Talla's Fallen Temple Ch. 31

Tension came with the darkness, seizing his senses and the muscles of every Fighter around him. The forward squads, some fifty metres ahead, had lit their torches as well, passing back signals via their waving.

Zhair'lo's nerve endings, already oversensitized by the magic inhabiting it, began burning. He imagined Is'ka setting a pan of hot oil over a stove, then sprinkling water into it. Every nerve in his body fried like the sizzling steam splashing out of that pan. Paralysed with pain, he glared to his left, desperately trying to squeak out even a single world of warning. His squadmates turned to look at him. Panicked and stumbling, he glared at them.

'You're looking the wrong way,' he thought.

-===================-

Zhair'lo's mindless, pain-filled panic filtered through to Talla, but failed to paralyse her. She sensed the urgency in his mind, blanked out the mad, thoughtlessness of his suffering and looked instead toward the source of his terror.

A half-ruined building rested placidly on their left, just ahead of where Zhair'lo's squad had stopped in confusion around their paralysed ward. To Talla, it looked like every other burnt out structure they'd seen for several city blocks. Taking a deep breath of ashen air, she tentatively delved into Zhair'lo's mind, a fearful child reaching into a dark hole in the ground. It took only a moment and she jerked back as if she'd suffered a snake bite for her curiosity.

In Zhair'lo's mind, the building seethed with rapid heartbeats and angry, ragged breathing. Either a hundred rabid wolves had taken up residence in the building, or ...

"Enraged!" she hissed and turned her bow, arrow already notched, toward the offending building.

Without a thought, trusting to the skills she drawn from Zhair'lo's mind, Talla loosed her bow string, launching an arrow through a darkened window. She had little chance of striking a blow for her own side, but a more urgent goal had lent speed to her hands. From inside the three storey building, a horrified, deep shriek of surprise echoed out, drawing the eye of every Fighter in the area.

Moments later, men came boiling out of the building, rushing through the double wide portal of its broken door, jumping out of first floor windows, hurling themselves from second floor balconies. If not for Talla's warning and the shriek it had elicited, the crazed men would have taken the Fighters by surprise, the attention of too many turned momentarily to Zhair'lo. But Talla had put them on the right track, got them to turn around just in time.

Even then, crashing as they did upon the swordsmen on the left side of the column, the Enraged engaged in a vicious assault. Bow strings stretched and loosed, taking out those still streaming through second storey windows. The swordsmen, gaining their feet, pressed back even as some of them were struck by clubs and slashed with large kitchen knives. The larger men found themselves quickly reinforced as the four from Zhair'lo's squad filtered into their line and the Fighter women, seeing their bows as nearly useless, drew their short swords and worked their way around the line of swordsmen to flank the Enraged.

-===================-

Zhair'lo, for his part, tried to stand up. At least the panic induced by his overloaded senses had served to warn Talla and get everyone's swords and bows pointed in the right direction. Without any memory of having fallen, he found himself on his knees attempting to stand. In his mind, he'd exaggerated when he'd put his guess of a hundred heartbeats into Talla's mind, but seeing the frothing mass of deranged humanity kicking, screaming and slugging it out with the front line of swordsmen, he realized how close his guess had come.

Bodies surrounded him suddenly. Strong arms, male and female, pulled him to his feet as the left column of sword wielding men fell back toward him, their line reinforced by more men from the squads on the right column.

"Up you get, lad," a thick brogue rolled over him as he found his feet.

-===================-

Talla couldn't spare another thought for Zhair'lo. Shanata had left her side, moving to reinforce the line of Fighters that sought to contain the Enraged to the area just outside of the building. Feeling curiously naked, the squads to the rear having vacated their positions to move to the line as well, Talla kept her bow notched and moved close to the small group of people directly surrounding Zhair'lo. The pain she received from him worsened as she closed upon him, but she felt him gaining control over it as well.

'Peace,' she beamed at him, and felt him strengthen.

It might have helped that a large portion of the enemies who had burdened his mind had died, but she lent him what she could of her own peace of mind as she surveyed the battlescape. At her level, with the armoured shoulders of so many blocking her view, Talla made out very little of what went on. Swords swung and slashed. People screamed in agony. Occasionally, a sword wielding Fighter stumbled out of the line, injured or dead she couldn't say.

