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  The fire started raging instantly and quickly it spread from the carts to the rest of the bridge and started devouring it.

  They were finally safe.

  Chapter 3 - The Siege of Echa

  Hundreds of eyes looked at them from across the burning bridge. Some were human, many weren't. One of the large monstrosities tried to cross the river but the river Calapis turned out to be stronger than the brook running through the center of the city. The monstrosity was quickly pulled downstream and two arrows came to help the river drown it more quickly. None tried crossing after the creature failed, just as Arnos hoped. The northern bank was steep and the lush grass would have made it too slippery to climb, especially against a defending force.

  Dion looked across the river at his hometown and the many houses that were already on fire. Those that weren't on fire were being stripped of everything valuable. Behind all this destruction, out of sight, was his house as well, and all of his family's belongings. He knew that they were now lost forever to him, either in fire or in the hands of some pillager whose soul had long forgotten the light.

  "Come on," Arnos called Dion when he averted thoughts to the task at hand. He turned eastward to check the situation on the road and saw that the long column of people forced out of the city was well on its way toward Echa. They were already at the point where the road wound its way round a hill and took the traveler farther away from the river and into the forest Wissa which stretched east all the way to the plains in front of Echa.

  "To Echa," Arnos strained giving the order. Both men and horses complied slowly, still catching breath.

  They walked for a little over two day parts and were halfway to their destination. It was late morning and patches of blue sky could be seen through the thick canopy. They walked slowly and in silence and not even the birds were disturbed by their passing. Kerkio, who demanded to be the rearguard, saw no trace of the enemy following them. Dion tried his best not to think about the events of last night and found comfort in listening to the birds above their heads as he counted the rays of sun that managed to push through to the forest path.

  When his thoughts returned to the world, the birds were already silent and their song was replaced by several voices coming down the road from the east. He looked at his father who was noticeably tense. He was sitting upright in the saddle, watching the road ahead, awaiting bad news and such came.

  "Lord Arnos!" a rider began when he stopped before him.

  "The messengers announced your arrival, but alas, Echa is under attack as well. Lord Taren is trying to hold the West Bridge until you reach the city walls or until defeat snatches it away. It is imperative that we move as fast as possible to avoid the latter. The enemy is vast. The land south of the river has no room for more."

  The news pressed Dion like a giant stone set upon his chest. He had a feeling that the poor horse he was sitting on wouldn't be able to hold his weight any longer.

  "Dad?" A voice of a worried boy spoke through Dion's mouth and Arnos noticed, fully aware what it was that had his son so worried.

  "Your mother is fine. It's still safer in Echa than it is out here." Arnos cut short his response with what he hoped was a reassuring smile and quickly turned his attention back to the rider from Echa.

  "Go to the Bridge and tell Taren we'll be there very soon." The rider complied and disappeared back the way he came. The forest road was narrow and with everyone moving in a tight group there was no need for Arnos to issue the order. The men picked up the pace and were now almost running east to get to Echa before it was too late.

  "I don't like not knowing what's in front of my men. We need to go forward." Arnos spoke to Dion but also called for Kerkio who joined them quickly and together they started pushing their way to the head of the column and towards the exit of the forest.

  When they reached the forest's end it became clear that the rider's report was mild in comparison to what was happening around Echa. The stream of people pouring from Echa Rei was not the only one - an even larger group of people was pouring into Echa down the North Road.

  The North Road was the most important road in the kingdom as it connected the three Echas in the south with Tialoch, the kingdom's capital, located far north. Numerous houses were strewn next to its two-mile stretch from the city gates to the point where it entered the forest Wissa and all of the houses were now releasing their dwellers onto the Road and into the city proper.

  The gates were so stuffed with people entering the city that it seemed no one else could get in or out but a thin line of horsemen managed to squeeze out of the city. The riders who managed to escape the torrent of refugees turned sharply from the road and rode like mad towards the Western Bridge.

  A sight never before seen by Dion welcomed his eyes when they reached the Western Bridge. The battle standard of his kingdom stood straight and high in the air, and even though it was too far away for him to see it clearly, he knew its every detail. It was a flag as black as a starless night and on it stood a golden dragon armed with a sword as large as its body. The very sight of it filled him instantly with strength and determination.

  Around the battle standard stood a circle of shields and spears and men who guarded the bridge. Opposite them, trying to cross it, was another flag, one which Dion had already seen earlier when it appeared from out of the Great Oak in Echa Rei. It carved itself deeply into Dion's memory. It was a flag as red as blood and on it was a dragon's skeleton.

  The bridge beneath the red flag was littered with bodies. Their blood ran down towards Taren and men from Echa but that was all that managed to cross the bridge. Nevertheless, the enemy kept pushing relentlessly and Dion was sure that Taren had no hope of holding it for much longer.

  Behind the men fighting on the bridge Dion could see the southernmost part of the city and behind the city walls there, instead of the lush top of Echa's Great Oak he should have seen, now rose a pillar of smoke.

