The Ninth Prophecy

Faris and his fellowship sneaked at the back door of Nox, entering the Snake’s Throat. Faris kept on looking around him, admiring the scenery. Tall cliffs defined the path from both sides. At the beginning the cliffs were far apart that one could fit an army between them. As they went further in, the path got narrower with each step.

- “Is there any way to climb these cliffs Taal,” Faris asked the general.

- “No, my lord. But there is a narrow ledge some forty lengths up. It can be reached through one of the caves. It is much like a goat trail. I had been there once when I was a kid, but it is very dangerous. One wrong step and you could fall down. Also, the path that leads to it through the caves is hard to find. I could barely find my way back that one time.”

When they eventually approached the dead end, it came down to a narrow hole, just like Taal had described it earlier. They stopped at the gate. They were aware that once they go in there was no turning back. Faris turned back for a split second. His followers just nodded in silence. He went in first. Taal, Geren and Sheda followed. As they entered the caves, two guards lit up their torches. “Come, this way,” Taal invited the others to follow him.

- “How sure are you of the path we need to take,” Sheda asked.

- “I am sure that I can get us half way there. At half way through the cave’s paths cross each other and multiply. It gets harder from that point on. I guess we will have to rely on your skills from then on, Sheda.”

As the party progressed through the caves, eerie sounds caused them to grow edgy. The further they went, the more unsure Taal grew of the path they were taking through the caves.

- “Are the shadow people known to have entered these caves, Taal,” Faris asked.

- “Nobody ever saw them here, although many of the disappearances of people in these caves are attributed to the shadow people. It is said that they would grab the wonderers and drag them into the darkness before they would get a chance to scream. Actually, when I was here as a kid, one of my friends disappeared in the caves. When the elders went to search for him, they returned shortly after. One of the people in the search party said that he saw a shadower run sideways across the walls of the cave, carrying the boy in his mouth. The search was cancelled and the caves were declared to be forbidden land to all Noxians. No one had entered them since, except for the outlaws hiding from justice and opportunists hoping they would bring back some camels and wild goats. No wild goat has been seen in the realm for the past twenty years so it is not hard to figure out that few of them had returned back.”

Just then, a shadow-like creature flew through the air across the cave. Geren instinctively pulled out his sword and hit the creature which fell down on the ground. Geren looked down and saw a bat flapping its wings. The animal was stunned by the blow, but it wasn’t cut.

- “The damn creature is lucky I hit it with the flat side of the sword. I hate these damned things. Although, if we run out of food, it could make a nice dinner.” Sheda pushed Geren aside and gently picked up the bat. - “Just because the creature lives in the dark doesn’t give you the right to call it a dark creature. One shouldn’t be judged by anything but by what it truly is.”

- “And what is this bat, then?”

- “It is a beautiful, smart, sophisticated creature, for once. It looks frightening, but it is frightened. It does man no harm nor did it ever do so. It is blind, yet it sees everything. It perceives the world upside-down, yet it perfectly navigates through it.”

- “Well, I don’t know much about them, but I sure don’t like them.”

- “Judge upon what you do know, not upon what you don’t know. All fear derives from ignorance. We fear only what we don’t know. As a result, fear gives birth to hatred. Knowledge eliminates fear. It makes you wonder: who are the real creatures of the dark? Is it those who live in the darkness or is it those who are kept in the darkness of ignorance?”

- “So, if we are not going to kill it, what will we do with this creature of the dark?” Geren pushed on.

- “We shall follow it,” Sheda said, letting the creature go. “It will lead us to clean air and its sources of food. It will lead us to light. You’d never say a creature of the dark would show us the way to light, would you? ”

Geren said nothing. He just looked back at Faris and walked on behind Sheda. Eventually, the party found their way out of the caves thanks to Sheda and her skills. As they walked out, they were struck by a heat wave. “We have to walk in the shades to save our energy,” Geren said.

It was very hot. The sea on the other side of the wasteland also affected the air above the wasteland. The winds from the sea caused the air to be heavy. “It can be hard to breathe here so we must not force ourselves too much. We must walk at a steady pace and not hurry ourselves,” Geren continued to instruct the group.

- “You almost sound like you have been here before,” Faris commented Geren’s knowledge of the place.

- “Here? No! I have been to the other side of the wasteland. We docked there a couple of times when we would need to do some repairs. Once, two of our ships were almost sunk by the drifters near the shores of the wasteland. So, the fleet docked there until the ships were repaired. It took us some fortnight to repair them. We used the wood which we could find on the land for repairs. Search for wood forced us to go more inland. But one would allow himself only to go as far as some five hundred lengths, always in pairs. We saw no shadowers, but we were happy as hell to leave the place once we had done our work.”

