The Merest Inkling Contd.

“Zorlac, this is patently ridiculous.”
“No it isn't, Zanticus. I say it isn't, therefore it isn't.”
“Yes, it bloody well is. There are no more dragons in the world.”
“An ancient legend says that they may be found – right here in Erseland, Zanticus.”
“Well, firstly, that's just an ancient legend, and they only come true in computer games, Zorlac. Given the amount of them you've played, you should know.”
“I don't play computer games!... much...”
“Secondly, the ancient legend does not say there are dragons in Erseland, Zorlac. It says that the last dragon came here to live out his days.”
“And rekindle his kindred!”
“How many seven-hundred-and-ninety-eight-year-olds have you known to rebuild an entire race?”
“Years are different for dragons.”
“Obviously. Seven-hundred-and-ninety-eight is still fairly old for a dragon!”
“Don't even think about growing a spine, Zanticus. You wouldn't know how to use it.”
“Shove off, Zorlac!” Zanticus roared, whipping around to vent the full force of his rage on Zorlac. His voice echoed between the trees on either side of the dirt trail and off the distant mountain peaks of the Urglenn Mountains proper, between the ancient bushes and dark valleys that had swallowed up entire Thursian armies without a trace, down the deep caves of the karst regions and up into the upper reaches of Elleria's troposphere.
“And what reason would a fine pair of lads such as ye have for yelling so loudly as to disturb the dead?” a voice asked.
Zorlac looked down.
A pale little face, long-haired, seemingly human, smiled sardonically up at them. The man – an Ersian, clearly – was completely unarmoured, dressed in beautifully woven fabrics of green and red, with a thick torque around his neck. This didn't matter, however, because the little Ersian had a huge sword – easily a hand-and-a-half sword for a human, an enormous claymore for the little Ersian propped against Zorlac's waist.
“And mixbloods as well. Tell me, where are ye from?”
“Kamar. I'm Kamarean.” Zorlac supplied.
“Me too.” Zanticus added.
“Really? How do I know?”
“Well...” Zorlac grimaced.
“Just kidding. Only Kamareans are so pale you shine in the darkness. Ye are lucky that your king sided with the Traditionalist Ersians, and ye are luckier still that you met me before you met Progressives. A lot of Progressive tribes can be very cruel, very cruel indeed. Oh – where are my manners? I'm Cássarix, warrior in the employ of King Trénax of the Dálcash sept. Luckily for you, I was instructed to ask questions first and chop later, otherwise you might have ended up with your head nailed to the ground.”
“That sounds unpleasant.”
“Might I ask what ye are doing here?”
“We're looking for dragons.” Zorlac answered, puffing out his chest.
“I'm sorry, I must have heard you wrong. I thought you said you were looking for dragons.”
“That's what we're looking for.”
“Well... son... you see, in these parts, when something dies, it usually – not always, annoyingly, but usually – stays dead. All the dragons are dead.”
“What about Vaseryx Goldenhide?” Zorlac retorted, referring to the dragon from their mythical guide.
“He's dead too. Now go home and try to keep clear of things that are over your head.”
“Cheek! I could pop a dragon like a pimple.” Zorlac exaggerated.
“Doubtful. Listen, son, go home. For your own sake.” Zorlac sighed, theatrically.
“I suppose I should inform you of who I am and where I want to go...”

ten minutes later

“My King? The heir to the Kamarean throne. And he wants dragons.”
King Trénax leaned forward.
“Well then, you'll want to hear about the Gabolga, the Spear of the Ersians. Or, in Kamarean, Belly-Ripper.”

