The Crimson Legion

SEVEN UMBRA’S RETURN

Rikus woke to a sharp jab in the ribs.

“Stop lying on ground,” said K’kriq. “Find Urikites.”

Opening his eyes, the mul saw that the green tendrils of first light were just shooting across the starlit sky. He rolled away from Neeva’s warm body and looked up at the thri-kreen’s towering form.

“Huh?” he asked groggily.

“What wrong?” K’kriq clacked his mandibles impatiently. “Why so stupid?”

“I was sleeping,” Rikus yawned.

“Sleep,” the thri-kreen snorted, disgusted with the mul’s weakness. “Waste good time for hunt.”

“It’s no waste,” Rikus grumbled. Taking one of the cloaks he and Neeva had been using to insulate themselves from the cold night wind, he rose to his feet and stepped away. “What about the Urikites?”

K’kriq pointed all four arms westward, toward the jagged, black wall of the Ringing Mountains. “Find many Urikites. Not far.”

Rikus raised a hand. “Wait.”

The mul looked out over a dusty camp, where a thousand murky, inert lumps lay snoring and growling in their sleep. “Everyone up!” he yelled. “Move!”

Half the gladiators leaped to their feet with weapons in their hands, and the other half hardly stirred. “Wake your fellows,” Rikus ordered, stepping to Neeva’s side and nudging her with his foot. “We march in a quarter-hour.”

Neeva rose, pulling her cloak over her shoulders and stifling a yawn. “What’s happening?”

Rikus took her by the hand and started toward the templar’s camp. “I’ll explain later. Now, we’ve got to wake our leaders.”

Within a few minutes, they had roused both Styan and Jaseela. When Rikus asked K’kriq to explain what was happening, however, Neeva objected. “What about Caelum?”

“He’s probably off on a morning devotion,” Rikus answered sarcastically. The dwarf’s unexplained appearance the night before still angered the mul. Although he had to agree with Neeva that a traitor would not have saved them from the halfling assassins, he remained convinced that Caelum had followed them to their campsite for some other purpose.

“We’d better find him,” said Jaseela. She yawned, then winced in pain when her crooked jaw opened too far for its mangled socket. “If you’re expecting a battle, we’ll need the dwarves.”

Rikus reluctantly agreed, then led the way to where the dwarves had slept. They had made their orderly camp between two spires of sandstone, on a bristly carpet of moss that reflected the faint rays of predawn light in glimmering silver and gold.

Caelum met the leaders in the center of the camp, offering them each a handful of small serpent eggs. Only Styan refused the breakfast.

“K’kriq found a Urikite campsite,” Rikus explained, pointing at the distant gulch the thr-keen had indicated earlier.

“How big?” asked Jaseela, slipping one of the leathery eggs into her misshapen mouth.

“As many as our packs,” K’kriq answered, pointing one hand at each of the companies in Rikus’s legion. “Many humans. Camping, waiting.”

“Did you see Maetan or the Book of Kings?” asked Caelum.

K’kriq crossed his stubby antennae, indicating that the answer was no.

“That doesn’t mean the mindbender isn’t with them,” Rikus said.

“And it doesn’t mean he is,” objected Styan. “He could be halfway back to Urik.”

“We’re attacking,” Rikus insisted.

“Who is we, exactly?” Styan demanded, looking down his pointed nose eat the mul. “I haven’t committed my templars to anything.”

“If we wait for the templars to fight, Maetan has time enough to crawl home,” Rikus spat.

Styan faced the other commanders. “We must go straight to the oasis. My company finished its water last night.”

“You let them finish their water? What if there were still Urikites at the oasis? Without any water your men would be unable to fight come midday,” Neeva said. “Only templars would be so stupid.”

“Not necessarily,” said Jaseela, turning her good eye on Rikus. “We ran out yesterday afternoon.”

Neeva groaned and looked to Caelum. “How about the dwarves?”

“We’ve been on half-rations for three days,” he said proudly. “If we go to quarter rations, we’ll last another day.”

Styan smirked in Rikus’s direction. “If you were wise enough to keep track of your gladiators’ water, I think you’d find that they emptied their skins before the rest us.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Rikus snapped. “We did it without water for three days before the fight at Kled.”

