Shadow of the Flame - Chris Pierson by Dragonlance

Author:Dragonlance [Dragonlance]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780786964994
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2013-06-11T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter

18

THE RUINS OF SULUK

There were survivors, though for many that was no great mercy. They lay beneath rubble, mantled by a pall of dust that never seemed to settle, crying out for rescue or pity. What was left of the city resounded with their groans and wails, even a day after the battle’s disastrous end.

Those few who had escaped the devastation intact—and they were few, for even among those left alive, many lay broken and bloody, waiting for the too-few surviving Mislaxans to care for them—dug through the wreckage, trying to reach those trapped below. Common folk used pry bars and shovels and bare hands, scraping their knuckles raw; the remaining wizards cast spells the lifted blocks of stone into the air and cast them aside, drawing moon power until it depleted them. Every now and then, they pulled someone out, white-faced with dust, eyes hollow and haunted from the ordeal. But many of those were maimed or crippled, and quite a few died very soon after. And for every subdued cheer that arose when someone dragged a survivor free, three muted, plaintive voices beneath the rubble fell silent and were never heard from again.

Hult dug through the night, working by torchlight along what had been the wharf. The harbor was utterly smashed, its piers sundered, its waters choked not just with the burned ships of the Suluki and broken hobgoblin rafts, but also with taverns and storehouses, temples and shops, half-sunk and jutting at weird angles above the surface. He toiled alongside soldiers who had, miraculously, escaped the shockwave, the killing wind that had blown away both armies. A few hundred had been so lucky; the rest were gone. They scratched in the wreckage, trying to find their shield-brothers, but mostly what they found were pieces—red rags and bodiless limbs that were all that remained of Suluk’s defenders and the horde they had fought. The whole night through, Hult found bits of what seemed like a thousand men, dwarves, and hobgoblins, but only six who still breathed. Of those, one died while Hult was trying to pull him free, suffocating with lungs full of dust; two others were so badly broken, he knew they wouldn’t see the sunrise. He left them for healers he knew wouldn’t come and moved on.

One more was a hobgoblin with a broken leg. Hult cut its throat with his talga but took no pleasure from the act. That left two real survivors, a man and a dwarf, who stared at the remnants of the city with deep and abiding horror before setting to work with him.

When dawn finally came, yellow and sickly through the clouds of debris, it had been three hours since he’d heard a single voice beneath the ruins. Exhausted, his maimed hand bleeding from the stubs of its fingers, he sat down on a hunk of what had once been a pillar—from the gilt, it must have tumbled all the way from Suluk’s upper tiers—and surveyed the destruction. All across the city, barely one building in fifty still stood, and many of those were too badly damaged to be safe.

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