* * *

The bony, tattoo-scalped man hung from the bamboo frame like a sack of potatoes, scarred and pained. He had shouted his defiance, once.
That had ended after the first three days.
Then he'd started talking.
“Tell me.” Ankh said, walking around the bony man. His all-concealing mail clanked gently as he moved. “What was that thing you summoned in the village?”
Vellarion the Demented looked up at Ankh. One eye was fused shut, a scab crusted over the eyelid. He said nothing.
“Don't tell me you're thinking of holding out again?” Vellarion closed his one good eye for a moment, then opened it again.
“Beholder.” he croaked. “Water.”
“Tell me.”
“Can't tell you if my throat's... dried shut... idiot.”
A dribble of water trickled down his throat. He coughed, a wheezing rasp that he knew would kill him if he received no medical attention.
It would kill him.
“It was a beholder.” he forced out.
“A beholder? You mean there's more than one?”
“Uncounted thousands... in the vaults of the Eks Amenur. They were created.”
“Who is the Eks Amenur?”
“Can't tell you that. Nothing you do to me can make me tell you that.” Ankh left it.
“And is – are the beholders the worst these Eks Amenur - ” Ankh tripped over the unfamiliar name “ - can provide?”
“Certainly not.” Vellarion cackled madly. He wasn't called 'the Demented' without reason. “I have seen things, my friend.”
“I am no friend of yours!”
“Ah, friend, enemy... all die. None come back. Despite what you priests preach to the people, there is no heaven to receive the souls of the good. But let me assure you – there is a hell. Oh, there is... there is a hell.” Vellarion hacked, bloody saliva splashing Ankh's mail. “I have seen it. With these two – well, one now... eye. Seen it. Yes, the Eks Amenur are the servitors of Benet – not your feeble Benet, of course, but the true Benet, the dark original. She whose worshippers the Amenurites are.”
“Who are the Amenurites?” Ankh asked.
“Who indeed? You, me, everyone... has a choice, to see the light or to see the darkness beyond the light, the darkness that is coming for us.” Vellarion coughed again and smiled beatifically up at Ankh. His teeth were red with his own blood. “There is a darkness. Yes, beyond the light, and it is Benet. The Amenurites are the disciples of that darkness, those who see the truth.” Vellarion chuckled raspily. It sounded like a death-rattle.
“And what connection have the Amenurites with the Blue Dragons?”
“The Blue Dragons? Aah, you poor deluded fool. Those Blue Dragons, those guerrillas that Shamus of Borova trained to free the poor and help the weak, and establish a state where everyone is equal and there is rich, no poor, no inequality... they are dead. Shamus of Borova lives, but his ideas wither away. The Amenurites have seized his movement and made it their own. We have made it our own! And formidable as the Blue Dragons were - ” Vellarion coughed again “ - the Amenurites are a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand times worse. For in addition to the loyal guerrillas following Shamus, we have all the creatures of the night: beholders, shoggoths, dullahans, demons... and every one of you that falls is another recruit to add to our army.” Ankh leaned closer. The firelight flickered off his polished faceplate.
“Vellarion... are you talking about the undead?”
“Maybe, Ankh. Maybe.”

