City of Fire

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Tahrain wiped his brow and peered into the darkness, straining his eyes to the north. Nothing but sand, he mused bitterly, but he knew that somewhere, perhaps a hundred miles away, Kalpesh burned-if it still stood at all.

And yet he, the city's guard captain and Protector of the Opal Throne, abandoned Kalpesh's defense and fled into the desert on a vital mission that looked more hopeless every hour. For easily the twentieth time that day, his brown, callused hand found its way inside his light chain shirt to the oilskin packet against his right breast. He looked up and scanned his eyes over the faces of the few men and women who now lay in small clumps silently around him. They did not notice as his fingers found the leather thong and checked its secure knot.

Shaking himself out of his reverie, Tahrain turned again to his remaining soldiers. His most loyal troopers, twenty of Kalpesh's finest, followed him into the desert to die without any explanation. Only one man knewTahrain's true mission in the wastes, and he wasn't even a man by most civilized folk's standards. Most called him "brute" at best, but Tahrain knew differently. He looked for this brute among his exhausted soldiers.

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