25. Reinforcements

"Keep running!" I screamed, pulling the sobbing boy along. I could hear the pursuing bowmen releasing their strings. Arrows sliced through the air. Several tore through Nygrim's wings, puncturing the membrane.

"Driahda!" screamed Arkurius. I looked forward in time to see the thin mage fall to the ground, an arrow though his chest. The centaur was crying. "Driahda!"

He wheeled around towards the human's limp form, as though to help it. I released Nygrim's arm and caught the centaur's chest, pushing him along. "He's dead," I told him gruffly.

"He's not dead!" wailed the centaur, his voice wavering.

"And if you go back, you'll be dead, too," I snarled. I continued to run, pulling Arkurius along by the elbow. Nygrim was running in front of me now, his tattered wings half spread as though that position could hurry him along.

The guards were gaining on us. I could hear them just a dozen yards behind us, trampling the mage's body with a number of resounding 'cracks' resulting. Arkurius glanced back and, rubbing the tears from his eyes, broke into a gallop. Nygrim stumbled, but I caught him before he hit the ground. I tossed him up onto Arkurius' back, still running. The boy was crying so hard he could barely move, much less run. Arkurius did not look back to see what the new weight was, but, instead continued to run.

My lungs were burning. I chanced a look back and saw we were finally pulling away from the heavily armoured guards. There were about a hundred of them, and—though they were loosing ground—they were still chasing us. The castle was, by now, far distant.

"We can't run forever," said Arkurius breathlessly.

"We can't fight them," I told him.

"What's that?" asked Nygrim sniffling. He pointed to the horizon where a pink sun was rising behind three enormous shapes. They neared and their details became slowly visible, revealing a bizarre and vaguely terrifying group of beasts.

A centaur with messy brown hair and shining plate mail set with the Royal Crest of Zylx galloped at the front of the group, a faun-like creature on his back. Behind then, directly, flew an enormous bird with feathery ears and two long feathers on its brow, on over each eye. Its wings were blazing red and orange and gold, emitting a powerful light.

On the phoenix's left there was a humongous beast like a hare with antlers and wings, which shone white in the early morning sung. To the phoenix's right there was an equally larger creature with the torso of a man and the head and paws of a fox.

"Laerikeht!" exclaimed Arkurius. "Daelsmohs, Brebhan!"

"Khorahsykk and the Wolpertinger, too," said Nygrim.

We were close to them now—close enough to hear the yelling of the dark-haired centaur.

"Prince Arkurius!" he called. "Oh, you had me worried—"

"We're being chased," Arkurius said urgently, reaching him. "We need to fight!"

Unquestioningly, the centaur drew his sword. "I will defend you to the death, my Lord," he said.

Khorahsykk landed, his two coloured eyes gazing off toward the castle. The composite fox-creature looked down at us, over its sharp nose as the galloping of the guards became more pronounced. "You are lucky we came along," he said.

"Why did you come here? How did—" asked Nygrim. Khorahsykk cut him off.

"The general and the chimera, oh yes, they came to us," he said. "The chimera knew, oh—"

"We have no time for this!" I yelled. The guards were close. "Stories and explanations are for times when you'll live to finish them!"

"Oh, yes, of course, oh yes," said the phoenix. He spread his fiery wings and took off towards the guards, followed closely the giant, antlered rabbit. The bizarre fox creature was not far behind. I turned to go after them and help, but Nygrim caught my shoulder.

"You're bleeding, Kirash," he said. "Shouldn't you sew it up?"

I hadn't even been aware of the blood gushing out of my side where an arrow had slashed an uneven cut just below my ribs. I grunted and fumbled at my waist to find my string and needle. My fingers twitched clumsily, independent of my control momentarily. They'd been doing that since I had regained myself at Khorahsykk's palace. Only, it wasn't just my fingers that twitched—it was every muscle in my body. Even my tongue twitched, causing me to stutter when I spoke. I scarcely noticed my own stuttering, however, but I cursed it just as much as I cursed the twitching elsewhere. It was unbecoming, these minute moments of weakness. For so long my body had been one of the rare constants in my life—something durable and obedient that had rarely failed me and when it had, as all things are apt to do, it had only become stronger for it—and now it wavered unpredictably and pathetically.

