Free The Dusk Watchman: Book Five of The Twilight Reign by Tom Lloyd

you want to live to return home?’
    ‘Home? What home?’
    Larim walked closer. ‘The Ring of Fire is their home, and they look to you to take them there, General.’
    The white-eye was bald, his smooth face ageless. He wore a brightly coloured patchwork robe of predominantly yellow and blue, within which were set half-a-dozen glowing magical charms. Though young, Larim had the reptilian air about him that all Larat’s Chosen seemed to possess: an unblinking dispassion that was far from human.
    ‘Then they will be disappointed,’ Gaur said. ‘My plans are only for revenge.’
    ‘Revenge?’ Larim laughed. ‘And how do you propose to manage that? There is no revenge to be had here, only more death. Can you not accept that we’ve lost?’
    ‘I will have revenge for my lord’s death,’ Gaur insisted. He looked away, not interested in listening to any more of Larim’s scorn, but the white-eye walked around Gaur’s horse until he was once more in the general’s field of view.
    ‘Gaur, you will only die,’ Larim said. He cocked his head at the beastman, puzzled by Gaur’s blind determination. ‘Do you think the Gods will care that your lord’s faithful hound followed him even unto death? Do you think the families of these men will appreciate this sacrifice?’
    Larim shook his head when he received no answer and turned to the broken troops surrounding them. ‘Soldiers of the Menin, it’s time for you to decide! Do you want to live and one day, perhaps, return home, or do you wish to follow General Gaur to a pointless death?’
    The faces were all turned towards him, but no one spoke. If that perturbed Larim he didn’t show it. ‘You have the night to make your decision. Helrect is the nearest city we have not waged war upon. You can go there, or head south and attempt to meet up with the Fourth Army, but either way you don’t have the numbers to cut a path through. The injured will not make it, but the rest of you can. You may live as mercenaries or die as fools. That is your choice.’
    ‘And your choice?’ Gaur growled.
    Larim turned. ‘Mine? My choice is to survive, of course, to return to what is now mine in the Menin homeland.’
    ‘To run like a coward and abandon us here?’
    ‘You are only looking for death,’ Larim said with contempt, ‘and you’ll find it without my help. The Ring of Fire is a long way from here, but Govin and I alone can travel faster than any army might.’ He looked to the side, where his one remaining coterie member stood. The small man with a large head shrank under Gaur’s gaze.
    ‘The troops of the Hidden Tower were slaughtered in Thotel; I have no allegiance to these men.’ Larim opened his mouth to say something more but then he stopped, an expression of surprise appearing on his face.
    A moment later his acolyte reacted in the same way, and both men turned to look west over the moor. Those soldiers who followed their gaze saw nothing, just the advancing gloom of dusk as the sun vanished below the eastern horizon for another day.
    ‘It seems you don’t need to go looking,’ Larim muttered, reaching inside his robe for a silver pendant that bore the rune of his God, Larat. ‘Death has come to find you.’
    At last Gaur looked, but there remained nothing to see, just his exhausted soldiers trying to summon the energy to make camp for the night. And then there was something else: though indistinct in the waning light he could just make out something moving beyond the disordered clumps of troops.
    Shouts of alarm erupted from the nearest soldiers; men scrambled to their feet and drew their weapons even as they retreated. Gaur turned to Larim but the mage clearly wasn’t the cause of the disruption: the white-eye appeared apprehensive at whatever was happening out there, and his acolyte, Govin, was clearly terrified.
    Gaur mounted again and pulled his axe from his saddle. He urged his horse towards the disruption, ignoring Larim as the mage began to say