Xessa wound through an ancient rockfall, picking her way among slabs taller than she was and over others smaller than an infant. Her knees buckled and she caught herself just in time, forced them straight and kept walking, bouncing gently between the rocks on her cut feet, one hand holding Ossa in place until she regained her balance.
She came around the shoulder of the hill, but her sob of relief caught in her throat. The city wasn’t there. Xessa blinked, confused, and then quartered the landscape and saw it, far below. Of course, she was too high, had come out onto the scree field near the Swift Water’s main tributary. Deep enough for a Drowned.
Should she go back the way she’d come, and potentially run into any warriors tracking her, or risk the water and head through the scree, which would slip and roll beneath her torn feet and alert any Drowned to her presence?
Ossa butted her head with his and Xessa clung to a boulder and lowered herself onto her knees, biting her lip at the shuddering in her thighs. The dog slithered off her shoulders and looked up at her, then he sniffed the wind and gave her the predator signal from behind and downhill.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
Xessa was out of options. She took a deep breath, clicked three times, and whistled once. Home.
Ossa cocked his head but she cast him and he went, and Xessa sat back on her heels and watched her brave, clever dog race downhill through the scree towards the city, limping but running, running for her. One of them at least would make it back and if whoever found him had any sense, they’d realise something was amiss.
Xessa hauled herself back to her torn feet and picked her way after the dog through the scree, arms out for balance and praying the stream ahead of her was free of Drowned. Not much to eat up here. Not much to sing for. Please be empty. Please be empty. Malel, ancestors, let it be empty.
The ground slid from under her and then came up to meet her knees, the palms of her hands and then her forehead. Lightning exploded behind her eyes and the pain in her feet was so great the thought of standing made her want to weep. But Ossa was running, running on three legs. If he could do it, so could she. Xessa pushed herself back up and shambled downhill towards the city shining palely through wind and rain and oncoming gloom. And then someone was coming towards her, a dark blur through the downpour.
‘Enemy,’ she signed, the gestures big so they could be seen. ‘Northern slope. Enemy.’
It had been Toxte, of course – her husband had come looking when the day had worn on and she hadn’t returned. He’d slung her arm over his shoulders and raced her downhill and in through the city gate. He’d shouted for Ossa and then shouted what Xessa had told him and caused a panic. But a necessary one.
Now Xessa was in the upper healing cave, despite her protests, while Beztil swabbed at the myriad cuts and bruises decorating feet, shins, and knees, her elbows and hands and forehead. Beztil, not Tayan.
‘Tayan?’ She signed his name. Then: ‘Pechaqueh. I saw Pechaqueh on the northern slope. Eagle feathers. And red ones.’ Panic flared within her. ‘Shaman, where’s Tayan?’
Beztil wouldn’t answer and Xessa looked at Toxte, who was bandaging Ossa’s hind leg. She wanted to ask, but the dog needed healing too – even more than she did. She only had cuts and bruises. She shoved Beztil’s hands away and snapped her fingers rudely in her face. ‘Where is Tayan?’ she repeated.
Beztil’s cheeks puffed out and her shoulders slumped, but she met Xessa’s gaze. ‘The last anyone saw him,’ she signed with obvious reluctance, ‘he’d gone up to the womb to speak to that fucking monster you caught. He’s become obsessed.’ Beztil pressed her lips together and then softened. ‘More warriors followed those you first saw, hundreds, thousands more. It wasn’t a scout or a patrol – they’ve cut us off from the womb. We can’t get to him,’ she added as Xessa lunged upright.
Beztil grabbed her arm. ‘No one can. He’s trapped.’
The enemy had come, and not just above them on Malel’s sacred skin. They’d marched out of the jungle below, too, taking up position on the city’s western flank, where the slope was clear of river, orchards and fields – a wide, open space that was going to run with rain and blood and be scattered with corpses. Where all their fates would be decided.
