Kingdom of Monsters - Empire of Sand Series

Chapter 3.2

She prayed.

Her prayers were answered. The sky flared brilliant red. Surias flashed his power into her, ringing her voice with command. "I demand passage from your general!"

The captain-at-arms paused. "You have no power to make demands."

"I do have. I know his true name!"

His blade lowered. "You haven't the General's true name."

She clutched her leggings with trembling hands. "Let him deny me."

His mount stepped forward, stepped back, stepped to the side. The captain-at-arms twisted in irritation. "You are playing a trick."

The sky flared again. "Hear your general praise you after I have cursed his kannen and sent him into the shadelands."

Trees shivered. Flames popped across the black sky.

The captain-at-arms raised his blade and threw it.

The sword flew over her shoulder and hacked into the riverman running headlong into the woods. He stumbled and fell. He did not rise again.

His companda jumped from his back, where it had sheltered under his dirty cloak. It sniffed the jutting sword with unblinking eyes, then reached out a sad hand to tap-Tap-TAP the sword, but the sword did not move and neither did the riverman. The creature hunched in on itself, stared into the oblivion, witnessing the desertion of its owner's kannen-a from the riverman's body, and dropped to all fours, a frightened animal. It began the laborious process of toe-walking away.

The captain-at-arms glared at the remaining riverman. "The punishment for desertion is death."

He squeezed his knees together and whimpered. "I weren't running. I weren't running!"

The captain-at-arms urged his lamine to the dead man, planted a hoof on his back, and yanked the blade free. His blood dripped a warning.

"I'm your faithful!" the remaining riverman cried, squeezing his companda to eyes bursting. "I'm whatever you need."

The captain-at-arms eyed Lunsa. "If you lie, you'll wish you'd died."

Now that her immediate danger had passed, Surias and Lirial abandoned her. She clutched her broken leggings, alone in the torn soil amidst her scattered pack.

He nodded to the remaining riverman. "Take her, then."

The riverman danced. "Ohhh."

The captain-at-arms turned his beast toward her village.

She tied her leggings and gathered what she could of her pack while the riverman swore at her to hurry. They followed the captain-at-arms up familiar runnels, first away from her village, then toward it on King's River Road.

As before, the unfamiliarity of her native passage jarred her. Widened under the beating of hundreds of hoof prints, chewed and spit up, the road raged over unearthed rock and stripped root, bloodied to a muck-soft pulp.

The soldier's mount suck-suck-sucked every step, and Lunsa and the riverman slipped in the greasy earth behind.

Outlying huts broke off like jagged teeth in the blackened landscape. Along muddied streams, beheaded basket reeds shivered in the ominous wind. Bones, bitter apple cores, and husks littered the char.

Rivermen sifted the ruins, calling out when they found something, throwing down the shards of a family's keepsakes in disgust.

A stench of boiled humanity rose to her nostrils. Flames had touched most of these men, searing cloth to their aged flesh.