Canen's Renegade (Closed)

[Canen Darkflight]

You were never far from the sea in Corone. The scent of it was always there, almost as powerful as the stink of the manure from the cattle enclosures at the back of the farm. On the coast's southern side, when the wind was high and from the south, the waves would shatter on the rock wall of the cliff face and spray would rattle over the debris of the weathered heights.

As Canen peered out of the rickety wooden shutters protecting one of two of his farmhouse windows, his eyes veering across the rugged cliff edges not so far away, he remembered how after the Nocturnian War storms had battered the port of Domine for a week and the winds that had carried the sea spray to the cathedral tore down scaffolding about its unfinished dome. Waves had besieged the docks and pieces of broken ship had clattered on the stones, and then the corpses came, the horrible rotting stench of flesh upheaving the stomachs of even the steeliest of those people lucky enough to have survived the liberation of the sacred capital city of Nocturnis itself. But that had been almost ten years ago.

Since then, a decade of fighting for everybody else’s causes had entailed for the tired Nocturn. He had served in clans, armies, fought for bandits and rogues, fought for any bastard who would pay him enough gold to do their dirty work. But the main attractions of doing this were twofold. Firstly, he had earned enough gold to start a farm, live a quiet life away from conflict. Secondly, he did this in peace, his own scores settled and ghosts put to rest.

Another storm beat at the cliffs tonight, and monstrous waves shattered white against the jagged walls. In the dark, the watching Khaian could see the explosions of foam from the breaking tides and they reminded him of the powder smoke blasted from the fire mages of the Haicheyanne, as they tried in desperation to hang on to the realm they had taken from him a century ago, blasting each and every scolding hot fireball into scores of the reunited rank and file Nocturnian Genocide survivors, watching them burn to ash amidst what had to be the most terrible of battlefields Canen had ever served on. It had been a terrible and perhaps selfish burden for such a patriot, to have gathered the survivors of such a tragedy as the Nocturnian Genocide, only to lead them against their tormentors in a forlorn hope knowing that their survival to this point had been a gargantuan achievement in its own right, and then having to ask the people he was trying to save to throw away their lives in order that they might have the smallest chance of triumph over an otherwise invincible enemy.

Even though he was uncertain during the final moments of the Nocturnian victory, as his very own blood-soaked 25th Reaver Division led the final march into the city of Nocturnis to destroy the Haicheyanne once and for all, and see them off into the very gates of hell itself, as to just what he was really resolving, he felt the fight was his own and his fight was finally finished. The fight of the people of Nocturnis, those small bands of survivors who had scattered all over the globe to evade extermination from the hands of a demonic invasion, had finished, and now a new nation was under construction. Very soon, the Nocturns would re-establish themselves in society. An ambition achieved for Canen Maxmillian Darkflight, a vision in which he revelled every night.

As with the uncertainty of the future, and of that glorious day in Nocturnis, there was the same uncertainty again about the violence of this storm. Just when he thought the waves had done their worst, another two or three would explode in sudden bursts, the white water would bloom above the wall like smoke from a tar fire, and the spray would be driven by the wind to spatter against the cliffs like grapeshot.

With one final glance out to sea from the comfort of his warm room, Canen carefully closed and bolted the shutters, securing the ropes that held them to in order to prevent the harsh winds from tearing at them, and extinguished the lantern on his bed table. It was time for rest now. He needed to be up early to harvest, a task difficult in these conditions which required an early start most mornings.

However difficult the conditions proved to be, for once, it was nice to swap a sword for a sickle.

[Canen Darkflight]

Khaian Territory, the City of Domine
Two years ago

The Khaian Army could be heard long before they came into sight. Children clung to their mothers' skirts and wondered what dreadful things made such noises. The hooves of the great steeds mixed with the traces and chains, the hollow rumbling of rickety wooden wheels of supply carts, and above it all the crashes as tons of brass, iron and timber bounced on Domine’s broken paving. Then they were in view; the Reavers, limbers, Cavalry and outriders, all of them to advance the slopes to Nocturnis to pound the enemy into oblivion and defeat. Once, they did it running, swamped by the Haicheyanne invasion and slaughtered like sheep. Now, they would do it again, this time to reclaim their land after a century had passed. The Third Great War. Mothers held their smallest children and pointed at the Reavers, and their leader, and boasted that these soldiers would make the Haicheyanne wish they had stayed in hell and suckled souls, which was all they were fit for.

