All around the base of the Wall were posted guards. That is, Gair assumed they were guards. In reality, they were the most agitated things he had ever seen. At first glance, it was hard to tell if some of them were human, so troubled were their movements. Most were batting at their own clothes, as if trying to beat off a swarm of biting insects. Those who were not writhing were showing signs of extreme anger and distress, either bawling out the figures closest to them or methodically pulling at their hair. Only the Sentry element of the guard stood still, but even its members flexed their muscles and limbs again and again, as if uncomfortable with their own bodies.
Gair had seen enough to chill his blood. “Back into the trees!” he hissed. Men and munkke-trophe immediately obeyed. The Wall was still more than a league away, but there was no sense in exposing themselves to the fiends. Once in the relative safety of the copse, they tried to take stock of the situation.
“What in the Chasm is going on?” the first man whispered through gritted teeth.
“I’d keep a close guard on that word, Sedgar,” Gair replied. “You don’t know how accurate it is.”
Sedgar paled. “So that’s. . .is that
them
? I was expecting them to act more, well, dead.”
Merto, who was a scout by training, volunteered to go in for a closer look. “There must be another entrance. I’ve heard that there are smugglers’ tunnels dating back to Alric’s reign. Those Chasmites can’t have clogged all the ways in.”
Gair shook his head. “We’re few enough as it is. Besides, if any of the smugglers’ tunnels were left open, wouldn’t the Ulanese have found them?”
The wiry little man shrugged. “I’ve found many a way out that others have passed over.”
But the other two soldiers agreed with Gair. Reyn, the oldest and most experienced of them all, spoke with gravity. “The captain is right: we are already too few. I imagine those Easterners,” he refused the more colorful name Merto had given them, “would crush any one of us with pleasure. To split up until we have more information would be too dangerous.”
Merto was not convinced. “And how will we have more information if we don’t split up? It’ll be much easier for them to track five of us than one.”
Sedgar looked at his companion with skepticism. “And how are you going to get closer to the Wall? It’s open terrain between here and there; you’ll be lucky to find a rabbit warren to hide in.”
Merto was just about to respond when Ragger the munkke-trophe held up a paw to silence them. He was sniffing the air. “I can smell the smoke,” he declared.
“So?”
The primate’s beady red eyes were wide. “It is not just the smell of burning buildings; it is much more foul.”
As he processed what Ragger was saying, Gair’s heart sank. “Then the battle’s already over.”
The munkke-trophe nodded. “You don’t burn bodies while you’re fighting.”
The group fell silent, each one considering the enormity of the catastrophe. Windrell was Ulan’s greatest city, as well as the city closest to the Wall. It was her smoke that they were seeing. They all knew that if Windrell had fallen, then the Easterners must have pushed their way through the width of the Ulanese kingdom, no doubt destroying everything in their path. Gair looked unhappily in the direction of the gate. The Easterners had not only run through the kingdom, but had sent forces through the Trmak desert to skirt the southern end of Alric’s Wall and come up the outside, thus enclosing the Ulanese in a massive net.
“What do we do now, Captain?” Reyn’s question was barely audible.
Sedgar took it upon himself to answer. “What can we do? We go back and tell the king that Ulan is destroyed.”
Gair silenced him with a look. Sedgar was just a few months younger than himself. Gair had chosen him because of his loyalty to Corfe and his skill with a bow but had heard nothing remarkable about his bravery. “You surprise me, Sedgar. We’ve only just gotten to the battlefield and you already want to leave it?”
Sedgar turned crimson. “No, sir. I only meant that the battle is already over.”
With a grunt, Gair stood up and checked the straps on his voyoté’s saddle. “We won’t know that until we get a better look. Merto, how close do you think we can get without getting detected?”
Merto also stood and peered through the trees. “The grass is tall, but other than that, there’s little cover until we reach that rocky field there.” He pointed to an area of ground about three-quarters to the Wall that was protected by a small scattering of boulders. The turf around it was torn up. “That must have been where they got the rocks to block the gate. There’s no sense making a move until nightfall, though. Let’s just hope those Chasmites can’t see in the dark.”
“And after that?”
“I vote we move south, away from the gate; that’s the spot where they’ll be looking for action. But we must be careful. You said that you saw Sentry Chasmites as well as human: one from any tribe would be trouble, but remember that the Urabi are night watchers.”
Gair agreed and told the men to rest as well as they could. Then he sent the munkke-trophe up into the trees to keep watch. Corfe had been right: despite his complaints, Ragger was a useful scoundrel who had a sharp eye and needed less sleep than his comrades. Night finally fell and the small troupe made its move. The horrible smoke had turned to an orange glow, bathing the Wall in a malevolent light but not extending its light to the field. They crept to the boulders without trouble, from which vantage point they could make out the individual shapes of the Easterners who guarded the Wall. To their surprise, the creatures were moving, starting to draw in toward where the gate had been. They had lit several torches so that their shadows crept high up the stones behind them. Their agitated movements were now cast in the eeriest of silhouettes. Several large Sentries appeared—Mholi, from the look of them—and started to lash ropes to the rocks piled up against the gate. Then, when the bottom boulders were secured, several of the Mholi took up the lines and started pulling. As the lower boulders shifted, the higher and smaller ones began to roll down. Any other soldiers would have jumped out of the way, but the Easterners, both Sentry and human, simply let the torso-sized rocks knock them to the ground. A second later they were up on their feet as the Mholi continued to pull.
Gair could feel Sedgar shaking, or possibly it was himself. Was this the type of enemy they would be fighting? How could they possibly overcome things against which the rocks of Rhyvelad were useless?
