The morning after the Skirmish at the Shdulus River dawned cold and hard. I was, to my great surprise, now in command, though of little more than a fifth of the expedition’s original number and many of those who remained were not those who had begun the journey in Crisremon. Nor was I then, or ever, one well-chosen to lead any group. While I am prepared to defend my capabilities as a cartographer, chronicler, or scholar, I will freely admit that the responsibility to lead such a disparate group lay well beyond my abilities.
In the moment, however, there was no time for such considerations. With no means of learning of the outcome of Erun Nassah and the Imperial Guard’s valiant stand and no idea of the damage they inflicted upon the Bahab, we simply assumed that pursuit actively continued. The flight east over the mountains remained essential. The necessary orders were therefore quite simple. We would proceed east with all possible speed and secure succor and supplies from the Gray Birch tribe at such time as the high peaks were well behind us. All remaining members of the company were aware of the desperate need and moved as one.
The Redbone Explorers took point. They searched out paths over rock and ridge amid lingering snow above the level where trees grow. The rest followed. At Rubuya’s suggestion I allowed the three Nikkad women, the only proper soldiers remaining to us, to hold the rearguard position. Everyone else marched in a short file. It made for a ragged procession, with the animals very tired and short of fodder. Thankfully camels, though stubborn and foul tempered, are hardy creatures, as are the doughty ponies of the steppe that comprised our remaining horses. Our food situation had stabilized somewhat, as the rations of the fallen could now be divided among a smaller collection of mouths, but human endurance remained the weak point. We would falter long before our hoofed support.
This region of peaks, running east of the river, was the same as formed the eastward boundary of the Cracking Void. It was passable, with difficulty, but rarely traveled. The Bahab spend little time in truly alpine spaces where the forest thins. Few resources to support life can be found here. Sunfire Cultists sometimes dwell in such regions if they can find caves near alpine meadows to enable them to endure the winters. A danger, potentially, with the expedition so reduced in numbers and strength. I did my best to marshal vigilance against this, but there was little energy to spare. Thankfully, the snow-capped peaks offered few hiding places. Truthfully, had we not assumed active pursuit, we would never have gone this way. Had the expedition retained its full strength, it would perhaps have been able to overcome the Black Spruces in a battle on narrow mountain trails, which had recommended this path in earlier councils. Had we known the outcome of Erun’s final struggle I would have ordered us to deviate southward, to less dangerous trails, with perhaps profound consequences, but, recalling that flight, such a choice would have seemed madness in those days.
There were no maps of this portion of the mountain range, and no time to take readings. We relied utterly upon the guidance of the Redbone Explorers to open a path. They estimated that it would take three days before we could descend into the valleys beyond and find the Gray Birches with whom we might trade for essentials. It made for a cold hike upon the heights, one that placed strain on our remaining food supplies and compounded the emotional exhaustion triggered by the combination of betrayal and loss. Truthfully, I made little effort to secure command or restore the spirits of the expedition. I was focused instead on planning, logistics, records, and whatever offers might be made by way of trade given the few articles remaining in our possession. The act of inspiration and the necessary work to sustain the spirit and mitigate the grief of the survivors was instead taken up by Princess Romou. Possessed of unassailable faith, she never once gave in to despair and, like a beacon, pulled the rest of us forward and upward over the heights. Each night she led prayers and affirmed the assertion that all would, in the due course of time, find their way home again.
Stunted conifers, chirping birds, and eternally persistent winds characterize the high peaks of the Dumum Mountains. A hostile place by most measures, with stones more often covered in lichen than any soil, and freestanding roots ever ready to trip the traveler, but compared to the lifeless ice of the glacier this environment could only be considered a reprieve. There was, at least, forage and browse available, such that the animals could satisfy their hunger somewhat. Reduced in size as it had become, the expedition also moved with greater ease along the narrow trails and squeezed effectively into improvised campsites. It was even possible, in some places, to scavenge edible nuts and berries near the trail, a bounty left behind by Bahab over-hunting of the bear population and a clue to how the Sunfire Cultists manage to survive in such high places.