And the cavalry! The civilians applauded the trotting ranks of black and navy green uniforms, the curved, polished sabres of their soldiers unsheathed for display in Domine’s newly liberated streets and squares, and the fine dust from the horses' hooves was a small price to pay for the sight of the splendid Regiments who, the townspeople said, would chase the demons clean over the plains and back into the sewers of their own world.

Who could resist this army? From Riisa in the north and Sael in the south, from the ports on the western coast, they were coming together and marching east on the road that led to the Khaian frontier and to the enemy in Nocturnis City. Khaia will be free, Nocturnis’s pride restored, the Haicheyanne humbled, and these Nocturnian soldiers can go back to their own lives, bringing their nation and citizens peace.

The soldiers themselves were not so confident.

True, they had beaten Icarus’s northern army but, marching into their lengthening shadows, they wondered what lay beyond Domine’s safe borders, the next town and the last before the frontier. Soon they would face again the horrific, spear carrying demon veterans of Asmodeus’s army, the master of the current battlefields, the hordes that had turned the finest soldiers of their world into so much mincemeat. The townspeople were for now impressed, at least by the cavalry and the Reavers, but to experienced eyes the troops gathering round Domine were pitifully few and the Haicheyanne hordes to the east frighteningly big. The Nocturnian army that awed the children of Domine would not frighten the demons.

Canen Darkflight, waiting for orders in his billet on the outskirts of town, watched the cavalry sheath their sabres as the last spectators were left behind and then he turned back to the job of unwinding the dirty bandage from his thigh. The Nocturnian Reaver grunted. The jagged cut had become nine inches of puckered scar tissue, clean and pink against the darker skin. That bastard Haicheyanne had nearly ended him, that demon's jagged spear halfway through a massive down-stroke when Gideon's rushing blade had lifted it from the ground and the demon’s masked grimace, framed by the weird helmet, had turned to sudden agony. Canen had twisted desperately away and the javelin, aimed at his neck, had sliced into his thigh to leave another scar as a memento of sixteen years of survival. It had not been a deep wound but Darkflight had watched too many men die from smaller cuts, the blood poisoned, the flesh discoloured and stinking, and the doctors helpless to do anything but let the man sweat and rot to his death in the shit houses they called hospitals. A handful of maggots did more than any army doctor, eating away the diseased tissue to let the healthy flesh close naturally. He stood up and tested the leg. "Thank you, Gideon. Good as new."

"Pleasure's mine, brother."

Canen pulled on the black overalls he wore instead of the regulation green trousers of the 25th Reaver Division. He was proud of the overalls with their black leather reinforcement panels, stripped from the corpse of a member of Asmodeus’s Guard last week during the siege of Domine. The guard in question had been a lucky kill; there were not many men in either army as tall as Canen but the overalls fitted him perfectly. Gideon Xerxes had not been so fortunate. The Reaver topped Canen by a full four inches and the huge Khaian had yet to find any clothes to replace his faded, patched and tattered ones that were scarcely fit to scare crows in a turnip field. The whole company was like that now, their boots literally tied together with strips of hide, and as long as their home in Nocturnis was occupied by demonic shiteating scumbags no Commissary Officer would willing to complicate his account books by issuing them with new trousers or shoes.

Whatever state it was in though, it was all he had, his uniform and what he could carry on his back and under his arms. Canen Darkflight knew no home other than the battlefield, no family except for his brethren, and no belongings except what fitted into his supply pouches. He knew no other way to live and expected that it would be the way he would die, even if it were to be here. Officers of the Reavers, like all other Khaian Light Infantry officers, were supposed to carry a curved cavalry sabre but Canen hated the weapon with a passion. In its place he wore the long, straight sword of The Valiance; a brute of a weapon, balanced but crude, and Canen liked the feel of a savage blade that could beat down the slim lances of Haicheyanne officers and crush aside a swift blow.

And it was here, on the battlefield of his life, it would make, or break, his very soul.

[Canen Darkflight]

Sergeant Gideon Xerxes looked out of the window into the Domine town square soaked in afternoon sunlight, and made an acute observation.

