Kingdom of Monsters - Empire of Sand Series

Chapter 4.2

Demian emerged from the bush.

Those closest bent down and snatched up their rocks again, shrinking from him as though he, too, were a Serengai beast.

He eyed their poses, looked beyond them into the broken passage of the boar, then shifted back.

The captain-at-arms galloped up behind him, along with other soldiers.

The rivermen lowered their rocks and backed away.

The strategist, Herr Ravot, rode forward on a skinny beast. "I should've liked to have captured that one. Study it, find its weakness."

"It has a weakness for man's flesh, your strategicalness," the sergeant said. "It full ate a man. Dragged him into the bushes and crunched his bones before the demon routed him."

Demian ignored them. He was still looking after the giant. Listening.

"I should like to return the favor. Feed a soldier's family for a year on that ham," the older man said. He noticed Lunsa. "You. Mountain doe. Did your kind hunt these? Eh?" He nudged a riverman with his toe. "Your sister there. Does she understand words?"

But the riverman didn't answer. He was no more her brother than Herr Ravot was his father.

Lunsa preferred to slide away from their attention.

Even if she did wish to assist, her elder had made the proper observations, and her tribe followed the old laws faithfully. She had never seen such giant creatures. Her tribe and the Serengai godlings left each other in peace.

Now that the soldiers were banging into the woods, destroying her elder's spiritual agreements and burning the creatures out, she had seen worms the width of her torso with inward-flexing teeth, bats that hooked onto flesh and swelled with blood, and a village-tree-sized chicken that had shuffled into last night's settled camp, tilted one eye at a stunned riverman, and pecked him dead.

At her silence, Herr Ravot's expression soured. He made the cutting motions at his ears, to ensure that she did not hear his true name in his voice and use it against him in witchcraft, and looked down on the dead conscript. "This one's done. Part out his things and move on."

Their escort soldier rode forward. "Burying the body will discourage scavengers on our flanks."

"What do we care for scavengers on our flanks? We have a buffer," he said, looking over the conscripts buffering the army from assault with their bodies. "We'll make the Stone Bridge tomorrow. I begin to think that the Blade Mountains cannot be as bad as this forsaken land."

The words hit her with a jolt. The Stone Bridge! Were they really at the crossing? Any ordinary forest would have yielded to this army's insistent assaults, and indeed, the ordinary forest surrounding the road charred down to nubs so that she rarely recognized what she marched through.

The Stone Bridge was her last chance to regain her tribe. She had to slip away. In tonight's camp, before they changed out the weary guards, before anyone realized what she was up to, she had to—

Demian focused on her.

She froze.

Arctavian trotted down the road, half a unit riding with him. He stopped before Demian and formed a ring around the General. Demian turned his back on Arctavian but stopped at the press of the other men.

The under-general tsked. "Lost another soldier, I see."

Demian's voice remained soft. "Move."

Arctavian's men remained in position, hemming him in.