Escana

by J. R. Karlsson

  Where are we? He willed to the lizard still carrying him.

  We are in the deep desert now, we head for the canyons.

  Why don't we stop for water?

  Re'tak grunted, his breath was foul. The high sun will cook us alive unless we seek shelter, yellow-skin.

  Hern was too exhausted to argue, he could only once remember being in such a terrible and helpless state, at the initiation ceremony long ago. The masters had beaten him to a pulp, exposing his every weakness and picking apart every flaw in loud voices. It was the last test, either the assailed crumpled under the blows and renounced their desire to join or they crumpled under the blows and learnt how to avoid doing so in future. No masters could treat Hern in such a manner now, though the stranger he had faced seemed to have no difficulty in doing so.

  What was that stranger we faced?

  He waited for an insightful response from Re'tak, he didn't get one. Apparently being bested by a mere human was a sore subject and one that his lizard friend wasn't used to.

  Hern was actually surprised by how alert his mind seemed, it was a strange sense of lucidity that people claimed to get when heavily injured. He wondered in a detached fashion whether he was going to recover from his injuries and if so, how it was going to happen when his primary carer was a giant lizard.

  You think we are barbarians, we care for each other.

  The words caught Hern off-guard, he hadn't intimated those to Re'tak in any form of message, was he reading his mind?

  The human Hern was in a bad state, he would need to be cared for within the canyons as soon as possible. Re'tak hoped that the alliance lasted in the far fringes of Sah'kel, they were a long distance from the war zone and alliances made there tended to fray the further away they seemed.

  This gave Re'tak pause. How did he know that such things were true? He had no practical experience of the shifting allegiances of those around him, his clan had little contact with others and no friction that he had witnessed. Where had that thought come from?

  The human's voice started to trickle into his head, talking to himself of lucidity and seemingly daunted by the prospect of Re'tak nursing him to health. He sent out a slight reprimand and that seemed to startle Hern. Re'tak wasn't entirely pleased with the workings of his own mind either, were his thoughts becoming transparent in kind?

  Re'tak, is that you? How can you read my mind? What's happening?

  The yellow-skin could hear his thoughts too, Re'tak's confusion mirrored his human companion's.

  I do not know, we seem to be akin.

  Akin, what do you mean?

  Re'tak felt somewhat reticent with regards to telling him this, no outsider knew of the activities of his people.

  You don't have to tell me, if you think of it I will know.

  The yellow-skin made a good point, his every thought now seemed to flow forth into Hern.

  Stop calling me that.

  Re'tak was momentarily confused, then realised that the yellow... that Hern may take offence at such a term.

  Thank you, do you want to tell me what you meant by 'akin' now?

  Re'tak thought of an even better way of explaining. Casting his mind back he observed the twins again. They were not of the same nest yet the connection between them seemed prescient, they worked in tandem stalking their prey from a young age, almost as if they were one being with two separate parts.

  Something was wrong, the words were wrong. He did not know this 'prescient', yet now he did.

  I know the word you're thinking of. Re'tak felt Hern say.

  He saw giant walls of stone, it was the building that the masters used to educate the young. He felt the sting of a wooden cane beating across his knuckles as he incorrectly extrapolated the possible words for a single meaning. Prescient was one of those words, he had missed prescient and his stinging hands didn't appreciate his laxness.

  He blinked, this was not his memory nor was it shared intentionally as far as he knew.

  The masters treated you harshly for not knowing that word.

  He was greeted with a lingering silence that answered his unspoken question.

  You wanted to know if the memory you witnessed was intentional. It was not.

  Re'tak almost shook his head instinctively, catching himself at the last minute when he realised that Hern was still dangling from his mouth.

  This is very confusing to me.

  A brief glimpse of a memory of Hern nodding into a mirror, the sudden realisation that he now knew what a mirror was. An interesting way to convey agreement, apparently he was not alone in his confusion at events.

  Hern couldn't shake it, the endless inundation of thoughts and feelings and flashbacks to earlier times. Dealing with it was like balancing his own self on a scale with that of another life, in order to think he had to impose his own thoughts over the top of the strange symbiosis. At what cost to the original mind?

  You think that I am so weak? It is our people that have learnt this, not your kind.

  Re'tak had a point. Who was he to assume that the lizard's mind wouldn't overpower his own? What would then happen to his body? Could one mind really control both of them?

  I do not think it will come to that, though I have not heard of a joining between different species.

  Hern caught the thought immediately after that, prior to their unexpected joining Re'tak had not known the word 'species' existed.

  Over the course of their journey as he faded in and out of consciousness, it became a constant effort to disassociate the thoughts he was having with those that truly belonged to him. The heat pelted down upon him and his parched condition gave him other more immediate thoughts to linger on that made managing this peculiar joining even more difficult.

  Turn your head to the right.

  Hern looked, and spotted the vague brown shapes in the distance, it was the only thing he'd seen aside from dunes since their departure from Greyhawk.

  We make our way to those canyons, they will provide us with shelter and food.

