“And what of our animals?”
Chandi didn’t recognize the voice.
“Divide them however you see fit, but be quick about it!” The guard stepped to the side of the door and the stream began moving again, the dam removed.
CHAPTER TEN
Shahin could feel the muscles in Kamari’s sides bunch and release as they galloped through the city back to the Ra-Vidhyaji. He hoped the shopkeeper would forgive him for her missing oil. The flint was his own, the torches robbed from throughout the city, but he needed oil to make this work.
If I get to try it. The gate was visible now in the blue moonlight, a shredded mess hanging open on its hinges. On the road, guardsmen were trying valiantly to hold back the press of creatures, and cries of tchra! tchra! rang above their voices. Abandoned wagons from within the city were being dragged out into the road to create a barricade behind the soldiers. He urged Kamari on as someone among the guards screamed.
Shahin pulled up. Kamari pranced restlessly until the barricade was in place and all the guards had escaped behind it. Then he spurred her forward, more violently than intended. She leapt into the mass of guardsmen holding morale by a thread.
His ribs were starting to ache in earnest now. He grimaced as he tossed the jar of oil into the middle of the barricade. It was still in the air when he began throwing torches after it. A bare moment later he hurried Kamari back out of the way of the trained soldiers as the oil and wood caught.
He did not look back until he was sheltered in the shadow of a building behind the fighting. The barricade of wagons blazed. The guards who still lived wasted arrows against the monsters’ carapaces from behind the wall of fire. Nearby buildings smoldered; they would burn in earnest soon. The torches and oil had been well-spent, Shahin thought. Anything to buy us time to get away.
The monsters, though, were growing bolder in the face of the fire.
One of them reached out a pincer and cracked a slat of the burning wood in half. The guards took a step back; they looked like they wanted to run. Shahin knew he did.
Segmented scorpions the size of a camel, the creatures could have come to life off the city gates: all that was missing were the human heads. He had an arm wrapped across his chest to help fight the stabbing pain in his ribs. He wondered if there was anything more he could do here. He’d done too much, these last few weeks; he was sure Nikita would have something to say on the matter.
One of the guard commanders rode behind the bedraggled line of archers, shouting at them to shore up their courage. Another volley of arrows flew, and another volley of arrows bounced harmlessly off the invaders’ shells.
The creatures chewed away at the barricade now. Large sections of the wood were mostly charcoal, and the wagons collapsed in a gout of flame. The commander’s horse reared as the monsters crawled across the wreckage, flames licking up their legs. Are they actually the color of blood, or is that a trick of the light?
“Fall back!” The order was issued, and the commander gathered his horse back under control. Shahin marveled at the man’s nerve.
Those words were all the guardsmen needed. The retreat was barely restrained; some few of them took off at a dead run to join the stream of evacuees headed for the salt mines. More formed ranks to handle the rearguard. Their commander sat his horse, observing them, his face still hidden in shadow.
Movement behind the commander caught Shahin’s attention: the first of the creatures was within striking distance. He heeled Kamari into a gallop out into the main street, not realizing he intended to rescue the man until she was already moving. Kamari pulled at the reins. She turned herself a fraction of a second before Shahin gave the signal.
Shahin snatched the commander’s reins under the bridle. The other horse leapt forward a half-step behind Kamari; its rider bit off a shout. A sharp clack rang off the cobblestones just behind them and suddenly the other horse outpaced Kamari. Shahin dislocated his shoulder to keep from being pulled out of the saddle, urging the mare faster to come even with the other man.
“You alright? –Bahadur?” The other man looked just as surprised to see him.
* * *
They ran for the bazaar through the hollow clang of metal on stone, the inhuman cries of the beasts, the all-too-human screams of terror and death. Bahadur said they’d lost the walls almost immediately. The creatures were advancing behind them, and behind them the city burned. But the fire had bought them time.