“Not by choice,” objected Styan. “And who’s to say how long we will be without water if we attack and the battle goes badly?”

“It won’t,” Rikus growled.

Styan shook his head stubbornly. “If I command my men to bypass the oasis, they’ll plant a dagger in my back.”

“That wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” Neeva said. “The whole legion would be better off without you and your cowards.”

Styan glared at her for a moment, then looked back to Rikus. “If you insist on this foolishness, the gladiators will attack alone.”

“Not alone,” said Jaseela. “Water or no water, my retainers and I are with them.”

“As are the dwarves,” added Caelum, stepping to Neeva’s side.

Styan studied the sun-cleric for a few moments, a grim smile upon his thin lips. “Can you be sure of it?”

The dwarf’s red eyes flashed in anger. “Of course!”

“Shall we see?” the templar asked. He stepped away from the small groups of leaders and faced the dwarven camp. “Warriors of Kled, I feel it is my duty to speak with you for a moment.”

The dwarves turned their placid gazes on Styan, prepared to hear his words.

Rikus frowned and started to grab the templar, but Jaasela quickly clutched his arm. “If you interfere, it’ll look like you’re afraid of what he has to say,” she said. “Better to let him speak.”

The mul grunted angrily, but stepped back and clenched his fists in frustration.

“The thri-kreen scout claims he has found a Urikite camp, and the leader of the gladiators wishes to attack it,” Styan said. He waved a hand at the mul, as if his audience might not know Rikus by sight. “Out of fairness to you, I must point out that there is no reason to believe that Maetan or the Book of Kemalok Kings are with them.”

“There’s no reason to believe the book isn’t!” Rikus boomed, stepping to Styan’s side. “If you’re too much of a coward-”

“This isn’t a matter of bravery, it’s a matter of honesty,” Styan retorted, maintaining a reasonable tone even though he raised his voice above Rikus’s. The templar gave the mul a chastising look, then said, “If you were honest about the matter, you’d admit that K’kriq found a rear guard. Does it make sense to leave the Book of the Kemalok Kings with them?”

The dwarves studied both men, their steadfast expressions revealing nothing about the thoughts Styan’s words had fostered.

Neeva stepped forward to support Rikus. “We don’t know that it’s a rear guard,” she said.

“Don’t we?” asked Styan, raising his eyebrows with exaggerated doubt. “Did K’kriq not say that they were ‘waiting’? What are they waiting for if not us?”

“He said they were camped,” Rikus countered. “To him, sleeping is the same as waiting.”

“Even if I were willing to concede that point, here is another you cannot explain away so easily,” Styan said, one side of his mouth curling up in a confident grin. “As we were climbing down from the canyon yesterday, one of my men, a half-elf with eyes as sharp as those of his full-blooded brethren, saw a handful of figures struggling across the sands-away from the oasis.”

“You’re making this up!” Rikus shouted.

Styan ignored him and addressed the dwarves. That is where your book has gone,” he said. “And while we are fighting, Maetan will be carried farther away.”

“Liar!”

Rikus gave Styan a violent shove, sending the gaunt man flying two yards through the air before he crashed to the dusty ground. The mul was on the templar in an instant, the Scourge of Rkard in his hand and the blade’s tip pressed to the bureaucrat’s wrinkled throat.

Styan’s face remained serene and confident, but, above the astonishing gasps and the fall of alarmed steps, Rikus could hear the templar’s madly pounding heart.

“Tell them the truth!” Rikus yelled.

“But I have already have,” answered Styan. “Killing me will not change that.”

Rikus pressed on the blade, and blood began to trickle down the papery skin of Styan’s neck.

“Stop it!” said Jaseela. She grabbed the mul’s arm and tried to pull it away, but the noblewoman was not nearly strong enough. “You’re playing into his web.”

“He said nothing to me about any half-elf seeing anyone leaving the oasis!” Rikus spat.

“Of course not,” Jaseela said. “There were no figures, and there probably isn’t any half-elf-but you’re making it look like you’re the one who’s trying to hide something.”

Neeva grabbed Rikus’s wrist and slowly moved it aside, then nudged Styan so hard that she almost kicked him. “Get up before he kills you,” she said. “Not that I’d care.”

The templar showed his gray teeth in a poor imitiation of a smile. “Thank you, my dear.”

