The Ytharien
The horses of the Ytharien began to peel away from the scene, one by one, following one another until they began to move like a flock of songbirds in flight. Lothren and his compatriots closest the jail were the last to feel the call to leave, but once Aust and Galemnon returned with their prizes, the burning ruin was happily abandoned. Muon Pond was left behind them, nothing more than an orange glow on the low hanging clouds above, warming their backs as they rode home.
Lothren kicked haste into his horse until he rode at the front of his men, the Knight on display for all to see. Elven slurs were laughed and hissed in their own language, without any shortage of jeers yelled in Common so Sir Gawain could better appreciate their affection for him.
One empty horse was led back along with them. Nalendiel’s body was carried by one his closest friends. Funerary rites would have to be performed for him when they returned back. Lothren never felt exceptionally close to the man, more than a little repulsed by his violent tendencies, but he was still Ytharien. Their tenacity as as a family of exiles was at times the only thing that ever gave their lives meaning.
Barely audible over the jingling of tack and the pounding of hooves over the hard, sandy earth was a low roll of natural thunder. Lothren tilted his head to the noise, his sensitive ears more capable of distinguishing sounds than the common human’s.
“Juna, do you hear that?” he asked of a nearby rider. Annara was close by as well, eager to return to the caravan, but he’d
had to ask another elf. If
he could barely make out the sound, no human would be able to pick it out over the horses running. “Hold on tight, my noble friend.”
Lothren grabbed Thundrat’s reins and pulled, until the beast reared and cried out in fury. Gawain was held in place until the horse met the earth again. The animal tossed its maned head and pawed a divot into the dry soil. Lothren raised one arm to signal the rest of the Ytharien to stop. Gradually they did, grouping around him in confusion, throwing a cloud of kicked up dust about them.
“Hold!” The elf placed a steadying hand on Gawain’s shoulder. “Listen, all of you! Do you hear it?!”
Though it took some time for the horses to stop moving altogether, the murmur of thunder broke above the din of nickering and rising chatter. Even the few humans among them could hear it now. Aside from the rarity of storms in the desert out of season, at first there was nothing very unusual about the sound. Still, there were no rainclouds in sight, nothing that would explain the source of the sound.
Most distinctly, when Lothren tried to give a single direction to the thunder, to discern from where the storm was coming, he could not. It seemed to come from all around them. Individual threads of thunder seemed to occur just in front of them, and then behind, and again on every side of them.
It was beneath them.
Already? The Ytharien had nearly come too late for the village.
“They’re here!” Startled, Lothren’s horse brayed in response. “We
must return to the caravan! We must leave! The ant lions have come!” He pulled his horse hard to turn it around. “Ride! Ride as hard as you can! We
must move the caravan before it’s devoured!”
The only one who’d ever claimed to see an ant lion was Lothren himself, who’d encountered them in the salt wastes far to the south. The monsters usually avoided human settlements and had no business in the Aretan desert, but their signature was undeniable. Though up until now he had managed to stay ahead of them, it was inevitable that he would slip up. The ant lions were insatiable and difficult to track.
King Alonso was still at the caravan, along with some very dear friends and all of their supplies on the wagons. If anything happened to the Aretan monarch or their stores of food and water, the rest of the Ytharien would either be put to death or waste away here in the desert.
***
The sun was high by the time the stampede of Ytharien horses could be seen from the caravan. The colorful wagons sitting out in the sun, shielded on one side by a short cascade of rocky cliffs, were presently horseless and sitting helpless. The smell of breakfast cooking over a fire would have been enticing if the circumstances were any less dire.
Having resumed his watch, the dwarven poet spotted the Ytharien from a distance and waved a greeting, unaware of the danger he was in.
“Find Alan!” Lothren ordered frantically at his men once the horses drew near, disrupting the peaceful quietude of the caravan. “Get the caravans up and ready to leave. We make for the Aretan border,
now!”
Losing his focus on his prisoner, Lothren remained atop his horse and began scanning the area, but neither Alonso, nor his horse could be seen.
“Where is he?! Where is the King?!”
