City Under the Sand: A Dark Sun Novel (Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Sun)

by Jeff Mariotte

  The next assault was a hail of stones, as big as a goliath’s fist. A soldier near Ruhm went down with a gash in his scalp and blood pouring into his eyes. Cries of “Raiders!” rang out.

  Aric drew his wooden sword. Ruhm, his greatclub gripped in both hands, looked for someone to use it on. Damaric spun a singing stick, his hands at its middle, its distinctive whistling tones providing a musical counterpoint to the shouts of warriors seeking an enemy.

  “What kind of raiders?” Aric asked.

  “Dead kind, soon,” Ruhm replied.

  “Face us!” Damaric called, impatient to start the fighting. “Don’t hide in the dark like old women!”

  As if in response, the attackers showed themselves.

  Aric wished they hadn’t.

  “Halflings!” went the shouts of the soldiers. “It’s halflings!”

  Faces painted with what must have been the dried blood of the caravan’s dead, the halflings charged out of the desert screeching incomprehensible words from voracious mouths. They carried every kind of weapon imaginable; ivory swords and obsidian-tipped spears, gouges and gythkas—some wielded the horns of of exotic animals, filed to dagger-sharp points. Most were naked, or nearly so, though a few wore pieces of chitin armor no doubt stolen from previous victims of their raids. Halflings, Aric had heard, bore no trace of humanity. They were savages with only bloodthirstiness and cruelty in their feral little hearts.

  It seemed there were hundreds of them.

  They swarmed into the Nibenese soldiers, cutting and stabbing as they came.

  Damaric stepped to meet the onrush. His rod spun so fast it seemed to be a solid shield, the wider ends batting away halfling weapons and crushing skulls at the same time. Amoni gripped the handle of her cahulaks and swirled them about, four-bladed heads at the rope’s ends slicing through flesh and sending halfling blood spraying into the air. Ruhm seemed pleased to have an enemy he could see, and he waded into their midst, his club flying this way and that in a killing flurry.

  For a few moments, Aric thought none of the halflings would reach him. After all, Kadya said he was to be protected. Surely soldiers would surround him any moment, keeping him safe from the raiders.

  But Ruhm, Amoni and Damaric were all engaged with multiple opponents, as were the few other soldiers nearby. The halflings kept coming, and when Aric saw the glint in the horrible yellow eyes of one staring right at him, he knew he had met his first foe.

  The halfling bore a short spear with an obsidian tip. Ducking around the swarm trying to get at Ruhm, he came straight for Aric. Aric raised his sword. The halfling thrust his spear forward, and Aric parried the attack, wooden blade clacking against the spear’s shaft. But Aric didn’t recover from the parry fast enough to make an attack of his own, and the spear came at him again. Aric stepped back and to the side, bringing the blade around in a down-sweeping motion, left to right. It stopped the spear from stabbing him, but the stone tip sliced across his belly, opening a thin cut.

  Sweat was running down Aric’s face, stinging his eyes. He stabbed at the halfling, who beat the blade away. The spear streaked toward Aric again. He lurched backward and caught the shaft in his left hand. With a mighty heave he yanked the halfling toward him and brought his blade up for the killing thrust.

  The halfling’s eyes were full of hate, and his scent was rank. He snarled at Aric, then tugged back on the spear. The shaft dragged through Aric’s fist and the obsidian head sliced his palm and fingers. Second blood, and still all that had spilled belonged to the half-elf, none to his savage foe.

  He had to do something fast. His comrades battled half a dozen halflings at once, and here he was being sliced to ribbons by a single one. He remembered his battle against four elves, how he had woven a web of shining steel—

  But that was the difference, wasn’t it? With steel in his hands, he was a different person. This wooden sword had an edge to it, but it felt like he was fighting with a tree branch.

  The halfling nicked his right arm with the spear’s edge. Concentrate, fool! Aric told himself. Ragged gasps of breath tore at his throat.

  Aric launched himself forward. The halfling threw his weight to his rear foot, but that didn’t give him enough distance, and Aric landed too close for the spear to come into play. The half-elf’s sword was almost useless at this range, too, but he held it low, point up, and grabbed the halfling’s shoulder in his left hand. He pulled the halfling to him and pushed the blade at the same time. It met resistance, but cut through the halfling’s flesh, glanced off bone, tore at his innards. An expression of dismay and then agony twisted the halfling’s horrible face. His spear fell to the ground and the halfling went limp in Aric’s hands.

  Aric shoved him backward, drawing his sword out at the same time. More halflings converged on him, two of them, a female armed with a wrist razor, the other a male with a crude club. Bolstered by his victory, Aric engaged them both at once.

  If the halflings had a strategy beyond overwhelming their foes through sheer numbers, none could see it. They had, it was true, picked off soldiers here and there over the last few days, putting the entire expeditionary force on edge. But that slow attrition was forgotten as the halflings surged toward the light, breaking on the Nibenese defenses like a muddy red wave.

