There were only five. Several of them shrugged. One said, “It just disappeared. Right after we got you through the gates of the outer wall and out here. Gone. Just like that.”
Kol’Dre stared at him. “Is this all of us that’s left? All that got out?”
The men nodded, stone-faced. Only one even bothered to look at him.
“Ajin?” he asked quickly, remembering he had left her there. “The princess?”
“Gone,” one said.
“Gone? What do you mean, gone? She can’t be gone! Did you look for her? Did you search?”
“Penetrator, it was all we could do to make it this far. Bringing you out took everything we had left. Most of us are injured—some badly. If she were here, she could find us easily enough.” He shook his head. “She’s dead.”
Kol’Dre went numb and cold. He turned his head to hide his tears, looking over to where the fortress had been. He refused to believe it. Ajin was not gone! She couldn’t be! He wiped at his face with his sleeve. Ajin d’Amphere was invincible. She could not be killed. Others among them, yes. They were Skaar and warriors. Death came frequently and never wandered far from where they stood, always hiding in the shadows, always waiting to leap out.
But never for Ajin. Ajin was different.
Yet he understood that these feelings were unique to him. To others she was flesh and blood like all Skaar, and she could be killed as easily. He saw her differently because he was in love with her. And he wanted her to be alive because he couldn’t imagine a life without her.
Ajin.
His body shook involuntarily, and he stalked away to be alone with his grief. The others knew enough to let him be.
He stood apart in the darkness until the tears and the sobbing stopped and he was himself again. But the loss of Ajin d’Amphere was about more than just his personal suffering. She was the heart and soul of their invasion efforts, of everything they had given up to find a new land for their endangered people. She was the light that guided them and gave them their hope. To have come so far and accomplished so much, only to lose the one member of the advance force they could not afford to lose, was inconceivable.
He found himself thinking back over the weeks and months and years that had led to this moment. He had spent two long years living in this foreign land before standing on the shores of the Tiderace to greet the Skaar fleet as it landed at the far-northern edge of the Charnal Mountains. He had spent two long years preparing the way for this invasion. He had traveled widely and mapped the Four Lands thoroughly. He had recorded any relevant observations on the characteristics of its Races, the locations and designs of its cities and towns, the workings and proclivities of its governments. He had determined its strengths and weaknesses. He had cultivated various pliable government officials who would prove useful later. And all the while, he considered where the Skaar should strike first, where next, what sorts of obstacles presented the greatest dangers—which peoples would fight hardest and be most difficult to overcome and which would be most likely to see the futility of fighting and simply concede the battle before it was joined.
Kol’Dre had done this many times before in the countries of Eurodia, the continent that lay closest to the island home of the Skaar. His official designation was Penetrator—a scout, spy, assassin, and whatever else he needed to be, but mostly just a planner of ways to break down any form of resistance. Ajin d’Amphere relied on him as on no other to provide her with crucial information and advice on her potential conquests. She had always trusted in the validity and thoroughness of his assessments, and he had never disappointed her.
In return, she had paid him special attention—a reward for his services. She had given him access to her as she did to few others. He found her attentions and reliance on him flattering. And he found her, on a personal level, utterly irresistible.
Yet resist her he must if he valued his head. Everything was strictly business between Ajin and her Penetrator, in spite of his desire for something more.
Kol’Dre and those few he had chosen to serve him as guards and aides had come to the Four Lands in traditional sailing vessels shortly after the Skaar had determined it was necessary to find a new land to call home. They had crossed the vast blue expanse of the Tiderace in the old way, unaware of the existence of airships. Necessity was the mother of risk-taking, so you did what you had to, no matter the danger. What might lie on the far side of the ocean was unknown, but the Skaar believed that other countries must exist beyond those waters, and that other peoples must have survived the Great Wars that had destroyed the Old World.
It had been a revelation to find the extent of the opportunities this new land afforded. Kol’Dre was quick to recognize that this was where the Skaar were meant to be. Stealing the secrets of the airships was easy enough, and within a year the Skaar had built their fleet of aquaswifts and set about crossing the Tiderace not by navigating upon its waters as Kol and his crew had done, but by flying over them. As Penetrator, he had advised Ajin and the king to send only an advance force to begin with, to test the strength of those they sought to overcome. He had further concluded that the size of the country they were invading would prove a disadvantage to a larger force. A smaller, swifter, more mobile army would have better success and might just be strong enough to gain a foothold that would allow the larger army to cross and begin the greater task of carving out sufficient space for the bulk of their people to begin a new life.
His advice had been heeded, and the army Ajin had brought to the Four Lands had advanced to the fringes of the barren country belonging to the Corrax Trolls—a tribe that he found to be particularly barbaric and warlike, and not much liked by the other tribes. He knew the Corrax would attempt to drive them out, but the Skaar always chose a strong adversary at the start to set a persuasive example. So the Corrax would attack, thinking them weak and foolish to intrude—thinking victory over such a soft-skinned people would come easily and swiftly.
And the inevitable Skaar victory would be a valuable lesson to any who might think the same way.
As expected, the Corrax had massed in force within a week’s time, coming directly for the Skaar. And the Skaar had formed their lines, pointed their weapons toward the Corrax, and waited.
The Corrax were eager to comply. But the battle they got was not the one they were expecting. Instead, it was a massacre.
The traditional Corrax attack relied on brute force and a reckless disregard for personal safety to overwhelm and crush its opponents. It was a strategy that had always worked for them before. Strike hard. Give no ground. Show no mercy. It should have worked here, had they been facing anyone other than the Skaar. The Corrax had hammered into the invaders’ lines with all the fury and bloodlust that had destroyed so many other armies, fully expecting that this battle would end in the same way.
But the Skaar had simply waited for them to come, standing perfectly still in their precise but loosely formed ranks. Those in the front carried spears—eight-foot poles with hafts of pale ash, smooth iron-tipped heads affixed to one end and handgrips carved into the wood near the other. Those in the rear ranks bore short swords—blades of hammered steel with the surface dulled so that no light reflected, balanced and easily maneuverable in combat.