01 - Empire in Chaos by Anthony Reynolds - (ebook by Undead) Page B

take the
boy in. I wish you well.”
    With that, he turned away.
     
    Eldanair glared at the humans from within his deep cowl, and loosened the
tension on his bowstring, though he kept an arrow nocked. He couldn’t understand
the words spoken during the exchange, but he guessed at their meaning. These
humans were barbarians, he thought, turning on each other in their ignorance and
fear.
    He had hoped to escort the woman to her people, to see her safe and then he
could return to hunting the Druchii and enact his vengeance. He touched a long
finger to his cheek, following the thin black tattoo design. Thalui was
the name for the rune and it represented hatred and vengeance. Many of his
people, the Shadow Warriors of ruined Nagarythe, bore such symbols so that the
atrocities perpetrated by the hated Dark Elves, the Druchii, would never be
forgotten. But he saw now that she would not be safe with these people, for they
clearly could not even protect themselves.
    To see the beastmen herd so far from the dense forests where they bred was
surprising. To see them emboldened enough to venture forth, and in daylight no
less, spoke of the threat that the human realm was in. With the human armies
engaged elsewhere, the beasts of the deep forbidden places where man feared to
tread had become bold, striking out against ones likes these, weakly protected
and vulnerable. He doubted that many of the humans even realised that their
world, their Empire, teetered on the brink of destruction.
    Guilt wracked him. Had he been with his kin, he would surely have seen signs
of the Druchii war party. His kinsmen would not have died. If he had not gone to
the aid of the human child, then he would never have been captured. If he had
left Annaliese to her fate, then he would have covered the ground back to his
kin far swifter, and their massacre would have been averted.
    The weight of their deaths was upon his shoulders. Annaliese had lived at the
expense of his kin, and for that he may have hated her. But he did not. No, if
she were to die, then the deaths of his kin were for nought, and he now swore to
himself to protect her, to see her safe until such a time as he deemed her ably
protected.
    A human would have difficulty understanding his honour, he knew, but that
mattered little to him. They were a strange people, and before he met Annaliese
he had discounted them all. But she was different, he saw that, and as much as
he desired his vengeance against the Druchii, he knew that it could wait. When
the human woman was safe, then he would resume his blood-quest against them.
Only then, when all those who had slaughtered his kin had perished, would his
soul be unburdened by guilt and remorse.
    He would take Annaliese to the south. War wracked the north—though, as they
had seen, no place was safe—the southern lands of the Empire would be the
least affected in the dark days to come. He sighed, for she seemed to have
adopted the human child. Though it would slow their progress further, he could
not expect her to abandon the child, as it seemed the others had done.
    “Annaliese,” he said, indicating that they should get moving. He was wary of
the beasts of Chaos nearby, and he reckoned that once they had recovered their
nerve, they would attack again, probably under the cover of darkness. With
certainty, he knew that the humans with the wagons would be dead by sunrise.
    He motioned again for her to come, to resume their travel, but she merely
shook her head, pointing along the road, to the east. It was the direction that
the wagons had come from. What was she thinking? He shook his head, but saw the
determined set of her mouth, and knew that she would not relent. By the gods of
the Asur, she was a headstrong woman.
    “Upon the spirits of my murdered brothers of the Asur, I swear that I shall
see you safe,” he snapped in his native tongue. “But I cannot protect you from
your own innate human stubbornness,