This Red Sky

Chapter Twenty-Six

The sun smouldered as it rose over Cordath, a low-hanging ball of fire that set the sky aflame and cast its red light over the savage village.

"Blood in the sky," the shepherds would mutter, gesturing at the horizon and tracing the rune for repelling evil in the air. "Spilled in the night."

The firelight from the sun slowly crept over the trees, casting skeletal shadows onto the ground and reflecting off the bleached white trunks, now stained with splashes of red.

Men and horses dragged bodies between the tents and huts, leaving red streaks on the ground. A few wore the steel armour of knights, their green capes stained crimson. Others were in the wool clothes of shepherds, their faces streaked with green paint. Stone weapons lay beside the steel that the cultists tossed victoriously at the feet of their red-cloaked leader.

There were twenty-three fallen soldiers of Palasotarr in all, and fifteen dead cultists carried on their shields back to a hysterical Szandra's house.  Syralth rested against the clay wall, watching the women of the cult coming forward to dip their hands in the blood of the fallen enemies. They marked runes on their children's faces and clothes, smiling tiredly and humming prayers for good luck.

The cultists would want to perform a black rite to absorb their dead enemies' power. Syralth looked up at the crimson sky, her ears ringing, her eyes heavy with tiredness.

The sentry had spotted a band of soldiers in the woods, scouting for the hidden village. The men of Cordath crushed them. The shifter reminded herself not to get cocky. The knights and their poor soldiers were vastly outnumbered that night, and she hadn't forgotten the high walls of the city.  Palasotarr would send more men when the first did not return.

"It must happen tonight," she murmured, looking back to the scene before her.  Syralth's five favourites were greeting skinny women and children by the nearly-complete stone circle. Her sleep-deprived mind could barely recall the men's names. Her sword had tasted blood, and now it was running down the blade into the red sand. She got up unsteadily, walking past the line of bodies. Green eyes passed over the bony shepherds, their hands callused from years of holding crooks, not swords, broken arrows protruding from their chests. 

Rubbing her eyes, she continued to where Szandra frantically flapped her hands, ushering two cultists bearing a wounded man through the doors. Syralth's voice rose hoarsely. "Szandra!"

The priestess jumped, tottering over to her with servile clasped hands. Her scarred face peered at the shifter through strands of greasy black hair.

"We must do the ritual tonight," Syralth lowered her voice, glancing at the brutish men she'd chosen to gift with the power to shift their shape. "Before they come again."

Szandra's yellowed eyes widened. She sputtered in response.

Syralth strode past the priestess, sucking in a breath, opening her mouth to shout an order, and letting it out again as Szandra scrambled in front of her.

"But—but the preparations, Redcloak!" Szandra was wringing her hands. With her increasingly hunchbacked stance, her head now only reached Syralth's chest, where once she'd been a few inches taller. The shifter realized with a jolt how wretched and miserable the priestess looked. "They'll take all day!"

"And?" Syralth demanded.

Szandra extended shaking hands back at her house, where Syralth could hear the moans of the wounded cultists.

The shifter struggled with herself for a moment, and then set her shoulders.

"Their sacrifice will never be forgotten," she told the priestess, whose eyes had grown wide as saucers. Someone was weeping back at the house. A mother, begging for the life of her bleeding son. She steeled herself again, leaning in. "There is something else. Do we have a volunteer for the sacrifice?"