713 Norhill, aft summer

          To the east of the Norhill volcano, that same ash and soot which smothered the Wastes mingled with the southerly rivers to create a new, wildly fertile flood plain.  In the aftermath of the volcano's first eruption, Norhill fell to pieces.  Lydia, a small mercantile nation in the southeast, scrambled to grab every parcel of land it could.  Harried by the roving beastmen to the east of its mountains, it needed every inch of soil.  At the same time, Elsia, the major agricultural province of the old nation, broke away in a coalition of noblemen.

          War broke out, of course, and the new nations exhausted their fledgling armies.  Eventually, they settled on a line dividing the Wastes clean in two from the Forest in the west to the howling mountain peaks in the east.  All would have been well if not for those thrice-damned beastmen!

          Still, wild lands infested with tribal barbarians meant work for the Guild of Blades.

          Their caravan left the final intact Lydian outpost yesterday, twisting along the river road at a march.  Sooner out of these wild lands the better, or so the overseer muttered constantly.  There could be no good encounters: the crusty army men who hunted the beastmen often proved just as thirsty as any savage for a shipment of metals.  Greed and corruption for all.

          At least that fatass taskmaster got to ride snug inside his carriage, hugging an ice stone to keep the heat out, out of mosquito and sun.

          Marcellus, meanwhile, stomped from dawn to dusk on roads that could rattle teeth out.  A dozen carts and thirty Blades followed behind.  Small time.  He was the oldest of the mercenaries, a Blademaster, and leader by reputation alone.  Thirty-nine, a head taller than the rest, he had skin black like night and rough like leather, hands like vices, and a bear scowl.  Half his crew couldn't shave as they pranced around with their swords like theatrical idiots.  His next senior was barely thirty and spent most of his Blade career as a drill master.  Their overseer shoved them cold paste for dinner, giving the men who his life depended on food that couldn't keep a pup up.  Usual irritations, unfortunately.

          Something deeper kept him in a thunderstorm mood.  The simple life, mercenary money from all four corners of creation, didn't satisfy anymore.  A life of glory and adventure by the sword?  That romance rotted in the dust, killed by twenty three years of toil.  Even the far deserts of Yandra, the unholy roar of Havoc storms in the savage lands east of the mountains, could do little to excite him.  He needed something new.

          Problem was...Marcellus Blademaster was such an ingrained identity, what else could replace it?  He'd been a warrior since twelve and for sale since sixteen.

          Marching in the oppressive heat left little energy for showing off, and the younger Blades complained when Marcellus chose a full night's sleep over performing fancy tricks with an ax and two melons. 

          "Don't screw around!" he admonished them.  Easy way to lop off a couple fingers or a hand.  Not that they listened.  When one Blade limped up in the dawn's light with a slice halfway down his forearm, the Blademaster just stitched him up and sent him packing for the Lydian outpost with docked pay.

          On the third day, Marcellus diverted the caravan.  Only last week, the beastmen burned the new post; the train didn't need any of the fumbling that would follow.  Clumsy attempts at reprisal by ham-headed generals.  -You can never defeat the enemy you don't understand.-

          Soon after, they met a train of dingy dirt farmers coming in out of the Wastes, piled high with the rich volcanic soil for sale as fertilizer in the south.

          “Road's flooded knee high ahead,” reported Roho, a young Blade who would wag his tail at Marcellus all day if he had one.  “Want to turn back?”

          “No.”

          “It'll bog us down!” the boy protested.

          “We'll be fine.  I've been this way before.“  Truthfully, the Blademaster preferred the threats of untamed land to the snide corruption of the army.  -Tomorrow we'll hit the Elsian border, and we can worry about bribing their useless patrols instead.-

          Rain dumped on them through the night, brought out swarms of insects with the dawn, and choked the air with humidity.  Their muddy excuse for a road straddled the line between the dense thickets of plants and the swollen river banks.  Whoever cut the way needed to come back for another pass; weeds and low branches snagged at his clothes with every step.

          "I'd give my left nut for a weather Wizard," grumbled Roho, slapping at the bugs.

