Dawn of War (20 page)

He stood silent as Malya mulled his words. The difficulty of the task was clear in the worry lines carved into her face.

At long last, she spoke, her voice barely above a whispered breath. “Though I would not have my family fall prey to Grol cruelty, I will not abandon my people. They must have one leader who understands compassion.” She grasped Arrin’s wrist and squeezed. “Carry a message to Pathrale and ask sanctuary of Warlord Quaii for all the people of Lathah. Bring me his word of refuge and we will march as one to Pathrale.”

“We are short on time, Malya. I know not how soon the Grol will come. Please, do not delay with politics.”

She shook her head. “It is enough I contemplate fleeing my home with my tail between my legs, but I will not do so without assurance of safe asylum. I would rather we all die fighting for our nation than creep away to live landless, like our forefathers before Lathah was founded.”

Arrin sighed. The fire he’d loved in her still burned as bright as it ever had. He knew she would not be swayed from her course. For all his strength, it was a battle he would not win. “Then it shall be done.”

She graced him with a smile and pulled him to her so that she could plant a soft kiss on his cheek. The gentle scent of her was like a fresh breeze in spring, her kiss a touch of the sun. He warmed to her closeness, a lifetime of loneliness brushed away in an instant, but he set his mind against the impulses that surged through his veins. Her kiss was all he could hope for.

She pulled away with what seemed to him as deliberate slowness and bowed her head. “Thank you, Arrin, for your loyalty, and your love. It is, and shall always be, a treasure to me.” She lingered a moment and then turned to the prince’s men, her look stolid once more. “My guard shall assist you to escort Arrin Urrael to the gates. Be warned, should any harm come to him or my men, you will pay most dearly, my brother’s will be damned.” She waited until they acknowledged her threat, her gaze tempered with steel, before looking to Maltis. Her expression softened. “I would appreciate your continued supervision to their escort, commander.”

Maltis smiled. “Certainly, my lady.”

Malya cast one last glance at Arrin, whispered her thanks, and strode back toward the Crown, five of her men close at her side. Lieutenant Santos glared after their backs, fury undisguised in his eyes.

Arrin growled and drew the lieutenant’s attention. The collar glimmered and Arrin snapped the chain of the shackles without effort. Before the wide eyes of everyone, he tore the manacle cuffs from his wrists, bending the iron with obvious ease, and threw them at the feet of the lieutenant.

“If you even deign to cause Malya harm, now or ever, I will find you and tear your still beating heart from your chest as you watch.” He turned and gestured toward the main gate. “Now, let us be about my second exiling before I’m forced to see myself out.”

Maltis choked back a laugh and strode to Lieutenant Santos. “I’d have our swords.”

The man’s wide eyes dropped to look at the crumpled iron of the shackles at his feet. Without further hesitation, he handed Maltis his sword and Arrin’s as well. The commander smiled and returned to Arrin’s side as Malya’s men formed a loose circle around the pair.

Not waiting, Arrin strode forward. Malya’s guard kept pace, while those of the prince hurried to stay close; but not too close. They traveled the rest of the way in silence. Arrin’s eyes were locked straight ahead, his mind in a trance of thoughts and memories until the squeal of the main gate drew his head back to the present.

He turned to the commander as the gate swung open, extending his hand. “Thank you.”

Maltis clasped Arrin’s hand in his, a sly smile still on his face. “You’ve grown strong in the wilderness.”

Arrin grinned, sweeping aside his unkempt hair so Maltis could see the collar. “I’ve the help of the goddess, my friend,” He grew grim as he spoke. “As do the Grol that march upon Lathah. If I do not return before you see the dust of our old enemy nearing the border, drag the princess and her family, bodily if you must, to Pathrale. To engage the Grol is suicide; to sit behind the walls is to accept genocide.” He released the commander’s hand and collected his sword before turning to stride, chin held high, through the gates of Lathah, out once more into the wilderness.

“Mark my words, Maltis,” he said over his shoulder as he cleared the gate. “There is only one certain chance for survival: you must run.”

Chapter Seventeen

Commander Feragh stared at the ruins of Fhenahr through the narrowed slits of his eyes. Fires still danced unattended within its walls, having yet to consume the city in its entirety, though it was close. It was a haunting sight, the leaping flames flickering into the sky to be swallowed by the glowing face of A’ree. The light of both cast a reddish pallor over the land as though the morning had been born of crimson’s womb.

There were none of the expected screams of the dying in the air, only the thick scent of charred flesh and burning wood that clung as a sour passenger on the wind. Other than the gentle crackle of the flames and the occasional rustle and crash as a support was devoured and a structure collapsed in its wake, there was no sound of life from Fhenahr.

The men at his back were silent, as well. Not even their mounts dared to make a sound. The devastation was so complete as to defy logical description.

The walls had been laid open in several places, blackened char surrounding their crumbled foundations. What could be seen of the building inside was the same, fire having come to cleanse the town of its history and memory.

Unlike the battlefields that Feragh had seen, his feet having trod many in his time, there were no bodies scattered about, no pieces. No crows circled overhead in search of a fallen feast, for there seemed to be nothing left to feed upon.

Though this was often the way with the Grol, their enemy but living fuel for the beasts, Feragh had never seen such complete and utter destruction. The people of Fhenahr had never made it out from behind their walls, save for those led out in chains. No defensive force had struck at the Grol as they laid siege. Feragh knew this for no blood stained the open field before the city, no pieces of fur or flesh of any kind, no fragments of bone, lay strewn about in the dirt. While the Grol were notorious for their appetites, not even they could scour a battlefield so clean as to leave no trace of war.

