The Crimson Legion Read online

  “It isn’t the Way, either,” said Agis, rubbing his temples. “I can sense the presence of Tithian’s thoughts, but their power is boosted far beyond anything he’s capable of.”

  Agis and Sadira studied each other with troubled expressions, while Rikus and Neeva nervously awaited their conclusion. Finally, Agis dared to speak the possibility that troubled the four. “It could be dragon magic.”

  “Dragon magic? What’s that?” asked Jaseela. The silky-haired woman’s words were slurred, for, in a battle preceding Kalak’s overthrow, a half-giant had hit her in the head. Now, one hazel eye drooped low over a smashed cheekbone, her nose curled down her face like a snake’s tail, and her full lips were twisted into a lopsided frown that dipped so low it touched the broken line of her jaw.

  “Dragon magic is sorcery and the Way used together,” Sadira explained.

  “Tithian can’t do that—can he?” gasped Neeva.

  The king spoke, preventing an answer. “Soldiers of Tyr, I have been watching,” said Tithian. His voice echoed over the battlefield like a peal of thunder, instantly silencing the warriors. “Well have you executed my plan!”

  “His plan!” Rikus snorted. His remark was lost in the cheer that rose again from his legion’s ranks.

  “You have struck a great blow for Tyr,” Tithian continued. “When you return you shall find your reward.”

  This time, even the king’s voice could not be heard over the din of the screaming warriors.

  A few moments later, the king’s thin lips began to move again, and the legion fell quickly silent. “Our enemies are foolish to return,” Tithian boomed, his beady eyes turning toward the hill. “You shall drive the Urikites before you like elves before the Dragon.”

  An alarmed murmur rustled through the legion’s ranks as the warriors looked west. To Rikus’s astonishment, he saw that a high wall of absolute darkness now ran across the crest of the small hill. He had no way of telling what lay behind it, but he immediately guessed that the Urikites had returned to salvage what they could of their siege engines and the argosy.

  Before the mul could give the order to drain the water casks, Tithian continued his speech. “Kill the Urikites, and remember what awaits you in Tyr!” the king cried, his radiant form dissipating into translucent wisps of yellow steam. “With the strategy I have given to Rikus, Tyr cannot lose!”

  All eyes turned toward the mul.

  “He didn’t tell me anything,” the mul said, speaking quietly, so only those standing next to him could hear.

  “Of course not,” Agis said, his brown eyes glimmering with anger. “He’s trying to get us killed.”

  “The king would not do such a thing!” objected Styan. The templar was a weary-looking man with sunken eyes and unbound gray hair that hung down to his shoulders. Like the rest of his company, he wore a black cassock that identified him as a member of the king’s bureaucracy. “To suggest he would is treason!”

  As Styan spoke, Rikus noticed him slip a small crystal of green olivine into the pocket of his black cassock. Instantly, the mul knew how the king had learned of their initial triumph so quickly. He had once seen another of Tithian’s spies use such a magical crystal to communicate with his master.

  “Styan, did the king tell you his strategy?” Rikus asked.

  “No. How would he do that?” Like most templars, Styan was a practiced fraud. The only sign he gave that he was hiding the truth was to remove his hand from his pocket.

  “If that’s true, Agis must be right about our king’s intentions,” Rikus said. He glanced to the west and saw the wall of darkness descending the hill at the pace of a slow march.

  “I also think Agis is right,” agreed Jaseela, one of the few citizens of Tyr who instinctively sensed the truth about the king. “Without Agis and you three to counter his influence, Tithian will find it easy to force his self-serving edicts through the Council of Advisors.”

  Rikus looked to Agis, Sadira, and Neeva. “You three leave the battle and go back to keep Tithian in line.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Neeva.

  “Finish the Urikites—and kill their commander,” Rikus answered, glancing at the hill. The wall of darkness had descended more than halfway and was now less than a quarter mile away from his legion. “I’ll catch you after the fight.”

  Agis’s jaw dropped. “I can’t believe you’re saying this,” the noble gasped. “How can you expect to win the battle now?”

  “Because I have to,” Rikus snapped. “Even if I could convince the gladiators to run, the Urikites would only chase us down. By fighting, at least we’ll buy you the time you need to reach the city.”

