Fate of an Empire (Talurian Empire Trilogy Book 1) (20 page)

“I don’t think
you will be disappointed,” Larkin grinned, foolishly, “The fiancé is putting on
some kind of act to protect two additional people that came on the wagon. The
leader of the group, Corporal Rurik Kaster,” The man showed a glimmer of
recognition at the name, “showed me a letter, but Saris sent his own message
ahead of them with a fast rider, the same time that he sent word of war to the
Emperor. There was no mention of cause to be distrustful, but it was very
detailed, and what it said was different from what has shown up on the
doorstep.” Larkin paused, and rubbed his hands together, “And you’ll never
guess the surprise twist!”

“I’m brimming
with excitement,” the man responded, flatly.

“One of the
additional party members is a baby! When the hell did they come about taking in
a baby?”

“A baby.” The
man repeated to himself, retreating inward in thought.

“Good, right?”
Larkin asked. He got no response. “Maybe good enough for my big pay off?” He
leaned forward, trying to peek at the man’s face. “Hello?”

The man
suddenly jabbed out and caught Larkin in the throat. “You have done enough.
Your services are no longer required.”

Larkin fell to
the ground, grabbing at his collapsed throat.

The man
whistled, and two other figures appeared. “You, get rid of the body.” One of
the new men drug Larkin away, still trembling with his last seconds of life.
“And
you
, find me Gretio, tell him I think we might have a lead in the
Aamin Kaster case. I think we might have the break we need to tarnish our
mighty General, after all,” He laughed quietly to himself “And the poor fool
probably doesn’t know what is going on with his ‘trusted’ people. Saris will
fall by association.”

Within a
minute, they cleared the area around the pond and disappeared into the night,
leaving behind no trace that anything had transpired there.

Vyker marched
his troops forward for the sixth day.

The morning
air was chilled, and steam rose from the hot bodies of his mixed soldiers. Each
day they had assembled into three or four groups and hit at the Keep’s
surrounding palisades. They could not start the siege until the Talurians
outside the walls, were killed or pushed back inside.

After the
horrific battle against the demon beast, Taverous and his Tearanei had
retreated into their large tent. The energy expended during that fight had
ravaged their bodies, and they needed to recuperate.

Luckily for
Vyker and his army, it seemed the effects of the battle wore on Balar also, for
he and his undead had been absent from the battlefield, equally as long. Their
only magical aids at the moment were the royal children and Captain Shaymesh, who
had warned against the Talurians own druid.

The muscles
tightened in Vyker’s neck, a snarl etched across his face. He looked on the
Talurian army with hatred. He loved each morning that he could answer a small,
but satisfying, amount of his anger, with the blood of his fallen enemies.

“You doing
alright over there?” Dageros asked. He rode next to the General, taking the
place of his brother that morning.

“Just firing
up the inner rage, my boy,” Vyker said with a smirk.

Dageros
laughed, “Oh, to be a surly, old war General!”

The two rode
on horseback, accompanied by a dozen other mounted soldiers, then followed by
two companies of footman. They were one of three groups attacking today,
Shaymesh and Fayeth, who returned from her scouting trips earlier in the week,
led one to the south of them, while Ceth and his newly appointed
second-in-command, Ryon, headed one to the north.

They halted just
out of the bow range. Vyker scanned the low, wooden walls. Each day they had
managed to reach the barrier and inflict substantial damage but had yet to
overrun the forces guarding it from within. He wanted today to be the day. He
could taste it as if victory was something tangible.

He waited a
moment before giving the command, looking to make sure Shaymesh and Ceth had
their forces in position and took a last look behind, toward the open pavilion
were King Melidarius sat with Kaillum and the three other Chiefs, anxiously
watching.

His hand found
the hilt of his heavy jagged sword. He ripped the blade from his side and thrust
it into the air. Shaymesh and Ceth did the same in response—all was ready.

Vyker slashed it
down like a hammer and shouted, “Charge!”

Seconds after
the soldiers were unleashed; an aerial response from the Talurian archers
dotted the sky. Vyker galloped across the battlefield, raising his shield to
deflect the arrows.
Pang, pang
, the tips assaulted and dented his metal buckler,
but it held.

