Maltis choked back a laugh and strode to Lieutenant Santos. “I’d have our swords.”
The man’s wide eyes dropped to look at the crumpled iron of the shackles at his feet. Without further hesitation, he handed Maltis his sword and Arrin’s as well. The commander smiled and returned to Arrin’s side as Malya’s men formed a loose circle around the pair.
Not waiting, Arrin strode forward. Malya’s guard kept pace, while those of the prince hurried to stay close; but not too close. They traveled the rest of the way in silence. Arrin’s eyes were locked straight ahead, his mind in a trance of thoughts and memories until the squeal of the main gate drew his head back to the present.
He turned to the commander as the gate swung open, extending his hand. “Thank you.”
Maltis clasped Arrin’s hand in his, a sly smile still on his face. “You’ve grown strong in the wilderness.”
Arrin grinned, sweeping aside his unkempt hair so Maltis could see the collar. “I’ve the help of the goddess, my friend,” He grew grim as he spoke. “As do the Grol that march upon Lathah. If I do not return before you see the dust of our old enemy nearing the border, drag the princess and her family, bodily if you must, to Pathrale. To engage the Grol is suicide; to sit behind the walls is to accept genocide.” He released the commander’s hand and collected his sword before turning to stride, chin held high, through the gates of Lathah, out once more into the wilderness.
“Mark my words, Maltis,” he said over his shoulder as he cleared the gate. “There is only one certain chance for survival: you must run.”
Chapter Seventeen
Commander Feragh stared at the ruins of Fhenahr through the narrowed slits of his eyes. Fires still danced unattended within its walls, having yet to consume the city in its entirety, though it was close. It was a haunting sight, the leaping flames flickering into the sky to be swallowed by the glowing face of A’ree. The light of both cast a reddish pallor over the land as though the morning had been born of crimson’s womb.
There were none of the expected screams of the dying in the air, only the thick scent of charred flesh and burning wood that clung as a sour passenger on the wind. Other than the gentle crackle of the flames and the occasional rustle and crash as a support was devoured and a structure collapsed in its wake, there was no sound of life from Fhenahr.
The men at his back were silent, as well. Not even their mounts dared to make a sound. The devastation was so complete as to defy logical description.
The walls had been laid open in several places, blackened char surrounding their crumbled foundations. What could be seen of the building inside was the same, fire having come to cleanse the town of its history and memory.
Unlike the battlefields that Feragh had seen, his feet having trod many in his time, there were no bodies scattered about, no pieces. No crows circled overhead in search of a fallen feast, for there seemed to be nothing left to feed upon.
Though this was often the way with the Grol, their enemy but living fuel for the beasts, Feragh had never seen such complete and utter destruction. The people of Fhenahr had never made it out from behind their walls, save for those led out in chains. No defensive force had struck at the Grol as they laid siege. Feragh knew this for no blood stained the open field before the city, no pieces of fur or flesh of any kind, no fragments of bone, lay strewn about in the dirt. While the Grol were notorious for their appetites, not even they could scour a battlefield so clean as to leave no trace of war.
The people of Fhenahr had been butchered in their homes in a way Feragh had never seen. They met their end quick and with brutal violence. Had the Grol been any other force, Feragh felt he would have found much of the population still in their beds; dead where they lay.
Feragh drew in a thick breath and licked his lips with a dry tongue as General Wulvren pulled his horse alongside the commander.
“They are days ahead of us still. Given the multitude of tracks, they easily number in the thousands, perhaps over ten. The prisoners’ tracks make it hard to be certain.” He gestured toward the wall of the Fortress Mountains just visible in the distance. “Their path confirms that they are headed toward Lathah. They could be headed nowhere else.”
Feragh turned to look at his general. “Do you see the walls?”
Wulvren nodded with a grim face.
“When did the Grol become capable of this?” He swept his arm in the direction of Fhenahr, the fires flickering over the city. “What could they have found in Ah Uto Ree to have empowered them so?” He shook his head, his eyes drawn once more by the burning city. “This is no longer a simple hunt as I’d believed. The Grol intend war and our legion can no longer stand against them as could the Fhen, though it sickens me to speak such foul words.”
Wulvren spit on the dirt. “It would seem the Sha’ree truly are dead. The Grol must have learned of their secrets when they invaded their land. I can see no other way for the beasts to have caused such damage on their own.”
Feragh agreed in silence. The Grol had pierced the ancient lands of the Sha’ree and had returned alive and unharried, a miracle indeed, bearing burdened palanquins that must have contained the fury of the ancient Sha’ree people.
Before him stood proof that the Grol that strode the lands today were not the enemy he had long battled, defeating at every turn. Whatever they had found stoked the fires of their courage, and given the flaming downfall of Fhenahr, rightly so. A shudder crept down Feragh’s spine as he imagined the Grol given the means to assuage their cruel appetites, their hunger for flesh and destruction.
For the first time in his life, Commander Feragh knew fear. He’d crawled from his mother’s womb into the warrior’s life of the Tolen, raised since he’d opened his eyes to rule and wage war. Since he was just a pup he’d known the thrill of battle, his claws blooded upon the Grol before they’d even grown their full length.
Yet in the ruin of Fhenahr, he saw a new world, one where all he’d believed had been cast aside to make room for the miraculous. Never more than a nuisance, the Grol had suddenly become a true threat; one not just to the Tolen, but to the whole of Ahreele.
“We must warn our people,” Feragh told Wulvren. “Send a runner home with orders to rally. I want our forces on the move the day they receive our warning. Have them skirt the inside border of Gurhtol and slice through the heart of Nurin with all haste. I would have them ready at the backs of the Grol should Lathah manage to hold them to a standstill.”
The general glanced to the city. “Do you truly believe the Lathahns capable of such?” He waved a soldier over as he waited on the commander’s answer.
Feragh shook his head. “They are fierce in defense of their homes, and smart in their tactics, but no, I don’t believe they will fare much better than the people of Fhen.” He sat in silence a moment as Wulvren passed his order onto the messenger, continuing once the soldier had been sent away. “My only hope is that they will take their toll upon the beasts and perhaps slow them enough so that we might strike at their backs unaware as they lay siege.”
“Pardon my tongue, but it is a weak hope, commander, if what we see before us is a true representation of the Grol’s newfound strength.”
“We’ve little else to take faith in, general. We’ve no messengers fast enough to take word of preparation to Lathah, or even to their Pathran allies, no doubt next upon the list of Grol victims. Unable to coordinate a plan of attack, we must make do with what few options are available to us.”
Wulvren shifted in his saddle. “Is this truly our fight to so risk our people? We owe no claims to Lathah or to Pathrale.”
“True.” Feragh met his general’s eyes. “However, if the Grol have grown so powerful as to slaughter the Lathahns behind their great walls, what certainty is there that we will prevail against them?”
“They cannot possibly break our fortifications. We are no farmer folk to be caught by surprise and trampled in our homes.”
“No, of course not, general, but would we be so different under the circumstances?” Once more he gestured
