Sarkiades: The Echoes of Resolution
Part 2: The Pursuit
Sarkiades watched the team of Kulnarn horse archers circle around the hastily extinguished campfire, resisting the impulse to release his grip on the bowstring as he lay concealed in a thicket of Greentongue Berries atop a nearby hill. There were five this time. That meant he needed to be careful.
The slaughter of one of the Dark God's fire born on the banks of the Taevitra River had apparently caused something of a stir in the Ukni high command, because the Gesatir wasted no expense in carpeting the Velian Plains with his tracking teams. Sarkiades had expected some kind of pursuit once the Korvadun agents realized that he'd escaped from the city with vital intelligence, but the fact that his trail happened to cross paths with the man who slew Arikhe had apparently promoted him to the second most wanted fugitive in all of Aios. He wasn't even sure whether the Ukni knew about the documents detailing their plans for a surprise invasion of Lyst, but he supposed that hardly mattered now. There was nothing quite like the death of an Onguloch to light a fire under the general's asses, and now the entire countryside was lousy with Ukni search teams.
Before now they'd been content to fan out alone or in pairs, and he'd been able to survive for a while just by using the woods to obscure his trail. With so many refugees fleeing the Ukni advance, a single traveler was not of any great interest, at least until a keen eyed Kulnarj spotted him in the bows of a Respite tree and he was forced to open fire. Since then, he'd had to contend with half a dozen small teams of two or three riders, and he'd ambushed each with little difficulty. Now, however, they appeared to be taking the threat more seriously, which meant that he'd actually have to use his head to find a way out.
Sarkiades watched the first rider dismount, tentatively kicking the smoldering remains of his fire as if he expected a Wyr to leap out from the embers. Typically, checking to see how fresh a campfire was was the sort of thing that required that required only a single soldier, but he needed to know how much the enemy knew about him, and the fastest way to find that out was with bait. Knowing that none of the Ukni scouts would be able to read the Argovad script used by the city-states of Naviras, he'd scraped the ink off one of the less important documents and wrote out a few vulgar limericks about the depraved inclinations of the rider's mothers, then left it singed at the edge of the campfire as if he'd been in too much of a hurry to burn it properly.
While Sarkiades' heart leapt at the speed with which the commander jumped off his horse and pulled the paper free from the fire, he took some consolation in the fact that men were born with the neither the limbs nor the minds to read and shoot at once. As the commander gestured over one of his subordinates, Sarkiades released his arrow, letting it fly free just as the man's feet left the stirrups. Within seconds he had followed this opening volley with a rapid fire barrage aimed at the other dismounted riders while the two still on horseback charged his position.
Sarkiades picked up the soaking rag at his feet, wrapped it around an arrowhead as he smashed his flint against the firestarter. He lit the rag and lobbed off the shot, then dove down beneath his cover, unsure whether he found his target until shouts of confusion came echoing up the hill. He had been fortunate that Krash, the strange intoxicant given to Ukni soldiers which amplified the arrogance and emotional inhibition of alcohol while severely attenuating the motor loss, was far more flammable than even grain, and doubly so that one of the first riders he'd killed had apparently been severely addicted to the stuff. He'd found two jugs tied to the man's horse. Enough to soak the rag and douse a flattened off section of the hill's defile that he knew the riders would have to cross. The blast alone wasn't enough to kill them, but those few seconds of shock were long enough for his arrows to finish the job.
Sarkiades hated the way he'd come to enjoy those screams, but a moment later he heard a sound that far less agreeable: horns. The first rang out from the other side of the burning clearing, but it was quickly echoed by dozens more in every direction. He was surrounded.
Sarkiades leapt up onto his stolen courser, pricking his ears to the deep, undulating calls as he spurred her as aggressively as he could. By his reckoning, the enemy had already established a decent perimeter, especially to the north, but there were only a handful of answering cries from the south. However, while most of the area to the north was open farm country, to the south the valley threaded itself through a narrow gap between two rocky embankments that would leave him completely exposed. If the scouting party had been nothing more than bait to draw him out of hiding, then whoever was in charge of the search would have certainly set up cordons at the other end of the pass. But if he truly had taken them by surprise with his ambush, then there was a real chance that the difficult terrain had slowed down the hunting parties in the south. There was only one way to find out, he supposed, and in the end either option was better than hanging around waiting to be discovered.
