One of the men in the crowd snorted and muttered something just loud enough to catch his attention. Merros turned to eye the man sharply. "What's your name again?"

Not being completely foolish the man stood a little straighter and answered directly, "Lockner Horast, General. Captain of the First Lancers Division."

"Lockner Horast." He eyed kept his eyes locked on the man until the other soldier looked ready to get nervous. That was exactly what Merros wanted. "Captain Horast, you sound doubtful. Tell me what's on your mind."

"All respect, General, but everyone knows the Roathians like to talk a good war. Most of us have been down there a time or two fighting the Guntha."

"Absolutely right. What's your point?"

"The Roathians tell me a hundred ships are along their shoreline and I'm probably going to expect a dozen men fishing in paddle boats."

Merros smiled. "Aye. And you'd probably be right. Except that this time there's information coming from other sources too. This time one of Desh Krohan's Sisters is studying the situation. If you'd like to talk with the wizard and ask how often his associates lie about the facts I can arrange that."

Horast shook his head. "No, no. That's just fine, General."

"There are ships. Just how many we don't know, but it's over a dozen." He paused a moment and then pointed to the south. "The great clouds you see from that direction are coming from where the Guntha Islands used to be. They're gone. They've been burned away and a new island is growing out in the Corinta. And between that island and the Roathians there are ships.

"That's one problem. Next problem is that Emperor Pathra Krous is dead. He was murdered right there, in his own palace. With a hundred members of the Imperial Guard within hailing distance." He looked hard into the audience of soldiers. "How is that acceptable? How is that ever acceptable?"

The men in front of him looked around, but no one came up with a good answer. He gave one himself. "It's not! That happened because as an army we have grown soft and lazy."

That got them. Several of the men made noises now and almost all of them were staring with angered expressions.

Merros held up a hand. "Don't take my word. Instead let's talk to Morton Darnaven." He gestured to his left and the man came forward. "Darnaven can tell each and every one of you what he witnessed when he met the Sa'ba Taalor. He did not travel with them. He saw them when they were watching our finest soldiers being trained." Darnaven was a heavyset man, but none of him was flabby. He was a long timer, not quite as long for the service as Merros himself, but he'd been in combat against the Guntha and had been farther to the south than most of the men in the room had ever traveled. He had worked the skirmish lines across most of the Empire at one time or another and he was a hard bastard with a particularly mean scowl. That was why he was now a colonel.

"Colonel Darnaven is going to talk to you about the Sa'ba Taalor. He is going to explain to you why they are dangerous and why we need to prepare." Merros looked at the crowd and then he smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. He normally reserved it for when he was about to deliver punishments. "He's going to explain why we are now going to have new soldiers coming in and how hard we are going to work to train them for combat."

He walked a few paces, eyeing the men and making sure he had their attention. "First, however, we are going to make sure that the coronation of our new Empress goes smoothly. There will be no disturbances. There will be no unruly crowds. We will have a peaceful coronation. Or I will have heads to mount on the walls of the Summer Palace. Do I make myself clear?"

"Aye! Ho, Sir!"

"War is coming. We will be prepared for it." Merros walked away from the soldiers and left them with Darnaven.

As he walked, Durst kept pace. "I want that list of names. Durst. Every one who wasn't paying attention when we started and the ones who didn't show. When Darnaven is done with them, send them to my office to wait for me."

"Aye, ho sir."

He thought for a long moment and then added, "I want a post and a whip in the western yard, Durst. I won't use it yet, but I want it there. I want them to know we're serious."

"Aye, ho sir." Durst didn't hesitate and didn't argue. Merros did not like using punishment to make a point made and the man knew it. But like Merros, Durst had seen the Sa'ba Taalor in action. He knew how serious the situation was.

"Also, it's time for a few competitions. Work it out. I want the best ten archers. The best ten swordsmen we have. Everyone competes. Best ten lancers, best ten horsemen. There will be cash rewards for the winners and very likely a few promotions."

