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Chapter XIII - Storms' Eyes

Captain Summer swiped his left arm across his forehead, and couldn't help but wince as the sliced flesh there felt like it had parted yet more, blood streaming down his face and blinding one eye as he rode pell-mell up the mud-slicked road in the again-pouring rain. He grunted, as the large fur behind him squeezed around his middle to stay a-horse, likely the first time the heavy cougar had ever been in a saddle.

The horses were winded, many of them blowing bloody froth by the time they reached the first of the road houses outside Amarthane's walls. Situated some ten minutes' ride from the city, they were some combination of smuggling den, gambling hall, traveler's stop, and gossip network. With satisfaction, he noted the place looked swiftly abandoned.

Sending Thistle on ahead to evacuate the inns had been a smart move, and Summer was grimly pleased the locals had apparently not argued. The dismembered undead monster his corporal had thought to take with him seemed to have done the job. He only hoped the plague wasn't catching off the gnashing, wailing, armless legless corpse.

He looked around, paw to his forehead again as the stinging claw wounds kept draining rain-watered blood into his eye, holding the wound shut as he counted the furs on horseback who'd ridden along with him.

"My men...Thank you for sparing them..."

Summer grunted, and turned at the waist to look at the cougar behind him. When last they'd looked eye-to-eye, the captain had just punted him in the crotch and knocked a sword out of his paws. Then, the mountain lion's face had been warped with furious rage, his eyes wide with terror and battle-savagery, and he'd been fighting like a giant.

Now, the sagging skin under his eyes, the half-lidded bloodshot eyes, and the countless scabbed-over minor injuries told another story. Summer spoke back to him in a gruff tone, with far less growl and threat when they'd last spoken.

"Didn't spare them all. My guards killed some."

"Doesn't matter...If you hadn't let us ride double with you, we'd all be dead now."

Summer stared wordlessly a moment, surprised, as the cougar began to weep, raising both paws to its face and trying to keep its heaving sobs silent. The captain turned away, shaking his head in sympathy and disgust rolled into one, and continued counting.

"Four went with Thistle, all unhurt...Four with me, all injured...Two dead. Damn it."

He knew that only two lost in such an engagement was a blessing, and a testament to his warriors' skill and discipline. He told his hard-won knowledge what it could do with itself, with a growl of frustration, as he swung his leg up and over the horse and fast-dismounted into the squelching muck.

"Four bandits, alive, mostly unhurt."

"We aren't bandits," the cougar protested, and Summer frowned, realizing he'd been counting out loud without intending to.

"You killed a farmer for his horse, and didn't even bother keeping it."

The mountain lion was still a-horse, holding onto the saddle horn with his overlarge paws, and chewing his lip while trying to figure out how to dismount the exhausted, nervous creature.

"We tried to buy the horse first. He wouldn't sell, and we had no time. Had to get a message to the garrison."

Summer turned on his heel and glowered at the mountain lion, striding over to grab the horse's lather-speckled, rain-soaked lead.

"Think harder next time, fool! Knock the farmer over the head, take the horse, send someone ahead, and keep moving! Panic is no excuse for murder! Especially not for a former soldier!"

He angrily grabbed the leopard by his sodden coat and yanked, pulling the muscle-bound fur off the horse sideways and dumping him in the mud greatsword and all. Spluttering, the beaten male managed to force himself to his knees, head lowered.

"You...You are right. His blood's on my paws, and my troops as well...Gods forgive me."

Summer's glare didn't lessen. The words rankled him, and he grabbed the cougar by the lapel of his coat, yanking on the too-heavy creature. If the cougar were a smaller fur, or when he himself was younger, Summer would have lifted him right to his feet.

"Enough whining! Get your troops ready, we'll be walking into the city, and trying not to get spotted by Casso's watch! I imagine that's important to you, given you're some of Callian's boys, eh?"

"H-how...Did you know?"