  Not being in any position to disagree, he decided not to say anything further. Trust didn't come easily to someone like him but ultimately he had no choice but to place it in his lizard companion and hope Re'tak knew how to care for a human.

  I can keep you alive, human. The heat must be affecting your brain, lest you forget I can hear your every thought.

  Hern could feel his friend's concern as the speed they travelled at increased, he hoped they'd make it to the canyons soon.

  94

  Garth

  Garth surveyed the scorched camp, the look of disbelief plain upon his face.

  Sah'kel had been a hell-hole when he had been forced into command before, it seemed to have degenerated even further in his absence. What bothered him most about knowing this was when he had been in charge they had been a fractured group of left-behinds. The rear-end of the Empire's army left to cook in a sandy domicile, a fighting force consisting of criminals claiming they were reformed men.

  The tents stretching off into the distance were the Empire's entire standing army, they were meant to be the finest soldiers in all the land united in purpose and cause. In the past Garth had been forced to sacrifice his best officers to promotion and eventual relocation to the main army, now he was in charge of it entirely and none of those sea of faces he had lost were here. Some he could understand had gone on to comfortably retire and were now too old to be drafted, others had been much younger than him when they had departed. Where had all the competent officers in charge of the day-to-day operations gone? Had the war gone so badly that anyone with command skills was lying in a sandy grave?

  His first request had been to replace Mayer with someone who knew what they were doing, he had secretly relayed the message to his fresh-faced new runner, Inglewood. The boy had come back empty-handed and sweating buckets, apparently he had jogged around the entire camp and there were no other Colonels. When asked who was running the camps he kept mentioning a man known as Cutter. Garth
had told the boy to take a rest and had tasked Mayer with fetching the man.

  The young Colonel had changed over the last few days, his initial enthusiasm had died down considerably after realising that he wasn't going to be called out for any further recruitment drives. He spent most of his time pouring over the maps and trying to think of some strategy to turn the tide of the combat. It was looking very bleak and only highlighted further the difference between the current incursions and the ones Garth had dealt with all those years ago.

  The lizards were territorial and disorganised when Garth had fought them last, they often attacked each other and the incursions he had been charged with curbing were rarely more than a few of the creatures at a time. Now it seemed that there was a unifying force driving these monsters south, they seemed organised and lethal in their assaults. Their hit and run tactics inflicted massive devastation and before any troops could be rallied to defend the area under attack it had already been lost.

  Apparently the tactics had changed from reclamation of lost territory to having what we hold and then in the case of the previous commander of the forces, damage limitation. The area of Sah'kel that had been taken now exceeded the area that they still held. If they were pressed back to the mountains they'd be forced to make a final stand to prevent the lizards invading the northern reaches of the Empire. Should that happen there would be slaughter on scale Garth had never seen before, he had to prevent that from happening using whatever means necessary.

  It seemed so strange to him to put it in such simplistic terms, that for all the power of Levanin a sudden attack from the north was threatening utter chaos on such a scale that it rendered them powerless to prevent it.

  The weight had hit him upon that realisation, the well-being of the very heart of the Empire had been placed entirely upon his shoulders at the behest of some unknown advisor. He had been meaning to ask Sisead who exactly in Levanin had called for him by name but the curious man had disappeared.

  The spirit of many of these young boys who had joined the army had been set on discovering parts of the Empire they'd never seen, fighting on the very frontiers of the established world and finding themselves in the process. The lies they had been sold catered entirely to that, they hadn't been told they were going straight to Sah'kel, the desert was the utter antithesis of the world they longed to thrive in. It was vast and barren and uninteresting unless you had a peculiar love of sand and rocks. The only thing a youth might discover about himself out here was just how lethal sunstroke could be.

  He spotted Mayer picking his way through the edges of the camp with the white-haired veteran known as Cutter, neither of them looked pleased at Garth inconveniencing them.

  As they grew closer Garth got a good look, his face was worn and criss-crossed with a myriad of scars of varying age. He had hoped the man's name had come from his skill with a blade, apparently he had seen the wrong end of one too many times.

  'Lieutenant Cutter as requested, sir,' Mayer said, saluting as usual.

  Garth waved an arm at the tent. 'Let's get out of sun, shall we?'

  He seated himself directly in front of the map and bid the two men join him, upon arriving in the tent they had seemed to be trying to outdo each other in rigid attention. Garth had little time for formalities when he needed information.

  'How long have you been in Sah'kel now, Cutter?'

  The man scratched his patchy stubble, seeming to think about the answer for a time. 'I'd say about fifteen seasons General, give or take a few.'

  Garth nodded, that was a long time for any soldier. 'It's been over twenty seasons since I was last in Sah'kel and in many ways not a lot has changed, it's the ways in which it has that concern me. You're the most senior officer aside from myself and the Colonel here, I want your assessment of the situation.'

  Cutter shrugged. 'I'm not a tactical man, they've been pushing us back harder and harder these last few years. There's more spitters out there too so men that survive don't in the tents later, most of them stay out there and die on their feet as they've seen what happens otherwise.'

  'Spitter?' Mayer interrupted.

