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The Cruel Sun

Six men rode on, their horses mouths caked with dried spit and salt and gore. The desert was baked empty around them and they rode across drum sand, each hoof-fall beating the rhythm which marched them towards death. Two days since they had tasted water. Four since they had felt the cool of a breeze. They rode onwards, because they couldn't turn back.

The sun rose behind them like a baleful eye breaking the horizon, and they clung desperately to the lee of sand dunes, trembling beneath the shifting hills, searching for a moment's shade. But an hour since the sun cracked the horizon, it hung above them, huge and hideously golden, and their horses hooves started to click as they passed into an open place, all caked lime pure white and seeming infinitely out of place, ancient baked oyster shells that cracked into a fine dust with only the barest wind of the passage of men. Their horses hissed at the light, and the men rubbed ash under their eyes to keep their sight; the horses bucked, snow-blind, and raged until they walked, stumbling and blind, towards a vague shape that they could barely see. The sun baked the undersides of their chins, roast their bellies, shining brutally from the stone, but they rode. On towards a blue jade spire sitting in the distance, just short of the mountain range that spread out in front of them bare at the range of vision, its caps completely unpeaked with snow but instead a harsh red scoria. Before the sun was reaching quarter height, the man in the front of the makeshift pack raised a hand to beckon his second.
“The sun's getting too high. We'll set for the rest of the day here. We make for that stone there, and camp underneath.”
“They're following us, sir.”
I know. I saw the dust as well as you. We'll rest here.”
“Sir, they won't stop.”
“Then they will roast themselves in the daylight sun, and we'll be free of that threat. We're stopping for the day. The manse is two days ride, and we won't make it that long in the light. That is final, lieutenant.” The younger man, the sweat that dripped across his aspect marks of wood just a white lace of salt, turned with a snort, and sounded the order.
“All stand. We're camping under that boulder; we ride at dusk.” None needed to give their assent to the hoarse croaking of that parched voice; they rode just a short way to the one rock in sight, a spike of basalt striking up from the stone plain, the last of some volcano worn to nothing by a thousand years of windblown sand. The leader paused and his aspect marks glowed with a faint red thrum, as he felt Pasiap's humility flow through him. He cast his eyes about, and saw sitting on the rock the rest were under an old spirit, an ancient man of the south in a broad hat, baked nearly dry. The spirit did not turn, made no sign towards them, as if he could not see. The dragonblood climbed up the mount behind him, up twenty yards sheer stone to reach him, and set himself beside the spirit on the point.
“Brother spirit, have you a bit of water we could share?” The spirit turned to the voice, and the dragonblood understood that he did not see, that his eyes were scoured from their sockets by endless years of sand and heat.
“Brother dragon, I've been without water for a thousand years. This is my lake we're in, here. And I'm afraid that's all the water there is to find.”
“Brother spirit, can you offer us shelter?”
“Brother dragon, I've been without shelter for a thousand years. This is my stone we're on, here. Amd this spike is all the shelter there is to find.”
“Brother spirit, have you any friends to call for aid?”
“Brother dragon, I've been without friends for a thousand years. You're all the friends there are to find.”
“What of the mad, Brother spirit?”
“I'm no friends with those that took my water and my eyes.”
“They're coming this way, after us. Can you aid us?” The spirit gave no answer, and simply stared into the nothing that filled his sockets. The dragonblood climbed back down, watching his men huddled in the shadows, a tent set against reflections from the hard light of the stone plain, the horses blindfolded and tied on short leads to the stone.
“How far back is the horde, do you think sir?”
“Fifty miles, at most. I can bare see the cloud of their passage from the top of the stone. They'll have to rest for the day too, if they are still men.”
“And if they aren't, sir?”
“Then they'll be on this point just after nightfall, and we'll be a bare half dozen miles away. Pray to the dragons they are.”
“Aye, sir.” The young soldier sighed and stared at nothing.

