Tanin forced the terror of the morning’s attack from his mind as his ears led him to a smoldering above-ground thatch hut. One naked, tan arm reached out past its threshold, twitching.

Tanin raced forward and grasped the hand, which tightened momentarily, then went limp.

“Are you all right? It’s Tanin, can you hear me?”

The Fell inside the hut lifted his head. Tanin recognized him as Moun, one of the Desita Guardians. Moun’s face was masked with blood. A new, cold fear crept into Tanin’s muscles: if Moun, a trained fighter, had not withstood this assault, then what chance did Memine have?

Tanin pulled on his arm. “Let me help you—”

Moun gurgled something unintelligible, shaking his head. Dirt and blood dripped from his face and only then as Tanin tried to assess his wounds did he realize Moun’s lower half was . . . gone. Utterly gone. His legs had been severed at the thigh and he had been left to bleed to death.

That process was nearly complete.

“Tanin,” the Guardian grunted through his mouthful of blood. His hand tightened on Tanin’s again, briefly. “The Charic’sada. It was the Charic.”

Tanin had heard tales of the Charic’sada, told by Fell Guardians like Moun who’d periodically ventured out beyond the desert. He’d half-thought the creatures were mythical.

“Are there . . . others? Alive?” Moun’s eyes fluttered.

“Not here. My parents are dead, Moun. There were ripped to pieces . . .” He squeezed the Guardian’s arm. “But Memine! My party was at the river and the riders, they took Memine alive but they killed the others, Chenoa and Hewa and—”

Moun coughed up more blood. “They took others from town. Not many. They keep . . . those they do not kill. At least . . . for a time.”

Moun’s body clenched, struggling to breathe around the fluid filling his mouth. He spat it into the scorched earth and lifted his head with what clearly was the last of his strength.

“You’re the last,” Moun grunted. “Save the others, Tanin. Find them quickly. Or the Fell . . . are no more.”

Moun’s eyes rolled back. He dropped face-first into the dust and ash.

Tanin released his hand and unconsciously wiped his palms on his belt. He backed away from the hut; it wasn’t Moun’s, as all Fell Guardians lived in mud-brick houses on the outer ring of Desita, not in burrows and huts. He didn’t see another body inside; how did Moun come to be here?

Had he been hiding?

The prospect renewed Tanin’s terror. Fell Guardians feared nothing. Yet there were no weapons near Moun’s body; not the fire-hardened cactus bones they used as spears nor the sharpened rocks used as daggers; no bow, no arrows, nothing. Maybe the Charic attack had been of such brutality that even this warrior took flight in an attempt to save his own life.

Unable to bear the blood and destruction any longer, Tanin ran from the town, to an outcrop of granite rising high from the desert floor, the kind of natural monolith other creatures might worship. He climbed to the top of it, realizing distantly he had not done so since his youth. It had been a favorite play place of he and Chenoa many years ago—and that memory made him gag. Chenoa was dead, shot nearly to pieces, perhaps even now still floating along the river . . .

Tanin shut his eyes and tried to regain his breath. It took several minutes. At last he was able to open them and gaze out at the desert, his back toward the smoking ruins of his lifelong home.

Everything was gone.

Everything.

Everyone.

The Fell were—had been?—a frugal people by necessity. The desert offered little, but in the hundreds of years they had carved out their living here, it had provided enough. They mined no minerals, knew no metals other than those sometimes brought back by traveling Fell Guardians; most Fell simply did not leave the safety of Desita and the nearby desert. Those who wandered and returned brought terrible and fabulous tales, and the occasional trinket from another race. Their habitat had provided a hundred years of peace, the desert as effective as an ocean at keeping enemies at bay. They had nothing any other creature could want or envy. Their moral laws, kept on sheaves made from the pulp of certain native bushes, were simple and brief. The Fell lacked nothing and wanted nothing.

So what then could these invaders, these Charic’sada, desire from them? They’d behaved like vermin, like locusts, sweeping to destroy all, then disappearing, fast and deadly.

That’s what they were, Tanin thought as his nausea and terror began the inevitable climb toward rage. They were bugs, like the scorpions that plagued Desita each winter, to be stomped out of existence.