          “That can be arranged.”

          They passed rotted planks that marked someone's abandoned farm, following the hill up.  Same as last time up this way, except...

          “Really?” Roho chuckled.  “How much does Blade testicle go for on the market?  I was thinking maybe-”

          “Shut up.”  Marcellus' hackles rose.  Over the next rise, the soggy road would run out of hill and have to descend into the muck.  It contracted to a boggy thread.  He remembered how the stagnant water there, cut off from the river as soon as flood waters retreated, stank horribly.

          But he couldn't smell anything now.

          "Stop the caravan," he called out.

          "Huh?"  Both Roho and the lead driver stared like dumbstruck cows.

          "I said, stop the caravan!"

          "Why?"

          "Ambush."  Marcellus tugged off his soaked shirt, revealing an impressive number of scars.  Savages respected scars (usually).  Somebody like Roho with nary a nick?  If he wasn't slaughtered, they'd slave him as a stud...which was nowhere near as fun as most young men seemed to believe.

          The caravan slid to a stop.  Their overseer, a shrill man who equated screaming with authority, hopped out to protest.  He confronted Marcellus, who by now wore nothing but breeches of hemp, holding a short sword and a mace.

          "We're already behind!" he screeched, rather like a housewife.  "Explain this!"

          "Ambush over yonder.  Wanna come?"

          "How do you know that?!"

          "Suppose I don't, not really."

          "Then why the hell did we stop?"

          By now, half the caravan peeked around the corner of the lead wagon to eavesdrop.

          "If you value your goods so much more than the lives of your men, then why don't you go check?" Marcellus growled.  -Go ahead.  Let the men see your yellow belly quiver.-

          Indeed, the overseer began to stammer on about authority and responsibility and a man's place.

          The Blademaster turned his back on the overseer and shrugged to Roho.  "This is why I don't have a wife, boy.  Its like taking that guy home every night."

          People laughed openly, and the overseer shook in rage and humiliation.  With anyone else, he could have lodged complaint and docked earnings (within the safe confines of Elsia's laws), but not with a Guild Blademaster...

          -Athos bless the Guild.-

          "What's the plan, bossman?" Roho asked. 

          "I'll go negotiate."

          "Want some help?"  The lieutenant was eager to catch sight of the savages in action, no doubt.

          "No.  They're well-situated, I'm sure, and bringing in a dozen men gives the wrong impression.  We're in a bad spot for this.  If they attack, don't go after the first one you see.  Make them expose themselves if they want to advance.”

          The young mercenaries soaked in his advice like schoolchildren, no opposition, and damn that made him feel old.  -I need to talk with Lynia again.  Get some strategy classes started for the rank and file.  Can't have a Blademaster on every trip to save them from themselves.-

          He set off over the hill into danger.  Butterflies of death-terror never faded, but they did grow familiar.

          Rain narrowed the road to a thread between pits of fetid water, his bare feet sinking in to the ankle.  The caravan would have been strung out, busy tugging and cursing, when the ambush fell upon them.  At least this way, they would have a chance.

          "I've encountered verbena before!" he shouted to the bog, arriving in the pit's center.  "Scent masker to catch the dogs off guard.”

          He rather hoped at least one of them spoke Lydian.

          A crocodile with a man's burly arms rose on its hind legs, drawing a bow in his direction.  Face blunt and reptilian, it probably couldn't speak at all.  Marcellus' heart sank.  In his experience, beastmen usually took personalities to match their feral halves.

          It barked at him, wet bow string creaking.

          "Chief?" he asked.

          An arrow with rusty hooks.

          "You can shove that thing up your ass if you think I'm going to drop my weapons and let you slave me."

          Scaly shoulder bunched, and Marcellus dove face first into the muck.  The arrow careened overhead, and the Blade scrambled forward.  The crocodile had another arrow half drawn when Marcellus made his leap.

          "Stop!" bellowed a voice, rising from the waters. 

          Obliging, the Blademaster crashed into the crocodile, shoulder into its scaly gut, and only clubbed it in the head once.

