Throne of Ruins (The Powers of Amur Book 5)

by J. S. Bangs

  “That was the last of them,” the man shouted. “The palace is empty.”

  “Sure?” Navran asked.

  The man nodded. “And I personally ensured that Srithi, Caupana, Amabhu, and Daladham got away.”

  “Thank you.” Navran turned toward Dastha and shouted, “Come up! Archers, help them.”

  “You heard!” Dastha shouted. “Up the ladders.”

  A pair of wooden ladders descended from the wharf to the dried riverbed, a drop of three yards. Dastha’s defensive force had fallen back to within ten paces of the ladders. When the order came, the rear defenders turned and bounded up the ladders, pulled up by the archers and sent back on their way. The spears themselves started to climb up, the Devoured a few feet behind.

  Dastha reached the top. He immediately turned and stabbed at one of the Devoured at the foot of the ladder with his spear.

  One of the spearmen was grabbed from behind as he climbed. Two archers grabbed his wrists and pulled him up, and a swordsman ran forward and began to hack at the arm holding him. They Devoured’s grip loosened, and he fell.

  “Kick the ladders!” Dastha shouted. The last of the spearmen clambered up one of the ladders, and the archers kicked over the ladder. They hoisted a spearman up to the wharf from the other ladder, with Devoured clinging to his ankles. The spearman sprawled onto the stone pavement. A pair of his comrades slashed through the forearms of the Devoured clinging to him and hurled the ladder back.

  “Quickly!” Dastha shouted. “We’ll only have a few minutes before they get up.”

  “The south road,” Navran said. “The palace was evacuated on the south road. Follow them.”

  “All the way back to Virnas?” Dastha asked.

  “If we make it that far.”

  The spearmen and swordsmen of the front line were bloody and limping. Archers helped them along. They ran.

  The road from the south gate to the palace was a raised stone causeway, with wooden boardwalks sprouting off of it and bursting into clusters of stilt-legged houses. Half the houses were burned, the other half were abandoned. Anyone who still lived in Jaitha had already run.

  Navran saw a handful of civilians from a distance, running south. Farther still, people who must have been Devoured went from ruin to ruin with a swagger.

  He glanced back. The Devoured had put the ladders back in place and were climbing onto the wharf. He and Dastha had a lead of a few hundred yards. They ran.

  The wall of the inner city rose before them, shining with the tigers and the suns of Chaludra. The gate was half-open, the gatehouses abandoned, the clay path on the far side of the gate strewn with the refuse of those fleeing the city.

  “Halt!” Dastha cried just as they reached the gate. The men around him stopped and bent over, panting.

  “What?” Navran said. “We need to run.”

  “We should hold the gate,” Dastha said. “Most defensible point in the city.”

  Navran was about to object, but he saw the point. If nothing else, they would buy more time for those fleeing. “We go through and close it,” he said. “Get up onto the walls from the other side.”

  Dastha glanced up at the wall and the open gate. “I don’t think we can get on top of the walls from the outside. But there’s a stairway that goes onto the ramparts in the gatehouse. We can close the gate, climb up through the gatehouse, and defend the wall from the top.”

  “Do it,” Navran said. He turned to the beleaguered men around them. “Did you hear?”

  Their faces were all warped with exhaustion, but they nodded.

  “Archers go up first,” Dastha said. The archers nodded and entered the door, climbing the stairs to the crenellations atop the wall.

  Navran went into the gatehouse and looked around. Behind the stairs and against the walls were old pieces of armor, broken jars, scraps of leather, and casks of oil. Navran began rummaging through the rubble, trying to find anything useful. He heard Dastha shouting to the men outside. The door of the gate groaned shut, and the counter-weights clicked into place. Navran continued looking around.

  “Nothing,” he muttered.

  The clatter of spearmen on the stairs to the top of the walls. There was a snapping sound, and the groan of stones falling to the ground. The door of the gatehouse creaked shut, and the last of the swordsmen clattered up the stairs to the battlements.

  Dastha spoke. “I cut the ropes holding the counter-weights. They’ll have a damn hard time getting the gates back open. But we have to keep this door closed.”

