Nights of Villjamur - Mark Charan Newton [183]
The thick ice vibrated beneath their feet, responding to the bass thunder of animal and warrior. Some from his order beside him gave a mumble of concern. There must have been over a hundred soldiers now approaching them in two columns, and at thirty paces away, the skjaldborg was all that lay between them.
Approaching troops and horses collapsed on impact when hitting the invisible wall cast up by the relic, the others colliding straight into the back of them.
Seeing how it was saving them, this relic didn’t seem so much a piece of cultist technology as a makeshift prayer.
There were gasps of agony from behind it as the oncomers still desperately piled into the shield. Horses lurched sideways. Metal armor pinged against the resisting emptiness.
Such power gave Dartun a cheap thrill at times, but he maintained his composure.
The shell-creatures seemed totally unable to comprehend what they faced. Fallen companions looked up from the ground with bulging eyes as the horses trampled them. At least they’re not invincible, Dartun thought, seeing black blood spit against the flat nothingness and ooze down it as if on glass. To the rumel, at least, it soon became apparent that there was no way through, and some began shouting urgent commands to those at the rear. Their language was none that Dartun recognized.
Eventually the turmoil ceased and the rumel stood observing Dartun calmly, militant voyeurs. He turned to beckon to his entourage. “Come on—don’t be shy.”
The other cultists joined him.
“They look just like the rumels you find in the Archipelago, don’t they?” Todi remarked.
“They do indeed,” Dartun replied. “Which is interesting, don’t you think?”
“How so?” Verain inquired.
“Because those ones have red skins, unlike any of ours. Otherwise they seem anatomically identical. Even those shell creatures aren’t all that far removed from what we find in our world. They’re bipeds, for one thing. Yet if they stepped out of that Realm Gate,” he indicated the glow to the north, “then why would there be any similarities at all?”
“That suggests some evolutionary link to our own world,” Todi said. “Or maybe we derive from them in some way.”
“Excellent reasoning,” Dartun said. His mind was buzzing with theories. “One might go so far as to say our ancestors might have shared origins, then?”
Someone on the other side tried firing an arrow, which struck the shield, stopped in midair, and fell uselessly to the ice. Others scraped the invisible wall with their swords. They weren’t going anywhere.
Dartun walked in front of them, his arms folded, scrutinizing them. The armor of the rumel was sophisticated, he noted—intricate designs which had their roots in some of the ancient traditions of the Máthema civilization. They clutched swords, bows, small round shields, which meant interestingly that their technology seemed no more advanced than that of the Boreal Archipelago. Dartun wondered how this race might have evolved totally independently of his own world.
Gasps.
Dartun looked round to see a group of shell-creatures begin advancing upward, digging their claws into the wall generated by the relic. He laughed at this absurd vision, but for a moment he wondered just how high the relic’s range would offer sanctuary. He certainly didn’t want to take any chances.
One of the creatures finally reached the top of the invisible barrier then fell some distance to the ground, not far from his feet. Within moments, as if perceiving his thoughts, the undead soldiers approached it.
“Make sure they kill it properly.” Dartun gestured for the undead to move. They shambled numbly forward, inert, eyes focused at a vague distance. Fifty or so had gathered around their intended victim when another creature dropped