by Logan Petty
“Terina, you don’t have to do this. Let me fight in your stead.”
Terina never took her eyes off Gothur as she spoke. “No, this has always been my fight. I have been running far too long. I won’t hide behind you any more.”
Gothur raised his axe and everyone parted. He grinned at his daughter, his eyes flashing with murder.
“This day your soul goes to Harmeta by my hand. I regret you cannot die a free death, but some souls are not fit to become spirits.”
Terina silently paced away from the inner pavilion, watching Gothur stalk around her, as the two moved into a more open section of the ziggurat near the far corner. The clan gathered around them, shouting encouragements to either side. Binze sensed the division in the Harthaz. He feared that even if Terina could defeat Gothur, only half the clan would follow her. His mind returned to the fight at hand as Terina lifted her scepter, pointing it at Gothur.
“Come, old man, let me be your escort to the Veil.”
Gothur snarled and charged his daughter. He rose his axe high and crashed it into a dome of light that surrounded Terina. Binze watched in awe as Gothur hammered away at the mystical shield that emanated from her scepter. The brilliant sapphire glowed brightly as its light shuddered under the rain of devastating blows. Binze reflected on her old weapon. Brenaljos, the Burning Light. That simple bone scepter rivaled Harmeta in lives taken. Binze often forgot just how fearsome his sister could be in her zealotry. He wondered whose conviction would prove stronger today.
Terina watched for a lag in the blows. The hammering force of Gothur’s assault hit like a barrage from a giant. Each crashing strike drove Terina back. She watched patiently as the dome of light flickered more frequently. Finally, Gothur raised his axe and took a deep breath.
As he brought his axe down again, Terina dropped her shield. The deadly blade split the air. She felt the wind off it as she dodged to the left, pointing her scepter toward his armpit. A red flash of light pierced his shoulder like a lance. He roared in pain as Terina circled around, narrowly avoiding his back swing. Binze noticed the hole in his shoulder did not bleed. The intense heat of Brenaljos’s holy lance astounded him. Gothur’s right arm hung uselessly by his side as he wielded the massive axe with one hand, holding it half way up the shaft. He continued his assault on Terina. To her surprise, he moved even faster than before.
Sparks flew from Terina’s shield of light as Harmeta chipped away at it, flashing its blade like the fangs of a hungry wolf. Finally, the axe smashed through, shattering the dome of light with an explosive concussion. Terina screamed as the blade bit into her shoulder, shattering her collarbone. She staggered backward as Gothur ripped it out of her and swung again. She winced as she raised her damaged arm slightly. A beam of light shot from the scepter, striking Harmeta. The impact did not damage the enchanted weapon, but it was enough to throw Gothur’s attack off. Terina switched Brenaljos to her good hand and charged her father, swinging fiercely. A brilliant blue flame leapt from the gem and hit Gothur in the face. He swatted at the immolating blaze as it scorched his flesh. He reared up, kicking at his assailant. His iron hard hooves hit her back, raking her viciously as she ducked under them, shoving Brenaljos into his stomach.
Gothur’s visage turned to one of shock as another lance of light erupted from his lower back. Terina took advantage of his rearing posture and shoved hard, pushing him to the ledge of the Ziggurat. He swatted at Terina with his axe as desperation took over. Harmeta’s blade bit into her flank, cutting through her armor as if it did not exist. Blood sprayed from her wound as she ignored the pain. She raised her wounded hand to his lower heart. Her blood from the shoulder wound had trickled into her palm. She clenched her jaw through the pain as she focused on the blood.
“Móđar ek tív dóm eyđar.”
A circle of light appeared around her hand as her blood evaporated. A thundering boom burst from the combatants as the two bounced apart, thrown in opposite directions. Terina hit the ground hard, skidding several feet. She lay still where she fell as Gothur screamed in panic. He flung his axe feebly at no one in particular as his broken body went over the edge of the ziggurat, smashing into a step several feet below. His momentum carried him beyond that step as he bounced down dozens more steps, leaving spatters of blood on each one he hit until his battered body rolled down to the ground below.
