Kalindos was burning. He took a deep breath to counter the crushing feeling in his chest. Better that their home disappear, better it rise in sparks and ashes than fall into the hands of tyrants.
“You’ll never take us,” he whispered.
He stretched out his hands, feeling each separate blaze around the circle, drawing them together into one strong beast. He had only to feed it.
Within the ring, soldiers yelled to one another, their voices charged with fear and anger. But not pain. Not yet.
A house exploded. Dravek put his hands to his face, slippery with sweat. By now someone had died because of him, maybe several people. He was no better than his father.
The fire stretched into the distance, curving as the Wolves ran around the circle, lighting more sections of the ring. The shouts of the Descendants came closer.
Dravek finally opened his eyes. Kalindos burned like a nighttime sun. The wind howled hot and hard, stoking the flames into a massive, roaring conflagration.
Now the soldiers screamed. Dravek covered his ears and backed away across the firebreak. Some had reached the ring, seeking the entrance that no longer existed. A few tried to climb over in panic. One made it as far as the top of the wall before Endrus shot him in the neck.
The Descendants spread out, searching for a safe place to climb. A group of them shouted ahead to his left. He cursed as he realized the ring in that section was burning too fast. Soon it would crumble and leave a gap, and they would all pour through.
The wind shifted, wafting the smoke his way. Even if the archers could hear him over the roaring flames, they could no longer see their targets. It was up to him.
Dravek knelt in the dirt, closed his eyes and fired.
The flames streamed from the wall and enveloped the soldiers. They ran and fell, burning. He shrieked with them.
There would be more. They would find another hole.
Get up, a voice inside him ordered.
He rose and staggered around the burning circle, firing again and again as the desperate soldiers tried to break through.
They raped your mother, the voice reminded him. They killed your grandfather. Now they’re killing you.
If he survived this night, he’d be dead inside. He could feel his soul crumble to ashes like the wall in front of him.
A pain spiked his chest, and he realized how short and rapid his breath had become. The fire was devouring the air and replacing it with soot.
He turned to warn the others, but his knees gave way and he found himself on the ground. The air here was cooler, sweeter, and he wanted to curl up on the dirt and go to sleep, where he’d never hear the screams again.
A hand seized the back of his shirt collar. “Let’s go!” Daria yelled. “Ladek gave the retreat order.”
“Not yet.” He gave a deep, hacking cough. “Some might escape.”
“No one’s getting out of there unless they learn to fly. Now get up!”
He placed a foot under himself but couldn’t rise. “Where’s the rest of our squad?”
“Endrus has my father right behind you. We need to get to the rendezvous point together.” Daria knelt beside him, her face smeared in soot, blurring in his vision. “Hold still and don’t fight me.”
She jerked him to his feet, then bent and grabbed him around the hips. Then she stood, lifting him over her shoulder. The world tipped, and he yelped. She secured his arm around her neck and began to run. He saw nothing but Daria’s boot heels and the ground passing beneath him as he slipped into a semiconscious fog.
When Daria finally set him down, he opened his eyes to see they were at the rendezvous point, on the forested trail to Tiros. He sat up, head throbbing. The night filled with the sounds of coughing, groaning and vomiting. Through the trees, more than a mile away, Kalindos burned.
Elora sponged his face with cool water. “Can you speak?”
He choked out a hoarse “Yes,” then asked her, “Did we all get out safe?”
“So far.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Adrek’s in bad shape, but I think he’ll make it. Endrus, I can’t say. If I’d been beside them at the fire, I could’ve stopped it, but the heat and smoke—”
“Where are they?”
Elora helped him stand and led him over to where Adrek and Endrus lay side by side on stretchers. Daria knelt between them, holding one hand of each. Dravek collapsed to sit beside her.
“We did it,” she whispered to the Cougar men. “We got every one.” She kissed her father’s hand. “They’ll never hurt us again.”