  "Dad! It looks like it's coming from the Tree's courtyard!" Dion tried to avert his father's attention to the Great Oak but Arnos nodded him away - the first thing he saw when they had exited the forest was the broken Tree. He took his horn again and signaled Echa that they had arrived. Soon after the horn went silent Taren's horn answered and the men who guarded the bridge started retreating slowly towards the city.

  Time was running out. They had to reach the gate before Taren's men got there from the bridge, and they managed, but barely, having stormed over the plain to the gate as if fire burned beneath their feet.

  The gates closed shut behind Taren and his men.

  "Get the wounded to the healing houses. Those not wounded - go up the walls and kill any who nears the city!"

  He was anger incarnate. His blood-stained yellow mustache spat out orders and drops of blood all around him. He removed his helm and thrashed it into the ground, cursed Grom and all the other high gods but then calmed down and called upon Arnos. Dion looked in wonder when Taren called upon Kerkio as well. The three of them moved deeper into the city and before they got far Arnos turned round and whispered so Dion had to read his lips: "Find mom."

  He dismounted to avoid standing out from the crowd as well as to avoid trampling someone in the same. He took the reins and headed for the library - he was sure he would find her there. He remember that the king had asked for new maps of the southern counties a few days earlier and that when his mother left to work on them in Echa he grabbed the opportunity and snuck away to Lorei to see his grandparents.

  Dion went past Pelin who did not notice him. He was surrounded by family and his face red from crying told of despair Dion himself felt. Out of nowhere, a hand landed on Dion's shoulder and when he turned he saw the hand and arm lead to a sweaty middle-aged man. The man was smiling.

  "That's him," the man with his arm upon Dion's shoulder told a group of men standing right behind him.

  "That's our thunder god, I tell you!" The man was ecstatic and loud. "Our Grom!" he finished even louder while patting Dion
on the shoulder.

  Dion only grinned at the silly remark and moved on. The men continued with their tales of events barely gone and Dion listened in.

  "Really, you should have seen it. He held a lightning in his hand. Yes! Really! And then he..."

  Dion couldn't hear them anymore so he tried thinking about what had happened earlier that morning as he walked towards the inner walls, but weariness aided by the noon sun watered down all serious thoughts. He made his way into the old city through the gate in the inner wall and then stopped as if he had hit the wall. He gasped when his eyes fell upon the Tree.

  What used to be a tree that towered the walls and dominated the entire square was now a burned skeleton with nary a leaf on it. This symbol of strength and unity of his kingdom, this gift from the gods, this thousand year old tree - it was no more.

  Dion ran towards the Tree, desperately wanting to enter the Tree's square and see if there was any chance the Tree might have survived the fire. He moved quickly since no one seemed to want to get close to it. There were many bodies and branches scattered all around the street and the square and they proved to be a strong enough deterrent to all prying eyes, except Dion's.

  The north and west entrances were both guarded and it was a safe guess that the other two entrances were guarded as well so he went to the north entrance; it was the nearest one. He got to the guards and it was also as far as he was allowed to go. The guards were adamant so Dion did the only thing he could do - he stood on his tip toes and looked over the shoulders of the nearest guard.

  The Tree looked as if a dozen storms came upon it and ravaged it until it gave in. Its trunk was split in half and its branches were burnt and broken. A large pile of debris and bodies lay intermingled inside the Tree and there Dion saw a familiar sight - a body of a creature like the ones that came from the Tree in Echa Rei.

  His mind was afire.

  "They came out of this Tree as well," he thought to himself, but thought better to ask than jump to a wrong conclusion.

  "What happened here?" he asked the guards. After a few moments of silence, probably seeing nothing could come of it, one of the guards spoke.

  "They came out of the Tree this morning. Those things." He stopped to take one more look at the creatures in the square.

  "We were lucky. They came out just as the day guards were preparing to replace the night guards. All the night guards perished but they managed to hold them inside the square until we arrived from the citadel."

  Dion closed his eyes for a moment and bowed his head thanking the lost men in his own way. The guard understood the gesture and stopped speaking for a moment.

  "What about the Tree?" resumed Dion.

  "Eonen and his apprentice destroyed the Tree with their magic to stop the creatures from billowing out of the Tree."

  "I heard that the Treewatcher Eonen died. Is that true?" added a guard who stood to their left. Before anyone had a chance to answer they heard another voice - one that was well known to Dion. She was running towards them, holding numerous scrolls in her arms.

  "Mom!" Dion slipped his hand from the reins and ran to her. Her small body along with the scrolls she was carrying disappeared in his embrace.

  "I found out everything only moments ago. I didn't even know that dad was here last night. Are you both all right?"

  She moved away from him and checked him out from top to toe. He nodded that he indeed was all right but kept his head down, staring at the white stone of the street, hiding the fog that set in his eyes. He sighed heavily, calmed down.

  "Where is dad?" she asked.

  "Here somewhere. With Taren," he answered with a clear voice and then added in a softer voice: "I am tired."

  She smiled and took his arm. "Let's go to the house," she said and it took a moment for Dion to realize that she was speaking of her parents' humble house located in the shadow of the eastern outer wall of the city.