          Now the other dozen beastmen revealed themselves, rising in the waist-high waters right off the road.  The most human was a boy with saber tooth fangs jutting out; most fell somewhere in between that boy and the almost entirely feral crocodile in their blending of man and beast.  Their chief was close to half coyote and half man, but at least his muzzle was short enough to form human words.

          Mongrel pack, drawn from any breed the savages could get a hold of.  Probably escaped Elsian slaves.  Not like the packs to the east of Lydia; those segregated themselves by species, and they tended to drive much harder bargains...

          "Pretty ballsy, human," said the chief, eying his scars.

          "This ain't the life for cowards."

          "What motivates this?"

          "My caravan requires safe passage.  You're gonna let us through nice-like, and we're not going to mention you to the slave chasers or the army."

          Hefting his mace onto a shoulder, he let the silence draw on.  The boy with saber tooth fangs inched over to drag the crocodile away, and the worn mercenary let him.

          "Are you their leader to speak for them?"

          "I'm in charge of the men who would face killing and dying in this pit, and that's all matters."

          The coyote snorted.  "Good point.  What's your name, brave man?"

          "Marcellus.  A Blade of Lydia."

          "Lydia...how is it?" The bestial voice caught on a man's homesickness.

          "Good.  Wizards and the Guilds at each other's throats.  Too many beggars, too many wars, not enough land.  The usual.”

          Combat-ready tension made them all sweat, and fur could not be helping.  The verbena began to fade, letting in putrid whiffs of the pools and of sweating animals.

          "So, you gonna let us through?"

          The coyote nodded.  "I am Yote, formerly Erich of Lydia, and on my honor you may pass."

          "Thank you."

          He departed, crossing over the rise.  Simple as that.

          By the time he fed a lie to the overseer and the truth to his men, the beastmen were long gone.  Still, nobody dead for no good reason, and that was probably worth the three thousand new bug bites.

**********

          Yote must have spread the word, because their caravan creaked along in peace past all the most dangerous spots.  Probably the most peaceful run in the last two seasons.  Even the weather cooperated.  The overseer preened himself, muttering about good time and better profits, as if the mild sun was his personal invention.

          The more everyone else relaxed, the worse Marcellus wound tight.  Even when a savage gave a good word, life didn't hand out free ones.  When the Blades wanted to carouse bawdy tavern songs, swap lurid tales, and drink themselves under the table, he played the devil and forced the men to their dull, itchy watches.  They accused him of being incapable of easing up.  Rightful accusation, in truth, but the Blademaster rationalized.  -I'll relax when we're in Cove.  Slacking off on the trail is like dancing blindfolded in a snake den.-

          Besides that, in the city nothing ever slowed down.  Out in the flood plain, cicada songs created the kind of alluring rhythm that drew you into contemplation - snagged a man down into twenty three years of bad, bloody memories.  Never the good ones that emerged on the trail.  He'd outlasted three generations of students, and each one who he held as they gurgled held its own little wound.

          The caravan left the river plain in one piece, now firmly in Elsia's territory and past the predations of the savages.  They left behind muddy ditches and the insect swarms, pushing due north for Cove, the capitol, along the Rainbow Sea.  Human touches reappeared, farmsteads nestled in golden tides of wheat.  A vast land, blessed with lands as far as the vassals could spread and till, but poor in minerals.  Here, farmers substituted slave labor for technology.  Beastmen sometimes watched them pass, their eyes dull from beatings.

          On the dawn of the second day in the plains, the rising sun revealed a great pillar of smoke on the horizon where the first trade post should have been.

          "There's supposed to be army garrisons there," Roho said.

          "Fat good it did," spat sour Cluverius next to him.

          “Here, the army serves the Lords first,” Marcellus brooded.  His memories were on a dark path; he had warred in this land.  “Wide, wide miles where no patrol ever bothers to come.  Farms where people huddle in fear, ruled by bandits as if this land was lawless...”  Voice grating lower into an unintelligible growl.

          “Which way did the attackers go?” Roho asked, steering the conversation – and the Blademaster – back to the matter at hand.  “Maybe the slaves revolted?”