Adrek’s gaze wandered to meet hers. He opened his mouth.
Elora touched the side of his head. “Don’t try to speak.”
Endrus stared up at the night sky, chest heaving in short, liquidy breaths, face contorted in agony. Elora knelt beside him and chanted, filling his torso with a white light. It was only a painkilling spell, Dravek knew. He couldn’t be healed.
The Cougar’s face relaxed in response to Elora’s touch, but as the minutes went by, his breaths became shallower, and Dravek found himself holding each of his own breaths until the next time Endrus’s chest rose and fell.
Finally Endrus breathed no more. Daria let out a long, choking sob. Dravek touched her shoulder, knowing she might lash out. Instead she wrapped her arms around his neck as she cried.
“No…” Adrek groaned in grief for his friend, his own breath harsh and ragged.
One by one, the other Kalindons came and knelt by Endrus’s head, laying their hands on his hair or his shoulders as they whispered prayers.
Finally Elora tugged Endrus’s blanket to cover his face. “We’ll take him with us and have his funeral when we reach the others in the mountains.”
When they made camp that night, Daria came to Dravek as he stood guard near Endrus’s body.
“Father’s doing better,” she said.
“Thanks to Endrus. Didn’t you say he carried Adrek out of the fire?”
She nodded. “Elora said Endrus died because he was first phase. His body just couldn’t handle it.”
“You’re only first phase.”
“I didn’t take nearly as much smoke as they did.” She put her hands in her pockets. “Why should we have to have children to make us strong? It’s not fair.”
He shook his head. He’d given up trying to fathom the Spirits’ ways.
“Thank you for saving my life,” he told his sister.
“Oh, good, you didn’t forget.” She sat beside him, her boots shifting the dry leaves. “Are you going back to Asermos?”
“After Endrus’s funeral. I have to find Lycas.” And Sura, he didn’t add out loud.
“I’m going with you.”
“Lycas can always use more archers.” He paused. “Did you kill anyone in that battle?”
“Wasn’t much of a battle.” She hunched her shoulders. “We roasted them like pheasants. The ones I shot were already on fire, so it’s hard to say what killed them.”
He wiped his nose, where the acrid scent of burning flesh seemed to linger. “I wonder what the Ilions will do now.”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but whatever it is, they’ll have a thousand fewer men to do it with.”
11
Kirisian Mountains
In the hour before sunrise, Lycas sat inside his tent at the guerrilla headquarters, examining the Asermon map in the lantern light. Only two vineyards remained unburned, but they were closest to the village itself and therefore the most dangerous to attack.
Lycas heard the heavy, uneven footsteps of Medus approaching his tent. Though at fifty-five, the Badger man was as strong and fierce as ever, his time in the Ilion prison had left him with a noticeable limp.
“Come in,” he said, before Medus announced himself.
“Morning.” The brawny man swept aside the flap. “You asked to see me?”
Medus’s position as Asermon police chief and his years in the village’s resistance—not to mention the time he spent working with th
e Ilions when they first arrived—gave Lycas insights he’d be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. He’d made the Badger his executive officer over the Kirisian Mountain troops, which now numbered in the hundreds. Each company of a hundred men was authorized to independently carry out attacks on Asermon targets of opportunity. Little by little, they were pressing in on his home village.
Without preliminaries, Lycas announced, “I’m gathering the Kirisian battalion for an all-out assault on the hamlet.”
“Hmm.” Medus rubbed his considerable growth of gray-and-blond stubble. “It’s awfully close to Asermos. They could send reinforcements from the garrison.”
“Not if Feras distracts them with an attack of his own.” He held up a sealed parchment. “As I’m ordering him to do.”
The Badger’s eyes gleamed in the lantern light. “Sounds like we’re entering the final phase at last.”