Nevertheless, the flight was exhausting despite the absence of any obvious pursuit. On the third day, when we crested the final ridge and saw the heights fall away before us, the sight came with great welcome. The smudge of smoke rising against the horizon in the distance suggested the presence of a Bahab encampment. Strange how those who lived in the forests we had disparaged as savages transformed into a source of potential salvation through the extremity of struggle. Hope and the prospect of rest did much to alleviate our collective distress, even though it was at that time too late in the day to attempt the full descent.
The expedition made camp in a saddle below the ridgeline, just inside the edge of the tree line. I allowed proper fires that night, judging that if pursuit existed our location was already known, for deviation was hardly possible, and we would either outrun them or not. This did much to restore strength and raise spirits. Whispers passed around the camp effecting that the belief that none were hunting us, that Erun’s charge had broken the Bahab and that all that remained was to march back out to the steppe and make our way south.
A clear hope this, and one not without some truth behind it. The Black Spruce Bahab had been severely injured and intimidated. Pursuit was not coming from the west. Unfortunately, the empty appearance of the high mountain peaks is regrettably illusory. Humans are tenacious beings, capable of survival even in truly desolate spaces, and the ascent upwards to seek protection from a hateful world is not practiced only by deluded cultists. Wizards seek succor in much the same way, and it happened that, on the day before this camp, we had passed just to the south of a key fortress of the Obsidian Order without knowing.
Fire did not betray the expedition. The wizards already had their agents tracking us. Doubtless they had eyes among the Black Spruces who had carried them word of the battle at the river, and the mere absence of smoke would hardly serve to hide us from the means they might employ in tracking. In truth, though I have no proper evidence to support this belief, I contend that they had long planned to attack the expedition. Mystics say that essence calls to essence. Apothecaries, healers, priests, sorcerers, and wizards alike all congregate in groups by nature, condensing knowledge and power in singular locations. Wizards, in their twisted manner, prey upon the others. Just as the Princess was sought by the Bahab as a target for their political avarice, so too was she targeted by the essence-driven hunger of the Obsidian Order. Certainly, the force dispatched by the unnamed dominator who stood atop the hierarchy of the order in the Dumum Mountains and all of northern Shdustu, had not been assembled in haste. It is my suspicion that at some point early in the summer an offer was made to Tomad or Master Lam while we sat in camp beneath the glacier that promised payment and protection in return for the blood of any who chose not to join in the mutiny they must even then have begun planning. It is even possible that the reason we were left alive at all was to fulfill this bargain with this potent tyrant of the high peaks, lest he descend upon Tomad instead to claim the tribute he saw as his due. It cannot be confirmed, but there is solid speculative sensibility behind it.
Whatever the reason, as the sun rose on the fourth day out from the river, the Redbone Explorer Drasid Ulust, who had ascended to the ridge as we scrambled to break camp, cried out an alarm and ran back down to report an armed host advancing up the trail from the north. A force garbed in ragged blue and rotten turquoise robes whose skin leaked terrible oozing pus in a bright summer green shade. They were led by a tall man carrying a two-meter length staff forged of solid iron. He wore a black hood, but beneath it lay a skull with skin stretched taught over the face, forming a rictus, skeletal grin. Though armored in little more than cloth scraps and armed with crude blades, bows, and staves scavenged or stolen from bandits and Sunfire Cultists, there was no doubt as to the danger presented by this shambling host. Warriors bent and remade by the twisting might of wizardry could bear skin stout as any mail and strike blows with the strength of oxen. Horrible as the green residue leaking from their pores is to the eye, it is a sign not of decrepitude, but strength, cruel power imbued to stretch the limits of natural flesh.