- “All right, so where do we go from here? Where do we look for the shadowers? ” it was Taal’s turn to ask.

- “We will follow the trail of the woods. The shadowers should be somewhere near the shore, because of food. I believe that this is why there were no sightings of them near Nox lately. They are simply too far. Also, the crevasse and caves are said to be the largest in those areas. The shadowers are said to live in them,” Faris explained his logic.

- “No need to worry. If we don’t find them, they’ll find us. I bet they find us first. Hell, we might not even know it when they do. Maybe they already know we’re here. Maybe they are stalking on us as we speak,” Geren commented, making the soldiers feel even more nervy than they felt back in the caves.

- “Don’t you worry boys,” Sheda reassured the young men, “they’ll only strike once the wasteland has had its way with us. They will probably wait for the land to drain us out and then they will strike, once we are too weak to hold our swords and crossbows straight. By then, we will wish for them to come and to put us out of our misery.”

As the party walked on, their limbs grew heavier and heavier with every step they made. Eventually, Faris ordered them to set up a camp in a small dry basin which provided cover from the wind which had started to blow, mercilessly whipping their faces with hundreds of pieces of rough sand and dust. They had already drunk half the water they had brought along. They knew that they only had one more day to find the shadow people. If they don’t find them, they won’t have enough water to continue the search or to come back home. As crazy as it seemed, the shadow people were their only hope of ever getting out of the wasteland alive.

The whole thing started to look like a bad idea even to Faris. He sat down around a fire together with Sheda. “What do you think will become of us? ” he asked.

- “We will survive. We will find the shadow people and they will join our cause,” Sheda replied. Faris just smiled.

- “Do you really believe that?”

- “I do, actually. And so do you. Don’t let anybody think differently. You have led these people into the wasteland. Hope is the only thing that drives them on. You can’t take that away from them. We simply cannot afford ourselves the luxury of being pessimistic right now.”

- “You know, Sheda, you’re not all that bad.”

- “You think? ”

- “Well, I can be a poor judge of character. I have proven that with Aegor.”

- “Aegor is not your mistake. Your brother didn’t see it either. Aegor is not your main problem now. It’s not even the Koprites. Your problem is Daors. Getting the shadow people to fight for us brings you one step closer to taking down Daors.”

- “I don’t want them to fight for me…for us. I want them to fight because it’s the right thing to do. I think it is. I want them to fight for their own salvation.”

- “Hey, save that speech for the shadowers.”

They both laughed. Shortly after they went to sleep, not knowing what the sun will bring.

* * *

At the other, eastern end of the midlands, Yon’s party was advancing towards the Xelon territory. Half way there, misfortune struck. Climbing one of the hill peaks to get a better view of the path ahead of them, Maedur fell and hurt his leg. Two soldiers who accompanied him carried him back to the location where the rest of the party was enjoying a brief break. Yon rushed to see how Maedur was doing: “What happened, Maedur?”

- “I was climbing up the hill, just to check what was ahead of us. I made a stupid mistake. I stood on a rock and pushed myself off another one just above. The rock slid down and took me with it. My foot got caught between two rocks. Stupid, stupid thing to do… I was so careless!”

- “Yes, it is stupid,” Setha said angrily.

- “It doesn’t matter now. We have to find someone to check up on you. We can’t continue the trip without you. We passed through that village some two hours ago. We have to go back. They should have a healer in the village. We’ll go around. If we go back the same way we came, with the night falling, they might mistake us for Koprites or some other alliance troop. Hell, I told them to fire at anything they see coming from the east. They have organized watches and set up traps. They are quite edgy too, we all witnessed it. Their guide will lead us around their traps, I don’t think we can avoid them by ourselves. I don’t want to risk anyone getting killed. We’ll go around and enter from the west side, at the front gate. It will cost us a day or two, but it must be done,” Yon decided.

- “Thank you, my lord. Once again, I am so sorry! ”

The party then picked themselves up and started their trip back to the village. When they reached it late at night, after taking the longer way around, they could see smoke arising from inside the village. Yon and the soldiers rushed in, leaving Hadera behind with Maedur. When they entered the village, they could see nobody. A crossbow dart flew Yon’s way and he barely managed to duck his head and avoid getting hit. He fell of his horse in the process. A villager ran out: “I am so sorry my lord! My son didn’t recognize you. He thought you were with them!”