The only real contribution she could make lay with the upper storeys of the building, so she kept her eyes there. Consequently, when someone hurled a wooden chair out of one of the darkened windows, her eyes caught the motion almost instantly.

Swordsmen shouted as it struck them, landing directly on the line where they clashed, threatening friend and foe alike, though the Enraged barely noticed.

Looking directly into the window, Talla saw nothing but blackness until another chair flew outward. Squinting, she strove to make out anything in the wide rectangle to tell her where her foe lurked. Slowly, her vision began to waver, as if from heat distortion, and everything she saw developed a strange overlay of clarity. A curious sensation rolled over her, as if she'd operated with one eye closed her whole life and suddenly discovered she could open her other eye. The window into which she stared became clearer and she could make out things around the corner from where she stood.

She realized that she saw not only through her own eyes, but Zhair'lo's at the same time.

And Zhair'lo's eyes could make out the Enraged woman in the upper floor, her face ripe with anger, muscles taut as she dragged another chair toward the window. If Talla could use his eyes to aim and her own arms to draw the bowstring, they had a chance to thwart this projectile attack. She watched the woman raise the chair over head and loosed her arrow, striking the woman in the ribs, to the left of her sternum. She collapsed, clutching her middle, the chair falling idly from her hands as her head cracked against the hard stone edge of the window sill before she fell backwards into the darkness of the room in which she'd hidden.

The power flowing through Talla's body ceased suddenly and she spared a glance over at Zhair'lo, immured by Kendrick and Gillian and their largest guards. Curiously, she found Gillian staring right back at her, but only for a moment before the woman turned back to keep an eye on the battle.

Time flowed and the Enraged fell. Talla watched as they pushed a few wounded Fighters back out of the line, but the professional soldiers had their feet under them by then, and they shifted the battle heavily in their own favour.

Slowly, Talla eased off the fortifications she'd built against Zhair'lo's emotions and found him no longer overwhelmed.

'What happened?'

'I don't know, Talla. There were so many minds ... so angry ... I felt them all.'

'Are you okay now?'

'I think so ... I won't let it happen again. I ... I think I can control it.'

Talla tried to keep her doubts to herself on that subject. She didn't worry about his ability to keep his mind in order - he'd clearly lent her his strength to fire the arrow - but he'd lost control of his own body. She had felt something akin to physical pain forcibly disconnecting him from his body.

'Were those rebels?' she asked.

'Enraged, Talla,' Zhair'lo relayed deep condescension.

'But the woman ...'

Zhair'lo flashed an image of the woman, clear in his vision though invisible to hers. A red-eyed monstrosity appeared in Talla's mind, hair in disarray, lips drawn back in a rictus of pain and anger.

'Enraged,' Zhair'lo repeated.

Talla's lips twisted in disgruntled acknowledgement.

'Still ... a woman.'

'Yeah, that doesn't match up with anything -'

"Talla, is it?" an imperious voice interrupted her reverie.

"Mistress!" Talla braced to attention instantly.

Gillian leaned over, peering directly into Talla's eyes. With the helm covering all of Talla's hair and a good portion of her jaw, Talla wondered how the woman had recognized her.

"Nice shot," Gillian's voice carried a sharp tang of accusation.

"Mistress?" Talla steadfastly refused eye contact.

"The man in the window? Throwing chairs out?"

"Yes, Mistress."

"I couldn't even see him."

Talla had no answer for this. Either Gillian lied, which seemed unlikely, or she really hadn't seen the woman up on the second storey. And if Gillian, with her eyes, couldn't see, then no one besides Talla and Zhair'lo knew a woman had taken part in the attack.

If Gillian expected something of Talla, Talla never knew what, for she quickly turned about to confer with Master Kendrick.

A moment later, Shanata appeared at her side.

"What happened?"

"I shot a ... person on the second level," Talla stammered. "Gillian recognized me somehow."

She'd done her level best to keep her face hidden from Sonja, not wanting to trigger any memory or get herself in trouble. But if Gillian now knew her by name, and mentioned it to Sonja ...

"Gillian will have recognized you by your bow handling," Shanata pointed out. "Though, if she cared, the part of your eyes visible through your helm would do it, too."

"What?"

"Even I heard about your insane archery skills, Talla," Shanata pointed out. "There's no way Gillian will have forgotten them. There's no reason for an Abundance girl to have such natural skill. You stand out and Gillian is suspicious."

