DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (215 page)

He heard more cries from above, but they weren’t directed at him, he realized, but at the fire that was now burning more furiously.

Pagonel lay very still, concentrating on his Chi. He brought his hands to Merwan Ma’s wounds and sent his hot life energy into them, transferring his strength, his healing, to the near-dead Shepherd.

The fire burned into the night, and cries of “Murder!” resonated about the streets. Pagonel could only listen with helpless horror as the Behrenese took out their anger over the murder of the new Governor of Dharyan on the other To-gai-ru slaves.

Gradually, the screaming died away, replaced by the quiet stillness of midnight.

Pagonel pulled himself from the sand, then lifted Merwan Ma across his shoulders, and in truth, he wasn’t even certain if the man was still alive.

And then he ran, out into the darkness, using the stars to guide him. He ran all through the night, and most of the next day, as well, pausing only periodically to use his healing energy on the gravely wounded Shepherd.

That night, he ran on again, tirelessly, stopping only when he heard a command to halt, issued in a telling melodic voice.

Only then did the mystic allow himself to realize his exhaustion, and he slumped
into the sand, lowering Merwan Ma beside him.

“A fine gift,” Belli’mar Juraviel said to him when he awoke sometime later.

The mystic craned his neck to see Merwan Ma, wrapped in blankets across the small fire, with Cazzira sitting beside him and Agradeleous off in the background.

“It may be,” was all that the exhausted mystic could reply at that time, and he lowered his head and went back to sleep, knowing that he would need all of his strength and more if he was to have any chance of keeping Merwan Ma alive the next day.

It was late in the day before he awoke once more, to find Cazzira standing guard over Merwan Ma.

“Juraviel and Agradeleous flew out before the dawn, to keep watch over Dharielle,” she explained.

“Dharyan, once more,” Pagonel corrected, and he pulled himself up and moved toward the injured man.

“Eat first,” Cazzira offered, pointing to the side, to a steaming small pot, and Pagonel veered toward it. “Juraviel believes that the Behrenese will move soon.”

“Very soon,” the mystic replied. “Into To-gai in pursuit of the Dragon of To-gai and her army.”

Cazzira laughed.

“Who is he?” she asked a few moments later, pointing to the injured man.

“His name is Merwan Ma,” the mystic explained. “An attendant of the Chezru Chieftain, named governor of Dharyan and then nearly murdered, on orders from the Chezru Chieftain.”

Cazzira’s look was predictably puzzled.

“A Chezhou-Lei cut him down.”

“A rogue act, perhaps?”

Pagonel was shaking his head before she ever finished the question. “They are unquestioningly loyal to the Chezru Chieftain. Never would a Chezhou-Lei take such an action of his own initiative, not when it involved a man so closely tied to Chezru Douan.”

“But why?”

“That is what I hope to find out,” the mystic replied, and he took another sip of the stew, then wiped his mouth and moved beside Merwan Ma, falling right back into
doyan du cad ray chi
, “the warm healing hands.”

Belli’mar Juraviel and Agradeleous returned that night, bringing the welcome news that the bulk of the Behrenese army had marched west and were even then scaling the narrow passes of the plateau divide into To-gai.

“It was all that I could manage in keeping Agradeleous from attacking them,” the elf admitted a while later, when the dragon, after transforming back into his humanoid form, stalked off from the camp. “A killing rage grows within him. I know not how long we, and Brynn, will be able to control his fury.”

“Because he hates Behrenese?” Cazzira asked.

“Because that is the nature of dragons,” Pagonel interjected. “They are creatures
of destruction, usually of random destruction. It is remarkable that you and Brynn have placated him enough to keep him in line thus far. Soon enough, I fear, we will see the true fury of Agradeleous.”

Belli’mar Juraviel looked out into the darkness, where the beast was out even then seeking some creature to tear and devour. A shudder coursed his spine.

Chapter 28
 

R
UNTLY PLOWED THROUGH THE SOFT SAND
,
LABORING FOR BREATH BUT
,
LIKE THE
three hundred To-gai ponies running beside him, not slowing. The feint against the walled city of Pruda had gone perfectly, with very few To-gai-ru lost to the city’s defensive volleys.

And predictably, before the fleeing To-gai-ru had gone far, Pruda’s gates had swung wide and their garrison of several hundred, along with a seemingly equal number of peasants, all eager to join in the slaughter, had come forth, some riding horses, some on camels, and many others just running behind, brandishing everything from fine swords to farming implements.

Brynn brought her riders along the base of one huge dune, then turned about it and paused, all riders fitting arrows to their bows.

On came the lead Behrenese pursuers, and the To-gai-ru kicked their mounts into another run. Many of the skilled riders of the steppes turned back in the saddle, trusting their mounts to run true, and began letting fly their arrows.

The Behrenese pursuit halted abruptly as the front ranks thinned. Brynn and her riders heard the calls for retreat, for a return to Pruda. When she looked back and confirmed that the Behrenese had broken off pursuit, she halted her force, and gradually turned it about, taking care to send spotters out wide to make sure that their enemies were indeed heading back to the safety of their walls.

Walls they would never reach, Brynn knew, for as she had led her small force and the pursuing Behrenese out into the desert, the bulk of her army had filtered in behind, taking up a position in front of Pruda.

When Brynn and her riders caught up to the retreating Behrenese, they found them stopped in their tracks, desperately trying to form into some semblance of a defensive formation, for they faced a force thrice their size, and one comprised of skilled, veteran To-gai-ru warriors.

Brynn had hoped it would go like this, with the Pruda garrison destroyed right before the city’s wall, in clear view of those terrified defenders remaining within Pruda. She noted the leaders of the doomed Behrenese soldiers huddling, likely discussing whether or not they should ask for quarter.

