“But what does it mean?” he murmured. “Kya i thu den?” Golgren repeated, momentarily slipping back into the Ogre tongue.
In a rare sign of frustration, the ogre leader banged his fist against the rock.
The signet flashed. The symbol flashed.
And a blazing gap opened up before the Grand Khan, who stumbled forward and fell through.
XI
There were survivors among Khleeg’s hand, though not very many.
The black cloud that had descended on the struggle had materialized from nothing. One moment, there had only been the baking sun, the next it was as if darkest night had come.
One by one, followed by the dozens, the bolts had struck selectively. They fell so long as there was resistance, ending the moment that the hapless defenders finally gave in to the inevitable. More than two hundred burnt corpses gave witness to the monstrous horror. The stench of burning flesh filled the region.
Rauth’s warriors and the traitors among Khleeg’s hand quickly moved in to seize those left standing. The prisoners were gathered together, and those who were officers of any sort were separated from the rest.
Rauth rode up in front of the others. A narrow-eyed warrior with a crooked mouth that seemed constantly about to smile, he gestured at the officers, the first of whom was dragged forward to him.
The ogre officer leaped down. He seized the bound prisoner by his mane and pulled his head back. The other ogre struggled, but the guards held him in place.
Keeping his axe sheathed, Rauth drew a dagger that had once been wielded by his commander, Khemu. There were stains on the blade: Khemu’s blood.
“F’han!” his own followers shouted. “F’han!”
With a grin, the treacherous officer drew a thin red line across the captive’s throat. It was not enough to slay the prisoner, but certainly put him through excruciating agony.
The guards shoved the bleeding captive down on his knees. His hands were unbound, brought around to the front, and retied tightly. He was stretched forward as far as possible.
The captive tried to pull away. Rauth sheathed the dagger and accepted a hefty axe from a comrade. He raised the weapon high over the kneeling figure.
As the axe came down, the bound officer tried to throw himself forward. But once again, the guards held him in place. They would pay the price if Rauth missed his target.
The heavy blade chopped through both wrists.
The kneeling ogre screamed as blood poured from his severed limbs. His arms moved about as he tried in vain to connect them somehow to the lost appendages.
Rauth’s followers roared their approval, while the prisoners gave a horrified hiss. Some grew restive, but guards moved in and whipped any who looked defiant.
The maimed officer finally collapsed, the blood loss and shock too much for even an ogre to bear. The guards unceremoniously dragged his lifeless body to where the rest of the dead lay.
Rauth casually plucked up the severed hands. With blood and fragments of flesh and muscle dripping down his arms, the ogre held the appendages for the rest of the prisoners to see.
Even for an ogre, Rauth was a creature of few words. But those few words were all he needed to make his point.
“Golgren!” he roared, tossing the severed hands up in the air and letting them fall with a disconcerting thud on the blood-soaked soil.
Only the wind and the quiet, hesitant breathing of the prisoners was heard in the aftermath of the short but ghastly spectacle. Rauth grinned as he looked among them, his bloodshot gaze especially focusing on the unnerved officers.
When enough time had passed, Rauth used the axe to point at the next prisoner he wanted brought before him. Compared to the first captive, the ogre did not begin his journey to death with the slightest hint of courage. Out of his yellow-toothed mouth poured unintelligible noises of fear and terror. He twisted and turned and tried to do everything he could to keep from being dragged to the murderous traitor. There were few things that ogres outright feared, but what Rauth had done to the first victim was a mutilation they considered among the most heinous.
The officer watched with grinning amusement as the second prisoner was positioned before him like the previous victim. He drew his dagger and once more cut a thin line across the throat. The guards immediately forced the wounded warrior to his knees and brought the hands forward.
Rauth gripped the axe and raised it high over his head.
A breath later, he lowered it again. To the surprise of the prisoners, he came around to his victim’s front and used the flat of the axe to raise the shivering figure’s gaze to him.
“Atolgus …” Rauth declared, his eyes indicating the axe head. He shifted the head to a position just over the wrists. “Golgren …”
The captive was immediate in responding. “Atolgus! Swear to Atolgus!”
His response was not yet enough. Rauth let the axe slip closer to the wrists.
The bound ogre immediately twisted his head to the side, offering his bleeding neck to the axe. With a savage grin, Rauth touched the shallow cut with the flat of the axehead.
“Atolgus!” the prisoner roared. “I swear to Atolgus!”
From the traitors there came triumphant barks. The guards lifted the bleeding captive to his feet and untied him. He was presented with another axe.
Rauth pointed to the next enemy officer.
Nearly all the prisoners would surrender their lives to their captors, in return for becoming bound by blood oath to the traitors’ dark cause. It was part of an old ogre tradition that Golgren himself had utilized at times. The cutting of the hands was a new touch designed specifically to remind the prisoners that the Grand Khan was already a thing half-condemned to a shameful afterlife, and thus hardly a ruler for whom it was worth sacrificing one’s own eternal fate.
Khleeg growled under his breath at the bloody, albeit cunning strategy. To most ogres, one of the worst things that could happen to a warrior was to have his hands-which held his strength and skills-severed either before or after death. The afterlife in which most ogres believed was a place of no pity; those without hands would be forced to beg forever. A death without hands shamed the clan as well.
There was no doubt in Khleeg’s mind that, had he been among the prisoners, the first maimed corpse down there would have been his. Not for a moment did he think the traitors would have granted him the chance to change his allegiance. And not for a moment would Golgren’s second in command have even considered saving himself for what he felt would be a greater eternal shame.
Astounding as it seemed even to him, he lived, and he watched the foul deeds from a low ridge some distance away. He had been certain of his doom when the black cloud had suddenly arisen, for he recognized the sorcery of the Titans.
But before the cloud could strike, Khleeg had somehow been whisked away. Khleeg had only one explanation for his amazing rescue: The strange crystal that the Grand Khan had given to him had saved him. To Khleeg’s straightforward mind, that was the only explanation. And yet Golgren had not informed him of any such ability on the part of the crystal. He could only assume his lord had wanted to keep that a secret for some reason.
A part of Khleeg wanted to go charging into the throng in order to smite Rauth down. However, not only would he never make it all the way to the traitorous officer, but Rauth was apparently not the true leader of the astounding insurrection.
That mantle belonged to a most unlikely choice: a young chieftain of a nomadic tribe whom Khleeg had last seen being offered an officer’s rank in one of the southern hands. Khleeg recalled Atolgus well, a tall ogre eager to curry favor with the Grand Khan. It had been Atolgus who had found the knight, Stefan Rennert, and brought him to Garantha. For that, Golgren had rewarded him, and all indications had been that Atolgus was a loyal follower. Certainly Khleeg, who considered himself good at judging other warriors, had seen no guile.