“Follow me!” Rogan cried as he ran forward, the men around him taking up the cry. “Attack!”
Rogan began to sing in a low chant, leaping over the fallen rubble and heading straight into the cloud of dust. He easily outdistanced the slower Tingarans and saw horses on all sides as the desert warriors deftly jumped the rubble and led their mounts into the heart of the opaque storm of dirt and powdered stone.
Then there was yellow dust on all sides, and Rogan coughed and choked, struggling to breathe. He was forced to cease his chanting and instead concentrate on dodging around the blocks and darting between horses as he ran forward.
It was unlike any battle he’d ever been in.
It was impossible to see. The dust was so thick, it filled his nose and mouth. Rogan gasped for fresh air but kept running, pushing his aging body through the mass of horses and littered stone. Beside him a horse tripped on a block, and its leg shattered with a sickening crack, propelling the rider out of the saddle. Rogan helped the Hazaran stand and saw with relief that he was unharmed, but Rogan kept running, knowing that if the revenants made it through the dust cloud, the city would be theirs for the taking.
It would be a massacre.
A man rushed out of the cloud, heading directly for Rogan, and he held a huge two-handed sword above his head. Taking in the glow of runes and the white-eyed stare, Rogan choked a series of runes and sent fire into his zenblade, though his armorsilk stayed dark. He ducked under the overhead blow and thrust into the neck, flicking his wrist to sever the spinal column. The revenant warrior fell, and then Rogan was in the heart of it.
Revenants and horses were everywhere in a chaotic confusion of spraying blood and rolling dust, figures appearing and disappearing in the haze. Rogan cut down enemy after enemy, gasping the sequences for his zenblade and armorsilk, seeing his blade light up with fire and then dim again as he coughed. He saw enemy warriors swarm forward to leap on top of the horsemen and drag the desert men from their saddles, hacking and slashing at the bodies before turning to the next.
He continued to move forward as he fought, lunging ahead after he dispatched each foe, leaping on top of the stones to gain height and thrust down at the revenants as they threw themselves at him and he cut them down.
Then Rogan was clear of the dust.
Suddenly, he burst free into fresh air. He could see the hills surrounding Seranthia, and below the hills the plain was filled with soldiers of the Empire, clashing with a heaving mass of formed-up revenants.
The soldiers of the Empire were outnumbered.
Rogan sucked in a lungful of air as he fought to regain his breath. He saw a glowing spear at the front of the allied army; they could only be Alturan infantry and bladesingers. The point of the wedge struck deep into the heart of the enemy, but even they couldn’t break through, and like the horns of a bull, the flanks of the horde came out to envelop them.
Rogan scanned to the left and right. He was alone. The defenders of Seranthia were fighting in the dust cloud.
He fixed his gaze on a cluster of uniformed revenants and saw the warrior who led them, clad in black-and-white checkers. Rogan regained his breath and once more commenced his song.
He ran forward, and fighting alone, Rogan Jarvish threw himself at the enemy’s rear.
58
Sentar Scythran climbed up the stairs and emerged from the glowing stairway at the Sentinel’s base to stand once more in the open air.
Rage coursed through him.
After the wretched enchantress’s destruction of his essence, he’d entered the chamber inside the Sentinel and once more examined the portal, desperate to find some way to open the gateway and bring his brothers home.
But to open the portal he would need essence.
Sentar calmed his rage, feeling clarity return to his thoughts.
Fortunately, he knew just where he could find some.
He’d left necromancers in Aynar, their task to build vats and raise more revenants, to gather essence in quantity for just such an eventuality.
Sentar had cunning. If one strategy failed, he always had another prepared.
Huge blocks of stone clustered around the base of the pedestal, remains of the wall that had enclosed the statue. Freed of its encumbrance the Sentinel now stood proud and tall.
Sentar looked up at the statue and smiled.
The portal wasn’t the greatest relic the Evermen ever devised. It was the Sentinel in its entirety that took the combined powers of the Evermen to create. The portal was just one part.
Sentar walked away from the legs until he could stare up at the torso, and leaning his head back, he could see the great head, the noble cast of its features, and the regal aspect to its eyes, nose, and mouth.