When Rikus turned away to sheathe his sword, he was surprised to see the dwarves falling into line and marching out of the camp. “What are they doing?” he demanded, scowling at Caelum.

The tall dwarf looked away, obviously ashamed. “They’re going to the oasis,” he said. “Please do not blame them. It is not that they doubt your word, but they cannot understand why Styan would lie about something so important. Under such circumstances, fighting this battle would violate their focus, and they cannot do that.”

“Fine,” Rikus snarled. “We don’t need them, either.”

“Rikus, you can’t mean you still intend to attack!” Styan gasped. He was careful to stay out of the mul’s reach.

“I’m not going to let them get away,” Rikus answered.

The templar looked to Jaseela. “Surely, under such circumstances, you’ll reconsider your decision.”

The noblewoman scorned the templar by turning the disfigured side of her face to him. “So far, Rikus has won every battle,” she said. “I’ll trust to his instincts.”

Rikus heard the clatter of stones ahead. He drew his sword, then motioned for those behind him to ready their weapons as well.

The mul was leading Neeva and the rest of his gladiators through a deep ravine filled with pink groundstar and barbed thickets of amber tarbush. On one side of the furrow rose the stony foothills of the Ringing Mountains, and on the other the great dunes of the sand wastes. Directly ahead, the trench was blocked by a delta of stones, sand, and other debris spilling from the mouth of a dry gorge. It was in that gorge, according to K’kriq, that the Urikites had been camped last night.

Before climbing out of the trough, Rikus paused to look at the crimson sun. It hung at its zenith, a fiery orb that hovered in the exact center of the blazing white bowl of the mid-day sky.

“White sky,” Neeva said, also studying the sun. “Jaseela should be in position.” Under K’kriq’s guidance, they had sent the noblewoman and Caelum to circle around behind the enemy.

“She’d better be,” the mul said, motioning toward the gorge ahead. Now that he had the Scourge of Rkard in his hand, he could hear officers barking orders to their subordinates. “It sounds like the Urikites are on the move.”

The mul scrambled up the slope at the end of trough, motioning for Neeva, Gaanon, and the rest of the gladiators to do the same. As Rikus charged over the top he saw that the enemy was marching down the canyon in an unruly jumble. The mob was a stark contrast to the disciplined legion he remembered from the first battle. Without exception, the Urikites’ red tunics were tattered and filthy, only half carried their bone shields, and even fewer still possessed their long spears. Most were armed only with obsidian short swords, and their faces were pale and rigid with fear.

Behind them came a towering figure of absolute blackness, herding the ragged force before him like a phantom shepherd driving his flock to slaughter.

“Umbra!” gasped Neeva.

“Good,” said Rikus, rushing straight towaid the shadow monster.

“What’s good about this?” Neeva asked, falling into step at his side.

“If Umbra’s here, then Maetan probably is too.”

“Good,” said Gaanon, his heavy footsteps jarring the ground as he echoed the mul’s words. “I’ll kill them both.”

Behind the trio came hundreds of screaming gladiators, spreading out to meet the mass of Urikites head-to-head. Already, Rikus could see this fight would be to his company’s liking: a grand combat with no tactics and no tricks, blade against blade and warrior against warrior.

The two mobs quickly closed within a dozen yards of each other, and the mul’s concerns were quickly forgotten as battle cries filled his ears.

Rikus sprinted straight for a pair of Urikite spearmen, intending to lop the heads from their weapons and barrel past them into the throng beyond. At the last moment, however, they lifted their spears from the braced position and threw the weapons at his heart. Reacting instinctively, the mul blocked the spears with his sword. To his surprise, even though it struck only a glancing blow, the Scourge sliced the first shaft in two.

The other spear slipped past the arcing blade but abruptly dropped and struck in the lower abdomen. Rikus cried out and staggered under the impact of the sharp point, but did not feel the deep burning of a puncture wound. He looked down and saw that the spearhead had not penetrated his Belt of Rank.

Rikus plucked the weapon from his belt and tossed it aside, grinning at the two petrified Urikites who had attacked him. The men backed away and fled into the enemy mob, screaming about magic and sorcery.

“Cowards!” Rikus yelled, rushing after them. “Running won’t save you!”

