- TMK -

The skyskiff carried them over a thirsty land. The scent of ash remained while cactus blossoms added a waft of overripe fruit.

           

Below, Khergat sprung up from the Sahel, a sore thumb of permanent buildings in the waste. Days ago, the Arrcosi flag of the Iron Mask flew above feathery nomadic standards. Now, the Crusade’s Black Falcon was there, a beacon for Farsald and his platoon.

           

They neared the town of hide-walled shanties. The skyskiff’s pilot inched them to a makeshift landing pad of flattened earth. The skyskiff slowed, teal cirrus from its exhaust ports producing a muted hiss as the hull floated to the caliche.

           

Farsald did not wait for the ship to land. He leapt off the side, cratering the earth with his steel greaves.

           

“Very dramatic,” Daiseric jeered.

           

With bulky arms and a pot belly causing his breastplate to bulge, Daiseric was stout for a Gepid. Despite his stature, Daiseric was the most feared lieutenant across the Divide. Though Farsald had only reported to him for a short time, he saw the vigor behind Daiseric’s grey eyes. A vigor that made Crusaders kneel were Daiseric to give the order.

           

Farsald was no exception.

           

“Lieutenant.” Farsald saluted. “I can see the town has been pacified.”

           

Daiseric gestured for Farsald to follow as the rest of the platoon disembarked from the skyskiff.

           

“Contained, young talbrüder,” Daiseric said. “Not pacified.”

           

“Lieutenant, seems like semantics to me.”

           

“Semantics are better left to clerics and lehren. Out here, far from the barracks and academies, such things will end you.” Daiseric motioned to the seven burned-out pyres filling the town square. “A warning to the nomads who’d fight rather than pray.”

           

“How many pagans have you sent to the stake?” Farsald’s chest tightened at the thought of this morning’s ashen aroma. 

           

“Only them. There’s naught but women and children with all the men gone to Trasap. Or, dying at Trasap more like it, paradise willing.”

           

“Paradise willing,” Farsald repeated.

           

They continued their stroll through the moribund town. The people here, the Asylent nomads, watched them with suspicion. More often than not, that suspicion turned to scorn. It was perfectly understandable why. The Arrcosi had granted them autonomy in all but name. The Crusade, however, could not tolerate such disobedience. Not to God.

           

Never to God.

           

Besides their theological differences, the Crusaders were foreign at their core. Before the Crusade had come, the nomads could look in any direction and only see an infinity of sky and dust. What few faces they did see were the same, sharing the brown skin, flanged ears, and copper eyes of the Lau race from which the nomads descended. While the Crusade harbored Lau converts, races from every continent formed the people of the Crusade. From avian Ikarans to Vampiric shadowlarks, the Crusade was made for any and all. Of course, the bulk of Crusaders were Gepids like Farsald and Daiseric–pale, grey-eyed Humans of the Green Hills.

           

While the Lau were as close to Humans as Elves, they wore different clothes, ate different food, and spoke unfamiliar words. Farsald and Humans like him were invaders to these people, Crusader or not.

           

Out of sand-lashed windows, the plump, tanned faces of nomads tracked his every move. They glared at Farsald’s seven-foot shadow lumbering down their road. Only the children dared to leave the relative safety of their homes. They ran and laughed in the cratered street, passing leather balls to one another as if the smoldering pyres were absent. Perhaps they played amidst the soot because they knew no better. Or perhaps such violence was simply routine.

           

“It’s always like this,” Daiseric stated. “The grown ones keep indoors while children wander. Makes one wonder…”

           

“What?”

           

“Look at the way they let the young roam. No schooling or discipline. It’s no secret why they’ve little to show for their time under the sun. And why they’ve become their favored weapons against us.”

           

“I see,” Farsald responded uneasily.

           

“Cheer, young talbrüder, keep your cheer. When you’ve fought in as many campaigns as I, such things wash off you as the flood over Gerod,” Daiseric said.

           

“Narbadensis 2:30,” Farsald quoted.

           

“Precisely.” Daiseric nodded. “Besides, your concern is not what happens in Khergat.”

           

They reached a stable at the end of the main road. However, in place of stallions were wayrunners, each the color of the Sahel around them. Like their roadrunner cousins, wayrunners ate whatever meat or grub they could find along the Divide.