          “Well, we will see soon enough,” replied Cluverius.

          A shift in the wind gagged them with the stench of rancid meat and human refuse.  It only worsened as they neared the post, the men white-knuckled and huddled close to their wagons.

          "We should just go by," the overseer mumbled.

          "For once, I agree," Marcellus said.  "Survivors would be begging at our feet for help by now.  Wouldn't put it past whoever attacked to trap the place.”

          “How long ago?” Roho again, always the inquisitive one.

          The Blademaster leaned back and yelled the question to Kier, an Elsian native.

          "A day.  Two at most!" Kier shouted back.

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          "Aye.  Chances are, no one spread the word yet."

          Speared bodies covered the palisade wall, most missing their heads.  Men, women, children.  Marcellus could not remember when he was young enough to experience shock at a child's corpse.

          Blood runes swirled across the wall, gibberish hedge magics that linked each body into a single chain.  A calling card.  Also possibly some sort of bomb, trick, trap, or latent mind control.  Best policy for Wizardry?  Kill the Wizard, and burn everything they ever touched.

          “Headed northwest,” Kier confirmed, crouching amongst the muck.

          Away from them, at least.

          Goosebumps began to climb the Blademaster's spine, the kind of subtle unease that widened pupils and made heart race in his ears.  He raised his hand high, curled it into a fist, and nodded with his knuckles at the outpost.  His men tightened their grips and braced for some sort of ambush.

          -What's their angle?-

          Invisible blades of unseen men hissed through the air.  Men died, stunned by the weapons that protruded from chest or belly.  All around, screams erupted.  Marcellus felt his stomach clench and dropped to the ground by Blade instinct, a second ahead of the ghost that meant to behead him.

          "They're all over!" Roho screamed, swinging his ax in a wide arc.  It caught flesh and cleaved deep into a creature.  "But they still bleed!"

          -Not ghosts then,- Marcellus thought, springing up.  Ten of his men already corpses, taken in the initial surprise, and a dozen of the caravan drivers.  The horses panicked, bucking at anything they could see, and the overseer clawed at his throat, being strangled by invisible hands.

          Surprise accomplished, their ambushers dropped their enchantment.

          -Means they can't see each other either with that spell up,- noted the tactician in the back of the Blademaster's head.  -Now they need to exchange the cloak for pack maneuvers.-  It quivered in excitement, absorbing every detail from style of sword to their gruesome appearance.

          These men wore black and red rags over their armor, each one a symbol for an accomplishment.  Marcellus recognized a rank structure even as his mace caught one of the bastards in the skull.  The bare-faced neonates wore individual rags, probably single kills or battles.  Older, hardened men let squares of their colors float behind them, streamers attached to their shoulders, and sported masks to cover their jaws.  Both senior officers flaunted several streams of blooded cloth from their chainmail and modified human skull masks.  The one strangling the overseer had carved tribal swirls across the skull and applied kohl to the sockets to make his eyes into deep pits; his partner, driving Roho back with a flail, attached a wolf's jaws in place of human, each tooth stained yellow and black.

          While the tactician soaked all these details, the raiders drove the Blademaster and his men away from the wagons, cutting down the civilians on their way.  One of the Blades, cut off and dueling three men at once, cried out the Forbidden Word, but the Shaitan must have laughed: nothing happened.  His opponents skewered him.  Marcellus spared a flicker of pity: poor March would burn in the Pits for succumbing to temptation in his final moment.

          In a few minutes, ten Blades stood outnumbered, backed into a tight circle.  Kier nailed one of the skull-faced officers with a thrown dagger in the femoral artery, but that meant little.  They braced, ready to face their deaths like men.

          "You fight well," said the other officer, his voice resonating in the wolf-jaws, "but there is an alternative to your meaningless bravado.  Service."

          "We don't serve no bandits!" Cluverius snarled, twitching.  All itching to throw himself at them in blind rage.

          "Bandits?  Insulting!  We are the Empty Armies!" He chuckled.  "We're bandits with a mission."