The Merest Inkling

The wind, cold and parched, blowing from the deep, glimmering sea visible to the south, blew particles of sand past the white, block-like houses of Ruhigicir, into the Ruhig oasis, and through the stands of green-leaved palm trees, sprouting like weeds from a pavement, that characterised this part of Farhight. Ankh, his back to a palm, his armour gone, his square face leaning back, eyes closed in relaxation.
“Ankh! Ankh, sir!”
Ankh opened his eyes.
For a week, they had travelled east, despite the distance between Salkir and Ruhigicir being two days' camel ride. Sandstorms, sloth, numbers, and general bad organisation had contributed to their lack of progress. Half of their two hundred paighans, the peasant levies which the Farhighter Empire insisted on calling soldiers, had had their sandals fall apart halfway through the march, their being made out of wicker, like the paighans' shields and armour. Ankh suspected a well-aimed slice of cake stood little chance of piercing the paighans' armour, but anything else would shear through it. In addition, the two elephants they had brought from the plains around Ur-Qadesh, to the north of Salkir, had been violently sick on the third day; the ten chariots, fearsomely equipped with scythes that jutted out, razor-sharp, in every direction, had broken down, and three of their drivers had cut themselves trying to fix them; and the twenty Lanciars that Duke Scalax had sent from Akar had had to take off their heavy chain armour because of the fierce heat. There were no seasons on Elleria, because there was no tilt in the planet's axis; instead, the weather was ruled entirely by pressure systems. A fierce high pressure had blown north across the ocean from Tydon on the fourth day, bringing with it boiling sun and hardship.
And now Ankh was going to have to face it again.
“What is it?” he asked the paighan who had disturbed him, in Salkiri. A brown, skinny man with a drawn-on moustache, he looked nervous – as everyone in Farhight seemingly did when confronted with the western barbarians.
“Sir,” he answered – in Salkiri, very fast; Ankh had to concentrate to work out what he was saying - “we have found, ah, Blue Dragons, we think. Jurian Pasha said to tell you.”
“Blue Dragons? Where?”
Ankh dressed into his armour – scorching hot, despite the fact that he had left it in the shade – and shouted for the Lanciars he had been given as escort as the paighan told him. Apparently, a group of twenty men had been seen in a nearby village, all bearing wooden shields with a crude blue dragon painted on them, standing in the middle of the village around a man who had been shouting, partly about the communist ideals of the Blue Dragons but – oddly – mostly about some new religion the Blue Dragons were supposedly espousing. The Lanciars, all fiddling their armour into place, gathered around Ankh; his was the only white Pontifex's brush in evidence. The Farhighters had provided three mages, sorry enslaved creatures bent to Jurian Pasha's will by magical leashes, and Ankh suspected that they knew what he was, namely a wizard; but officially, the Pontifexes were only priests. If there was spellslinging to be done, let the Farhighters do it.
“Lanciar Ankh!” a heavily-accented voice shouted, accompanied by the clopping of hooves. Ankh turned, realised his helmet was incorrectly positioned, and banged it. It fell into place, the eyeholes appearing in front of his eyes to reveal a tall, handsome man in bronze scale armour on top of a mare. Behind him clustered the only worthwhile soldiers in the entire detachment: the world-famous Farhighter heavy cavalry archers.
“Jurian Pasha.” Ankh nodded, humourlessly. “You say we have found Blue Dragons.”
“Yes, yes we have.” Jurian Pasha smiled: his teeth were blindingly white, his beard oiled into an improbable Pharaonic-looking style that probably hadn't been in vogue for two thousand years. The spare child, a third son or so of Arkaryan El'satharios Jubal Dacoval naTazihim, the governor of the nome – or province – of Ruhig Oasis, Jurian Pasha naTazihim was, Ankh recalled, and young enough not to have earned any of the ridiculous train of names his father dragged around. He was handsome, brave and dashing, arrogant, headstrong and overconfident, but a good man overall, and many worse choices could have been made for pasha of the little army. Like all the nobility of the current dynasty, Jurian and his clan were descended from the Farh nomads who had descended on what had then been called Kemet. Mounted archers, the lower echelons of the Farh clans had retained their nomadic existence, serving as exclusive mercenaries to the nobility of the then-newly-created state of Farhight. Elite soldiers, they were the only equiv-tech soldiers that Ankh would have bet on against Lanciars.
“I look forward to smashing these peasant buffoons.” Jurian stated, smiling arrogantly. Those paighans present, being peasants themselves, gave him an irritated look. “I assume I can count on your aid, Lanciar Ankh.”
“I'm in the middle of the Farhighter desert, at least a day away from the nearest civilisation, with twenty Lanciars and all their equipment. It's not exactly like I'm doing anything else.”
“So... yes?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent.” Jurian swung down from his saddle, barely avoiding getting his foot tangled. “Now, these Blue Dragons are being suspiciously obvious.”
“Obviously.”
“So that means...” Jurian preened visibly, evidently pleased with his powers of deduction, “...this could be a trap!”
“Oh – well, yes it could.” Ankh kept a completely flat face: Jurian had surprised him. He had been expecting the average noble's-spoiled-brat approach of simply charging in with everything, but obviously Jurian was smarter than that.
“You Lanciars shall charge in, supported by my heavy cavalry. The paighans will take up position on either side of the town, in the surrounding trees; should there be a problem, they will charge in. Any questions? No? Let's go.”

