The Straits of Galahesh loa-2

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  But there was no time to waste. Muqallad had fused the Atalayina and would now set his sights on the Spar. Up to this point the Kamarisi’s forces had given ground steadily, but Ashan said that these were only delaying tactics. They had given up as much ground as they were going to give. Now the real fighting would begin, and it would be fierce, because they were not so spread out as they once were. There were no longer gaps in their lines, and if one was made by force of arms, they would be able to plug it quickly. Plus, with them so tightly packed, the advantages they’d gained from the Matri would be minimized. Soon, the battle would devolve into a chaotic frenzy waged step by bloody step to reach the Spar.

  The unseasonably warm night air grew chaotic from the clatter of reloading muskets. The weather continued to be still-unnaturally still. The last of the spires had been destroyed, and it had left not storms, but a world breathless, as though Erahm were raising its sword before unleashing its fury. Nasim could feel it on his skin-it had started as a tickle, but he had long ago begun to itch, and it was growing as the night progressed.

  With muskets reloaded, all became silence. Minutes later, the caw of a rook came high above them. “At the well ahead, a dozen lie in wait.” It was Saphia. She had been assigned to them especially, though the Matri had warned them that any of the others might speak through the rooks, in case Saphia was hurt.

  For the soldiers, and even Ashan, this meant little-one Matri or another made no difference-but Nasim still was not wholly comfortable having the lone Matra who had tried to assume him so near.

  Another flurry of musket fire came, followed by the urgent calls of men as they waged a quick but fierce battle with swords and axes. Soon it was clear the battle was moving further away. The enemy was in retreat.

  They would wait, however, until the Matri told them it was safe.

  One of the akhoz shuffled closer to Nasim. By the looks of him he had been a young boy when he’d been turned, only eleven or twelve. He would have been promising, indeed, had he been allowed to live.

  The boy ducked his head and scrabbled closer. Nasim reached over and touched the taut skin of his head. The moment he did, a memory came unbidden, a memory of this child, scared and frightened, succumbing to the curse of the akhoz hundreds of years before. Nasim did not welcome many memories of Khamal, but this one he embraced; it was painful, but he accepted the pain gladly, if only to honor the sacrifice this boy had made those many years ago.

  His name was Cyhir, and he had been one of the first.

  His skin burned Nasim’s hand, but Nasim had found that such things were welcome conduits to Adhiya. The way to the world beyond had largely been closed to him since his awakening five years ago. Only through others had he been able to reach it. But now, since Rabiah had saved him on the beach below Alayazhar, he’d found the way to Adhiya still difficult, but more open than ever before.

  He opened himself to the pain in his fingers, a heat that would blister the skin of normal men. His instinct as the heat rose was to pull away, but he forced it to remain in place, for through the pain he could feel the suurahezhan in Adhiya that would heed his call if needed. Beyond the suurahezhan he could feel spirits of the wind. He could smell them in the subtle shifts of the dead night air. He could feel the vanahezhan in the earth he stood upon and the jalahezhan trapped beneath the city. Dhoshahezhan were near as well, though they were the most distant, the most difficult for him to reach.

  Ashan touched his arm. “It is not yet time, and we don’t want to warn Muqallad if it can be avoided.”

  He was right. Nasim lifted his hand from Cyhir reluctantly, savoring the last of the heat as it dissipated.

  The rest of the akhoz were far behind him, spread throughout the city. Try as he might, Nasim was unable to keep them from releasing their chilling calls to the night sky. The smell of blood was upon them, and though they obeyed Nasim’s command to remain, they did so unwillingly, so rather than keep them in one place, Nasim had decided to spread them out so as to confuse the Kamarisi’s forces that had set up a perimeter around the Spar’s southern end.

  Nasim peered through the darkness. He looked up at the bright sliver moon. The night was already well on its way toward sunrise, the likely time Muqallad would begin the ritual.

  “This is taking too long,” Nasim said.