The count of the dominator’s force measured sixty-one, a perverse number chose not at random, but in deliberate spite against the Divines. I suspect that they did not truly care, but offered up this composition in indication that no quarter would be asked or given. The expedition might once have offered battle against such a force, even accounted it a holy mission, but such strength no longer remained to us. From the moment the report came, I knew the only way to secure the survival of any was to repeat Erun Nassah’s sacrifice, splitting what remained in the hope of holding back the onslaught long enough that the Princess might escape. Yet the resources available were so few, the cause so hopeless, that I must confess I froze, not knowing how to even begin to arrange our piteous assets in a final defense.
It was Glukish of Stones, eldest of the Redbone Explorers, who broke me free of the fugue of hopelessness. He stood, taking his long, narrow-bladed two-handed sword in hand, and pointed it toward the agents of the Obsidian Order. “Our enemy is there, and it is our time to fight,” he announced, saying more words at once than I had known him to use in weeks. At this I recalled the hidden purpose of the explorer’s guild; their vows to hunt down and destroy wizards and the monsters they unleash in order to make the wild safe again. In that hour, these men proved themselves worthy heirs of that oath and purpose. All four stood forth, swords and spears to hand, and committed everything to the hopeless defense.
Five blades, counting my own amateurish swordplay, against sixty. Hopeless, but perhaps on the ridge it might have served to purchase time in narrow space. A forlorn reed to cling too, but all other choices evaporated beneath the mountain sun. I took the expedition’s banner, passed to me at the river, in hand and thought to rise up to the ridge and lure the enemy toward that sign. To Mistress Rubuya I gave charge of the defense of the Princess and the return to Crisremon. An absurd thing to request of a Nikkad woman who had never left Shdustu in her life. Despite such challenges, she did not hesitate to declare an oath on her life before the Divines, and slashed a line of blood across the back of her left wrist in promise, as is done among the warrior-women of the Nikkad in swearing service.
It was only at the final point of decision, after the Princess called down the blessing of the Divines upon our blades, a violation of all military law, but the minions of wizards are not soldiers, or even bandits and cultists, but monstrous abominations to be cleansed from the world, that the Lady Indili intervened and held forth a final ray of hope to those who stood before onrushing doom.
Her words were simple, practical, and profound. “There is an ovoo on the ridge, a place of power. If you can defend me, perhaps I might work a spell to bring about victory.”
The Bahab have long built these mounded cairns in the mountains, piling up stones in place of proper shrine construction to mark out those rare places where divine essence gathers and pools through some unseen circumlocution in the great cycles of the world. Normally these points are only of interest to mystics, and others avoid them to spare themselves the touch of unseen powers. Only a fool would meddle with such clearly placed markers.
The declaration by the sorceress shocked us all. Of course she possessed formidable power, something I knew better than most, but not one of us had expected that she would offer to sacrifice herself for us. She was a member of the chapter house before any other obligation. No oaths mandated that she give her life for the Sanid Empire or join a hopeless struggle against wizards. Nor was she one to attach any weight to valor. I had personally heard her speak to the pointlessness of Erun Nassah’s glorious death the night before. That she would consider such a course lay beyond the imagination of us all.
Even the least ray of hope is as cool water to a man dying of thirst when presented before those who know themselves to be doomed. The Redbones agreed that we should make our stand upon the stones with a simple nod. The others accepted the command to run as hard and long as they could, until they found succor. There was no further ceremony, no time remained.
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Fifteen fled down the slope, while six climbed to meet the forces of the Obsidian Order. A fast and hard climb, and in this the journeys of the prior months told. Had the ice not forged strength and endurance in my limbs, I do not believe I could have kept the pace that allowed us to beat the enemy to the ovoo. As it stood, the four Redbone Explorers and I formed a loose semicircle before the cairn even as the host approached within bowshot. The Lady Indili climbed up to the center of the stony mass, where a string of flags torn and ravaged by years of wind and snow clung to a raised pole. She raised her staff high above her head and began to chant in the strange ancient language used by sorcerers to describe all the things of the world. It was not a song or hymn, but instead an endless litany, a list of names and traits called out in unrecognizable syllables.