- “With whom,” Yon asked, shaking the dust off.

- “With the Koprites. We thought you might be Septors or Sciprians.”

- “What Koprites are you talking about? ”

By this time, all the villagers had rushed out of their homes. They looked frightened like a cat cornered by a hound. The villager who started the conversation cautiously stepped forward: “My lord, they were here some one hour ago. They were argorite riders, some one hundred-hundred and fifty of them. Only one was a Sciprian. He was interrogating us.”

- “What about?”

- “About your whereabouts. We refused to tell them anything at first. We told them no one had passed through. But they saw the hoofmarks in the earth. They started burning hay and barns. They were about to burn a house…only then we told them that you had passed through few hours earlier and where you were heading. We told them there were more of you, we doubled the numbers. It didn’t seem to scare them off. They left the village immediately in pursuit of you. I am sorry.”

- “There’s no reason to be sorry. We just might turn this to profit. Maedur will stay here. You will give him the best care. They wanted to ambush us. Now, we will ambush them. How many Koprites are in the posse again?”

- “Some hundred and fifty. And they all ride argorites.”

- “Yon, they outnumber us by two to one,” Hadera stressed out the unfavorable odds.

- “It doesn’t matter. They have probably set up a camp by now. It must be in the canyon. They couldn’t have passed through it yet. They probably think that we set up our camp in the valley too. They wouldn’t attack us in the valley. It is too narrow. They would lose the advantage of being more numerous. Also, they know we would set up a watch around the camp. They wouldn’t like those guarding the camp to see them first and they could only guess what our watch perimeter would be. They can only attack when we are on the move. However, we don’t have the problems they do. On the contrary, we will seize the advantage the ground offers. The argorites will not be able to smell our trail as we will be on high ground. It will be hard, almost impossible for them to reach us. Their argorites will be useless. We will squash them like flies. We must leave now and come around them. They won’t be staying there long. They want to catch up with us. They think we are ahead. We have to reach the camp site before they leave. That’s our best chance of annihilating the posse. We’ll take all the villagers that can bear arms along with us. That should boost our chances. You, the commoners, shall only bring your bows and leave the swords. You will travel light and you don’t stand a chance in a head-to-head fight against the Koprites anyway. We will do all we can that it doesn’t come to that. We shall return tomorrow, hopefully after we have won the battle.”

After the villagers said their farewells, they rather unwillingly joined Yon’s troop.

The sun was coming up over midlands. The Koprite throng was preparing to leave the camp and catch up with the Kulin party whom they believed to be ahead of them. As one of the Koprite commanders looked up he saw a blurred shady image come fast towards him. Too late did he realize that it was an arrow fired by Hadera. He fell of the argorite as it struck him in the forehead. Before the others could realize it, huge round rocks came rolling down on the Koprites and crushing their ranks. Several tried to climb up the hill on their argorites, but their attempts fell short. Only one made it near the top, the snout of his argorite almost touching the shield of a Noxian soldier, before he was struck down and his argorite beheaded.

The attack was swift and ruthless. Few groaning Koprites who were lying on the ground were killed by Yon in person. He took an unusual pleasure in beheading the few fatally wounded Koprites. As he turned back after beheading the last one, an argorite, seemingly dead, suddenly jumped up and charged at Yon. The animal managed to graze his cheek with its claw, before Setha threw a spear at it. The animal charged on Setha, throwing her around before it was struck down by Maedur’s arrow. “Are you all right, my lord? Maybe you should treat that. Their claws are said to contain poison. It might do your head harm,” a soldier advised Yon. As blood was dripping down from his unattended cheek, Yon ran over to Setha. She was dead. Rage building up inside him could almost be seen through his eyes. He was aware that he shouldn’t allow the emotions to show before his soldiers. He stood up and coldly delivered the order, as if nothing had happened: “Bury them all. We don’t want others from Karos to find them. Then they would know that we passed through and they could set up an ambush upon our return. We must keep them thinking that the posse is still in pursuit of us for as long as possible. Burry them deep!”

Everybody got down to work. Only after they were finished burying the Koprites and argorites, Yon gave his wound proper attention. Hadera stitched him.

- “The damn beast could have cut my head off.”

- “That would be a shame. It’s such a pretty head,” Hadera commented as Yon looked down awkwardly playing with his fingers. The party continued on, leaving behind the locals who had lost a few men to arrow strikes in the battle. A couple of soldiers, no more, also lost their life in the same way. Yon told the other villagers to go to Nox, where the families of those who died would be tended to appropriately, along with Setha who was to be buried in the village.