The day passed with the cracking of heated stone; none could see outside their refuge for the blinding light, and as they sun dipped half-way behind the horizon, they saw on the southern horizon a broad cloud, stretching over an inch of space, not a dozen miles back. The cloud was the bright yellow of angered sand, and it was led by a stench of sulfur.
The captain watched it for a moment; “Sellus. Your eyes are keener than mine; how many?”
The wood aspect climbed a ways up the basalt stone and watched, yelling back down. “Over two hundred visible, no doubt more of them following in the cloud. Not more than fifty mounted, but that's all I can make out.” The man descended in a clatter of stone.
“We ride!” Yelled the captain, and they took to their horses, lowering their heads against the cruel sun that set below the mountains ahead.
Their horses bore their loads poorly, their ankles clattering hard against the stone; they whinnied in pain as footfall after footfall and the burning lime heated their shoes to brands, but they heeded the spurs of their masters and rode ever onwards.
It was fading twilight when they came on the first graves. Sunk holes, coffin shaped, six inches into the limestone bedrock. Each one held a man or a woman, all ages, all nations, each one with their eyelids cut away, their lips pulled back into a grimacing smile, and their skin baked dry like clay or leather, taut and withered over their bones, and as they moved on they came to the older, their bones showing pure clean and white, whiter than snow or the lime that they sat on, and those skulls had painted on them in harsh black charcoal the smiles that were gone. The lime was young cut, no sand in the graves, the oldest not more than a few years.
“My god sir, where did these people come from?”
“The Anathema brought them. The anathema has laid us a trap. Gallop as you can, men!” They rode, hard and fast, their horses scattering sharp sparks of blue flame as their shoes clattered on the stone. They made for a low ridge of stone, the edge of the forgotten sea's bed, and a break in the side of it, and as they drew close enough at last that their galloping echoed off the walls in front of them, it was accompanied by a howling. To a man, excepting the captain, they turned and looked; the captain knew precisely what followed, and chose not to see it.
Like a wave following them, a roaring burst forth as hungry ghosts clawed themselves free of their ruined bodies one by one, their broken claws bright with St. Elmo's flames, glimmering fogs of hot blue corpus that trailed them. The wave enveloped them and roared past them, and for the quarter mile in front of them before the pass they made for were ghosts hauling themselves free, cackling and shrieking madly. The men rode, hard and fast as they could, and the claws that they passed swung freely and madly, clawing rents in armor, spreading gouts of blood from the flanks of their mounts, which the ghosts fell upon, laughing as they licked the salty red from the seabed. Thousands of the ghosts were there, no more than a foot space between their graves, and the men burst through the last of their ranks into the dry riverbed that they made for. Not a ghost followed them.
“Why don't they follow, sir?”
“He's buried them there in a seabed all of lime and salt. Their very graves are lines of salt that imprison them. They're there to guard this pass and this pass only. We must on. There is much land to cover, and more traps surely. Sellus, can you guess the distance on the host that follows us?”
“Aye, sir. Their front guard's reached the first of the graves. They're no more than an hour back of us, unless the dead take them apart.”
“They won't. Remember what they all had last time we met?”
“Aye, sir. Talismans of death magic, tattooed in their flesh.”
“Aye. They're free to pass these guards, and they're faster than us. We must make a stand here, at least enough to slow them down. Huntsman Asher?” A man stepped off his horse, bowed before the captain.
“Yes, my captain?”
“Make the earth swallow them whole. You have an hour.”
“Yes, captain Sesus.” The man, a thin, pale looking man, more gaunt than ever before in the cold moonlight of the southern deserts, pulled from his pack dozens of sticks, and placed them in lines across the bed of the river and in lines along the top of its walls, and began to sing in a low, deep voice like an ocean returning from a tide. The sticks glowed faint and yellow as his anima flared into existence, gusting winds about him; and as if undoing and reenacting a thousand years of erosion, the walls of the river bubbled upwards into sheer basaltic stone twenty yards high, and the bottom of the riverbed caved out behind them, a crevasse ten yards deep, five wide opening up in front of them, sheer stone lined on the bottom with footlong barbs.
The men unslung their spears and readied their shields and stood watching the horde approach. Through the blue light of the ghosts, they could see the men come, howling and gibbering in blasphemous languages, some older than time, some new as they echoed out of the mouths of the madmen. All in disarray, each dressed differently, they poured into the mouth of the river a hundred yards away. The clamour of their tongues was insanity, some laughing and some weeping and all loud and raucous, pouring as if indifferent into the overt ambush that had been laid for them. They roared inwards, some running on all fours as a beast, bounding from the walls. One bore on his chest a shattered and ruined breastplate from times past, burdened with dents of mace and stone; some had armor made of skinned sand swimmers crudely pasted together, wearing their heads, fangs and eyes and all, as helms; some came naked but for the glyphs emblazoned on their flesh, and those cavalry that now burst through the ranks of the footsoldiers all wore the tanned skins of men, stitched together with the hair of their scalped victims, layer upon layer of murdered flesh thick as elephant skin, and their horses had barding of human bone, sternums sewed onto their foreheads between their furious eyes, rib cages covering their crests and woven through their manes. The men that rode them bore them right to the edge of the gap and bellowed in joy as their horses without a moments hesitation leaped the gap, soaring towards the handful of waiting dragonbloods.

