Kingdom of Monsters - Empire of Sand Series

Chapter 4.1

Lunsa passed two short nights in the broken husk of her former village, always under watch and always within reach of malice, and then the soldiers forced her to take over a dead man's position hauling a cauldron and force-marched her onto the open road for six more nights.

The mudded trail stank. Smoke wove a greasy cloth to blanket their march. When the cloth drew tight, it blurred her eyes and striped her cheeks with tears.

They walked up King's River Road toward the Frost Mountains, but she had heard talk that they were bound for the Moon Sea Kingdom, on the sunset side of the Blade Mountains. No one had crossed that passage for a hundred generations. Their forays directly into the Serengai were aborted attempts at shortcuts.

On the sixth day, an offensive smell over-reached Lunsa's nose. She quickened her pace, but not enough. A man's broad hand pinched her buttocks. Old bruises mushed under the sharp, hard pain.

She jumped forward. The cauldron banged her knees. Surias's brightness flashed through her. "Get a splinter!"

The riverman who pinched her so hard merely slowed again, dropping into the ranks of the conscripts.

Their soldier escort, on his pacing lamine beside their column, didn't look in her direction. The others hauling the cauldron with her ignored her outburst.

She glared at them all and forced her aching legs to walk on.

No one cared that the conscripts followed her to the trenches, leering as she pulled down her leggings, or to the washing streams, where she had to scrub her clothes as she wore them. At the night meal, when she leaned over to slurp fibrous oat gruel, they slashed her braids with a flash of sharpened shale, and her hair sprang free to squeezes and ruckus, as though she were releasing her hair in a seductive dance to tempt them.

Only continuous harvesting of bitter-thorn spikes saved her from the questing hands at night; in the mornings, more than one fat hand swelled with the telltale puffed fingers draining black puss. Luckily, bitter-thorn grew in tangled masses along every road, carried by bird scratch and lamine grain, but she overheard officers speaking about leaving the road before it crossed the river at the Stone Bridge. Dread filled her whenever she thought of the consequences.

Also, she often stuck herself threading the thorns into her skirt, and had to quickly chew her depleting stock of sweet balm and spit it on her wound to draw out the poisons.

A whistle held up the march.

She released her side of the cauldron with a groan.

The other conscripts dropped their burdens and moved around her, uneasy. Her soldier escort rode forward to collect a green torch from an officer. He rode back, selected two torchbearers from the shuffling, sniveling conscripts, and drove them at sword-point into the forest, directly for the Serengai.

Up and down the line, the road quieted as those not chosen gave silent thanks to their gods.

Some conscripts set to starvation foraging, stuffing everything from acrid bark to bitter vetch in their mouths and gagging with hunger. Others, eye sockets black with death, rested their backs against trees and held palm-sized rocks against their chests, eyeing the departed with tired alertness.

Lunsa plucked and stripped a handful of long reeds and retreated from the unwelcome attention she inevitably drew, wedging the cauldron against a rock and crawling inside, drawing her pack after her. Although occasionally, the ugliest conscripts liked to bang it, reverberating through her clenched teeth, one point of vulnerability to watch was a decided advantage.

A distant crackle echoed against the hills. The sky roared black. A man screamed.

All of the conscripts paused, alert.

The sound was not repeated, and they relaxed.

She trimmed the ragged ends of her long reeds—the roadside variety was always scratchy, but better scratchy than falling apart—and fitted the thick ends curve-side out into the loosened weave of her pack, ignoring the sideways glances, the rivermen stretching, moseying in her direction. If she didn't get proper materials soaked and dried, she would have to continue to fix this every few days—

The cauldron made a ringing noise.

She looked up.

The others were looking at her, but none close enough yet to have touched her, not even those sidling up behind her. So then, what was this new torture? She pulled her pack in and tightened her elbows against her sides, a tortoise returning to a too-small shell.

The cauldron rang louder, and she felt the cause. Thud-thud-thud in the ground.

As one, the conscripts looked toward the Serengai.

Greenwoods cracked and snapped, and the shrubbery shook. A giant—a god itself—awoken by this army, come to exact its vengeance?

A peccari as tall as the elder's house ran onto the road.

No, not a peccari.

This creature had the same ill-tempered squint, the same squat tusked body, but its skin was brown singed to black, its head was wickedly horned and tufted, and its canine tusks were thick as saplings and twisted into corkscrews.

Men shrieked, dropping their rocks and leaping away. The monster pounded after them. A quick headshake, and the monster speared two, one on each tusk, and trampled a third man, crushing him beneath stump-sized hooves. It disappeared again into the woods beyond her. Silence returned.

Her cauldron creaked, shaken off balance from its wedge against the tree, and fell over.

She swallowed down the heart-racing fear and crawled out.

The others gathered around the trampled man. He was crushed up like a smashed bug, his chest staved in, eyes glassy on the black sky.

The brush moved again, and everyone jerked to face the new threat.