Ruhm bled from a score of wounds, although certainly some of the blood soaking his huge form had surely come from the halflings mounded around him. Amoni swung her cahulaks with ferocious abandon, lips parted and teeth clenched, and the dead and wounded before her formed a wall that other halflings had to climb to get to her. Damaric’s singing stick had taken some punishing blows, but he seemed mostly unscathed so far. Other soldiers were dead and dying everywhere, some almost under Aric’s feet. The combined stink of halfling bodies, viscera, blood and death was everywhere, inescapable.
Aric didn’t know how long any of them could go on. He had powerful arms and shoulders, a blacksmith’s strength, but there were so many halflings. Soon he would start to grow weary, and then what?
“Kadya,” he heard someone say in a surprised tone. Others repeated her name. Aric parried three attacks and risked a hurried glance over his shoulder.
The templar had climbed on top of one of the argosies. Halflings hurled stones at her but she ignored them and they sailed harmlessly past. Her lips were moving, though no one in the thick of battle could hear what she said, and her hands made fitful gestures. A stiff wind blew up from behind her, ruffling her clothing and tearing her hair from the pin holding it up. Around her, the air itself seemed to waver. Then she thrust her hands forward, toward the halfling force, and that rippling air spread out from her, past the Nibenese but striking the halflings with almost physical force.
As the wave flowed past them, halflings dropped their weapons and staggered about, dazed. Blood flowed from noses, ears, and open mouths. Some fell down clutching their heads while others pawed at their own faces or chests. In the rear ranks, as far back as the firelight extended, halflings took off running, as if to escape whatever Kadya had loosed upon them.
The halflings facing Aric fell victim to it as well. One died instantly, her eyes rolling back in her head, body stiffening as she pitched forward. Another clapped his hands to his ears even as blood burbled up from his eyes and mouth. The third tried to turn and run, but his legs gave out beneath him and he fell atop his fellows, clawing at the air like a drowning man reaching for a rope.
Watching the devastation, Aric realized it didn’t affect only the halflings. One of the wounded soldiers close by curled in on himself, gave an agonized scream, and died. Another, barely wounded as far as Aric could tell, dropped to his knees as though his legs no longer had the strength to support him. Even Aric felt weakened suddenly. He took several unsteady steps backward to get a wagon behind him before he fell.
Defiling magic. Kadya had drawn from all their life forces in order to send that surge of powerful magic into the halflings.
With the badly wounded soldiers dead and some of the others still reeling from their own templar’s spell, the ones who had strength left went after the halflings, dispatching those they could get to without leaving the firelight. The halflings offered little resistance. Heads rolled, swords and spears spiked bodies. Soon the soldiers gathered at the wagons again, wiping blades on shirts or rags torn from the minimal clothing the halflings wore, and binding their wounds.
The boasting and the burying would come later. With the sound of the remaining halflings running off into the darkness, the Nibenese forces sat around dwindling fires or leaned against armored argosies. Conversation was sparse, most of it grumbles of complaint. “We could have beat them,” someone ventured.
“We would have died trying, if she hadn’t done that.”
“But how many of our own did we lose in the doing?”
You yet live, as do I. It might have been different.”
Damaric showed Aric a weary grin. “You did well.”
“I survived.” Aric held up his left hand, which continued to bleed. “You came through fine, it seemed.”
“As I said, I’ve been trained to fight since the time I could walk.”
Aric moved closer to the soldier and lowered his voice. “I’m surprised that some complain openly about the templar.”
“Warriors sometimes forget themselves in the flush of victory, Aric. However that victory is achieved. By morning they’ll have thought better of it, and spend the rest of the day worrying that she heard them.”
Ruhm joined them, dripping blood from his crown to his toes. “That was fun,” he said.
“Fun?” Aric repeated.
“Sure.” He squeezed Aric’s shoulder. “You had fun too?”
“I’m not sure I’d put it that way.”
Amoni joined them too, flicking bits of halfling flesh off the blades of her cahulaks. She had suffered a few wounds, and she winced when she turned at the waist, trying to stretch her back. But the four friends had lived through the battle, and Aric couldn’t ignore the swelling of pride that spread from his breast.
Later that night, however, when he tried to sleep, he kept seeing the image of Nibenese soldiers, fighting death until Kadya’s magic sucked the life force from them. Perhaps that had been necessary to defeat the raiding halflings.
Then again, perhaps not.
VIII
Valley of Fire
The cistern fiend’s paralysis gripped Myrana for two days. The second day she was able to sit up on her own and eat but not walk. That night, it wore off, but she, Sellis, and Koyt didn’t want to leave the relative protection of the oasis. Instead, they waited until morning, filled their bellies and their water skins with fresh water, and started off once more across the desert. She had hated having muscles that refused her every command, and the urgency of her dreams had not let up, but even so, it was hard to leave a place with shade, shelter and plenty of fresh, clear water.
The contrast, by mid-afternoon, was remarkable. The sun bore down with pitiless intensity. On foot all day, Myrana’s leg and hip sent pain shooting through her entire body, making her grit her teeth and bite back groans. She wanted no pity from her companions, and most of all she didn’t want them to feel—as men so often did, in her experience—that they needed to fix things, make them better. This situation couldn’t be fixed, unless they came upon some wild kanks or erdlus to ride. She was thirsty, hot, and aching, and that was just the way things were.
Her dream-inspired route led them up a low rise. On the other side, the way was considerably steeper, a rock-strewn slope leading down into a wide, flat valley. The ups and downs were harder on her leg than flat stretches, so she looked forward to reaching that, but knew the descent would be difficult and painful.
Sellis pointed to the hillside on the valley’s far edge, where a patch of green might have indicated a natural spring. “We’ll make it there before we stop,” he suggested. “And if it’s safe we can make camp by that spring.”
“Water for three nights in a row?” Koyt asked. “Fortune smiles upon us, eh Myrana?”
Myrana grunted a meaningless response. She liked the idea of another night beside water, but the far side of the valley was a long way off.
Sellis touched her arm. “Shall we go down?” he asked. “Or would you rather rest first?”
“I’m ready,” she said. The statement wasn’t entirely true, or altogether false. She would have loved to rest—perhaps for a week or two—but to accept his suggestion would be to show weakness. She wouldn’t do it. She was the reason they were here, in danger every hour of every day because she refused to ignore her dreams. “Let’s go.”
She started down the slope first. Small rocks skidded out from beneath her feet. Every time she planted her left leg on the down slope, another twinge of pain traveled up her spine.
The men paused for a moment at the top of the slope. They didn’t think she could hear them, over her own scrabbling sounds, but her ears were keener than they knew. “She’s tough.” Sellis said.