His riders were
the first to reach the walls. Lines of metal clad Talurian soldiers stood ready
with spears anchored in the dirt.

The river of
men splashed up and over the barrier and, what was two sides, was now a
twisting mess of bodies all locked in violent struggle. The initial impact
dismounted Vyker. He swung his blade, dropping enemy after enemy, and soon a
circle of ground had been cleared around him by fear of his frenzied blood-letting.

He spotted Dageros
or rather a group of him. The real Dageros remained inside a small arc of his
fighting copies. They defended him while he was able to judge the situation and
pass out orders.

Vyker was so
proud of the young boy, who he had grown into such an honorable man.

Dageros’
family was like his own. He fought his way toward the Prince, leaving bloodied
earth in his wake. After so many years, the movement of war was a secondhand
thought—a spin here, a stab this way, a downward swipe across there. It was a
well-practiced waltz. 

He kept his
focus on Dageros. Suddenly Fayeth teleported beside him, nearly catching a
reactive swing from her brother. They were talking about something, but Vyker
couldn’t make out the words, he couldn’t completely focus on them, he had his
limits.

A rush of
enemy soldiers surged up and broke through Dageros’ copies. Without a moment of
hesitation, Fayeth notched and let fly, three arrows, taking her victims in the
center of their throats. Dageros slid between his sister and another soldier,
catching his prey in the stomach, ripping open a wide, disemboweling gash.

Vyker reached
them right as the immediate action ended and watched as Dageros quickly rebuilt
his self-army. The momentary reprieve allowed Fayeth to repeat her message to
the General. Balar’s undead have reentered the fight and had taken on a new
shape. Before she finished telling him everything, a chorus of roars erupted to
their left.

Handfuls of
men launched into the air. Vyker strained to see the cause. A rush of men
retreated from the area. It seemed whatever had been causing the havoc, was not
easily falling to the blade.

The sea of men
thinned enough for the three to view the tormentor or tormentors, there were
five beings standing out in the open—manlike abominations. They were products
of some kind of combination among Balar’s undead soldiers.

Standing eight
feet tall, the gnarled and muscled men, orchestrated death with six fiercely
accurate and controlled arms. Two carried massive iron shields tipped with long
spikes, which would spread open to reveal two more arms wielding a curved sword
and a long spear. The last pair reached over and aimed a bow at its prey that
would send arrows thundering through the air, launching men off their feet with
its bone-crushing impact.

Long, blade
wounds riddled their bodies, but no effect on their performance was visible.
They probably inherited the only weakness of their previous version—their
heart.

Vyker shouted
out over the mass of warriors, “Stay away from them! Concentrate on breaching
the palisades!”

A streak of
light flew past his eyes. One of the Tearanei now stood in the center of the
battle. Vyker tried to recall his name. It was the quiet one, well quieter than
the rest.

Lasal! That
was it.

The hooded
mage whirled his staff through the air. Flashes of silver echoed the point in
which throwing daggers released from his palms. He jumped high into the air and
glided down like a feather, grasping at the various vials that hung from his
vest. With a
pop
, a cork was removed from a shiny metallic potion, and
he launched it at the feet of one of the six-armed creatures.

The dirt
absorbed it instantly. The creature froze in place, tugging at its legs. They
were turning to stone faster than he could react and before ten seconds passed,
the being was a statue, capturing its horrendous expression.

Dageros
touched Vyker’s shoulder to get his attention and pointed off to their right.
Mathis and Arclite had also joined the fight. The men’s presence rallied the
troops around them, and again the tide was shifting in their favor.

A sharp whistle
cut through the air and, moments later, the massive wooden gate to the Keep
lifted. Two dozen of the six-armed undead poured out from the Keep, but only to
take position around the entranceway. The remaining Talurian forces fled inside
the protective stone walls while their undead allies kept any of Vyker’s forces
far from the gateway.

The Tearanei were
absorbed with a magical conflicted that had started when a group of Balar’s
Staffwielders had appeared atop the walls of the Keep. The Tearanei struggled
to divert their attacks from landing devastating blows on the troops below.

