Neversfall - Ed Gentry [5]
Fifteen paces from the fleeing soldier, Taennen could clearly see wounds on the man's arms and neck, thin oozing cuts. The horn-blower rasped and wheezed, his lungs strained from running, but one word was clear: "Monsters."
Taennen reined his mount to a stop next to the young soldier. The runner sucked hard for breath, collapsing against Taennen's horse. Taennen looked back to see the rest of the Maquar and Durpari. They marched toward him but were still several long bowshots away.
"What's the danger, soldier?" Taennen said.
The soldier tried to speak, but still Taennen could only make out that one word. Taennen reached down and turned the man's face toward him. His eyes were glossy and distant, his pallid face streaked with blood. Taennen released him. Whatever had stricken so much fear into this man would not drive Taennen to the same state. He was Maquar.
The Durpari man pushed away from the horse and ran to the rest of the troops. The Durpari mercenaries had fallen in with the Maquar, both forces approaching but still some distance away. Taennen pulled his steed s reins and turned the horse to take his place among his men. He froze in place when his ears began to vibrate with an unfamiliar sound. It felt like dozens of flies buzzed in unison inside his head. There was no pain, but the sound was discomfiting.
He stared toward the east, still unable to see what might be causing the sound. Taennen slid off" the horse. Something was close. He jogged forward, coming to the top of a small hillock, and looked over its edge into the valley below. He nearly cried out. Behind him he heard the horse scream and take off towards the Maquar and Durpari. He shook his head to clear it, and glanced back at the fast approaching army.
"Sirs," he said as Jhoqo and Adeenya reached him. "We have a problem."
Below the gathered troops, at the bottom of the gently sloping hill and charging toward them, was an army of creatures. Taennen's practiced eyes scanned the mobbing beasts. "Approximately fifty individuals," he reported. "Maybe ten bugbears, another dozen goblins, a score of kobolds, more than a dozen humans and… by the One! A pair of girallons and a half-giant." Jhoqo nodded, his brow furrowed, his mind already working on a strategy, Taennen was certain.
Goblins, bugbears and kobolds together, Taennen could accept, but never had he seen so many humans alongside the black-hearted creatures.
But that was not their greatest concern. What Taennen, and no doubt the others near him, found so amazing were the creatures behind that gathered mass.
Ranging in sizes that matched everything from a dog to a horse stood another twenty or so creatures, looking like twisted and mutilated centaurs crossed with insects. Taennen was reminded of desert ants, only these creatures were less graceful in appearance and many thousands of times larger. Their reddish brown flesh shimmered in the midday sun. They stood on four legs that bent at multiple joints. Two arms attached to shoulders topped by wicked, bony protrusions. Bulbous sacks erupted where their legs and backs met and carried short barbs on some of the creatures. There could be no doubt that they were pressing the other creatures, human and goblinoid alike, up the hill toward the waiting soldiers.
"What in all the order of the Adama are those?" someone from the ranks exclaimed.
Taennen had seen a wemic once, a leonine creature similar to the centaur-like ants below. The wemic had been beautiful and frightening at the same time, elegant death in motion. The same could not be said of these creatures. They moved with twitches and jerks, their gait uneven. Thin to the point of emaciation with hairs covering their legs, they clattered along with their stomping cohorts. They could not be creatures of this world. Where they came from was a mystery, but they did not belong in Veldorn, that much he knew.
"Something is terribly wrong," Adeenya said.
"We should continue to the citadel," Khatib advised. There was