  “We will win,” declared Gaanon. The half-giant was sunburned, with a flattened nose and a gap-toothed mouth. Like many half-giants, he was a consummate mimic who tried to adopt the habits and appearance of those he admired. At present, he had shaved all the hair from his body and, like Rikus, wore only a hemp breechcloth. “To lose is to die,” Gaanon said, repeating a favorite gladiatorial saying.

  “I’ll stay, too,” Neeva said.

  “So will I and my retainers,” added Jaseela.

  The mul looked to Styan. To his surprise, the templar gave a reluctant nod. “The king’s orders were explicit,” said the old man. “We’re to stay with the legion.”

  “What did you do to anger our wonderful king?” Jaseela asked, raising the brow over her undamaged eye.

  “Your jokes are not amusing,” sneered Styan.

  Next, Rikus turned to K’kriq and explained the situation in Urikite, suggesting that the mantis-warrior accompany Agis and Sadira back to Tyr.

  “No!” the thri-kreen cried. “Stay with hunting pack. Drive wagon for you, smash black wall.”

  “You can pilot the argosy?” Rikus asked.

  “Phatim make K’kriq steer when he sleep,” the thri-kreen explained. “Start, stop, turn.”

  “Then you stay,” he said, warmly slapping the thri-kreen’s hard carapace. The mul checked on the advancing wall of darkness and saw that it had reached the bottom of the hill, only two hundred yards away. He ordered Gaanon and the gladiators to throw the Urikite water on the burning argosy, then turned to Agis and Sadira. “You two had better go now.”

  “Fight well,” Agis said, holding his hands palm up in a formal gesture of farewell. “I will be hoping that Hamanu’s soldiers do not.”

  “It won’t matter,” Rikus answered, returning the noble’s gesture by clasping both upturned hands. “They’ll fall.”

  “We can only hope,” Sadira said. She stepped to the mul’s other side and squeezed his arm. “Do what you must, love, but be careful.” She glanced at Neeva, then added, “I want both you and Neeva back alive.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Rikus replied. He took her head between his hands and gave her a lingering kiss. “You and Agis are the ones who should be careful. After all, we’re only out-numbered. You two are facing Tithian.”

  With that, Agis and Sadira trotted away from the battle. Rikus turned to Styan and Jaseela, assigning the templar to take his company to the left flank of the wall of darkness and Jaseela to take hers to the right.

  When he issued no further instructions, Styan asked, “And what do you wish us to do there?”

  “Fight,” Rikus answered, scowling. “What do you think?”

  “Your battle plan doesn’t seem very complete,” ventured Jaseela. “Are we to push the flanks in on themselves, slip past to attack from the rear, hold our positions, or what?”

  “How can I tell you that? I don’t know what will happen any more than you do,” Rikus answered, motioning for them to return to their companies. “You’ll know what to do.”

  After Jaseela and Styan left, Rikus ordered the gladiators to fall in behind the argosy, then turned toward the wagon himself. The muffled hissing and sputtering of dying fires sounded from inside the wagon, and huge billows of white steam poured from every opening. Gaanon’s helpers were hefting the huge water ca
sks into the cargo door. Inside, the vapor was so thick that Rikus could barely make out the half-giant’s form as he grabbed a keg and disappeared deeper into the wagon.

  From what Rikus could see, the back of the wagon had been burned down to its frame of mekillot bones. Forward of the cargo door, the argosy was still more or less intact, with gray fumes rising from the upper levels and steam from the lower. Clearly, the wagon would never carry supplies again, but it might serve to bull through a line of Urikites—assuming that was what the Tyrians found on the other side of the dark wall.

  “Smash those casks and take up your weapons,” Rikus yelled, sweeping his arm at the large number of water barrels that had not yet been hoisted into the wagon. “The argosy will hold together long enough for what we need.”

  As the warriors obeyed, he led Neeva and K’kriq into the steaming wagon. They stumbled forward, coughing and choking, finding their way toward the pilot’s deck by green halos of light shining from the glass balls on the walls. Although Gaanon had already put out most of the flames in this part of the wagon, the walls and floors were still flecked with the orange embers of smoldering fires. The heat in the corridors was thick and oppressive, scalding Rikus’s bare skin and searing his nose and lips with each cautious breath.

