• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Sound lagged sight: A huge rockslide was scouring the slope above. The tumbling chaos of boulders poured over the edge of the cliff before the roar of it reached their ears.

Rytlock, Korrak, and the command corps turned around, shouting to the warriors behind them in the choke point. Their warnings were drowned out.

The first boulder smashed down atop a charr axeman. Another slab hammered a whole warband. Then stones pounded down in such numbers that the soldiers were lost in a crimson cloud of dust.

Korrak, Rytlock, and the command corps fell back as rocks cascaded into the canyon. Stones spun in clouds of dust and hurled out shrapnel. They mounded in the gap—thirty feet and sixty feet and ninety feet high, filling the canyon. At last, the final stones slid over the cliff’s edge and clattered to a stop on the huge pile.

It was more than a pile. It was a cairn. Warbands lay interred there.

“A trap!” Rytlock shouted.

“Shut up!” Korrak snarled.

“I told you it was a trap!”

“I said shut up!” Korrak swung the axe end of his weapon in a wide arc.

Rytlock rolled away and came up in a crouch. A fierce smile ripped across his face. He grasped the hilt of his sword and drew it slowly from its stone scabbard. A fiery blade emerged, forged of two sharpened strands of twisted metal. Its name was Sohothin. Long ago it had belonged to a human prince of Ascalon. Now it was Rytlock’s.

“You would raise your blade against me?” Korrak Blacksnout growled. “I will put an end to—”

The centurion’s threat was cut short along with his neck, severed and cauterized. The head toppled, and the body crouched and fell.

Soldier Rytlock Brimstone turned to the dozen Iron Legion warriors standing with him on the near side of the rockfall and said, “Guess you’re going to need a new leader.”

One by one, they dropped to their knees and nodded their loyalty.

“We acknowledge you as our centurion—for the moment,” snarled Sever Sootclaw. “Shall we clear the passage?”

“Let the charr behind the rocks clear it. We’ll hunt down the humans who did this!”

Sootclaw’s brow rose. “Humans? Here?”

“Yes. Here.” Rytlock glared toward the cliff top. “They’re cannier than you realize, but they’re also cowards. They’ll be fleeing now. We must be faster.” Rytlock unclasped his breastplate and let it clank to the ground. “Take no needless thing. We have a long climb and a longer run and a battle afterward.”

One by one, the kneeling warriors stood, their breastplates falling to the ground around them. They had given up their defenses. Now, they would fight to the death.

Day was dying as Logan Thackeray and his scouts reached a high pass above the timberline. They were about to descend into a new valley, but Logan lingered on a rocky overhang and peered back the way they had come, watching for movement. So far, only the shadows had moved, lengthening as the sun quit the world. The route they had taken would discourage any but the angriest pursuers.

Of course, these foes were furious.

At first, there was nothing. The mountain was silent, the air still. But then he glimpsed it. Five miles back and half a mile downslope, the saplings shivered with their passage.

The charr were coming.

Logan scrambled back from the overhang and went to his scouts. “They’re closing on us. They’re only five miles back.”

The scouts stared at him, their faces white. They were light scouts trained for merchant caravans—not even part of the Ebon Vanguard. None of them had faced a single charr, let alone a dozen.

“The mountain and the darkness are our allies,” Logan said. “We’ll set traps as we retreat.”

“Where? To the west? Those are ogre lands!” objected Wescott.

“Maybe we’ll get past the ogres and the charr won’t,” Logan said simply. “Let’s go!” He led the others down into a new valley.

Beneath a staring moon, Legionnaire Rytlock Brimstone bounded along a trail, dragging the air into his lungs. “They’re close now. Can’t you smell them?”

In the blackness, Sever Sootclaw crashed his foot on a stone. “Draw your sword. We need light.”

“And show them where we are?” snarled Rytlock.