          -Empty Armies?-  Marcellus knew them.  A breed of pirate from the Rainbow Sea.  Cowards, mostly, scavenging from their hidden islands in that dangerous no man's land where water began to merge into the Chaos beyond.  Certainly not capable – much less interested – in butchering posts on the southern border.  “What in the Pits are you doing this far south?”  Unscratched, still tall and strong, meeting the enemy right in the eye.  Damn if he wouldn't at least die with some dignity.

          “Circumstances change.  We're not the pirate rabble people remember.”  

          The Blademaster counted the opposition, noted their placement, surveyed the land.  -We're dead men.  Too many of them, too few of us, and no exit strategy in sight.-

          "Your answer?  Will you serve, or will you die?"

          Roho and the others wanted to go down fighting.  He could see them chewing at their own mortality, trying to build up the kind of heroic defiance that storybook heroes always seemed to have.  Why was it the youngest ones were always most willing to toss their lives away?  Never thought of their families or their countries; never saw the long game.

          "Service it is." Marcellus acceded because surrender would save the lives he was sworn to safeguard, but the words still tasted like ash and shame.  -Suck it, Marc.  There will be a time for reckoning.  We need to live to seize it.  Your boys need you more than you need that blasted pride.-

          His Blades seethed and snarled like captive tigers, lobbing their betrayed glares.  The Empty Army soldiers mugged them for weapons, armor, and even the rations in their pockets.  Then, chained and bound, they watched as the enemy looted the caravan for anything of worth.

          "How could you fucking betray us like that?!" hissed Cluverius, almost foaming at the mouth.

          "They killed everyone!  They loot our blood brothers like dead dogs, and you just lay down?” Kier howled.

          Marcellus shook his head.  "It ain't like that."

          "Athos' balls, you surrendered without so much as a cough!" Roho sounded most hurt, wounded puppy when his idol didn't match the tavern tales.  Foolish boy.  "After watching them kill Jonny and Cyan!"

          Now, the Blademaster snapped.  "You shut up and listen!  No one who died here would have got back up if you all joined them!  We're alive, and we're whole, and that's a damn sight better than most prisoners of war!"  He commanded their gaze, quivering with suppressed rage.  "There will be a reckoning.  I swear it!  But before that, we have to stay alive and healthy long enough to get a handle on what the hell this is about.  Nobody makes a move before I say so. Someone spits on you -  tough.  Someone kicks you into the mud? You get up and keep walking.  Our pride is meaningless."

          Empty Army soldiers watched as the human skull passed to a new officer.  All the useful goods went into the three wagons with horses in good shape and working wheels.  After stripping the corpses, the dead Blades and caravan crew were left to the birds.

          "This is about revenge."

          Guards shoved them forward, forcing them into a hobbled double march that set shins and thighs to aching.  His Blades never found a chance to reply, and he had to hope that his words sank in deep enough to sustain them for the trip.  It wouldn't be an easy one.

**********

          Cluverius, surly archer with the eagle eyes.  Cecil, proud even with both eyes blackened for talking out when they fed the captives dog-scraps.  Kier, the Elsian simmering over his rage.  Red, pensive and twitch-eyed.  Aniki, pale and fearful.  Magnus, an old hand at prisoner of war, who kept his head down.  Ofer, listless and shuffling.  Eric, poker face like a marble wall.  Roho, lost in stormy thoughts except for the occasional trusting glance to the Blademaster.  (How quickly his faith snapped back.)  Marcellus, battle plans warring against bad memories across his brain.

          Much harder to lead a squad out than to sneak alone, but only a viper could abandon the young men whose eyes latched onto him: their anchor.  They all knew that, somehow, Marcellus would lead them out.

          Athos' balls, he hated that look.  Half teenage immortality complex and half blind hero worship, a cloak of lead choking around his neck.  Sixteen hours a day of double march across the rough plains with bare enough water for a weed only aggravated matters.

          Their raiding party dragged them southwest to the army proper, a bloated swarm of black and red.  None of the Blades could make any formation out of it; Marcellus estimated on the order of ten thousand men.  A drunk man or a sea monster, it staggered in bits and pieces generally northwest.  Hauls of treasure and food strayed after in overloaded wagons, and chains of the prisoners of war shuffled in the army's middle.

