With the coast near and night falling, Faros sent two riders back to the main party to let them know the way was clear. The small scouting party made camp within sight of the shoreline. Eagerness ran high among the minotaurs and even the pair of humans who accompanied them were beguiled by the lapping waves. The Blood Sea sang its siren song even to Faros, who thought he had long steeled himself against such nostalgia.
A thin, swirling mist drifted over from the waters as night lengthened. The party kept close together; sentries were posted on the edge of the encampment. As the rebels settled down, the sound of the sea proved so soothing that most fell asleep quickly.
Faros was not among those. He lay with eyes closed, trying to focus his thoughts on the dangers ahead. His thoughts roiled. There were so many risks involved in his plans. In an attempt to calm himself, Faros tried—as he had sometimes done before—to recall peaceful moments from his youth, yet those moments always twisted into vile reminders of what he had lost, even bucolic scenes transformed into ravaged, gore-drenched nightmares.
The scent of the sea overcame him. He heard snores, the shifting of bodies, and the occasional call of woodland creatures. Then suddenly he heard furtive whispering. The words were hard to understand, but the urgency of the tone was unmistakable.
Sitting up, Faros glanced around. No one around him seemed awake. In the distance he made out the shadowy form of a lone guard watching the dark woods. All looked as it should. He pricked his ears, but he no longer heard the whispering. Deciding he had imagined things, Faros lay back down. This time, though, the stars caught his attention. Through the sea mist, they had taken on an ethereal quality. They were forming images, such as a snapping turtle and a rose. One even seemed to him to resemble a face. No, not exactly a face, for he noted a hooded crown and what appeared to be eyes, but nothing more.
The eyes stared at him. Faros could not look away. He felt as if he floated toward the star eyes, as if they meant to engulf him …
A frenzied shout jolted him free. He rolled to the side, grabbing his sheathed sword.
All around the encampment, the soft earth erupted. Huge mounds rose then crumbled open. From them emerged massive, shelled forms armed with odd, curved blades almost like scythes, but with harsh, angled and edged teeth. Other shadows held wicked, three-pronged spears with barbed heads.
The mist-enshrouded crustaceans swelled in size, growing broader and taller than the minotaurs. Their heads were buried so deep in their shells that they were barely visible. The monsters’ eyes were grotesque, knoblike protrusions and their snouts long and flexible. The shells were tinted crimson. They made a bubbling hiss, then, trundling forward on four lobster-like limbs, the demonic host closed on the startled rebels.
One minotaur dropped his weapon, he was so astonished. Another shook his head and began muttering prayers. More than one set of ears stood taut as the nightmares of childhood were resurrected before their very eyes.
Magori …
Faros’s father had fought in the war against the aquatic horrors, as had the parents of most of the minotaurs in the party. The monsters had arisen from the depths during the time that other races called the Summer of Chaos or the Chaos War. As a child, Faros had heard the tales of the gruesome slaughters, of the relentless hordes of crustaceans pouring onto ships, onto the islands of his people, and the bloodbaths that ensued. Where the monsters struck, they left little recognizable of their victims. They offered no chance for surrender; butchery was their one desire.
The Magori served an entity called the Coil—itself in the thrall of some dark god—and desired nothing less than the total annihilation of the minotaur race. Gradic had murmured of finding entire settlements razed—heads, arms, and other body parts scattered wide. Not even the ogres rent such horror.
The fiendish creatures had overcome much of Mithas and ravaged part of Nethosak, yet in part because of Sargonnas himself, the Coil had perished and the leaderless Magori had retreated. At the very edge of annihilation, the minotaurs had fought back and sent the Magori slipping back into the deep. No one living had seen a Magori in a generation, but they remained the demons of memory, the fears of troubled sleeps …
“Form a square!” Faros shouted, but only a few could obey before the hissing Magori plowed into them. The crustaceans slashed and jabbed with surprising swiftness, forcing the rebels to defend rather than attack. Half-hidden by the mist, their hisses echoing chillingly, and the Magori were terrible to behold.