There were as many guards as civilians in the bazaar, streaming in from both south and east, and as many guards still fighting a rearguard as those who had joined the exodus. Shahin still had hold of Bahadur’s bridle to keep him from joining the hopeless fray. He had no intention of letting the man die now, not when he’d already injured himself to rescue his captor. He was a little surprised not to hear protests from the other man. Shahin glanced over his aching shoulder; Bahadur rode with clenched teeth.
Their rearguard shattered. Some of the people on foot sprinted well enough to keep up with the horses. They cornered hard in the bazaar, joining the civilian stragglers and fleeing guardsmen.
A muffled boom sounded to the north.
Shahin had to release Bahadur’s horse to avoid running people down, but the pounding of hooves behind him did not diminish as he rode. Later he would let himself regret the ones who could not be saved. Later, when he had time to think of things beyond the sound of hoofbeats, Kamari’s trajectory, and the nearness of the monsters’ cries.
Another boom – the mining explosives – and there was the gate, and treacherous open ground. Beasts fought outside the gates. Great tails and rod-like legs shuffled in the sand. They fought each other as much as the Guard, with enough room for the agile or the lucky to escape through. Shahin didn’t dare let himself think about what they might be fighting over.
No way to go but forward: he heeled Kamari on, dodging between the tails of a pair of the eight-legged creatures as they stood off against more of their own. Bahadur was right behind him.
Kamari tried to turn off to the right. Shahin fought to keep her on the road, but then a scream from that direction caught his ear. He let her veer off. They galloped toward a small, shadowed figure transfixed by a giant stinging tail. He leaned out to the side, holding on with nothing but his feet in the stirrups and a hand on the saddle horn as Kamari pounded on.
He scooped the girl up in his extended arm without slowing. The impact popped his shoulder back in place. He groaned; the jolt made stars swim across his vision. She screamed in his ear. He strained bruised muscles and still-mending bones to pull them both upright and into the saddle. Shahin panted, trying to catch his breath again; at least those lessons in trick riding were proving useful.
Kamari swerved back toward the road of her own accord, a half-pace behind Bahadur now. The guardsman rode with his eyes fixed forward, as though he could see a destination.
The girl sat sideways across the pommel of his saddle and clung to his tunic like a child. She might be crying. She certainly had reason to. The night was quiet, now, save for the offset triple-beat of their horses’ hooves. The figure of the man he followed – Bahadur, that was his name – demanded an inordinate amount of attention.
He lost all sense of time or place. The light of the moon never varied. The dunes were replaced by shadowy bluffs that all looked the same. They had to get away, but he only had a fuzzy idea why. His chest felt warm. Was it the girl? The warmth surged with every hoof beat, but never reached his hands. His hands were freezing. He felt more than heard the thud of Kamari’s gait.
They were climbing, he thought. He glanced up into the sky: there was the moon, but it was dim, like a star. The edges of his vision were cloudy. The horses slowed, then stopped. Someone spoke, but the words were muffled by a great distance. The road led into a hole in the side of the bluff in front of him, and then that defined blackness expanded, devouring the bluff and the sky and the horse beneath him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
After l
eaving the courtyard of the caravanserai they were immediately swept up in the torrent of humanity pressing towards the Nal-Rodhyaji in the north. Chandi ran through the city streets with her parents, buffeted from all sides.
They were swept along the guard-lined Rodhyaji. Talikha started to sing over the din of crying children and confused adults. Her voice was as clean and pure as it ever had been, cutting through the thick haze of panic. It was Jahaiya Resh To’N. A few bars in, Uncle Darshan took up the song. One voice at a time, the song was taken up by Chèin’ii and local alike until it was impossible to tell one voice from another.
Quiet resolve rippled through the crowd. Heads lifted, shoulders squared, and the swollen feeling of panic receded. Small children still wailed, but such was expected of younglings.
The sun will rise again – jahaiya resh to’n!
Through every test and trial, so long as men remain,
The world will thrive again – jahaiya resh to’n!