          "Why are they taking prisoners?" Roho asked while the raiders argued with appeared to be a commander - at least by the elaborate skull mask - over compensation.

          "Human sacrifice, most like," Eric offered.

          "They could have butchered us just fine forty miles ago," Cecil pointed out.

          They shifted towards Marcellus, but he just shrugged. "Prisoners are a lot of trouble.  Perhaps they will reveal a weakness.”

          Negotiations began to heat up.  Their raiders apparently felt quite entitled by the capture of Blades, demanding a promotion.  The commander scoffed.  Allies of both parties began to drift closer, tense.

          “Have you ever fought the Empty Armies?” Roho asked of no one in particular.

          Marcellus shook his head.  “Lynia did, before she was Guildmistress.  They were nothing like this.  Rabble, mostly, not a lick of cooperation between any two ships across the whole Sea.”

          “So what happened?”

          “Same thing happened to us Blades when the Guild formed.  Somebody unified them.”

          Regrettably, negotiations ended without bloodshed.  The Blades let their captors transfer them to the center of the fetid army's mass, though their party remained separate of the shackled lines just to their left.  For the most part, these other prisoners were burnt-skinned and hard-worked, probably more peasant farmers and slaves than warriors.

          No segregation laws in the Empty Armies.  beastmen shared the ranks, leading squads of their feral kin along the march.  Most were probably escaped field slaves or cursed by Shaitan.       

          -Equality for all, long as you pillage, rape, and ravage.  Kill your boss, and you'll probably get a promotion.  What's the secret, keeping this monster moving together?  Beyond that....how many more are still ahead?-

          Decades ago, Elsia depended on Norhill for its security.  When the old land collapsed, Elsia found itself in control of vast tracts of land and lacking anything resembling an army.  Every time they managed to grow another one, some sorry excuse for a vassal would throw it against Lydia, pirates, or savages.  The lords kept their personal troops close to home, and great swathes of the country existed in functional absence of government.  A force of the Empty Army's size with even a basic understanding of warfare would probably bring Elsia to collapse before the lords managed a united response.

          -Ah, that's right.  Their King died a few years back.  They're fractured, barely stitched together by his Queen.  No, this country would collapse from a stiff wind.-

          So why did they wander the country side terrorizing peasants for grain instead of toppling Cove?

          At the blob's head, a beastman witch led the way with bone-dice magic and a low, moaning chant.  As for the Blades, they began the slogging march again, now swallowed by the Army, and could only guess why they headed southwest for the Norhill Wastes.  As the days dragged on, they entered the Wastes proper, stumbling on jagged rocks until their boots tore at the seams.  The stench of sulfur made their eyes burn, and each received a pittance of water and a rotten chunk of bread once a day.  On a good day, someone would discover a few struggling shoots of grass that they could wolf down.

          Broken terrain and chaotic formation led to two fortunes.  The slave tenders removed their chains out of necessity after a prisoner fell into a lava hole and dragged five other people to their death with him, and the Blades were able to slow their pace by fractions, slipping to the very tail of the Army.  They solidified a plan during the sixth night, while howling winds full of ash threw volcanic gristle into the eyes and ears of their guard.

          Kier and Roho would go first; between the two, they spoke every human dialect for a hundred miles and even a smattering of beastman tongues.  Magnus and Marcellus, the two oldest, would flank the group, dispatching of any alarms with finesse.  Eric and Red would raid for supplies, and the others would scatter into pairs over the landscape.  Everyone would meet at an oasis to the east that Kier swore by, using the stars as guides.

          The seventh day, Marcellus could make out a faint ribbon of green to the west if he squinted, spreading across the entire horizon.  "If the oasis doesn't pan out, we'll head for there," he informed his men.

          "That's the Forest," Cecil pointed out.

          "So?"

          "Dryad land."

          Magnus snorted.  “You could walk one end of that place to the other and never see one.  They're ghosts for all intents.”

          “Hospitable ghosts, we hope,” Marcellus offered.