“Here comes Captain Happy."

“Captain Harore."

Gideon ignored Canen’s reproof. He and Canen had been together too long, shared too much in life and death, and the Sergeant knew precisely what liberties he could take with his brethren. "He's looking more cheerful than ever, Canen. He must have another suicide mission for us."

"I wish they'd send us East. Maybe, I don’t know, just to get away from that madman. I might even ask Asmodeus for a job."

Gideon, his huge hands gently stripping the hilt of the Vampire Blade, his anti-cavalry sword, pretended not to hear the remark. He knew what it meant but the subject was a dangerous one. Harore was about glory, and glory in death. Canen just wanted to get a lifetime’s wait out of the way and free his people, sparing himself and everyone else any more torment and bring some normality back to life, as it was so long ago. Canen now commanded the remnants of a company of Reavers who had been cut off from the rearguard of Captain Harore's army during its retreat from the outskirts of Domine the winter before. It had been a terrible campaign, mostly in weather that was like the traveller's tales of the poles rather than northern Khaia. Men had died in their sleep, their hair sometimes frozen to the ground, while others dropped exhausted from the march and let death take them. The discipline of the army had crumbled and the stragglers were easy meat for the demons who murdered their exhausted mounts at the heel of Harore’s army. The rabble was saved from disaster only by Canen’s Reavers, which kept their discipline and fought on through the brunt of the worst weather.

One year turned into the next and still the living nightmare went on, a battle fought by Harore’s freezing men with no morale peering through the snow for a glimpse of the cloaked Haicheyanne. Then, on a day when the blizzard bellied in the wind like a malevolent monster, the company had been cut off by an ambush, and were left to die by Harore, who made his own escape with a handful of men. The Captains were killed, the other Lieutenants froze to death, the men wouldn't fight and the enemy spears rose and fell and the damp snow muffled all sounds except for the grunts of the Khaians and the terrible impaling of the spears cutting into wounds that steamed in the freezing air.

The door of the ruined cottage slammed open and Captain Harore stepped into the room. He looked, and dressed, like a naval officer, despite being an Engineer, one of the tiny number of Military Engineers in Khaia, and he grinned as he took off his cocked hat and nodded at Canen's leg, ignoring Gideon’s dark glare. "The warrior restored then? How's the leg old boy?"

The Sergeant collected the Vampire Blade as if he was about to leave but Harore held up his hand. "Stay, Gideon. I have a treat for you; one that even a heathen from Sael might like." He took a dark bottle out of his sack and raised an eyebrow to Canen. "You don't mind?"

Canen shook his head. Gideon was a good man, good at everything he did, and in their hundred years' acquaintance-ship Canen and Gideon had become inseparable friends, or at least as inseparable as brothers could be. Canen could not imagine fighting without the huge Khaian warrior, the offspring of the legendary Gabriel Xerxes, beside him, and Gideon dreaded fighting without Canen, and together they were as formidable a pair as Harore had ever seen on a battlefield. The Captain set the bottle on the table and pulled the cork.

"From Sael?" Canen asked.

"Tokay, from Sael's own cellars".

"That's very interesting." Gideon's eyes lighted up, his lips parting for the first time since Harore entered the room. "How? That town was a living fortress of Haicheyanne. We couldn't get near it!"

"You don't always look with your eyes, son..." Harore grinned, gulping down a vast quantity before passing it to Gideon, who snatched it away and supped. "I've got some interesting information for you..."

[Canen Darkflight]

"From…Pike?" Canen asked, wide eyed with a mixture of fear and joy.

“The man himself. He asked after you, Canen, and I said you were being doctored or you would have been with me."

Canen said nothing. Harore paused in his careful pouring of the Tokay wine. "Don't you care, Canen?! He's fond of you. Do you think he's forgotten The Castigar War?"

The Castigar War. Canen and Gideon remembered all right. The field of dead outside the village where he had been commissioned by the former Red Dragon leader on the battlefield. Harore pushed a tin cup of Tokay across the table to him. "You know he can't get out of there alone. He came to help you, Canen, as you did him. Can you not do the man a good turn, just as you do for your own people?”