As they bellowed, the captain turned to his men. “Form!” All six formed a line blocking the whole of the riverbed, barely ten yards across, their oversized tower shields together. The madmen laughed as they flew towards the wall, laughed as the planted spears passed through their horses and them, and laughed as the captain ordered the men to pull their spears free and they fell into the pit, indifferent to their broken bodies. Seconds later, the wave of men reached the side of the pit and poured over it, unstopping, like lemmings, breaking on the ground below, pouring onwards, until in a moment the whole of the trench was full of men, cackling as they were trampled by their compatriots, laughing as hobnailed boots crushed them, and craning their necks to catch a sight of their foes. The dragonbloods watched in horror as the stream of men broke before them but did not slow, like a cataract, and the river flowed again with men and flesh as it had not been filled for a thousand years. Perhaps two thousand men gibbered in front of them, mad and hungry, apparently untouched by thirst and untired by their long run, their eyes reddened and bloodshot, many of them looking apparently at nothing, only following the human tide, blinded by the day's light on the salt and lime.

The dragonbloods' animas all flared together, burning brightly in the night and filling the riverbed with fire and ice and slashing stones and tearing vines, as the captain gave the signal and they activated as one their protocols of battle.

Six men stood, and shifted one foot back, and readied their spears at shoulder height to thrust over their shields, and moved not a whit as emeralds and diamonds and garnets erupted from their skin just as the first wave of men clambered over the bodies of their allies to howl and snap with teeth sharpened at the defenders. Six men stood, blocked their enemies strike with the hard steel top of their shield, a sickly crunch of wristbones and teeth cracking and blood leaping free, stabbed once and hurled them back, breaking the ranks of the men behind them with the force of it. Again and again they drove back the howling hordes, each one killing dozens before they had built a wall of corpses, almost four feet high, to slow the advance of those milling in front of them. The captain bellowed.

“Asher, now!” One of the huntsmen made no motion, but spoke softly.
“Make yourselves real, and bear that stone down upon those men. Do what you will with their bodies afterwards, but at least produce a wall for me.” Four shapes, bundles of hair and slime, formed around him, flickering into being, and unfurled into massive shapes like marionettes backwards, strings reaching upwards towards a tiny puppet, and together with one blow drove inwards the great walls at the side of the river, driving ton upon ton of stone down upon the roiling mass of men. The dragonbloods broke their line, leaped onto horses, and rode as madmen as the walls collapsed behind them; the puppeteers began to dance among the bodies of those near them, pasting them together and piling them with stone, and men slashed at their legs with crude axes but found themselves striking at nothing as they were hurled skywards, hanging for long moments of laughter as they fell broken to the ground. The dragonbloods looked backwards only momentarily to see a wall start to be formed, stacks of broken stone and waste and ruined flesh piled atop each other, and watched as one of the four puppeteers collapsed in on itself, lashing madly with its final motions, sending men flying everywhere, limbs scattering madly and scuttling across the ground like a daddy-longlegs fallen. and the wall grew taller, and a puppeteer fell, and then it was too far to see, but they could all heal the gleeful howling of the hungry ghosts as the river flowed for the first time in a thousand years with hot, fresh red blood, a tide of it that swept across the plains, hissing on the hot ground.

They rode for a half an hour before, along the barren riverbanks, rough grass started to grow, and minutes after that they saw a trickle of water through the dust. The blue jade spire rose before them, and they rode hard, and before they had thought they would, they were on it, passing through meadows of high grass to its gates.
The captain walked to the front gate of the manse, prepared to strike it down, and found it open a crack. His hunt filed through, cautiously, slipping silently from their mounts and passing with spears out through halls that echoed no sound of theirs. They reached the central hall of the manse, and stopped dead. The hearthstone pedestal had on it an inert grey stone, no life pulsing in it; the captain raised his charms and saw no essence in the place at all; the manse was simply dead. Sitting on the throne at the head of the room was a woman, smiling broadly, with her throat cut. Written on the wall behind her in letters of blood was a simple message.

“Captain Sesus Etli, of the Imperial Armies and the Wyld Hunt. You have trespassed against me. Report to The Weeping Spring for your punishment. Sincerely, Anesca who Brings Justice, Herald of Enoch, Master of Hegra's Mad Host.”
The hunt had to laugh, a little bitter laugh, for what else was there to do? They razed the manse to the ground and salted its ruins, and rode west.