  “Barricade it,” Navran said. “We’ve got plenty of… stuff.”

  “I’ll help.”

  They heaved a cask of lamp oil against the door, the heaviest thing in the room. Then they piled the rest of the rubbish up around it. Someone shouted from atop the battlements. Dastha ascended halfway up the stairs, then returned bearing a pair of wooden beams that someone had stashed atop the wall.

  “Perfect,” Navran said.

  They found an angle and wedged the beams between the door and the stairs. Navran stamped the beam down to force it to stay, and the beams of the door groaned. Any tighter and the wood would break.

  “That should hold them for a while,” Dastha said. “Up.”

  They climbed.

  The archers had spread themselves out along the battlements, arrows nocked, their faces looking down on the city grimly. Navran looked out across the ruins of the battle.

  The banners of Sadja, of Bidhra, of Gauhala, and of dozens of khadir and majakhadir had been spread along the south bank of the Amsadhu that morning. Navran saw none of them now. Far to the east and west he saw little pockets of resistance, banners which managed to hold ground or make an orderly retreat. They were ignored by the Devoured who poured through the broken center into Jaitha.

  Some of the Devoured approached the gate where Navran and his men waited, but they stopped a hundred feet short of the walls.

  “They know they can’t take the gate,” Dastha whispered.

  “They will eventually,” Navran said. The thought spurred him to action. “We have to look for a way down.”

  He slipped through the archers and began scanning the top of the battlement for anything they could use. A rope. He would give anything for a rope. But he found no ropes atop the battlement, just a handful of scraps of fabric and broken clay lamps.

  He returned to Dastha a few minutes later. Dastha stood watching the Devoured gather below with his hands on his hips.

  “Soon they’ll get their courage,” Dastha said. “Can’t wait much longer.”

  “Clothes,” Navran said. “Tie clothes into a rope to descend the other side.”

  Dastha gave him a grim look. “Probably the best idea. Talk to the men. My lord and king,” he added, as if he had forgotten.

  “I’ll give my own first.” Navran pulled off his white silk kurta and rolled it into a thin cable. “Have to set an example.”

  He went to the archers. The nearest had heard the exchange with Dastha, and without a word he pulled off his undyed cotton kurta and handed it to Navran. “My lord and king,” he said smartly.

  “Watch the Devoured,” Navran said with a nod.

  Ten more men gave him their shirts, and at the end Navran had a long knotted rope of cotton. Lowering it down the outside wall, the rope came within six feet of the ground. Close enough.

  “They’re coming,” Dastha said. His voice was taut with tension. “Hold! Fire!”

  Arrows whizzed from the bows of the archers. Navran grabbed the makeshift rope and ran to Dastha’s side.

  The Devoured approached, a tide that advanced over the dusty riverbed and the scorched boardwalks. Navran saw what they had been waiting for: they were bringing the ladders from the wharf.

  “If they make it….” Navran said.

  Dastha nodded.

  Arrows fell among them, to almost no use. The Devoured ignored the gashes which the arrowheads made with the same indifference they would give to the bites of fl
ies. Men holding the ladder approached the wall and tried to set it close to the battlements.

  “Push it down!” Dastha shouted frantically. “Stop shooting! Just stop the ladders!”

  He waved his sword, but he barely needed to. The archers had already thrown down their bows and attempted to knock back the tops of the ladders. Navran looked down, and his stomach lurched. The ladders were not the only ones. The Devoured came in a mass, pressing up against the base of the wall. Aside from the ladders, they carried boxes and chairs and great clay jars. Anything else they could climb onto. A heap already formed against the bottom of the wall, and the Devoured clambered atop it. One of them jumped. He couldn’t quite grab the lip of the battlement, but he came close.

  Twenty yards to the right, the heap at the base of the wall was higher. A Devoured man pulled himself up onto the wall. A swordsman hacked at his wrists, and the archers tried to shove him back. Navran ran and kicked the man’s face. He tumbled to the ground. But more were coming.

  “Navran!” Dastha shouted.