“I told you this was going to be a suicide mission, brother.” Gideon retorted, snapping almost at the infuriating tone Harore used to ask his questions. “He wants us to take our already weakened forces into Sael, and get Pike out of there. Are we not risking our entire campaign?”

"I know." Canen frowned and raised the cup to his lips. “But we can’t just leave him there. Somehow, he got that wine out, and a message asking for me. Somehow, he is still alive, how I don’t know, but that means he is evading them. Somehow. We are attached to you, and at your command, as much as I hate it, and you.” Gideon nodded slowly in disdained agreement.

"You are. And we have a job." Harore's eyes twinkled. "And what a wonderful job it is, too."

Gideon sighed. “That means suicide and martyrdom, then.”

[Canen Darkflight]

Riisa outskirts, three miles north of Sael

Unlike the bustling streets of Domine, with their powerful military displays as regiments prepared to move further north aghast the background of an awe inspired crowd, Riisa was a desolate and devoid place of ruin, an empty ghost town on the fringes of oblivion. Not a single piece of architecture remained intact from the consistant and relentless magical destruction bequithed by the Haicheyanne army's finest mages. The streets, still ablaze from the most recent attacks and billowing thick, sooty clouds of toxic ash into the already misty morning air, were empty but for a smattering of concrete scattered loosely in all directions. A church, its spire crumpled like parchment in a naked flame, had collapsed inwards as if it had given up the will to live. The surroundings seemed sullen, eminating a feeling of despair, of hopelessness. Indeed, if it were possible for a once thriving city to become the very definition of "forgotten", this would have been very much a fitting example.

The blazing scarlet colours of the Red Dragon 25th Footsoldiers had once filled their followers with an almost palpable feeling of pride, of hope. Now, their banner torn and bloodstained, their rank and file soldiers battered and wounded, staggering along like injured cattle in double file, the very flag itself became a burden on its bearers, who silently and secretly wished they could leave it at the nearest pile of smouldering ash to prevent themselves being spotted by their malicious predators, and having to once again endure another volley of scalding ashen ember.

The Haicheyanne had flooded the end of the city limits, forming a stiff and rigid perimeter around the green belt, and squads of mages in loose formation flowed round woods, trees, farms, coming ever forward towards the stream encircling Riisa’s ruins and the Red Dragon’s already battered and demoralised soldiers. They darkened the plain, filled it with a tide of demonic black flecked with steel, and still they came; spearmen, mages, skirmishers, and the more feared executors and winged executors, the former followers of the now deceased Icarus, the Khaian traitor who had made his own nation the enemy.

The Sergeant of the 25th, a large man going by the name of Lancer Assirra Asuran, scrambled up the broken city wall and stood beside two officers of his division as they looked over the plains. The first of thousands of fires sparkled in the Haicheyanne lines. Assirra shook his head, shading his eyes.

"I wonder how many more armies like that we'll have to meet before it's done..."

The two officers said nothing. They had been with Assirra the year before when he, alongside Commander Pike, defeated the Haicheyanne at Irsay and Artinia, yet this army was ten times bigger than the force at Irsay, three times larger than Icarus's army at Artinia, and twice the size of the force they had thrown out of Northern Khaia in the spring. As they gazed into the fringes of the forests, the volume and density fires increased by the second, as if a firefly's nest had been rudely disturbed with a firm boot through the walls.

It was frightening to behold.

"Those fires are the Executor campfires." Assirra pointed out to his silent officers. "The only advantage we have at the moment, if it is indeed an advantage, is that we can guess the enemy numbers by telling ourselves that there are an average of five demons for every light in that line. But..."

He paused, thinking for a moment.

"But that statistic is irrelevant. Our men our wounded, beaten and demoralised. The size of their force is simply staggering. If help does not come south from Domine soon, we are sure to be overrun..."

Assira's boots crunched on the broken plaster of the wall as his officers stood in silence, the quiet murmering of the regiment below the only sound creeping out from Riisa's broken form. He prayed for anything. A miracle would have done nicely, but here in this damned place, a miracle was going to be exactly that. They needed Domine.

They needed the Reavers.

[Canen Darkflight]

The Raven's Trail
25 Miles south of the River Saelia

Gideon, his black greatcoat and Vampire Blade trailing his form, marched with a long easy stride, happy to feel the road beneath his feet, happy they had at last crossed the unmarked frontier past Domine and were at least going somewhere, anywhere away from Harore. Over the past twenty four hours, his love for him had not improved.

