Stormed Fortress Read Free Page A

demanded their vigilant care. Many hands lent assistance. Attentive to need, swift and silent, the desert-folk lifted his form, without jostling.
    Respectful, they bore him on, past the looming, brick walls of the ruin. Through the cracked, weathered arches that marked the east gate, they turned their steps towards the dawn and made their way into the desert.
    The path they walked held no sign-post. Shifting, dark sands erased all past traces of the ancestor ' s steadfast footprints. Here, guidance lay in the notes of the stars, heard by the ears of their wisest old man. Staff in hand, with slow steps, he led the company bearing the litter.
    Yet before they reached the rock outcrops and the spring that promised them shelter and ease, the crone in their midst raised her palm and charged the procession to stop. ' I will require eight dartmen to serve. For there is another. Before night is done, a traveller will set foot on our shores from the decks of a ship bearing in from the west, ' To the chosen handful of warriors, she pointed the way, and declared, ' I name him as our guest. Fetch him back. '
    * * *
    The waves crashing onto the black shingle at Sanpashir ' s cliff head had a muttering voice all their own. From the decks of the Sunwheel Alliance ' s flagship, under the ghostly flutter of the gold-blazoned banners, Sulfin Evend watched the white spume jet up and subside, bright and brief as the sparkle of diamond. Sable waters reflected the brilliance of stars, small light to his dark apprehension. This brooding shore-line of rock was a desolate destination. Only adamant use of his superior rank had brought the state galley to anchor. This territory was proscribed, demarked as free wilds, and no town-born man ' s place to trespass. Even the lord who held the command of the Alliance of Light ' s amassed war host should shun the prospect of landing.
    Sulfin Evend took no comfort from the disciplined industry of the deck-crew, launching off the small tender at his insistence. His charge to leave the safe decks of the galley and pursue the unknown course of a promise was unlikely to settle his wracked peace of mind. He could scarcely stem the dread course of the future. Yet the hand-wringing nerves of his subordinate troop captain failed to unseat his resolve.
    ' Why should you do this? ' Gold braid and Sunwheel surcoat reduced to pin-prick glints under starlight, the kindly man tried one last time to dissuade his conflicted Lord Commander. ' The desert tribes are not lenient with strangers. They poison the barbed points on their weapons. '
    Sulfin Evend breathed in the sea air, freighted with blown salt and the rock-scented dew swept off the crags of the headland. ' Because the cause that we serve is grievously flawed. I cannot engage Lysaer ' s orders to recruit, or bear the Alliance standard to assault the s ' Brydion citadel. Not before doing all in my power to secure a defensive talisman against the wanton destruction posed by Desh-thiere ' s curse. '
    ' Such strength and courage may not save your skin ' the galley ' s master broke in from the side-lines. Experience backed up his claim, that no task in this wasteland should ever be tried, even for dire necessity.
    ' What is my life, if not the desire to stand true at the side of a friend who ' s endangered? ' Sulfin Evend shrugged under the weight of a mail shirt that offered haphazard protection from darts. ' Best I die here than fight at Alestron, leading a force of deluded fanatics blinded by Light, with no heart. ' Beyond any words, the thought never spoken: the memory of Lysaer ' s private anguish, turned into a pillow to silence an onslaught of weeping fit to tear spirit from flesh. The stamp of the Mistwraith ' s design on such greatness was a sorrow not to be borne.
    The davits squealed, and the tender struck the face of the sea with a splash that slapped wavelets against the state galley. Its crew of four oarsmen scrambled down the side battens. The coxswain