From there it was back to the palace for another round of meetings. The coronation of Nachia Krous was only a few days away. There were a thousand details to see to and more.

And, of course, there was always reason to expect a few unpleasant surprises.

Chapter Four.

In the distant past, the Wellish Steppes was a place of horror and tyranny. The Overlords in charge of the area were bested long ago, but a number of people still claim that the land is cursed. To be fair, the fact that most of the region runs alongside the edge of the Blasted Lands hasn't helped the area's reputation. The land is fertile, but not much grows there beyond fungus and scrub grass. The one distinct advantage to the place is that it's mostly flat. Large caravans and small groups alike can travel it without too much worry about unseen threats.

It is so calm there, in fact, that even without paving the pathways through the area have long since been well established. "The roads along the steppes practically pave themselves," is a fairly common remark among the soldiers in the Imperial Army. For that reason alone it was not unusual to find those very same soldiers looking forward to marching across the area.

There are exceptions to every rule.

The damp was constant and heavy. The moisture clung to everything and slowly, methodically seeped its way through clothes, shoes and supplies. Had it been any warmer, there would likely have been worries about the supplies mildewing. Instead they just marched on, keeping a brisk pace in the hopes of staying warm in the chill, misty air.

The caravan came from the east. They traveled the Imperial Highway, and those who had horses were glad of them. Those that did not carried their packs and their supplies and walked the distance from Old Canhoon at a steady march. The road here was old but well tended, and cut into the low-lying hills. In some places the paths were deeply enough worn that the soldiers almost disappeared from sight and in others they were level to the ground, but as one of the outer ranks and charged with watching the flanks of the entire column, it was occasionally amusing to watch the men seemingly sink into the ground fog, like the specters he'd heard tell of as a child.

Nolan March preferred walking the edges of the column and keeping an eye out. It broke the monotony of staring at the backs of the men in front of him when he was forced to march the column.

Nolan carried himself easily enough. He'd grown up in the north, joined the army when he was of age and had now been trained as a soldier. Canhoon was where he was assigned and where he'd expected to stay, but now he was on his way to Tyrne, where he was supposed to join the Imperial Guard and where he would see his family again.

That was the plan before he found out about the death of his father, Wollis. He hadn't seen the old man in a long time and now it looked like he would never see him again. The thought was a hard one to accept. He'd grown up believing his father was nearly indestructible. The man had been on the road and traveling for most of Nolan's life, but he'd always seemed almost like a giant when he was home and he'd always been the first to tell stories of the military life and the people he'd fought with and against.

Thinking about Wollis made his chest swell with pride and his heart ache with loss at the same time. He would be missed.

The man who'd been his father's commander had sent for him. The plan had been to reunite the entire family and Nolan was grateful for the effort, even if it hadn't worked out.

"First thing I do when we get to Tyrne, is I take the money I've saved up and buy myself a new pair of boots. These bastards are falling off my feet." The voice came from Darus Leeds, who could rightly enough be called Nolan's friend. Which is to say he was one of the people in the battalion that Nolan liked and additionally was one of the few he trusted. Nolan was not big on trust. His first few weeks in the army had taught him that many people are thieves. Those same weeks had taught a few of the thieves that stealing from Nolan was a very bad idea.

Stonehaven was a long ways off, but the lessons he'd learned in his hometown stuck with him. Most of the people in the area, not surprisingly, worked in the quarries and worked hard for what they owned. That tended to make them a bit reluctant to let go when something was taken from them.

Darus was fairly tall and lean, but Nolan had already learned that didn't mean much. While he was nowhere near as solidly built as Nolan he was as strong as an ox and had a fearsome way with a sword. They often faced off against each other in practice matches and from time to time teamed up against other members of the battalion. Darus came from a good distance to the east, somewhere near Elda. From what he'd told Nolan, the people in his area still trained hard with sword and shield alike. Nolan saw no reason to doubt those claims.

Darus was looking his way and expecting a response. "What?"

"I said what are your big plans when you get to Tyrne?"