The high elders of Tokob and Yaloh spoke from the ritual platform in the largest festival plaza not long before dusk, asking for calm and for every non-fighter proficient with bow and blowpipe to defend the walls the next morning.
Xessa, Toxte, and most of the ejab had a place near the front of the crowd as normal, and Xessa watched High Elder Apok’s face for … she didn’t know what for. A way out. Some way to rescue Tayan and the ejab guarding the Drowned in the womb. A plan that wouldn’t see them all dead or captives at the end of it.
She was shaking and leaning on Toxte’s hip, the sole of her left foot cut and swollen, hating the feel of the bandages and the soft doeskin boot she had to wear to protect the wound from dirt. It cut her off from the ground, left her feeling out of sorts and irritable, and it was such a little thing amid the horror of the Melody being here, but perhaps that was why she couldn’t stop focusing on it. It was small, and so it was easy. Understandable. Nothing about the Pechaqueh greed and hate and arrogance was understandable.
Toxte’s arm tightened around her chest as she fidgeted again, and his mouth brushed the top of her ear in a kiss. She turned her head into it.
Apok kept on speaking, Elder Rix signing his words. Xessa looked around the faces closest. Fear was the overriding emotion everywhere, closely followed by despair. They were cut off from the fields and the harvest that would be ready any day now. They were cut off from the Swift Water and now had to rely solely on rainfall – and the Wet was ending. All of the Paws who’d been fighting in Tokoban, pushed relentlessly and inevitably backwards, were now considered lost. They couldn’t expect reinforcements. They were surrounded, and they were outnumbered. They had non-combatants to protect.
‘Our only option is to defeat them in open combat,’ Apok was saying and Xessa felt the ripple of disbelief go through the crowd. Toxte’s arm tightened on her ribs until he shortened her breath and she squirmed to loosen his hold. ‘If we wait behind our walls, we are only ever going to be on the defensive. If we attack, we have the chance to break their spirits and overwhelm their numbers. Our warriors will march out at dawn.’
There was another ripple and Apok and Rix both paused as the crowd shifted. The high elder glanced sideways at Rix, and the eja elder’s shoulders slumped before he nodded. Xessa stood straighter, one hand fisted in Toxte’s tunic.
‘Now that the Swift Water and the fields and orchards are cut off, the council asks the ejab to volunteer for the reserve. You would only fight if there was no other choice, but we cannot deny that it may come down to you being the last line of defence between our civilians and the Empire. We ask you to think carefully and come to the council house at dawn with your answer.’
Shit and fuck.
Being asked to fight was far, far worse than being ordered to. Xessa and Toxte stared at each other and the panic Xessa had felt the night before they’d been supposed to capture the Drowned roared back until she was dizzy with it. She held on even tighter, and Toxte tilted his head in silent query: Will you fight? She made herself scan the crowd, take in the non-fighters, the parents holding children tight against them, too tight, crushing.
The Sky City needed her and Xessa had always given it what it needed. She firmed her jaw against the promise of tears, of raw denial, and looked back to Toxte. She nodded, jerky and graceless, and his eyes slipped closed as anguish flickered like lightning across his face, his need to protect her weighed against their joint need to protect the city. Their duty.
‘I’ll be at your side for all of it,’ he signed, fierce as a hawk, his eyes blazing. ‘I won’t leave you. I’m never leaving you.’ Then he pulled her in against him and wrapped hard, warm arms around her. She let him, never wanting to move from the safe darkness against his chest. C
ouldn’t, because the circle of his arms and the press of his body was safe, whereas the world had been revealed to be anything but.
She held him, because war had come, and not just to Tokoban and the Sky City. War had come to Xessa – and she wasn’t ready.
ILANDEH
Sky City, Malel, Tokoban
19th day of the grand absence of the Great Star
Ilandeh stared down on the Sky City from above. The march around the base of the hill and then up the northern flank had been brutal – mudslides and flash floods had barred their route between the rolling hills, forcing them up and over each one until they were exhausted and mud-splattered to the thighs.