He crashed into the Urikite mass, his magic blade slashing and slicing through enemy arms and bodies as easily as it had the spear shaft. Neeva followed on his right, clearing a wide swath with her axe. Gaanon came on the left, his great club launching shattered Urikite bodies in all directions.

The three gladiators tore deeper and deeper into the Urikites mass, a maelstrom of death ripping its way across enemy territory like a wind-storm whirling across the salt flats of the Ivory Plain. Now and then, Rikus raised the Scourge of Rkard to block or parry instead of attack. Each time, when his attacker’s obsidian blade crashed into the ancient steel of the mul’s sword, it shattered.

Soon, Rikus was aware only of what he sensed: his own voice screaming in glee, the sour smell of opened entrails, the flash of his sword, and the spray of blood hitting his bare skin. He reacted without conscious thought, his blade dancing as if it were part of his arm, his legs and his free hand lashing out of their own accord to push some enemy into the path of Neeva’s axe or Gaanon’s club. He loved battle as a thri-kreen loved the hunt, as an elf loved to run, as a dwarf loved to toil. It was for this that the mul had been born: to fight, to kill, to win.

As the battle progressed, Rikus was vaguely aware that, all around him, Tyrian warriors were slashing and hacking at the confused and outmatched enemy. Like him, they had spent their lives training for personal combat and, if their talents were not quite a match for those of a mul, neither could the enemy’s skill compare to theirs. Even in Rikus’s own ears, the screams of the dying Urikites drowned out his jubilant shouts. Out of the corner of his eyes, he glimpsed red tunics falling by the dozens. The coppery smell of blood, rising off the red-stained rocks of the battlefield, filled his nose.

It ended all too soon. Suddenly, Rikus found himself lashing out at his foes’ backs, stumbling over dead bodies as he tried to keep up with the fleeing Urkites.

“Fight,” boomed Umbra’s voice. “Fight and die, or I will have you as my slaves!”

The shadow giant grabbed a few of the fleeing Urikites, absorbing them into his dark body as he had the first time Rikus saw him. This time, his threat had little effect. Hamanu’s soldiers continued to flee, or, when they did heed Umbra’s words, Tyrian gladiators cut them down as quickly as they turned to fight.

“After the cowards!” Rikus screamed, finally working his way free of the tangle of bodies littering the battlefield.

“Death to the coward Urikites!” echoed Gaanon, his voice thundering almost as loudly as Umbra’s.

Now that the Urikites had stopped fighting, Rikus found that the joy was gone from the battle. Nevertheless, he set off after the fleeing enemy. Even their route was working to the Tyrian’s advantage; from the direction they were fleeing, the Urikites would soon run into Jaseela and Caelum. Although the noblewoman’s company was not large enough to stop so many panicked soldiers, it would slow the mob of cowards long enough for the gladiators to finish it off.

As the mul ran, his sharp blade struck down a foe with nearly every step. Because of their heavier weapons, Gaanon and Neeva could hardly keep up with Rikus, but they loped along behind them, finishing off the soldiers that the mul had only wounded.

Suddenly, Rikus found himself staring at a huge shadow. A black hand descended on his right, grasping both a Tyrian gladiator and a fleeing Urikite. A pair of blood-curdling screams sounded above the pained cries of those suffering more mundane deaths, then the bodies of the two men melted into Umbra’s darkness.

“We’ve got Umbra,” panted Neeva, stepping to the mul’s side. “Now what?”

Gaanon stepped to the mul’s other side. The half-giant was speechless; it was as if the sight of a being twice as tall as he had taken his booming voice away.

Rikus looked up and found himself staring into the sapphire orbs of Umbra’s eyes. The shadow giant smiled, then reached down toward Neeva. “You will pay a heavy price for your victory, Tyrian.” The breath rolled from the thing’s mouth on fetid wisps of dark cloud.

Neeva screamed in defiance, hefting her dripping axe and bringing it down on the black hand. The gore-covered blade passed through the shadow with no apparent effect, emerging clean and bright as it hit the rocks at Neeva’s feet. The weapon shattered as if it were glass, and Umbra’s dark fingers closed around her waist.

“Rikus!” she screamed, black shadow already creeping down her thighs and up toward her neck.

