like cloth dolls strewn about in broken-backed postures impossible for the living. It never appeared for a moment that any of the enemy worried for their own lives. Nothing touched them. Nothing frightened them in the slightest, and the damage they inflicted upon Leeka’s soldiers was nothing to them but a grand amusement.
Leeka had seen an enemy spearman pin an Acacian soldier beneath his foot. The foul thing studied the woman with primitive curiosity, and then jabbed the pronged point of his weapon straight down into her face. This had galled Leeka like nothing ever had before. He roared. He directed his fury up from his abdomen and hurled a scream across the tundra. The spearman heard him, yanked free the weapon, and moved on him. If the being loosed his spear and missed, Leeka promised as he ran toward him, he would find himself gutted on Acacian steel the moment after. The spearman, though, threw with accuracy. The missile sped toward him in an elongated blur. Leeka would have died if not for the actions of one of his soldiers, a man whose name he did not know beforehand and did not learn after.
The soldier stepped between the spearman and the general. He caught the lance full in his chest. It pierced through him and emerged from the other side in a burst of blood and jagged shards of rib. The spear point shifted just enough to the side that it passed through the hollow between Leeka’s side and his arm. The soldier’s body smashed against his. The force of that impact flung them both backward. The man’s helmet cracked Leeka on the forehead and knocked him unconscious. The two must have fallen together in a jumble, one looking just as dead as the other.
That, he assumed, was why he was not more carefully dispatched and why he opened his eyes many hours later to find himself layered well down inside a mound of bodies. Before he had been felled, he had noticed that some of the enemy grabbed slain soldiers by the ankles and slung them into piles, clearing the ground as if careful that corpses not clutter their playground, so he understood that he had been tossed into one of these mounds. Others were then piled on and around him. Immobile, stuck fast within a mound of the deceased, the blood-smeared men and women of his army intertwined under and over him; he drifted into and out of consciousness.
In waking moments he came to understand existence as one of suffering and great heat. He was so packed in that for some time he thought the heat was a product of this alone. Later, he was engulfed within an incredible furnace beyond anything the stiffening bodies could have been responsible for. He felt the corpses around him flex and shiver with it, belching the awful scent of flesh aflame. It was not until he had sweltered through this state for hours on hours, drifting into and out of fitful, nightmare-laden sleep, that he awoke to the startled realization that heat raged inside him as well as without. A fever pulsed with life from the center of his forehead. A bug was imbedded there. He was sure of it. An insect dipped its curved beak into his skull, pumping him full of some venom, the round, bulbous bottom of it heaving with the effort. He struggled to reach it, but he could not move. He sweated from every pore of his body. Salt tinge stung his eyes. He licked the corners of his mouth, frightened by the crusted leather that was his lips. His teeth had changed also. They were canine incisors that cut into his tongue, filling his mouth with mercury that, try as he might, he could not expel. He gagged on it, lost consciousness, awoke gasping, remembered the heat and the insect within his skull and realized that the flesh had begun to slough off his frame, rotten meat. And then he would pass out. Dream. Wake. Writhe. And on and on.
This was all before the time he awoke to coolness and to the square of light above him and to the bird cutting shadows across the sky. He had no idea how many days had passed when he struggled
Leeka had seen an enemy spearman pin an Acacian soldier beneath his foot. The foul thing studied the woman with primitive curiosity, and then jabbed the pronged point of his weapon straight down into her face. This had galled Leeka like nothing ever had before. He roared. He directed his fury up from his abdomen and hurled a scream across the tundra. The spearman heard him, yanked free the weapon, and moved on him. If the being loosed his spear and missed, Leeka promised as he ran toward him, he would find himself gutted on Acacian steel the moment after. The spearman, though, threw with accuracy. The missile sped toward him in an elongated blur. Leeka would have died if not for the actions of one of his soldiers, a man whose name he did not know beforehand and did not learn after.
The soldier stepped between the spearman and the general. He caught the lance full in his chest. It pierced through him and emerged from the other side in a burst of blood and jagged shards of rib. The spear point shifted just enough to the side that it passed through the hollow between Leeka’s side and his arm. The soldier’s body smashed against his. The force of that impact flung them both backward. The man’s helmet cracked Leeka on the forehead and knocked him unconscious. The two must have fallen together in a jumble, one looking just as dead as the other.
That, he assumed, was why he was not more carefully dispatched and why he opened his eyes many hours later to find himself layered well down inside a mound of bodies. Before he had been felled, he had noticed that some of the enemy grabbed slain soldiers by the ankles and slung them into piles, clearing the ground as if careful that corpses not clutter their playground, so he understood that he had been tossed into one of these mounds. Others were then piled on and around him. Immobile, stuck fast within a mound of the deceased, the blood-smeared men and women of his army intertwined under and over him; he drifted into and out of consciousness.
In waking moments he came to understand existence as one of suffering and great heat. He was so packed in that for some time he thought the heat was a product of this alone. Later, he was engulfed within an incredible furnace beyond anything the stiffening bodies could have been responsible for. He felt the corpses around him flex and shiver with it, belching the awful scent of flesh aflame. It was not until he had sweltered through this state for hours on hours, drifting into and out of fitful, nightmare-laden sleep, that he awoke to the startled realization that heat raged inside him as well as without. A fever pulsed with life from the center of his forehead. A bug was imbedded there. He was sure of it. An insect dipped its curved beak into his skull, pumping him full of some venom, the round, bulbous bottom of it heaving with the effort. He struggled to reach it, but he could not move. He sweated from every pore of his body. Salt tinge stung his eyes. He licked the corners of his mouth, frightened by the crusted leather that was his lips. His teeth had changed also. They were canine incisors that cut into his tongue, filling his mouth with mercury that, try as he might, he could not expel. He gagged on it, lost consciousness, awoke gasping, remembered the heat and the insect within his skull and realized that the flesh had begun to slough off his frame, rotten meat. And then he would pass out. Dream. Wake. Writhe. And on and on.
This was all before the time he awoke to coolness and to the square of light above him and to the bird cutting shadows across the sky. He had no idea how many days had passed when he struggled
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