Lions of Istan

by Fuad Baloch

  Then, taking great care not to drop the cursed thing, he placed it on the center of the table.

  “There!” he declared, taking a step back.

  Voices, deep, sonorous broke out behind him, around him, over him. Startled, Shoki wheeled about. “W-what—”

  A blanket of thick, dense darkness fell over him.

  Chapter 38

  Nuraya

  Her heart racing and sweat pouring down her face, Nuraya watched her men array themselves at the lip of the hill. The ant-like figures still writhed in the distance, death dancing amongst them. If they knew another force was about to enter the battle, they seemed to pay no attention—one force desperately trying to plug the breach in the walls, the other trying to get through.

  Kinas knew she was here, of course. So did the veteran salars who made up Ahasan’s army. Yet, they continued to ignore her—giants unconcerned by the presence of a babe in their midst.

  Something they would come to rue.

  Nuraya turned toward the north. A contingent of archers and armored horses stood atop the hill there now, a massive red command tent in the center. Was Kinas there this very instant?

  She steeled herself away and back to the killing fields outside the Algarian walls. When she had last set foot outside these walls with Abba, a few taverns had stood amongst run-down hovels on parched ground. Here and there their walls still stood, leaning at odd angles now, roofless, no doubt littered with the corpses of men and horses trampled to a pulp by more men and horses.

  “My sultana,” came a wheezing sound behind her.

  She exhaled. “What is it, magus?”

  Maharis shuffled forward to stand beside her horse, the other magi trailing behind him. “You should give us a chance to serve you. Why risk your men and forces when you’ve got us to lend you strength?”

  “Your time has not come yet, Maharis.” Chewing her lower lip, she forced her heart to relax once more. All going well, maybe their time would never come. Like it or not, she was the Keeper of the Divide. Already her actions had allowed a foreign power to invade the sacred borders of the Istani empire. She could not make the same mistake again. If she was to take the Peacock Throne, it had to be on her terms, by prowess as a leader of men.

  Just like Abba would have wanted.

  And once she won like that, maybe she could re-establish the Kalb, put the magi back under their dominion.

  Horses whinnied as her salars, both heavily armored, rode toward her. She grinned, raised her gauntleted arm. “My salars, are your men ready?”

  “Of course, they are,” Jinan replied, panting slightly. “They are... most excited by the prospect of glory.”

  “What of your men, Vishan?”

  The older salar licked his lips, glanced at the city walls, his head turning north for an instant before returning to her. “As you command, my sultana.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You’ve had your chance to make your point and I’ve heard it. I have to win. This has to be the battle to right all the wrongs and secure all our futures.”

  Vishan nodded slowly. If there was still any ill will in his heart toward her, she sensed little of it from his outward expression. He merely pursed his lips, then shrugged.

  Nuraya turned away from the men, cold fear coursing through her veins once more. Her men were few in numbers, but they were fresh, had better morale, and faced foes that had already been weakened considerably. All she had to do was to carve a path through the breach, secure the Shahi Qilla, subdue Ahasan, and seat herself on the Peacock Throne before the prophet’s holiday in two days’ time.

  “Don’t be a fool!” her mother had sent word through Mona. “Use all the power you have at your disposal.” Nuraya seethed at the woman who, even sequestered away, still had the temerity to order her about. Worse was the realization she was already thinking of that option, even if she hadn't spoken it aloud yet.

  The air seemed to still around her, a strange sort of quiet descending. She couldn't even hear the restless mercenaries behind her. Was this the battle song the sagas mentioned? That one perfect moment of calm and peace that preceded a momentous battle?

  Before she’d had enough time to linger, the moment collapsed. Harsh voices of men and snorting horses assaulted her. She blinked and raised her fist.

  Muttering ceased behind her. Her hand shook slightly. She gritted her teeth. Too late to change her mind now. “Sultana’s Hands,” she bellowed, deciding her energy would be better spent on actions rather than a long speech. “Charge!”

