5th of Saun 719
He could feel his luck slipping away. As he moved his hands, hoping to the ancestors that he could make it out of that forsaken pit, every ounce of plague matter and the dead bodies covering his sad carcass fell away before those hands. He'd pay for this salvation in luck. It was his blessing or his curse. He knew not from whence it came but had seen enough to know that it would rob what wealth he had.
His luck and fortune was gone by the time he climbed to the top of the plague pile that had been his comrades and looked around. Flies buzzing as far as he could see, a miasma that blocked his vision from afar. Yet he could smell it on the wind. The smell of inferno. The conflagration of the defenses of Rhakros. So they brought along incinerators? Interesting, would've been nice to know more details from the Braxtons and Marshal, but marks were only there to die. Not ask questions.
Clavam spat on that idea, and the slippery pile that gave way beneath his boot. The fires were to the east, so that meant north, so he'd just take a left and high tail it back to Etzos. The war was going to be won, they had Lisirra's forces on the backfoot. Barring some calamitous failure of judgment by the Marshals and Lady Sintra, the war would go the way of Etzos. But Lisirra was Immortal. Could Immortals truly die, or be beaten? Etzos lore would have it as such.
At any rate, there was one Immortal flanked by thousands of men and ghosts who all desperately wanted another Immortal dead. Clavam put his money that the former knew well enough that it could accomplish its goal, the death of the other.
The war would end, but the struggle for the Etzori way of life would continue. They'd just see if Mortal will was enough to overcome Immortal guile.
Clavam, for his part, dismissed such high minded musings as soon as they occurred. What he wanted now, was to collapse into some cloistered den, into the pillowy bosom of a Outer Perimeter whore.
So he walked away from it all, not deigning to follow after the incinerating force, but doubling back the way they'd come. The corpses and what had been corpses squished beneath his boot. He could almost feel the fortune slipping away with every step he took. No ordinary mortal man had any right to proceed over that plague-ridden field without contracting some form of rotting illness. Yet here Clavam was, walking over it like it was a particularly foul smelling pile of cow shit.
He walked for at least a break, had the ranks truly been this thick? Or was the slime dissolving them, displacing and expanding their mass as they were liquified?
More troubling thoughts, Clavam suppressed them. One foot in front of the other was more thought than he'd rather exercise. So he just kept right on over the plague fields.
As he went along, he stepped on firmer and firmer ground. He was mere ten feet away from stepping on real soil, then he could run for true. Then, with a sudden shock, a hand shot out of the ground and gripped him by the ankle.
"The fuck!?" He kicked at the hand, but it held his ankle fast. He half expected some undead abomination to spring out. Instead, he pulled himself along, trying to make distance, but with every step he pulled the corpse out of the ground. He didn't make it all the way to the soil, before he realized it was no corpse. Well not really. It was Culler Roote, that damned Rhakros traitor.
"Pleeease, Clavam. Take me wid you!"
"Fuck off! And let'go! I'm leavin'."
So saying, he skipped forward and kicked the Rhakros mutt in the shoulder, freeing his ankle as the Sev'ryn's hand relinquished its hold. Then he was off toward the North.
