Troy Denning: The Crimson Legion

She pulled him from the shadow. His legs were as white as ivory, but at least they remained attached. The mul put a hand to his thigh. It was colder than anything he had ever felt, and there was no sensation in the leg.

“What’s wrong with them?” the mul cried, wondering if the heat would ever return to his frozen flesh.

As he spoke, Umbra’s black shadow shrank to the size of a normal man. Where the shadow beast had lain, the sand was clean and sparkling. There was not a single corpse, stray weapon, or even a puddle of blood to suggest that there had ever been a battle on the dune.

The shadow slipped down the slope and assumed his rightful place at Maetan’s feet. The Urikite commander hardly seemed to notice, studying the site with an air of distaste. Finally, a small sandspout rose around his body, hiding the mindbender from the mul’s sight.

Rikus pushed off the ground and drew his numb legs up beneath him, then tried to run down the slope. His knees remained stiff as stones, pitching him face-first into the burning dune.

Maetan’s sandspout rose high off the ground, then drifted out into the valley and hung over the heads of a throng of Urikite soldiers that was being pursued by a mob of bloodthirsty gladiators. For a few moments, Rikus feared that Maetan was awaiting an opportunity to launch some devastating mental attack, but at last the whirlwind traced a semicircle in the air and shot up the valley.

Neeva helped Rikus to his feet. “I hate to admit it, but I’m a little surprised,” she said, slipping his bulky arm over her shoulders. “We won.”

“Not yet,” Rikus said, watching the sandspout fade from view. “Not until we have Maetan.”

The thirsty Tyrians stood beneath an arch of golden sandstone, taking what shelter they could from the white-hot sky. Their eyes were fixed far below, on the slowly spinning sails of a small windmill. With each rotation, the mill pumped a few gallons of cool, clear water from a deep well and dumped it into a covered cistern.

Unfortunately, the cistern stood in the middle of a small village. The plaza surrounding it was basically round in shape, with a jagged edge of curving salients that resembled tongues of flame. The circle was paved with cobblestones of crimson sandstone, and the whole thing reminded Rikus too much of the scorching ball of fire hanging in the center of the midday sky.

The huts enclosing the plaza also resembled the sun, with rounded red flagstone walls. The buildings stood only about five feet high, and none were covered by any semblance of a roof. From his position on the hillside, Rikus could look directly down into their interiors and see the stone tables, benches, and beds with which they were furnished. Of course, on Athas there was little need to protect one’s belongings from rain, but the mul thought it foolish that the residents left themselves and their belongings exposed to the brutal sun all day long.

The huts, standing in a series of concentric rings, were enclosed by a single low wall of red brick. At the moment, the wall was manned by eight hundred Urikite troops. Two hundred more stood at the edges of the plaza, their spears pointed inward toward a frightened mass of men and women huddling together in the circle.

The prisoners were all short, standing only about chest high to their guards, and with squat, angular builds that made even Rikus look undermuscled by comparison. Their bodies were completely hairless and sun-darkened to deep mahogany, save for a patch of orange skin covering the ridge of thick bone along the top of their heads.

Towering above the dwarves, in the center of the circle next to the cistern, stood Maetan of Family Lubar and four large bodyguards. Though the distance separating them was great enough that Rikus could not make out the Urikite’s expression, the mul could see that the mindbender was sipping water from a wooden dipper and staring up at the arch where he and his companions stood.

The mul shifted his gaze from his enemy to the terrain surrounding the dwarven town. On the side closest to Rikus, slabs of orange-streaked sandstone, speckled with purple spikeball and silvery fans of goldentip, rose at steep angles to become the foothills of the Ringing Mountains. The other side of the village was dominated by a barren mound of copper-colored sand.

Thirsty Tyrian warriors covered the dune and the sandstone slabs, sitting in plain sight and staring down at the cistern with yearning eyes. In the olive-tinged hours just after dawn, Rikus’s legion had taken up positions surrounding the village and had been awaiting the order to attack ever since. But with the Urikites waiting for his troops to make the first move, Rikus was in no hurry to give the order.

“If we attack, Maetan kills the dwarves,” the mul growled, shaking his head and facing the five people with him. “If we don’t, we die of thirst.”

The Tyrian army had run out of water two days ago after five days of tracking Maetan and fighting a running battle to keep him from regathering the Urikite army. Thanks to his mul blood, Rikus was not suffering too badly from the lack of water. The same was true of K’kriq, who only drank once every ten or twelve days in the best of times.

Unfortunately, the rest of their companions were not so hardy. Neeva’s lips were cracked and bleeding, her green eyes sunken and gray, and her skin peeling away in red flakes. Jaseela’s black hair had become stiff as straw and the tip of her swollen tongue protruded from the drooping side of her mouth. Styan’s throat was so constricted that he could hardly gasp when he tried to speak.

Gaanon was the worst off, though. Because of his great size, he required more water than most warriors, and thirst was taking its toll on him faster than anyone else. His throat was so swollen that it choked off his breath if he didn’t consciously hold it open. Simply taking a few steps strained his big body so severely that he had to lie motionless in order to calm his pounding heart. To make matters worse, the wound in the half-giant’s thigh had festered, and now a steady dribble of yellow pus ran from the puncture. Rikus had no doubt that Gaanon would die if he did not have water soon.

“I don’t know what to do.” the mul admitted.

“There is only one thing we can do,” Styan whispered. Still dressed in his black cassock, he was the only one of the group wearing anything more than a breechcloth, halter, and a light cape. He claimed the heavy cloak trapped a layer of moisture next to his skin, but Rikus had his doubts.

“Yes,” Jaseela agreed. “We must leave.”

“Are you mad?” Styan croaked.

“I won’t be responsible for the death of an entire village,” the noblewoman countered, waving her hand toward the crowded plaza below.

“They’re only dwarves,” objected Styan. “And crazier than most, judging from their village.”

Rikus raised his hand to silence them. Their comments had provided no help, for he was already well aware of the situation either his legion died, or the dwarves did. “What do you think?” he asked Neeva.

She did not hesitate. “This is our fight, not that of the dwarves. We can’t sacrifice them to save ourselves.”

“We’re also saving Tyr,” Styan added.

“You care less about Tyr than you do about the dwarves,” Jaseela hissed.

“That’s enough.” Rikus stepped between them. “I know what we have to do.”

“What?” gasped the templar. From his hostile inflection, Rikus knew that Styan would not be happy with any answer that did not mean water.

Rikus faced the village again, where Maetan was wasting water by pouring it over the heads of his captives. “We’ll capture the cistern-without letting Maetan kill anyone.”