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Dragh's Demise
Chapter 29

Chapter 29

“Thank the gods, you made it General,” Pello greet Dragh at the gates of the camp in the fading light of the sun.

The wooden doors had opened when Dragh approached, like a set of welcoming open arms after his perilous journey.

“The Legions need to heal, they need a hospital tent and healers,” Dragh pointed back at the long snake of men coming down out of the Car Lauch mountains they’d just made it through.

“How many did we loose?” Pello asked.

Dragh felt heavy, his mind and heart. “We lost one hundred in the Pass. Ledges of snow from above came down on the end of the baggage train. I had left the merchants and the rest behind, I knew it would be hard. I didn’t know we’d loose so many,”

Pello paused, knowing what it felt like to loose people. They’d been together since the Second. They’d lost an entire Legion to betrayal. In the southern wars, they’ lost thousands. A generation of men and women. “How many need aid?”

“Hundreds more,” Dragh said.

“Primus!” Pello shouted up to the tower above the gate.

“Yes Legate Pello?” A call from above.

“Set up a tent for the Legions! They need aid!”

Dragh watched, an out of body experience as the camp woke up around him. Horns called into the dark night. Torches were lit, fires, and the men and women of the Dragon Legion awoke from their slumber. A tent was being erected as Pello pulled Dragh towards the center of the camp.

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“We have not heard word of the king or the Council’s legions in a week, we know they left a month ago. They would have made it into the desert by now,”

“The last word I had from Anastasia was that she was with them, that they were the Vanguard,”

“Gods, Palegh will protect them,” Pello invoked the god of war.

“Get me Ludden,” Dragh said.

Pello issued another command to the Primus behind them that had come with Dragh from the Sixth Legion. The young woman saluted and ran off to find the blacksmith.

“Is he who I think he is?”

Dragh nodded, finally admitting something that only three people in the nation knew of. “He is my spymaster, Bennje is his equal,”

“I have not heard that name in many years,” Pello said.

“General!” A call came up from the soldiers around them as they walked through the sea of white tents pitched between them and the command tent.

Suddenly the click of boots snapping together could be heard around the camp.

“HIC SUNT DRACONES!” The call went out.

Dragh raise up his fist to his heart, saluting the men and women around him. “HIC SUNT DRACONES!”

The soldiers echoed the chant and then continued on their way towards the coming Legions to offer their aid.

Pello led Dragh to the command tent, set up as it always was in his army camps. The soldiers around the entrance scouted to Dragh.

It had taken Dragh weeks to make it back to the Dragon Legion, marching through the mountains, through Cinforths Pass. The cold had reminded him of his days in the Second, when he’d faced the mountains as a young man.

“Cinforths was closing when we marched. There will be no returning through it on the way back to Landor,” Dragh mused.

“We will face the Council if we must, but with the strength of the entire Landorian army,” Pello said.

They walked through the flap of the tent to be met with his commanders, Legates and Primus’.

Dragh stood tall, ignoring the ache in his back, the numbness on his right hand. Their waxy color a sign that he should be in the hospital tent receiving aid. He had no time for it, no time to rest. He now knew the danger that Harin was in. The Council was not just working against them, but the very people that had destroyed his families empire.

He had to get to Harin, to protect his son and daughter from the evil that followed them. The vanguard of an army was always attacked first. But, they would never expect to be attacked by the army behind them, the one that they led.

“Soldiers, we leave on the morrow. We ride at down to save the king, to save the kingdom,”

None of the leaders in front of him blanched at the command. They knew the stakes before they left to march here. Marched through the pit that was the Car Lauch mountains.

“Pello, get me Generals Hasper and Eris,”

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