The Crimson Legion

by Denning, Troy

  A broad river of white-hot rock was pouring out of the gorge, sweeping onto the delta in a glowing, steadily flowing river. The Urikite troops not in the front lines of the battle were caught by the lava. Panicked, they clambered over each other in an effort to flee, but to little avail. The molten stone pursued the screaming soldiers relentlessly, lapping at their heels and overtaking those who fell. As Rikus watched, hundreds of soldiers burst into columns of yellow flame, flaring for a brief instant before they vanished in a wisp of smoke and ash.

  Caelum had won the battle for him, but Rikus could not help wondering what the real price would be.

  FOURTEEN

  PARLEY

  “RIKUS … RIKUS … RIKUS …”

  The mul straightened the sling holding his left arm, then hung the Scourge of Rkard from the scabbard hooks on the Belt of Rank. The company outside had been droning his name for two days, and now that he had recovered from his wounds enough to stand, Rikus was prepared to face them.

  “Would you like me to stand with you?” asked Neeva. No one else had been brave enough to follow Rikus up into the room.

  “No, I’d better do this alone,” he answered.

  After stepping onto a small balcony that overhung Makla’s central plaza, he looked down upon the company of chanting corpses. Some were naked, with bits of singed cloth clinging to their blistered hides and blackened stubs of bone where their hands and feet should have been. A few others had lost their legs from the waist down, and supported themselves only by clinging to huge boulders that hovered in the air before them. The largest part of the crowd had been reduced to whirlwinds of ash crowned by the vague outline of a pain-racked face. All had been part of Drewet’s doomed company.

  At the head of the crowd, over a small circle of blackened and cracked cobblestones, burned an orange pillar of flame. The grisly undead band had appeared in Makla only hours behind the Tyrian legion, and neither Caelum’s magic nor threats of violence had convinced them to move.

  “Rikus … Rikus … Rikus …”

  Their rasping chant did not change tone or inflection, and the mul could not even tell if they knew he had come to answer their call. He forced himself to stare at their gruesome forms for several moments, determined not to show the fear he felt it inside.

  Rikus raised his good arm for silence, but the warriors continued to chant his name. “I’m sorry you died,” he called, speaking above them. “I tried to save you.”

  The orange flame, which the mul assumed to be Drewet, advanced a pace. The entire company followed, angrily shouting, “Hurray for Rikus!”

  The mul stumbled backward, shocked by the anger in their voices. When the company came no closer, Rikus recovered his composure and returned to the edge of the balcony. This time, he gripped the stone rail to prevent himself from retreating again—and to keep his hand from trembling.

  “I had to save the rest of the legion,” Rikus said. Once again, he shouted to make himself heard, for the company had resumed its chant. “You were doomed anyway.”

  Drewet led the company another pace closer, and again they shouted, “Hurray for Rikus!”

  The mul’s knuckles turned white, but he did not step from the railing. “What do you want?” he asked. Though he tried to speak in a demanding tone, there was an undertone of dread and fear in his voice.

  This time, only Drewet spoke. “Tell us why,” she demanded, moving closer. Tongues of flame began to lick at the underside of the stone balcony.

  “I told you,” Rikus answered, feeling his legs begin to quiver. “To save the legion.”

  The rest of the company came forward. “Hurray for Rikus!”

  As they resumed the chant, it was all the mul could do to keep from turning and running. “If you want my life, then come and try to take it,” he yelled.

  With a trembling hand, he reached for his sword.

  Don’t, you fool! commanded Tamar. Until you bring me the book, your life is not your own to throw away. When Rikus moved his hand from his scabbard, she continued. Your warriors only wish to be dismissed. They are in pain.

  How do you know? the mul demanded.

  Look at them, Tamar said, a bemused note in her voice. Any fool can see they suffer the agony of their deaths. They would have abandoned their bodies long ago, had they been able.

  Rikus turned his hand to the railing. “You’re free to leave.” After a moment, when the company continued to chant his name, he yelled, “Go. Leave your pain behind you!”

  “Tell us why!” Drewet screamed.