"Madra Zen ..."

Shanata shrugged. "You performed a service today, in battle. Don't worry about it. Gillian has other things on her mind."

-===================-

Zhair'lo regained his knees as control of his body came back to him. The searing in his nerves that had arrived with the emotions of their Enraged attackers had faded to a dull, uncomfortable ache. But the ease with which their anguish had forced him to the ground troubled him far more than anything.

Worse yet, his weakness and sensitivity forced him to consider other matters. The emotions he'd experienced had absolutely levelled him. If those could trouble him so much, what lay in wait for him when he arrived at the Temple and delivered his precious, magical cargo to the Goddess?

"We didn't bring a cart, lad," Master Kendrick winced as he took a knee by Zhair'lo's side.

"I'll ... be fine," he pledged, his breathing ragged and his eyes still tearing with pain.

"What happened?"

How much, he wondered, ought he to reveal?

"I felt them," he offered. "Their anger ... it was ... too much."

Kendrick looked up thoughtfully, scanning the building from which the attack had sprung. If it surprised him that Zhair'lo could sense other people's emotions, nothing of his shock showed in his body language.

"Feel anything now?"

"No, sir."

"How much warning did you have before it took you out?"

"A few heartbeats ... maybe."

"Alright," Kendrick nodded. "The next time you feel it, even a little, you call out an alarm."

"Yes, sir."

Zhair'lo knew that he could, no matter what, at least alert Talla. As long as she lived, he could warn those around him.

"Okay, lad," Kendrick stood up with visible effort, stepping away. "Rest up a bit while we bandage the wounded."

No one, it gladdened Zhair'lo's heart to know, had died, but several had taken blows to their heads in the scuffle and hadn't yet come to their senses. Fighters, however toughened by training, still carried all the frailties of any other humans. However unfortunate their circumstances, Zhair'lo used the time their recovery gave gratefully, recovering his poise one deep breath after another. He saw Talla, standing just ten paces away from him, arrow still notched to her bow.

'It's safe now, y'know?'

'I'm sure you think so,' gentle humour tainted the link. 'But you aren't even standing up yet.'

With a weary sigh, Zhair'lo climbed to his feet.

'I can't feel any Enraged nearby.'

'Good,' Talla did not take her arrow from her bow string.

In short order, Kendrick and Gillian had prodded the injured Fighters from the ground and got them stumbling into the centre of the formation.

"No way we can leave them anywhere behind us," Kendrick pointed out. "They'll just have to make do."

Renzi limped over to Zhair'lo.

"You alright?"

"Yeah," Renzi nodded toward his left leg. "Some guy stepped sideways on my leg. Probably hurt in the morning, but I'm good for now."

The girls in his squad, having stood behind the line, had suffered no injuries at all, though each of them watched her surroundings through wide, nervous eyes.

"We should be fine," Del declared flatly, "as soon as we can make the Temple."

No one else had anything to say as they formed up around him.

"Fighters! Forward!" Kendrick's hoarse voice bellowed out over their heads.

The army moved once more, trudging through the last, darkness shrouded leg of its journey, the only sounds those of distant crackling fires and the nearer squeaking of leather and nervous stretching of bow strings.

Zhair'lo felt Bree shifting out of her place at his back as someone displaced her.

"You'll tell me the moment you feel anything, lad," Kendrick muttered.

Warily, knowing the potential pain to which he exposed himself, Zhair'lo opened his mind.

"Nothing nearby," he kept his voice low.

Kendrick grunted an acknowledgement and backed off a pace, but didn't cede Bree's place back to her. The formation shifted around him, unevenly squeezing him into the middle of its rear rank.

Block after block passed them by, ash and soot in the air and decaying bodies underfoot. Zhair'lo decided the acrid smoke burning his lungs had done him a favour, blocking out plenty of less savoury odours.

As they neared the Temple, a sense of foreboding pushed at Zhair'lo, a cold wind stinging his face despite the heat of the smoky fires burning around him. Without thinking, he pulled his mind inward, protecting himself, knowing what awaited him if he exposed himself.

"This isn't good," he muttered.

"What?" Kit whispered back.

"A lot of them, just ahead."

"How far, lad?" Master Kendrick came to his shoulder quickly.

"Can't be sure," Zhair'lo inhaled deeply, trying to control the pain.

