The pair of archers rode up to the Shield Anvil. One reached down an arm. 'Quickly, sir, the stirrup's clear.'
Unquestioningly, Itkovian clasped the wrist and swung himself up behind the rider. And saw what approached.
Four more demons, four hundred paces away and closing with the speed of boulders tumbling down a mountainside.
'We'll not outrun them.'
'Yes, sir.'
'So we split up,' Itkovian said.
The rider kicked his mount into a gallop. 'Yes, sir. We're the slowest — Torun and Farakalian will engage — give us time-'
The horse swerved suddenly beneath them. Caught unprepared, the Shield Anvil's head snapped back, and he tumbled from the saddle. He hit the hard-packed soil, the air bursting from his lungs, then rolled, stunned, to come to a stop against a pair of legs hard as iron.
Blinking, gasping, Itkovian found himself staring up at a squat, fur-clad corpse. The dark-brown, withered face beneath the antlered head-dress tilted downward. Shadowed sockets studied him.
Gods, what a day.
'Your soldiers approach,' the apparition rasped in Elin. 'From this engagement … you are relieved.'
The archer was still struggling with his startled horse, cursing, then he hissed in surprise.
The Shield Anvil frowned up at the undead figure. 'We are?'
'Against undead,' the corpse said, 'arises an army in kind.'
Distantly, Itkovian heard the sounds of battle — no screams, simply the clash of weapons, relentless, ever growing. With a groan, he rolled onto his side. A headache was building in the back of his skull, waves of nausea rippling through him. Gritting his teeth, he sat up.
'Ten survivors,' the figure above him mused. 'You did well… for mortals.'
Itkovian stared across the basin. An army of corpses identical to the one beside him surrounded the demons, of which only two remained standing. The battle around those two creatures was horrible to witness. Pieces of the undead warriors flew in all directions, but still they kept coming, huge flint swords chopping into the demons, carving them down where they stood. A half-dozen heartbeats later, the fight was over.
The Shield Anvil judged that at least sixty of the fur-clad warriors had been destroyed. The others continued chopping on the felled beasts, swinging ever lower as the remaining pieces grew ever smaller. Even as he watched, dust swirled from the hillsides in every direction — more of the undead warriors with their weapons of stone. An army, motionless beneath the sun.
'We did not know that K'Chain Che'Malle had returned to this land,' the hide-wrapped corpse said.
Itkovian's remaining soldiers approached, tense, driven into watchful silence by the conjurations rising on all sides.
'Who,' Itkovian asked dully, 'are you?'
'I am the Bonecaster Pran Chole, of the Kron T'lan Imass. We are come to the Gathering. And, it seems, to a war. I think, mortal, you have need of us.'
The Shield Anvil looked upon his ten surviving soldiers. The recruit was among them, but not her two guardians. Twenty. Soldiers and horses. Twenty … gone. He scanned the faces now arrayed before him, and slowly nodded. 'Aye, Pran Chole, we have need.'
The recruit's face was the hue of bleached parchment. She sat on the ground, eyes unfocused, spattered with the blood of one or both of the soldiers who had given their lives protecting her.
Itkovian stood beside her, saying nothing. The brutality of the engagement may well have broken the Capan recruit, he suspected. Active service was intended to hone, not destroy. The Shield Anvil's underestimation of the enemy had made of this young woman's future a world of ashes. Two blindingly sudden deaths would haunt her for the rest of her days. And there was nothing Itkovian could do, or say, to ease the pain.
'Shield Anvil.'
He looked down at her, surprised that she would speak, wondering at the hardness of her voice. 'Recruit?'
She was looking round, eyes thinning as she studied the legions of undead warriors who stood in ragged ranks, unmoving, on all sides. 'There are thousands.'
Spectral figures, risen to stand above the plain's tawny grasses, row on row. As if the earth herself had thrust them clear of her flesh. 'Aye. I'd judge well over ten thousand. T'lan Imass. Tales of these warriors had reached us' — tales I found hard to countenance — 'but this represents our first encounter, and a timely one at that.'
'Do we return to Capustan now?'
Itkovian shook his head. 'Not all of us. Not immediately. There are more of these K'Chain Che'Malle on this plain. Pran Chole — the unarmed one, some kind of high priest or shaman — has suggested a joint exercise, and I have approved. I will lead eight of the troop west.'