  The older man looked at Garth in askance, Mayer technically outranked him but rank became less meaningful the harder the situation grew. Garth nodded, indicating that the man should answer his question.

  'Spitters are lizards with a frill around their neck, they're the ones our scouts look out for as they're poisoned. A man gets cut open by a spitter then he's dead. They're not all that common though otherwise I wouldn't still be here.'

  'I've seen two in all my time here,' Garth said. 'If there's a lot more now that bodes ill, continue Lieutenant.'

  'We've been pinned back near the canyons for months now, they know where our forces are and they also know if they take the canyons they can venture on into the mountains unopposed, devouring whatever northern settlements they come across first. It's a matter of time before they do so sir.'

  Garth looked in the man's eyes. He was telling the truth as he saw it, there was no glimmer of hope there, just a silent acceptance that he was living out his last days.

  'So things really are that grim then,' he sighed. 'Lieutenant, if you were in my position, what would your next move be?'

  Cutter furrowed his brows in confusion. 'You really want me to speak my mind, sir?'

  The General nodded back at him 'Speak freely soldier, I want to hear your thoughts.'

  The veteran leaned back in his chair and sucked in a deep breath, he had been waiting a long time to say this it would seem.

  'We're fucked, dead, done. Perhaps we can hold out for another month, maybe two if we're lucky. The few advanced scouts that came back tell us they're pouring out of the rocks like the desert is bleeding lizards. Supply lines are thin and recruitment has dried up as word has got out about how fucked things are up here. So there is no winning strategy here, we hold out against them until we're dead to a man, and trust me we will be dead to a man. They'll hunt down and kill the deserters for sport.'

  Mayer was growing increasingly agitated as the man spoke his mind, finally interrupting him as he spoke of the deserters. 'So what? We give up hope completely? We just lay down our weapons and crawl back to the Empire and wait for death?'

  Cutter's eyes flashed in brief anger, his fingers twitching noticeably on his thighs. It was clear that had Garth not been present in the room he'd soon be short a Corporal. He entertained the idea of leaving the tent briefly and letting them argue until one was dead, then dismissed it as barbaric.

  'We're not going to give up,' Cutter replied. 'If I had the rank,' he gave the Corporal a withering look at this, 'I would charge the bastards and take as many of them as we could in the night as they slept.'

  Garth knew what the man was talking about, the lizards only attacked after dawn, the afternoon sun was too hot for fighting in and the nights were too cold. When fighting in Sah'kel you had two enemies: your opponent and the climate. You needed to master both in order to have a successful campaign.

  Mayer snorted, the young man had grown increasingly intolerable as the time had gone by. 'Covert operations to eliminate the lizards have been tried before, nobody knows where they go at night.'

  'That's why we send more scouts out, have them lead us to their lairs.'

  Mayer turned to Garth in frustration. 'We sent ten scouts out in the last week, one has come back alive and that's only because he didn't run into anything out there. What do you think happened to the other nine, General?'

  Garth hated rhetorical questions. 'Then we shall ask Levanin to come to our aid, they have forces there beyond our reckoning.'

  Both men seemed united in their incredulity at his statement then, Cutter was first to voice it.

  'What have the fuckers in Levanin ever done for us other than keep this bloody campaign going and fuelling it with more hapless lives?'

  A gentle cough came from the tent flap. 'Excuse me gentlemen, I couldn't help but overhear your conversation turning to your thoug
hts on our fair capital.'

  Cutter paled at the appearance of Sisead, it wasn't the reaction that Garth had expected from the hard-bitten man.

  Sisead ignored the Lieutenant as if he was beneath his notice. 'General, we at Levanin are aware of your circumstances and of how dire the situation is. I shall attempt to negotiate any aid possible from the capital but I fear that little will be drawn from such talk.'

  Garth sighed. 'Do what you must Sisead, any aid would be appreciated in these times. How much of our conversation did you overhear?'

  Sisead smiled, the gesture seemed calculated and lacked any warmth. 'You are contemplating rushing out in the night and attempting to locate the lizard's hiding places, are you not?'

  'We are considering it as one of the few options remaining to us, yes.'

  'I would suggest against this course of action. The lizards bury their bodies deep in the sand at night to ward off the cold, it would become an excavation project to unearth a single one. Assuming you could find it that is.'

  Garth's heart sank. There would be no covert sting, they would have to fight these monsters face to face.

  'How do you know that they bury themselves?' Cutter asked.

  Sisead ignored him. 'General, my superiors wished me to inform you that you are tasked with holding the line. They will reassess the situation when time permits.'

  When time permits? Garth pictured a group of musty old men that had never seen combat weighing human lives like coins in a global game. In spite of the thoughts angering him, he knew that this Sisead character was the messenger and did not deserve his rebuke, regardless of the inferred finality of his proclamations.

  'I thank you for your restraint, General. I wish the same could be said of your contemporaries.' He left the room on that, vanishing to who knows where.

  It was a no-win situation, a war of attrition against an incalculably large force grinding them down into nothing. All that was left for Garth to do was shore up the defences and see how long they could hold out before these creatures devoured them.