KINGDOM OF THE STONE -- a Wattpad featured novel

Chapter Forty Nine

"Oh! Don't ask me to do that. I couldn't!"

"I wasn't." Amantis walked over to Charissa's bed and ripped back the sheet.

-=====|==

Seeing Bazma fall, Macander raced up, grabbed his arms and dragged him out of spear range. He looked around for Karux, hoping he would save Bazma and heard the rally to me call of his horn. The strangely insistent pull of the horn nearly drew him away, but Bazma grabbed his wrist in one bloody hand. Before he knew it, the tireav let up a great cheer and charged into the city. Within moments they were alone on the field. The groan of the dying, the buzzing of flies and occasional caw of a crow sounding almost peaceful after the tumult of battle had left.

"Don't let me be buried in a foreign land," Bazma gasped.

Macander surveyed the battlefield, surprised at the number of dead scattered like storm-tossed driftwood. He couldn't look his friend in the eye. "You're not going to die, Baz. Why do you always assume the worst?" He looked to the sky and the lowering sun for a hopeful sign, and saw a gathering flight of carrion birds.

"Don't lie to me Mac. You can do almost everything you set your hand to perfectly, but you're a terrible liar.

No, not perfect, Macander thought. I couldn't save Garick. I couldn't save Jomel or Somek. I can only kill.

"We're the only ones left who remember the hills of the Pelahi," Bazma said.

"There's always Karux."

Bazma laughed. It turned into a horrible eruption of gurgling coughs.

Macander glanced at Bazma's wound. Bright blood oozed between his fingers from a hole in his side. Macander had seen enough wounds to know his friend would not survive this.

"Karux has been to the top of the mountain," Bazma wheezed. "He sees nothing else, not even the ground he stands on."

Macander chuckled despite himself. "True."

Bazma took several rasping breaths, rapid and shallow as a wave of pain surged through him. "I think I was fated to outlive the others, so I could suffer their deaths as well as my own. At least I won't have to suffer through your death. You probably won't ever die. I don't think death could defeat you. In fact I think it has already failed."

"What? A final bit of optimism from Bazma?" Macander regretted the use of the word final as soon as it left his lips. He tried to cover it with a smile, but couldn't lift the corners of his mouth.

"Promise me." Bazma's bloody hand gripped his arm painfully.

"I know you," Macander smiled. "You're going to pretend to die so I'll have to carry you home, aren't you?"

"Promise me," Bazma insisted.

Macander looked into his ashen face. Bazma's eyes burned with fierce desperation. He felt the words dragged out against his will. "I promise," he said softly.

Bazma gave him a slight nod, then took a deep rattling breath. He let out a long slow sigh through the faint smile of blue lips. He was gone.

-=====|==

The defending reavers fled as Karux's men flooded through the barricade. A group of strange men and women in yellow robes with mysterious symbols tattooed on their foreheads swarmed the tireav wielding clubs. They barely slowed the battle-hardened reavers who plunged through them and into an open area between the buildings. "Take some alive!" Karux called out. "We must find Amantis. He is all that matters."