The Crimson Legion

by Denning, Troy

  Neeva changed directions. “Let’s find him and kill him. It might be the halflings’ commander.”

  Rikus followed. Like his fighting partner, he wanted nothing quite so bad as to find an enemy that they could fight. Of course, the halflings would never let themselves be caught in hand-to-hand combat, but with a little luck whoever was overseeing them would not be so careful.

  The pair’s change in direction caused a flurry of chittering and scuffling. Rikus detected at least nine different halflings relaying messages and adjusting their positions. Normally, he would not have considered nine warriors much of a threat, but the prospect of facing so many halflings sent a shiver down his spine. He did not tell Neeva the bad news.

  They had traveled no more than ten yards when Rikus heard the soft tick of an arrow being nocked into a bowstring. Less than a yard away, a scrawny halfling rose from the rocks and pointed a small arrow at Neeva’s back.

  “Roll!” Rikus yelled.

  The bowstring popped. Neeva cried out in alarm and barely managed to roll away as the arrow shot into the ground where she had been lying.

  Rikus launched himself at the halfling, driving the tip of his sword into the assassin’s stomach. The Scourge passed through his foe’s body with surprising ease, not stopping until the tip protruded more than a foot from his back. The halfling’s sallow eyes opened wide, but he did not cry out. Instead, he reached into his hip-quiver for a dart and drove himself forward onto Rikus’s blade, slashing at the mul with the poisoned tip.

  Rikus leaned away, then punched the halfling with his free hand. The blow crushed the assassin’s skull and popped an eye from its socket. Casually, the mul kicked the body off his blade.

  The twang of bowstrings sounded from directly ahead, then Rikus felt two taps as a pair of arrows sank in his belt. He dropped to the ground instantly, a panicked scream escaping his lips.

  “Rikus!” cried Neeva.

  Another bowstring popped and the mul heard an arrow clattered to the ground near Neeva. She rolled away, then whispered, “Are you hit?”

  To Rikus’s relief, he did not feel either arrow pricking his stomach. “They hit me in the belt,” he said, carefully plucking the darts from the leather girdle and tossing them aside. “No harm.”

  He started to crawl toward his fighting partner, but the halflings fired their bows again. Several darts clattered down between him and Neeva. Rikus saw her roll away, then stop to wait for him. The mul started toward her, but again the halflings fired. This time, two of the darts nearly hit him, and two more almost struck Neeva.

  “They’re separating us,” Neeva cried. Another bowstring twanged and she barely saved herself by rolling yet farther away from Rikus.

  “Let them,” Rikus answered, realizing that by trying to rejoin each other, he and Neeva would only make themselves easy targets. “Go on—we’ll circle around and meet each other up ahead.”

  Two more bowstrings popped and Rikus rolled away. When he looked back toward Neeva, she had disappeared into the dusky shadows.

  Rikus crawled away as fast as he could. Neeva could take care of herself and, even if she couldn’t, he didn’t see how getting killed himself would help her. As he moved farther away from the halfling he had killed, the pop of bowstrings grew less frequent and the whistled messages of the halflings sounded more urgent.

  The sun sank behind the mountains completely, plunging the field into darkness. The moons had not yet risen, so there was only the faint twinkle of the stars to help the halflings see. The mul breathed a sigh of relief as his dwarven vision began to outline the glowing forms of rocks, ground, and halflings. Now he and Neeva stood a good chance of surviving, for, unlike elves and dwarves, halflings could not see in the dark. With the advantage of his dwarven vision, Rikus thought he could circle around to Neeva and escape without suffering a prick from one of the halfling arrows.

  His optimism was short lived, however. From the direction in which Neeva had gone came a halfling’s astonished cry. Rikus heard the twang of a bowstring, then his fighting partner grunted in anger. There were a couple of muffled blows.

  “Don’t jab that thing at me,” Neeva said.

  There was a sharp snap, as though the big woman had broken a spear shaft, or perhaps a halfling’s back, over her knee. Something soft and limp collapsed onto the rocks, then Neeva’s heavy footsteps sprinted away from the altercation.

  A cacophony of chirps and whistles sounded from her direction. The field near her came alive with clacking rocks and snapping bowstrings as several halflings, glowing warm red against the orange rocks of the field, rushed toward the sounds of Neeva’s flight.