They were still mortal, Faros knew. He jabbed twice against the one facing him, seeking a vital spot. However, his blade only encountered a shell more protective than a steel shield. Worse, his sword felt uncommonly heavy, almost as if it were resisting his will. When he tried to thrust at the pale, fleshy part beneath the snout, he felt his arm jerk to the side, nearly leaving him open to the Magori’s vicious counter-attack.
The nightmare swung, its wicked scythe cutting a jagged trail across Faros’s forearm. The minotaur cried out as the weapon bit into his flesh. The Magori leaned close, so that its bulbous orbs nearly grazed the minotaur’s own. There was nothing in the creature’s gaze, though, except blankness. This was a thing of carnage, of savageness beyond any race born of Krynn.
Another scream ripped the air. Faros caught a glimpse of a minotaur victim—the head flying from the torso. Something struck the ground with a dull thud near the rebel leader’s feet. Faros tried again for the fleshy area of his opponent and again the sword felt heavy, awkward in his hands.
“Damn you!” he snapped at the blade. Whatever the cause for his trouble, Faros would force the weapon to obey. With a grunt, he deflected the scythe then thrust ahead with all his might.
The sword sank deep. A hideous squeal, the Magori’s death cry pierced his eardrums. A putrid, yellowish fluid spilled from the crustacean’s quivering body. The stench, akin to rotting fish, forced Faros to cover his nostrils. Droplets struck his wrist, burning him. With a final hiss, the Magori slumped over.
Shaking from pain and effort, Faros looked around. His dwindling party was hard-pressed. One human had fallen under the savage attack of two Magori, his body severed into three pieces that briefly flopped about on the ground as the vestiges of life drained away. The shelled horrors surrounded the scouting party like a wall.
Faros tried to dredge up childhood memories of the beasts. The Magori had other weaknesses, he thought, besides their narrow patch of soft flesh. If he could only remember …
The other human screamed, his chest ripped open by a barbed spear. As the nightmarish warrior stood over his victim, the heads of his lance still bearing gobbets of bloody flesh, a female minotaur leapt forward, burying her axe in one of the creature’s bulbous eyes. The Magori squealed and fell.
Such heroics were dwindling. More common were simple, desperate acts of survival, as each of Faros’s rebels struggled against the inevitable. Forced back, Faros stumbled over something. He slipped, tumbling. A searing pain swept over his left shoulder. The minotaur frantically rolled away, his fur singed by the campfire.
Then something Gradic once told his son came back to Faros. Ignoring the heat, he seized a long piece of driftwood from the flames and thrust it toward his adversary. The Magori ducked but showed little fear of the flames. The rebel leader’s brow wrinkled; that wasn’t what he expected.
Before he could ponder the matter, his foe charged again. Faros dropped the wood, throwing himself back. He deflected another strike then cut the creature on one limb. The three-digited claw twitched, and the weapon slipped.
Then he noticed something: The holes from which the Magori had burst were no longer there. Even in the dark Faros could see the tall, shattered mounds were gone, and the ground was smooth and quite solid.
That was impossible … unless the tunnels had magically sealed themselves. Unless there were no tunnels and mounds to see, because they had never really existed in the first place.
If that was so, what did it say about the monstrous crusta
ceans?
On a hunch, he rubbed the black ring. The Magori did not vanish, but almost as one they certainly rippled—and briefly Faros saw another, more familiar form in the place of each. What he did next, Faros knew, might cause his death, but if his eyes had seen true, it was his only option.
Planting the tip of his sword in the earth, the minotaur bent down on one knee. At the same time, he shouted to the rest of his band, “Stop! Do as I do! Now!”
It spoke to the trust they placed in Faros that the other rebels immediately obeyed. The Magori encircled them. Their bulbous, unyielding orbs twitched atop their stalks. Several hissed and the foul odor of death washed over the rebels.
The Magori raised their monstrous weapons. Then the one looming over Faros hesitated. It signaled the others to lower their blades, then leaned forward, as if studying its adversary.
Faros clutched Sargonnas’s ring and struggled with every iota of his willpower to understand what he had really been fighting.