They’d had to get there by the tenth day, though, or risk leaving the High Feather and his Talons vulnerable, and so the mixed force of macaws, eagles, slaves, and dogs had pushed on relentlessly despite the weather and the slick mud and rock beneath their feet. They’d done it, just, reaching their position in the afternoon of the tenth day. Feather Calan had allowed a two-hour rest around the curve of the hill out of sight of the city so the warriors could regain some strength, and then they traversed the slope and filtered out to take control of the ground between the Sky City and Malel’s womb.
It was the first time any of the warriors except Ilandeh had seen the city up close, its location and defences and walls and fields. The murmuring had been quiet and disciplined as they analysed what it was they were going to take, and then just a little lighter with relief when they spotted High Feather Pilos’s Talons marching up out of the jungle below. Everything – everyone – was in place and on time.
Below the expanse of limestone walls enclosing the city were thick orchards and terraced fields green with crops and the double loop of the Swift Water that bent back on itself as it rushed downhill. Each formed a series of obstacles difficult to navigate – defences that prevented a straight uphill assault. Instead, and at Ilandeh’s recommendation, Pilos would attack the western wall and curve his warriors up to meet Ilandeh’s above the city. Feather Calan’s forces would filter down to give battle at the eastern walls.
A three-pronged attack that would drive the defenders down through the city and into their orchards, fields and to the river – their own defences becoming a series of traps to hold them still so the Melody could round them up. Eventually.
The arrival above and around the sides of the city had caused chaos among the hundreds of refugees camped outside the walls and tall, barred gates. A trampled track leading up northwest told of many who’d already fled, while the rest screamed and begged and beat at the gates. Northwest would lead to nothing but the salt pans marking the border between Ixachipan and Barazal. They could be chased down and roped once the city fell. There was nowhere for any of them to go except into the Empire and under the song.
It seemed Ilandeh had done her work in the Sky City a little too well. Her fostering of bad blood between Tokob, Yaloh, and Xentib seemed to have blossomed into something bigger than she had anticipated, causing the Sky City to refuse entry to desperate civilians fleeing the Melody. She wondered whether any of them had come from the towns below, and whether that meant her Whispers had been discovered and executed. She breathed a swift prayer that they were safe. Either way, divisions in the defenders was work well done, as it was always easier to knap a flint that already had a crack in it.
And if there were any Whispers among those pleading for entry, she knew some at least would have scaled the walls during the night. By now they’d be ready to act, disguised as Yaloh and clad in a dead person’s clothes.
The Melody had slept out on the slope, hundreds of small fires lighting the hill around the city, double watches to prevent a night attack that hadn’t come. Ilandeh had been surprised by that – the Tokob and Yaloh facility with ambush and trap had convinced her they’d be fighting from the moment they emerged into sight of the city.
Still, it would be over soon. She and Calan had crept down to Pilos’s position once night had fallen to co-ordinate their attack, and now they just had to wait and see how the defenders would fight – whether they’d march out to try and break the forces arrayed against them, or whether slave warriors and dog warriors would take the walls and hold them for macaws and then eagles to wash the streets with blood.
Pilos’s order was to give the defenders until halfway to highsun; if they hadn’t surrendered or come out to fight by then, the Talons would assault the walls. All around Ilandeh stood the rest of the macaws, fierce and bright in their war paint and their salt-cotton armour, feathers and spears and glass blades winking in the morning light.
As they watched, the gates opened and warriors flooded out to both east and west. And then the upper gate opened too. They were making a stand of it.
Ilandeh glanced downhill and saw Calan hold her spear and small shield crossed above her head; she returned the gesture. ‘Let them come!’ the Flight shouted as the lines around her shifted. ‘Do them that honour, for though they fight for the wrong reasons, they are brave.’