They had left in the dark hours so that the bulk of the march would be done before the sun spoiled their cover, and Canen was looking forward to an afternoon of some badly needed rest and hoped that the Red Dragon 25th Foot Division, one of his old commands, were getting the same. The Reavers, his new command, were somewhere behind them. Gideon had started the march at their traditional "never say die" fast pace, three steps walking and three running, and as the company made good time through the plains, he mulled their mission for himself.

The Red Dragon forces up north had sent a lone messenger with a document all the way from Riisa, a once thriving Khaian city northwest of Sael that had played an important part in Khaian heritage. According to the message, the city and its holding battalion had been decimated by Haicheyanne mages and stragglers from Icarus's former army, the two enemies having converged from Sael as one huge force laying siege to the broken settlement, and the only survivors were the 25th Foot and a number of high ranking Red Dragon officials in command of a rescue operation. The rescue operation meant to free their former leader, Pike LeMorte, from the clutches of the Haicheyanne at Sael.

Part of their mission was to destroy one of two vital bridges crossing the River Saelia, a mile wide waterway dividing the north and the south. With this bridge gone, the Haicheyanne could no longer attack in a pincer movement and would be forced into a bottleneck on the single remaining bridge, for which the Red Dragon forces intended to employ their famous lancers. On the bridge, the Haicheyanne would be slaughtered in the Red Dragon counterattack, and the Red Dragon forces would be free to march to Sael unhindered.

However, things had not gone as planned. The Red Dragons, led by Assirra Asuran, had been headed off before reaching the first bridge and chased into an ambush. Thousands of men were slaughtered like sheep before the surviving regiment, the 25th, were forced to take the second bridge northwest to Riisa after being cut off by the Haicheyanne rearguard. The survivors found themselves holed up in a broken city, with decimated numbers and a large number of wounded soldiers, miles northwest, seemingly light years away from their intended destination and with a huge enemy force in tow.

Things were, quite simply, hopeless for the Red Dragons, unless The Reavers got there sharpish.

There was a sobering rumour that the Harore had ordered Canen to take every one of the seven hundred men of his regiment to Riisa, and that, to Gideon's mind, was a terrible price to pay if failure deemed them to die, which seemed at that time like an almost tangible possibility. He had not asked Canen the truth of the rumour; if he had he would have been told nothing. His Khaian brethren might be at times moody, irritable, and liable to snap as a means of venting frustration, but Gideon, if pressed, would have described Canen as his closest friend. It was not normally a word that a Sergeant could use of an officer, but after everything they had been through together Gideon could have thought of no other. Canen, likewise, thought of Gideon as one of the best soldiers the Khaian had seen on a battlefield, with a countryman's eye for ground and a hunter's instinct for using it, but Canen looked for advice to only one man in a battle, Sergeant Gideon Xerxes. It was an easy relationship, of trust and respect, and Gideon Xerxes saw his business as keeping Canen Darkflight alive and amused throughout this terrible campaign.

As for Canen, he enjoyed being a soldier, and swore that it was the only thing he was good for, what he was born to do. He had been reared on the tales of the Khaian heroes, he could recite by heart the story of Gabriel Xerxes single-handedly defeating the forces of Icarus's early militia. But Khaia was Khaia and the Nocturnian Genocide had drove these men to strange places. If Canen had followed his heart he would be fighting against the humans who had betrayed them to the demons, not with them, but like so many of his countrymen he had found a refuge from poverty and persecution in the ranks of the Red Dragons when he first entered the human realm and a means to liberate his broken nation many years on with their help. He never, not in a century of torment, forgot home. He carried in his head a picture of Sael, his hometown of twisted rock and thin soil, of surrounding mountains, lakes, and wide marshland on the floodplains of the River Saelia where families scratched a thin living.

It was hard now to think of the humans as enemies. Familiarity in the human realms, fighting alongside human clans for human causes that should not of been their concern but fought nonetheless, had bred too many friendships. Khaia and Nocturnis were places where strong men could do well, and Canen Darkflight liked the responsibility he had earned and enjoyed the respect of other tough men, like Gideon.