  She rose into the air until she hovered in front of the balcony. An orange tendril lashed out and touched Rikus’s sling, instantly setting the bloody cloth on fire. Screaming in alarm, the mul pulled his aching arm free, then ripped the rag from his neck and flung the flaming thing into the square.

  Drewet’s company moved closer and chanted his name more loudly. Thinking that he had been a fool to listen to Tamar’s advice, Rikus retreated to the back of the balcony. Drewet followed, moving so close that the heat of her flaming form stung his skin. He drew his sword and held the blade in front of himself.

  The Scourge won’t protect you, Tamar warned.

  But she won’t listen!

  How do you expect the warrors to accept their fate when you will not accept the onus for choosing it? Tamar asked. If you shrink from your destiny, it will destroy you—and I have no wish to find another agent to recover the book for me.

  I am not your pawn!

  Tamar let her silence be her reply.

  At his back, the mul heard Neeva’s voice. “I’ll get Caelum!”

  “No,” Rikus said, accepting Tamar’s advice. Though he distrusted the wraith as much as he despised her, the mul did not doubt that she was trying to save his life. As she had pointed out, she still needed him to recover the book. “I need no protection from my own warriors.”

  Keeping his eyes fixed on the pillar of fire in front of him, Rikus slowly sheathed his sword and moved forward. Drewet backed away. When she was once again hanging over the square, the mul stopped and looked down at her company. They continued to cry his name, their voices bitter with resentment and pain. Rikus studied their tortured forms for several moments, his heart growing heavy as he accepted the full burden of what he had done.

  At last, he was ready to dismiss Drewet’s company. “You died so I could win the battle,” he called, fixing his gaze on the flaming pillar before him. “I would do it again.”

  The chanting stopped, and Canth looked up from the mug of bitter-smelling broy that a friend had poured for him. Like the rest of his fellows, the burly gladiator and his fire-mates had made their camp at the western end of town—as far away from Rikus and his company of dead disciples as they could.

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Canth said, setting his square jaw. “What do you suppose Rikus is doing now? Has he taught Drewet and her troops a new song at last?” He supressed a shudder.

  “Who knows?” replied Lor, a brown-skinned woman with a bloody bandage on the stump of her sword arm. She held her mug out to Jotano, a quiet templar who had endeared himself to the gladiators through his uncanny knack for finding broy or wine when others had to make do with water. “I’ll wager that whatever he’s about, it’s no good.”

  “A dwarf told me he’s learned sorcery so he can be a king like Kalak,” offered Lafus, a stooped half-elf with an unusually broad face and a bald pate. “The dwarf heard it from Caelum himself.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Canth. “The Rikus I know doesn’t care about kings or magic. I say the ruby has taken over his mind—and it’s going to get us all killed.”

  Lafus, always as ready to argue as he was to fight, countered the generous claim. “Because you once shared a stadium pen with the mul doesn’t mean you know him.” He snorted. “How do you account for those monstrous things in the square?”

  Jotano shook his head. “Those are unquiet spirits, longing for rest, not creatures raised by magic.”<
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  Canth nodded. “And you templars know your magic. Besides, I’ll believe Rikus’s word over that of a sun-sick dwarf any day,” he countered. “What makes you think Fire-Eyes knows what Rikus is doing?”

  “My dwarf contact says it came to Caelum from Neeva,” said Lafus, his lip turned up in a triumphant sneer. “That’s why she won’t lie with Rikus anymore.”

  In a drink-slurred voice, Lor declared, “Then I’ll lie with him.” She raised the stump of what had been her sword arm. “Maybe his magic will grow my hand back.”

  She chuckled grimly, but the others looked away in uncomfortable silence.

  After a moment, Canth faced Jotan. Hoping to counter the powerful case that Lafus had made by invoking Neeva’s name, the square-jawed gladiator asked, “What do you hear in your company’s camps, Jotano?”

  The templar shrugged and refilled Lor’s empty mug. “It matters little to the templars whether Rikus is learning sorcery or controlled by it,” he said. “Magic is power, and it is better to have a powerful master than a weak one.”

  K’kriq burst into Rikus’s room. “Come quick!” he said. “Need you.”