The Tokob began their war chant and the Yaloh wove theirs through it, and as it rose into the sky it sent a warning shudder down the length of her back. It wasn’t full of fire and vengeance and promises of retribution; it was a quiet defiance, eerie, and hauntingly beautiful. If the sacred song of the Empire could be given human voice, it might sound something like this. She shuddered again at such blasphemy and whispered a soft, fervent prayer for forgiveness to the holy Setatmeh.
The Melody’s own chant rose sporadically along the lines and grew in strength and vigour and Ilandeh added her voice to it, feeling it lift her and fill her with righteousness. Their chant too was beautiful, and it drove them all, speeding their hearts and their blood. When they reached the moment within the song that called for movement, for passion and fire, they began to flow downhill towards the enemies who would one day be happy, productive members of the Empire.
‘Range,’ called voices up and down the line as they ran, and the front ranks loosed their arrows. They thrummed through the morning and the Melody flowed behind them, three volleys and others coming back to meet them, and then they reached the second range and their throwers launched their big, heavy javelins.
An arrow buzzed past, close enough to make Ilandeh flinch. It punched into the macaw behind, stealing his legs from beneath him. Downhill, Calan’s slave warriors and dog warriors were falling too, ragged holes opening up in the front line. The eagles would go in last.
Slingers now, almost more dangerous than the archers, for an arrow in the arm could be removed and bandaged, but a stone in the same place would shatter bone. The storm of missiles got heavier and more macaws fell. Unlike Calan’s eagles, they didn’t have a screen of slave warriors to take the brunt of the initial fight. The small wooden shield in Ilandeh’s off hand was to bat away spear thrusts, but she angled it over her head as best she could and kept on running. The faster she got in with the enemy, the better.
The lines came together and shattered, the Tokob breaking up into their Paw formations, six groups of five fighting as a unit and supporting each other. The Yaloh split too, both tribes accustomed to fighting within the close confines of the jungle, where lines and large groups were impossible and battles were normally only a couple of hundred warriors fighting short, intense duels. It was easy to flow through the gaps they left in their own lines and so engage the rear fighters as well as those at the front. The defenders’ second wave was immediately engulfed, leaving them no reinforcements.
Ilandeh ducked under the swing of a club that would have taken off her head and punched out with her spear; the woman batted it away, stepped inside Ilandeh’s reach and swung again. The Flight dropped to her belly, rolled onto her back and stabbed up, raking open the woman’s leg. Her opponent screamed and smashed the club down, but she rolled again, made it to one knee and punched the flint tip of her spear through her enemy’s stomach.
There were still snatches of the war chant echoing across the hill, but most
ly the sounds were grunts, curses, and shrieks of pain, the clack and clash of weapons, and the meaty tear of flesh and gristle.
Two Tokob came for her, one from each side, their paint bright and their faces hateful. Ilandeh took a hatchet on the small shield tied to her forearm, then wrapped her hand around one warrior’s elbow and yanked hard, pulling him onto her spear and spinning them both so the second man’s thrust killed him instead of her. He stopped in horror, screaming a name, and she wrenched her spear free and used it to steal his voice and the name both, punching into his neck and tearing back out.
Something hit Ilandeh in the back and she went down hard, attacker on top of her and the side of her face slapping mud. They rolled together a few strides down the slope with Ilandeh pinned inside arms and legs thick with muscle and her spear flailing as they tumbled. They came to a dizzy stop and the Whisper dragged her knife out of her belt; the fall had broken off part of the obsidian blade and the remnant was shorter than her little finger, but with two jagged, wicked points. She rammed it into the leg that was pressing on hers and dragged upwards towards the hip.
The scream set Ilandeh’s ear ringing but he let go and she let momentum carry her over, rolling until she faced him again. There was a lot of blood but not enough to indicate she’d hit the killing place, and he had a knife too. It hit her in the chest, punching into – through – her salt-cotton so she felt it slide, hot and agonising, across her collarbone. That was a killing place too, but her knife was already in his armpit, slicing muscles and nerves and taking the strength from his hand.
The Stone Knife Page 42