easier.
“Lathahn!” the commander snarled as he drew closer. His claws were extended.
Arrin’s gaze snapped to the Grol officer as he hacked aside two more of the creatures. Kirah tugged at his arm.
“Come, Arrin.” She dropped another beast as Braelyn cleared the path at their backs.
Arrin weighed the commander’s life for an instant, but deemed it not worth the sacrifice. The O’hra the Grol wore assured him it would be no easy fight. Every second spent trying to kill a commander who would be replaced an instant later only meant more of their group would die. Arrin gave in and let Kirah tug him away.
“Fall back!” Braelyn shouted nearby. “Run!”
As another burning projectile crashed into the Yvir, they hurried to comply, their rage dissipated. They broke ranks, such as they were, and ran full out in the direction Braelyn pointed, leaving the Grol to lag behind. Arrin and the women followed after. Cael matched their trajectory off in the distance.
The jagged voice of the Grol commander howled at their backs, calling for Arrin. He ignored the shrieked taunts and raced on. They were gaining ground from the Grol force but not the mystical fire. Blow after blow tore the earth apart around them, taking its toll upon the Yviri numbers, as well as the Velen who rejoined the group with Cael. Further still, the constant barrage slowed their retreat. Forced to keep an eye on the death raining down from above, the Grol were regaining lost ground.
Arrin snarled as an explosion singed his arm, tendrils of fire licking at his back. They skirted the line of the desert in their flight, pressing west toward the jagged hills of the Fortress Mountains. It had been an instinctive choice to move away from the mass of the Grol, but the direction itself would soon become its own concern.
With only the mountains and the ocean ahead, they would soon have to make a choice. They could climb into the mountainous range that encircled Lathah and be slowed, but that would give the Grol time and opportunity to pelt them with more of the m
agical fire as they scrambled vulnerable through the heights. It was that, or they could turn south into the desert. They knew well enough what lay in that direction.
Whistled shrieks splitting the sky at their backs, Arrin ran on. Death loomed with every choice.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Wafts of energy prickled Uthul’s skin as he stared off toward the approaching Hull. The dust seemed suffused by an emerald green, which clung to the sky and danced in the swirling air. Marii trembled at his side, her leg pressed against his unconsciously, translating her emotions to him with every twitch and involuntary spasm. Uthul watched Hull grow ever closer, suspecting his own nervous motions were fueling hers.
As the first of the enemy crashed through the covering trees and burst into the open field between them, startled gasps rose up all around. Uthul blinked away his uncertainty, and stared at the creatures. He had believed the subtle glow to be the remnant essence of their travel through the fonts, but the reality was far more disturbing.
The Hull lumbered forward, filling the horizon with their massive forms, but it wasn’t the overwhelming numbers that drew Uthul’s attention; it was the silver that clung to the stony hides. Uthul’s heart sputtered.
The Hull wore O’hra.
The line of Sha’ree went silent as each recognized it, as well. Marii went stiff at his side. As the line of the enemy grew nearer, he spied the smaller shapes of the Ruhr flitting about the ranks of Hull. They, too, bore the familiar flicker of O’hra.
Uthul swallowed hard against the rising lump in his throat. He had never seen such an affront to Ree in all of his existence. The tools had been crafted to size, clearly each being designed to fit the stone monstrosities. They wore a full complement of O’hra, as well, not just a single piece. They had been outfitted for war.
The army came forward at a leisurely pace despite the magic at their call. It was a message to the Sha’ree, a cruel statement of intent declaring the Hull the victor before the battle had even begun. It was as chilling as it was true.