Nolan looked away. "I'm supposed to meet with a family friend." He muttered the words and a little twist of guilt nibbled at his insides. It was unjustified but the guilt was still there.

"Your family has friends in Tyrne? Didn't you say as you're from up north near Trecharch?"

"Stonehaven. A bit east of Trecharch."

"Yeah I heard of that one." The way he said it let Nolan know his friend was lying. He didn't take offense. Darus had a need to sound knowledgeable about everything he encountered. Several people had called him on his claims in the past and Nolan ignored them as easily as he ignored the false claims. Darus was a friend. It was precisely that simple for him.

"My father." He paused a moment to swallow the lump trying to form in his throat. "The man he was riding with is in Tyrne. He's asked to see me. He wants to present my father's ashes."

Darus made a noise and nodded his head. That was all there was to say on the matter. Darus had left home when he joined the army and had no intention of looking back. What his parents might have done to inspire the cold distance within the otherwise friendly man he did not know. He merely understood that Darus had no desire to speak of it.

Nolan thought back to his one meeting with Merros Dulver. He'd seen the man ride up on horseback and smile and thought him a striking figure. He was tall and rugged and solid. He carried himself with confidence and he'd shaken Nolan's hand and spoken highly of his father's prowess in combat. He'd liked the man just fine right up until the time his father decided to go off with him.

There was nothing fair about that, of course. He knew Dulver was a good man. His father had said so on several occasions.

Still, his father was dead. And the man who'd taken him away was one of the men in charge of the entire army.

"What you should do is find out what this fella says about how your father died."

Nolan nodded his head and looked around. They were following the same road they'd been on for longer than he cared to think about. Up ahead the sound of horns came back their way and the foot soldiers dutifully stepped to the sides of the road and waited, most of them grateful for the chance to rest their legs for a moment. The last time they'd been called off the road had been to let the escorts past with the body of Emperor Pathra Krous. That had been a somber moment. An escort of mounted Imperial Guards had dominated the road, and a great black wagon moved between them, the windows covered and the Imperial crest gleaming on the sides. Nolan, along with every other soldier, had held his sword out above his head as the wagon rumbled slowly past and several of the soldiers had done their best to hide tears.

Tears for a man none of them had met. What a mad world they lived in.

Somewhere up ahead a loud noise came their way, as if to prove the point. It was a warbling cry, a trumpet call that he was not familiar with.

The response was immediate by a good number of the foot soldiers. They grabbed their shields and their weapons and prepared. The men sported swords or axes. Those that did not brandished spears. The road almost immediately bristled with pointed, sharpened steel.

"What the hell is happening up there?" Darus was squinting against the glare of the sun's attempt to burn away the mists, trying to see what was causing the disturbance, but with no luck.

Someone called out, "Spears to the front!" and immediately the foot soldiers with spears came forward, sliding past the swordsmen and preparing themselves. A lanky man with graying hair moved into position in front of Nolan and dropped into a crouch, holding his spear with the point aimed high and easily lowered should it be necessary.

No one questioned whether or not this was a drill. The sounds of conflict came from further up the road. The view was obstructed by spearmen and by the curve of the road itself.

"What the hell?" That was Darus again as a deep roar cut the air and was immediately followed by the sounds of several men screaming.

"Spears, ready! Here they come!"

"They" were impossible to see at first, but hearing them was easy. The sounds of metal and men joined together in a loud tidal roar, but that was nothing to the sounds clashing for attention. The noises were unsettling, alien, and made Nolan's skin crawl with distaste. There were low growls and higher sounds, a keening noise that barely made sense to his ears.

The lines of men that bordered the road began to falter and spear tips that had been raised high wavered and then dropped as something came closer. Whatever that something was, the spears were attacking, doing their best to pin it in place.