A crash resounded through the night, audible even over the cacophony of voices. The Mholi had not taken long to bring down the barricade. The boulders that remained in the path were hastily pulled away and the road was cleared. The spies watched, riveted, as the door opened and a dark screeching mass began to pour through it. The Easterners were on the move.
They tried not to panic, although Merto couldn’t keep his voice from trembling. “Skies above, do you see what they’re doing? There’s only one city on that road.”
Gair shared his alarm, but he tried not to succumb to it in front of the others. “At least they’ll move slowly. Such a large force—even one like this—can only go so far in a day.”
Ragger had started wringing his hands. “Yes, but no doubt they can travel by night, as well. They’ll be in Lascombe in less time than it took for us to get here.”
Sedgar jumped to his feet, eying the spot in the trees where they had left their voyoté. “Then there’s no time to waste; we have to beat them back.”
Reyn pulled him back. “Get down, you fool! Do you think you’re invisible?”
Gair stared gloomily at the orange sky over Windrell. Was there anybody alive in there? “Here’s what we do. Sedgar, Reyn, and Merto, move as quick as you can back to Lascombe. Warn the king.”
“And you, Captain?” Reyn asked.
“I cannot move as quickly as you.” He knocked his wooden leg. “If anything were to happen to my voyoté, I’d be a hindrance. Ragger and I will stay here to search Windrell. Perhaps there are some Ulanese still alive.” He did not mention that he might find Farlone among them. Such a hope seemed too far-fetched.
“As you wish.”
“Now go. Rest only when you need to. Reyn, you’re probably right about the Easterners: they may move slowly, but it doesn’t look like they will stop. You
cannot
let Lascombe be taken unawares.”
The men saluted and hurried off, leaving Gair and Ragger, to settle down and wait. It would be a long while before that gate had vomited forth its last Obsidian regiment.
CHAPTER
TEN
The triple lunos were high in the night sky when the final group of Easterners had disappeared beyond the horizon. The gate stood empty. The victors had felt no need even to shut the doors behind them. Gair suspected that they had not bothered to leave behind a garrison either, but he took no chances. As stealthily as they could, he and Ragger moved from shadow to shadow until they made it to the base of the Wall. Then they crept to the edge of the dark opening.
If a garrison was stationed there, it was hidden under the debris. Gair had never seen the city of Windrell. He had heard stories that it was a lively town, not quite up to the artistic level of Lascombe, but still a hub of trade and learning in its own right. For the Ulanese kingdom, Windrell was a gateway to the west, to the rich plains and majestic peaks of Keroul. Now, the famous gateway had become a tomb. The silence was deafening, and Gair tried not to get sick as he looked at the remains. With no one alive to bury them, bodies were left where they had fallen. It looked like many were clustered around the gate in a last ditch effort to escape or perhaps to keep the fiends from moving toward Lascombe. Most of the bodies were men, but it did not take much searching to find the women and children who had tried to hide. They, too, had been brutally murdered. Gair shuddered at what their last visions might have been. He was sure that many of them had put themselves into Kynell’s hands before falling under Zyreio’s wrath, but eternal peace for their souls did not save their bodies from being ravaged.
Shaken yet emboldened by the stillness around them, Gair and Ragger picked through random piles of debris, listening for any sounds of life. Once, as they were investigating an area at the base of a building, the wall above them came loose and they almost shared in the fate of the Ulanese. Only Ragger’s quick reflexes saved them. After two more close calls and a few more hours of searching, Gair was ready to leave.
“There can’t be anybody left alive,” he whispered. Talking aloud seemed sacrilegious in this place. “And if there are, they’re further back in the city and can fend for themselves.”
Ragger, as submissive as Gair had ever seen him, agreed. The two were about to return to the gate when the munkke-trophe held up a paw. “Wait, Captain. I smell something.”
Gair raised his eyebrows. “How can you smell anything but burnt flesh?”
Ragger didn’t answer. Instead, he scampered down the street, away from the gate, and disappeared into a doorway. Gair followed, although he traveled much slower on his artificial limb. When he arrived, Ragger was climbing, monkey-like, down from a ruined balcony, the staircase to which was nowhere to be seen. He was cradling something in one arm.
“It is a human child, Captain.”
“I can see that, Lieutenant. Is it alive?”
“Yes, sir. It looks healthy, just a little hungry and, well. . .” he looked down at the child’s tattered diaper. “Messy.”
“And the mother?”
“She is with Kynell now, sir.”
Gair nodded as he stared down at the infant. It was young; he had no idea how old it was, but not old enough to walk or possibly even crawl. It was crying, although it was so weak that the cry was really more of a whimper. He looked around the remains of the building. What could they possibly give it to eat?
Ragger was stroking the child’s head, which had the most meager amount of thin, dark hair. Gair had no idea he could be so gentle. “We must get her out of here,” the munkke-trophe announced. “She needs food.”
“Her?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right then.” He stopped and looked around again. His artificial limb was beginning to chafe; he longed to get out of this place of death. “Are there any more?”
Ragger shrugged. “I cannot smell any more. It’s amazing that this one survived.”
“Then let’s get her some food and, uh, some fresh clothes.”
On their return to the gate, they dug up some clean rags that would serve as diapers, some more clothes to keep the chill off the little girl, and even a small store of food supplies. They found a bottle of milk that, while not fresh, was not yet rancid, and even some produce that they could mash down for baby food.
It was well past dawn by the time they made it back to the copse. Ragger, whose hidden talents were revealing themselves through this new development, changed the child’s clothes and gave her some food. But Gair was anxious to press on. He watched impatiently as Ragger rocked her to sleep.
“Get up, Lieutenant,” he ordered. “We have to keep moving. We will deposit the child at the first village we come across.”
Ragger said nothing. Moving to his voyoté and mounting carefully, he continued to croon into its ear. Then he started. “Captain, I smell something.”