  “For what?” the mul demanded. He sat up and placed his legs over the edge of the bed. During the last three days, he had risen from it only once, when he had gone to dismiss Drewet’s company. “Is Hamanu sending another army?”

  “No,” K’kriq said. “Just come.”

  Rikus forced himself to stand, gritting his teeth against the pain it caused. The spear puncture in his shoulder was already scarred over, for Caelum had used his magic to heal it long ago. Many of his other wounds, including most of the charred holes where he had been spattered by lava, were still in an awful state.

  The canker on his chest, especially, had grown even more disgusting. Tamar’s ruby now resembled the red pupil of an eye, looking out on the world from a black iris that oozed a constant stream of foul yellow bile. The pestilence had left his arm swollen and useless, a source of constant pain that sometimes made him gasp.

  Rikus put on his robe, then followed K’kriq down the mansion hallway. Like all the other buildings in the village, this one had not escaped the ravages of the fires the legion had set during their first retreat. The whole building stank of charcoal, and the ostentatious murals on its stone walls were lost beneath deep layers of soot.

  Nevertheless, the mansion was still more comfortable than anyplace the mul had slept since leaving Tyr. During the time Rikus and his legion had been trapped in the Crater of Bones, the slave-keepers of Makla had returned to reconstruct their homes and slave compounds. It was a mistake they had not long lived to regret. When the Tyrians had returned and liberated the village, the hundreds and hundreds of quarry slaves had exacted a terrible revenge on their cruel masters.

  K’kriq led the mul into the mansion’s great hall, a square chamber with an entrance at each corner. A fire had burned clear through the floors and ceilings of the upper stories, and now slanting rays of the crimson sun shone directly into the room. The ruins of a massive table and other fine furniture littered the polished floor. On the walls hung charred streamers of cloth that had once been priceless tapestries.

  K’kriq guided Rikus into a marble armchair begrimed with smoke. Gathered around it were Jaseela, Styan, Caelum, and Neeva, the last two standing together. In the middle of the room stood Gaanon, his head newly shaved and a crimson sun tattooed onto his forehead. In his hands, he held a larger version of the stone hammers favored by Caelum’s dwarves.

  Rikus was more intrigued by the thin figure with Gaanon than by the half-giant’s latest attire. Standing in front of Gaanon was Maetan of Urik, dressed in a bronze breastplate and a fresh green robe boldly emblazoned with the winged Serpent of Lubar. Noting that the mindbender was dressed in clean clothes, the mul thought it unlikely that Gaanon had found the Urikite crawling around the slopes of the Smoking Crown.

  Rikus looked from the prisoner to K’kriq. “Fetch my belt and sword.”

  Clacking his mandibles in anticipation of a good meal, the thri-kreen left to obey.

  Maetan’s eyes betrayed no surprise. “I came under the water banner,” he said, referring to the Athasian custom of carrying a blue flag to signal peaceful intentions. The water banner was most often used when one party wished to approach an oasis where strangers were camped, but it was occasionally adopted to arrange a parley in times of war. “I trust that even a slave will honor the courtesies of truce long enough to hear what I say.”

  “We might,” Rikus allowed. “If you don’t misbehave.”

  In truth, the mul didn’t give a varl’s eggsack about the Urikite’s water banner. Such niceties were for men who regarded war as a game, and to Rikus it was a vendetta. If the mul didn’t kill Maetan today, it would be because the mindbender escaped.

  After glaring at the hated Lubar for a time, the mul shifted his attention to Neeva. “Call everyone back from the battlefield.”

  She frowned. “But many of our warriors—”

  “Now,” Rikus insisted. “Whatever he says, Maetan of Lubar isn’t to be trusted. I don’t want our search parties trapped if this is some sort of trick.”

  The dwarves and a company of two hundred warriors remained at the battlefield, searching for Tyrian survivors trapped beneath the avalanche. Although they had found twenty survivors and ten times that many corpses, the legion was still missing two hundred warriors.

  As Neeva left, K’kriq returned with the Belt of Rank, the Scourge of Rkard hanging in its scabbard. Rikus put the belt on, then said to K’kriq, “Wait outside.”