  “Patience,” Ashan said. “There is still time to be patient.”

  He grit his teeth. They waited, longer and longer. He was nearly ready to stand and begin moving on his own if no one else would follow when at last, calls came from the sotnik for his men to pull back, to allow the enemy to flee so as not to be caught off guard.

  He and Ashan moved with the streltsi that had been left to guard them. They treaded down a winding street that led to a large square with a tight cluster of buildings at its center.

  The rook fluttered down and landed near the sotnik’s feet. “Wait here. It will begin soon,” it said before flying off once more.

  The Matra meant the diversion. They would be making a large push to the center and the right flanks of the Kamarisi’s forces. They hoped that it would draw enough men from the left flank that they could sneak through with little to no resistance.

  Deep within Nasim’s chest, he felt his bond to the man he’d been connected to since his awakening. Nikandr. He was somewhere ahead, though exactly where he could not guess. Balancing the pull of Nikandr was the taint of Muqallad’s spell. By the ritual on the stone, he’d been freed from many of its effects, but he was still held back, and he wondered now whether he would ever be free.

  He started at the thundering sound of cannon fire coming from the east. The soft crack of muskets that followed sounded like the sizzle of a pinecone thrown into a fire. It sounded distant and somehow innocent, but he knew that however innocent it might sound, men were dying.

  Near him, Cyhir stopped and sniffed the air. Like a feral animal he strained his neck. Had Nasim not placed a hand on his shoulder he surely would have begun to bray. As it was, he stretched his head one way, then the other, then back again, like a mongrel dog straining at a leash.

  Nasim peered into the darkness of the streets that led out of the square, wondering if the men of Yrstanla were lying in wait. It felt as though a musket were trained on the crown of his head. He scrunched his brow and the feeling faded, but the longer he stayed there, just waiting, the more pronounced it became. He had just succumbed to rubbing his forehead to clear the feeling away when a rook flapped down and landed near his feet. He hadn’t expected one so soon. They had gone no more than three hundred paces from the sight of the short skirmish.

  “To your left,” the rook said, “move along the second street you come to.”

  There was something about this rook that seemed different. He knew immediately another Matri had assumed it, though which one it might be he had no idea.

  “Where is Saphia?” Nasim asked.

  “She’s needed elsewhere,” the rook said. “Sariya has reached the Spar.”

  Indeed, even as the rook spoke, the sound of cannons rose until Nasim could feel it on the back of his neck. The tops of the towers at the center of the square were lit by the flashes. Even the clouds high above glowed momentarily bright.

  As the rook flapped away, Nasim could practically smell the scent of the Matri. They rode the aether, and he had become more and more sensitive to their passage. He knew few enough of these women, but surely the Matri of Vostroma and Nodhvyansk and Bolgravya were present. Yet he couldn’t shake another feeling of strong familiarity.

  “Are you well?” Ashan asked.

  Nasim wasn’t sure how to answer. It was foolish, these thoughts. One Matra or another, what did it matter?

  “I’m well,” he said.

  They headed northwest, going to the place the rook had indicated. As they did, Nasim called upon the akhoz. It was time… Time for them to taste blood.

  That was when a meaty thump sounded next to him. As the sharp report of the musket echoed from the far
side of the square, Ashan crumpled to the ground, a dark stain welling through his robes.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY

  N ikandr stood over Grigory, his breath coming in great gasps. Grigory’s men, these soldiers and windsmen of Bolgravya, stared at him, some with enmity in their eyes, but many with neutral expressions and some with outright relief.

  “Take him below and tend to him,” Nikandr said to the nearest of the windsmen, and then he turned to Avayom. All eyes were on the two of them, and Nikandr was not at all sure that he had their loyalty. It felt as though they only hoped to be rid of Grigory, and now that they had, they would take their ship and be done with him.

  “Come with me,” Nikandr said. He strode to the kapitan’s cabin at the rear of the ship. Once the two of them were inside, Nikandr closed the door.

