The Hindering Ones by Mike Truk

Author:Mike Truk [Truk, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy
Published: 2019-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28

We rode at dawn. New energy had invigorated the crusade, so that for the first time men and women moved with purpose, breaking camp quickly and gulping down their meager rations of water so that we could march forward and bring our destination into sight at long last.

I walked alongside Victor in the vanguard, and for the first time saw his crusading banner; he ordered it unfurled and carried just behind him, a glorious white sun whose rippling rays streamed out behind it like a comet against a sea of gold. It snapped in the cold, biting wind, and each time I caught sight of its brilliance my heart lifted.

At first, we saw nothing on the horizon, which rose above us at the far edge of the valley. We marched in silence, everyone intent on what lay just over the rise, and I saw scouts that were clearly not ours watching us in the distance. On we marched, the ash silty with the morning dew, our wagons creaking behind us, the tromp of hundreds of boots breaking the otherwise eerie silence. On, mile by mile, rising ever higher, until at last we crested the final rise and Peruthros lay before us.

The sight tightened my chest and silenced my tongue with wonder. It was a city in truth, a great, sprawling metropolis, surrounded by an awe-inspiring wall, set hard by a broad river that flowed through its heart and out the far side into a bay filled with iron-hued water.

Towers rose, spires upon spire, and it was clear that once they had been of the brightest white stone. Now, however, all were filthy, as if a patina of corruption had fallen upon the city, making of those great walls a jaundiced, wretched color, stained as if by nicotine and dirt.

Still, the sight was enough to draw a ragged cheer from the soldiers behind us as we marched on and each band caught sight in turn of the fabled city. And in that cheer, I heard a celebration: that Victor had brought us as promised to Peruthros, had delivered our crusade to the gates of the enemy, had seen his followers through yet another trial and been good to his word.

That we had arrived. And that though what lay before us may spell our end, we had overcome the odds yet again to defy Lilith, to show her that in the face of impossible odds still the Source and those faithful to it could persevere.

On we marched, down the gradual slope toward the distant city, and I saw great banners of crimson and black streaming from its walls and towers, and on those banners a glyph that turned my stomach and made my head ache if I studied it too long.

“Lilith’s Sign,” said Imogen, face pale as she stared down at the city by my side. “Its very presence draws her attention and twists fate in her favor.”

“It spells her name?” I asked.

“No, nobody knows her true name. We call her Lilith out of tradition.

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