The trail plunged down into a strand of Blanket Trees, choking morning sunlight into a dusky haze as he struggled to guide his courser through the twisting passages. As the path wound it's way back up around the embankment, the sight of a fallen tree forced him to jerk on the reigns, his horse rearing back just as a barrage of arrows rained down from the surrounding hills.
Sarkiades kicked his feet free from the stirrups and sprung to his left just as his horse's lifeless body pounded into to the ground. He had just enough time for a moment's glance at his assailants before he was rolling down the side of the hill, but a moment had been all that he needed to confirm that he was fucked from every orifice. If the enemy had enough time to cut down a tree for the purposes of an ambush then they would have certainly taken the time to blockade the exit. As if to confirm his suspicion, a chorus of horns sounded out from both ends of the valley. Horns that had been silent when he'd ambushed the scouting team. He was hemmed in from all sides like a boar at the end of a hunt.
The funny thing about a cornered boar, though, was that no matter how skilled the tracker or how great their technological superiority, there was always that chance that those final moments would see the hunter gored through. In fact, it was not unusual at all for even kings of great courage and martial skill to meet their end from simple hunting mishaps. Up until now, every decision he'd made had been exactly what the enemy had wanted him to do. The Ukni had managed to lay an astoundingly intricate trap for him, but the mere fact that they had resorted to such measures revealed a deeper truth: they were afraid. Thinking about it, he realized that if the Shugatyad had concealed his presence from the enemy, as they were notoriously good at doing, then the most obvious candidate for Arikhe's killer would have been the man who'd escaped Piristrus with a cache of vital documents just as the city was in the heat of her death throes. A man whose trail happened to intersect the Onguloch's at the exact point where the beast met it's end. If there was a way out of this mess, and he sincerely doubted that there was, then it would be found in yoking that fear to his advantage.
A sane person in that situation would have done one of a handful of things. They might have tried to return back the way they came, circled around the ambush in an attempt to reach the southern exit, or even laid a counter-ambush of their own. However, one thing that no sane man would ever do is to walk back up the way they came as if the ambush was nothing more than a mild inconvenience. It was, however, exactly the sort of thing that a gossip-addled soldier might expect from the man who single-handedly brought down an Onguloch.
As he walked back up the slope, focusing his thoughts on maintaining a straight spine and a firm, confident bearing, he listened to the ambushing party fan out beyond the trail. He watched tops of six helmets ride past, heading north to encircle him, but they continued moving down the trail, only noticing him as he casually walked back onto the path.
Shouts and cries rang out all around him, but the vast majority came from behind, along the ways he would have gone if he'd sought to out maneuver them, but all that greeted him as he crested the embankment was his horse's body, five living Thekhaln coursers left behind as their owners walked through the heavy undergrowth, and the four soldiers who'd taken up positions behind the toppled tree. All around, the Ukni were screaming and rushing back to the ambush site, but those four men were frozen in place. Sarkiades did his best to put on a cold, annoyed expression as he strode forward in slow, measured steps, then sprang to life with terrifying forces, slicing out the throats of two of them as they fumbled with their bows, while the third caught him in the stomach with a firm kick.
Sarkiades rolled backwards, springing to his feet just in time to parry a thrust from the fourth. He leapt forward as if to counter, but just as the two soldiers jumped back he turned and ran towards the tethered mounts, cutting all five loose as he jumped up onto the back of the strongest and kicked it into a charge towards the southern exit.
The trail swung upward as he made his way around the bend, the trees giving way to an open expanse of hastily abandoned fields and farmsteads. But his enemy were not so foolish as to grant him access to that perfect horse country. At the very edge of the forest stood a shield wall of twenty Nashragha infantrymen, the dawn sun glistening on their blades and chest plates while the black fields of their full body shields seemed to devour any trace of light. The exit was completely blocked, and he had no doubt that a similar scene awaited him were he to turn back. He'd done all that he could, but sometimes this world just buried you so deep in shit that you could never hope claw your way out. A smile came to Sarkiades' face as he drilled his heel into his horses flank. He'd been on borrowed time since the throne room anyway, and the best way of ensuring that the secret of the Shugatyad died with him was to give these sons of bitches a last stand worthy of the slayer of Arikhe.
Sarkiades loosened his feet in the stirrups, preparing to dive off his mount at the moment of impact. But there would be no steep embankments to save his ass this time. As the infantrymen threw up their shields against the force of a steed at full gallop, Sarkiades dove forward, clearing the first rank defenders and coming down hard on the second, who had raised their shields into the air to protect the men at the front from arrows. He suspected that the impact broke the arm of the first of the two soldiers to bear the brunt of his dive, for their was no resistance as he drew out his hunting knife and cut loose his throat. The second, however, still had some fight left in him. The soldier grabbed the wrist of his knife hand and pulled it back as he drove his free elbow towards his chest, sending Sarkiades to the ground as the man leapt up on him. But the man's helm had fallen off in their struggle, and Sarkiades hoisted up his chest like a man swimming the butterfly and brought his own helmet crashing into his exposed forehead.
