Dawn of Unity by Nitish Sharma

Author:Nitish Sharma [Sharma, Nitish]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boundless Adventurer Publishing

Chap­ter Nine­teen

Meet­ing the main road as the two neared the south­ern edge of the desert, the way to Or­tie grad­u­ally grew wet­ter. Low moun­tains stood to the right of the boys, their rocks cast­ing shade on the road. The desert hugged the roots of the foothills, the wind push­ing sand up its sides, and sparse green­ery bat­tled against the en­croach­ment.

Ahmed rode at the head, lead­ing Will along. They came to a slope in the road which curved south­east then east­ward, green­ery in the far dis­tance. Out­side that curve, Ahmed no­ticed the ru­ins of a maqam built into the side of the rock, a squat square hold­ing up a small dome. This shrine had been co-pur­posed into a toll booth. Among the ru­ins lay sev­eral dead men in be­tween piles of bro­ken, jagged rock. Ahmed’s horse huffed its dis­plea­sure. He stopped and dis­mounted, bend­ing to in­ves­ti­gate.

“What do ya think hap­pened?” Will asked.

“Banu Murtād, apos­tates. Must have robbed the toll booth.” But Ahmed had his sus­pi­cions. Why was the booth in ru­ins? That seemed like too much ef­fort for mere theft. He ex­am­ined a dead murtād more closely and no­ticed his sword wound was filled with sand. Could the wind have re­ally filled it com­pletely?

A whiff of air brushed past the boys, send­ing a spray of sand across their faces. Ahmed sensed some­thing; the magic sig­na­ture was— The sand around them started to co­a­lesce into glob­u­lar masses, as if gen­er­at­ing their own wind. Rock piles lifted and merged with the masses. From nearby desert dunes, more sand formed into shapes. Hu­manoids, some more rock, oth­ers more sand, took form. They held curved swords of fast flow­ing sed­i­ment.

Ahmed drew his one-handed axe and kilij. His horse reared and Ahmed cut Will from it. The horse gal­loped through a gap in the en­croach­ing sand war­riors.

“The sand’s ris­ing up!” Will screamed over the sound of swish­ing sed­i­ment. “You were wrong. The desert is as they say!”

“Quiet! I don’t know what’s hap­pen­ing. This isn’t nor­mal.” Ahmed screamed, tak­ing a stance. The sand war­riors were com­ing closer. Ahmed fig­ured the Banu Murtād’s at­tack dis­turbed some awry magic, or maybe there was a mage in the fight who had mis-cast a spell, or this was an un­for­tu­nate co­in­ci­dence, it didn’t mat­ter right now.

“Un­bind me an’ give me a weapon. I can help. There’re too many!” Will begged, pre­sent­ing his bound wrists.

“No, you will run!”

“I won’t, I have nowhere to go. Please. At least let me de­fend my­self!”

“Ok! Ok!” Ahmed waved his hand over Will and the ropes bind­ing him un­rav­eled. “Get a sword,” Ahmed or­dered. The young mage waved his hand over his own sword. The blue glow of a field en­chant­ment flick­ered over his kilij be­fore sta­bil­is­ing. Will pre­sented a dead Raider’s scim­i­tar and Ahmed cast the same en­chant­ment over it.

“Whoa.” Will smiled.

“You need magic, a blessed weapon, or an en­chanted weapon to fight mon­sters and spir­its.” Ahmed eyed the sand war­riors as they closed the dis­tance.

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