  The Nibenese goliaths stood more than twice as tall as the halflings, with correspondingly greater reach. Most of the soldiers were armored, and even those who were laborers instead of soldiers had access to shields, and armored wagons to hide behind when the halflings launched aerial bombardments of rocks and chatkchas.

  All of which meant the battle was closer than it might have been, had Nibenay’s army been less well trained, disciplined, and equipped, or the halflings less numerous. Aric dispatched his two newest foes with a lucky slash that split one open from his collarbone to the center of his chest, and a precise thrust that pierced the other’s heart. But for every halfling who fell, it seemed two or three more took his place. When he found himself facing three at once, his newfound confidence faltered.

  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 t
o 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

  1

  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.

  “Aye, tough as they come. That leg …”

  “You would never know that at this time yesterday she could hardly take a drink on her own.”

  “When we’re falling down with exhaustion, she’ll be leaving us behind. Shaming us.”

  “She’s leaving us already,” Sellis pointed out. “We should catch up. This loose slope could be treacherous, and if she should lose her balance …”

  “Bad leg or no, she looks steady. If we fall trying to keep up with her, I’ll laugh.”

  “Laugh through the pain, you mean.”

  “Aye, for certain. It’s a long way to the bottom.”

  Long way or not, they made it without incident. Hiking across the valley floor was indeed easier, and after the long, steep descent, she was ready for easy. The ground was firm and even, the rocks big enough to be seen and avoided but not so large that they required major detours to skirt. Between the rocks and scrubby brush, cactus, and occasional patches of tall, brownish grass, they could see about halfway across the valley.

  They made steady progress. Here they wished again for kanks, as those huge insects could cover this sort of territory at a rapid pace. The sun pounded down upon them as it moved through the sky. On the hillside, cooling breezes had blown over them, but here in the valley no such relief presented itself. As they walked, even the shade seemed to dry up; at the valley’s fringes, runoff from the hills, during whatever infrequent rains came, nourished the plant life, but toward the valley’s center that tapered off until the plain became nothing but a hard, flaked crust of earth with rocks sitting on top.

  A little more than three quarters of the way across, Sellis drew up short and pointed to what appeared to be a jumble of boulders off to the south. “I don’t like that,” he said.

  “They’re just rocks, no?” Myrana asked.

  “I’m not so certain.”

  Koyt eyed the boulders, shielding his brow against the slanting sun. “There’s a fire pit in front,” he said. “Not burning now, but it’s there.”

  Myrana narrowed her eyes and peered at it. Koyt was right. Beyond the pit, a slanted boulder leaned on two others, and a dark hole might have been an opening into a cleverly disguis
ed home. “Do you think someone lives there?”

  “A hermit, perhaps,” Sellis said. “I would expect any living in this valley to be closer to that spring, but it’s less than an hour away, perhaps well less.”

  “Should we hail him?” Myrana asked. Any member of a trading caravan had some experience with hermits, or good or for ill. Some of them sought out interaction with travelers passing through, while others guarded their solitude with fierce determination.

  “If he’s there—or she, I’ve encountered more than one female hermit—then he knows we’re here.”

  “Many I’ve seen are mad,” Myrana said. “And men are more likely than women to go mad, aren’t they?”

  “I don’t know about that,” Koyt said.

  “Maybe it has to do with how that madness is exhibited,” Sellis offered. “I’ve certainly run across some madwomen, too, but they seem to favor city life. It takes a special kind of insanity to make someone want to live alone like this, so far from everything.”

  “I don’t like it,” Myrana said. “Let’s keep going.”

  They moved on, uneasy now. The nape of Myrana’s neck tickled. Is someone watching us? she wondered. She, Sellis and Koyt marched forward, not talking, each lost in thoughts or worries.

  “Kalipher warned you!” a voice screeched. The speaker stood atop a boulder just ahead of them and to the east, perhaps forty paces from the travelers. They stopped. Sellis whisked his swords from their scabbards and Koyt snatched his bow from his shoulder and an arrow from its quiver in one smooth motion.

  “Warned us of what, old man?” Sellis demanded. “And who’s Kalipher? We’ve never seen you before, nor heard that name.”

  “Kalipher stands before you, and Kalipher warned you to keep out of his valley!” The hermit wore a long, gray robe—although, Myrana noted, it might not always have been gray, as it appeared to have been patched from time to time but never washed—and a cap of the same color that fit snugly across his brow but hung down past his shoulder, its end resting on his chest. His thin arms were spread wide, as were his bare feet. He had a long beard that had, if anything, received even less care over the past decade than the robe. The distance was too great to see all the detail, but Myrana thought there were twigs snarled in its tangled mess, and perhaps insects and small rodents as well.