* * *

Vellarion the Demented was, as his name suggested, quite, quite mad. He was also fully aware of the fact, which wasn't really supposed to happen, and of the great charisma that it gave him. It came from staring into the face of the deepest, darkest corners of the earth and walking away, though with a new set of priorities.
One of those priorites was spreading his new religion.
“I have seen the darkness!” he cried, spittle flying from his withered chops, the runes painted onto his shaven, pink-gleaming skull glittering darkly in the scorching Farhighter sun. His robes, long and coloured like dried blood, rippled in the breeze; his fingers crooked into an arthritic cage in front of his face. “There is no point in denying it! The dark gods, the gods the Soulforger locked away at the dawn of days, have chosen now to make their return, and have made the Eks Amenur their puppets. Their puppets are the Blue Dragons, and their Amenurite faith. I hear you say: you wish to be no-one's puppet! Well, I tell you, it is better to be the right hand of the devil than in his path and, I tell you true, the devil is coming, as sure as night follows day!”
“What are you blathering about?” An irate voice cut through his hyperbole. The would-be prophet wheeled around from his audience of entranced villagers from the makeshift podium he had erected, over the heads of his bodyguard, to glare angrily at Ankh, who had spoken. The Lanciar stood, arms folded, at the head of his retinue of twenty Lanciars; Jurian Pasha and his heavy cavalry stood off to one side, looking fierce.
“A Lanciar. What are you doing in the middle of the Farhighter desert?” Vellarion snapped.
“Well, I'm not really sure, but that's beside the point. You – whatever your name is - ”
“Vellarion the Demented.”
“Thank you.” Ankh answered drily, but humourlessly. “Very well, Mr. the Demented, you are under arrest for denial of the true gods of the Church of Benet - ”
“You fool!” Vellarion burst into fanatical rhetoric again. “Can't you see your feeble protectors are as nothing compared to the might of - ”
“Benet and the Soulforger are the indestructible shields of humanity, the true divinities - ” Ankh roared in defense of his faith.
“Has no-one considered the Dead God of the Desert - ” Jurian Pasha interjected.
“The Dead God of the Desert is DEAD!” Ankh and Vellarion bellowed at the samed time. Ankh continued.
“I was born a Farhighter! For fifteen years, all through the Pontifexial training, I believed he would show me the way and illumine this false bloody faith the Lanciars were pressing on me! Every day, I prayed to the Dead Bloody God of the Bloody Desert and NOTHING HAPPENED! He didn't reward my faith, he rewarded it with NOTHING!”
An awkward silence settled over the village.
“I apologise. I realise I may have revealed more than I intended to of my personal life.” Ankh said. “Nevertheless! Vellarion the Demented, I place you under arrest.”
“I think not. Blue Dragons! Prove to me your loyalty!”
The village erupted. The Blue Dragon bodyguard jumped forward, wicker dragon-painted shields ahead, rusty swords overhead. Ankh pulled out his own sword, a metre of shining Akarean steel, felt his Lanciars charge in behind him and Jurian Pasha's heavy cavalry thundering. A Blue Dragon, an uncommonly pale, mucky weed of a man with a blue dragon tattooed on his face, charged into Ankh, screaming something in some incomprehensible Farhighter dialect. Ankh took his sword on his own: the blades sparked off each other, Ankh's polished sword biting a nick into the other man's rusty battered steel. They stood like that for a moment, mailed Lanciar against wicker-armoured fanatic, swords straining against each other, before Ankh bulled forward behind his shield and slammed into the man. He careened backwards, still shouting but this time with an overtone of terror. Ankh finished him almost without thinking about it and turned to find another enemy.
Suddenly, his vision went black, stars in front his eyes, a stunning pain in the back of his head. He reeled forward, the world having gone surreal and blue in front of his eyes as the blood rushed away from his brain. He staggered around, bending just enough to take another slash on the shoulder. This man's sword, less rusty than the others, chopped through the mail, grazing Ankh's shoulder. Ankh got his shield up, took another blow on it as he got his bearings. This man was a bad swordsman, just flurrying blows wildly and leaving himself undefended, not using his shield at all. Ankh took another blow on his shield, swung his sword towards the man's legs. A scream: he was legless. Ankh put him out of his misery.