  Paying the heat no attention, K’kriq led the way up to the pilot’s deck. As they climbed the ladder, Rikus heard the hiss of evaporating liquid and saw Gaanon throwing water from a large barrel as though it were a mere bucket. The half-giant’s efforts were to little avail, for the fire had already burned through the back wall in numerous places, with yellow flames shooting between the planks in many more. Fortunately, the air on the deck was now clear, for any smoke drifting into the room was sucked back through the holes in the rear wall.

  “That’s enough, Gaanon,” Rikus called. “Get your club.”

  The half-giant breathed a sigh of relief and smashed the water barrel, still half-filled, against the burning wall. Gaanon disappeared in the resulting cloud of steam, but his heavy footsteps let the mul know that the huge gladiator was moving toward the ladder.

  Rikus followed K’kriq to the pilot’s chair. After pausing long enough to stomp on Phatim’s half-charred body, the thri-kreen stood motionless and stared out over the mountainous shells of the mekillots. Fifty yards beyond the great reptiles was the Urikites’ curtain of blackness.

  After the thri-kreen had concentrated for a moment, all four mekillots raised their shell-covered heads and started to lumber forward. The argosy lurched once, then settled into its familiar, swaying rhythm. The distance between the wagon and the Urikite wall closed quickly.

  When the black curtain showed no sign of adjusting to the advancing argosy, Rikus asked, “What’s wrong with them? They can’t just let us punch through their formation.”

  “Maybe they can’t see us through the black wall,” suggested Neeva. “For all we know, there might not be anyone on the other side.”

  A brilliant flash of silver erupted from the wall, and Rikus decided she was wrong.

  “Magic!” the mul cried.

  K’kriq spun around, using two of his hands to grab each gladiator and pull them into the shelter of his carapace. In the same instant, the sound of shattering glass crashed over the deck, drowning out even the thunder of the magical bolt that had demolished the window. Shards scraped along one of the mul’s shoulders that had been left exposed, opening several long but shallow lacerations in his tough hide. Neeva escaped without injury.

  When the attack passed, Rikus stepped away from K’kriq. The mantis-warrior stood ankle deep in broken glass, but there was not even a scratch on his tough carapace.

  A pair of smoking red balls shot from the dark wall ahead. Instead of streaking toward the pilot’s deck, however, the flaming spheres sizzled straight at the lead mekillots. All four reptiles stopped in their tracks, retracting their heads as the crimson spheres hit. Great rivers of flame washed over their shells, then the earth rumbled and the argosy lurched to a stop as the great beasts dropped to the ground.

  The mekillots lay motionless as wisps of fire danced over their shells, but the mighty beasts did not seem to be either panicked or in pain. A moment later, after the flames had faded to smoke, they returned to their feet and jerked the argosy into motion again. This time, they trundled forward more rapidly, in the mekillots’ equivalent of a charge. Without looking away from the animals, K’kriq pointed a single arm toward the back of the deck.

  “Go,” he said. “Bad place for soft-skins.”

  “What about you?” Rikus asked, taking Neeva and moving toward the back of the deck.

  In answer, the thri-kreen dropped to the floor and pulled his limbs beneath his carapace, leaving only his compound eyes visible.

  Neeva started down the ladder without another word. Behind her, Rikus took the time to glance out the front of the deck. The lead mekillot had reached the curtain of darkness. The tips of their noses had no sooner disappeared into the black barrier than the mul heard the sizzle and sputter of more fireballs.

  Screaming, he threw himself into the pit, knocking Neeva off the ladder as he dropped past her. The gladiators crashed headlong into Gaanon’s massive form, and all three tumbled to the floor in a heap. A loud whoosh sounded over their heads. Long tongues of crimson flame shot down the wall, licking at their legs and their backs, stopping just shy of the floor itself.

  When Rikus spun over, he saw nothing but a blazing inferno overhead. There were flames of every color: red, yellow, white, blue, and, he thought, even black. He could not see the wall or ceiling, only raging fire.

  Despite the holocaust, the argosy continued to trundle forward.

  Rikus and his companions collected their weapons and rose. Not seeing how the thri-kreen could have survived such a firestorm, the mul touched his hand to his forehead, then held it toward where he imagined K’kriq’s charred remains would be lying. “You fought like the Dragon,” he said, giving the mantis-warrior the gladiator’s greatest farewell salute.