They stared unseeing through the withered branches of dead trees at the high ragged clouds which raced past the early morning moon, thinking of these thoughts, their missions, their responsibilities to themselves and their men, and the future, as the march continued northwest to the River Saelia and Riisa's unforgiving reception, and not a single soul uttered a word.

[Canen Darkflight]

Riisa Outskirts

Assirra was left with the company, with its junior officers, and the ranks of bloodied faces that stared at him as though fearful of some new torment devised by their commanding officer, as he would have been left with a dagger in a fight against a swordsman. Sighing at the almost unreal odds he was facing, both with raising the men's morale and facing such a brutally large siege, he walked to the front of the company, watching the red faces that bulged over the pieces of scattered rubble and glistened with sweat in the relentless heat, and faced them. His own jacket was half unbuttoned, his bloodstained shirt open, and he wore a serious expression. To the men of the Red Dragons he was like a visitor from another planet.

"Men of the 25th, we are in a war now." He started, one leg up on the edge of a broken and splintered table that might have once been used in a public house. "When you step outside of these walls, a lot of you are going to die. Most of you." They seemed, at first, appalled by his words, but listened intently.

"I'll tell you why."

He pointed over the eastern horizon, towards the waiting hordes. "The demons are over there, waiting for you, salivating at the prospect of turning you into their latest trophy. The heads of the men of the Red Dragon Lancers."

Some of the men looked over the wall, as though they expected to see the devil himself coming through the trees on the outskirts of Riisa.

"They've got mages, powerful elementals, and they can all fire three or four of those flaming missles a minute, all aimed at you. And they're going to kill you because you're slow, beaten, broken. If you don't kill them first, then they will kill you, it is as simple as that. You." He pointed to a mage in the front rank. "Over here."

For the first time, Assirra had their attention, and some of them would grasp the simple fact that the side which let loose the most payload stood the best chance of winning. He took the man by the shoulder, and discarded his crimson jacket, taking the mage's left hand. His casting hand.

"Look at it! One adult sized palm. Four fingers and a thumb. It spews magic projectiles, nearly as wide as your heads, and aimed in the right direction and with the proper payload applied, it kills things!" There was a nervous laugh, but they were listening. "But today, you won't kill any of those Haicheyanne mages sitting outside our gates with it. Oh no. You're too slow! In the time it takes you to cast two missles, the enemy will probably manage three or four. And, believe me, the demons are slow. So, today, you will learn to fire three in a minute. In time you'll fire four every minute and, if you're really good, you should manage five!"

One of the lancers, a tall fellow sitting near the back of the ranks, piped up.

"We're not all mages, Sir. With respect.."

"With respect..." Assirra interrupted "Today, son, you are a Red Dragon, an elite. You will adapt, today, and you are going to have to in order to get out alive. You got your training, you can cast, you can use magic. Tell me, how many a minute do you think you can manage?"

There was an embarassed silence. Assirra nodded.

"Lieutenant Khala?"

A young Lieutenant snapped to attention. "Sir!"

"Do you have a working pocket watch?"

"Yes, sir."

"Can it time one minute?"

Khala dragged out a huge gold hunter and snapped open the lid. "Yes, sir."

"When this mage casts, you will keep an eye on that watch and tell me when one minute has passed. Understand?"

"Crystal, sir."

He turned away from the company and pointed the mage down the field towards a broken stone wall. The mage's hand snapped forward, there was a flash, and a fraction of a second later the an orb of burning flame exploded out of his palm and the soldier felt the heavy kick of the missle's recoil.

Now it was all instinct: the never-forgotten motions. Through the thick white smoke of the magic's trail, Assirra concentrated with squinting eyes on his men's faces, as they began their limited and pressured training while they still had the time to do so.

He prayed that the Haicheyanne would wait until nightfall to attack, and then he prayed for a miracle.

[Canen Darkflight]

The River Saelia, southern trail.

The landscape crouched beneath the heat, still and silent, and the company of black clad Reavers swallowed up the torn up road as though it did not exist. Canen, taking point beside Gideon's towering form, scanned the road ahead that the Red Dragon's 25th Foot Brigade would have marched and far away, too far to see properly, the faded edges of the concrete bridge leading to Riisa rested on a shimmering, flat horizon of water and land.