A vast shape took to the air for just a moment. A blur of dark fur, darker leathers and metal and unless he was mistaken there was a person atop that lunging, flailing insanity. Yes, he saw an axe coming down even as the massive thing yielded to gravity. Several spears went sailing in the wrong direction, their points falling like saplings in a sudden flood. But more weapons went in the right direction and a moment later the roars and screams of the furred nightmare were faltering and then dying completely.

Ahead of them, along the line, soldiers screamed and broke ranks, unsettled by whatever it was they were seeing. The squad leaders called out for order and a small handful began listening, drawing back into the proper ranks, but some did not pay heed too enthralled by what they were seeing, apparently.

Darus shook his head. "Can't see a damned thing."

Nolan was about to agree when the shape came through the ranks. It was low-slung and charged across the ground, roaring and swinging clawed front limbs that slapped people aside with too much ease. There was indeed a man riding on the beast's back, but he was dead near as Nolan could tell. The man's skin was gray and his body sagged to one side, flopping and flailing with each move of the creature. Soldiers screamed as they were hurled through the air, broken and bleeding. Some only staggered a few feet, but a few truly unfortunate souls were thrown twenty feet or more with a single sweep of the monster's limbs.

Nolan backed up and looked for a better access point. Darus moved with him, looking for a moment as if he planned to run away. But that wouldn't happen. The punishment for running from combat was death and they all knew it.

There were few people from the north who couldn't climb a tree. Trecharch and the surrounding areas had trees that practically begged to be climbed, and so Nolan resorted to older skills, found the best looking tree for the job and scampered up as quickly as he could. Flinching a couple of times when his equipment tried to snag itself on a branch of catch on the rough bark.

Not far away the soldiers he'd trained with were scattering, giving more room to whatever the hell they were fighting and he saw them for the first time. The great furred nightmare he'd seen was down, killed by the footmen. Easily a dozen of them had gone down in the process, but they had taken man and mount alike.

Moving over those remains, demons from the worst kind of nightmares charged, slashing at the soldiers too close to the. The attackers moved quickly, but they were not faster than the eye.

What he'd thought was one enormous attacker was actually several. From above he could see the breaks in the forms that were close together and pushing along the same path. The large shapes could easily have broken away from each other and moved through the entire area, but they stayed stubbornly on the road and they continued to follow the path even when the foot soldiers and cavalry were in their way. Horses and riders were knocked aside and torn apart if they got too close. Any men standing nearby when the odd shapes got closer were slapped away or violently attacked. As he observed, one of the shambling things reached out and yanked a man into its embrace. Within a heartbeat's span the captured soldier was screaming and dying. As he died four of the spearmen attacked, driving the points of their weapons deep into the loathsome thing that shuddered and wailed and died.

Before he could see much of the dying creature the next in line rolled forward, crawling over the dying man and monstrosity alike.

He clamped his teeth tightly together and looked down at Darus. "Get to the supplies! Get to the wagons!"

"What? Why?"

"I want to try something."

As they spoke the column of nightmares tramped closer, pushing past or through the men fighting them. Spears and swords rose and fell and a few more of the things fell to the weapons. But the next in the line kept coming in a slow moving tide of unnatural flesh.

And as the people fighting them looked at the creatures, occasionally a trained fighter would back away, disgusted or horrified or simply unbelieving of what they were seeing. Nolan wasn't sure which was stronger, his desire to know what was so unsettling or the part of him that never wanted to be that repulsed.

Nolan dropped quickly from his perch and ran toward the wagons, hoping that Darus was with him. The things were coming closer and he had a momentary fear that someone would see them running and think they were trying to flee. He remembered his father telling him about two occasions where he'd had to discipline a soldier trying to flee from a fight. Neither of the men had lived through the experience. The idea of a spear in the back or a noose around his neck did not appeal at all.

Death did not come in the form of a spear or rope, but the things behind him were definitely getting closer.

The wagons were in motion. Not because they were supposed to be, but because the horses apparently did not like what was coming their way and they were trying to get up the sides of the well-worn road and drag their wagons with them. The men trying to calm the beasts were not having any luck. One wagon had fallen to its side already and the draft horses were straining and trying to haul their burden along despite the added traction. The men riding the wagon had fallen. One lay broken on the ground and the other was pinned under the weight of the capsized vessel.