The clan grew silent, despite a spattering of gasps and exclamations. Binze rushed to Terina, who had not moved since she hit the ground. She opened her eyes as he knelt down and lifted her upright, holding her head gently.
“Did I win?”
Binze chuckled, trying to hold back tears. “You did great, big sister. Gothur . . . father is . . . well, you are our new chief now. The Wind Speaker has joined the spirits of the wind.”
From behind him, a chorus of, “Praise to the wind!” greeted his proclamation. Hundreds of cheering centaur rushed toward the two, lifting them to their hooves. Binze looked around and noticed Analetta glare hatefully at them as she and a few dozen other centaur hurried down the ziggurat where Gothur’s body rested. He had a feeling she would be trouble later, but his focus returned to his sister. She could barely stand on her own. Blood poured from the wounds on her flank, back, and shoulder. She could not move her right arm. The glaze in her eyes told him she needed healing.
“Someone get the healers! Your chief is in need.”
The crowd shuffled around as the murmuring started up again. Binze worried this signaled his fears of dissention. How could he expect them to follow a woman who had been labeled a heretic for so long without question? A cold darkness crept over the ziggurat. Binze glanced at the portion of the sky he could see from the tent. He expected to see fresh storm clouds, but the sky looked only partially cloudy. Several screams echoed from the back, where the front gate stood. Binze instinctively ran toward the confusion, stooping down to pick up Gothur’s axe without thinking. He stopped in his tracks as his head began to ring. He tried to shake it off, but the ringing continued. He ignored it as he pushed through the crowd.
A sight of absolute horror awaited him at the far vista. He looked down into the Bone City from the edge of the ziggurat. The sealing stones of dozens of the stone mausoleums lay cast aside as the corpses of their ancestors spilled out. Several streams of bones poured out as well, swirling through the air like an unholy storm. Binze noticed three cloaked figures floating high above the chaos below, their tattered rags waving in the still air. His blood ran cold.
“The Fire Speaker’s horde is upon us! We need to escape! Now! Anyone who is able to fight, follow me!”
He pushed through the panicking crowd until he returned to Terina. He gazed at her, fear building in his chest. She smiled at him warmly.
“I’ve had worse. I can still run.”
Binze nodded and turned to the crowd. “They have us trapped in here! Our only route is straight through the gate. Grab anything you can use as a weapon and charge right at them. Don’t fight if you don’t have to. It’s not one we can win. Get out of the city and keep running! The Harthaz will live on!”
The thundering stamping of hooves shook the ziggurat as the centaur turned to flee downward, grabbing any makeshift weapon they could find along the way. Binze followed suit, with Terina close behind him. They charged down the stairs at a breakneck speed. Several more careless clansmates stumbled along the way, falling beneath the stampede, tripping several others along the way.
Getting out of the gate equated to trying to force sand out of a bottle. The few centaur who came out first clashed with the dead, felling some, some falling. The slain Harthaz rose soon after death and joined the onslaught of the fallen. By the time Binze and Terina reached the gate, the stampede of centaur broke through the first wave of the dead. Harmeta vibrated violently in Binze’s hands as he swung the behemoth axe at a charging skeleton, smashing through it effortlessly. He slashed away at his ancestors, cutting them down one after another as they attempted to flank him. He looked
up as they passed below one of the grey priests. Its sightless bone mask stared down at him as it pointed a gleaming blade at the centaur below. Suddenly, the churning maelstrom of broken bones began to rain down forcefully upon the fleeing Harthaz.
Screams of agony rose around him as the jagged broken femurs and rib bones bit into the flesh of the living. A dome of light surrounded him as the bones pelted it in his stead. He glanced back to see Terina, scepter held high, pain etched into her face. He turned forward and kept running, pushing past the fallen, gorging Harmeta’s voracious appetite on the flesh of the undead. He could see the rolling hills rising above the vaulted domes. Freedom drew ever nearer.
