Upon a Burning Throne

by Ashok K. Banker

  He was surprised to find that he himself was not as panicked or scared as he ought to have been. If anything, the sheer odds confronting him and his fellow Krushan made him feel angry. A surge of self-righteous rage was building inside him. Who were these rebels to resort to such low tactics? How dare they stoop to such means? Even if they succeeded, did they really think the world would cheer their victory?

  He was, of course, too young and immature to understand that history favors only the victors. Once the rebels won the day, they would be joined by other disgruntled allies of Hastinaga. The rebellion would grow into a nationwide—perhaps even worldwide—phenomenon. With Vrath gone, and the only two heirs to the empire dead, there would be no line of succession left in Hastinaga. Chaos would erupt across the length and breadth of the empire. Pocket rebellions would occur. Allies would fight allies. Everyone would tear the Burnt Empire to shreds, and feast on the remains. And in a hundred years, the Krushan dynasty—Vrath, Shvate, Adri himself . . . all would be half-forgotten names, tragic footnotes in history.

  Adri could not see that far ahead. He could only view the events of the present hour. And those events were both terrifying and soul-crushing, but also so desperate that taking any action, no matter how brash, seemed preferable to merely standing there in a chariot and waiting to die.

  “Shvate,” he said.

  He had to repeat himself twice more, raising his voice the third time to be heard. Shvate was enraptured by the horror of the battle raging around them, visible only in violent glimpses but shocking enough to have hypnotized him into rapt fascination. Adri could sense Shvate’s own fear and rising anger, the suppressed frustration and outrage he shared with Adri. Neither of them had actually expected to have to fight that day. Both had feared the prospect but had not seriously believed they would be under any real threat. That situation had changed abruptly, shockingly. The person they had assumed would lead and win the battle on his own was no longer here by their side to protect or advise them. They were now left to their own devices, with only each other to turn to.

  “Brother,” Adri cried out, his deep tenor voice loud and commanding.

  Shvate turned to gape at his brother. “Adri?”

  Adri held out his hand, reaching toward Shvate. “Brother, are we Krushan or are we cowards?”

  Adri heard Shvate’s sharp intake of breath, the moment of stunned silence, then the slow release of breath that told him Shvate was smiling.

  He felt Shvate’s hand grasp his own, squeezing it in response.

  “We are Krushan!” Shvate shouted back in answer.

  “Good,” Adri said in a normal voice. He smiled in Shvate’s direction. “Then let’s show them who we are.”

  Jilana

  Jilana rushed to the balcony’s balustrade, leaving behind her comfortable, cushioned seats and fan-turning attendants to view the horrific events unfolding on the battlefield below more clearly. That was her family out there, facing terrible, shameful deaths—her grandchildren and her son by marriage. She loved them all dearly and could not endure the thought of losing them. But that was only part of her anguish. To lose them would be terrible enough; to lose them like this was unbearable. The great Krushan line could not end thus, driven down to its knees in the dust of a nameless field, overcome by treacherous allies and illegitimate tactics. This could not be the end of her beloved Sha’ant’s legacy. She would not allow it.

  She was a breath away from rushing down from the pavilion and taking to a horse herself to join the battle. She would rather have died here today than stand by as her family line was destroyed. Though a fisherwoman born, Jilana was Krushan by marriage, and she would fight, even if only for a few desperate instants, rather than let this travesty stand.

  But just when all seemed lost, something miraculous happened.

  Vrath

  Jarsun and Vrath were almost a thousand yards in the sky.

  Jarsun’s assault continued unabated, his hundred segments attacking Vrath’s body without respite, constantly cutting, stabbing, piercing. Vrath’s body was covered with so many wounds that it now appeared entirely red. There was not an inch of whole skin left upon his frame. His limbs were brutalized, his torso cut to shreds, his muscles and tendons hanging like torn ropes, skin dangling in patches and flaps, his face a single mass of bloody pulp. He was no longer recognizably human or male or even a living organism in any sense of the term.

  Yet his grievously punctured lungs still wheezed and hissed, drawing agonizing gasps. His battered and stabbed heart still pumped blood. (Though most of it spurted into the air and fell, pattering down, wasted, upon the dusty field far below.) His other organs likewise still struggled to perform some fraction of their normal function. Thus Vrath was alive only in the sense that he was not yet completely dead. But to call him a living being, let alone a man, would be an abuse of language itself.

  And yet still he struggled, feebly now, for there was barely enough blood left in his body to carry energy to work his limbs. His arms and legs flailed. His back spasmed. His eyes struggled to see, his ears to hear. His brain functioned, but barely.

  Two bloody limbs that vaguely resembled hands, with a few appendages that might once have been fingers, grasped one of Jarsun’s snakelike excrescences and attempted to twist it like a rope, seeking to wrench it, or tear it. But the strength that had once brought innumerable mighty warriors to their knees was now fading fast, and the body that had won a thousand battles and challenges was decrepit and brutally damaged, and Jarsun slipped out of his grip easily, slicing open the last tendons that enabled Vrath to use his hands at all. Now those once formidable limbs hung limply down, useless as the skinless limbs of a butchered beast at a feast.