My memory of what followed is a mixture of moments of great clarity and periods of absolute chaos. The dominator raised his staff and shouted something unintelligible, but it sufficed to order his forces to surge forward. Whatever had been done to these thralls had damaged their minds, and they moved as a mob, not the hunters and warriors they must once have been. Unnatural strength and armored skin, however, made up for any weakness in organization. They did not, and it presented a critical deviation, use their bows. The most likely reason is that the dominator desired to capture Lady Indili and forbade errant arrows that might accidentally rob him of his prize. Instead, it was a fight of blade against blade. In preparation for the clash the Redbones sprinkled a strange powder over their weapons, causing swords and spearheads to glitter in the sunlight. Though I do not know the precise composition of this alchemical formulation, I know that the powdered and ashen remains of dead wizards are the central component. Somehow, by burning and bleaching the remains, this substance creates a countering effect, one that disrupts constructions of essence. Such things see little use in the current era, with wizards confined to remote regions and other mystics bound by the dictates of the revelation to hold themselves apart from conflict through austere vows, but their efficacy, battle-tested in the wars of the ancient world, remains formidable.
The first rank of green-stained thralls with haunted bloodshot eyes and twisted mouths was cut down almost at once as two long swords and paired sharp spears pierced their chests. Thralls, I called them, for those changed by wizardry are easily made dependent upon it, as others are the bottle or the effusions of certain plants, but these unfortunates are humans, not beasts. Though pain and suffering consume them, they retain the ability to reason. The second rank recognized the threat of those glittering blades and, leading with their crude swords, moved to surround us. Though most of them had been, before, Bahab hunters and not trained warriors, they knew at least the basics of blade work and had the strength to make even simple blows devastating.
Memory blurs at this point. Thrust, block, lunge, parry, the fight came furiously swift. Coherent thought fades into the blur of instinct. There is only the need for the next motion, the constant struggle for breath, leverage, position, and the haze of blood that covers everything. I took wounds, gashes to the arms when my blocks failed to counter the blows of men far stronger than I. I dealt terrible injuries in return, for though the bodies of the foe had skin like armor, just like armor it was weak at the waist, shoulders, and neck. Red stained the rocks at our feet, and only the steep sides of the ridge prevented our position from being instantly overrun. Just as when Erun faced the Bahab days before, those driven to defense were capable of inflicting severe injury upon their foe, but the outcome remained perfectly inevitable.
Drasid Ulust fell first, his right leg carved away by a potent overhand blow. He killed the one who inflicted it, I believe, but as he fell to the ground, lopsided, an enemy crushed his throat with the butt of a quarterstaff. Glukish of Stones was next, dropping back holding his guts in his hands. These losses opened a gap in the semi-circular array of desperate conflict. A staff worked into that opening and struck me across the back of the neck. Though the helmet gifted to me by the Winged Guard after Sun-Scourged Fortress spared my skull from shattering, I was thrown forward and rolled across the stones to land amid the ranks of the enemy. The cousins Nakarid Nivast and Kadaric Nivast joined back-to-back and held their post for a few seconds more before they suffered lethal wounds in tandem. With vision blurred, I saw a man whose hair had been entirely lost and whose entire scalp glistened with green slime loom over me, sword in hand. Well over forty, perhaps as many as fifty, of the Obsidian Order still stood and fought on the ridge. Their advance had been delayed not even half an hour, no more than a handful of minutes. Surely not long enough to spare the Princess their pursuit.
I looked down then, not at the sword about to fall, and almost gave in.
Until the Lady Indili slammed her staff down to lodge deep in the stones of the ancient ovoo.
A thick oaken grain, fitted to the hand and worn smooth by the grip of many years, that well-loved tool shattered into countless pieces at the depth of its impact. Lady Indili suffered grievous cuts to both palms, leaving scars she would bear the rest of her days. The nearest ring of attackers sprouted splinters as if they’d been hurled through a thorn hedge.