Uncertain of what else to do, the mul brought his sword down on the black arm. To his surprise, the magic blade bit into the shadow as if it were flesh. Umbraq screamed in shock and rage. Rikus hacked at the arm again, this time wielding the sword with both hands and bringing it down with all his strength.

Umbra’s hand tumbled from the end of his arm, spewing thick black fog over the ground. Neeva toppled over backward and lay shivering as the shadow fingers slipped from her body and drained into the ground.

Bellowing in anger, Gaanon stepped forward and leveled his mighty club at the shadow thing. Like Neeva’s axe, it passed through the black body without harm, snapping like a twig when it smashed into the ground. Umbra kicked at the half-giant, planting his foot squarely in the big gladiator’s chest and driving him to the ground.

Screaming in agony, Gaanon tried to roll away. His efforts were to no avail, for Umbra kept him pinned securely in place as a pool of blackness slowly spread across the half-giant’s torso.

Rikus struck at the shadow giant’s legs. Again, the blade bit into the black form. The dark beast cursed in a series of deep-throated gurgles that no human tongue could reproduce, then slapped the mul with his good hand. The blow knocked the Scourge of Rkard from the gladiator’s grasp, but the only thing Rikus felt was a terrible chill that took his breath away and made his bones ache at the marrow. Rikus tried to reach for his sword, but his cold-muted reflexes were slow to obey. The weapon clattered to the ground a few feet away.

“Vorpal steel,” Umbra hissed angrily. “Where did you come by that?”

As Umbra finished his question, the sound of sizzling and sputtering echoed off the rocky walls of the gorge. A short distance away, a curtain of shimmering air shot from one wall of the canyon to the other. The fleeing Urikites, more frightened of their pursuers than the magic before them, paid the translucent barrier no attention and continued to run. As the first wave approached the strange obstacle, they suddenly cried out and turned away. Their efforts did not save them. The press of those following drove them forward. As each man came close to the curtain, he burst into flame, then disappeared in a puff of black smoke.

Umbra looked toward the commotion and again uttered a curse in his strange language. Rikus threw himself toward his sword, passing over it in a rolling fall. He grabbed the hilt and returned to his feet in the same swift motion, lashing out at Umbra in a sweeping crossbody slash.

The blade sliced through empty air, for the shadow giant had already turned away. The dark creature was striding purposefully toward the curtain of searing air, the stump of his shadowy forearm trailing black mist.

Rikus went to Neeva’s side and helped her to her feet. “Are you hurt?”

“Frozen to the bone, but not hurt,” she said. She rose and retrieved a pair of obsidian short swords from fallen Urikites, then looked toward the shimmering curtain up the canyon. “What’s that?”

“Caelum and Jaseela, I hope,” Rikus said. He looked to Gaanon. “What about you?”

The half-giant forced himself to rise. “Just c-cold,” he answered, wavering on his unsteady feet. “I’m not injured.” He tried to step toward Rikus, but his frozen legs hardly moved and he fell face-first to the ground.

“Wait here. The sun will warm you,” Rikus said, motioning for Neeva to follow him.

“No, wait!” cried Gaanon, again rising. “I’m fine.”

Once more, the half-giant’s legs failed him. He collapsed to the ground, still protesting that he was ready to fight.

On the other side of the curtain, Jaseela pointed at the shimmering barricade and glared down at Caelum with her torpid eye. “This thing-”

“It’s a sun fence,” Caelum offered.

“Whatever it is, it isn’t a part of Rikus’s plan!” she snapped.

“Rikus’s plan, if he has one, is no masterwork,” the dwarf replied.

Along with K’kriq, they stood atop an outcropping of granite, more or less in the center of the thin line formed by Jaseela’s small company of retainers. Through the ripples of Caelum’s sun fence, they could barely see the Urikites pushing one another forward and bursting into flames as they neared the scorching barricade.

“Fence burn up prey,” K’kriq observed. “Leave no food for pack.”

“We’re not eating the Urikites,” Caelum growled.

K’kriq looked down his proboscis and clacked his mandibles at the dwarf. “Pack large-need much meat,” the thri-kreen said. “K’kriq know what you do. Hide all for self.”

Caelum looked away, disgusted.

“Take it down!” Jaseela said.