He noticed now he could see the course the Charic had taken out of town. Staring at the tracks scraping the desert floor into great divots, he wondered idly where they were going. The Charic tracks went west.

Tanin’s mind rushed ahead of him, performing quick calculations. The Charic’sada had attacked Desita at near the overhead sun; a patrol had been dispatched to the river and attacked his party. They’d taken Memine and rode back to town, joined their brethren, and headed west. In that time, he’d had to travel four jaunts on foot. He’d spent time searching Desita . . . and now sat here.

The Charic’sada had not been gone long. He had less than an hour before sunset now; that put them no more than a few hours away.

He might be able to catch them. If there was to be any hope of finding Memine and the other Fell who’d been taken, he would have to leave now. He didn’t know how well he could track them in the dark.

Tanin shivered, his shame burning hotter than the setting sun. Follow the Charic? And then do what? He’d let his betrothed be taken right in front him. A Guardian had apparently run in fear from the riders. He was a flourmaker, not a warrior.

Memine spoke to him then, as if from a dream. You always came after me.

“Then go,” Tanin whispered to himself, narrowing his eyes. “Go and find her and do what you should have done in the first place. Go.”

Death would be a better fate than not trying to find her and the others. If he was the last of the Fell . . . then there was no point even in survival.

Tanin glared at the Charic tracks. They were easy to follow, and this truth gave Tanin pause. Two possibilities existed: the Charic did not know that any Fell still lived to follow; or they did not care.

He guessed it was the latter. He’d seen Fell savaged by sandcats before, and those images haunted him, but the cats were animals. They hunted, they fed, and so it was with all living things. It was how the world worked, no matter what misguided Kassian zealots proclaimed. He’d first heard the idea of gods from a traveling Guardian just years ago, and the very notion made him and his party laugh. An invisible creator who may or may not interfere with the goings-on of Kassia? Absurd.

If there were such gods, they had much to answer for after today’s slaughter.

Tanin ground his teeth, closing his eyes against the memory of the blood of his mother, his father, his friends and neighbors saturating the ground, darkening the earth. The Fell were a communal people, sharing all. Now only he remained, he and Memine and whatever few the Charic had taken with them during their conquest. This truth at last sank deep into him like the Fell blood had sunk into the desert sand.

As Moun had said, at this moment, he was the last Fell.

The last. The word boomed and echoed silently between his tall ears.

He had been destined for a typical Fell life: gathering fruit at the river; constructing or repairing buildings; attending the great feasts; making flour from native trees that dropped pods each autumn; taking his turn each season to recycle their refuse and excrement—no one’s favorite job, but one necessary for the health of the town. Now such chores were meaningless.

Opening his eyes, Tanin managed a breath that filled his lungs to capacity.

He would undertake this mission for Memine. He would cross all of Kassia for her and the others. How many had the Charic taken? Ten? Surely no more than twenty based on the number of corpses he’d seen.

Could the Fell rise again from such a number?

Tanin cursed himself. Get up, Fell. Get up and walk. There is no answer to that now. It will only come once you find and destroy those white riders.

One goal at a time. Find them, and work the details out later. Sitting here miserable, trying to come up with an attack plan was only putting more distance between him and his quarry.

With sudden conviction, he scrambled off the granite column and ran back into Desita. Ignoring the torn bodies of his clan as best he could, Tanin scavenged quickly for all he could think to bring with him: A travelling sack with straps, a water sack from woven reeds and pitch—after his dip in the river, he knew he could last at least two weeks without water, but more was always the best idea in this desert—a Fell spear, and stray citrus. He toyed with bringing a bow and arrow, but chose not to; he’d never been trained on the weapon, as they were reserved for Guardians only. Likely it would only get in his way.

Thus armed, Tanin jogged from Desita as the sun set, pausing only long enough to whisper another plea for forgiveness from his family and a farewell to the town. He wanted to bury his mother and father, but decided—hoped—that they would want him to begin his journey, not spend time with a funeral.

Setting his jaw, the young Fell ran after his enemies.

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