A black crack opened in the sky above the head of the sorceress, and from some abyssal realm whose name only the Lord of the Skies knows the shades poured forth. Not one construct of essence, no. In her desperation, she had found the will and power to make manifest dozens of surging shadows. Each fitted to a potent piscine form, a sleek bodied thing made of black mist with powerful underslung jaws filled with countless serrate triangular teeth. Teeth I recognized, the shapes identical to those of the many fossils collected along the long days of our journey. Dozens of similar ferocious predators, combined speed and power to utterly shame any wolf or lion, emerged.
Sharks these shades, summoned from an inky black sea to tear apart those who claimed obsidian as their allegiance with the power embedded in elder stones. One passed through the space occupied by the thrall standing above me and snapped him in half. A huge chunk of flesh simply tore free completely without so much as slowing the black mist beast. Blood and green ichor sprayed over everything, left vision clouded and blurred and made the already impossible scene utterly incomprehensible. Such chaos is inevitable when the power of the Divines, even that minute fraction that humans can grasp, are turned to the path of destruction.
Of what followed only the broad contours can be described. Though the sharks were numerous and powerful, a display of mystic might greater than any I ever saw or heard described, they were no more invulnerable than the ocean predators in whose image they had been crafted. While I believe no army in the world would stand before such formidable and terrifying conjurations, the thralls of the Obsidian Order are not soldiers, and their masters have long ago purged all fear save that of their wrath from their minds. They stood against the shades and fought back. Bodies broke beneath toothy jaws even as shades subsided back into nothingness beneath the strikes of staff and sword. Chaos claimed the ridge.
The shark-shaped shades, being sea creatures, swam in the air. Upon the narrow confines of the heights this gave them a considerable advantage in motion. They streaked about in circles, slicing through their foes as their inspirations might well have carved apart a school of fish. This, combined with the losses inflicted by the Redbones, ought to have carried the day. One thing alone changed the calculation, the in-person presence of the dominator, a master wizard.
I can still see the skull-like face when I close my eyes, his eyes black as the obsidian whose creed he claimed. He advanced step by step, swinging the iron bar that served as his staff as easily as if it were made of paper, and with each stroke a shade collapsed back into the darkness whence it had come. He strode forward over stone, blood, and fallen thralls, ignoring them all. Only the Lady Indili held his focus, a prize of incalculable value to the eyes of one who views the world entire as nothing save a source of experiments. Shades struck at him, but not even the power and sharpness of shark teeth could pierce him. Triangular blades shattered against skin like steel plates.
Bravery is not a trait I will ever claim, but on that day its absence, and a scholar’s knowledge, perhaps served better. My prone position lay in the path of the dominator’s steady advance. I lay there, waiting, as shades and thralls fought above, until the dominator stepped over my body. His skin was the colorless pallor of chalk dust and his fine silk robes reeked of charcoal. Greenish spirals, wounds inflicted in mystic patterns, leaked through his skin and made it glow beneath the sunlight.
Wizardry can reshape bodies and strengthen them in myriad manners, but a humanoid body retains certain structures regardless. The joining of the leg and pelvis must remain loose and flexible to permit motion, even as it conceals the femoral artery. A point of essential vulnerability.
With desperate effort I rolled over and thrust my knife upwards with all the strength remaining in my limbs.
The blood of a master wizard is foul-tasting and bitter, not the least bit salty.
This strike, though it would have slain an ordinary man in moments, did not kill the dominator. The loss of blood did, however, cause him to fall. I rolled over atop him, placing the fullness of my weight upon his skull, and drove blow after blow into his neck, until the head at last rolled free. I do not recall the precise number of strikes required, but it was more than ten, and my knife was a battered and broken ruin by the end. This loss did not cause the thralls to flee, or even seemingly notice a change, but without their master, the shark shades eliminated them all soon enough.
