Stormchild: Emeline and the Forest Mage

15 Battle

PART 2: THE EAST

"We sat in the tents of the desert child, the first of our kind to meet with him. His language was strange and barbaric, but the Sheia spoke on his behalf. How can the desert sand speak? I know not, except that she whispered things to me in his voice, and I awoke in a tomb two days later."

~ Davit Hêrasem's Autobiography (Written in Bederïn Stêr's Time, The Season of the Lords)

Sheia Desert, Erdil, Present Day

    The Northern Barbarians were cruel and ugly. They had no honour and fought like sand devils—vicious and conniving! Casamir sat in the shade of his tent with a snarl of distaste distorting his face. The heat of the midday sun burned down, its oil-like shimmering tinging the horizon.

    The tent flap behind him flopped about in the slight breeze. He crossed his legs again and laid his pale white hands on his knees, attempting to calm himself for his hour of meditation. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, smelling desert sand in the air. The dryness was familiar, comfortable to his senses. Home.

    Clang!

    Grabbing his spear and panga from either side of him, Casamir frowned. From dim comfort into bright sunlight he leapt with stealth and flair. The desert breeze stirred, hushhh-ing, but Casamir made no sound at all. Warrior, be like the dunes of the great Sheia, silent in movement. With the desert's whisper came other sounds, spears whooshing, swords clanging, men yelling.

    These sand devil demons from beyond the forest had no respect! Everyone knew one should not do battle in the afternoon, when the Sheia breathed and stirred. It was disrespectful and stupid. Sheia would breathe on them all and quench them with dust! He crept around his tent and spotted an intruder about ten feet away, a devil who had not noticed him yet. The barbarian stood holding open a tent flap. Another appeared, popping his head out of the tent. He saw Casamir and shouted a warning to his fellow swordsman in his guttural tongue. Both ran towards him with their swords drawn, but he was quick. Warrior, be like the serpent of the great Sheia, quick and lethal.

    Casamir whipped his spear around and jabbed it through the first devil. The spear vibrated with energy in his hands, but the strength of his arms tempered its quiver. Blood sprayed from the man where he jerked the spearhead out. Casamir flipped lithely through the air, hacking through the second's exposed jugular. The man looked vaguely surprised as blood spurted from his neck, and he toppled over backwards.

    Casamir landed on his feet, turning this way and that in readiness. Hundreds more of the devils streamed between the tents of his fellow warriors. A river of filth pouring over the encampment. Sheia would not wear its stench on her skin for long. Soon she would shake the filth from her sandy surface. The foreigners would violate his fellow warriors' sacred afternoon meditations, catching them off guard. His nostrils flared. Fury boiled in his blood at this blasphemy. Casamir ran towards the nearest tent, hacking down devils as he went. By the time he'd reached it, blood ran down his sleeves, dripping into the white sand near his feet, leaving a brief imprint before that too disappeared.

    When he pulled the tent flap back, he saw Ashael sprawled on the sand in an awkward unnatural way. A peaceful look dressed his face, as though he was still meditating, while his innards spilled from his body. A scream of rage rose from his belly and thundered out, eyes bulging, arms gripping the air with anger and grief. His heel spun of its own accord, his mind set on bringing the godless northern scum to the death they deserved.

    No reverence. No respect. They would pay.

    Casamir sped between the tents like the desert wind. Death followed him and the path he carved in the backs and faces of his enemies. A huge barbarian stepped in front of him and he moved to sweep the panga through his neck. At the last moment, the devil turned and Casamir hacked his nose right off instead.

    The devil dropped his sword and lifted both hands to his face in shock. Before the man had a chance to voice the scream building in his throat, Casamir had chopped clean through his neck. The man's head and hands spattered away from his body, like an artistic rendition of blood and war or death and the desert. He toppled over, blood erupting from his neck and limbs. Casamir smiled. Another devil had paid.

    He ran down the next devil he saw and carved through his back, starting at his shoulders with a deep cut of his panga. The skin split from the cut like butter from a hot knife, exposing tendons, muscles, and bone. One was at his side, thrusting a sword at his face. He dodged it and jabbed his spear in the man's stomach with almost unnatural speed. The sound of pumping blood throbbed in his ears and pounded against his chest, and his limbs were warm and numb. The man fell forward, groping the spear, but Casamir tugged it out. The man hit the sand with a dull thud and powdery sand puffed into the air. Casamir leapt over him and chopped the barbarian behind's head off. He got the devil from behind granting him a great view of the head rolling to the left and falling. Blood sprayed out of his neck the same way it always did. Sweet vengeance.

    The presence of other Sheian warriors around Casamir was palpable to his senses. They were outnumbered, yet all brave and fearless in the fight. Yells of praises to the great Sheia, curses on the northern devils, screams of pain, and moans of death rang around him. The sounds of battle boiled in Casamir's blood. Corpses from both sides littered the sand around the tents, dead twisted bodies. Casamir's strength grew as he walked over the red sand. Whiteness spread from his footfalls, devouring the stains and restoring Sheia's purity. His eyes glowed with hunger for the enemy's blood.

    A sharp quick pain erupted on his back. Wet. He was wet. Who'd dump water on his back amidst this chaos? He looked down. A sword tip poked through his belly and disappearing again.

    Oh.

    Casamir slumped onto the desert soil face first in a pool of his own blood.

#

    Sunlight gleamed off huge white dunes in the distance, beyond thousands of tents. Something stirred beyond them. At first, only a little dust rose into the air. The plume of dust became a raging storm spurred on by the breath of the Desert Mother.

    A wall of billowing dust rolled towards the tents at breakneck speed, a tempest cloud of white dust ready to purge the Sheia. Many northerners dropped their swords, mouths agape. Some were speared through, forever frozen in awe, their cold eyes bulging and terrified. Others were hacked open with pangas. The rest ran past the Sheian tents in the other direction, but there is no escape from the breath of Sheia.

    Desert warriors sped to their tents, ants fleeing the flood. The wall of dust overwhelmed the tents and fleeing soldiers. A man stumbled and fell. The storm poured over his man's body, and it became a small mound. Before long, it disappeared altogether in the depths of the desert floor.

    Amidst the storm, a tiny whirlwind of sand formed. It spiralled at a slow pace but gathered speed and momentum quickly, spinning at the ocean of sand's epicentre. The whirlwind thickened, darkened, grew. Its winds sped up, but it was stationary.

    Darkness as pitch-black as the depths of the grave engulfed the whirlwind. Flashes of light pierced the sky, peals of thunder echoed, rumbled deep moans. A long, thin, shadowed pillar made of Sheia's sands and winds, coruscated and spun violently.

    From amidst the black sand a small hand struck out. It was pale white.

PS

Hi there readers. What are your feelings about characters dying off so quickly?

© Joy Cronjé 2015