The lead Magori shimmered. Its shelled body transformed, one pair of the horrific appendages vanishing and the others becoming furred arms and legs. Its snout stretched out, expanded, and transformed into a broad muzzle. The bulbous eyes became ears and—as Faros had guessed—a pair of long, sharp horns.
Horns belonging to one of his own kind.
With a startled expression, the other minotaur demanded, “Faros? Faros Es-Kalin?”
He was looking up into the stout face of Captain Botanos. The mariner’s horrified astonishment gave way to dismay. Botanos looked at his bloodied axe, which had nearly cleaved Faros in two. With sudden repugnance, he dropped the weapon and bowed his head.
“Faros! I swear I didn’t know it was you!”
With that, every Magori became a minotaur. The two parties look at one another, the terrible truth now revealed. Allies had met one another as deadly foes. More than half a dozen lay dead and several more were wounded, some badly.
“I saw—” Botanos swallowed. “The Crest dropped anchor about an hour north. We set out to scout the area. I—I heard noise and we snuck up—but it was ogres we saw! An ogre band with minotaur pelts set in a pile!”
Several of his crew quickly grunted or nodded assent.
Faros slowly rose. Unlike the captain, however, he did not toss away his sword. There was still a chance that this manifestation, too, was nothing more than vile illusion.
“We saw Magori,” he tersely told Botanos. “They burst from the earth, each armed with a scythe sword or barbed lance …”
“Magori? By the Sea Queen, small wonder that you fought back so fanatically! I’m old enough to recall those horrors, lad! ’Tis a wonder that you didn’t kill us all, regardless of surprise and numbers!”
Faros nodded bitterly. “That’s what some enemy had in mind. That’s what was supposed to happen. We were supposed to destroy each other.” He recalled gazing at the face formed by stars in the sky, just before the attack. “A crowned head,” the rebel leader muttered loud enough for Botanos to hear. “Eyes without a face …”
Botanos made the sign of Sargonnas. “Eyes without a face? A crown? It sounds like the lord of the bronze tower—dread Morgion!” The heavyset captain snorted. “Faros … are you saying that this deadly trap, this double illusion, is his foul work?”
“This and the plague that struck us earlier, the plague that was supposed to have annihilated all of my followers …”
Several of those nearby began muttering to one another. Botanos evidently did not like their tone, for he quickly said, “Aye, the temple might have Morgion to play dishonorable and scurvy tricks, but there before you is one who stood up to Sargas himself! You all heard that in the message spoken by the birds, remember? By the Maelstrom, I’ll take the battle might of Faros over a deity who dwells in filth and rot any day, eh?”
His words heartened the dispirited minotaurs. They cheered, despite the carnage. It was not truly their hands that had slain their comrades, but the foul, cowardly spell of their enemies.
“See to the wounded,” the captain commanded. Then, somewhat sheepishly, he looked at Faros and added, “With your permission, my lord.”
Faros nodded, exhaling with a sigh. While some tended to the wounded, others went about the task of dealing with the dead. Both sides had suffered, but at least the worst had been avoided.
Alone now with Faros, Botanos dipped his horns to the side, saying, “This error still rests on my head, lad. You’ve a right to take my head, it would seem, or my horns, whatever you see fit.”
“Which would only add to the tragedy,” growled Faros. “Keep both, Captain. I’ll demand more of you than that! Your precious Dragon’s Crest will be my flagship when I sail into Nethosak!”
If he thought that would shake the veteran sailor’s morale any, Faros was mistaken. He received a grateful grin. Botanos almost gave him a slap on the shoulder, then he saw the rebel leader’s wound.
“Gods above, Faros! You need to see to that!”
Only then did the younger fighter feel intense agony where he had been burned. So used to burying his pain deep, Faros had not even notice that his fur was in places completely charred. In one or two spots, his flesh had already begun to blister.
“There’s no time for it now,” he said, forcing the pain away.
“Oh, I think there is! This is one time I’ll be giving the commands, lad!” Looking over his own shoulder, the captain roared, “Joak! You’ve some mender training! Get over here and look at this!”