Nolan didn't take time to think it through. Instead he pulled his axe and climbed atop the wagon, hacking at the couplings until they broke. It didn't take much effort as the wooden connections had already fractured. Darus followed his lead and took a long knife from his belt sheath and cut the leather straps at the same time. A moment later the horses were free and the wagon was no longer moving.

The man under the wagon was not moving. He was alive, but his eyes had rolled back and his skin was pale and sweating. It would take more than the two of them to free him. The wagon was too damned heavy.

Nolan shook off the worries for the downed driver and climbed over the wagon. The canvas cover had broken and the supplies inside were spilled halfway across the road, only adding to the chaos as other wagons and horses tramped over the supplies within.

He'd been hoping for one of the armory wagons, but was not that lucky. The spilled contents were from the larders.

Behind him a wagon succeeded in climbing the rise and lurched off the road. The man who'd been riding the wagon and directing the horses did not make it along for the ride and let out a yelp as he fell backward and flopped down the hillside back to where Nolan and Darus were waiting. He was battered and looked a bit surprised to find himself in the mud, but he got back up on his own. His round face was familiar, but there was no name associated with him in Nolan's mind.

Nolan looked the man over. "Get a weapon ready!"

The man nodded and pulled at his sheathed axe. It was more a tool than a weapon, unlike like the one Nolan himself carried, but it would cut a monster as sure as it would chop wood.

Nolan looked at the debris, searching for any possible tools to help them and then looked up at the road ahead where the monsters were still coming.

No time.

The closest of the things was almost on them and he saw the head of the beast again and wished that he did not. It should not exist and yet it did. Had someone taken a dozen men sculpted of soft clay and decided to make something different from the originals what was coming at him might have been the result. Faces were distorted and pressed into new shapes, crushed against shoulders and torsos and bent by angry fingers into a new, rough form. He could see mouths and broken teeth, he could spy a nose mashed into a semi-flattened shape and smeared into an eye socket. The eye was still there, rolling madly and possibly seeing the world around it or merely staring blindly. Arms and fingers were broken and bent and pressed into that rough-hewn face. And it wasn't only the heads of the people used to make the shape. There were legs and torsos and there were broken swords and shields and armor twisted into that moving, impossible mess.

There was an Imperial Guard insignia crushed into the side of the monster's face. Part of the thing. The crest of a shield was warped into that nightmare, a piece of the unholy whole.

The bloated nightmare pushed forward and ran into the wagon, not stopping, not slowing but continuing along the same pathway. The wagon did not budge; it was a very heavy obstacle to be sure, but the thing kept shoving forward, the heavy forearms of the monster slamming into the overturned affair and smashing into it again and again, pummeling the wood and iron that began to break and bend under the assault.

Darus had to drag Nolan back as the brute continued forward. A moment later and he'd have been crushed when the wagon fell toward him as the monster kept coming.

The beast was the last of them, apparently. It kept moving, trying to push along the same road, but behind it the soldiers had finished their bloody work and had hacked and stabbed the rest of the monstrosities into immobile carcasses.

Revulsion got the better of common sense. That was really the only way to put it. As the bloated, loathsome thing kept pushing up the road, not the least worried about Nolan as it moved along, his mind went dark and red.

Nolan let out a battle cry and swung his axe in a great arc, bringing it down on the mottled, vile back of the thing. The blade cut deep and the creature let out a sharp bleating noise and started turning back to examine Nolan with its repulsive piecemeal, rudimentary face. He hacked again and again and felt himself climbing onto the thing's great back as he pulled the axe free and snarled at the impossible head.

There was nothing rational to his actions. Deep inside his skull, buried under the insane rage that consumed him, Nolan wondered at what he was doing and whether to not he would survive his foolish attack but it didn't matter just then. He wanted this abomination gone, and more than anything else that was what drove him.