Blood of Azura

Part I

'Move! Keep walking or you will feel the whip again!' The guard roared behind her.

He wanted to whip them, she could practically smell his desire. He had done it for even the most slightest indiscretion in the days since they were marched out of the city: a glance behind them, a word to a fellow Azurian, talking back. Any of these had brought his hot leather whip down on their legs, backs, and any other vulnerable exposed skin.

The crack of the whip echoed across the back of her legs from memory as she pushed forward, her tired dry body moving out of survival only. She wondered why the desire to survive remained when all else was lost. Everything was gone. Her home. Her love. Her name. All of it gone.

All of it your fault.

The old woman to her left sobbed quietly and dropped back a pace. Fara's arm shot out to grab her by the bony elbow and she pulled her along with her. The old woman wouldn't survive another crack of the whip.

'Keep going. We're almost there,' Fara encouraged quietly, risking her own skin instead. 'I can see the fires. Can you smell them? The camp isn't far. I promise.'

The old woman responded with another low sob, not overly encouraged by Fara's words or by the sound of human kindness. But she quickened her pace and kept moving.

All around them the noises were those of exhaustion and fear, hopelessness thick and pungent in the air. All female. The men had been slaughtered in the siege or marched west to another camp, ready to be shipped back as Labour slaves for the steel caves of Leoth or the coal mines of Zybar.  She'd thought, with a selfish kind of hope, that they might put the women to death too. But she had been wrong to hope.  Because in war women were the spoils of men. She'd been chained up with the women of Azura and forced to march, two days and two nights, to their victor's sprawling camp near the sea.

As they rounded over the hill she saw it. She saw what she'd seen from the walls of the castle that day, what her father-by-wedlock had seen, what should have turned his mind to surrender.

She saw the end.

She saw an unbeatable force here to destroy everything in it's wake.

A thousand ships or more rested in the open water, a camp large enough to house a hundred thousand men or more sprawled across the golden sand. Huts and tents and fires all demonstrating that this Leothine lead Zybar army had no plans to go anywhere. These pilfering raping monsters were here to carve up the green glades and endless riches of Azura for themselves. They may never go home.

That scared her more than anything.

Her brother had done nothing when he'd been called upon to help. King Sylvan had sent envoys at the first sight of ships on the horizon, a plea from her new family to the family she'd been born to for help. A request for men and swords to make their way towards the coast to help defend The City of Gold. But Fara's people were not known for their love of war. The quarrel was not with Calate, and so nothing would convince her brother to come to her new family's aid. The envoys had returned apologetic and empty-handed. The moment she was alone she cried out of guilt and fear wondering if her own words or hand might have swayed her brother's broken mind had she tried. Had she made a promise, any promise. But her soul was poisoned enough as it stood and so she had done nothing.