  Navran turned to see his guard wielding a sword against the fingers of another Devoured which attempted to climb onto the battlement. The man fell back to the ground, and Dastha turned to Navran with his face locked in a grimace.

  “You need to get down,” Dastha said. “Bring your rope.”

  “But you—”

  “Get down,” Dastha said. He bolted to where Navran stood and grabbed Navran by the shoulder. He leaned close and whispered into his ear. “Ahead of you, half of Jaitha and the survivors of the battle are all fleeing. Every minute that we hold this gate, we’re giving them more time to reach safety. But they’ll be in Virnas in a few days, and you’d better get to Virnas with them to prevent chaos. You’re the king—they’ll need you.”

  “You need me here,” Navran insisted.

  “No I don’t, my lord and king,” Dastha said. “You’re not even armed.”

  “But—”

  “My job is to protect you, and your job is to protect Virnas and the Uluriya. Now get back to your city and do your job.”

  Dastha was right. Navran bowed to his guard. “I honor you.”

  “Just get down.” Dastha turned back toward the fight.

  “Come here,” Navran said to one of the archers. The man turned and looked at Navran with surprise.

  “Hold this,” Navran said. “It’s too bulky to tie. I’ll climb down the outside of the wall. Dastha!”

  Dastha looked over at Navran with a look of irritation.

  “Send as many men down after me as you can.”

  “Yes,” Dastha said.

  The archer wrapped the makeshift rope around his wrist and braced himself against the crenellation. Navran grabbed the rope in both hands and climbed down. At the end of the rope he jumped, hit the ground, and tumbled a few feet. He rose to his feet, dusty but none the worse.

  “Send down the next!” he shouted.

  Another archer approached the rope and clambered down in a few seconds, his bow strapped to his back. More archers, then a pair of swordsmen, then another.

  Navran saw one of the Devoured stand on the top of the wall. A spearmen hurled him back to the ground.

  “Hurry!” Navran shouted.

  The defenders atop the wall thinned as they descended. More Devoured came to the top of the wall. Dastha and the last knot of spearmen drew together around the archer holding the rope. They were throwing down Devoured as quickly as they climbed up, but there were always more.

  Dastha took the rope from the archer, and the archer himself descended. As soon as the archer’s feet hit the ground, Dastha unwound the rope from his wrist and tossed it to the ground outside the wall.

  Navran’s heart stuttered. “Dastha!” he shouted. “Aren’t you coming down?”

  Dastha raised his sword from atop the wall. “My lord and king!”

  “You have to—”

  “Go to Virnas,” Dastha said. He bowed. “Get as far away from here as you can, as quickly as you can. It has been an honor to serve you, Navran-dar.”

  He turned away. Navran saw the heads of the Devoured peeking over the tops of the crenellations, and Dastha and his last four men hacking at them and pushing them off as quickly as they could.

  Navran’s voice cracked. “The honor was mine.”

  He turned away and looked at the soldiers around him, their faces serious and grave. Some of them wept. Navran’s chest felt heavy. He swallowed and spoke softly.

  “We go to Virnas,” he said. “There are women and children ahead of us on the road. We catch up with them and protect them until we get to the city. And the stars upon those we leave behind.”

  VAPATHI

  The sun in the west was the color of blood, the sky like a bruise. A haze descended over the bed of the Amsadhu, scattered with bodies and crows.

  Four of the Devoured carried Kirshta on his palanquin down from the bluffs on the north side of the river. Kirshta sat atop it in grim silence. Basadi followed the palanquin with her head held high. Vapathi and Apurta came side-by-side. Kirshta’s remnant of the Red Men walked around them, yellow serpent banners carried high.

  Vapathi was numb. A black leaden feeling settled into her stomach. She glanced aside at Apurta, whose silent, stoic mask suggested he felt the same. They followed the palanquin into the battlefield.

  The bodies of the fallen filled the riverbed like stones. The stench of blood filled the air. Ravens had gathered by the thousands, their cawing echoing ceaselessly. Vultures raised red heads among them. The ground beneath Vapathi’s feet grew soft and miry. She looked down. Blood had soaked into the dried river bed and turned it to mud. They reached the reeds, trampled and crushed by the advance of the Emperor’s soldiers and their subsequent retreat before the Devoured. The trickle of the Amsadhu was red.

