As Verum directed warriors to secure cover, Erlestoke turned to Jullagh-tse. “Any suggestions for where we go from here?”
She pointed along the main hallway, which headed east. “This route will connect with one of the grand corridors. It will head north and south. I’ve been on part of it, but only coming up from the south. There it connects with the other major route that runs northeast-southwest, from Muroso to Nybal. It will be the most direct route, and the most likely place for us to meet resistance.”
“Are there alternate routes?”
She nodded. “All along the grand routes there are villages and towns. Some have the grand routes running through them, so they are built all around them, above and below and to all sides. Other villages are removed from them, with their own roads. There are routes down to the mines, or to the springs. The mountains have a web of trails that are known, and probably an equal number that are hidden.
“The problem is this: invaders could move through the grand route without ever having to see any of the outlying villages, and those villages could block a tunnel so that it would take forever for an invading force to open it. With access to stores and water, a village could survive a siege for months, if not years, and would always have a route out to the skyside.”
The prince rubbed a hand over his new-grown beard. “If someone decides not to let us pass, we could be trapped. Worse, we could be lured into a trap. Seems moving along the larger routes and seeking smaller if we need to is going to be our best bet right now.”
Jullagh-tse nodded. “The heartening thing is this: we have not seen Au-rolani reinforcements heading this way. Chytrine must think she has the Sarens defeated or contained. The Aurolani troops think there is no one coming in behind them, else they would have left guards. If we are cautious, we might get through this.”
“It is something to hope for, yes.”
The prince stood and signaled for everyone to move out to the east. He took pride as his soldiers moved from point of cover to point of cover, with the elves going first and the urZrethi bringing up the rear. As they moved deeper into the mountains the amount of light faded, such that elven vision was very helpful. The others moved up smartly, investigating homes and halls as they went.
The devastation could be easily seen. Dark bloodstained walls, and the stench of death permeated the air. Jilandessa used a little magick to see what she could learn about some of the victims, but all her spells told her was that they had been dead for a long time—not quite as long as her people had been on the road, but close.
The injuries inflicted, and the victims, testified to the savagery of the attack. Children had died clutched in the arms of mothers. One child had been killed by the same draconette shot that slew her mother. As had been the urZrethi tradition, the dead lay where they fell, but Erlestoke was fairly certain that the Aurolani assault would have made it impossible to recover bodies, even if that were the urZrethi way.
The Aurolani had not invaded with impunity. Bodies of their dead littered the hallways, but not nearly enough to make Erlestoke take heart. He’d kept a rough tally in his head of urZrethi warrior fatalities to those of the enemy, and the ratio proved depressing—overwhelmingly so when he factored in the civilian bodies. The Aurolani forces had come through, and an orgy of butchery had followed.
Once they reached the intersection with the north-south route, the numbers of bodies shrank appreciably. Erlestoke guessed that once the gate had been breached, alarms had gone out, and the people who lived around the grand routes were evacuated deeper into the mountains. By doing that the Sarens could avoid casualties and, if they were lucky, let the Aurolani pass through.
Late in the afternoon they found a small complex of rooms that had been abandoned. While the Aurolani had looted it, they had been haphazard. Jullagh-tse located some stores of wood, food, and wine, and they were able to seal the door. That night they enjoyed a hot meal ana“ managed to get some rest in warmth.
A warm breakfast and good night’s sleep helped revitalize the company. Morale was slowly climbing and remarks were made about pursuing the Aurolani instead of slinking away from them. Everyone replenished their provisions and the squad moved out cautiously.
That second day passed uneventfully. Erlestoke could feel how anxious everyone was to move quickly, for the route they took was wide, tall, and largely without sign of conflict. Yes, the Aurolani had taken to defecating on anything that could even vaguely be considered ornamental, but even having feces smeared over murals did little to spoil the majesty of Sarengul’s Grand Corridor. The sculptures that decorated pillars and defined balustrades defied desecration. It made Erlestoke imagine that while the Aurolani might take control of Sarengul, they would never truly possess it—and that it would welcome those who came to liberate it.
That second day ended in another way station where they again found stores of food, drink, and fuel. It struck Erlestoke as a bit odd that those who had evacuated the area had not come back in the wake of the Aurolani advance either to secure or to poison these supplies. Jullagh-tse offered no answer as to why that had not happened, but the supplies proved to be untainted, so the group spent another night in relative comfort and safety.
On the third day, however, any illusion of safety vanished as they came upon the reason no urZrethi had ventured into the Grand Corridor. The route had run south and Jullagh-tse indicated they were getting close to one of the larger towns and an intersection with more roads similar to the one through which they’d entered. Even before the dim lights allowed them to see what had happened, they could smell it and, worse yet, hear things feeding upon the aftermath.
Little frostclaws, not much bigger than dogs, worried the bodies of the dead.
The huge, cylindrical intersection for paths from all levels of the mountains had roadways that spiraled up and down. Directional arrows carved in the stone pointed out the diverse destinations that could be reached over the broad avenues. Even though most of the intersection remained hidden in shadows, it was easy to imagine it as a place of much activity.
Now, though, the activity consisted solely of the flapping of flesh as greedy little temeryces crawled inside bloated bodies to feast on decaying flesh.
Erlestoke had little problem understanding what had happened. The urZrethi defenders had fallen back before the Aurolani assault. Chytrine’s troops had pursued quickly and had not taken precautions against an ambush. When they reached the crossroads, the urZrethi hit them with a withering attack.
Unfortunately, they had not hit hard enough.
It could have been the presence of dragonels and draconettes that undid the urZrethi. He saw much evidence of the damage that both would wreak. A dragonel ball bouncing up and around one of the spirals would eventually lose momentum and stop, but it would harvest arms and legs as it went. Bodies of urZrethi magickers appeared to have been riddled with draconette shots, and their deaths would have made countering Aurolani magick all but impossible.
The crawls, it seemed, had won the battle, for there were very clear signs of their presence. Not only were bodies blackened and burned as the result of spells, but holes had been melted in walls. The sheer power of the magick astounded him, and the evidence of the cruelty with which it had been employed sickened him.
All around the walls, the crawls had been at work. Magick had melted stone, and survivors had been pressed into it, hand and foot. The stone then solidified, binding them there—in essence crucifying them. While the urZrethi should have been able to shift their shapes to escape those bonds, being battle-weary and, as most were, wounded, would prevent them from effecting any escape.
Crucifixion, Erlestoke knew, was not an easy death. Hanging there, the body would labor to draw breath. The very weight of the viscera on the lungs would shrink their capacity until the victim slowly suffocated. Cries for mercy would shrink to moans then mews, rasped breaths, and finally death rattles.