The Doom of Kings_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [78]
The tales he had seen in the night throbbed in Geth’s head. The heroes of Kuun wouldn’t have waited. Neither would he. Geth drew a deep breath, braced himself, and stood. A wave of dizziness came over him, but he fought it back and took Wrath when Senen offered the sword to him.
“Do it,” he told Dagii. “We ride at dusk.”
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Their first night out of Rhukaan Draal was the most difficult, at least for Geth. Although he’d broken his fast with a tremendous meal and slept through most of the day, the effects of his vigil on the roof of Khaar Mbar’ost lingered in his bones. He swayed in the saddle and kept falling asleep as they rode. More than once he wondered if maybe they should have waited until the morning, but he knew that the stories of the past wouldn’t have let him. They churned inside him, demanding action. The entire party—Ekhaas and Ashi, Dagii, Chetiin, and Midian—felt the urgency to be on the road, though. Haruuc hadn’t returned to Khaar Mbar’ost by nightfall, but reports of events beyond the Ghaal River had: the Gan’duur’s descent on the fields had been swift and thorough. A significant portion of the crops, summer-dry and almost ready for harvest, had burned, and the Gan’duur raiding parties were still roaming the countryside, causing more havoc.
When they stopped near dawn, Geth all but tumbled out of his saddle. Dagii let none of them sleep for long, however. By midafternoon, they were riding again. It became their pattern to ride through the afternoon and evening and late into the night, sleeping through the dawn and morning hours. As Chetiin explained to Geth, in a land where most of the population was as comfortable at night as during the day, dawn was the least active time and the safest period to rest.
Geth missed riding with the goblin behind him, but Chetiin had, as he’d said, acquired a mount of his own, one that was almost as silent as he was. While the rest of the party clopped along on Tariic’s magebred horses—or in Midian’s case on his magical pony—Chetiin rode a great black wolf that padded beside them like a shadow. There was a disturbing, malevolent sharpness in the animal’s eyes, and when Ashi commented that first night that she felt like the wolf was watching them all, the snarl that came from its muzzle sounded eerily like speech.
“She is watching you,” Chetiin said, “and she’d prefer if you didn’t call her ‘the wolf.’ Her name is Marrow. She’s a worg.” He scratched behind his mount’s ears. “Her pack has an ancient alliance with the taarka’khesh. She’s agreed to travel with me as a favor.”
“How can she run with the horses?” Geth asked. “I’d have thought they’d be terrified.”
Chetiin produced a vial of slightly milky liquid. “A taarka’khesh preparation. She smells like a horse.” Marrow growled and Chetiin added, “Not that she’s happy about it.”
Like the landscape between Matshuc Zaal and the Gathering Stone, the ruins of human habitation marked the country that they rode through south of Rhukaan Draal. It lacked, however, the feeling of emptiness and desolation. The fields and orchards that had run wild alongside the trade road had been tamed, though in many places it wasn’t farmers working the soil, but slaves. Through the long afternoons, the distant crack of overseers’ whips was as common as birdsong. In Matshuc Zaal, the slaves had been goblins, hobgoblins, and kobolds, but Geth was shocked to see humans, dwarves, and shifters in the fields as well. Ekhaas looked ashamed when he asked her about it. “Captives taken during the war or in raids,” she said “If Haruuc were riding this way, you wouldn’t see them. The overseers would hide them until he passed.”
“He must know they’re there,” growled Geth. “Why doesn’t he free them?”
“Haruuc holds a sword by the blade,” said Ekhaas. “Promises of plunder—including slaves—were one of Haruuc’s first tools in uniting the clans. Now he’s paying for that. Warlords like Daavn of the Marhaan are hungry