“Leshie!” Saska screamed.
She slashed out with her Varin blade, the steel slicing through the flesh of the arm and fingers. Not flesh, she realised. Sand. The severed limb collapsed to the floor in a cascade of grit and gravel, the stump writhing and pulling back, tiny bits of stone pouring out like blood. Saska breathed out in horror, drawing away to the back of the tent. Leshie’s hands were groping for her blade. When she found it she ripped it from its sheath at once, pointing it at the door. Her hand was shivering.
“What…what was that thing?” she breathed.
Saska’s voice had abandoned her. Fear filled her veins, ice cold. There were sounds of struggle outside, she heard. Muted shouts, scuffing feet, the rain of pebbles on earth. An imperilled voice shrieked, ringing across the plains.
The shadow was still at the door, blocking the way out. “Get away, you!” Leshie screamed at it. “Away! Get away!”
They could see the outline of its body. See the arm…regrowing. The sand on the floor of their tent was moving, drifting back outside. There were more sounds out there. Panicked shouts and bellows, the roar of a sunwolf, horses whinnying in fear nearby.
The creature moved forward again, reaching in with its other arm. Leshie lurched forward. “Behind me,” she said, sword brandished ahead of her. “Get behind me, Saska! Get back!”
A thunderous roar tore through the air to their right, and another shadow appeared. There was a flash, a whoosh of movement. The creature turned, as a greatsword came slicing through its body, the creature collapsing in a hail of pebbles. Saska heard the splash of ten thousand tiny stones hitting the ground, spreading out across the barren earth. An armoured arm swept the flaps aside. A round scarred head, eyes blazing, filled their view. “My lady, are you all right?”
“Fine,” Saska said, breathing out. “What’s…what’s happening, Rolly? What was that thing?”
He had no answer. “Outside, now. Quickly. There are more of them. Many more.”
“But our armour…”
“Leave it. It won’t help. Quickly, come on.”
Saska and Leshie moved out through the flaps. Her legs felt like reeds, throat clenched tight. Even with godsteel to grasp, even Varin’s own dagger, her sight was blunted by this dark. Dust swirled through the spaces between the tents, mists moving. Spectres shivered through the night. “Stay close,” the Wall said. “Both of you, stay with me.”
The Wall led them on, through the tents. Saska saw a body outside one of them, one of Kaa Sokari’s archers lying on the floor. His mouth was open, filled with sand and grit, nostrils too, eyes wide and blaring. Suffocated, she realised. One of those creatures choked him dead. Half of his body seemed to be sunk into the ground, and he was still moving, being dragged down…
“Get away from him,” the Wall thundered. “Away, now!” He reached out, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her free. Her right foot had already begun to sink.
“They’re underground,” Leshie shuddered. “They come from underground.”
“Sound attracts them,” Rolly said. “Quickly. We make for the river.” He stepped away, all but sweeping the two girls up into his arms, but Saska pulled back.
“Del,” she said. “I’m not leaving without Del.”
Her brother was staying with one of the younger bowmen, in a shared tent, though she did not know where it had been pitched. Saska’s was always set at the heart of the camp, though the others were more a lottery. She looked around, searching for some sight of him, but the dust and darkness disoriented her. She could not even say which direction the river was. Torches burned at the borders of the camp like distant suns, floating in a hazy night sky. But one or two only. The rest had been put out.
“I’ll come back for him,” the Wall said.
“It might be too late by then. No.”
The Wall gave a grunt. “Fine.” He seemed to know the layout of the camp better than Saska did, stamping straight past one tent and then another. On the third, a creature appeared before them, large and ghoulish, swaying side to side. It had a different shape to the other one, a fluid shape, ever-changing, but humanoid. It turned suddenly upon hearing them, rushing forward with outstretched arms to take Rolly by the neck, inhumanly quick.
The Whaleheart was quicker. He swung before they could reach him, the arms cascading in a shower of sand, then hacked its head from the top of its body. Headless, armless, it made no matter. The creature lumbered onward, the dust and stone and pebbles at its feet rolling and rising up its body, replacing what was lost.