  “Why did you suggest bazh an bazh?” he asked.

  “Forgive me, My Lord Prince, but there seemed to be some question as to the authority we were to follow.”

  “Go on.”

  Avayom’s grizzled face, his steely eyes, did not waver. “The Lord Prince seemed to have misread the orders from his brother, our Lord Duke of Bolgravya.”

  He meant the scroll that had been sealed by Konstantin and delivered by Nikandr himself.

  “Did Grigory show you those orders?”

  Avayom stood straighter, as resolute as he had been on deck. “He did not, My Lord Prince.”

  “Then how do you know of them?”

  “My duty is to my Duke, first and foremost. His brother refused to show them to me, so I made it my business to find the scroll while it lay unattended during a drunken spell.”

  Nikandr took a deep breath, coming to the most important question. “Will you follow me, Sotnik Kirilov?”

  Avayom struck his heels and bowed his head. “We are yours to command, My Lord Prince.”

  “We go to fight,” Nikandr said slowly, “and we fight with the Maharraht.”

  This time it took longer for Avayom to respond, but he bowed his head once again. “If they fight our enemies, then we will fight with them.”

  Nikandr took him into an embrace and the two of them kissed each other’s cheeks. “The mountain is steep,” Nikandr said, giving him half of an old Anuskayan proverb.

  Avayom smiled sadly, but his eyes were fierce and grim. “Then we climb.”

  As the bitter winter wind cut through his coat to numb his skin, Nikandr sat in one of two skiffs just launched from the Yarost. They flew away from the hidden bay Soroush had led their ships to. They were tightly packed-nineteen fighting men of Anuskaya in his skiff, another twenty in the other. The men, their breath trailing behind them like white streamers, seemed tense, but not overly so. These were the kind of men that could channel such tension into precise, sometimes furious, action. One of them sitting near the bow of the other skiff, a veteran desyatnik with a scar running down the left side of his face, caught Nikandr’s eye and nodded. His men were ready. Nikandr nodded back, proud of them, these soldiers of his homeland.

  Soroush and his Maharraht trailed in seven more skiffs. He brought seventy-five in all, bringing their total to a little over a hundred-one sotni of men to stand against all the Hratha and the soldiers of Yrstanla. They had enough munitions for one sustained battle, no more, but hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. Hopefully they could surprise Muqallad before it was too late.

  And yet, as they flew over the lip of the valley and began heading southeast toward Baressa, Nikandr felt small. They were not enough. They wouldn’t make a difference. As the sun began to set in the west, Nikandr could still see the Sea of Khurkhan, dark and deadly in the distance. Ahead, over the tops of the green forest of spruce and pine and white-barked birch, were leagues of flying before they would reach the straits.

  “What will we do when we come to a city of two hundred thousand?” Styophan asked Nikandr as the sky was growing dark.

  “We do what can be done.”

  No sooner had Nikandr said these words than he felt a shift among the winds. The weather had been calm, but now it quieted to the point that all was still. The trees below did not sway. The clouds above did not drift. The whole world seemed caught in amber.

  Nikandr felt nervous, not only because of the odd quality of the weather, but because he could feel the changes through his hezhan. The spirit felt near-perhaps because of their proximity to the straits-but it also felt drawn, and drawn away, as if something momentous were calling it from afar. The havaqiram-including Anahid, who had some skill with the wind-reported something similar. They were forced to draw upon the winds more deeply than they had before.

  Despite all this, they made steady progress. Nikandr was watching the horizon for any signs of ships when he felt something different. It was far in the distance, a sense of discomfort in his chest not unlike what he’d felt when Nasim had darkened his soulstone.

  Except this…

  This felt…

  A column of flame shot up into the sky. Off the landward bow, it climbed hungrily and tore into the layer of clouds that hung high above the land. It burned brighter than the dying sun. It eclipsed the stars, a thread of roiling light cutting the sky in two.