With their
efforts being directed toward them, the Talurians managed to retreat into the
Keep and close the gates behind them. The six-armed undead beat back anyone
courageous enough to pursue, with some soldiers getting trapped inside the Keep,
to be helplessly slaughtered by the black army within.

Vyker rallied
his soldiers and ordered the palisades to be burned. Soon after, the whole
outer base was aflame. Vyker was angered by the loss of life during the
assault, but couldn’t help feel a little happiness that his army had gained
another step closer to victory.

As if hearing
his thoughts, the mass of soldiers roared out in cheer. They carried the dead
and wounded back to the camp with almost a skip in their walk. They knew their
brother-in-arms had fought for something greater than themselves and, soon,
their sacrifice would be honored to the fullest. It was time to begin the siege
on the inner Keep of Hillsford.

The Talurians
had nowhere to turn.

*
* *

The cheers
echoed Saris’ nightmares. He cringed as he watched his limping army retreat
through the gate. He was not atop the wall in his usual position. He was on the
ground, trying his hardest to not strike his own soldiers.

How could
they let those savages out there beat me? General Saris!

And that
damn Balar! That good for nothing piece of horse shit! With all his might, he
cannot simply hold the Merkadians at bay.

Thandril stood
at his side. “Should I give Arteus the command to retaliate? The trebuchets are
rearmed from last night.”

Saris walked
away in disgust. “I don’t care what you do.”

With a sudden
realization of his hunger, Saris made his way to the dining hall. When he
didn’t eat, he was cranky, well,
crankier
. He tried to think of some
great plan for the next day. With the Merkadians controlling everything around
the Keep, he was starting to feel a smothering effect.

His hands were
shaking at his side.

I’m hungry,
that’s all it is.

But he never
acted like this—unsure, restless, afraid.

The doctor,
Kuran, appeared next to him, how long he had been there, Saris did not know.
Being so lost within himself, his senses faltered dramatically.

“General, I
have some disconcerting news,” started Kuran, without making much of a
greeting. Something was weighing heavily on his mind. “Over the last few days,
I’ve had some soldiers come in to see me about an overwhelming feeling of
anxiety and fearfulness. I thought it was the mounting stress of war, but
recently the soldiers started showing physical signs of sickness, like fever,
headache, and trembling…Sir! Your hands!” The old doctor snatched Saris’ hand.

Saris didn’t
show much response to the action. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his eyes
sat hollowly in his skull.

“Sir?” Kuran
snapped his fingers in Saris’ face, but the walking drone still had no
reaction.

Long seconds
after the snap, suddenly, Saris spun around, “What are you doing?” His face
held vehemence in it.

“Sir, you were
unresponsive to it as it happened. I couldn’t get you to listen to me. I was
telling you about the sick soldiers.”

As if finally
recalling a long-ago memory, Saris punched his fist into his palm. “Oh, yes. I
remember you saying something about that.”

Kuran turned
Saris toward him, and held his face in his hands, looking into his eyes. “Damn
it!” The white of his eyes was tinged with a cloudy, black haze around the
edges. “Exactly like the worst of my patients.”

Again, Saris’
response was delayed, but when he caught up, he remembered what was going on.
“I think I should go with you.” Without another word, the two men turned back
in the direction of the infirmary. Saris absently disregarded his hunger and
his responsibility to command his army—he was in no state to fulfill the latter
of those.

By the next
morning, the first of the infected had died, throwing up their internal organs,
one by one, in violent, gory spasms. They had been isolated in hopes of
stopping the contamination, yet the disease still spread, bringing tens of
soldiers to Kuran every hour. Saris had been one of the worst, but Thandril had
used some of his magic to slow, not stop, the process, holding the General in a
deep coma.

“Once you find
a cure, I will be able to reverse it,” Thandril stated, confidently.

“I hope so,”
said Kuran, “You better go now. We can’t risk you being here any longer than
necessary.”

Thandril lost
his usual serenity and pinned one of his fingers to the doctor’s chest. “You
find a cure.” Fire lit his eyes. “You will answer to me if he dies.” He
threatened, before turning toward the door, leaving Kuran shaking in his
ominous shadow.

