Duras! The dead! They're coming! Let the Nar retreat!
Duras shook his head, confused, and shoved the Nar facing him back into the barricade. Thrusting and slashing he did not slow his attack, and Bastun repeated the message. Duras's fury faltered a bit as the warning pierced through his bloodlust. Shaking his head again and stepping back from the battle, he cast a glance at Bastun, blinking as he tried to calm himself. Taking heaving breaths, he nodded, gritting his teeth as he sheathed his long sword and drew an ivory hunting horn from his belt. Halfway to Bastun he blew a long note on the horn-a call for retreat. The other members of the fang held back their attacks, shaking off their fury as they gave ground to their foes. The Nar, however, mistook the cue and renewed their assault, complicating the situation. Duras reached for his sword, torn between Bastun's warning and returning to the battle.
Bastun studied the opening of the square even as Thaena and Syrolf advanced from behind. Calling the correct spells to mind he stepped toward Duras.
"Go!" he said, meeting the warrior's gaze with a quiet confidence he hoped would sway his old friend, then added, "Call the retreat again and keep Thaena and the others back. Trust me."
Hesitating, Duras nodded and blew the horn as he rushed to stop the others. An odd chill had filtered into the wind, and the scent of death filled Bastun's nostrils as he watched the warriors fall back against the Nar advance. Arcane words tumbled passed his lips, and from a pouch at his belt he pulled a pinch of sulfur. The sulfur hissed as it burned away, singeing the fingers of his glove. Hundreds of tiny glowing lights appeared all over the ground, silencing the arguments he could hear between Duras and Syrolf.
Gesturing at the Nar, Bastun watched the lights scurry away, leaving little trails through the snow. Weaving in between the legs of the Rashemi they crawled, glowing embers of living flame, to leap at the legs of the Nar. The ambushers fell back, trying to brush off the hundreds fiery spiders that bit and burned whatever they touched. The Rashemi obeyed the call to retreat, cries of surprise becoming screams of pain behind them as they rejoined the rest of the fang.
Everyone heard the moaning now-a chorus of wailing voices on a chilled breeze of decay. The dim torches on the ground guttered out, leaving only the tiny lights of the swarming spiders visible through the fog and growing darkness. Bastun backed toward the rest of the group as a deeper darkness crept along the edges of the barricade. Black forms distinguished themselves in the crawling shadow, twisted arms and malformed heads, incorporeal bodies that swam through a multitudinous wave of spirits.
"What evil have you summoned, vremyonni?" Syrolf whispered.
Bastun didn't answer. Reaching Thaena's side he waved her back.
"We have to go-now,"he said, trying to be silent, though he knew it didn't matter against the senses of the dead. The edges of the crawling cloud reached the panicking Nar, and a second set of voices joined the moaning, the screams of the Nar just as chilling as the winter wind. The nimbus of crawling light surrounding a few of the Nar moved through the fog toward Bastun and the fang, trying to escape the grim tide of death.
Chanting and spreading a fine dust over the snow, Thaena strode forward and slammed her staff into the ground. As she completed the spell, a shimmering barrier materialized between the buildings on the right and the wall of rubble on the left. Walking swiftly, she returned to the group and nodded to Duras.
"Now we go," she said coldly.
The fang moved quickly back the way they had come. No one turned to watch the fate of the Nar. Only Bastun looked to see them beating against the ethran's invisible wall as the dead engulfed them. Then Syrolf blocked his view, scowling with sword in hand to keep the vremyonni moving.
After a few blocks, losing themselves in the maze of Shandaular's streets, Duras broke the silence.
"What is happening, Thaena? How did Nar get into Shandaular?"
The ethran didn't answer right away, her steely gaze fixed on the road ahead. Similar questions were at the forefront of Bastun's thoughts as well, but he wondered not how the Nar got in, rather why they would come to such a place at all.
"We'll return to the second wall," Thaena answered. "I remember seeing an intact gatehouse. We shall tend to our wounded and discuss the situation there."
Duras nodded, apparently not wishing to press her further on the subject, and moved to direct the lead warriors toward the gatehouse.
Bastun noticed a trail of little spots appearing ahead of his every step-each one a bright scarlet, dripped from the wounds of the warriors. Some of them pressed against deep cuts, while others tried to disguise a slight limp. This behavior too-though a common point of pride among all berserkers-was also taken from the wolf, who would hide or attempt to ignore injury to stay with the pack. It was another reason Bastun wished he'd been one of them-and also one of the primary reasons he was not and never would be.
"You wasted no time ignoring the rules of your exile, Bastun," Thaena said, still looking forward.
"I did what I thought best," he replied. "I–I meant no disrespect."
"The Nar have… changed things," she said, her eyes scanning the shadows among the ruin, and let the matter of rules and laws drop. He too could not keep from wondering if another ambush awaited them, though his heart raced at her nearness. "The Shield s hathran may be in need of our assistance."
"You suspect the Shield to be in danger?" he asked.
"I can imagine few other reasons for the Nar to be here, in this broken city," she said, echoing his thoughts. "And no one comes here without a good reason."
He said nothing else, thinking of his own reasons for being brought here and the life he might know upon leaving again. The presence of his old friends tangled his thoughts and hopes for a different life. At the moment he wished that the wychlaren had chosen someone else to lead this mission, someone he could look straight through and despise without complication.
Thaena glanced at him, her eyes unreadable within the wychlaren mask, and whispered, "Thank you, Bastun-for ignoring the rules."
"There's no need, Thaena, I-" he said, trying to catch her eye before she returned to careful study of the dark corners they passed, but she seemed already far distant again, "It's nice… to hear something familiar."
"Familiar?"
"Your voice, speaking my name," he said. "It's been a long time."
She looked at him once, before quickening her stride to join Duras at the head of the formation. Bastun watched her until she became just another blur in the fog, another set of anonymous footprints in the snow. Sighing, he chided himself and shook his head.
"You're welcome," he said under his breath.
After his sister's funeral he had not been allowed to meet or speak with anyone before being taken away to the Running
Rocks. The wychlaren had thought it best. The rumors were spreading, and due to his magical talent he would be joining the vremyonni. They thought that with time the stories would be forgotten and that the rumors would fade away. Thaena and Duras had become a dream and Ulsera a nightmare. Seeing his old friends both now made that dream more real and his nightmare even more so-the memory that he had been the one to send Ulsera to her death.
The snow grew deeper as they walked, the footsteps before and behind Bastun growing louder and more forced. Even in the wind he could hear the return of the whispers. Glancing over his shoulder, Bastun saw Syrolf striding close on his heels as if leading an angry mob, which he likely did. The fang called him prejhenovani, or "one who summons evil"-and considering the Nar attack, Bastun felt inclined to agree. Misfortune seemed a traveling companion he could not shake.
He looked to each of the obelisks they'd passed before the ambush, and he contemplated the ash smeared in Nar symbols atop them. The warriors they'd fought could be the least of their worries if they encountered the author of those symbols.