Summer slapped the leather palm of his half-gauntlet over his face, and grumbled as he let go of the coat while the cougar rose to its footpaws.

"You're swinging a sword around like you know what you're about. And your men are dressed like bandits, but bandits avoid roads when traveling you twit. Now follow me, we've got a ways to go and it's going to get tricky."

He heard the splattering clop of horse hooves in muck at the same moment the others did, all heads turning towards Amarthane, as the noise began to multiply and quickly. Summer grabbed the nearest guard, pulling the flop-eared dog over to speak quickly into his ear.

"Lead this lot to the smuggler's entrance by the south gate, and quick-like. I'll distract the cavalry. Even with the rain, they'd spot your tracks if they're so much as half-looking. Sergeant Kerrin knows my plan, if I don't make it back. Tell him what we saw, leave nothing out, understand?"

The dog knew better than to argue, though his paws twitched in the desire to grab his captain and drag him along by force if he had to.

Swiftly, for such a rag-tag force, his furs and the former soldiers were off into the ditches and away.

Just as swiftly, and only moments after the others were out of sight, thirty or more of Casso's heavy cavalry rode through the rainy curtain and into view. Their high helms were all black, with argent dragon wings picked out on them in silvery inlay. Each bore the white belt of a knight, though he noted none carried the golden spur of a noble warrior. He frowned at the strangeness of it, as he stood up on the porch of the abandoned road house, waving a paw at the approaching column.

The tight formation slowed, though less than he might have thought, and with a curse he grabbed at his sword while backing towards the inn, as the lead knight lowered his lance from its raised travel position to its lowered charge station.

From within the high helm, a hard, grating voice spat furiously angry, yet questioning words, at the captain.

"You are captain Ameris Summer?"

His heart, already jolting with readiness for a fight he knew was unwinnable, suddenly dropped into his gut. They knew his name, and he knew that meant he'd either been betrayed or Thistle's men had been captured entering the city.

He briefly considered claiming ignorance, but the sword was already in his paw. That, and he recognized the heraldry on that shield, a rampant rearing winged tiger with a crown in its teeth in the top quadrant, with three patches of varying blues in the others.

Instead of fighting, he turned his grandfather's sword tip down to the rotting wood planks, and knelt, despite the raising of his hackles in anger.

"M'lord Royval Casso, you are correct. I am Captain Ameris Summer. How may I be of service?"

The cruel eyes that gazed down from within the helm saw the sodden tiger, noted his bleeding forehead and its claw marks, and narrowed in suspicion.

"Where are your troops? The lord Mayor ordered you not to leave the city!"

Summer tensed, as he twisted truth and by omission lied through his many gritted teeth.

"We fought leftovers of Callian's army. I'm the one who made it back. We were attacked by an army of the walking dead, my lord, and they're but half a day behind us."

Royval Casso snarled, and the basso rumbling seemed to steal the anxiety from Summers' heart. He made ready to die, spitted on the cruel warrior's lance, and prayed not to any god but to whatever was listening that his boys could accomplish what now would need doing.

"Foul lies! Treason from a commander of the guard! Arrest him and take him to my father for judgment!"

Summer looked up with a blink, his mind wheeling, trying to understand why he wasn't being slain on the roadside. Noble lords didn't bother with justice towards commoners, which he most certainly was despite his grandfather's station.

He met Royval Casso's glaring, hate-filled eyes, and saw in them a frustration that nearly made him grin.

"Father's declared all of tigrish blood to be noble. You'd best thank king Casso for his august first act as majestic lord of all Amarthane and her lands. It's the only thing keeping you off the tip of my lance!"

The wolf could hardly remember his own name, and it struck him so oddly that he suddenly laughed aloud in his clammy, drafty tower cell. He had not uttered a sound in hours, beyond a few muffled growls and grunts.

A snarl sounded from the tiger behind him, on the other side of the bars, who was pounding his deepest depths with a long and now quite familiar flesh-spined cock, claw-tipped fingers dug into the wolf's hips, yanking him back as the feline shoved its length in until it's balls bounced against his ass.

