Where had they come from? He had no idea and now they were everywhere, attacking the horses then knocking them onto their riders. Hundreds of them pulling and stabbing, slashing, and killing.
* * *
Earlier that day they had found where a battle had obviously raged because the whole field had been churned up and there was blood everywhere, but there was nothing else, not a body, not a shield, not a weapon.
He'd heard the lieutenant ask the captain, "Where are the weapons?"
"Tarius the Black must have taken them. It is said she will leave nothing that might be of use to the enemy," the captain answered.
"Where are the bodies?" he asked.
"That I don't know," he said, and they started up a trail that went deep into the woods. Here they found another site of obvious battle but again not a single body.
No bird sang, no bug made a sound. The captain had ordered them to dismount and look for any evidence that any of the troop might still be alive. He had seen something strange on the ground and had bent over and picked it up without thinking. He quickly dropped it when he realized it was a chunk of skull with brain and hair still attached. Tarius the Black had been right. No one had lived through this slaughter save those that she had extracted and they were about to be next. He knew it, could feel it in his bones even before he heard that awful sound.
When he'd heard it the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. It was like nothing he'd ever heard before, like the sound of a thousand feet scraping against an earthen floor. His heart had filled with dread, and then they were all over them.
* * *
They were all going to die, and that being the case there was no glory in making a stand. He screamed at his unit to retreat and they did, but only three of them made it clear of the battle, and they just rode in a dead heat in and out of trees, trying to ignore the battle at their backs. They weren't cowards; they were just practical. They were well clear when they came to a big rocky hill. They started running around it because to go over it would have slowed them down too much. One of his fellows, obviously with a stronger sense of self preservation than even he had, had gotten ahead of him and run right into a wall of Amalites. They seemed to just be boiling up out of the ground. He and his other fellow turned their horses back the way he had come and he—remembering what they had left behind them—turned his horse once again and then just started running his horse through the woods like a thousand demons were behind him because they were. He heard his last fellow scream and turned his head just in time to see him topple to the ground with an arrow through his chest.
He spurred his horse on, pushing him to his limits. He had to get back, he had to get to the garrison and tell them that he knew where they were hiding. Tell them how many of them there were.
Mostly he just had to get away from those things.
He didn't see the rope. It hit him hard in the chest and knocked him off his horse. The horse ran on and then they were on him and he prayed death would come quickly—which it did.