  Rikus leaped to his feet and screamed his loudest battle cry, charging over the broken ground to help his fighting partner. Unfortunately, he could not tell how she was faring. Even with his dwarven vision, he could see no more than ten yards in the darkness.

  Soon the red glow of a halfling’s form appeared at the limit of Rikus’s vision. The mul raised his sword, hoping to use the man-eater’s inability to see in the dark to good advantage. As the mul closed in, however, the halfling suddenly stopped and cocked his head as if listening, then lifted his bow and pointed the tip of an arrow directly at Rikus’s chest.

  The gladiator dropped to the ground, marveling at how accurate the halfling’s aim was, considering that he was doing it by sound alone. When his kneecap smashed into the jagged point of a large stone, the mul clamped his jaw shut to keep from crying out, biting his tongue in the process.

  The bowstring twanged, and the halfling’s arrow sailed over Rikus’s head in a blue streak. The mul returned to his feet as the halfling pulled a poisoned arrow from his hip-quiver and clutched it like a dagger. As Rikus advanced, the halfling closed his eyes, relying solely on his ears to keep him informed of the mul’s location.

  Rikus picked up a rock and threw it at his foe’s head, rushing forward behind the flying stone. The missile struck with a sharp crack and the halfling stumbled back. As the mul raised his sword for the kill, the halfling surprised him by throwing himself forward in a mad lunge.

  To keep from being stabbed by the poisoned arrowhead, Rikus lunged out of the way and landed face-first in the rocks. The halfling struck the ground a few feet behind him. The mul spun around immediately, swinging his sword in a blind arc. As fast as he moved, by the time he saw his attacker, the assassin was almost upon him.

  Rikus knocked aside the hand holding the dart, then brought his sword around in a quick loop and flicked the attacker’s head off. The halfling’s hand took one last slash at the mul, then dropped the arrow.

  Behind Rikus, a loud crackle sounded from the direction Neeva had fled, then a brilliant crimson light flared. Remembering the sound he had heard just before he killed his first halfling, Rikus assumed that Neeva had stumbled into a Urikite templar.

  “Neeva!” he yelled, leaping to his feet again.

  A sharp pain shot through the kneecap he had smashed earlier and his leg nearly buckled. To his relief, however, the Scourge brought the sound of Neeva’s voice to his ears. “Rikus is still alive,” she said. “Come on!”

  Not bothering to ask himself to whom she was talking, he limped forward again.

  A few steps later, he stopped in his tracks. In front of him stood four halflings, all pointing arrows in his direction. Their bowstring snapped simultaneously.

  Rikus cursed bitterly and dived to the side with all the grace he could muster.

  The mul felt the soft thud of four tiny darts before his feet had even left the ground. He had time enough to realize that, again, they had struck him in the Belt of Rank, then he smashed into the rocks.

  In the same instant, a tremendous peal of thunder deafened Rikus, and a brilliant orange light flooded the night. It washed out the mul’s dwarven vision and cast strange, quavering shadows over the entire field. A searing blast of wind washed over him. Blinded by a brilliant glare and pained by the heat, Rikus covered his eyes and curled into a fetal p
osition.

  With his ears ringing and his vision clouded, Rikus realized that he was more vulnerable than ever to the halflings. He lay as still as he could, convinced that he would never know the answer to the many questions flooding his mind about what had just happened. At any moment, he expected a halfling’s dagger to slip into his kidneys, or a dozen tiny arrows to prick his exposed back. Still, as much as his instincts cried out for him to stand and fight, the mul knew that moving would only draw attention to himself. Until his senses returned, he was helpless.

  To his surprise, when his ears finally stopped ringing it was Neeva’s voice he heard. “Rikus, are you hurt?”

  The mul looked up and, through his slowly clearing vision, saw his fighting partner standing over him. She was silhouetted against a wall of flame that still burned where the four halflings had been a few moments earlier.

  “Neeva, you’re safe!”

  “Of course,” she said. “You’re the one they were trying to kill.”

  Rikus frowned. “Me?”

  “When you screamed, they all but left me alone,” Neeva explained. “The question is, are you hurt?”