He felt himself getting yoked up from behind, drawing up his knife before the infantrymen could fully surround him and digging it deep into the meat of his arm.
“I don't give a fuck if he cuts off your cock and eats it right in front of you, we need that one alive!” came the shouts of the Ashravid in command of the formation.
Concussive blows from shields and sword butts rained down on him. A flash of pain cut across his face, followed by a warm sensation and the realization that he'd lost vision in his left eye. A violent impact sent him sprawling to the ground with dozens of feet searching out the unprotected places in his comparatively sparse Navarid armor. Sarkiades' consciousness began to fade, and with his last thoughts he wondered at the fact that the Ukni were still shouting and struggling.
A world of suffering enveloped Sarkiades' mind as it returned from silent oblivion. He felt as though his body had become some kind of perverse fountain, flooding his mind with a putrid mixture of every variety of burning, stabbing, and rupturing that he'd every known. Yet even that rancid cocktail of agonies was a warm spring breeze compared to the twin terrors looming over him: that his left eye was gone and that he had no fucking clue what had happened to him.
“Hell of a beating you took back there, friend.” a voice called out from above. “Hell of a beating you gave out, too, but fortunately for us, my companions and I aren't in the business of mending Ukni soldiers.”
Sarkiades rolled over, struggling to focus his gaze on the man standing over him. He wore the armor of a Piristran Naval officer, complete with the close-cropped beard and steely stare those types usually preferred. Yet there was a muted warmth in his eyes; the kind that comes when men of compassionate temperaments are strengthened rather than melted down in the kilns of war and despair.
“Luckily for you, Falviun's mother was a healer who managed to pass on enough herb-lore to make him useful in a pinch; and despite her insistence that her true calling is in combat, Sevetria can put the Minair to good use mending wounds when she decides that she wants to. Unfortunately, even if Plotarkes of Boronea had been here it wouldn't have made any difference for that eye of yours, but at the very least you shouldn't have to worry about it going green on you.” the man said.
“Well I'd take waking up to a blurry looking Piristran over the vivid image of a Korvadun agent any day.” Sarkiades said, stumbling to his feet.
“That's the stuff.” the officer said. “You know, you put up a hell of a fight back there. We were following those Ukni search teams when you came screaming outta that grove like the Dark God's own nightmare. To be honest it took me a couple of seconds to figure out if you were a man or a forest spirit.”
“Well you wouldn't have had much trouble if you'd stayed hiding any longer. I can't imagine a Lithir woulda had any issues with a few dozen infantrymen.”
“You coulda fooled us the way you leapt from that horse. I've seen my share of fighting and I've never once seen a thing like that. The name's Targan, by the way. Captain, or I should say former captain, of the Liviarus. And this...” Targan said, gesturing to the three men and one woman at his side. “is her former crew. Falviun here was my first mate. Despite how he looks he's actually not that bad to have around when things get hot. He was the one who had the idea to strip down the corpses to rig up a field gurney with their robes and lances. That woman who's looking at you like your decision to get your eye slashed open was a personal slight to her is Sevetria, our mage. She's not exactly known for her bedside manner, but you can take it from me that you're much better off with that stare than the one she's been giving those Ukni soldiers. She's half the reason any of us are still breathing, and the other half is that burly looking fellow standing next to her. That's Galtus. He was born a dozen miles outside Tarileum, and his old man was a hunter. He knows this land like he knows the folds of his dick. Hell, the only reason we've been able to keep our trail from the eyes all those search teams is because of his skill at covering our tracks. That young pup over there is Quistos. He picked a hell of a time to enlist, but he's figured out enough to make himself useful from time to time, like when we needed someone to actually haul that rigged up stretcher back to camp.”
“Well you have my regards. I woulda been dead back there if it wasn't for you guys. But if you don't mind me asking, how does the captain and crew of a Piristran naval vessel end up this deep in the interior?” Sarkiades asked.
“It's funny you should ask...” Targan answered. “Because, while anyone who can get the Ukni as frothed up as you did is a friend of ours by default, the question of how a Lystian soldier ended up in the middle of the Velian Plains with half an army army on his trail has been the subject of some conversation on our part.”