“I won’t,” the dwarf objected. “This is the most efficient way to stop the Urikites.”

“And keep my company out of the fight,” the noblewoman objected. “My retainers didn’t march halfway across Athas to watch the final-”

Jaseela’s mouth dropped open, and she did not complete her thought, for something else had seized her attention. Approaching from the other side of the sun fence was a figure as tall as a full giant and as black as a well-bottom.

“What, by Kalak’s grave, is that?”

“From Neeva’s descriptions, I’d say it’s Umbra,” the dwarf replied.

The shadow giant took two long strides and was standing at the wall, looking down on the barrier with two eyes of gleaming blue. After a moment’s consideration, he stooped over and a billowing cloud of black fog issued from his mouth. It settled over the sun fence like a pall, opening a gap more that a dozen yards wide before it dissipated into the ground.

Caelum’s face went pale. “It cannot be!” The dwarf grabbed Jaseela’s arm. “Scatter your company. Tell them to run!”

The noblewoman jerked her arm free. “I’ll do no such thing. We came to fight, and fight we shall.” She waved her arms at both flanks of the line, yelling, “To the center! Plug the gap!”

It was difficult to tell whether the officers could hear her all down the line, but even if they couldn’t, her gestures and the situation were sufficient to make her meaning clear. As the first Urikites began to pour through the gap, Jaseela’s retainers rushed to meet them. The chime of clashing blades and the screams of dying men rang off the walls of the narrow gorge, with more men from each side pouring into the battle each second.

Though the Tyrian retainers held their ground well enough, Caelum felt sick to his stomach with dread. “I beg you, my lady, sound the retreat before it is too late. Our enemy is too powerful-”

“Be still,” said Jaseela. “Just because a walking shadow undoes your magic-”

“It is not my magic that he overcame,” Caelum said. “It was the sun’s!”

Ignoring him, the noblewoman stepped to the front edge of the outcropping. As the last of her retainers poured into battle, she shouted encouragement and commands with equal vigor. Although the Urikites outnumbered her men and were fighting with the desperate urgency of doomed soldiers, her company was holding the gap.

When Umbra stepped into the breach, however, Jaseela’s pride changed to concern. The shadow giant studied the battle raging at his feet for a moment, then passed his wounded wrist over the combatants. Long wisps of black vapor trailed from the stump and hung in the air.

“What’s he doing?” Jaseela demanded. “Caelum?”

The dwarf did not hear her. He stood in deep concentration, one glowing hand raised to the sun and the other stretched out over the edge of the outcropping.

As Jaseela watched, the shadow giant spread more of the black vapor in the air. The dark mist coalesced into a thin cloud and spread outward, passing over the noblewoman’s head and engulfing all of her army. At the same time, Umbra grew visibly thinner, until his limbs were no thicker than those of a half-giant. The shadow giant then began to shrink to a height proportionate with those limbs.

The black cloud began to descend like a fine mist. Almost as one, the Urikites stopped fighting and, screaming in mortal terror, threw themselves on the ground.

In that moment, Jaseela realized that she had been wrong not to listen to Caelum. “Retreat!” she called. “Run!”

Her cries did no good; the Tyrian retainers were so confused by the Urikites’ behavior and the black cloud that was settling over them that they were incapable of any cohesive action. Some of them turned to flee, as she had ordered. Some hacked mercilessly at the bodies of their prone enemies. Still others pulled their cloaks over their heads as if a thin layer of cloth would protect them from the dark fog descending on them.

Out of the corner of her good eye, Jascela saw a bright, crimson light flare at the edge of the cliff. A searing heat washed over the unscarred side of her face. Thinking to protect what remained of her beauty, the noblewoman turned away and ducked, wondering what harrowing magic the dwarf was trying to work now.

“If you want to live, come here!” Caelum yelled. “You too, K’kriq.”

The dwarf took Jaseela’s hand and pulled her toward the edge the of the outcropping. There, hovering in midair, was a hissing, crackling sphere of crimson fire. In the center of it was a man-sized opening, out of which poured a brillant golden light that hurt the noblewoman’s eyes as much as the red orb seared her skin.

“Inside!” Caelum yelled.

The dwarf pushed her off the outcropping, and before she had any idea of what she was doing, Jaseela found herself jumping into the blinding ball of light.