“Die, foul creature,” the Whaleheart roared, blasting it apart with the flat of his blade, sending its torso scattering away through the camp. The top half collapsed onto the bottom, then both tumbled sideward in a heap of sand and stone. He kicked through the mound with an armoured leg, scattering it further, but already Saska could see that the thing was reforming elsewhere, rising from the earth, taking shape.
Her bowels went to water. “Del” she cried out. “Del, Del!”
“He’s here,” the Wall said, stamping forward to a tent. He went to a knee, tore the tent flaps back. There was a ping as an arrow went careening off his armour, spinning out into the night. “Gods, boy, it’s me, can’t you see! You almost got me in the face.” He stood and moved back, as Del emerged, crouching, followed by the skilled young archer he roomed with, a youth of eighteen called Jaito. Both held their bows in their fists and had quivers of arrows on their backs.
“I’m sorry, Sir…Sir Ralston, I thought…” Del saw Saska there, and Leshie, smiled briefly, then the smile was gone. His eyes were ripe with fear. There was shouting all about them now, roars and curses. More of the knights and sellswords were emerging from their tents, half-dressed, even naked but for the cold steel in their grasp. Saska could sense Joy nearby, slashing at one of the creatures with her long, razor sharp claws. On me, Saska thought. Joy, on me.
The cat came stalking out of the dark to join them, rushing up to Saska’s side. She saw a swish of red following right behind, the Butcher running past in his tattered cloak and not much else. He spotted them and veered their way. “These things cannot be killed,” he bellowed. “You cut them and they keep on coming…”
“The river,” the Whaleheart thundered. “We make for the river. The water will hold them.”
Men were still emerging from their tents. In others, the creatures crawled inside, or came up from below, dragging them down to their doom. Saska could see the shadows inside, the outlines of men struggling, choking. She looked up, hoping for a glimpse of the moon or stars, but there was nothing. It’s the dark before the dawn, she thought. The darkest time of day.
“We have to help,” she shouted. She pointed to one of the tents. “In there. Help him!”
No one reacted. So she did it herself, running away from the group, bursting inside the tent. There was a man inside beneath a heap of moving sand, swiping and struggling as an arm reached down his throat. She chopped at the mound with her dagger, kicked at it with her feet. It shifted, a quick movement, and a tendril came up from below to coil about her leg. It tugged, tripping her, but someone was there to catch her. Arms reached out, pulling her away.
“He’s dead,” the Wall was shouting. “That man is dead. There’s nothing we can do for him.”
They got her outside. Through the flaps she saw that Rolly was right; the man was no longer struggling. Only an arm reached up, out of the sand, as though trying to grasp for something, but soon even that was being drawn down into the earth, the world parting to swallow him up.
Horror twisted in her gut. The Butcher was shouting. “The river! The river! Run for the river!”
Saska could see some men fleeing out into the night, scattering, not knowing which way to go. All was black as tar and shrouded, a hell of shadows and death. “This way.” The Wall grabbed her, pulling her onward, Leshie and Del and Jaito following, Joy prowling, the Butcher still shouting out as they went.
They passed a fire pit. The flames had been put out, covered in sand. There was a blade here, lying alone, half buried, and a wooden cup as well. “That is Tellamin’s blade,” Jaito said. The youth was slim as a lance, with angular features and big brown eyes. “Tellamin had the watch.”
Tellamin is dead, Saska thought. He was another of the archers, though much older, a gnarled veteran of a hundred battles. And he never even made a sound.
The earth was rippling, moving their way like a wave. “Keep going,” the Wall roared at them. “Quickly! Go!”
They rushed on, passing more tents, more shadows. Del tripped at one point, and Jaito and Leshie hauled him up, and at another Joy gave out a hiss and sprung suddenly into the air, as a cat does, as something moved below her. She landed, snarling at the ground, slashing with her forepaws.