He felt a whoosh, behind him, as of another sword coming – and whipped around, not being caught on the hop this time. But this man was strong, very strong indeed. Ankh was knocked backwards, thudding heavily into the ground. He banged his head – stars flew again – he looked up. A shadow. It must be his enemy. Quickly, he closed his eyes, focused in that indescribable way that magicians must to access their power. Ancient glyphs in the Spelltongue, the archaic language the long-dead Mistocren people invented a thousand years ago to control magic with, flickered in front of his closed vision, circular serrated shapes imbued with concentric layers of meaning. A sentence in the Spelltongue, written on the surface of Ankh's consciousness: into his mind. The shadow stumbled, Ankh saw inside his head, started rearranging stuff, fiddling around, removing the Blue Dragon-ness -
Something else.
A shining beacon, or rather, a shining beacon's reverse: an all-consuming darkness, but outside Ankh's victim's mind, rather in the centre of the village. Ankh crushed the Blue Dragon's mind absent-mindedly, letting the now-infantile creature go limp, and opened his eyes to the real world.
What he saw was not reassuring.
Vellarion the Demented, scab-red robes flapping around his bony frame, the glyphs inked on his head glowing with a chaotic pinkish radiance, was floating spreadeagled in the air, as if the atmosphere had curled a windy fist about him and picked him up. Around him whipped a soot-black tempest, tendrils of blackness curling out and whipping about like a set of dragon's wings, leaving floating black particles in his wake. Central to it was a tiny sun of darkness, swallowing and billowing around the sorcerer. Incongruously, the real sun shone, white and bright, right behind it.
It was the single most evil thing Ankh had ever seen.
“No, no, no,” he found himself shouting, struggling forward – damn armour! It was so heavy - “stop him, stop him, stop him, STOP THE DAMN RITUAL, YOU FOOLS! Come on, come on, COME ON - ”
“Feast your eyes on the Beholder!” Vellarion screeched, a thin reedy pathetic noise whipped away by the intensity of the storm he had conjured. In the heart of the vortex, the world twisted and ripped, the very fabric of the universe itself splitting open in a way that really shouldn't have been possible.
Something came through.
A tentacle, pink and worm-like, tipped with a prehensile pad, quested through. Ankh rushed towards it, tripping over his armour, still screaming to stop the ritual, sword out, cutting his way through screaming Blue Dragons who tried to block him. He had to stop it, otherwise -
Oh no.
An eye, big as a man's head, blue-irised and bloodshot, above a fang-filled mouth, gaping and cruel, roped with slaver. The thing's head, on which the lone, baleful eye and mouth were, looked for all the world like a living human brain, pink and laced with barely-visibly-pulsing capillaries, red and branching. From below its mouth, a spray of tentacles, long and pink and tipped with the same pads that had come through the portal, hung like some kind of amphibian beard. The whole contraption, stretching eight feet into the air, defying every single convention of logicality that ever there was, raked the battlefield with its gaze.
The Lanciars – trained from birth, battle-hardened, brave, brainwashed, Spartan, and legendary – turned and ran. Jurian Pasha's horses shied and bucked, throwing men who ran after the horses shouting. From the trees above the village there came a rustling as the hundreds of paighans hidden there fled, smashing into the trees and shaking their leaves in their haste to get away.
Only Ankh stood, broad dark face impassive, eyes narrowed, standing with his legs braced, shield with the symbol of Akar, the crossed scythe, crook, hammer and sword, in front of him, his hand wrapped tightly about his longsword's hilt. The corpses of the Blue Dragons stacked around his feet, staining his mail with their blood.