  No one said a word. Everyone here save the men of Bolgravya knew what this was, and those that didn’t were too shocked to say anything.

  Nikandr could see wonder in the faces of his men and the Maharraht, both. There was worry as well, and a growing sense of desperation that did not bode well for the coming night.

  The third piece of the Atalayina had reached Muqallad, and he had now fused it to the other two. The stone was whole, giving him the power he so desperately sought.

  But there was more. Atiana had held one of the pieces. She’d been given it by Nasim. If it now lay in the hands of Muqallad…

  He held his soulstone and reached out to her. Hear me, he said, staring out beyond the forest, beyond the column of light toward Baressa. Hear me, Atiana.

  But his pleas went unanswered.

  “Be safe,” he whispered softly.

  Styophan glanced over, but made no mention of his words.

  Nearly an hour after the burning column appeared, it burned out. They were closer to the straits now, and Nikandr could tell that the base of the column had been positioned somewhere to the east of Vihrosh, Baressa’s sister city.

  Soroush’s skiff approached theirs, and he called across the gap. “We must go straight for the storehouse.”

  Nikandr already knew it would be so. They had planned on landing and stealing wagons to bring the barrels of gunpowder to the Spar, but now they had no choice but to transport the gunpowder by skiff. It would seem the quickest way to go about it, but it was dangerous to fly over the straits, especially in the channel where the winds were the most unpredictable.

  The winds were low, but something told Nikandr it wouldn’t last.

  As they neared Vihrosh, the boom of cannons could be heard in the distance. It must be Baressa, Nikandr thought, though who was fighting he couldn’t guess.

  The building was situated on a rise above the city. With the moon providing only a sliver of light, they landed their skiffs in a snow-swept field near a squat stone building. Beyond the building, limned in silver by the moonlight, was the bulk of Vihrosh, a sizable assortment of old stone buildings and half-timber houses, and beyond Vihrosh was the wide gap of the straits. The cliffs lay dark, making it look like a chasm that would swallow the city whole if given the chance.

  A light flashed somewhere in the streets of Baressa far beyond the straits. Moments later a boom came. More flashes followed like lightning in the distance, the thunder beating out a staccato rhythm that made it clear just how desperate the battle was becoming.

  As they slipped over the sides of their skiffs and moved silently toward the squat munitions building, Nikandr heard a wailing. It sent shivers down his spine. He’d heard that sound before, on Ghayavand and then again on Rafsuhan. It was the sound of the akhoz.

  The sound had come fr
om the northeast, in the rough direction the column of fire had been in.

  Soroush stood nearby. He was unmoving, stiff, as if the mere sound of the akhoz terrified him.

  Another call came-more like the bleating of a goat than the cry of a child. It was higher pitched than the first, and the cry was longer, more desperate. Nikandr could only think that it had been released from the throat of a misshapen creature that had once been someone’s daughter.

  “Quickly,” Nikandr whispered.

  They moved. The building was not guarded, a bit of good fortune no doubt granted them by the battle that raged in the streets of Baressa.

  They broke in the doors and found the powder room at the back. The place was silent, eerily so, as if Vihrosh had been abandoned centuries ago and they were the first to return.

  Two men at a time rolled the barrels out of the building and toward the skiffs. As Nikandr was returning from loading the first barrel with Styophan, he heard the call of another akhoz, much louder now. It was followed by one that was closer yet, a long keening that sent shivers down Nikandr’s spine. He could see their dark forms against the white snow at the base of the hill. One of them reared back and cried out to the nighttime sky. The other did the same.

  It sounded like a warning. A call that the enemy had been found.

  Styophan slung his musket off his shoulder and sighted along the barrel. As the pan flashed, Nikandr looked away so he wouldn’t be blinded. When he looked back, slinging his own musket into position, he saw that the nearest of the two had been felled, but it was already up again, and now it was charging toward him, calling in a high-pitched squeal as it came.