He looked over the shoulders of the men and women in front of him, the squads drawn in close to each other now. Their torches extended two blocks toward the Temple, after which darkness took over, broken only by the distant Temple battlements which appeared to float in the air three storeys above the ground.

"Somewhere between us and the Temple," Zhair'lo said. "Maybe right up against the walls."

"Odd place to be," Kendrick stroked his chin. "I don't hear any fighting."

"And I see no sign of action atop the walls," Gillian strained her eyes. "How certain is this sense of yours?"

The space around Zhair'lo had become crowded suddenly and he knew that more pressed in on him than the physical bodies of his friends.

"Very," Zhair'lo gulped.

"Warn the forward units," Gillian nodded at Kendrick.

The Master let out a low, lilting whistle and the entire army shifted with the sound of stretching leather and drawn swords. Boot steps fell in unison and an ominous stomping filled the night. Battle approached, and none shivered with the certainty of it more than Zhair'lo did.

Gillian believed him without question, which somehow made the danger more real than the pain starting to sear his skin.

Zhair'lo stumbled, and Kit and Renzi came to his side instantly.

"Halt!" Kendrick called out, and a thousand stomping boots paused instantly.

"They're awake," Zhair'lo breathed, looking ahead.

Ahead of the them, the street opened out onto a wide, dark plaza. The front lines of their army had already entered it, quickly merging to form a kind of phalanx with the squads from the side streets, all of which converged on this place at the darkened gates of Sweetness. With the stars blotted out by clouds of smoke, not even stars shone upon the space.

"You're sure -" Kit started.

"Yeah."

"What are they waiting for, then?" Bree wondered doubtfully, sliding back into her slot behind Zhair'lo as they quietly moved to fill the space behind the frontmost squads.

Gillian and Kendrick fell back away from them into conference.

"They're Enraged," Zhair'lo replied, his eyes glassy. "They're wound up. Angry. But they won't...won't attack until something sets them off."

"Can we slip by them?" Kit's voice carried a trace of hope.

Zhair'lo shook his head, unable to speak properly, the pain increasing the farther he walked. He took another deep breath and clenched his teeth.

"They're getting angrier as we get closer," he gasped. "Anything could set them off."

Standing without the physical support of his comrades, he came to a halt with his squad when they pushed up against those stopped in front of them.

"Any moment now ...", Zhair'lo muttered.

The moment froze in time. The pure, unadulterated hatred of hordes of Enraged men poured over Zhair'lo, a relentless waterfall of unforgiving pressure threatening to buckle his knees. A wall of Fighters, packed shoulder to shoulder, stood tense, sensing their enemies not by any strange magic, but by instincts borne of many battles.

"It's me," Zhair'lo's hiss barely reached his friends. "They feel me."

"What?" Bree asked. "You're crazy."

"They know me," Zhair'lo shook his head. "Know what I am. Why I'm here."

Kit looked around, taking in the dead bodies scattered about their feet, the blackened blood stains over the cobblestone, and the smoke clouding their lungs.

"And we know why we're here," Kit said.

"To heal this Temple," Zhair'lo acknowledged, avoiding eye contact, dismissing any thought of running away.

They state of the city had made it obvious. He couldn't abandon this place to the Enraged. No freedom awaited these people, only mindless, painful death and eventual starvation. Even with the certainty of his own death set to follow the delivery of the magic he carried, Zhair'lo couldn't imagine abandoning the remaining survivors of Beshenna.

Besides, sensing as he did now the focus of the Enraged, he knew he wouldn't last two steps past the edge of this army. Even if he somehow slipped past the eagle eyed women with their Facial upgrades, the mad foes across the plaza would always have the ability to sense his presence.

Zhair'lo took a knee and paused to regain his breath, focusing on protecting his mind from what lay in store for him.

"Are we ready, Master Kendrick?" Zhair'lo wavered slightly as he spoke, but his ragged voice packed stone and metal behind it.

"Aye, lad," the Master Fighter replied from two paces behind him, warily watching the darkness.

Zhair'lo took a fist-sized piece of broken cobblestone from the ground and stood up, bracing himself with his feet locked into the ground.

"Here they come, sir," he announced, and hurled the rock forward into the empty plaza.

Before it even struck the ground, Zhair'lo reached to his back to draw out his bow.

More than eight ranks back from the front, no target could enter his range for quite some time, but the anger flowing at him out of the darkness drove him to prepare himself.