I managed to find what I was looking for, and I wet my fingers in my mouth before running them along the string. I fondled my side with one hand, blindly—for the wound was on my right side; the same side as my empty eye socket—and, finding the edge of the laceration, I clumsily pierced the skin with the needle and pulled it through into a stitch, grunting slightly as my fingers twitched and pushed the metal slightly off course.

"Here, let me help you," said Nygrim. I looked at him sharply. On another, fresher day, I would have snapped and growled, yelled at him and made a scene such that he would've ran from me crying and I would've stood there smiling inwardly at his pain. But this was not that sort of day. I was tired—a deep, penetrating sort of tired that went beyond the ache in my thighs and my still burning lungs. It was a sort of tiredness of the soul, which stabbed at my chest and fed upon any joy I had; it was a pain that had been with me since Khorahsykk's palace, just the same as the twitching.

So I handed him the needle and let him stitch the wound closed. "Do it tight," I growled softly. "If I bleed to death, I'll find you in Hell."

Nygrim glanced up at me, only for a second, then looked back to his work. He smiled slightly, so I bared my fangs, but the boy took no notice.

Near by, Arkurius was speaking to the strange creature that was like a faun. The other centaur, the dark-haired one with black fur, had run off past us, after the other three beasts. I glanced over my left shoulder to see how they were faring against the soldiers, to see they were winning, as I had expected from their grand proportions. Khorahsykk beat his phoenix wings with a wild ferocity, shooting periodic blasts of flame from his curved beak which scorched the barren ground. The fox creature howled and slashed with his forepaws(of which he had two sets—one pair which were situated on arms firmly attached to his body, and another set on arms which free floated around his shoulders), swallowing soldiers with mouths within them. The rabbit glided over the battle, swinging its long lion tail and breathing down blasts of ice. The guards were confused and terrified, and it showed. Their formation had broken up and they were firing arrows randomly into the air at which ever monster seemed to threaten their livelihood most immediately. All the while, the black-furred centaur in his brilliant plate mail ran among them, striking out with his sword.

"It is an easy fight," said the faun.

"Daelsmohs, if I may ask," said Nygrim, addressing him. "How did you know we were in trouble? And what happened to you, anyway? We lost you in Kentohrkk's castle…"

Daelsmohs tilted his head back. "Ah, yes," he murmured softly. "That is a strange story, and I had forgotten it, like a dream. After I split off from the group to check my area for the heart, I got very lost. A group of ghouls found me, if you could believe that. Terrible things, they were—Spectres, the sort completely unheard of outside of the Centre of Souls. The sort that feeds on flesh, you know. I am not the sort easily moved to fear—it was not really crafted into me—but I was terrified of these ghouls. I fled from them, and ended up, at length, in deep catacombs, where I had so confused my path that I knew not which way I had come from. The Spectres had been left behind, however, so I thought it not so bad. I was readying myself to simply teleport to the entrance hall of the palace, when there same a moment where all magic in the palace died. I am an elemental chimera, as you know, so that moment wrecked me well.

"For a time I couldn't gauge, I was dead," he continued. "There was nothing left of me. Then, the magic returned. I came back into being, stunned in one of the many rooms of the palace. I slipped into unconsciousness and dreamt of all of you, but particularly Driahda and Pike. I dreamt of a darkness penetrated only by the moon. And in that darkness, Pike crept from his room with a dagger in his hand—a dagger which had been given to him with the explicit purpose of him disposing of the King of Zyrx with it. I saw him, in my dream, pray to his Unworld gods and cross himself in a sign not unlike that which is made after prayers to Kurok, and then he went to Teblorhn's room, his soul heavy with regret. I dreamt he murdered the King, and the guards rushed to see what the matter was. I dreamt of his final moments as he fought back the guards of that corridor, because he had done a terrible thing and he regretted it, even before it was done."

"Why did he do it?" asked Arkurius vacantly. He was only half listening, his eyes focused on the castle, too distant to be seen.