A wall of bones rose from the ground around the would-be escapees, cutting off their retreat. One of the grey priests floated above it, laughing in its bone dry voice. Terina forced her way past Binze. While everyone else halted in confusion, she pressed onward. She roared in defiance as she charged the wall.
“Puppet of the Tyrant King, you will not hold us here this day!”
She drew her arm back, hoisting Brenaljos like a javelin. She threw it as hard as she could. A sound like a dragon’s inferno burst forth as the scepter turned into a blazing bolt of red fire. The bolt hit the priest in the face, shattering its mask and incinerating its fleeing soul in the process. The burning rags flittered down to the wall of bone as it collapsed, letting the Harthaz stumble over it and onward to the hills beyond. Binze caught up to Terina as she bent over to retrieve he scepter, which stuck out of a dome a hundred yards away from the dead priest. She looked exhausted. He offered her a hand.
“Let me help you.”
She glared at him defiantly, but after a moment of hesitation, took his hand. He hoisted some of her weight onto his shoulders and helped her along at a gallop. He looked behind him. Hundreds of the fleeing centaur now belonged to the Grey King’s forces. He sighed and focused on putting as much distance between them as possible.
They climbed the hilltop beyond the pine grove and Terina halted him. She turned to look back on the chaos below. The once sacred Bone City of the Harthaz swarmed with the undead corpses of their ancestors. Hundreds of them spilled out of the city limits, shambling into the grove below.
“Is this my fault? Did they follow us here?”
Binze slid his hand under her arm. “You know they would have found it on their own. They are spreading like locusts, drawn to mass burial sites. It was only a matter of time. Now come on, we have to get back to the Swerdbrekker. He’s the only one who can stop the Fire Speaker now.”
Tears fell down Terina’s cheeks. “But, the Runestone . . . it’s still in the temple. What will we do now?”
Binze shook his head as he tugged at his sister’s arm. The dead broke through the other side of the grove and now stumbled up the hillside.
“We don’t have time to worry about that right now. The enemy is upon us and we don’t have the strength to fight them.”
Terina glanced down the hill and then nodded, as if she just awoke from a daydream. The two turned and darted down the other side of the hill. As they ran, taking the old paths meant to confuse pursuers, dozens of other centaur fell in with them. An hour passed and the number of Harthaz grew to well over a hundred. They kept running for hours until Terina collapsed without warning. She fell mid-run, tumbling as she rolled to a stop. Binze nearly fell himself as he tried to stop. He turned and knelt by his sister’s side. He pulled her up into his arms. She grew a sickly pale gray. Her breathing labored in her chest. Binze looked up at the centaur gathered around him.
“Does anyone have water?”
A moment later, a young centaur soldier Binze recognized knelt beside him, offering a water skin. It was Ulio, the guard who stood against inquisitor Analetta.
“Here, take mine. Anything for the rightful chief.”
A bubbling of murmurs rose from the herd as another centaur stepped forth. He had a long gray beard and a gray and white speckled pelt. He retrieved some herbs from a patch on his belt as he scooped some damp earth with his other hand. He rolled them together and smeared it into Terina’s largest wound across her shoulder as Binze forced her mouth open to pour water down her throat. She coughed as it splashed on her face and winced, opening her eyes.
“By the Four, little brother, you trying to drown me?”
Binze smiled, hugging her. She inhaled sharply and pushed him away.
“Easy, that hurts. Some of us just fought through a horde of the dead after overthrowing the most dangerous mass murderer south of the Grey King, you know?”
“And we are eternally grateful for your heroism, young chief,” the old man who tended her wounds added. “If not for you, we’d all be rotting in that city still. Most likely we’d be actually rotting. Gothur would have never tried to flee. You saved our people, both of you. We are ever in your debt.”
Binze stared at him, baffled. “So does this mean you accept Terina as the new leader of the Harthaz? All of you?”
Shouts of affirmation from the crowd lifted Binze’s spirits. Ulio bowed to Binze.