  They circled around to a place where a stairway knelt and offered them a path onto the king’s causeway. From there they marched toward the palace of Jaitha.

  The Red Men around them were silent. Did they feel as doomed as Vapathi did? Did they regret having thrown in with the deathless Mouth of the Devourer? She squeezed Apurta’s hand. He looked at her, and his lips trembled.

  The palace showed the signs of its hasty evacuation: overturned tables, rubbish spilled in empty rooms, clothes cast to the side, silver dishes left lying about in chaos. They marched straight through the disorder of the outer halls and into the throne room, a narrow hall paneled in mahogany wood with a two-stepped dais at one end. The Devoured carried the palanquin forward, turned, and set it down before the dais.

  “Close the door,” Kirshta croaked.

  His neck was slashed, the bile that leaked from his jugular crusted around the wound. His pierced belly reeked of rot. Dried black tears left streaks down his face. His voice sounded strange and unnatural in his wounded throat. Vapathi couldn’t stand to look at him.

  The Red Men closed the doors of the throne room.

  “Red Men get out,” Kirshta said. “Leave me and the Empress and the other two.”

  With a nod the soldiers left and closed the door behind them. Only the four of them remained.

  Kirshta watched them. His eyes roved from Basadi to Vapathi to Apurta. No human expression could be recognized beneath the black scars and disfiguring injuries. His breath rasped in his throat like pebbles grinding over a stone.

  “The Emperor is dead,” he said. “The kings are dead or fleeing. There’s no one left.”

  “Have we won?” Vapathi raised her voice. Apurta squeezed her shoulder, and his eyes pleaded that she keep her peace. But she shook herself free of his grasp and stepped forward. “May we rest now, and stop trying to stamp out kings who cannot possibly hurt us?”

  Kirshta gave her an empty stare. He didn’t blink. His breathing filled the hall. “I’m not done. I want my sister and my friend.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Kirshta began, then he fell silent. He looked at Apurta, and for the first time a re
cognizable expression crossed his face. He was sad. “I mean that I wish I could keep you.”

  “We’re here,” Apurta said, confused.

  “You have betrayed me,” Kirshta said.

  They all fell silent. The Empress let out a little chuckle.

  “My brother—” Vapathi began.

  “Quiet.” Kirshta rested his head in his hands. “Do you think I don’t know?”

  “What do you think you know?”

  “I know you, Vapathi,” Kirshta said. Grief and bitterness sounded in his voice even through the grinding of his throat. “Better than anyone. You always wanted to help me, to protect me even as I protected you. But you’ve never helped me. She Who Devours is the only one who can save us.”

  “Brother—”

  “I said quiet.” Kirshta fist pounded the arms of the palanquin. He looked up at her. The sadness in his voice had gone, replaced by a smoldering anger. “You betrayed me. You gave my name to the Emperor.”

  Vapathi fell silent.

  “You know they did,” Basadi called out. “She spoke to Navran-dar alone. I was there.”

  “But Navran-dar knew your name already,” Vapathi said. Her voice quavered and cracked. “From when he was Ruyam’s captive.”

  “Did he know how to use it as a weapon?” Kirshta hissed.

  “She gave your name to the Emperor,” Basadi repeated. “She wants to unseat you, rule as the Queen of Slaves in your stead.”

  “No, brother, believe me,” Vapathi said. “I don’t want to rule anything.”

  Kirshta trembled, and he rose to a standing position. His rasping voice echoed across the marble tiles of the floor. “Lies! Why did you give my name to the Emperor? You hate me and want to destroy us. You’re on the side of the slavers, the rulers, the oppressors. Why, sister? Why?”

  Vapathi clenched her hands together. Nothing she could say would save them now.

  Kirshta collapsed again onto the cushion of the palanquin. He covered his eyes with his hands and rubbed his temples with his thumbs. His shoulders shook. A strange, wheezing sound filled the throne room. It took a while before Vapathi recognized what it was. Kirshta wept.