Both Lady Indili and I collapsed after this. We might well have bled to death from our injuries had not Rubuya, with great foresight, violated my orders and left the Kharal slave Kundun behind to serve as a lookout while they fled. He, observing this unimaginable victory, raced down the mountain, caught the rest of the expedition, and brought them back to save us. Our injuries, somewhat miraculously, were deep but clean cuts, easily treated with needle and thread. By the time Rubuya finished directing the sky burials of the Redbones and piling the Obsidian Order thralls up to be burned we had roused. Though it is not right to burn the dead, the twisting distortion of wizardry renders a body toxic, likely to poison any animal, even the indomitable vultures, that attempts to feed upon the flesh, so this solution was the only one available to us. The bodies, as they burned, smelled as if they were made of rotten straw rather than living flesh, a sickening scent I shall never forget.
This action did provide an unexpected benefit in the form of a windfall of wealth. The adherents of the Obsidian Order, being paranoid creatures, carried such riches as they possessed entirely upon their persons. A significant quantity of gold and gemstones, which we accounted as plunder duly won in battle, was recovered. This was of great utility in later endeavors.
I have made the choice to relate this incident at considerable length not in an effort of self-aggrandizement, I was simply lucky. It was the Redbone Explorers, may they find their way swiftly to the next cycle, and the Lady Indili who earned this triumph. Rather, I feel it is important to highlight the true power of those who had mastered the mystic path and how, in the wild regions of the world far beyond the confines of the Sanid empire, these powers still shape lives and societies. Among the bodies of the Obsidian Order burned that day most were Bahab, but there were Kharal, Nikkad, and those of mixed blood present as well. The Order was, I am certain, connected to the series of tragic events that brought the expedition to the brink of total annihilation.
Similarly, the death of the dominator, he had both a name and title I have chosen to omit, was a matter of considerable significance in its own right. This man was believed to be the most potent wizard in all of Shdustu, and perhaps beyond. Certainly, he was one of only two able to lay claim to the grim title. A considerable shift in the priorities of the mystical world occurred throughout the region following his demise over the next several years. Fortresses were plundered, knives were wielded in the dark, and thralls perished in droves before the matter concluded. This shift in the shadows won gratitude from many who reject the machinations of wizards, though it was not widely known for some time.
Given the activities of those inclined to seek out wizards, there is nothing to regret in such destruction, though it is somewhat frustrating that the fortress of the Obsidian Order could not be located. No clues were found on the remains, and so its lore and riches remain in unworthy hands. I am certain it exists, somewhere in the heights of the Dumum Mountains, whether abandoned or reclaimed by another follower of the twisted path of wizardry. A proper survey of such scattered wilderness is unfortunately beyond the resources of the Bahab.
Regulation of mystics, as conducted by the empire, is clearly a wise practice. Though the usage of divine essence is most often subtle and rarely observed with any clarity, when turned to the hands of masters and unleashed in the fullness of desperate potency it is an awesome power indeed. To watch as one stands against fifty and emerges triumphant is an experience not to be underestimated. Such achievements are not easy, nor do they unfold without consequence. Lady Indili could not walk for several days, and the loss of her staff was a notable sacrifice, but even so I imagine a sea of sharks unleashed within the imperial palace and shiver at the carnage that might unfold. That mystics chose to manage their membership and cull out those unable to control base impulses is a most valuable practice, one that allows their power to serve the needs of all and advance scholarship without unleashing perpetual conflict. Without such careful measures there is only tyranny or chaos. Pity that wizards have never found proper accommodation with the needs of civilization. As to why, I cannot say. Not being a mystic, I can never fully understand the nature of the practice or the commitment it demands. Princess Romou suggested that wizardry, being permanent, inspires a level of selfishness and arrogance that the other arts do not. The continual practice of prayer or elemental attunement serves to center the mind in the direction of duty, while the obsession with personal manipulation does the opposite.
It is as good a theory as any.