          That day crawled by, mired in a choking twilight.  Norhill grumbled behind them, drooling rivulets of amber down its sides.  Soon as the sun set, Eric and Red slipped away, ducking between the remains of Norhill architecture that now hosted ill-tempered superiors of the army.  The others waited an hour, stretching their bread to minced bites, and neither Blade returned.

          "What's taking so long?" hissed Cecil.

          "We should go," muttered Aniki.  He shook like a threatened rattler.  "They could be tortured into talking any minute!"

          "Give them time," Magnus ordered.

          A horse snort doused their conversation as an Empty Army sentry approached.  Half-masked, he dismounted and opened his trousers.  He pulled his dick out and pissed their dull fire out, smirking.  Taunting them.

          Kier winched tighter by the moment, nostrils flaring like a provoked bull.  Marcellus eased behind the youth, ready to restrain.

          Just for good measure, the sentry spit in their last bit of bread.  Then the peacock laughed, mounted, and rode on.

          "Bastards," cursed Cecil while Cluverius salvaged twigs from the fire pit.  Even in aft summer, the Wastes would leech heat like any desert.

          "Sir Gabriel in Lydia had a theory," commented Magnus.  "Anonymous, pushed to compete and show off to other guys...enough to make anyone a bastard.”

          "The power to do anything you want to someone is a heady rush," Marcellus agreed.

          Still no sign of Eric and Red, not even the shouts of capture.

          Kier shifted.  "He gave us an opportunity!  Our fire is out by no fault of our own.  We can be gone before anyone thinks to force us to relight it!"

          "Wait for Eric and Red," Magnus said.  "Or do you know how to cross a desert without water?"

          "They're caught, fool, and they're not coming back!  Or they got the supplies and ditched us!"

          Marcellus rose, a towering shadow, and loomed over the fuming mercenary.  "We go together or not at all."

          "Stuff it, Blademaster.  I'm not letting our chance slip by.  What you gonna do?  Break my neck?"

          -Depends.  Would you squeal like a pig while I did it? Why is it, these kids, they go straight from loving you like Athos himself to hating you for everything?-

          He put ground glass in his voice.  "Sit down, shut up, and that's an order from your Blademaster."

          "When I get to Elsia, safe and sound, you can fucking court martial me, pops.  If you ever get there, fool.  Come on, guys...don't let these cowards drag you down too."

          Aniki scuttled over.

          Cecil and Cluverius refused, staunch with the older Blades.  "Its not right to abandon Eric and Red," the first insisted.  Ofer refused to budge, still lost deep in himself.  Roho knelt in the middle, clenching his fists with indecision.

          "Don't be daft, Roho!”  Kier extended his hand.  “Wherever the hell this sodden excuse for an Army is going, soon none of us will know the lay of the land.  You want to wait till we're wandering blind, or follow someone who knows every bump from here to safety?”

          Roho glanced at his mentor.  Hunched shoulders, flushed cheeks, breathing shallow and sweating heavily.  That monumental need to escape pressed him down, drove the fear up, and smothered a tactician's thinking.  "What if there isn't another chance...?"

          "I believe there will be," Marcellus answered.  "You're a warrior, boy.  You gotta follow your instincts.”  But he could already see: terror won in the boy.  Freedom tasted too sweet, and the thought of allowing that breeze to rush by untouched was too much.

          "I'm sorry..."  Roho joined Kier and Aniki.  "There may never be another chance, and every day will sap our strength will moldy food and long marches.  This is it."

          The Blademaster added another pebble to the stones hung from his heart.  -Dammit, I liked you kid.-   No helping it.

          "You better get going then," Magnus said.

          The trio crept through a maze of crumbling pillars and ran, their necks visible for a moment before they were gone from sight.  A long time trickled by.  The next sentry to pass forced the remaining prisoners to relight the fire, and the air stank of burnt piss.  No one cared to perform a headcount on them, and the Blademaster began to wonder if he had failed.  What if he had squandered their only legitimate opportunity for the sake of two dead men?  He did not doubt now that Eric and Red would not return, but he hoped they were simply dead.

