Dust Clouds of the South Part 3

It has been six months since the Great Evoker’s forces were first sighted. All the settlements at the borderlands were either conquered or had defected to the rebels. Finally after months of skirmishing, the rebel army reached the southernmost major city of Thebes. The rebels spared no time to encircle the city and build siege engines. Huge mangonels flailed the cities with diseased corpse of the dead while the Evoker’s Bantu allies tried to mine beneath the walls. Most deadly of all are the machinations of the great sorcerer himself, raining comets of fire into the city and killing by the thousands.

Governor Ahmose had long fled the city with his crack troops, leaving the city’s inhabitants to their fate. Declaring that he will return with reinforcements, he commanded the city militia to hold the city to the last, keeping the enemy in place while he and his reinforcements will return and hit the foe with a vice-like grip.

The city fell within a week.

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As the army of the Great Evoker pillage the city of Thebes, they were being observed by the loyalist army hiding in the surrounding hills. Basti watch as the city below burnt. He could hear the screams of the city inhabitants, the cries of helpless women and children. It did not require much to remind him that he narrowly escaped death. He had been drafted to become one of the runners for the chariot teams and had left the city just days before the rebel encirclement was completed. His family had remained in the city, his mother, his five sisters and his father who joined the city’s garrison.

Basti watched but he did not weep. The time for crying had long passed. In a way the boy Basti had also died in the flames of Thebes. From that day onwards he will be Basti the Warrior, and one day vengeance will be his.