‘I’ve heard nothing from them,’ U-Pre shouted, batting at his arms and hissing his pain at the red welts revealed.
A fat yellow centipede now rode atop U-Pre’s helmet as if it were some sort of whimsical crest. Golan recognized it as one of the fatally poisonous kind. Summoning his power he flicked it aside without saying anything. He bent closer to shout: ‘I will see to them. Start fires, Second. Many fires.’
U-Pre saluted and jogged off. Golan went in search of an Isturé. His yakshaka bodyguard immediately surrounded him; they appeared either impervious to the plague of insects or merely hardened against their bites and stings, and the unnerving sensation of things crawling where they shouldn’t. For his part, Golan summoned his power to maintain a flickering blue aura about his person that turned aside the swarms. The encampment was a riot of screaming and writhing men and women batting at their ears and faces. Any fires were almost smothered beneath the thousands of winged bodies drawn to their heat. Golan lent power to each he passed, allowing them to flare up once more, hungry and all-consuming. He hoped their smoke would also contribute to dispersing the hordes.
Close to the border of the camp he found an Isturé. The man wore heavy armour of plates at chest and shoulders over a mail coat, and a full helm. All had once been blackened, but was now scraped and worn through heavy use to an iron-grey shine. He was leaning on a tall rectangular shield and waving a gauntleted hand before the visor of his helm as if the attack were nothing more than a show put on for his amusement.
‘Where are your mages, Isturé?’ Golan demanded.
‘The name is Black the Lesser,’ came a sullen rumble from within the helm.
‘Mages, Black. Where are your vaunted Isturé mages?’
‘Not our battle.’
‘Not your-Why else are you here, ancients take you?’
‘We watch for these monsters you’re so fearful of. Lizard-cats, lion-men and other bugaboos.’
‘I demand you take action! At once! Or I will leave you behind as useless!’
Heaving a loud sigh, the big man threw his shield on to his back and waved for Golan to follow. He led him to an old man sitting cross-legged on the ground. His greying hair stood in all directions and a great baggy set of robes enveloped him like a tattered shapeless bag. Black stopped in front of him and tilted his helm to indicate Golan. The old man cocked a sallow rheumy eye to Golan. ‘What is it?’
‘What is it? What is it?’
Golan thrust out his hand only to realize that he’d left the Rod of Execution in the tent. He waved around instead. ‘Can’t you do something about this!’
The old man gave a shrug that was smothered within the bag. ‘I could. Why don’t you?’
Golan drew himself up straight, offended, then was forced to wave a hand before his face where scores of alarmingly huge flying cockroaches now fluttered their stiff brown wings and bumped at every one of his orifices. ‘The time has not yet come for me to announce myself,’ he said between clenched teeth.
‘She knows you’re here.’
‘She does not know a master of the Inner Circle has been sent!’
The old man snorted a loud laugh as if what Golan had said was immensely amusing. His arched brow climbed even higher. ‘Do you really think that matters one damned bit?’
Golan decided to dismiss the man’s words as empty bluster. What would this foreigner know anyway? Then he noted how of the swarms of insects seething over the ground not one touched the man’s robes and this settled the matter for him. ‘Do something about this plague or I shall reconsider our agreement, Isturé. What would your Skinner think of that? He would not take it well, I think.’
The old man’s gimlet eye shifted to Black. The two appeared to share some sort of unspoken communication and then it was the old man’s turn to heave a sigh. He climbed awkwardly to his feet, began rooting through what appeared to be innumerable pockets lining his loose robes.
Meanwhile the swarming continued. Solid flights of tiny midges or flies completely enmeshed their victims, who quickly fell, becoming nothing more than twitching heaps of glittering black multitudes. ‘Do something,’ Golan snarled, his hands impotent fists at his sides.
The old man produced a feather from his robes. It was grimed and plain, perhaps taken from some seabird. Golan sensed the blossoming of the man’s power — a far different flavour from the foreign ‘Warrens’. More chthonic, seething wild and feral. The old man blew upon the feather and it shot straight up into the fat scudding clouds above. Then he sat once more and pulled his robes higher about his pale neck.
‘That’s it?’ Golan demanded.
‘Done.’ He sniffed, coughed, then hawked something up that he spat aside. ‘All this damp,’ he complained to Black. ‘Bad for the lungs.’
‘Wouldn’t know,’ Black rumbled. ‘I’m still a young shoot.’ And he laughed while the old man cackled harshly.
What strange people, these foreigners. Was that a reference to this Vow of theirs?
Something was coming. Golan could feel it in the air now brushing past him. In the distance, the dark canopy of the jungle writhed as if in the fists of giants. A great boom crashed overhead like a burst of thunder. Black, he noted, had braced himself, hunching and digging in his rear foot. Golan had opened his mouth to ask what was happening when a wall of air punched into him and sent him flying backwards, his feet swinging up violently. He landed on the back of his neck, stunned; fortunately the muddy ground was soft beneath him.
After the stars cleared from his vision the Thaumaturg found himself peering upwards at shattered branches whipping overhead, along with great wads of detritus dug up by the hurricane winds that now scoured the encampment like a rough sweeping hand. The noise was tremendous, deafening, a thundering storm howl that eliminated any possibility of communication. Not that he could move in any case.
The front, or blast-wave, now diminished, roiling onwards. Golan could push himself up on to his elbows. Of the thick black swarms of insects there remained no sign. He stood, his yakshaka bodyguards rising with him, and headed for the main staging area. Here the troops and labourers were slowly straightening, stunned amazement clear upon their features. He found that the plague of insects was not the only thing missing: the tents had been swept clean from the field. Wagons lay overturned, their contents scattered across the mud and mire. His own tent was completely absent; his servants crawled through his strewn possessions lying in a trail of wreckage that disappeared among the trees.
A yakshaka soldier approached and respectfully proffered the Rod of Execution in both armoured hands. Golan took it absently while he continued to scan the wide field of scattered stores and tossed debris. The baton was muddy and he used the edge of his robes to wipe it clean.
A second boom crashed down upon them, making the troops flinch, and it was as if the clouds were overturned as a great downpour struck, hammering everything further into the muck. Golan stood quite still in the torrent, drops falling from his chin and his fingertips, watching reams of pressed plant fibre papers dissolving in the rain and filth.
Funny. The bastard probably thinks this is all so very funny.
* * *
They established their headquarters in the valley just before the one occupied by the southern capital of the Thaumaturgs, Isana Pura. Dismounting from an inspection of the pickets and the deployment of his lancers, Prince Jatal straightened the white cotton robes he wore over his armour and tucked his gauntlets into his belt. That he was not looking forward to this strategy council was something of an understatement. The head of every family would have a place at the table and there would be as many opinions as mouths flapping. Yet attend he must. It was required. As the head of one of the two largest factions his was a position of leadership among this temporary coalition. Not that said position carried any attendant authority whatsoever.