  She spurred Vengeance and the horse bolted forward toward the city he had ferried her out of a lifetime ago. Cries, whoops, shouts broke out behind her. A half-second later, the clatter of horse hooves followed. Down the hill she rode, her horse getting to the sands in no time.

  “For the sultana!” shouted someone behind her.

  “For the sultana!” came the resounding reply.

  She grinned. All other concerns and thought and fears washed away. The world was suddenly very simple. She had to cut her way through the breach, take what was hers by right and mow down anyone that stood in her way.

  A simple goal.

  A rider pulled up beside her. Surprised, she cocked her head to the left. Jinan grinned, raised his sword, then kicked his massive charger once more and began gaining on her.

  The men ahead weren't tiny anymore, their mouths no longer moving silently as they had been through the eyeglass. Heads turned toward her. The pale-skinned, turbaned northerners. The ruddy-faced westerners that might very well have hailed from Nikhtun and Buzdar. The heavily armored, dark-skinned soldiers that might have been summoned from the eastern provinces. They might have been foes, ready to murder each other, but now they all readied themselves to face her.

  Form the corner of her eye, she saw Jinan trample two writhing figures, his sword cleanly chopping a turbaned head.

  Then, the world became a blur as she crashed into the irregular line of pikemen and snarling swordsmen.

  Vengeance did justice to her name, snorting derisively at attempts to unseat her, dutifully stepping away when a blow came too close. Nuraya lunged to the right, hacked at the sea of flailing limbs that appeared in her arc. She struck angrily, each impact sending a painful jolt up her arm. Grinning maniacally, she raised her arm again, hacked, lunged, slashed.

  She might have been the one person the enemy forces should have united to attack. But as more and more of her men joined the fray, her attackers withdrew, their attention diverted by men well-rested and keen to exact vengeance on her behalf.

  “On me!” she shouted, not caring whether the call imperiled her personal safety.

  “For the sultana!” came Jinan’s reply, loud and strong over the shouting men.

  Despite herself, she couldn't wipe the grin from her face, even as she slashed at a northerner, taking off his arm cleanly at the elbow. Regardless of what had happened between them, she and Jinan were more alike than not on that front, cut from the same cloth that spurned pragmatism and care for the want of expediency, tainted by a lust for blood.

  She turned her head to the right. The massive walls of Algaria loomed ahead, blocking the sun.

  This close, the walls looked impregnable, impervious to any army. The truth was different, of course. She had seen the breach with her own eyes.

  She howled, stabbed an easterner in the neck then ducked as a spear flew toward her. She would get to the breach before Kinas’s men. And then—

  She blinked as a sudden worry took root in her heat.

  Kinas had more men in the wings. Why hadn't he already pushed to go beyond the breach?

  “Get behind the lines, my sultana,” shouted a man she distantly recalled seeing at the cook pots. “We’re retreating!”

  “Retreat?” she muttered weakly. As if more aware than her master, Vengeance snorted and turned around.

  The Sultana’s Hands were more than ten thousand strong. Fresh of spirit and horse. They should have been able to cut their wa
y through these shambling soldiers. Why hadn't they?

  Her eyes fell upon a trail of horsemen leading from her hill toward the northern hills. Had their camp been attacked? Were her mother and Mona safe?

  Then, realizing what had happened, shock spread, numbing her senses.

  Betrayal.

  Once more, someone had betrayed her.

  Dazed, she closed her eyes shut for a tortured breath. Someone shouted at her, followed by more voices telling her to retreat, to get away.

  Get away? Where?

  “My sultana!” roared Jinan. She opened her eyes, fighting to keep balance. “Vishan has betrayed us, the bastard. He has defected to Kinas.”

  A mercenary wasn't to be trusted. An observation everyone worth listening to had made plenty of times. Something she had believed herself too, then conveniently forgotten.

  “Retreat!” shouted Jinan. “Rurik, pull them all back. Regroup at the hill.”

  Vengeance snorted and started to trot back. Her arms weak, the fingers slipping off the reins, she tried turning the horse around. Vengeance didn't budge but broke into a canter instead.

