44th of Summer, 512 AV
Prairies undulated, rising to stiff-ridged knolls like vessels. Azure skies blemished by fluffy morsels, subjugated by a sweltering nimbus. Tufts of thick, brown grass picking from dirt, crunched under desperate heels. Desiccated sagebrush disintegrating, scuffing milk thistles as sluggish zephyrs tweaked the blades. Twists of spiny yucca eroding from perches. Parched soil rusty like old blood.
Ulric hustled by flinty hurdles, every sinew and tendon shrieking in protest. Ashy flakes caked under sockets where sweat had dried, cupping the ridges of his jaw. Skin flushed, gimlets dull, yet wild from looming perils. Riders, their myriad beyond his ability to puzzle. They’d followed, intending to terminate his raiding, and he was afraid. Resigned to the inevitability of demise, yet frenzying against this ringing augury of hooves, gnashing molars at his impotence. Bone-tired, he refused to allow any leeching of qualms. But he knew this wouldn’t persist. Every dog wants to live, he gritted, clinging to the mantra. Every dog wants to live.
Hills swept by like revenants. Fringes of forests departed a pair of days earlier, obliging him to traverse these barrens. Every step was a jolt, layers of black plate clanking over dusty, dented scales, boiled leathers jingling as he willed himself to carry on. This only preserving his pride, and for the sake of a rogue’s justice. Their stakes were high. Every night, he’d slumped like an ingot of lead, surveying the outlying fires.
Every night, the flames crawled nearer.
Skidding over vertebrae of grass, his lungs were like a pair of busted bellows, pumping with little effect. Harshly yoked by wedges of metal that he couldn’t afford to discard. Legs churning. Pulsing with incessant agony, stitch chiseling at his ribs. Brash he’d been from hiding, and he’d paid the piper.
Every dog wants to live.
Indignation flaring, he implored the ruddy gloom to fall. Deaf ears from divinity. Profane homilies always from the dog. Luxuries like patronage unfitting, their inlay of disregard.
Ulric jabbed by a rocky cleft, over a basin left by a gaggle of tilting hills. Hurrying, mining every shred of grit from his tendons. Puffing and blowing misery. Chafing in soaked togs, but he couldn’t stop or they’d have him. Shrilly, the baying of mongrels only reminded him that it was his fault. Grasses swished as he slogged, buffeting and tangling his ankles, until he raked from the morass. Defy a god, and you inevitably perish.
Abruptly, he realized there’d be no more nights. Mad dogs were kicked until they’d become jelly. Mad dogs died, squashed by their ferality. Musket-ball gimlets skated over grassy knolls, straying over the swell of a lank, stony tor. Boulders cradled the summit, nestling like giant eggs. Making for them, he trudged with a limping delicacy, afflicted by sporadic wheezing. Shuffling through his unruly pack, he triumphantly lifted a canteen, guzzled liquid from the relic. Balmy tendrils flowed through him, consoling aching joints and partly rejuvenating his vigor. Tiny pearls trailed canyons over the grime caking his neck, lodged in the bluish scruff of beard.
Eventually he reached the zenith, though he’d rarely felt this grudging, sinking certainty in his belly. “Dira, bide with me I’ll give you a display of carnage,” he pledged, “Such as you’ve never seen.” Likely just another, empty intonation from the damned, but he’d always been arrogant. Empty intonation from the damned, really. Puffed up by mounds of corpses, metal slivered around bone shrapnel. Flies everywhere.
This stampede he couldn’t finagle, and he knew it. They’d destriers, ringmail, arbalests, and he was trapped. Twenty, thirty riders, he didn’t know the figure, imperiling him with their proximity. Maybe a bell and they’d be upon him, judging by the nebula of dust.
Ulric lifted his goliath of a crossbow, skewing its flanged, unyielding steel prods over a boulder. Plucked thick quarrels from his bag and poked them in the scorched soil, readying for battle. The knoll provided him an excellent vantage, without any glaring weakness except that it wasn’t vertical. Kneeling, he jerked on his gauntlets, fixing them around a lump of schist in the rocky detritus. Hauled it up, and then reached for another, flatter piece. Using these dregs for a barricade, he might bridge the divide of larger boulders. Raising an ersatz palisade wasn’t easy. Toiling, he piled a pair of spans just over his waist. More sweat dripped from his spiky mane, and he hesitated for another, fortifying gulp. Kept a laconic vigil over the prarie.
Cradled by these stones, perhaps he’d inflict just enough, glorious butchery to assuage his grief at perishing.