“My hand is being forced.” Lycas crossed the tent to the wall that held the map of Asermos, on which the hamlet was outlined in red. “My scouts tell me they’re moving our people inside. Our sympathizers from the outlying farms, the ones who’ve given us food and supplies all these years. The Descendants are putting them in the hamlet, then giving their properties to Ilion settlers.”
“They’re stealing our farms out from under us?” Medus’s hand crept over the thick club on his belt. “It’s an outrage.”
“It’s genius.” Lycas paced in front of the map. “They’ve taken our lifeline. We still have the moral support of the population, but they can’t give us logistical support when they’re penned up in the hamlet. We’ll have to start raiding farms to feed our troops, which hurts our reputation as friends of the people.”
“Can these Asermons leave the hamlet if they want?”
“No.” Lycas picked up the latest intelligence briefing from the scouts. “Reports indicate that the relocation is meant to be permanent. The hamlet is basically a small, fenced-in village. The residents have adequate food, decent housing—even jobs. They have everything but their homes and their freedom.”
“For how long?” Medus asked.
“Until the Ilions have beaten us.”
Medus scoffed. “They’re delusional. We’re on the verge of winning.”
“Maybe.” He folded his arms and stared at the mark of the hamlet on the map. “But with a thousand hostages, the Ilions can demand our surrender.”
“So when do we attack?” Medus asked.
“Within the week. One of my scouts should arrive soon with better plans of the hamlet—the layout, what time they change the guards, that sort of thing.” He handed a stack of sealed orders to Medus. “See that these are sent right away. We need our battalion here, and Feras at the Asermon garrison, before it’s too late.”
“Yes, sir.” Medus snatched the orders and walked out, his hurried pace nearly disguising his injury.
After a few silent moments, footsteps crunched outside, on the ridge overlooking the distant Asermon hill country below. Lycas recognized his daughter’s slow, sullen gait, her boots scraping the rocky dust. She was no doubt pining over Dravek again. He’d barely been able to look at her since the incident in the hayloft, and when he had, her eyes had held no shame.
Vara spoke outside, near Sura.
“They say that war is ten percent terror and ninety percent boredom.”
Sura harrumphed. “This is both at the same time.”
The two women were conversing in what they must have thought were low voices, but he could hear them clearly.
“Dravek will be fine,” Vara said. “His training over the last year has taught him control.”
Lycas almost snorted. Dravek didn’t look very controlled when he was tearing off Sura’s clothes last week. Lycas’s temples pounded at the memory.
“We’re in love,” Sura said. “I don’t care who knows it.” The volume of her voice rose, as if she knew Lycas were listening.
“I suspect I’m in a tiny minority, but I don’t judge you.” Vara sighed. “This world grants us so little joy, we should take it wherever we can get it, and in however small a dose.”
Lycas rubbed away the tight spot in his chest. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shared joy of any kind with anyone.
“So you think we can be together?” Sura asked Vara.
“Not if you both want to keep your Spirit.”
“What if that’s just a silly superstition?”
“Maybe it’s silly for the more common Animals. But the rare ones like us should spread our talents across the lands. After your apprenticeships, you and Dravek owe it to our people to move to different places that need Snakes. There’s a practical reason behind all of the Spirits’ decrees.”
“I don’t care about the practical reasons.”
“Of course you don’t. You’re young and in love. But that doesn’t change the fact that if you give in to your feelings, Snake could take back Her Aspect. Perhaps another Spirit would claim you.”
Lycas shook his head. How could anyone consider changing Spirits? He would be nothing without Wolverine.
“What would you be,” Sura said to Vara, “if you couldn’t be a Snake?”
“Insane.” Vara gave a laugh, which Sura echoed bitterly. “In any case,” the older Snake said, “it’s not a decision to make until after the war.”
Sura snorted. “I’ve heard that phrase, ‘after the war,’ for ten years now. It’s become nonsense, like saying, ‘on top of the sky.’”
Lycas’s gaze fell to the bottom of his tent’s door, under which the first scarlet light of morning now shone. I’m trying, he thought. I’ll end this war, if I have to swamp the Asermon Valley with Ilion blood.