           

Only, they ate more of them.

           

With excessively muscled legs, they delivered swift kicks against the caliche, each strike like a gunshot crack. When the dust settled, their huge clacking beaks would dive into the soil gashes, gorging themselves on snake-length worms and fat grubs. Each slash opened new, uncharacteristically wet earth teeming with the food able to sustain such huge beasts in these wastes.

           

There were tales passed down from the nomads of great wayrunner herds roaming the divide, stripping the land bare like feathered locusts. According to the nomads, the divide was once as lush as the Arrcosi taiga before the wayrunners. They rendered this land a waste and angered the Gods of the west. As punishment, those Gods created the Asylent to tame and guide the wayrunners. One day, when all the wayrunners of the Divide have found their Asylent masters, the taiga would return to these lands. The land would become a verdant gem once more and their Gods would rejoice.

           

Such a story was not so different from Athraiél’s gospel. God had sent her to guide the Faithful as the Asylent claimed their deities sent them for the wayrunners. Except Athraiél guided people, the Asylent guided beasts.

           

More so, the nomads were inseparable from their mounts. They learned to ride these horse-sized birds before they could even walk. Every day was spent on their backs, living and dying with the wayrunner no matter the cost. At a glance, this codependence would seem noble to any heathen with a voice. What they failed to grasp was this codependence held the nomads in an age that died with the advent of cirrus and steam.

           

For what was a wayrunner worth when men could fly?

           

“Never seen one, talbrüder?” Daiseric asked.

           

“Plenty,” Farsald replied. “I have never ridden one though.”

           

“New experiences abound during war.” Daiseric gestured to one of the beasts. As he did, an Asylent approached. Like all his race, he held flashing copper eyes, black hair, and was a head shorter than the average Human. Except this nomad was clad in Crusader armor brandishing the black falcon tabard.

           

“Talbrüder, this is Byarlun. He’s one of the few nomad scouts we have in these lands. He will be guiding you,” Daiseric explained.

           

“To where?”

           

“A village with no name,” Byarlun spoke with as much grit in his voice as on his face. “We Asylent don’t live as Gepids do. Wandering is in our blood. Our villages move with the wayrunner flocks over the Divide. This place, Khergat, was made for the Arrcosi who thought they ruled this land. Now it serves God.”

           

“I see.”

           

“Byarlun speaks the truth. The village is unnamed. But it does have powder. Or so we think,” Daiseric said.

           

“Or so we think…” Byarlun murmured.

           

“The shadowlark’s report from Arrcus says that much. And if those cooked on my stakes are any indication, they have more than enough powder.”

           

Farsald turned his grey eyes to Daiseric. “Sir?”

           

“These nomads have been setting mines for us. I’ve already lost ten men to them. Ten good, holy men. Those nomads I set alight were ones I caught planting said mines outside of Khergat. A day after my sergeant lost his leg to one,” Daiseric’s voice grew darker with every word. “Our shadowlarks in Arrcus report the nomads are moving their powder caches with these ‘villages’. They plant their mines around our camps at night, riding their wayrunners to their village’s new location in the day. These wayrunners here, they’re the ones we pulled off the nomads we burned.”

           

“It is our duty to secure the villages around Khergat. Both to protect the people and the Crusaders,” Byarlun added.

           

“Is it now?” Daiseric muttered.

           

The coming platoon of Crusaders interrupted them. There were five of them, Gepids all, each younger than the last. They wore armor and garb similar to Byarlun, only without the dust patina.

           

“Reporting,” the tallest of the platoon saluted Daiseric.

           

“It’ll do…” Daiseric scanned the recruits warily. “As we don’t have enough skyskiffs between the siege at Trasap and holding Khergat, you will be riding the wayrunners to the village. When I’ve enough skyskiffs to move without making our position vulnerable, I shall relieve your platoon. Then you will secure the next village, so on and so forth until we’ve pacified the whole Divide. And God willing, stopped these stragglers from murdering more Crusaders.”

           

“I would not worry about this platoon,” Byarlun said. “They will not come to harm. At least not in this deployment.”

           

“I’m sure.” Daiseric closed his eyes and inhaled. He looked at the wayrunners as they nipped the soil for any grub or lizard they could find. “Well, you best be going, Crusaders. Good luck, and may the Deus keep you.”