  A woman's scream ripped through the air, somewhere to their right and from above. They looked up the wall and then they heard another voice. This time it was a man's voice.

  "Look at this!" the man shouted. "It... It's eating bodies!"

  They both knew right away that Dion wanted to see what was going on. His overused muscles would have to succumb to curiosity and wait a bit longer for rest.

  "I am going to the house. Hurry back." Odea had to shout the last few words. Dion was already on his way out of the inner city. He gestured back to her to take care of the horse and then ran through the gate of the inner walls and was lost in the crowd again.

  He found the outer western wall of the city full of curios people who have, like him, just arrived and were climbing up, but he also found a lot of terrified people climbing down and leaving the wall. He pushed his way through the crowd, now desperate to see what had them so terrified, and finally he found himself atop the wall.

  A tiny space on the wall cleared up in front of him. He pushed himself in-between people who were looking over the walls and found out quickly that the spot was emptied because you could only peer from the ramparts into the distance. He could not see anything that was happening at the foot of the walls. For a moment he managed to peek out through one of the crenels when people spread out a bit and saw huge tentacled creatures. He was sure they were the ones responsible for frightening all these people.

  "Dion!"

  His father's call from somewhere in the distance pulled his attention away from the creatures and back into the city. He was certain the voice was coming from the south but he did not move until a second call came and he saw arms showing him where to go.

  "Found your mother?" Arnos asked him when Dion managed to reach him through the thick rows of people surrounding them.

  "Yes. She told me to come home from the walls."

  "We should listen to her," Arnos said with a trace of a smile glinting in his eyes. Dion saw his father was about to say something else but interrupted him anyhow.

  "Father? What are those creatures?"

  "I am not sure," Arnos answered and then looked around them to see who was listening to them. It turned out no one was even though Taren and Kerkio stood close behind Arnos' back, but they too had their backs turned towards him and were preoccupied by the events outside the walls.

  "I think I saw something similar sketched in one of your grandfather's notebooks..." he paused then and bent nearer to Dion, adding finally in a much quieter voice: "We'll talk later at home."

  Dion looked at his father and his eyes burned with wonder and curiosity. He was sure his father knew something he could not convey now in the open.

  "Arnos, come," spoke Taren and turned for a moment while he was speaking. He threw a short greeting glance towards Dion as well and then turned back to the events outside the walls.

  "Too easily and too quickly have we abandoned the Western Bridge," groaned Taren when Arnos and Dion joined him and Kerkio on the ramparts, but he also recognized the truth in Kerkio's answer: "It's good you left before this thing appeared in front of your men." Kerkio was talking about the creature that was moving at that very moment on the road from the south towards the bridge.

  It moved faster than a man on it massive but short four legs. Six long tentacles whipped and battered the ground on each side of its body as it helped itself move with them.

  "It looks like a bull to me," Dion said looking at the creature and its bulging shoulders from which stemmed a massive head on a short neck.

  "Sure," said Kerkio jokingly. "A bull crossed with a mountain. It's at least twice the size of the largest bull I ever saw and that's without taking into account the tentacles."

  The creature reached the bridge in the next blink of an eye, helping itself move by grabbing the end of the bridge with its two front facing tentacles and pulling its body onto it. Its body filled the entire width of the bridge and its tentacles overwhelmed the bridge's short parapets.

  It moved closer to the fallen men who lay lifelessly in the middle of the bridge and then
it grabbed them one by one with its tentacles and dragged them closer. The creature had no issues with the rough leather armor some wore as it stuffed them in its mouth. It did not even try to eat the entire body when such a large offering was in front of it but it chewed off and ripped off a piece here, another piece there. A few heads and arms fell off the body back onto the bridge or were hurled into the river by the creature as it feasted on the bodies.

  "This Eater must be the cause of all this panic," said Dion now almost as scared as the rest of the people on the walls when he saw the creature with his own eyes.

  "And that Eater, as you have called it, will clear the bridge for the rest of them to reach the city's gate. We'll be under siege by lunch, if there even will be a lunch." Taren's voice was filled with anger once more.

  "But we can sour their plans now that you are all safe," Taren continued. "We can go out under protection of our archers and buy us some time. Maybe Doros arrives in force, if they are not lost as well."

  No one spoke for a long while after Taren so Arnos took it upon himself to speak out. "We have nothing to do outside anymore, at least not until we prepare each and every one who is able. There aren't that many of us. We should also see what is happening in the east before a decision is made."

  Taren moved away from the rampart and looked at Arnos.

  "Nothing like this has ever happened to this city and I still do not acknowledge that this is a siege. Not yet." His eyes were dark again just like they were the first time Dion saw Taren at the gates of the city when he slammed his helm into the ground.

  "Council! I call a council at this very moment and you, Arnos, are coming with me." He finished the sentence with a tangible hurry in his voice and placed his hand on Kerkio who was still bent over the rampart with his eyes outside the city.

  Kerkio looked at Taren and a sweaty lock of golden hair slid across his forehead as he moved. He swiped it away with his wounded arm and then completely turned towards Taren and straightened. He moved with ease, as if he was neither tired nor wounded - at least it looked that way to Dion.