  The thri-kreen crossed his antennae. “Maetan enemy. Stay to k-kill.”

  Rikus shook his head, fearing what would happen if the enemy general took control of K’kriq’s mind with the Way. “Go. You’re needed outside, to hunt Maetan down if he uses the Way to escape.”

  K’kriq’s mandibles clacked together several times, but he finally obeyed. Once the thri-keen was gone, Rikus removed the Scourge’s scabbard from his belt and sat down, laying the sword over his knees.

  “You needn’t doubt my honor,” Maetan said. “I have accepted that in coming here, I may well die.”

  “Then why come?” demanded Jaseela.

  When the mindbender looked upon the disfigured noblewoman, he did not even do her the courtesy of hiding the repulsion that flashed across his face. “My defeat has disgraced my family,” he explained freely. “By delivering a message for the king, I redeem the Lubar name—and mighty Hamanu will confiscate only half of our lands.”

  Rikus allowed himself a smug smile. “What is your message?”

  “It is for your king,” Maeton said.

  Rikus reached into a pocket on his belt and withdrew the olivine crystal. “You can pass your message through me—or not at all.”

  Maetan nodded. “That will be acceptable.”

  Rikus held the olivine out at arm’s length. Tithian’s sharp features quickly appeared in the gem, and the king scowled in anger. “I had hoped not to hear from you again.”

  “I bear good news, my king,” Rikus said. “We have destroyed the Urikite army that Hamanu sent to attack Tyr, and we have captured the village of Makla.”

  “Are you mad?” Tithian roared. “Makla’s quarries are Urik’s only source of trade. Hamanu will wipe you out—and raze Tyr in retaliation!”

  Rikus looked away from the gem, careful not to betray Tithian’s reaction since only he could hear the king’s ranting. Behind Maetan, Neeva slipped back into the room.

  Rikus returned his attention to Maetan. “What’s your message?”

  “Mighty Hamanu will suffer the pretender Tithian to sit on the throne of Tyr,” the Urikite said. “In exchange, Tithian must relinquish Makla, maintain Tyr’s trade in iron, and present to Hamanu all the gladiators in this legion. The mighty king of Urik will not tolerate slaves loose in the desert.”

  Rikus dutifully repeated the offer to the king.

  “Accept it!” Tithian commande
d. From the anxiety that still colored the king’s face, however, it was clear that he did not believe Rikus would do as ordered.

  Remembering Tithian’s betrayal in the nest of the slave tribe, the mul gave the king a bitter smile, then looked up at Maetan. “Tyr refuses!”

  “I am king!” Tithian screeched, his voice sounding inside the mul’s ears alone. “I decide what to refuse and what to accept!”

  Maetan nodded as though he had expected Rikus’s response. “Hamanu thought you might be reluctant to return to your rightful station, Rikus,” he said. “Therefore, he has sent his army to block all the routes to Tyr. You will not be allowed to return to your city.”

  Rikus raised his brow. “That must have taken many legions. The desert is a large place.”

  “Hamanu’s army is larger,” Maetan anwered. “His legions have blocked every route. You have only two choices: surrender or die.”

  Rikus remained quiet, though not because the mindbender’s words frightened him. If Maetan’s claims was true, the mul had a third choice—albeit a desperate one: attack Urik itself. Even Hamanu’s army was not so large that it could garrison the city and still seal all the routes between Urik and Tyr.

  Taking advantage of the mul’s silence, Jaseela demanded, “If Hamanu has marshaled his legions, why isn’t he sending them here?”

  Maetan did not even bother to look at the noblewoman. “Because that would achieve only part of his goal,” said the mindbender. “He wishes to guarantee access to Tyr’s iron and to use your gladiators to replenish his supply of slaves. Destroying this legion would accomplish neither, whereas a negotiated peace will achieve both.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Hamanu’s offer is refused,” Rikus said.

  In the gem, Tithian yelled, “You ill-begotten larva of an inbred cilops!”

  Rikus silenced the king’s voice by slipping the olivine back into his pocket. At the same time, Styan stepped to the mul, asking, “Is it wise to reject this offer? Aren’t you endangering Tyr for the sake of a few warriors?”