  She cocked her head back. At first glance, nothing seemed to have changed. Men still fought, still continued to turn to corpses.

  Not just Ahasan’s and Kinas’s men.

  Hers too, now.

  Then her eyes rose to the north. Toward the hill where the horses were beginning to array in battle formations.

  Kinas wasn't like Ahasan. Another lesson she had forgotten. Far from overplaying his hand, he had done what any good commander would have done—weaken one’s enemy from the within.

  And now that he had broken her back, her choices had been limited.

  Either bow to the will of her brother.

  Or be annihilated.

  Chapter 39

  Shoki

  Shoki woke to a clamor of screams and panicked shouting.

  “W-what...?” He mumbled, blinking at the sun glaring directly overhead. Where am I?

  He lay on his back, the sand underneath him hot and prickly. More bloodcurdling screams floated up and he felt his body tense up.

  Shoki tried forcing himself up. His fingers twitched but lacked the strength to give him leverage. Offering a silent lament, he waited for long seconds to allow strength to seep back in.

  Then memories of where he had been rushed back at him. Dread spread through his limbs as he retraced events that had transpired in the village. A place that despite its outward appearance wasn't the abode of humans.

  Was it the djinn he had met there? Shoki had no real basis for knowing for sure, but even Mara hadn't exuded such a vibe of utter wrongness as the folks he had met in that village.

  First things first! Gritting his teeth, Shoki tried raising himself again, managed to sit up with a groan. His eye fell upon the marble stone planted in front of a mound of packed soil.

  A gravestone.

  He squealed. Where in the gods’ guts was he? How did he get here?

  Scampering back on his hands, he bumped into something solid. He turned. Another gravestone, the carved letters written out in the ancient Ghansi script, layers of sand half-obscuring the words.

  Swallowing the panic, he rose on his feet unsteadily. Some sort of a graveyard? He looked around and blinked once more. Not just any ordinary graveyard. Matli outside Algaria. Despite the rising terror, a strange sense of wonder gripped him. He had been traveling north-west, away from Algaria for days. How had he jumped all these miles in the blink of an eye?

  Shoki turned his head to the right. Statues of Istan’s dead sultans stood silently outside marble mausoleums and shrines, their defiant chins held high, staring out into the swirling sands, and the hills just beyond.

  “Oh gods, what’s happening?”

  Shoki took an involuntary step back, away from the tombs of the Istani sultans. Something crunched underneath his feet. Yelping, he looked down. Old, wilted flowers someone had brought some time ago, left to the vagaries of time.

  The shouts drifted up again and now he turned left, toward the source of the commotion. He froze. Hundreds of men clad in mail smashed into each other, a writhing serpent, its tail constantly rising and smashing into anything that came too close. As he watched, a mace made a sickening thumping sound as it crashed into a soldier’s helmet close to him.

  Shoki licked his lips. A battle, raging a mere couple of hundred yards from where was. He wasn’t in it, but he had to increase the distance.

  He stepped back without looking away, his eye watching the carnage ahead. He’d seen men die before, of course, but that had been nothing like the mindless thrashing going ahead.

  More shouts came from the east. Without breaking his stride, he squinted toward the source, toward the towering walls of Algaria. For a second, something dark and wavy blocked the sun. Again, his breath caught when he recognized the large black flag, half shredded and torn, floating downward from the walls, more arrows piercing it even as it continued to sail.

  Ahasan’s flag.

  He shook his head. Was Ahasan losing his grip over the capital?

  At yet another shriek, his eye fell back to the fighting. One of the soldiers thrashing on the ground was pointing at him. Blood poured from an eye socket, the eye hanging limply to one side. Another soldier, one most likely responsible for the damage followed the dying man’s finger, his eyes finding Shoki.

  Panic rising in him, Shoki turned, began sprinting. He had no idea which way was which, but so long as it led away, it’d do. He ran like the wind, as fast as he ever had. His legs burned and his lungs protested, but he paid them no mind. These things would be no good if one of these bastards got hold of him.