They were approaching the bazaar. A chill ran down Chandi’s spine; she thought she heard the monsters’ calls over the melody. There was a press from behind to hurry even as they spread out to move through the bazaar.
Someone screamed from farther back in the current, then another, and the calls of tchra! tchra! grew more frequent. The undercurrent of panic began to swell again. She ran faster.
Wand’ring the dry and dusty land we sustained,
When the gods refused to answer we fought alone.
The world will thrive again – jahaiya resh t’on!
The singers’ voices were beginning to fade under the strain, but the Nal-Rodhyaji was in sight. Firelight flickered around the gate and at the edges of the road, and now she could hear the monstrous cries from before and behind. The guards urged them still faster.
No one had breath to sing any longer. They ran headlong, squeezing through the narrow corridor the guard had managed to open.
“Keep to the road!” One of the guards bellowed from horseback.
“The salt mines! Run for the mines!” she heard from the other side. The press of bodies Chandi half expected to trample her suddenly lessened and she stumbled.
Where are Mama and Papa? She spotted a familiar-looking back and ran headlong after it. It looked like Remu. Remu could help her find her parents. She began repeating Jahaiya Resh To’N through her head in Mama’s and Uncle Darshan’s pure voices.
Her endurance faltered once. She paused to catch her breath, jostled by those with more stamina, more fear, or both, and her ears picked up the sound of the hunting cry. She lifted lead feet with strength she hadn’t known she had and began to run again, her gaze fixed on the ground in front of her.
Eventually she realized she was more tired than she should have been. The sand under her feet was loose and slid with every step. Where’s the road? She whipped her head around. Behind her, a few scattered figures still labored along the Rodhyaji. Back toward the city, motionless dark shapes littered the ground – more than were still running. Large dark shapes moved among them, their forward-curving tails held aloft, sometimes sparring amongst themselves.
She slid down the dune she had been clamoring up, aiming for the road. Her belly filled with a fearful heat even as the hair on the nape of her neck stood on end. A gentle swish of sand came from the peak of the dune.
The three-count beat of a galloping horse approached, but no one knew she was here. Chandi turned to look over her shoulder. A shadow was rising up out of the sand, a great rounded shape larger than a camel with pincers nearly as big as she was. The creature’s massive tail ended in a spike. The image transfixed her. She wanted to scream, but she could not find her voice any more than she could wrest her eyes away.
There was a blur of motion, and then a man on horseback stood between her and the creature. Time froze as they faced off.
Tchrah-ja! It screamed its blood-curdling cry. A sound of stone clashing against steel. The horseman blocked the pincer strike with the broad, blunt blade of a khanda. He seemed to have no fear of the creature. The horseman parried another claw. The creature’s tail slammed down, but the horse danced out of the way. It was as though she had opened her eyes in an unfamiliar play. She was dancing the lead, and the mysterious horseman was her hero.
It was the monster that backed down, crawling on its eight spike legs toward the city gates in search of easier prey. The horseman did not move until the beast was small on the crest of another dune. Chandi blinked. Suddenly she felt sand chafing her palms, and the day’s warmth on her buttocks through the pleats of her dhoti.
“Are you all right?” The stranger dismounted even as he asked the question. His voice was soft and soothing.
Chandi gripped the hand he extended to help her to her feet. “Yes, I… I think so. What…?”
His grip was firm and his arm steady as she pulled herself back to her feet. “Shhh. Time enough for questions later. First we need to get someplace safe. Will you ride with me?”
“…Okay. Are we going to the salt mines?” He picked her up by the waist as though she were still a youngling and set her on his horse’s loins. Somehow at the moment she didn’t mind. His hands were like Papa’s. She wished she could get a better look at his face, though.
“I’m afraid not.” He swung up into the saddle in front of her.
“Why not? That’s where everyone was supposed to go!” It came out as a wail, but she couldn’t make herself care.
“The salt mines aren’t safe, even for those who made it that far. Many didn’t.” He nudged his horse forward into a walk, perpendicular to the road.