Daelsmohs did not answer him. Instead, he went on, "I awoke, jolted by concern. I could not interfere directly with the events I'd witnessed, I knew, so I decided to quickly gather whoever I believed might aide me. First I found Brebhan, who was more than happy to come to aid you. He said you were kind people, and he was fond of that. Then, I visited Laerikeht, who I sensed was connected you, Arkurius. He was also glad to come, and also glad for news of you. Finally, I sought Khorahsykk, who minded no more than the others."

"And the Wolpertinger?" asked Nygrim. "Why did she come?"

"It would seem that the Wolpertinger is the physical manifestation of Kentohrkk's soul," said the goat-legged young man. "Because the heart is in Khorahsykk's possession, he commands her. That is why she guarded the heart, and that is why Khorahsykk wanted it. Simply to have a new slave, mind, not to gain more force."

Behind us, the monsters and the dark-haired centaur were still busy in the fray. A distant trumpet sounded, and the guards retreated, leaving their dead behind. The others did not pursue them. They returned to us, and the dark haired centaur said, "They were caught off guard. They'll regroup, and there will be more of them. We'd best get going, lest they catch up with us under those circumstances."

Arkurius nodded.

"We should return to our homeland," said the fox monster. "We are glad we could help you, we surely are."

"I should get going as well, oh yes," said Khorahsykk. "You'll forgive me for not staying longer, I hope, oh yes."

He gave the creature called the Wolpertinger a nod and they abruptly spread their wings and took to the sky without farther conversation. I was not at all sad for that. We started into the barren Western Frontier, Arkurius and the older centaur at the lead.

"General Laerikeht," Arkurius said, addressing the dark-haired centaur. "I thought the vampires had killed you. What happened? Did you fight your way out?"

The centaur Laerikeht laughed merrily. "Oh, gods, no. I was much too out numbered to fight my way out," he said. He radiated a sort of jolly friendliness—it was a disarming quality which, I suspected, had served him well as a soldier in most of the tough spots he'd encountered.

"How did you survive?" Arkurius asked. "I mean, there's not a scratch on you!"

"You wouldn't believe it if you didn't know what a pinch it was," began Laerikeht. Arkurius leaned in to listen, as did Nygrim and the faun. I listened with a small bit of curiosity which I did not show. "Do you remember that wolf that tagged along with us in the Noa?"

"The one that was really fond of…," Arkurius began, but his voice faded off at the end.

"Driahda, yes," finished Laerikeht, not catching the prince's emotion. "Well, the vampires were closing in on us, and I drew my sword and then—and this was certainly amazing; never seen anything like it in all my years, and I'll probably never see such a thing again—he stepped forward and a light came over him. And he became a man. But not just any man. He was a god—imagine that! He turned to me, and he said 'Go, and I will hold them back. Catch up with the others. They need you.'

"He didn't need to tell me twice, of course," continued the General. "So I galloped away. I got lost in the desert, but ended up in Myrashekk all the same. But, by the time I got there, you'd left. Luckily, there was a boat full of soldiers in the harbour, and they gave me a ride."

"Why were there soldiers coming to Zyrx?" I asked.

"I'm not entirely sure," answered Laerikeht, glancing briefly back at me. "I didn't really ask. From what I gathered they were setting up some sort of coastal fort… As I said, I didn't ask. It didn't seem at all odd to me—the Zylxian Royal Army is always sending soldiers overseas, to set up forts and guard merchant ships and the like… But, now that I think about it, this was a bit different from those sorts of expeditions… Many more soldiers. And I recall them saying something about more on the way…"

I glanced over my shoulder, deep in thought. The castle was too far away to see, and the guards were too far away now to be heard. In all directions there was only the stretching frontier, dotted with stone columns.

"What are you thinking?" asked Nygrim.

I didn't answer him.

We forged ahead, so as to put more distance between us and the guards. Arkurius told the General his story about what had happened as we travelled. I learned that the faun was named Daelsmohs, when he got to that part. I also heard for the first time what the others did while I was indisposed. It seemed to me that they had a much easier ordeal than I'd had.