So they talked. Targan told him about their ship. How they were stationed in Sallaninth far to the east dealing with the Ukni-financed privateers who raided the Nostrean when news of the invasion broke. According to the captain, the Navirark in charge of the city must have been on the Ukni payroll for quite a while, because he'd ordered the entire fleet into port for an inspection before the invasion even began. Fortunately, the Piristran outriders had been faster than the Ukni scouts, so by the time they got back from one of their hunting expeditions news of the siege was already flying around the harbor. Realizing that the Navirark intended to hand the entire fleet over to the enemy, Targan took it upon himself to scuttle not just the Liviarus, but as many of the Piristran ships as they could manage. They'd gotten about a third of the way through the fleet before anyone noticed what they were up to, at which point they fled into the forest with dozens of Korvadun agents on their heels. Apparently they'd thought Sarkiades' ambush was meant for them, and decided to take the fight to the enemy just as he had. For his part, Sarkiades told them everything he'd seen during the fall of Piristrus: the fearsome Onguloch, King Vatrevian's final message and the documents still tucked safely within his robe, the appearance of the Shugatyad, and of course his own desperate flight.
“Well I figured you must have been pretty fucking important to merit that kind of manhunt...” Targan said as he read through the papers. “But I've never seen anything like this in my life. To tell you the truth, it puts me in a bit of an odd position.”
“How so?” Sarkiades asked.
“Well those folks back at Sallaninth seem to be rather fond of throwing that word 'traitor' around. They were yelling it as we pulled into the harbor, they were yelling it when the Navirark gave that big speech about respecting the chain of command, and they damn sure were yelling it after we sent their fleet to the bottom of the Nostrean. Now they made a few convincing arguments about how this world would fall to hell if everyone went around doing whatever they pleased, but the problem is that none of those assholes were hanging around the day I was sworn into the service of my king and homeland. If they want to go over the words of my oath with a fine comb that's their business, but at the end of the day that vow was between me and my kingdom, and, given that there's no longer any Piristrus worthy of the name, it falls on me alone to decide what those words really mean. Truth be told, I figured that scuttling the fleet was as good a way as any to set things right before my crew and I went our separate ways. I was thinking I'd head south to Boronea or Aegerea to see if they had any use for and old captain, but if everything that you're telling me is true, well then it would seem that Piristrus still has some use for us yet.”
“Well if that's the case then I hope you came prepared with a plan, because you can be as impressed as you like with my little show back there, but the simple truth is that people don't go charging headlong into enemy ambushes when they've got better ideas to work with.” Sarkiades said.
“Well like I said, Galtus grew up hunting in these parts, and he has a real gift for sneaking right underneath the enemy's eyes. Now I couldn't say whether it was Arikhe's death or those papers you got with you that got the Ukni so worked up, but it's a pretty safe bet that they're not just gonna turn around and go home after this. So we know where we need to be, and we got a rough idea of how we're gonna get there. All that's left is for us to get up off our asses and do it.”
“I mean I could of told you that much.” Sarkiades replied.
“Well I've got a little more up my sleeve than just that. Up north things have sunk straight to the bottom of a plague infested cesspit, but there's still a bit of resistance further south. Hell, the only reason we ended up this way was because we'd heard the garrison at Tarileum was gonna try to hold out, but by the time we started passing refugees we learned that they'd sent everyone with the strength to fight down to Fostrii. I guess they're planning on evacuating the women and children into Lyst and holding those passes to the last. From what I hear all those frontier fortresses through the Lianin passes are packed to bursting with Piristran loyalists. Those Ukni scouting parties have had free reign over the countryside with all the chaos and collapse, but there's just no fucking way a bunch of horse archers are gonna stand a chance against those mountain strongholds. They'll need to haul in a siege team and all of their heavy engines for that, which means that all we gotta do is get to the foothills of the Lianin Mountains and we're clear.” Targan said.
“So it's a mad dash for Fostrii then?” Sarkiades asked.
“You got it. Move at night. Carry only what you need. Ride our horses 'til their legs give out then kill some more of the bastards and ride off on theirs. You know the drill by now.”
"Sarkiades: The Echoes of Resolution" has been published freely online in order to introduce readers to the world of the "Under the Burning Tower" series. Because of this, hiring an editor for the project simply isn't feasible. If you happen across any typographical or grammatical errors while reading, especially if you see something that looks like a missing paragraph, please feel free to reach out and let me know.
