The Withered Land: Dragons and Marauders

Dragons and Marauders, Part Nine

The ground shook, undulating like an ocean wave, from the force of the third explosion and the blast wave rattled and cracked windows in nearby low-level buildings on both sides of the street. Adam Wilder stumbled, but managed to keep his footing as he propelled his seven foot-plus frame past an obstacle course of flying stone shrapnel and falling debris. Behind him, ex-Pelagic Corp Special Tasks Militiamen Oerdyke and Murshipaz, the municipal police deputies assigned to shadow D'Spayr on his precinct patrol, struggled to keep up with the swift footed Traveler in Red. Though they could not match the streaking, distance-gobbling stride of the taller man, the deputies nonetheless doggedly pushed and maintained their own rapid pace for the length of the extended boulevard stretching from the promenade fronting the courthouse.

The few people who had been traversing the street were screaming and desperately seeking cover as the sounds of pitched battle from within the ramshackle, formerly abandoned municipal center building echoed like onrushing thunderclaps.

Wilder bitterly cursed himself for being late to the rendezvous. He should have been with the rest of the team. He should not have taken that last minute, and ultimately uninformative, detour to follow Kolag Y'phree back to his palatial fortress estate after the Warlord had left the Ikarenium quarry, but Wilder, impatient and feeling more than a little angry at being lied to, had presumed there was a chance there was yet more he could have discovered about the scheming autarch's covert activities. It was the wrong move to make. He should have joined the Knight, Ryonne and the rest to share what he'd learned. Maybe he could have helped predict the surprise attack upon the group. Instead, he was coming in blind into an active battlezone after the fact. Late! Damn it!

For their parts, Murshipaz and Oerdyke, both of whom Wilder knew and had worked with during past undertakings while he'd been on special assignment from Kolag Y'phree, had just finished turning in their reports of the events at the City's wall breach and the subsequent encroachment episode with Infantry Commander Layvis Kroule and his Xar'gueyek warriors. When they'd seen the Traveler wandering through the convoluted traffic mosaic of the Merchants' Bazaar, being straightforward and genial men, they'd hailed him and automatically fallen in behind the hooded man in the deep red cloak on his short trek.

And then they'd seen something in the green-tinted, aluminum-hued sky that looked like a spinning star descend upon the rooftop of the courthouse...

To everyone's horror, that was when the sudden clamor of battle erupted.

An orange-white bolt of sizzling energy ripped through the masonry of the building, traveling across the street and punching into the side of a modest-sized, three-wheeled combustion engine vehicle and the motor cart blew up spectacularly. An intense ripple of surging heat rolled down the street. The motor cart was tossed tumbling into the air as high as a man's chest and then landed heavily, splitting and collapsing in on itself. Flames geysered into the air and then rained down onto the asphalt boulevard, splashing like lava.

Wilder's leather-gloved hands steaked down to the weapon holsters across his hips and quickly drew his twin light-beam pistols. He charged onto the paved promenade in front of the courthouse, up the short flight of stone steps and under the sigmoid curve of the entrance's Ogee arch, eyes flitting to his left and to his right as he rapidly scanned for any telltale sign of enemies lying in ambush or approaching antagonists. Only deepening shadow greeted his rapid scrutiny.

Behind him, he heard the rapid footsteps of Oerdyke and Murshipaz approach and he raised a hand to wave them to flanking positions as he braced himself to kick in the building's front door.

That was when the air around them all took on a rippling, liquid density and something resonant that sounded like a brittle bell tolled as the dim light around them flickered and popped...