“But how am I supposed to find them if I don’t–”
“Quiet, child! Whoever you’re looking for is probably already dead.”
Dead? They couldn’t be. They were just…
“Even if they did make it to the mines, the chances they could make it out again…” Her unexpected hero heeled his mount into a trot. The bouncing was not enough of an annoyance to divert her.
“You’re lying.”
“What would be the point of that?”
“You don’t know they’re dead.”
“I don’t even know who they are. Now if you’ll be quiet we’re less likely to be eaten.”
Chandi had no voice to answer that. She gave in, and her head dropped until her forehead rested on his back.
“Hold on.” His warning did not come quickly enough, and Chandi nearly lost her seat as he spurred the horse into a gallop.
This can’t be happening… Dead? Mama, Papa, everyone? There had been no end to the monsters along the road. She was certain she had been following a caravaner; how had she lost her way? Did he turn into the desert to avoid one? When did I lose sight of him? But… they can’t be… The whole caravan, just gone? That has to be impossible, right? The wind was cold against her damp cheeks as she turned things over in her head again, and again, and again.
They didn’t gallop far, only long enough to leave the attack behind. Then he slowed his horse to a walk, picking their way between the dunes rather than cresting them. Eventually she drifted off to sleep against the back of her mysterious hero.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Something warm and soft nudged Shahin’s face. He groaned. The earth was hard and stony beneath his bare back. Wait, why am I on the ground? What happened to my tunic? A girl’s voice said something indistinct, and the warm-soft thing nudged him again. Slowly he opened his eyes; he could see again. At the moment, this was limited to the rocky ceiling above and the intelligent eyes of Kamari peering down her muzzle at him, ears pricked. It was daylight. He groaned again and pushed the nose away. When he tried to lever himself up on his elbows he had to bite back a scream. Breath hissed noisily through his teeth as agony lanced out from his chest and he fell back to the ground. The horse whickered.
“Uncle Shahin!” He heard footsteps, and then a girl with long black hair entered his field of view. She was dressed in a linen sari like one of the Chèin’ii. This, then, was the ch
ild he had rescued. She looked to be about twelve. He was struck by the brilliant green of her eyes; she would be beautiful when she grew up.
“Do I… know you?” He didn’t recall seeing her before.
“No, we’ve never spoken. I’m Gita, daughter of Jayanta by Leela. You helped my cousins the night all the trouble started.”
Shahin could feel small fingers running along his ribs.
“Chandi said you seemed like a good sort. You push yourself too hard, though. Auntie Nikita would have a fit if she knew.” She chattered like a squirrel, but her voice and her eyes were tight.
Poor kid… He lifted one hand off the ground to grip the girl’s in strong fingers.
“They… they cut Papa right in half… I saw three women get run through…” She lowered her face so he couldn’t see it any longer, but her shoulders trembled. She held his hand like a vise. Part of him wanted to say something, anything, but nothing would make any difference.
“Weren’t you supposed to be making sure we all stayed hidden over here?” Bahadur’s deep voice was the only announcement of his presence.
“Y-you’re back. Good timing – he just woke up.” She let go of Shahin’s hand with one of her own to wipe her cheeks.
“So you stuck around, too, huh? Mind telling me what happened?”
“Not much to tell. After all your heroics last night you fainted right outside the mine entrance.”
“I just…” Shahin interrupted himself with a sharp breath. “Just did what I had to. I assume you’ll refuse if I tell you to leave me behind?” It wasn’t like they could stay put, wherever they were, and Shahin knew he would just be a liability.
“We owe you our lives, Shahin.”
“I’ll only slow you down. I can’t even get up.”
“We’ll manage.”
Shahin sighed. “Then help me sit up and tie my chest again.”
“But-” Gita tried to protest.
“Yes, I know, ‘restricts the breath of life’ or whatnot. I’ll deal with Nikita’s scolding again if it comes up, but right now I have to be able to move.”
Advent of Ruin (The Qaehl Cycle Book 1) Page 8