  With his every attempt at breath, Vrath still fought, as he would continue to fight, to the very end. But it was a lost cause now—for Vrath had nothing left to fight with, and Jarsun was still so powerful, still so ferocious, and had every advantage remaining.

  Jarsun

  Jarsun sensed the imminent end of his prey, and his frenzied movements slowed; his various components twisted and writhed until they were entirely wrapped around Vrath’s body like a pattern of ribbons. He allowed himself and Vrath to hang suspended in midair for a moment, then began to squeeze.

  The rebels on the field below, those not wholly engaged in pushing home their own certain victory at this moment, glanced up and knew what was about to come next. As he had done to Ushanas of Ushati at Darkfortress, Jarsun would now squeeze the last vestige of life out of Vrath’s body as easily as two fingers squeeze a ripe grape.

  But before he could accomplish this end, rain began to rise up.

  Strictly speaking, to be described properly as rain, it must be said to be falling. Yet this rain fell upward, not downward, rising from the ground to the sky.

  The rain seemed to come out of the earth itself, from the groundwater beneath the earth, from the great water table that lay like a vast ocean under the surface of the land. It burst out of the pores of the field and rose like raindrops, falling upward as rapidly as a heavy rainshower.

  It gathered speed as it rose, rising faster and faster, and converging upon the place where Vrath struggled feebly, entrapped by Jarsun, a thousand yards high. The sound it made was like a hissing. It gained speed until, by the time it reached Vrath and Jarsun, it was only visible as a blur. Enough rainwater to fill a sizable lake gathered from miles around to converge upon a space barely seven feet long and three feet wide—

  And crashed into the demigod and the demon with the force of a cloudburst.

  Jilana

  The sound caused everyone on the battlefield below to pause and stare upward at the incredible sight: a cloudburst of water, large enough to drown a village, exploding on contact with the body of Vrath a thousand yards high. Jilana gasped at the sight.

  The brunt of the impact was borne by Jarsun.

  For by wrapping himself around his prey’s body, he had encased Vrath in a protective layer of his
own flesh. The force of the water striking his thinly spread form was so intense that it caused Jarsun to lose bodily cohesion completely. His flesh was smashed into a thousand tiny droplets.

  He exploded like a cloud of spray in midair.

  The cloud of spray drifted down like a red mist, carried eastward by a current from the southwest.

  As the cloud was borne away by the wind, those below watched to see what had happened to Vrath.

  Vrath’s body remained floating in midair, no longer entwined by Jarsun, but now entirely encased in water. The water was several yards deep, forming a giant block roughly rectangular in shape. The edges and sides of this block were not smooth or perfect; they were wavering and fluid, rippling in the current of wind, but the water cohered into this shape and remained thus. In the center of this rough shape was Vrath’s body, now only blurrily visible but somehow still intact.

  As all watched, the block of water began to harden and grow more blue in hue.

  Despite the morning sun shining down, in just a few moments, the block had frozen solid, and remained where it was, hovering in midair, a thousand yards above the blood-soaked battlefield.

  The Charioteers

  “Krushan!”

  The battle cry tore loose from the throats of the two young princes. The cry applied equally to children of Krushan of any gender, but in this particular case, it was used to mean, literally, “Sons of Krushan!” Shouted by both Shvate and Adri together, at first it was noted only by the Krushan charioteers. They turned their astonished heads to see the two young princes raising their voices—and their swords.

  It was a miserable morning for the charioteers of Hastinaga. What should have been a battle with a foregone conclusion had turned out instead to be an unwinnable fight. The enemy’s unlawful violation of the rules of war and their cowardly tactic had turned the balance against the Krushan. The sheer mass and speed with which the rebels had attacked the Krushan chariot lines was unheard of. No one could have anticipated such a move. To start a battle with such skullduggery! But any outrage had been swiftly replaced by dismay, then alarm, then outright panic as the odds mounted against the charioteers.

  Now, barely an hour into the battle, the sun only a hand’s breadth above the eastern horizon, the brave charioteers were already facing not just their own imminent deaths, but also imminent total defeat. Both of these ignominious outcomes were galling, but the knowledge that the heirs of Hastinaga would be killed also was unbearable. So long as there was even a single Krushan charioteer alive and standing, they would fight the enemy tooth and nail.

  The princes must not die.

  The rebels would win this day, but they would pay a price for that victory. The captains had sent out the word: ten for one. That meant simply, kill ten enemies for every single Krushan felled.

  And that was what they were doing until that moment: selling their lives dearly. Fighting with whatever they could, using every means at their disposal, against impossible odds, to make the enemy pay as expensive a price as possible to achieve their goal. The charioteers of Krushan had fallen into a fighting spell, a hypnotic state wherein all they saw was the enemy and all they sought was the means to kill that enemy. The world fell away and reduced to that narrow purpose. Even the fantastic battle raging in the sky between Vrath and the Reygistani Jarsun was only an occasional distraction. They could do nothing to help their prince regent. And for once, Vrath could do nothing to help them. They were each fighting their own battles.

  “Krushan!”

