Eachigo died without honor. The Skree penetrated his back and then leapt to Gamelo. The Skree move faster than any man can react to. Our blades flashed over Gamelo’s head in a vain attempt at intercepting it by chance. It was to no avail, the Skree pierced his chest, killing Gamelo and detonating the shaped charge in his armor. Two dead for one Skree. If Eachigo hadn’t turned to run, his shaped charge would have killed the Skree and Gamelo would have lived.
I called to my squire. “Boy! More blades!” Feneshi, my squire was a good lad. He pulled the blade cores from his belt and snapped them into their holders. “More juice too.” I reminded him, as if I needed to.
“Yes sir.” He replied and quickly ejected the power core from my back and put in a new one.
Then we heard another one coming. “Stand back Feneshi!” I cried as I pushed him down. My first blade blazed but the blight that hung in the air was getting in the way. The other knights fired their first blades off. By fortune, one of the beams sliced into the approaching Skree, cutting it in half.
“We have to get out of this blight forest! They never used to chase us into the blight!” I called out. “Drop anything we won’t need, leave the spent blades and cores. Maybe we can retrieve them later but I fear there is a Thrum here.”
The men’s faces turned white at the suggestion. “Surely sir, not in the blight. How will we travel?”
“It’s only been a matter of time before they learned about us coming here. It will make bringing back the new colony even harder, even more will die on the trip. The floating blight slowly kills off anything that comes near to it, so I for one have never been comfortable coming here. If the Skree and the Thrum don’t kill us, the blight surely will.” I shook my head. “You’ve left the extra supplies? Good, lets move out. We’ll travel through the burnt forest. It will give us some protection. Keep your ears sharp”
Zecho took my shoulders “Bachui, I’ve followed you for five years and I trust your judgement, but the Thrum love the burnt forest. Wouldn’t it be better to travel through the plains where the Thrum don’t have anywhere to hide? Yes there will be Skree, but we have a chance of defending against them. With a Thrum, a hundred men would not be enough and we are now six.”
I put my hands on his shoulders in return, looking him in the eyes. “I understand your fear Zecho but we will have to move slowly through the plains so we can hear the Skree coming. We may be able to out run a Thrum. There’s a better chance that at least some of us will make it back to the city and report to Lord Hishi while there is still enough time to act. If we take too long, then we have failed our mission. It has to be the forest.” I surveyed the faces of the knights and the squires. It was an unpopular choice and I feared that they would not follow but a look of determination slowly came over their faces as they nodded to indicate their support.
“To the forest then” Zecho said with a face of stone.