“And what do you think you're going to do?” Vellarion smiled, squatting down relaxedly in the shadow of the hideous creature he had summoned.
“We'll see.” Ankh answered.
“Oh, give it a rest, you idiot. Beholder! Kill!”
The eye turned, looked at Ankh. Its pupil narrowed.
Ankh shifted his grip on his sword, watching the creature. Curiously, it extended a tentacle towards him, the fleshy tentacle snaking wavily through the air.
Ankh's sword flashed. The creature yanked its tentacle back, hissing, the rubbery end half-severed.
The single baleful eye narrowed.
The tentacles, three of them at once now, darted towards Ankh from different directions. He lashed out with his sword at one, caught another on his shield, felt another snake around his legs, looking for a way to trip him up – but his mail gown prevented it. He stepped on the tentacle, blocked another tentacle, slashed at another -
And could only watch as what must by now be the seventh tentacle wrapped itself around his chest, coiling and coiling and coiling and dragging him right up to the foul creature. He lashed out with his sword, struggling futilely, but more tentacles wrapped around his arms and legs, and one wrapped itself around his head, a slimy pink worm circling his helmet and blocking his eye-holes with greasy ropes of flesh. Ankh noticed – bizarrely – that the tentacles were adorned with thousands and thousands of tiny bristles. What were they for?
The single eye jerked wide open, the single pupil fixated on Ankh.
Ankh thrashed, hundreds of volts of bioelectricity coursing through his body. As he slowly came back online, he noticed the thing's smell: coppery like burnt blood, but with a chemical overtone to it and more than a hint of dung. He slumped, a few last crackles of lightning lancing between the little bristles and his mail. So that's what the bristles are for, he thought inanely. He felt himself being shifted and he opened his eyes, saw through a gap in the tentacles the beholder -
No! He would not die like this!
But what could he do?
Stupid question with an obvious answer: magic.
Ankh closed his eyes. The circular symbols of the Spelltongue flickered across his mind again, tapping into the fifth force of the universe. He pushed, reaching across into the soggy mass of flesh that was the Beholder's head and initiating a mind war.
The eye closed.
It pushed back.
Ankh swore, in his own mind. The Beholder could use magic! He thought again, diverting a tiny portion of his concentration from the mind war – damn! It was gaining on him! - to initiate a distraction, something bright and annoying. Another sequence of glyphs, and a flare went off in front of the Beholder's eye.
Nothing. He put all his concentration into beating the Beholder, put it was too strong, it was pushing him back inside the confines of his own skull and he was going to die -
Suddenly, the Beholder's concentration vanished. Suspiciously, Ankh probed forward – no traps, no nothing. What was going on?
Equally suddenly, the tentacles holding Ankh up went slack and he thudded to the ground, breaking – no, attenuating; Ankh just managed to keep his concentration – the mind war. He pushed forward – the Beholder was diverting some of its concentration again! He had to work fast – and -
He reached into the utterly alienness of the Beholder's mind. Indescribable images of hellish places flickered in front of his eyes, smells and sounds and horrible things -
He imagined a mailed Lanciar's fist around the Beholder's mind, and snapped it shut. The creature's thoughts squelched into infantile, dysfunctional nothingness, its intelligence reduced to a vegetable state, its usefulness nil. He opened his eyes, saw the creature swaying in front of him, its tentacles drifting. He ran forward, took a running jump – as much as he could in his armour – and rammed his sword through the Beholder's eye.
From behind the thing's settling bulk, Jurian Pasha stepped, without his horse.
“I thought you could use the assistance,” he smiled, wiping blood off his blade, “but my horse disagreed.”
Vellarion the Demented cursed in a language older than life and turned. The rift through which he had summoned the beholder was still open. If he ran, which he did, bony legs flailing out desperately, he might reach it -
A hand grabbed his shoulder and a sword tucked itself under his chin.
“You aren't going anywhere.” Ankh whispered.

