Page 210 of War

The other rider has also fallen off his steed, but as I leave the building he’s limping towards the creature, who’s standing fifty meters away.

Using the bow and arrows I’ve reclaimed, I shoot him in the spine. His back arches, and then he staggers forward several steps before falling to his knees.

I grab another arrow and nock it as I approach him. The rider glances over his shoulder at me, his eyes full of anger.

The second arrow goes through his ribcage. He cries out, slumping to the ground.

“You bitch!” he chokes out as I step up to him.

“Where is War?” I demand, nocking another arrow and pointing it at him.

He lets out a pained laugh. “You’ll die if you try to save him.” He’s gasping for breath. “But go ahead and try.”

Deep foreboding slips down my spine.

The phobos rider coughs, then goes still. I nudge him with my boot, but it’s clear that whatever life he possessed, it’s gone.

I move from him to the other phobos riders, checking each one for signs of life before I collect what arrows I can.

I might need them for the remaining fifteen riders.

I return to the lookout building I’d left my horse inside.

By the time I enter, Hussain is dead, his eyes half open and staring blankly at something on the floor.

Something inside me aches at the sight of him. He undoubtedly committed many, many horrors. Death was no less than what he deserved. Still, he was kind to me when he had no reason to be. I hope that whatever lays beyond this life weighs his good along with his bad.

I grab my horse’s reins and lead the creature back outside. I can’t stay here and wait for more phobos riders to come to me. If there are others who are making their way back to camp, I’ll simply have to face them head-on.

It’s time to find my husband.

I ride downthe road, following the trail of corpses like breadcrumbs. They litter the ground everywhere. By the looks of it, War called all the dead to him, every single one that he could reach.

At some point, the fallen bodies seem to steer away from the road, cutting west, into the desert. I veer off the road, heading towards what I assume is the site of the attack.

The farther I ride, the denser the corpses become. A hot breeze has kicked up, and a layer of sand sprinkles the bodies like garnish.

It’s not until I summit a shallow hill that I see the rest of the phobos riders.

I count nine of them amongst the rest of the corpses, their bodies torn from limb to limb, their throats ripped out. They became zombie food by the looks of it. Even more perverse, some of the phobos riders have bloody mouths themselves, as though the moment they died, they turned on their comrades.

I continue on, aware that half a dozen phobos riders are still MIA.

That all changes when, a short distance away, I see a section of earth bare of corpses. It forms a lopsided circle, and at the edges of that circle I see meaty bits of appendages—an arm here, a leg there, an indeterminate body part across the way.

My earlier nausea rises at the sight.

There’s no way to determine how many phobos riders died here, or what caused it, only that—based on the blood splatter—several of them did in fact meet their end here.

Only about ten meters away from that, the bodies become so dense they’re nearly lying on top of each other. They seem to come to a focal point, as though they were all closing in on someone at the time they fell inert.

Was it War? His attacker?

My horse refuses to wade through the dead, so I hop off and head over to the location on foot.

I pick my way through the bodies, and right at the center of them all, there are more dead phobos riders and lots of blood—but no War.

It takes a bit more searching to find any more clues to War’s location.