Demonstorm

'How many wagons set out?' he asked.

'Fifteen,' said Auum.

'Dear Gods burning,' said Hirad.

The end of the train was in sight. Eight wagons remained.

'They'll be here in less than half an hour,' said Denser.

'Know that for a fact, do you?' said Hirad.

'Educated guess.'

'Hardly matters. We need to get in there and get involved. We've done enough hanging around. We've—'

'Hirad, are you all right?' Erienne's hand was on his neck.

'I—'

The full force of the rage hit him then. He knew he was falling but he was helpless to save himself. His body was suffused with the strength of Sha-Kaan's fury and he had no option but to let it wash him away.

'Sha-Kaan,' he managed. T can't—'

The Great Kaan was close to losing control. The frustrations and anger thudded around Hirad's skull, rendering him helpless. He was dimly aware of his friends spealdng to him, touching him, but he had no way of responding. He gathered the vestiges of his consciousness to him and did the only tiling he could.

'Sha-Kaan, stop. You're killing me.'

Abruptly, the hammering of emotion within him ceased but did not allow him to return to consciousness.

'Skies take them, they are destroying all our hopes.' Sha-Kaan's words flooded his senses. Hirad felt his despair and impotence.

'Who?' he asked into the void.

Sha-Kaan sighed, a sonorous exhalation laced with sorrow. 'It would take so long to explain. Since you're unexpectedly at rest, I will grant you this. See through my eyes. Feel what I feel.'

Hirad experienced an acute sensation of falling. He felt the ground disappear and a sense of vastness take its place. Cold air channelled across his body and every nerve and fibre was suffused with ancient pain and longing.

He heard the beat of wings, felt their resistance against the air, their driving power. His nostrils caught the harsh scents of wood and oil, the smell of wrecked, burned flesh. He could taste something acrid and sour in his mouth. His mind reeled under the weight of emotion pressing from every direction. And finally, he opened his eyes and drank in the skies of Beshara.

What he saw chilled his bones. Beneath him, as Sha-Kaan's head swept around to give him the panorama, the sky was a mixture of flashing scales, blinding yellow flame and dark smoke, torn by the winds of the upper skies. The battering roar of mouths disgorging fire swept up to him on a tide of fury so intense it shuddered him.

Hirad couldn't begin to count the dragons intent on destruction below. He recalled the sight he had seen in these same skies at the time of the Noonshade rip but it was a mere skirmish compared to this.

'Almost a thousand dragons chase a petty squabble and damage us all such that we may never recover,' toned Sha-Kaan. 'And outside our dimension, the Arakhe will be sensing it all. Fire this intense and the temptation of dragons to switch out of the battle and move

into inter-dimensional space to escape could open the door to them.'

The noise from below was truly extraordinary. A flight of Skoor, twenty strong and glittering sand-yellow, curved in a tight arc and drove through the left flank of their enemies where they pressured fellow Skoor. Massed in a roughly spherical formation, they tore into their targets. Flame scoured every point of the compass around them. Forward, the lead dragons collided wjth those in their path.

It was a devastating tactic and one being mimicked across the fight. Dragons bellowed and squealed, their wings, bellies and backs scorched and bubbling. Smoke trails criss-crossed. Fangs ripped into necks. Dragons by the dozen fell from the sky. Yet still the Skoor were losing the battle. Outnumbered five to one, their moves couldn't hope to counter the enemy strength for ever. But their pride kept them fighting. The attrition rate was awful.

'On a day when we should have been working to secure all our futures, one brood has been rendered extinct and others will be so depleted they cannot hope to survive.'

Hirad felt the ocean-deep grief as if it were his own.

'In our pride we used to think it was other species so blind that they would fight each other over nothing though their mutual extinction was the only sure result. And yet we are worse. Our failure could extinguish so many lives because we have chosen to touch them without offering them the choice to refuse us.

'Tell me you are close to Xetesk.'

'Less than a day, Great Kaan. But there's one hell of a fight coming to get in there. The demons aren't exactly going to usher us in, are they?'

Sha-Kaan paused. Below, the centre of the fight exploded in appalling flame, engulfing fifty, a hundred even. 'When is the fight?'

'It's already begun. Julatsans and the Al-Arynaar are under attack as they approach Xetesk. We're joining them and we'll all enter the city early tomorrow morning.'

T will bring the Kaan to you.'

'No,' said Hirad. 'We shouldn't declare our hand and announce all our allies. Save your strength, save as many as you can and be ready when I call.'

Sha-Kaan rumbled. 'You could fail at the gates.'

'We won't fail,' said Hirad. 'We're—'

'Don't,' said Sha-Kaan. 'Don't say it.' Embryonic humour flared, gone in a wing beat. 'Time to go, Hirad Coldheart. I must pick through the ashes and rebuild what I can.'

'Good luck.'

'Skies keep you, my friend.'

Hirad opened his eyes, pain already a fading pulse in his head. Above him, a ring of anxious faces. Thraun's cracked a smile.

'Sha-Kaan?' he said and held out a hand.

Hirad grasped it and pulled himself up.

'Yes,' he nodded. 'More trouble, I'm afraid. Look, we need to get a move on when we get into Xetesk. I'll tell you on the way but it seems to me that every day we delay, fewer dragons will be alive to shield us.'

The cacophony surrounding the wagon train was so complete Rebraal could barely make himself heard. The demon attacks were incessant now and since the disastrous loss of two ColdRoom mage teams the previous night, the pressure on the Al-Arynaar warriors was acute. The humans were panicked now, losing their heads and then their souls when their discipline failed. Five of the eight wagons had elven drivers now and so few humans actually remained that Rebraal contemplated placing them all in wagons. Through his irritation at their failings, though, he couldn't help but be impressed by the sheer doggedness that they showed. And every time their numbers fell, they still found time to joke. The Al-Arynaar couldn't understand laughter in such dire circumstance but Rebraal had seen it all before with The Raven.

Right now, though, he was more concerned with the horses. All of them were tired and the accumulated stress was evident in trembling limbs and eyes that spoke of their confusion. His elves still spoke soothing words to them but eventually that would not be enough.

Above him, the demons were massing again. He didn't have much time. Rebraal ran down the line of surviving wagons. His limp was becoming more pronounced. The cloth tight around his thigh could do only so much. The claws of the cursyrd had raked deep during the last attack and of course he hadn't been able to rest

and so die blood still flowed. The wound felt frozen, his muscle damaged, but he could not afford to stop. Not until Auum and The Raven reached them.

But where were they?

The wagon train was passing to the south-east of Triverne Lake now. Before long, they could expect concerted attack from the Xetesk cursyrd, adding to the legions that had dogged them from Julatsa.                                                   

Two days of constant noise, repeated attacks and movement broken only to change horses was taking quick toll. They were all tired: the mages in the wagons with paper-dun concentration; the warriors running beside them with muscles burning and fatigued; attack mages with barely time to cast the simplest spell in the mana holes