Heart of Black Ice

CHAPTER 68

Thousands upon thousands of weary soldiers marched onward, creating a low rumble across the land. The army’s progress did not pause, mile after desperate mile. Individual men faltered, but the main group, the single-minded ancient fighting force, moved on. After crossing the continent, the soles of their boots were worn to ribbons, their feet bloody. Their skin was sunburned and stretched tight against their bones from malnourishment. They stripped the land of any edible shred.

General Utros looked back at the dust cloud raised by the endless ranks. He saw the hollow yet stony expressions on their faces, sunken eyes staring ahead, intent on their goal, intent on their leader. They did not complain, partly because of the numbing preservation spell, but primarily because they still believed in Utros. They would march all the way to Tanimura and capture the great city, which would allow him to anchor his empire from Orogang across the continent and up to the New World.

Utros held his head high even under the weight of the helmet. He would not let his men down. Fifteen centuries ago, they had laid siege to Ildakar, and after reawakening they had battled their way over the mountains, across the valleys, and all the way to the sea. That in itself was a victory, but General Utros wanted more. They marched north along the imperial road toward their real prize.

Ruva rode beside Utros on her bay mare, but she seemed in a trance. Although he insisted that she eat well, the sorceress seemed gaunt, even wasted. Her voice was quiet above the plodding hooves of the horses. “Do you think Ava will be in Tanimura? I miss my sister.”

Utros frowned. “Ava’s spirit appears whenever she wishes.”

“I haven’t seen her in so long.” The vibrant paint that marked Ruva’s body was smeared and flaked off in patches, which disrupted the arcane loops of the spell-forms the twins had so carefully painted on each other.

More disturbingly, he saw a faint fuzz of hair, tufts of stubble that showed how Ruva had not maintained the exquisitely careful shaving of her body. Her eyes had a distant and disturbing hint of madness. “Will Emperor Kurgan be in Tanimura, I wonder? I will help you defeat him, beloved Utros.”

“Iron Fang is no longer our enemy. We have others to conquer,” Utros said, then added an edge to his voice. “I need you, Ruva. You are my sorceress, the only one left.”

Her disturbed eyes flicked back and forth. “No … no. We are both here. Ava will come back. The Keeper doesn’t have her yet.”

He clenched his jaw, grinding his molars together as if to crush any unwise words before they came out. The scarred half of his face stretched tight. “I need your focus. I need your magic.” He softened his tone. “And I need your companionship.”

Ruva blinked and came back to herself. She shook her head. “You shall have it. I feel stretched thin without my sister. She is here and yet not here. Part of my Han is frayed, but she will make me whole again if she comes back.” Ruva lifted her head and shouted out in a raw voice, beseeching the sky, “Ava, where are you? The Keeper cannot have you yet. He can’t have either of us.”

After finding no respite in Renda Bay, the ancient soldiers had leveled what remained of the town, sifted fruitlessly through the ashes, and then watched the fleet of serpent ships gather again and set off. The Norukai could offer little assistance to the landbound troops, nor did they have much interest in doing so.

King Grieve would revel in his newfound war, raiding town after town as he moved northward. Utros’s soldiers would take much longer to reach Tanimura. They needed to move at a forced march and hope to reach that great city by the time the Norukai raiders arrived.

Rather than working their way along the rugged coast, they moved inland, where they found a direct but long-abandoned imperial road. Utros was glad to find it still existed. Such roads were not meant to be trade routes, but straight-line thoroughfares by which Sulachan had led his armies up to the New World and his war with the wizards there.

The old roads were overgrown, the paving stones buckled and shifted with time, but the route was plain, a direct way to Tanimura. “It has been a long time since a conquering army passed this way,” he mused.

Behind him the army trampled everything in their path as they moved on and on.

Finally, in response to Ruva’s summons, a flickering shape appeared in the air. The green-limned spirit of Ava drifted in front of the horses. “I am here,” she said in her hollow voice, “but it grows more difficult to hang on each day.”

Ruva opened her arms to her twin as she sat in the saddle. The spectral form intensified even as Ruva weakened; then Ava’s form dimmed and Ruva drew strength in return. “We are connected, sweet sister.”

“We are being torn apart,” Ava said. “The Keeper wants us both, and the more I deny him, the harder he pulls.”

“The Keeper wants us all,” Ruva said.

The spirit separated again and hovered before Utros. She extended a slender arm and pointed back toward the endless lines of troops. “The Keeper calls them. He knows them. They can’t forget that their place is in the underworld.”

“Their place is with their general. And they will keep marching.”

Behind them the troops plodded onward in uneven ranks. Weak and exhausted, some of them collapsed, falling to the flattened road. The dazed comrades behind them trampled the bodies, while others, ravenous, fell upon them, tearing off the ancient leather armor and devouring the flesh down to the bones.

Ruva laughed with an irrational edge in her voice. “See, the Keeper claims his own!”

“The Keeper will have to be satisfied for now.” Utros lowered his voice. “He already has Emperor Kurgan, and he has Majel, but I have this world for now, and I swore to conquer it. I need my army. My place is here.” He raised a fist to the sky. “I will hold on until I have accomplished my task!”

Ava’s spirit let out a strained laugh that was eerily echoed by her twin sister. “The Keeper pulls us all closer to the veil. He will wait, but he will not be denied forever.” Her faint spirit stretched and pulled, and she reached a yearning arm toward Ruva. Her twin tried to grasp her, tried to hold on, but Ava wavered like an image imprinted on smoke. Her spirit vanished.

Utros and Ruva rode on alone. Under his breath, he promised the Keeper, “I will bring you many more souls, if you will just wait … wait.”