The people of Fhenahr had been butchered in their homes in a way Feragh had never seen. They met their end quick and with brutal violence. Had the Grol been any other force, Feragh felt he would have found much of the population still in their beds; dead where they lay.

Feragh drew in a thick breath and licked his lips with a dry tongue as General Wulvren pulled his horse alongside the commander.

“They are days ahead of us still. Given the multitude of tracks, they easily number in the thousands, perhaps over ten. The prisoners’ tracks make it hard to be certain.” He gestured toward the wall of the Fortress Mountains just visible in the distance. “Their path confirms that they are headed toward Lathah. They could be headed nowhere else.”

Feragh turned to look at his general. “Do you see the walls?”

Wulvren nodded with a grim face.

“When did the Grol become capable of this?” He swept his arm in the direction of Fhenahr, the fires flickering over the city. “What could they have found in Ah Uto Ree to have empowered them so?” He shook his head, his eyes drawn once more by the burning city. “This is no longer a simple hunt as I’d believed. The Grol intend war and our legion can no longer stand against them as could the Fhen, though it sickens me to speak such foul words.”

Wulvren spit on the dirt. “It would seem the Sha’ree truly are dead. The Grol must have learned of their secrets when they invaded their land. I can see no other way for the beasts to have caused such damage on their own.”

Feragh agreed in silence. The Grol had pierced the ancient lands of the Sha’ree and had returned alive and unharried, a miracle indeed, bearing burdened palanquins that must have contained the fury of the ancient Sha’ree people.

Before him stood proof that the Grol that strode the lands today were not the enemy he had long battled, defeating at every turn. Whatever they had found stoked the fires of their courage, and given the flaming downfall of Fhenahr, rightly so. A shudder crept down Feragh’s spine as he imagined the Grol given the means to assuage their cruel appetites, their hunger for flesh and destruction.

For the first time in his life, Commander Feragh knew fear. He’d crawled from his mother’s womb into the warrior’s life of the Tolen, raised since he’d opened his eyes to rule and wage war. Since he was just a pup he’d known the thrill of battle, his claws blooded upon the Grol before they’d even grown their full length.

Yet in the ruin of Fhenahr, he saw a new world, one where all he’d believed had been cast aside to make room for the miraculous. Never more than a nuisance, the Grol had suddenly become a true threat; one not just to the Tolen, but to the whole of Ahreele.

“We must warn our people,” Feragh told Wulvren. “Send a runner home with orders to rally. I want our forces on the move the day they receive our warning. Have them skirt the inside border of Gurhtol and slice through the heart of Nurin with all haste. I would have them ready at the backs of the Grol should Lathah manage to hold them to a standstill.”

The general glanced to the city. “Do you truly believe the Lathahns capable of such?” He waved a soldier over as he waited on the commander’s answer.

Feragh shook his head. “They are fierce in defense of their homes, and smart in their tactics, but no, I don’t believe they will fare much better than the people of Fhen.” He sat in silence a moment as Wulvren passed his order onto the messenger, continuing once the soldier had been sent away. “My only hope is that they will take their toll upon the beasts and perhaps slow them enough so that we might strike at their backs unaware as they lay siege.”

“Pardon my tongue, but it is a weak hope, commander, if what we see before us is a true representation of the Grol’s newfound strength.”

“We’ve little else to take faith in, general. We’ve no messengers fast enough to take word of preparation to Lathah, or even to their Pathran allies, no doubt next upon the list of Grol victims. Unable to coordinate a plan of attack, we must make do with what few options are available to us.”

Wulvren shifted in his saddle. “Is this truly our fight to so risk our people? We owe no claims to Lathah or to Pathrale.”

“True.” Feragh met his general’s eyes. “However, if the Grol have grown so powerful as to slaughter the Lathahns behind their great walls, what certainty is there that we will prevail against them?”

“They cannot possibly break our fortifications. We are no farmer folk to be caught by surprise and trampled in our homes.”

“No, of course not, general, but would we be so different under the circumstances?” Once more he gestured to the smoldering wreckage of Fhenahr. “This city was brought down from outside its walls, by a force that could reach inside and cause chaos without risk to itself. This was no simple siege with fired arrows and stones hurled over the walls. The Grol killed them from a distance and likely only engaged on foot for the sport of it. Would we fare any better as fire and fury rained down on us while we awaited a force of men to cross our lines that would never come.”

Wulvren sat back in his saddle, his eyes narrowed, his fangs bared, but he said nothing.

“We know not what we face, so I would rather take the fight to the Grol, on our terms, than wait for them to come for us at a time of their choosing. Do you not agree?”

The general snarled. “I do, but the taste of it sickens me. To think the Grol present a threat to us is foul meal to swallow.”

Feragh smiled. “It is the same for me, but I would rather credit the beasts as worthy adversaries and live to skewer them upon my sword than to die upon their fangs because I was too much of a fool to feel threatened.” Feragh spurred his horse and waved his general on. “Let us be on their trail. I would know what we face, once and for all.”

Feragh turned his mount into the trail of ruined earth left in the wake of the Grol army and charged ahead. He heard Wulvren call out orders behind him. The sudden sounds of a thousand horses trampling forward sent a shiver of excitement down his spine.