“Look!” Sura cried.
Lycas heard Vara suck in a slow, horrified breath. “They did it. They really did it.”
He shoved aside the door and stalked to the edge of the ridge, where the women stood, transfixed by a sight in the east.
A dark veil covered the horizon, shimmering brown and purple into the morning sky. The haze turned the sun’s first rays to bright pink, and Lycas could look straight at the orb without squinting.
Kalindos burned.
Throughout the camp, others left their tents to gawk at the distant cloud. Two of Lycas’s best Wolverines, Kalindon natives themselves, dropped to their knees and prayed silently together, faces contorted.
Lycas had expected to feel elation at this moment, knowing the enemy had been vanquished on a larger scale than ever, knowing that Ilios had begotten its own fate.
But dread slithered under his skin. Kalindos had just defeated itself. He had ordered it.
All at once his strength flowed from him. He stared at his hands, flexing his fingers as the power left their tips, coursed hot down his wrists and up into his shoulders, then down his body, all the way to his feet. As the power slunk away from his body, it left behind a cold, limp sensation he barely recognized.
Weakness.
Lycas raised his gaze to the sooty eastern sky. “No…”
“What’s happening?” shouted one of the Kalindon Wolverines. “I can’t feel my fingers.”
Lycas saw them stare at their hands in bewilderment, as he had done a moment ago. Past them, another Wolverine staggered out of his tent, clutching at his chest.
Vara’s voice came from behind him. “Lycas, what’s wrong with the men?”
He tried to speak, to reassure everyone that it was just a momentary disturbance.
But the sudden void sucked out his breath, and he fell to his knees, unable to utter the terrible, world-ending truth.
Wolverine was dead.
For the first time in over a year, Rhia entered the Gray Valley. It looked as lifeless as she’d remembered it. The landscape had no color of its own, but was only a monochromatic reflection of the light shone upon it—now an unseen red sun.
The dead tree loomed as black and menacing as ever. She could swear it had grown.
She glanced behind her at the fog that
led back to her world. She would never admit it out loud to Crow, but she harbored a secret fear of being trapped in the Gray Valley.
Rhia waited several moments for someone to appear, then turned right and began to walk. She didn’t like to travel to the left, toward the cave of the never-born. Crow had taught her that He’d reserved that place as a womblike haven for those who died before their birth. She understood that for them it continued the comforting presence of their mothers’ bodies. But it still made her skin crawl.
“Nilik!” she called as she walked, her voice and steps echoing against the cliffs on either side. She searched the rocky facade for movement along the ridges, where disconsolate souls often lurked.
“I know you’re not here,” she whispered. Nilik had gone to his death willingly and for a purpose that meant the world to him.
But Marek had insisted she look. He’d slept little on their journey into the Kirisian Mountains to meet his fellow Kalindons. The impending attack on his village, coupled with the anniversary of their son’s death, had turned his thoughts dark and obsessive. The newest Descendant atrocity had opened Marek’s old wounds, memories of the things he’d done to keep Nilik alive.
Footsteps rattled the rocky soil behind her. Rhia stopped and closed her eyes. Please don’t let me be wrong. Please don’t let it be my son.
She turned. Sirin stood on the trail, looming over her, his skin and hair absorbing the dull red light around them. Only his pale blue eyes seemed alive.
He was almost close enough to touch—not that Rhia would try. She knew better.
She stepped back, away from his glowering face that held no forgiveness.
“Traitor,” he whispered. “You put me here.”
She kept her voice steady. “You died in battle, not because of what happened in that Asermon prison.”
“One thing leads to another,” he hissed. “The arm I broke in that tub cost me my life in the fight.”
“You said it had healed.”
“It shattered at the impact of the first sword.” He held up his arm, which stretched whole and straight in this world. “I’d broken limbs before and had full use of them in less time than that.”
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