A shorter, narrow-eyed mariner joined them. Seeing Botanos would not be satisfied until something was done, Faros resigned himself to treatment. He sat while the other minotaur fussed over his burn.
“Can make a poultice out of some herbs I’ve got and a plant I saw, but it’d be better if I had ’im aboard the Crest.”
Mention of the ship sparked Faros’s interest. “How far is it off shore? An hour, you said?”
“Aye. A safe harbor, at least for now. We skirted half a dozen imperials only a couple of days ago, though! There’s lots of activity goin’ on.”
Most of it aimed at Faros, no doubt. It would only increase now that Bastion de-Droka was counted among the dead.
Botanos misread his expression. “Oh, we’ll get you aboard quick enough, lad, no doubt about it! I’ll not lose you now that you’ve taken up the cause! Soon as you’re secure, we’ll set sail for the Courrain!”
“We’ll be going nowhere, Captain, at least, no farther than your ship. The rest are a day or more behind us. I swore I’d leave no one in Kern.” In his mind’s eye Faros saw his father’s face. When Gradic had given an oath, he had kept it. Faros could do no less.
“But—”
At that moment, Joak, the mender, made the mistake of probing a particularly sore area. With a growl, Faros shoved him and leapt up. Blood briefly filled his vision.
“No one gets left behind for the ogres, do you understand?”
“Aye … aye, lad—Lord Faros.”
The rebel leader picked up his sword, which once again felt like a natural extension of his arm. “Take us to your ship.”
They left after the dead and wounded were dealt with. One of the rebels who had fallen under Grom’s influence said a prayer to Sargonnas. Faros glanced up at the constellation representing the god, but as usual, the deity did not appear. When the short ceremony was done, those wounded who could not walk were carried on makeshift stretchers built from cut wood and blankets. The trek was not an arduous one, but after the sinister illusion, each step was made warily. It no longer appeared that Sargonnas’s power obscured Faros from the sight of his enemies.
“I wish you’d be reconsidering,” Botanos muttered as they neared their goal. “The Crest could reach a safer location in a handful of days, and with luck, enough ships for most of your people could be arranged shortly after. A week, maybe three at the outset—”
“Everyone left behind would already be dead or worse.”
“ ’Tis you that m
atters! You’re the only one who can lead us to victory!”
The rebel leader met the mariner’s gaze. “Would you follow someone who abandoned so many for his own hide?”
Botanos could say nothing to that. He finally nodded. “As you say, then. At least get aboard and stay there. If we are discovered by Imperials, you can’t argue if we take you away!”
“No, I’ll stay ashore. If any ship comes, I’ll melt back into the woods then return to the column.”
They broke through the last line of trees. At any moment, at least according to what Captain Botanos had told him earlier, they would spot the legendary rebel vessel.
“Now see here, my lord!” Botanos was saying. “If you’d only—”
The mariner broke off, his mouth agape. Faros quickly followed his eyes to where the Dragon’s Crest lay anchored—and surrounded by more than half a dozen other large vessels.
“Into the trees!” he snapped, pulling away from Botanos. “Captain! Get—”
Yet Botanos laughed. Faros looked at him as if he were mad.
“Rest easy, my lord! There’s nothing to fear!”
“Those are warships!”
“Aye! Ships of the Eastern Fleet, most of them! Led by Captain Tinza, if you’ll recall …”
The veteran naval officer’s face briefly came to Faros’s mind. She had been one of those who had first sworn to follow him, if only he would make his focus Nethosak, not Kern.
“Truly the Horned One watches over you, my lord!” Botanos gestured at the fleet. “There lies the end to both our concerns! You wanted ships to carry the others? I’ll wager these’ll do! The birds spread your message quicker than even I thought, and it seems your heartfelt words did the rest!”
Faros surveyed the ships, every one of them having come this far because of his entreaties. Every one, because they would follow him, even if their seemingly futile quest ended in death.
Against the unearthly power of the malevolent Morgion that was the likely outcome.
Empire of Blood Page 14