  After what felt like an eternity, he glanced back. No one was giving chase. He heaved a sigh of relief, his heart thudding against his ribs. Safe. He was safe.

  Swallowing, his lungs still burning, he looked around, then groaned, cursing himself for not looking where he ran. He’d arrived at the small hills outside Algaria, and just a hundred yards ahead, two soldiers were approaching him. Their armor looked different, but they carried swords, nonetheless. Had he fled one set of enemies to another? He turned around.

  “Halt or we’ll riddle your body with arrows,” came a shout.

  Closing his one good eye momentarily, offering yet another curse at kismet, he moved his feet to obey the command. The men approached him warily, swords held out in front as if Shoki would be pouncing at them without warning. Shoki sighed, half-amused he could ever give men an idea as crazy as that. Then, he remembered the eye patch that had added a hard edge to his features and the smile melted away.

  “Whose spy are you, one-eyed? Ahasan’s or Kinas’s?”

  Shoki blinked. The voice was familiar. He squinted. Had he seen them somewhere?

  “Answer us!”

  “Me... S-spy? What a pr-preposterous idea!”

  “Feels like I’ve seen this ugly face before,” said the bald soldier.

  “Must be all spies look the same to the untrained eye... to pass detection, you know,” replied his companion.

  “Never quite thought of it this way,” replied the bald man appreciatively. “What do we do with this one?”

  “I’m hungry. Let’s be rid of him and get back to the cook pot.”

  The cook pot! Shoki startled, blinked. Liaman and Deraman, the two men he had gotten into an altercation with, before the sultana had sent him away. Just as ugly in daytime as they’d appeared at night. Had he actually managed to run toward safety, only to find these two bumbling fools? Licking his lips, thoughts racing furiously through his mind, he raised a warding hand. “Now w-wait a second. Y-you can’t just... kill me! Aren't there… forms to be carried out?”

  “No one ever taught me any of these forms,” grunted Liaman, the dumber and uglier of the two. “You, Deraman?”

  “Neither.”

  “W-wait,” squeaked Shoki, his mind desperately trying to come up with some witticism, some clever turn of phrase
that might put off this most unfortunate turn of events.

  The men were a few paces away now. Liaman raised his sword, an evil grin split across his face. “I could’ve sworn I’ve seen this face before.”

  Sometimes, truth was the best defense.

  Shoki cleared his throat. “Men of the Sultana’s Hands, I’m your sultana’s noble emissary, Shoki Malook. She sent me north-west to bring her support.”

  “Shoki...” repeated Liaman. To his side, Deraman’s eyes widened. He raised his sword.

  “You’re not going to get away this time, you cock-sucking piece of camel-dung!”

  “What?” started his bald companion, then his eyes narrowed as realization finally bloomed across his face. “The giraffe has walked directly to the hunter. What wonderful luck, isn’t it?” He scratched his chin. “Is that what one calls providence?”

  “Touch me and the sultana will skin both of you alive,” Shoki declared, heart thumping against the ribs. Stupid as they were, it was entirely possible they hadn't thought through the ramifications of their actions.

  Though their eyes remained just as hard as before, both mercenaries lowered their swords. “Sent to fetch an army, eh?” asked Deraman, looking behind Shoki. “Where is it?”

  Shoki licked his lips once more. “News not meant for the likes of you. Now before she realizes how much of my time you two ended up wasting, take me to her immediately!”

  Liaman seemed to bristle at the tone of his voice. Deraman placed a restraining hand over his arm and checked him. “No man escapes justice from us for too long, just remember that.”

  “And I have a very good nose for hunting my prey,” snorted Liaman, his large nostrils flaring.

  “Erm... understood!”

  Dusting the sand off his robes, Shoki followed the men deeper into the camp. Somehow smaller, even more disorganized than the last time he had been here. The mercenaries had been full of cheer before. Now they looked at him gloomily, their armor dented, blood leaking from their shoddily bandaged wounds.