"What's so funny, slut?"

The wolf lowered his head, ears pinned back, and giggled, as the rough fucking made his own hard shaft bounce repeatedly in front of him. He'd long since given up trying to control it, or the shameful pleasure that radiated from him as the spiny dick stroked over that hated, explosively pleasurable spot inside him.

His laughter was unstoppable, overflowing from the emotions pressed up inside him like an overfilled dam, leaking over the side to vent pressure. It's tone was high, higher than he would normally laugh, near-hysterical as the tiger hilted hard into him again.

"M-my name...Wh...What's my name...Ngh...Again?"

The wolf's words were said with laughter rolling off them, along with grunts of pleasure as his guts slowly began to clench on the invading cock. He heard the tiger grunt, and felt the harder hit of a stronger thrust, claw tips drawing drips of blood from his flanks.

"Mmf...Who cares?"

The naked wolf groaned out, and clamped on the tiger's hard fleshy spear, as he blew streaks of white all over the floor beneath him, tongue lolling out as his world went dull for a while, his mind gone off into a quiet, dimly lit place where nothing could touch him. It would be the closest he'd come to sleep in days.

Meanwhile, the tiger laughed as the wolf blew his nuts dry on the floor without so much as being touched, and continued fucking the slumping, half-conscious creature, holding his hips up to keep spearing the disgraced knight's bruised and battered asshole.

"You'll be happy to...Mmf...Know. Toryen is having you transferred to...Mngh! His private home...As a trophy...Ngh! Fuck!"

The tall, slender warrior yanked on his fucktoy, pulling the limp wolf's hips back for one final thrust, before he emptied himself into Ranos' abused guts, purring at the feel of pulsing, throbbing, wriggling muscles around his cock. Panting, the tiger eventually pulled free to wipe his cum-glazed cock in the wolf's drooped tail.

"I'd say I'll miss having you around to fuck, but I doubt that'll be a problem."

The city looked like hell, and Summer knew more than a bit about the subject of both hell and hell-looking towns. As he rode, hand-paws tied together and to a saddle horn, he saw that Casso's troops were deployed on all of the major avenues, clustered together in bands of three or four, mostly huddled under whatever overhangs they could find and looking miserable about it.

He restrained a grim smile, looking at the damage they'd done. Not a working fur was to be seen anywhere in the entire trade district, as his mount was led through by the entire cavalry column. Carts had clearly been smashed, and some homes looked to have been ransacked and gutted. Pillories were full of sodden, shivering furs, many of them still sporting bleeding wounds. The cavalry seemed blissfully unaware of the angry looks Summer glimpsed from behind mostly-closed shutters.

Captain Summer frowned, wondering just what devilry had occurred in the ten or so hours he and his small cadre of guards had been out of the city. He spoke to the angry-faced cat holding the lead to his mount, half-expecting the half-breed tiger and lynx mix to ignore him entirely.

"You lot don't waste time, hey? Thought pillaging was supposed to happen just after battle, not a month or two later?"

"Shut it, traitor," the tiger growled, then continued. "Someone shot a crossbow at His Majesty last night. So the garrison got orders to come down here and show these dirty peasants who's in charge."

Summer stared at the black-crowned helm, and shook his head, stupefied, before growling right back to the surly, soggy cat.

"You morons don't even know well enough to realize how expensive a damn crossbow is? The likes of these peasants couldn't afford one."

No further conversation forthcoming, Summer settled in, knowing it would take at least half an hour to walk across the city like this. Assuming, of course, nothing got in their way. Behind him, as he turned, he saw the guards at the gate had ignored his admonitions of what was coming. It didn't particularly surprise him. He just hoped, with a grim pinch in his gut that often happened when he was worried, that the plan would work quickly enough to get the gates shut before that horde arrived.