*
* *

Taverous
jolted from his sleep and ran from his tent, vomiting. His nightmares bared the
mark of his brother, and his evilness poisoned Taverous’ body. Balar reeked of
death and vileness, and he could smell him from where he stood. Hiding in those
walls, Taverous thought, with contempt.

During his
slumber, Taverous had learned of Balar’s next attack, and it was nothing like
the others. His dark brother was summoning death itself. He had used the attack
one time during the old Blood War of the Tearanei. It was fatal and a cowardly attack
that would kill anyone in its pathway. Taverous crumbled to his knees, shaking
from the revelation. He could do nothing about it.

He wiped the
bile from his lips.

His Tearanei
had heard what was going on and quickly appeared at his side. Taverous conveyed
his discovery, and in turn, the three dropped their eyes to the dirt, forced to
remember their fallen brethren from centuries back.

Taverous
steadied himself, making to his feet, and braced against their shoulders. “Take
me to Melidarius. He must know what is coming.”

The three
led—carried—Taverous through the camp to the command tent. Melidarius, Vyker,
and both Royal Princes were already going over siege plans, set to begin that
day. The King had now learned to trust Taverous when he felt something was
important.

Taverous
needed to speak to the war council, so Melidarius made it so. Within ten
minutes, everyone else was present—the Chiefs, Ceth, Shaymesh, and lastly,
Fayeth, who still had some extra fascination for Arclite, tracking him with her
eyes.

Taverous
started by retelling what had happened and about his detection of Balar’s plan.
Then came the hard part of their situation. “Balar must be stopped before his
attack reaches full strength. If the disease takes enough lives from within
those walls, he will be able to expel a wave of death upon this army, with such
power, that whoever it touches will instantly die. An army of my Tearanei fell
to this very weapon over a century ago. I was absent, but even if I was there,
I do not know of a way to stop it, except terminating the caster.”

Dageros rose
to his feet. “Then let’s get this siege going as fast as we can. If we are
lucky, we can breach those walls in a couple of days, and then you and your
friends can slash him down where he stands.”

Taverous was
quiet, not wanting to reveal more. He got a reassuring touch on his arm from
Mathis. Taverous nodded and turned to the assembled council. “We have until
around midnight tonight. He planned it many days ago, and the showing of the
illness is the last piece of the magic. The men inside that Keep will be
reduced to nothing before the moon hangs at its highest.”

“That is not
enough time for a successful siege!” Dageros hit his hand on the long table in
front of him.

Amhar, of the
Chargon tribe, took to his feet. “Why don’t we leave? If we know, it’s going to
happen, and it’s going to win the war for us. Why not escape it?”

The two other
Chiefs, Rowkar and Equim, agreed with Amhar. They needed to flee from the city.

Taverous shook
his head. “We are marked. He has targeted us, and there is no escaping. You
couldn’t get far enough away to make a difference. We must think of another
solution. Any thought of running is futile and a waste of precious time.”

“I may have an
idea,” Kaillum spoke up. “Would General Saris be part of the group of
infected?”

“Most
definitely. Saris is a rival of power to Balar, maybe not magically, but that
is
his
army.” Taverous eyed the Prince; trying to see where he was going
with the thought.

“I may know
someone who can help us from the inside,” Kaillum turned toward his sister,
“I’m going to need your help.”

*
* *

Thandril
hurried toward Balar’s suite, trying to hold himself together. Saris was like a
father to him, or more, as a savior, and he was forever in his debt. Balar’s
room was located deep inside the citadel. He claimed he needed privacy to
regenerate his powers.

A ripple of
energy shifted from inside the building. Thandril quickly looked around and
noticed that none of the others in the hallway had felt it, most likely
something Balar was doing. Thandril didn’t trust him and constantly stayed  on
guard against anything, but right now, he might be the only person who could do
something about this disease—the only person that could save Saris.

He reached the
door to the suite but hesitated to knock. Who knows what could be behind that
door? The dark arts that he practiced within were not natural. Before he could
finish his action, a soldier came running to find him.

“Sir! We need
you now!” He turned and ran down the hallway, without waiting for a response.