  With that, the mul led the way back toward the cargo door. They reached it just as the argosy itself was passing from the Tyrian side of the dark wall to that of the Urikites. From this side, the barrier was not opaque. Rather, it had the translucent quality of a sheet of thinly cut obsidian, and the Tyrian gladiators were visible on the other side as dim, charging shapes.

  Rikus saw immediately that his use of the fortress-wagon had upset his opponent’s carefully laid battle plans. The Urikite regulars had been spread out in long ranks behind the black wall, and most of them were now wildly rushing toward the wagon. Already, hundreds were gathered near the argosy to await the Tyrian gladiators. With some of their spears pointed toward the wagon and some toward the gladiators following it, the soldiers were in a disorganized mess that Rikus knew his gladiators would quickly decimate.

  Rikus could see that the Urikites were a little more organized at the far side of the valley. A fair-sized company was marching toward Jaseela’s flank. He could only assume that, on the other side of the wagon, a similar company of Urikites was rushing toward Styan’s templars.

  A series of brilliant flashes flared from near the front of the wagon, followed immediately by several deafening cracks. The smell of burning wood and charred bone filled Rikus’s nostrils, then the argosy ground to quick halt. When he peered around the edge of the door, the mul saw a small group of yellow-robed templars standing near the front of the wagon. Their smoking fingers were pointed at the thick shaft that connected the mekillot to the wagon.

  At the rear of the argosy, the first of the gladiators emerged from the darkness, screaming their battle cries and charging into the disorganized Urikites.

  “Let’s fight!” the mul yelled, raising his cahulaks.

  Rikus leaped from the smoky wagon into the bright crimson light. He had no sooner landed than a pair of Urikite soldiers jabbed their spear tips at him, simultaneously raising their shields to protect their faces. Rikus swung a cahulak, cuttin
g their weapons off at the heads.

  Before the mul could move forward to finish them, Gaanon’s joyful warcry boomed over his shoulder. The half-giant slipped past the mul and leveled his mighty war-club at the spearless Urikites, smashing their bucklers as if they were glass. The blow knocked the pair back into the crowd and sent a half-dozen men sprawling. Neeva followed Gaanon’s attack, smashing bones and rending flesh on both the fore- and back-swings of her axe.

  It was all Rikus could do to keep his companions from wading into the midst of the Urikite mob. “Wait!” he called, hitting their shoulders with the shafts of his cahulaks. “Leave them to the others. Come with me.”

  Rikus moved toward the front of the wagon, where Hamanu’s yellow-robed templars continued to attack the mekillots with bolts of energy and balls of fire. Though no longer attached to the argosy, the reptiles remained in their harnesses and were turning back toward the Urikite lines.

  To the mul’s amazement, the shape of a thri-kreen was hunched down on the centershaft between the rear mekillots. His carapace was black with soot, and one of his four arms seemed to be hanging limply at his side, but the mantis-warrior apparently remained in command of the reptiles.

  The templars were so intent on stopping K’kriq that they did not even notice Rikus and his two companions coming up behind them. The mul killed four with a quick series of strikes. In the few seconds it took him, Neeva and Gaanon finished the other five.

  When the magical barrage fell silent, K’kriq peered up from between his mekillots. He raised a clawed hand in Rikus’s direction, calling, “The hunt is good!”

  The thri-kreen’s mekillots snapped and stomped into the soldiers massed near the argosy, ripping a wide swath of destruction through the middle of the throng. Aided by the enemy’s confusion and fear, the Tyrian gladiators tore into their foes like a cyclone into a faro field. Within moments, the coppery smell of blood filled Rikus’s nose and the shrieks of dying Urikites rang in his ears.

  “What now?” asked Gaanon.

  Before answering, Rikus took a moment to study K’kriq’s progress. The thri-kreen turned his mekillots straight into the long file of Urikites rushing toward the battle, followed closely by hundreds of gladiators. The maneuver brought the enemy’s charge to an abrupt halt and sent those leading it scrambling for their lives. The soldiers that did not fall to the mighty reptiles’ snapping jaws were quickly killed by Rikus’s warriors.