It is, in the end, an unnecessary entreaty; for, just as effectively as they have thrashed and herded the townsmen back toward Esleben, the Talons are able to break the Krebkellen formation, form into well-ordered lines of retreat — two abreast, now, rather than four, for speed’s sake — and return past the spot where Visimar is waiting, all long before their opponents can follow. Some Talons bleed from lucky blows scored by the Eslebeners, but most are simply sweating and bewildered; yet they never slow their double-quick march along the Daurawah Road. Arnem, for his part, draws up beside Visimar, breathing hard and allowing the Ox a moment to revel in his reunion with the old man’s mare.
“Well, cripple, Kafra knows how you could tell as much, but they were beginning to seem beyond — or better say below—human: the most grievous wounds imaginable, taken as though they were scratches!”
“I would be surprised if your golden god has any sense of why all this is so, Sentek. It will be my unhappy duty to explain it to you — but let us get your men well away from the evil of Esleben …”
Arnem will not take to the Daurawah Road until the very last of his wounded — all, thankfully, sound enough to ride and march — depart; and Visimar, for his own reasons, will not start without the commander. The appearance of the eagle owl he called Nerthus has proved beyond doubt to the acolyte that the pestilences at work in Broken have spread throughout (although each in different parts of) the western kingdom, likely for the same reasons that caused their appearance further east, in and about Daurawah; and he must make the sentek see that all the towns along the route that they are traveling, where they had thought to find welcome, provisioning, and forage, must now be avoided.
{vii:}
Despite the Talons’ dispatch of the threat at Esleben, questions about the future of the campaign upon which the legion had embarked became more nagging as the force marched east to Daurawah. The enemy had been sickened townsmen, after all, Broken’s own farmers, millers, and traders, many of them women, fighting at the behest of some madness or even of Death himself, who had forced them to dance his deadly round.† Whatever the case, the work there had not been truly fit for such peerless troops as the Talons, and each of them has come to this realization by the time Akillus and his scouting parties report that Daurawah is close; and the mood among the men has grown somber at best. Is this because, after several days of unusually warm, bright weather, the third morning of the soldiers’ march looks, to judge by the dim light and a damp chill in the mist, to be strangely muted? Perhaps; but muted, too, are the sounds of Nature’s world, and they only lessen as the column nears the Meloderna River, an Unnatural, unharmonious development that even Visimar cannot (or will not) explain.
And as the grey light slowly increases and the walls of Daurawah grow closer, it indeed becomes apparent that even the relief and comfort that it was once hoped the port would offer will be denied to Arnem’s men: for the western gates of the place, which no man can ever remember seeing closed, are not only shut, but barred from within and sealed from without. The lack of activity before the northern and southern gates, meanwhile, which front the sharp bend in the Meloderna created by the Cat’s Paw’s emptying into that larger, calmer river, suggests that those portals are similarly sealed — and soon, sounds begin to emerge from within the port’s walls that explain why:
They are the sounds of human beings whose bodies may still walk this Earth, but whose minds are already crossing the Great River, or have completed that journey and arrived in Hel‡ itself. Such are mournful noises, as if those who make them have some faint recognition of what has befallen them, and of how irretrievable the loss has been.
It is not, therefore, any fear that the men of Broken’s Ninth Khotor (the legion that has for over a century guarded Daurawah and the eastern frontier of the kingdom) or some even larger mob of ordinary townspeople will be disgorged from the tightly shut city gates that slows the pace of Sentek Arnem’s Talons as they march steadily toward the walls of the port; rather, it is simple dread of what sights must accompany such terrible sounds as emerge from the place in greater volume with every step they take that holds the soldiers back. It is as if Daurawah — sitting, on its landward side, at the end of a long hillside road, one flanked by inexplicably empty pastureland that ends at the thick strips of forest that line the low banks of the two rivers — has become a place entirely unto itself, one which does not even notice the approach of five hundred soldiers, an event that would ordinarily call for great clamor, either of alarm or welcome. But on this dismal morning, the echoing cries of pain, woe, and confusion continue unabated until the Talons are well along the road leading up to the main gate; yet when they finally halt, it is neither some great increase in the port’s uproar nor a sudden silence that stops them. Instead, the wind — which has been out of the west and at their backs since before dawn — abruptly shifts for but a few moments, so that it comes in off of the wide Meloderna beyond Daurawah, stopping each soldier before he has received any such order to halt. For this wind carries with it the smell of burning human flesh, the stink of hundreds of bodies, which no fire could be large enough, if built within the port’s walls, to burn quickly; not without risk of setting entire town districts afire …
“So many bodies …” Visimar muses through his cloak, which he holds about his nose and mouth. “Matters are already at far worse a pass than even I thought they could be …”
He has brought his mare beside Arnem’s mount, and on the sentek’s opposite flank, as always, is Niksar. “What can we do, Sentek?” the linnet asks. “Daurawah’s gates are nearly immune to violation — and the men of the Ninth are unlikely to let us get close enough to try.”
“Nor would such an attempt bear any fruit, in all likelihood, Reyne,” Arnem replies. “For, as you say, they are much like Broken’s gates — the eight or ten feet of oak at the bottom of each is wholly sheathed in iron plate. And so we will wait. They do not seem to have noticed us: we must observe what happens when they do. In the meantime—” Arnem turns to the men behind him. “Akillus. Dispatch parties of your men down to each of the riverbanks. See if anything has transpired there, or in the water itself …”
Without a word, Akillus signals to several other linnets of scouts, each of whom takes three or four men and makes with typical speed for the Meloderna and the Cat’s Paw at the most approachable points in the steep riverbanks. It requires deft horsemanship, as well as longer periods than the sentek would have thought, for the scouts to return; and few words pass among those who remain as they wait. It is only when they hear the sound of a commotion emanating from one particularly obscure stretch of riverbank, as well as atop the walls of Daurawah, that any general murmuring goes through the officers and ranks of the Talons. When the other scouts reappear, Arnem realizes with aching dread that it is Akillus himself who has raised the alarm; and the commander does not rest easy until he sees his most reliable set of “eyes” finally emerge from the great trees and heavy undergrowth.