Thandril dropped
his hand away from the door and, with a sigh, ran after the soldier. “Hold on!”

He rounded a
corner to find the soldier kneeling down beside an unconscious, young woman. A
beautiful young woman, he thought. Wait. She wasn’t a soldier, and the female
nurses had been sent away with the caravans. As he tried to decipher the
scenario, she suddenly jumped forward, clasping his wrist. The movement
revealed long, curly, Merkadian-blonde hair, and her eyes burned brightly.

Trying
desperately to react quick enough, Thandril pushed away from the pair, only to
be grabbed from behind by a pair of massive arms. They grappled him at the
midsection of his chest, equally tall as him. The hallway of the citadel was
gone, and now a burnt-out cityscape filled his vision. He tried to wrestle
free, but the arms holding him were strong and sure.

“Relax.” A
steady voice whispered into his ear. “If our main objective were to kill you,
it would be done already.”

For some
reason the words calmed Thandril, but he knew they shouldn’t have.

“I’m going to
release you. Don’t try anything stupid. Your powers won’t work here.”

The arms
slowly started to pull away. Thandril lunged forward and then spun around to
face his captures. The old druid that he had battled along his escape from the
camp stared him in the eyes. Alongside him was the young woman from the
hallway, smiling, with an edge of mockery, and the male soldier, who he had
followed, also stood before him. The man started to shift, and his identity
became clear.

“You!” Thandril
knew the shapeshifter.

Thandril
lashed out with his fist, expecting a surge of energy to rush through the air,
but nothing came. Again he tried.

The other
druid slowly walked toward Thandril. “I told you. Your powers will not work.”
He pointed up, to either side of them. They were in an alleyway, and on the
second story of the two surrounding buildings, the Tearanei mages stared down at
him, arms crossed over their chests. “They have deadened your abilities.” He
smiled, smoothing out the wrinkles on his face. “You are strong, so it takes
their combined effort to subdue you. We don’t want a fight.”

Thandril
reared back, snarling at the old man. Fear of his weakness made him angry and
disoriented. “Let me go!”

“Young man, we
wish to help you. Do you want Saris to live?”

The words
surprised Thandril, but he didn’t trust anything they might have to say. He was
a trapped animal, so he did what was natural. He attacked. Before he could
reach the druid, his vision tunneled and, with a thud, he dropped to the
ground.

*
* *

There was
faint breeze breathing across the back of Thandril’s neck. He forced open his
eyes, just to realize there was no light, or worse that he had been blinded.
No, not blind. He noticed a small crack of light shining a few yards away at
ground level, probably a door. It was, and it opened with painful suddenness,
flooding his sensitive eyes with the afternoon light. Three men entered.

“He’s awake.”
One of the voices said—rough, sharp, like a warrior.

“Is he alert?”
A second asked, like the first voice, but carried an air of superiority. A
leader of some sort, he thought.

“Yes, he can
hear you.” The third was soft, melodic, and unsettlingly ancient. “And, most
likely, trying to take in as much information as he can about us.”

The words
shook Thandril. This third man had powers or an uncanny ability at perception.

“Leave me with
him, alone,” He said.

The first two
left without objection, closing the door again, plunging the room back into
darkness.

“I know you can
hear me.” The man said, his face close enough that Thandril could feel his
balanced breathing.

“You do not
need to talk. But, you will listen.” The words circled around Thandril’s head,
shifting from every direction so that he couldn’t make out where the man was
standing. “Balar, the man who resides in your stone fortress, is more evil at
heart than darkness itself. I know you can see it. I know you have felt it—the
wrongness. You are, by nature, one with this planet, and all that live
throughout, that is your heritage. I know you don’t remember your beginnings,
so I am sorry that you do not know your proud legacy. Perhaps, in time, you
will learn it for yourself, but that is not my reason for bringing you before
me. I need something from you and, if you do what I ask, your precious Master
will live.”

A light
blinked into existence, showing the man’s soft, lined face. His short, gray
hair edged his appearance, and his green eyes seared through Thandril’s soul.
“My name is Taverous. Balar is my brother, and… I need you to kill him.”