But that was not to be. Not there and not then.

Before their huddle had produced anything at all, Brynn brought Flamedancer up high above her head and cried out for the charge.

Showers of arrows led the way as the To-gai-ru encircled the force.

“They should have tried a charge straight through the line, back to their gates,” Brynn remarked to those around her. “Their cowardice has cost them all hope.”

Another volley of arrows rained on the Behrenese, and then another, and then
came the charge. Even among the Behrenese soldiers, few offered any fight, for they were all too busy trying to scramble away, trying to find some hole in the To-gai-ru line to get back to their city.

Some did manage to get through, but of the force of nearly a thousand who had left Pruda in search of a glorious victory, more than nine hundred soon lay dead or dying on the bloodstained sands.

And a To-gai-ru army of four thousand now stood before the thinly manned gates.

M
erwan Ma blinked open his eyes, quickly moving his hand up to shield them from the glare of the hot late-afternoon sun.

He heard the noise almost immediately, but it took him a long while to connect the sounds to the truth of them.

They were screams of terror.

The battered Shepherd forced himself up to his elbows, wincing with pain all the way. He didn’t know where he was, but he saw the white walls of a Behrenese city in the distance, swarming forms all about it, and lines of thick black smoke rising from many of the structures within.

The Shepherd’s heart sank.

“Pruda,” came a voice beside him, and he turned to see the Jhesta Tu mystic, his companion and his savior.

“Pruda?” Merwan Ma echoed, hardly able to get the name out of his mouth. “The greatest center of the arts and learning in all the kingdom. Oh, what are your friends doing?”

“They are fighting to be free.”

“Pruda is not a warrior city!”

“Obviously,” Pagonel dryly replied.

“They cannot destroy it,” Merwan Ma remarked, his words turning into a pained grunt as he tried unsuccessfully to sit up, only to wind up flat on his back, crying softly.

He felt the hot hands of Pagonel on his wounds a moment later, and though they surely brought relief, he tried to slap them away. “Savage!” he said. “Heathen barbarian!”

“But not one who would murder his supposed ally,” the mystic remarked, and that notion surely defeated Merwan Ma’s attempted resistance.

“Do you think this savagery?” the mystic asked.

“Can you name it any other thing?” came the incredulous reply.

“Do you think it savagery on a scale anywhere close to what the emissaries of your Chezru Chieftain have forced upon the people of the steppes?”

Merwan Ma’s generous lips grew very thin.

“You do not believe me.”

“My master is a generous and wise man,” the obedient Shepherd insisted with as much conviction as he could muster. “He is the God-Voice of Behren, who
speaks to and for Yatol.”

Pagonel dropped a dagger beside the prone man. “Then do his bidding,” he remarked.

Merwan Ma stared from the dagger to the mystic. “A challenge?”

“A challenge to your conscience and your faith, perhaps,” said Pagonel. “Your God-Voice wished you dead, so take up the dagger and fulfill his plans for you. I promise that I will not try to heal you once you have plunged the dagger into your heart.”

Merwan Ma looked away. “It is a mistake,” he said. “A rogue Chezhou-Lei.”

“There are no rogue Chezhou-Lei,” Pagonel replied. “You know as much. That warrior acted upon the orders of your God-Voice, that you were to be killed and it would be made to look like a murder by a To-gai-ru slave. It is perfectly obvious, to me and to you.”

“You know nothing.”

“I know that you would be lying dead in Dharyan if I had not carried you away and tended your wounds.”

“And you think that I am therefore indebted to you?”

The mystic chuckled and shook his head. “I think that there is a mystery here, one that both of us do not quite understand, but that we both desperately wish to understand. There is a reason that your Chezru Chieftain wanted you dead, and I wish to know of it.”

Merwan Ma looked away.

“Consider my words and consider the truth, Merwan Ma,” Pagonel said. “There is something very wrong here, from your perspective. Perhaps you believe that you still owe loyalty to the man who would see you dead.”

Merwan Ma chewed on his lower lip and did not look back at Pagonel, and the mystic let it go at that, certain that the man was conflicted, at least.

It was a good start.

The mystic shielded his eyes and looked back to Pruda, and knew that the battle was over. Then he looked off to the south, where the two elves and the dragon were waiting, and he knew that Agradeleous would not be pleased that it had ended so quickly and cleanly, and without his aid.

“T
he Library of Pruda,” Brynn heard one of her soldiers mutter in obvious awe. And indeed, the woman felt the same way, for here before her was the great building, the most renowned and revered center of knowledge and learning in all of Behren, perhaps in all the world. Inside were shelves and shelves of parchments and tomes, ancient and new, along with some of the greatest artwork of years gone by. Here were the scriptures of Yatol, and the entire history of the Behrenese religion, along with a multitude of works about the Abellicans and their gemstones, copied from the great library in the monastery of St.-Mere-Abele.

There, before her, was the record of civilization.

“Do not damage this building,” she ordered those around her, on impulse, for
Brynn was feeling the great weight of responsibility here. “Spread the word that the library is not to be desecrated.”

Skeptical expressions came back at her, but no questions; none would question the Dragon of To-gai, who had led them to yet another great victory.

Almost none.

“It is, in part, a Yatol temple,” came a familiar voice behind her, and she turned to see Pagonel’s approach.

“It is much more than that,” Brynn replied.

The mystic moved up beside her and did not disagree. “Why do you distinguish between this place and all of the others that have fallen before you?” he asked.

Brynn looked at him and smirked, well aware that he was testing and teaching her. With his typical distance, he was asking her the question so that she could ask it of herself, so that she could formulate her own answers.

“If I sack this place, then I will have to answer to those historians centuries hence,” Brynn answered at length. “They will speak of the To-gai insurrection as a dark time, instead of the glorious time it truly is.”