New pennants flew over the city since yesterday. Where the crest of Amarthane herself had once flown, a great white tower on a field of green, wreathed in garlands of blue roses, the Casso family's ancient heraldry now flew. The winged tiger reared above every tall building, though to his amusement, the beautifully-colored flags were soaked, and many had been made cheaply, their dyes running and dripping down on the street to join the muddy sludge the great city created whenever the rain was too much for the old trench sewers.

"Heh. Come join us down in the piss and shit."

The guard looked up and glared at him.

"What was that?"

The captain merely shrugged, grinned his soggy grin, and gestured with a pointed finger towards the keep.

"Lead on, I said!"

They had been feeling their way along for hours in the black, dripping tunnel, and despite having the young priest to lean on, Cel's crippled knee and many injuries were beginning to push past her iron-clad will, making every step a razor-edged torment. The featureless darkness helped nothing, giving her no distraction from the hot pains of her abused body and the worse, gut-churning torture that was her memories.

With no sun or sky to see, time seemed to drag on into eternity, and Cel had already recited every mantra from her knightly training and childhood, trying to keep the specters away that could stop her and leave her trapped in this dark, useless, forever, for the others could not possibly carry her and arrive in time for Amarthane.

Finally, the churning pressure in her chest could take no more. The added pains acted in synergy, bashing against her resolve until the stone walls of her mind were beginning to show signs of crumbling.

"F-father." Her voice was stiff, tense, filled with pain, and she knew the perceptive priest could tell.

Vanyal cut in before the priest could speak.

"We can't stop, or we won't be there before the horde. As it is, we'll not have more than a day before they arrive."

The slaughtered knight blew out a shaky breath, and leaned her weight more firmly against Father Timid, feeling his slender body shiver from her touch. Her mind was too exhausted from pain to realize the tunnel was not cold enough for shivering.

"I..." She swallowed the weakness, the all-consuming desire to simply lie down and give in to exhaustion. Cel had barely slept, barely eaten, for fear of the memory-dreams. "Father...Distract me...Please..."

Cel felt him move, heard the shifting of his rough woolen habit, and felt his paw touch her cheek. Though it stung the raw flesh beneath her bandages, it felt warm and caring, and some bit of the pain died away under his gentle touch. His voice balmed her tired soul, as he spoke in a soft tone that carried, as if addressing a quiet crowd in chapel.

"I know a good story, if you all wish to listen."

Silence greeted him for a moment, before Tomasj spat a muzzle-full of copper smells and gave his harsh laugh, the one that meant he was rolling his eyes yet accepting something.

"Long ago, before the sun shone on the world, the celestial lords who lived in the stars did long and bloody battle against their enemies, the shadow lords of the underworld. Where the celestial lords were masters of light and beauty, the shadowy ones were demons of sorrow and hunger, and the two could not coexist in one reality.

"In those days before time, the celestials were not given names upon their creation, for to do so would give their enemies power, and allow corruption of their purified essence. The shadow masters, opposite in many ways to the celestials, each had many names and prided themselves on their accomplishments by granting new names with every passing victory large or small, thus diminishing the power words could have over them by spreading it among many names.

"However, the War in the Beyond had lasted for time beyond time, a thousand thousands of eons without name, a terrible neverending battle over what nature our mortal world would have. One night, for there was not yet day to reckon by, a great celestial lord saw an end to the fight. His end was to create the first mortals, and thus begin creation of the world that now exists before the shadow masters could do the same.

"And thus he created the first living things. At first they were simple, small things. Insects, worms, and stranger things that as often as not failed to survive, for the celestial lord was a novice at the art of creation, as all are when a new craft is invented.

"In time, he had populated a great dark stone with creatures, and filled its sky with wind and rain, and all the other things his failed experiments taught him were needed. Yet, he knew, something was wrong, missing - The shadow masters made no attempt to emulate or destroy his work, and thus he knew it was flawed, for surely no move in the war had value if the enemy could not be bothered by it.