The Khaian stood beside a gnarled tree trunk to the side of the road for a moment, his sword held across his knees, and stared into the heat haze. A lizard darted across the ground, paused, looked at him, then ran up a tree trunk and froze as if he would lose sight of it because of its stillness. A speck of movement in the sky made him look up, and high in the hazy streaks of red and purple a shape slipped past him, its wings beating furiously, its head poised as if searching the ground for prey. Gideon would have known instantly what it was but to Canen the creature, most likely a dragon, who were resident to this area of Khaia, was just another hunter.

Canen felt glad to be back in Khaia. He looked to the surrounding fields at the stunted crops with their promise of a thin harvest and wondered what family would shake the branches in the autumn, whose lives were bounded by the stream, the shallow fields, and the high, climbing road he would probably never see again after the end of this terrible war.

Then there was a noise. Too hesitant and far off to sound an alarm in his head, but strange and persistent enough to make him alert and send his right hand to curl unconsciously round the hilt of The Valiance. There were footsteps on the road, many of them crunching through the loose gravel and broken paving that littered the trail, and they were moving slowly and cumbersomely, and that sound suggested that something was wrong.

"25th Reavers, hold point. Do not move..." The order came, drawn from Canen's instincts. He needed silence for clarification, and he needed a view.

Canen doubted that the Haicheyanne would have patrols in these parts but he waved Gideon forward nonetheless, and the two warriors proceeded silently up the trail, instinctively choosing a path that kept his uniform hidden and shadowed until he could identify the source. When at last a ditch fell to the side of the road, and the footsteps became louder and acute, the two dropped belly down and layed eyes on their prey.

"My god..." Canen whispered as his eyes followed the clumsy, awkward marching of the spear-wielding demonic Haicheyanne, and the red coated human corpses they drew in tow with heavy chains, simply allowing their bodies to skip and skid across the hard road. Heavy streaks of blood led a dark trails back across the length of the bridge, like a smear across the face of someone who had wiped away a nosebleed. The men were mutilated, limbs severed, and were dressed in Red dragon uniform. "It's...slaughter."

"Murderous bastards!" Gideon hissed, spitting a globulet of flem from his throat. He felt sickened to behold such a sight, but he well knew the brutality of his enemy, and the enemy of all of Khaia. "Brother, we must get back to the column. This is an ambush, if I've ever seen one. Look!"

He pointed over the rim of the ditch to the bulk of the bridge. A swarm of Haicheyanne had descended upon it like flies to meat, thousands upon thousands of lancers and mages, just waiting for the opportunity to wipe out anything that came across.

"That's the bridge to Sael..." Canen noted, with a frown. "They are guarding it with their lives, or as much in equal. There has got to be something else in Sael they are protecting other than their captive..."

Gideon nodded, and looked back down the road. "We must return to the column without delay! The Reavers are outnumbered three to one, and now we must find another route to Riisa. How did these bastards know we were coming, Canen?"

He didn't answer.

As the two brethren began their retreat to the column, deep frowns plastered over their faces, Canen would soon realise that The River Saeli and the surrounding area did not exist as a place where anything lived, loved, or traded, it was now simply a ruined building and a great stone bridge that had been built to span the river at a time when the Saeli was wider than the flow which now slid darkly between the three central arches of the Khaian stonework. Soon, it would only be a killing field. The Haicheyanne had known they were coming. But how? How did they organise such a large force? How did they even know, tactically, where to make their stand, these alledgedly stupid beasts?

As their sore, pounding feet returned them to their forces, a pair of sapphire eyes glanced at them from across the bridge, the terrifying forms of the demon lancers shifting in the reflections of his glossy irises. A bloodcurdling creased grin spread over the young man's face like a fissure born from an earthquake, and the softly spoken words were drowned by the ferocious battlecries of the advancing Haicheyanne.

"Don't be afraid, my brethren. There will be more killing to come, more tears and pain, anger and freshly spilled blood to soak into the barren earth of our nation. But don't die just yet..." A snigger crept from his blackened lips, and a glint appeared in his sinister expression.

"...No, Canen, it is too early for you...lead your Reavers to glory, and then bring them to Sael. Then, under pain of death, blackened skies, fields of fleeing cowards and perishing heroes, it will be done, and done right..."