  “I don’t know, and now is no time to find out,” Rikus said, rising. “Let’s go—”

  “Don’t worry, the halflings are gone—at least for now,” Neeva said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Now, are you injured or not?”

  Rikus frowned, but decided to take her at her word. If there were still halflings about, they would have struck by now. In answer to Neeva’s question, the mul said, “I’ve been hit by half a dozen poison arrows, but the Belt of Rank stopped them all.” He pointed at the four darts still stuck in the girdle. “Otherwise, I’d be dead by now.”

  “Let me have a look, just to be sure,” said another familiar voice, this one at the mul’s back. “Sometimes, a wounded man does not feel his injuries until much later.”

  Rikus peered over his shoulder and saw a dwarf’s lanky form standing behind him. “Caelum?” he gasped.

  “Who do you think created the wall of flame that saved you?” Neeva asked.

  Rikus ignored her and scowled at the dwarf. “What are you doing here? I told you and everyone else to leave Neeva and me alone.”

  The dwarf dropped his eyes. “It was a coincidence. I was performing my sundown devotions.”

  “I’ve never seen you perform any devotions,” Rikus grunted. He narrowed his eyes and studied the dwarf’s dark eyes. “You’re lying.”

  “Why would he do that?” Neeva demanded.

  “Maybe it wasn’t the Kes’trekel who warned Maetan about our ambush,” Rikus said, grabbing the dwarf by the throat. “Maybe it was Caelum!”

  “That’s madness!” snapped Neeva, prying the dwarf from Rikus’s grasp.

  “No, it’s not,” Rikus insisted. “He followed us out there so he could show the halflings where we were sleeping.”

  “No,” Caelum rasped, rubbing his throat. “It was a coinidence, as I said. You’ve never seen my devotions because I must perform them alone.”

  “You don’t expect me to believe that,” Rikus sneered.

  “It makes more sense than what you’re thinking,” Neeva snapped. “If Caelum’s a traitor, why’d he save you from the halflings?”

  Rikus scowled, unable to think of a good reason. “How do I know? He’s the spy!”

  “Whatever you choose to believe about my devotions, you must see that I have as much reason as you to hate Maetan. I am no spy,” Caelum said, meeting the mul’s gaze evenly. “Now, let me inspect your stomach. If you have been scratched, the sun’s vigor will burn the poison from your blood.”

  When the mul did not do as the dwarf asked, Neeva reached over and unclasped the buckle. “I think we should return to the legion before sunrise,” she snapped.

  Caelum immediately set about inspecting the mul for wounds.

  As Neeva stretched out the Belt of Rank to inspect it, Rikus saw that there were two more halfling darts in the back. Though they had probably struck him while he was crawling through the rocks, he had not even felt them through the thick leather.

  “And you called it a worthless piece of leather,” Rikus said, motioning at the girdle.

  Neeva shook her head in amazement. “All the arrows hit you in the belt,” she said. “How lucky can you get?”

  “I doubt that it was luck,” Caelum said. He paused his ministering to pluck a poisoned dart from the leather. “I’d say it was magic.”

  SEVEN

  UMBRA’S RETURN

  RIKUS WOKE TO A SHARP JAB IN THE RIBS.

  “Stop lying on ground,” said K’kriq. “Find Urikites.”

  Opening his eyes, the mul saw that the green tendrils of first light were just shooting across the starlit sky. He rolled away from Neeva’s warm body and looked up at the thri-kreen’s towering form.

  “Huh?” he asked groggily.

  “What wrong?” K’kriq clacked his mandibles impatiently. “Why so stupid?”

  “I was sleeping,” Rikus yawned.

  “Sleep,” the thri-kreen snorted, disgusted with the mul’s weakness. “Waste good time for hunt.”

  “It’s no waste,” Rikus grumbled. Taking one of the cloaks he and Neeva had been using to insulate themselves from the cold night wind, he rose to his feet and stepped away. “What about the Urikites?”

  K’kriq pointed all four arms westward, toward the jagged, black wall of the Ringing Mountains. “Find many Urikites. Not far.”

  Rikus raised a hand. “Wait.”

