They stood on wet ground as the cool breeze of their darkest hour swept past. Most of their numbers were gone.
The free lands in the north had all fallen, swallowed up by the black mass of the oppressive Kath'rahim army. Only York stood against them now, one final free people, stretched fabric-thin against a world's worth of steel.
For a year they had managed to hold the untold numbers at bay. Under the leadership of King James Rawlings III, they had used the swift striking movements a smaller force could achieve, but a larger force could not quickly respond to, as a tool of harassment. If nothing else, they had hoped to maintain their own independence. Now, not even that seemed possible any more. The devil was at their doorstep, and the lock was broken.
Kath'rahim, covering the southern part of the great continent, had always been a dark and oppressive land. Authoritarian and bleak, even their religious music was known for its minor keys and moaning choirs. The people of the large, desert-flecked nation obeyed their faith-based leaders and worked as ants in a colony.
Kath'rahim, though, had also maintained a lack of contact with the rest of the world. They had held strong border defenses and refused significant trade for as long as anybody could remember. Up until a few years ago, most people had never actually seen a Kath'rahiminer, and little was known about them.
And then the armies marched through the gates.
Unknown to the outside world, Kath'rahim had long been suffering a drought that evaporated farmland and starved families. In response, the emperors of what was often called The Hidden Land had instigated a number of programs that bought time, but solved nothing. The newest ruler, a military commander and son of a wealthy family named Guyen Tahlen, had seen something in the faces of scared mothers and bony children nobody else had: opportunity.
Using the famine as a rallying cry, he had whipped his people into a frenzied belief that, because they had a right to survive, they had a right to take fertile land from the lands to their north. His armies swelled and, before anybody even realized his ambitions, he was standing at their doorsteps.
Of course, he'd had no intention of stopping with the conquering of his neighbors, and once his men tasted victory he had no trouble convincing them to continue the fight. What finally made him truly threatening to all who stood before him was his promise of protection for the families of any men in his new lands who would join his cause. His own defeated enemies had quickly allowed him to build the largest army in written history.
Tahlen did not hide his ambitions. He wanted the world.
James Rawlings, and his strong wife Nina, had guided York's ever dwindling numbers into battle time and again. Together, they had managed to accomplish something nobody else had in the face of Tahlen's overwhelming numbers: victories over the black swarm at their doorstep. This, along with their passion for freedom and humanity, had earned them the position of being the people Guyen Tahlen hated most in this world. He dreamed at night of the ways he would give them pain. He made it clear to all that there would be no end to their sufferings, should they fall into his grip.
When he captured David's half-brother, Nicholas, fleeing north in a caravan he had gutted him in public and sent his organs to his enemy king in a box. Guyen Tahlen was a soulless creature.
The threat of suffering had never seemed more real than it did now. The small army of York was split in two, having just completed a successful feint and flank maneuver on one of Tahlen's smaller corps, and the hope had been to reconnect before the large force could react. James led one wing, Nina the other. He stood now at the planned meeting point, high in the Aerothian Mountains. The wind made a sound that could only come from the world of the dead. Like a promise, or a threat. He ignored it, scanning the horizon as he had for the last six hours. Nothing.
"The scouts are back," Gerald Lang, James' oldest and most experienced commander, was climbing up to the lookout point. His awkward movements betrayed his age, but his thick pepper beard and hawkish eyes made him look every bit as tough as he was.
"They haven't found anything," James Rawlings's eyes continued their diligent hunt.
"No," Lang sighed, reaching the point. "But there was smoke in the direction of the Misean Rivers. Black smoke, they said. Thick." He watched his king's face as he said it. He had been advisor to James's father, had watched the boy become the man, and was as much a concerned uncle as a reliable general.
"Then she's lost," James continued searching without visible emotion, as though he hadn't just resolved himself to such a reality.
"Maybe not, my boy. Maybe not." Lang put his hand on the tall man's shoulder. Neither looked at the other. Long moments passed.
James tensed. "There's a rider."
"Where?" The old man squinted in the direction James was looking. "I don't see anything."
James pushed away suddenly, leaping down the mountainside towards the camp below. "It's Piani!" he shouted over his shoulder as he ran.
General Hane Piani was Nina Rawlings's military advisor. A loud, aggressive man with a tendency to get into fights over trivial things, he nevertheless had always been as gentle as a teddy bear around the queen. On the field, he was a great match for Nina's mathematical eye; she maneuvered troops like she was playing chess, and he guided them in their work like each new breath was a fistfight.
As he rushed into the encampment, dirty and bruised, he headed straight for the command tent. His horse, a fine and strong animal, foamed with the effort of the long run. Blood flecked its nostrils.
"My lord!" He howled well before he was actually in hearing range. "My lord!"
He and James reached the command area within moments of each other, both out of breath. "Where?" James called, running.
"Gone," Piani practically fell from his horse when it stopped, holding his hand to a bloody tear in the side of his uniform. "The witches...the witches are..."