          “Maybe Kier was right, folks,” Marcellus admitted.  “I always say stick with a plan...but this one is toast.  Eric and Red won't be back.  Pray that they died easily.”

          A fatal shout speared the air.  "Escape!" Men yelled, horses burst into action, and torches flared.  Others began to draw all the captives in, quickly approaching the Blademaster's camp.

          “At this point we are completely screwed.  Plan or no plan.  Run if you think you can.  Fight if you can't.  Beg mercy if even that doesn't work.  Do everything you have to for survival.”

          Ofer began to edge backwards, finally reacting to the world around him.

          The other Blades produced what little weaponry they had – a stolen dirk, chipped volcanic glass blades, whatever they had scrounged – and stood beside Marcellus against the oncoming swarm.

          -I have damned us all for my cowardice.-  Marcellus forced the thought down and turned to the moment.

          Bodies crashing; short sharp cries; angry hornets in the torchlight.  Strangely quiet, though, once one tuned out the constant thwack of fist and weapon against flesh.

          Even a Blademaster couldn't take these odds.  After the first couple good blows to the head, numbness embraced him.  No idea how the others fared beyond the immediate press of assailants.  Distant thumps like a knock on the door as more blows rained.  Athos' balls, if he could just black out already.  Damn constitution.

          WHACK!

          -Ah, that's better...-

**********

          Aniki they speared like a fish, right through the navel.

          Kier they slashed down the back, and he collapsed face first as his legs stopped working.    He screamed as they dragged him off.

          Roho ran on.  No camaraderie now.  Blind, crying, burning with shame, scraped and sliced, struggling to breathe.  Not like on the battlefield, the familiar rush where adrenaline snapped the world into crystal focus, but deserted of his training and scrambling like a terrified deer.  No moon to illuminate the broken landscape.  No coherent plan.  Norhill beckoned overhead, the devil's mountain of fire and fury, and seemed to laugh at the bug in its grasp.

          Torch light caught his back, and too late the young Blade ducked.  Only one horseman, but that's all it took.

          "You're mine!" the sentry howled, goading the horse.

          "Athos' balls!" swore Roho as he sprinted away.  Each frantic step, he sank ankle-deep in the ash.  -I should never have left the shop!  Dad was right.  I should have stayed a carpenter!-

          The ground dipped and jumped, deceitful in the dark, and his teeth rattled.  From a hundred yards, the horseman narrowed the gap, caterwauling.

          His foot plowed through the ground, the paper matting of ash crumbled, and Roho tumbled into darkness.  He hit a bed of oily muck hard enough to raise a choking cloud and vaguely registered the smooth walls of a magma tube.  His tormentor jerked the reigns in surprise a second too late.  The galloping horse and howling rider both broke through the tube's false ceiling.  They collided with the far wall in a sick crunch, and neither moved again.

          Sense prodded Roho up despite jelly for knees.  Cautious, he minced over to check and loot the body.  Nothing useful but a lump of bread; both spear and sword lay shattered.  He patted the horse's neck.  "Better luck next time."  Then he spit on the corpse.  "And that's what you get for galloping around in the dark!”

          Even if Kier didn't spill about the oasis, Roho couldn't navigate by stars hidden by the smoke.  -West then.  To the Forest.-

          Certain death above on the empty plains.  So the boy swallowed hard and began to walk down the tube.  Occasional breaks in the thin ceiling let in the flash of passing torches.  Every step he bit his lip.  Would this be the one?  Would the floor give out and pitch him from hospitable escape route into a lake of lava?  How many more steps could he push his luck?

          One step, hundreds in, he heard the floor shift and threw himself backwards.  A moment later, the tube in front of him caved away.  Molten light and noxious fumes filled the tube, and the Blade ripped most the skin from his fingers clawing his way out a claustrophobic channel to the surface.

          Oh, ash-choked air never smelled so sweet!

          No sign of pursuit.  At the moment.

          Roho oriented by the volcano and began to limp west, keen for death to return for him.

          It would be a long, hard road before he stumbled into the Forest where Glisinda waited.