  The sound of the princes’ battle cry had startled the charioteers out of their collective reverie, waking up a part of their minds that had shut down in anticipation of the looming defeat.

  “Krushan!”

  Prince Shvate and Prince Adri shouted again, their young eager voices a stark contrast to the gruff older voices of the other charioteers.

  The charioteers turned and paid heed to their princes.

  “Krushan!” the charioteers cried in chorus with their lieges.

  Prince Adri and Prince Shvate were standing on the rims of the wells of their chariots, each with a hand on the flagpole that carried their house colors. They were waving to attract their fellow Krushan’s attention.

  Now that they had that attention, they delivered their message. It was a single-word order, yelled with the same furious youthful intensity as the battle cry.

  “Attack!”

  Both princes pointed in the same direction.

  The charioteers turned their heads to look—

  And saw their opportunity at once. Every charioteer’s nightmare is to be stuck and rendered immobile, whether by an obstruction, a broken wheel, a dead horse, or by the worst of all calamities: a chakra—a ring of enemies so dense that even the most skilled of Krushan charioteers could not find a way to break through.

  They found themselves in the midst of the worst chakra imaginable right now. Ringed in on every side by layers upon layers of enemy forces—not merely chariots, but also cavalry, foot, and even elephants. It was impossible to escape such a chakra, and even if they could, they had had their hands full until now merely surviving and protecting their princes, which meant creating a chakra of their own, circling their own chariots to prevent enemies from reaching their lieges—but at the same time preventing themselves from breaking out.

  But now Shvate and Adri were pointing to something that every charioteer recognized instantly.

  The place where the wagons had breached the Krushan wall of chariots was a scorched patch of earth. Because of the fire and hot ashes, the enemy was tactically restricted. Elephants and mounted horses might panic at the smell of fire and cause havoc. Foot soldiers would be useless too. Only chariot teams could brave that fiery breach and attack the Krushan lines. So they had sent chariots through, many of whom were still there, fighting and killing more Krushan on every side.

  But chariots moved . . . which left a gap in the wall.

  Yes, there was a vulnerability in the chakra at that place. Not a very great weakness—and one that the enemy could fill in a moment once their leader entered the breach with more chariots—but for the moment, the spot was weak, and the opportunity was there for the taking. And the two princes had spotted it and were calling to their army to act.

  And the charioteers of Krushan did.

  Jilana

  Jilana clapped her hands together and drew in breath.

  Above the field, the cloud of red mist that had been Jarsun dissipated, blown away by the wind.

  The block of ice that remained marked Vrath’s location. Though he lay still as death within the block, she could not believe he was dead.

  He could not be.

  She knew that the water that had finally defeated their enemy and saved Vrath’s life was no ordinary water.

  It was Vrath’s mother herself—Jeel come to save her son: it was a powerful reminder, as if she needed one, that although Vrath lived among them as a mortal, he was yet the demigod son of the divine River Goddess Who Nourished the World. Jeel had felt her son’s life blood pattering down through the ground, soaking into the dirt of the field, and had risen up to come to his defense.

  And destroyed the demon Jarsun.

  And in doing so saved her beloved Vrath.

  And helped the Krushan draw victory from the jaws of defeat.

  Even now, Jilana knew, within that block of ice, Vrath was likely being healed by the powerful magical properties of Jeeljal, the precious sacred water of Jeel herself, descended directly from heaven to Arthaloka, purest of the pure, most blessed of all fluids, the water of life itself.

  Upon realizing the miracle that had occurred, Jilana had clapped her hands together and shouted, “Jai Jeel Mata!” and had heard herself echoed by everyone on the royal platform.

  Then she had turned her attention to her grandsons.

  And that was what had caused her to clap her hands together and draw in a breath.

  Adri and Shvate were leading a charge!


  The two brave boys had somehow managed to rally their Krushan chariot cadre and had ordered them to change tactics. The defensive wall the charioteers had built to protect the two boys would not last long, and so it made sense for them to change from a defensive to an offensive approach; in the absence of Vrath or another senior leader, the charioteers could not undertake such a change of tactic . . . but the princes of Hastinaga could. Ordering the chariots to attack, they were now leading them through a very narrow breach in the enemy lines, barely wide enough for a single chariot to pass through at a time.

  She watched with rapt attention and hands clasped in silent prayer:

  Jai Jeel Mata.

  Jai to all the stone gods who watch over us.

  Protect and bring home my grandsons safe.

  Adri

  “Krushan!”

  Adri’s heightened senses informed him that the breach he was seeking lay directly ahead.

  It was he who had found the breach and informed Shvate of its existence. Even though Shvate had eyes as sharp as an eagle’s, he had not been looking for it, while Adri, not needing to look with his eyes, had heard the absence of sound in that one particular spot that meant an empty space—a small but vital empty space.

  Adri was now using that same heightened sense to race his chariot toward that breach. Yet even Adri’s own charioteer could not see the breach himself—there was too much debris and smoke still in the air in that area to see the narrow gap. It was only Adri’s acute hearing sensitivity that enabled him to guide his charioteer via a series of taps and touches on his back and shoulders, indicating which way to turn.