victory. As always he had to fight down a surge of repulsion and contempt.
This was what the army had come to, he thought, drunken humans swilling booze and shouting in their harsh cracked voices. It had not been like this in the old days, when his people had conquered this world, and made men fear them. Then it had been only ten thousand Terrarchs, and their dragons and their sorcery to bring an entire world full of demon-worshipping barbarians to heel.
How he wished he had been born into that earlier, glorious golden time. He envied those like his father and his uncles who had lived through it. Now everything was so diminished. The Golden Age had passed. Civilisation was sinking back into the Abyss. The stinking humans were dragging the Elder Race down to their level. He felt contaminated by their mere presence. Perhaps the Terrarchs who claimed that the Ten Thousand should have stayed on Al’Terra and died with the rest of their people were right, he thought sourly. That way the last true Terrarchs would at least have made a glorious end, and not faced this slow loss of all that was great about their people.
Sardec reached around for his sword. As he gripped its hilt he could feel strength flowing back into him. He seemed to be drawing it directly from the precious ancestral heirloom. Moonshade had been old when the Terrarchs had walked the lost islands of Al’ Terra before the Exile. It had been forged under the light of a different sun. It was a link to those older, more heroic days before the Exalted had come to this blighted world and lost their way.
Sardec groaned as he remembered his earlier awakening, and what he had learned then. It all came flooding back into his mind, filling him with shame. He recalled the fight with the Ultari. He remembered its speed and the astonishing flash of pain and paralysis when the claw struck him. He recalled the way he had lost control of his limbs. He recalled his sense of shock.
Why had Moonshade not protected him? Its Elder Signs were meant to be a sovereign protection against inimical magic. Either the blade was failing, like so much of the old magic, or there had been no magic involved with the claws, only poison. He tried to assure himself that the latter was the most likely. The Ultari were degenerate survivors of one of the Old Races, demon worshippers who had fought for possession of this world long before the coming of the Terrarchs. It must have been poison.
He knew he was just trying to avoid the most painful thought of all, that he had been saved by the half- breed, that where he had fallen, that abomination against all the laws of heaven and Terrarch had stood and triumphed, and worse, he had done it with Sardec’s own sword. Even in the dark he could feel his skin grow taut with shame. As soon as he got back to camp he would have to have the Priests perform a ritual of cleansing to remove the taint from the weapon. Just the thought that one of Rik’s tainted blood had touched the weapon made his fingers weak, and the hilt difficult to clasp.
What was worse- the men had seen it. They had witnessed his fall in what should have been triumphant single combat against the demon. He would be a laughing stock even among his own people when word of that got around. The Terrarchs were not a people to forgive any sign of weakness, and his brother officers would use him as a whetstone on which to sharpen the blades of their wit. The taint might be removed when the blade was purified, but the stain on his honour never could be.
Just the thought of Rik goaded him to greater rage. He loathed the creature. It astonished him that his brother officers could stand seeing that face, those features amid the common soldiery of their own camp. Did they not see the affront it was to them, that one of his tainted and diluted blood should be allowed to mock them by his very presence? How he despised those of his own race who wallowed in the mire with the females of the human kind, who thrust themselves into the tainted ripeness of their bodies, who…
Sardec wrenched his thoughts away from such vileness. Severin was dead! A wizard lost. All in all, he thought, this expedition had not been a good one for the Elder Race. The humans had managed to complete at least part of the mission while their betters had been left sprawled senseless on the ground. The Colonel would say that it merely showed how well they had been trained, that they had reacted so well to the situation, but Sardec knew differently.
He knew that, treason though it was to say it aloud, in some ways the Blues were right and the Reds were wrong. It was a new world now, one in which the power of the Terrarchs would slowly slip away, and with it all that remained of their great culture. Unless something was done a new mongrel civilisation would emerge, one which the Reds seemed prepared to accept and make peace with. Sardec knew that was their mistake. The Terrarchs were the source and fountainhead of all that was fine in this world, and they held their place now only by virtue of their ability to overawe the members of the inferior races.
Today he had contributed to the erosion of that ability and it made him so sick he could almost have wept. He had let down his people, his bloodline, his family and the proud warrior legacy of his father. There were times he knew he could never be what his father had been and it clawed at his gut like a sword wound. This was one of those times. He swore he would find a way to make that Rik share some of his pain, although he doubted the beast could feel more than a small fraction of it.
“That’s the last,” said Weasel, looking at the corpses they had tossed down in front of the bridgebacks.
“This was not right,” said Rik. He was surprised to find he meant it. The hill-men had been enemies, and he normally wasted no thought on the deaths of those. But they had also been killed by elder world sorcery and had their souls devoured and now their mortal remains were food for wyrms.
“Don’t waste your sympathy,” said Sergeant Hef. “These men were scum. They consorted with the forces of Shadow. They served a sorcerer. They helped feed that demon. Their master Zarahel wants to bring back the Spider God. They say he’s going to drive the Terrarchs from the land and restore the lost glories of man.”
Rik knew this but it did not help a great deal. He thought about the thing that lurked in the mine. Had these men known? They surely must have guessed something but maybe in some ways they had been just like he and his comrades, following orders. Maybe they had been enslaved in the service of a madman they had not dared defy. Having spent some time in the army that was something he could identify with. And where were the bodies of all those people who had vanished in the mine? He saw Vosh coming closer; he looked very pale. He had done so ever since he had scuttled in fear from the mine.
“No sign of Zarahel?” Rik asked the hill-man. He had known the man, after all. His former kinsmen had cursed him as they died.
“He’s not among the dead. It looks like he got away.”
“What’s he like?” Leon asked, scratching his bandaged head. His skull had taken a nasty crack when the Ultari’s convulsions threw him across the chamber. He was pale and his breathing was fast. His eyes were wide, pupils dilated. He seemed to be taking this feeding squad duty worse than the rest of them. Rik was surprised to see Vosh shudder.
“He claimed he was of the blood of the old princes, of the Priest Kings who worshipped Uran Ultar. He would talk about that, and there was something about the way he talked that made you believe him, made you believe that the Old God would rise soon.”
“Why did you sell him out then?” asked the Barbarian, somewhat untactfully, Rik thought.
“Only a madman would want the Old Gods back,” said Vosh. “Only a damned heretic unbeliever would listen to all that devil’s talk of the old days come again, of immortality here in the flesh. Aye, immortality for the chosen few- just like it was in the old days. The rest of us would be just…food for his god, just like we were back then. Zarahel’s breed are not the only ones who remember the Old Days. The rest of us know some stories too.”
All of this was making Rik think uncomfortably of the books he had stowed away in his pack. He decided to change the subject.
“How do you think he got away?”
“Maybe he knew you were coming. Maybe he was away on one of his trips. He was always coming and going among the tribes, trying to whip up support for his plans, trying to get the chiefs to unite against the Terrarchs.”
“I can see why we were sent here to get him,” said Leon, fitting his pipe into his mouth and for once filling it and lighting it.
“Think he’ll come to pay us back for this?” Leon asked. It was a thought that had been on all their minds. They had all heard the tales.
“If he does, I’ll cut his heart out and make him eat it,” said the Barbarian, staring off into the distance. There was an undercurrent of worry in his voice.