  The mul looked out over a dusty camp, where a thousand murky, inert lumps lay snoring and growling in their sleep. “Everyone up!” he yelled. “Move!”

  Half the gladiators leaped to their feet with weapons in their hands, and the other half hardly stirred. “Wake your fellows,” Rikus ordered, stepping to Neeva’s side and nudging her with his foot. “We march in a quarter-hour.”

  Neeva rose, pulling her cloak over her shoulders and stifling a yawn. “What’s happening?”

  Rikus took her by the hand and started toward the templar’s camp. “I’ll explain later. Now, we’ve got to wake our leaders.”

  Within a few minutes, they had roused both Styan and Jaseela. When Rikus asked K’kriq to explain what was happening, however, Neeva objected. “What about Caelum?”

  “He’s probably off on a morning devotion,” Rikus answered sarcastically. The dwarf’s unexplained appearance the night before still angered the mul. Although he had to agree with Neeva that a traitor would not have saved them from the halfling assassins, he remained convinced that Caelum had followed them to their campsite for some other purpose.

  “We’d better find him,” said Jaseela. She yawned, then winced in pain when her crooked jaw opened too far for its mangled socket. “If you’re expecting a battle, we’ll need the dwarves.”

  Rikus reluctantly agreed, then led the way to where the dwarves had slept. They had made their orderly camp between two spires of sandstone, on a bristly carpet of moss that reflected the faint rays of predawn light in glimmering silver and gold.

  Caelum met the leaders in the center of the camp, offering them each a handful of small serpent eggs. Only Styan refused the breakfast.

  “K’kriq found a Urikite campsite,” Rikus explained, pointing at the distant gulch the thr-keen had indicated earlier.

  “How big?” asked Jaseela, slipping one of the leathery eggs into her misshapen mouth.

  “As many as our packs,” K’kriq answered, pointing one hand at each of the companies in Rikus’s legion. “Many humans. Camping, waiting.”

  “Did you see Maetan or the Book of Kings?” asked Caelum.

  K’kriq crossed his stubby antennae, indicating that the answer was no.

  “That doesn’t mean the mindbender isn’t with them,” Rikus said.

  “And it doesn’t mean he is,” objected Styan. “He could be halfway back to Urik.”

  “We’re attacking,” Rikus insisted.

  “Who is we, exa
ctly?” Styan demanded, looking down his pointed nose eat the mul. “I haven’t committed my templars to anything.”

  “If we wait for the templars to fight, Maetan has time enough to crawl home,” Rikus spat.

  Styan faced the other commanders. “We must go straight to the oasis. My company finished its water last night.”

  “You let them finish their water? What if there were still Urikites at the oasis? Without any water your men would be unable to fight come midday,” Neeva said. “Only templars would be so stupid.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Jaseela, turning her good eye on Rikus. “We ran out yesterday afternoon.”

  Neeva groaned and looked to Caelum. “How about the dwarves?”

  “We’ve been on half-rations for three days,” he said proudly. “If we go to quarter rations, we’ll last another day.”

  Styan smirked in Rikus’s direction. “If you were wise enough to keep track of your gladiators’ water, I think you’d find that they emptied their skins before the rest us.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Rikus snapped. “We did it without water for three days before the fight at Kled.”

  “Not by choice,” objected Styan. “And who’s to say how long we will be without water if we attack and the battle goes badly?”

  “It won’t,” Rikus growled.

  Styan shook his head stubbornly. “If I command my men to bypass the oasis, they’ll plant a dagger in my back.”

  “That wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” Neeva said. “The whole legion would be better off without you and your cowards.”

  Styan glared at her for a moment, then looked back to Rikus. “If you insist on this foolishness, the gladiators will attack alone.”

  “Not alone,” said Jaseela. “Water or no water, my retainers and I are with them.”

  “As are the dwarves,” added Caelum, stepping to Neeva’s side.

  Styan studied the sun-cleric for a few moments, a grim smile upon his thin lips. “Can you be sure of it?”

  The dwarf’s red eyes flashed in anger. “Of course!”

  “Shall we see?” the templar asked. He stepped away from the small groups of leaders and faced the dwarven camp. “Warriors of Kled, I feel it is my duty to speak with you for a moment.”