"One of his advisors, a great creature with no name, advised that the greatest weapon against the shadows were creatures that could make use of names. For though the shadow masters had divided themselves into many names, each name unto itself could be controlled by those willing to risk the madness such works could cause. He counseled the great celestial lord to make a race of creatures who could understand words, and make things of them.

"So, in agreement, he created the first furs on our world. For their bodies, he took from his own flesh to give them the divine spark, and from the bodies of the animals to give them life and instinct that would make them survive. From the brilliant night sky, he took stars of every color, and made them into eyes and minds, so that his new and great creation could see and understand the world. Then, he took from his servants tiny, volunteered bits of souls, and forged them together into a great machine, to create endless spirits to inhabit the bodies and give them animus.

"Then, in his final great act of creation, he placed these creatures upon the land, and clapped his great ethereal paws together. The thunder of his power was enough to forge all the leftover materials together, and to set them to shining as a giant golden disk to light and warm his creation.

"Exhausted, for a time, he slept."

Cel felt as if she were asleep and walking, her mind giving flashes of vision, of the great events and story with which she was quite familiar, for her own people had similar stories, though with slightly different details. She smiled, and rested her head against the priest's shoulder. The touch did nothing to stall his story. Long practice giving sermons to unruly children, while the elder clergy ministered to adults, had seen to that.

"When he awoke, to his dismay, the shadow had crept into his creation. This, he knew instantly, was why they had failed to attack his master plan. Though his warrior servants, the Starlit Host and their great general, had fought hard, the war for mortal souls was being swiftly lost.

"In a state of anger, for his only weakness was pride of his creations, the celestial lord sought a solution. He found that they had been easily corrupted for a lack of knowledge, for lack of a name to fill their minds against the ravages of the shadow words. Yet he had no name to give them.

"In his anger, he could not see, and was the first ever of the celestial lords to give himself a name. So sure was he of his own power and purity that he did not bother hiding his name, or making it complex, fairly daring the shadowy ones to attempt using it against him. He further steeled himself against such an attack by spreading his name far and wide, into the minds of all his creations. He spoke to them, and told them of their creation. He called himself Hao, which meant 'creator of souls'.

"In the darkness, the shadow masters smiled their thousand-toothed, victorious smirks.

"It was not long before mortals tried to understand Hao's existence, his purpose and nature. Hao was pleased at this, for such thoughts helped to push the shadow out of the souls of mortal creatures. However, the trap of the shadow masters was subtle, their influence deep and silent, and stealthy as shadows in darkness.

"They had left, in the heart of mortal-kind, the tiniest bit of their blackness. In time, through speaking Hao's name, the darkness slid upward through the connection of their prayers. Unknowing and arrogant, Hao could not detect the corruption in himself. He could not detect the madness that began to drive his acts, quiet, small betrayals of his compatriots and servants.

"In this way, the shadow began to grow in strength, gaining ground slowly but certainly against a celestial host confused by this sudden reversal. As the heavens slowly began to fall, mortal-kind grew corrupted further and further, the shadow masters becoming less and less concerned with stealth and secrecy as their power grew."

Tomasj stumbled over something in the dark, issuing a hissing stream of curses that interrupted the hypnotic story that filled their darkened sojourn. Van hadn't bothered once to ask if the wolf was alright, so when he spoke it startled Cel from her haze of pain and half-consciousness. Images of hazy, dreamy shapes flitting about them faded as she was wakened.

"We're close. We'll be coming out in the old town, so be ready just in case."

Cel nodded her head, where it rested on Timid's shoulder, and felt the rough cloth of his monk's robe against the un-bandaged part of her chin. Her limbs felt leaden, too heavy to lift, and she just hoped they would be lucky enough to rest before the fighting started again.

She felt the little priest nod, and tense slightly, though his shakes seemed to be gone. The story, she realized, was giving him strength to face coming troubles. Cel smiled slightly, there in the dark.