A Minor Clarification

For those who came here in search of communists, the Blue Dragons are communist. Just thought I'd clear that up. That's all. Yep.

The Shai Qadi Ninja I

Constantine fumed. And it wasn't the heat.
For when he had, at last, found Duke Scalax... ha. He remembered it well. He and that hideous would-be ally of his, Kantor, the Nimble Mind, had strode triumphantly into Scalax's command pavilion.
“I am,” Constantine had declared, grandiosely, “the man who brings you Tyrenea.”
“Out.” Scalax had said to Kantor. “I don't care what message of world-shatteringly revolutionary importance you bring, it can wait until I've dealt with this moron.”
“Moron, sir?!”
“How did you do it?” Scalax asked, curtly, and Constantine had explained – slightly nonplussed – how he'd gotten to Tyrene, been captured, and had been on his way to the headsman's block when the people of the city, already annoyed at their being neutral in the Dragon War, had rioted at the prospect of executing Lanciars.
"The Tyreneans are an Akaric people, like us - " he had explained.
"I know that." Scalax had interrupted, frigidly.
"Well, there was this ethnic solidarity movement going on – helped by the corruption in the Patriarchal government. They took over the city – well, the Patriarch gave it to them – and sent me, along with four thousand Tyrenean soldiers as a gesture of goodwill, to ask you to install a native Lanciarial government in the city."
"So you survived by luck."
"Well - "
"Lanciar Constantine, through your reckless foolishness, you could have lost your own life, the lives of ninety of your comrades, and you could have brought the wrath of Tyrenea down on us, leaving us fighting a two-front war!" Scalax slammed his fist into the table, jumping all the cups and inkpots on it. "I should have you farming some bog back home for the rest of your life!"
"Sir, with all - "
"SILENCE!!!" Scalax bellowed. "I don't care whether or not you succeeded. Luckily for you, the rest of the command does – I cannot even strip you of your rank. But I can do this."
And that was how Constantine had ended up in southern Lannding, while the main force moved towards Lanndar, searching for a phantom.
Oh, the Shai Qadi Ninja – as this phantom called himself – was fearsome enough, and the stories circulating about this creature would turn a grown man's stomach, but he was only one man. Why Constantine had been given ten Cataphracts and sent off into the wilderness for one man... He balled his fists unconsciously.
Further north, close to the Urglenn Mountains where the sly little Ersian folk made their homes, Lannding was reasonably fertile, but the landscape that Constantine and his ten Cataphracts pushed their horses through was a dry dustbowl of a place, the dirt beneath their feet too fine even to achieve the status of sand. Blasted, sun-cracked orange cliffs loomed on either side of the ravine through which they passed; the sun, red like a bloody mouth, dribbled its glare on the shattered landscape. To the left, the vast plateau and sun-scorched peak of Barrowmount, Grave of Cities, loomed: not even the Shai Qadi folk of the desert would go near the mountain. There was common sense in that, of course – the mountain was tall, treacherous, and uninhabitable except by rock wyrms and the like – but there was an element of superstition as well.
Constantine felt inclined to note an element of superstition in the existence of the Shai Qadi Ninja also.
"Where did the last villagers say they'd seen him?"
"They said he headed this way, sir."
"Well, I don't see him..."
"That's only because I don't want you to, Lanciar."
There he was. Right in front of them, standing on a rock, black-blue robes rippling in a sudden wind, hand on his scimitar, face wreathed in black.
I hate it when bad guys do that, Constantine thought.
"I imagine you are the Shai Qadi Ninja." Constantine remarked. "Are the stories about you true?" Behind him, he heard the soft whirr and woody wrenching of gastraphetes being prepared to fire.
"I call myself the Shai Qadi Ninja, true. You are called Constantine. You are a Decanus among the Lanciars and you recently captured Tyrenea."
I hate it when bad guys do that too.
"Mr... aah, Ninja, I am placing you under arrest by the authority of the Archduchy of Akar and Tyrenea on charges of membership of the illegal Blue Dragon organisation, assault, rape - "
"Spare me." The man jumped down from the rock and strode towards Constantine. "You are a man of great potential, Constantine of Akar, and my goddess Benet would ardently desire your service."
"What are you talking about? Benet is my goddess."
"The other Benet, Constantine, the other Benet. The one whose servitors are the Amen Ur, whose home is the hellish city of Delirium, and whose worship the Blue Dragons have taken up, Constantine. Membership of the Amenurites is very exclusive, Constantine. Had I the choice, you would be dead right now. But I was, aah, obliged to offer you ingress."
"Rubbish!" Constantine snorted. "I don't want to get into your damn cult. Lanciars, kill him."
That was when everything went wrong.
The rocks came alive. Blue-robed men with composite bows, like the Shai Qadi Ninja save that their faces, lined and brown, were visible, popped up from the canyon all around. And I hate when bad guys do that too, Constantine thought irately. But these were Shai Qadis, longtime allies of Akar.
"Shai Qadi people!" he shouted, holding his hands up and ignoring the Ninja.
"Kill them." the Ninja ordered dismissively in Salkiri. "But leave the leader for me."
A few gastraphetes bolts spat out wildly, someone cursed in Salkiri. There was a whirring sound and a chorus of grunts.
When Constantine turned around, all his Lanciars were dead.
"You should have accepted my offer!" the Shai Qadi Ninja bellowed -
- and stepped back as Constantine's sword snicked through the air where his head had been moments before.
"Come here, you coward!" Constantine roared in turn, his sword held out in front of him, shield forgotten by his side. The black-robed bandit considered for a moment.
"Feather him." he ordered.
One arrow took Constantine in the shoulder, another in the leg, and a third in the small of his back. He jerked forward, his helmet concealing the widening of his eyes as the pain kicked in.
The bandit sauntered forward and kicked the Lanciar off his feet. Constantine hit the ground, rolled over, snapping the arrow in his back. The sun burned down on him until the Shai Qadi Ninja's shadow shaded him.
"You've wasted your first chance." he whispered. "Live and reconsider." Then he was gone.
Constantine gritted his teeth, moaning in the dry dust of Lannding. There would be hell to pay for this, he vowed.
Or rather, hell would pay for this.