Read Doom's Break for Free Online Page A

murmured Mentu. "Because in their lives any sign of compassion would be taken as weakness. The others would tear them apart."
    "More the question, really," said Janbur, "is why you wouldn't be like them."
    Thru blinked, reminded suddenly of the great gulf between mot and Man.
    Two days later, far from any land, Jevvi Panst died. They had done what they could for him, but he never awoke.
    Pern Glazen sang the sad songs of the Sulo Valley, which was their home, and they consigned Jevvi's body to the deeps, wrapped in a piece of old sailcloth with a ballast stone tied to his ankles.
    They continued northeast, out into the vastness of the ocean with only the Land itself far ahead.

CHAPTER THREE
    It was the fifth summer of the war. The fifth summer in which red flames licked up from burning villages. The fifth summer in which the sounds of battle rang out beneath the trees and on the beaches. The fifth summer that saw the grim burials of the fallen, whether by solemn mots in village burial grounds or lines of men aboard the Shasht fleet as the dead, with rocks tied between their ankles, were dropped overboard.
    By this fifth summer, no one in the Land wondered why the army of men had been sent to haunt their lives. It was simply accepted in the way of any other catastrophe.
    Aboard the Shasht fleet, the war had become a nightmare without end. But no one ever thought about pulling up anchor and sailing away to find some other place to start the colony. Too much blood had been spent fighting for this land already. They were men, and they had been sent to take this land for the Empire. They would do it, or they would die trying.
    Toshak, the former professional swordmot who had once rebelled at the training at the Royal Academy of Sulmo, was now the acclaimed commanding general of the army of the Land, both North and South. Having driven the Shasht army out of Sulmo before they could burn the city, Toshak and his soldiers had enjoyed plenty of leverage in establishing that unified command.
    Relations were still difficult with King Gueillo and his inner circle, of course. Some members of the Sulmese nobility would always nurse the old grievance. For them, the dream of Old Sulmo would not die. Among their circle, cooperation with Dronned and the other Northern kingdoms was regarded as subjugation.
    For this and other reasons, Toshak had kept his army's base in Dronned. But within the past year he had been forced to spend most of his time in Sulmo again, where the Shasht fleet had chosen to place its forts.
    Fortunately, the disaster of the battle of Farnem-Chillum had helped the Sulmese people to see the need for cooperation. Outside of the royal court, the friction that had occasionally troubled Thru Gillo and other Northern officers during the second summer of the war had vanished.
    But for Toshak, it was always present. The King had never forgiven Toshak for resigning his commission in the Royal Army of Sulmo and leaving the realm to become a vagabond in the North.
    He refused to let it bother him. He had a war to fight. It was a difficult campaign as well, for it forced him to keep large forces in the field all the time. Toshak understood the enemy's rationale. The men were far from home, and they were desperate to keep their casualties low. They had suffered terribly in the first two years of the war, even worse than the folk of the Land. The war of forts was a clever strategy for the Shasht fleet, for it built on their strengths. With the freedom of the seas they had the ability to land and build a strong point before the army of the Land could respond and destroy it. Thus, it was a war of sieges, which allowed the Shasht to continue the war without risking many lives.
    On a warm evening of early summer, Toshak sat on the bluffs below Criek's Rock on the coast of Blana. With him was a group of special troops, gathered from the mountain towns of Creton. Known as the Mountaineers, they were all good rock climbers.
    Toshak had