“Of course we do, Wind Speaker. We shall follow both of you into the jaws of the Veil if that is what it will take to stop the Fire Speaker.”
Binze shook his head. “You’ve got it all wrong. I am not the Wind Speaker. That old tradition got us into this mess in the first place. We don’t need to hear the secrets of the wind. We can forge our own destinies now.”
The old man smiled, pointing at Harmeta. “But you wield the Grief Eater. The holy blade that sings to the wind will not be refused, young master. Call it what you want, but the wind will not go unheard.”
Binze’s focus turned to Harmeta. It sat on the ground beside him, glistening in the sunlight. It reminded him of a predator rather than a mediator. He snorted at the monstrous axe as he answered the old man.
“That murderous weapon does not belong to me. It is too soaked in the sins of my father to be of any use to me.”
The old man sighed, “Be that as it may, it still chose you. No one else can command the Grief Eater, and you cannot simply leave a sacred treasure of your people out in the wilds for anyone to come across. Why, it would be the Brenaljos fiasco all over again.”
The blood soaked axe shimmered as if it agreed with the old man. Binze knew he was right. He sighed, turning back to the one addressing him.
“Very well, I will carry it, but I won’t use it. I refuse to feed that demonic blade any more.”
The old man smiled as he finished rubbing his ointment into the last of Terina’s wounds. “There, that should do it. We ought to rest a while. The chief is in no condition to run. We should have shaken off our hunters for now. We are roughly three hundred strong. No wild beasts will dare besiege us in a group this large.”
Terina sighed, “He’s right. I need to rest. We aren’t far from the rendezvous point. They’ll wait on us. Let’s rest, get some lunch. We haven’t eaten in two days.”
The old centaur laughed jovially. “Hoo hoo, I bet you two foals are starving then! Very well, let us set up camp and do some hunting!”
Night fell as the centaur busied themselves with gathering resources nearby, cooking, and eating. Binze found a pond nearby and led a party there. They managed to catch at least three dozen fish. Other gatherers brought back baskets full of acorns and berries. Some even managed to score piles of wild goats and fells fowl. The aromas of roasting meat and nuts filled the camp. After a hearty meal, Binze fell asleep quickly.
He awoke quickly, as well. Someone shook him out of the peace of slumber. He looked about, trying to rub the groggy feeling from his eyes.
“What’s going on?”
His eyes finally managed to focus. The first light of dawn peeked over the horizon. Ulio knelt by his side, a worried expression on his face.
“Sir, we have a problem. The chief is already up. She instructed me to bring you right away.”
Binze flexed his muscles, waking up much faster now. “Lead the way, Ulio. I th
ought we were supposed to be safe here?”
Ulio nodded as he led him to the hill where Terina stood with a dozen archers. “Well, from wild beasts, sure. From the undead, most likely, but we didn’t take this into account.”
Binze raised an eyebrow as his heart raced. His head rang painfully. He gripped Harmeta’s haft tightly, barely aware of the fact he wielded it so naturally, unaware of when he picked it up since awakening. He climbed the hill and joined his sister. His jaw dropped slack.
On the horizon, easily a mile away, the winged form of a dragon dominated the skyline. The roar that shook the ground even from here confirmed its approach. He glanced at Terina, whose eyes stayed fixed on the dragon.
“Is it Ylsgrin?”
She shrugged, “Hard to tell from here. Even if it is, there’s a good chance he’s not here to share breakfast.”
Binze swallowed the lump in his throat. “We’ll find out soon enough. There’s no outrunning a dragon, so we’ll have to stand our ground. He’ll be on us in a matter of minutes.”
Terina nodded in agreement. They waited in silence as the winged harbinger grew ever larger. As the light increased, Binze noticed that the dragon carried something in its fore claws. He squinted into the distance and noticed it was some sort of large cage with people in it. His stomach dropped at the sight.
“He has hostages.”
Terina snorted, frowning. “Then it would be unwise to open fire on him first, which leaves us at his mercy. Archers, be ready to fire, but not until I give the order.”
