Page 369 of Of Empires and Dust
“What about Faelen?”
“Faelen is safe, but Salme is not. And it means I could take further care of Varthear along the way. There are people I care about there. I spoke to Faelen of this possibility before I left.”
Calen looked up at Valerys, who shifted closer and lowered his head so the tip of his snout was barely half a foot from Therin’s face, lavender eyes looking down at the elf. A brief moment of quiet passed between them, and Valerys pushed his snout into Therin’s chest.
“We leave now,” Calen said.
I’m coming, Dann.
Chapter 86
Walk Through the Ashes
23rdDay of the Blood Moon
Western villages of Illyanara – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
The army had marched ceaselesslyfor three days, sleeping as little as they dared and moving as swiftly as their legs could carry them. The elves kept guard at night; they slept less than the others. Queen Tessara, Baralas, and Thurivîr had argued endlessly over who should have the ‘honour’ of holding the night’s watch. An honour which Tarmon had happily ceded to them.
The Uraks’ path had not been a difficult one to track. Every structure, every farm, inn, house, cottage – every single one – had been left burning, every soul within slaughtered, the land broken by the weight of the creatures’ steps. Corpses had hung from trees, limbs hacked free. Rows upon rows of rotting severed heads were impaled on spikes running along on either side of the dirt road from Camylin to Erith. Dann’s squire, Nala,had vomited at the sight. And then again a few moments later. Many of the other young squires and porters who travelled with the army did the same – along with a fair few of those who had seen many more summers. Dann didn’t blame them. The fact that his own stomach didn’t turn upset him in a way. It meant he had grown so accustomed to the horrors of war that even a sight as grotesque as severed heads on spikes had little effect other than setting an ache in his heart.
Smouldering cookfires and remnants of spiked trenches and makeshift fortifications of felled trees and iron signalled where the creatures had camped each night, the markings of their passage stretching for miles across.
All Dann had ever known of Uraks was that they were mindless beasts that killed and slaughtered. Everything he’d seen in his life had supported those thoughts. But seeing the fortifications they’d laid and the purposeful display of the mutilated bodies had shown him how wrong he’d been. These creatures moved with intent. They placed the bodies to brew terror. They laid their fortifications with care and thought. And for some reason, learning that he’d been wrong, learning that they were not the mindless animals he’d thought they were, had only served to strike even deeper fear into his heart.
The Uraks were terrifying enough when they were no better than beasts. But if they could plan, build fortifications, lay siege, set traps, it meant that these were not beasts who killed simply to eat and survive, monstrous from instinct alone. Nor did they do it for the reasons humans and elves did: land, glory, jealousy. It seemed to him the Uraks killed for nothing more than the sake of killing itself. They revelled in it, yearned for it.
His heart had sunk when they’d reached the long-broken and charred ruin of Erith. The village had been destroyed months ago, long before the Uraks who had razed Camylin had passed over it. The bodies were nothing but blackened husks, collapsingbeneath the weight of the birds and animals that roamed the ruins. The rotting corpses of five children had been twisted about each other and pinned to a tree by a single black spear, forming some kind of gruesome rune shape. The skin had sloughed off their bones, ripped and torn where the birds had picked away at them. He’d only known they were children by the size of the corpses.
He didn’t stop, nor did he dismount, but he whispered the blessings of the gods as he passed. A prayer to Heraya to take them into her embrace, to Varyn to watch over those who yet lived, to Neron to see their souls safely from the world, to Elyara in hope that she might gift him the wisdom to defeat what lay before them, to Achyron to grant him courage, and to Hafaesir to forge him into the man he needed to be.
The villages were his home. And in truth, he had not expected to ever see them again. But he had expected even less to find them in this state. The scouts had reported both Pirn and Ölm had shared the same fate. All he could think about is what if that had been young Lyna Styr, or Aren Ehrnin, or Tim Ferlok. That was something Dann had not prepared himself for; it was not something he thought he ever could prepare himself for. He knew the Uraks had attacked The Glade. He knew the place itself was gone – though he still couldn’t spend too long thinking on it. But he had not asked Haem whose faces he’d seen amongst the dead. Dann wasn’t ready for that.
They encountered small groups of Uraks as they travelled through Ölm forest. Scatterings of the creatures that had fallen behind the main body. After what the soldiers had seen in Erith and along the road… Dann had never witnessed such fervour in killing. The men and elves tore the Uraks limb from limb, hacking and slashing long after the beasts were dead.
As the sun sat high in the sky on the third day, they stopped by a stream nestled in the heart of Ölm Forest. At first glance,the woodland looked just as it had done during The Proving. The air was still thick and heavy. The trees still held sway, their vast, arthritic limbs creaking and groaning with the breeze. Gnarled roots stretched across the forest floor, mushrooms of vibrant yellows and blues sprouting in the damp soil around them. That same incessant, unrelenting buzz of insects filled the air.
And yet all was different. Bodies of men, women, and Uraks were scattered through the roots and foliage, all mashed and trampled, clawed footprints pressing into the soil everywhere Dann looked. The air may still have been heavy, but it no longer smelled the same; the ancient scent of time was gone, replaced with that of iron, and shit, and blood, and death. Birdsong no longer played chase with the breeze. No hares or squirrels scuttled about. He saw a wolfpine prowling through the thicket, but the animal had simply torn a chunk of flesh from a corpse and fled.
The air of magic and wonder with which he’d always viewed the forest was as dead as the bodies that now decorated its depths. And the fear he’d once felt was nothing but a lingering memory. What he feared now lay on the other side of the forest.
The sight of it all made Dann think back to that herd of stampeding deer he, Calen, and Rist had found when hunting. Those claw marks in the stag’s ribs had been the first sign of what was to come. That seemed a lifetime ago now.
Dann dismounted, patting Drunir’s neck. “Drink up.”
Beside him, Nala dismounted from the bay mare Dann had gifted her – one of those he’d ‘liberated’ from the Lorian forces a while back. It was a fine animal with a good temperament. Probably would have cost an arm and a leg to buy in The Glade.
“How are you finding her?” Dann asked as he dropped to his haunches. He made to dip his waterskin into the stream but stopped at the sight of two bloated and rotting corpses pressed against the bank on the other side. All around him, men andelves were lined along both banks, thousands of them. Some filled their skins, others washed the accumulated dirt and sweat of constant travel from their face and hands, while others again stripped bare and dove into the water with alacrity. Either they hadn’t seen the bodies or they had seen so many in the weeks of travel that they no longer cared.
At any other point in his life – were it not for the bodies – that likely would have been Dann. But he was tired, not just in his joints, muscles, and bones, but in his heart. He had seen what the Uraks had done to the other villages, knew what they’d do to Salme if Dann and the others didn’t reach it in time.
“Can I be honest, my lord?”
Dann shook the dark thoughts from his head. “What did I say about the ‘my lord’?”
When the porter in Durakdur – Conal, he thought his name was – had insisted on calling Calen m’lord every ten seconds, Dann had mocked Calen with every breath he could. He couldn’t right well then turn around and allow Nala to call him the same. Dann had no problem if people called him an arsehole, but he wouldn’t be named a hypocrite.
Besides, there was something ‘wrong’ about the word. He was the son of a tanner, not the son of a lord. There were no lords in the villages. The closest lords had resided in Camylin, and they were all dead now most likely. Not that he’d ever known their names in the first place. The only name he’d known was High Lord Castor Kai, and even then that had meant little. Nobody had ever really cared about the western villages, and that had suited everyone just fine.
