"Enough!" spat Jirina, her patience at an end. "She knows nothing of our people, nothing of what we have sacrificed-" "Then we'd better hope Vivien and her new friends are successful in their hunt." Her shoulders burned under the weight of her armor. "I beg your pardon, General, but if that thing catches up to us, there will be no fight. "Those wounded and sick you mention won't be able to fend off an attack on their own."īryd's horse shuffled a bit in place. "We need all the fighters we can muster here," said Jirina. Perhaps it would be wise to send a detachment of soldiers ahead, to prepare Lavabrink for our arrival." There are many wounded in our column, and many sick. I can walk for a few hours more, but you're going to bring me to the limit of my endurance if you keep that up." "If you'll permit me to speak my mind more frankly than my rank might-" Or at least, they would have another chance at safety. If she could just keep her people together another handful of hours, they would be safe. It seemed so easy, when one said it like that. "According to the reports of our outriders, Lavabrink is still half a day's march. "General Kudro," said Bryd, snapping out a smart salute that nevertheless seemed somehow petulant. "News?" said Jirina, dispensing with the typical formalities. At surviving.įarther up the line, she spotted Colonel Bryd riding toward her at a trot, grimacing and muttering with each bounce of the saddle. It was a hard place, and it had been a hard day, but somewhere up ahead waited the thick walls and bristling spears of Lavabrink, and another chance for them. She had asked that much of her people, the people of Drannith if they could cross this blasted hellscape on foot, so would she. The crushed volcanic glass lining the path was no kinder to leather boots than it had been to hooves, but still, she would walk. Her own mount had gone down miles back, mouth frothing with red foam, and she had refused to take another. Their column-such a formal name for a line of filthy, exhausted men, women, and children-snaked out between the spires of jagged rock breaking up the horizon line, monoliths shaped by the fires and quakes that regularly scoured the surface of Raugrin until only the most resilient creatures survived.īut they do survive, thought Jirina Kudro, walking alongside one of the wagons heaped high with relics from their life in Drannith.
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