The Phoenix Transformed

by James Mallory

  If everyone had done what they were supposed to do when they heard the alarm, right now there were people guarding the shotors, people guarding the flock, people ringing the camp itself to watch for something attempting to slip past that line. If they weren’t all in position yet, they should be in a few minutes more. Only they didn’t have a few minutes. The Black Dogs moved faster than the fastest racing shotor.

  Aduni was one of the two southern sentries. She was no Knight-Mage, but she’d lost her leg the first time they’d faced the creatures, and she knew too well how much destruction the Dogs could bring if they got into the encampment. Now she flogged her shotor viciously across flanks and withers, forcing it to run directly at the pack. It took the Dogs only moments to pull down the shotor and to kill Aduni as well, but they were moments the camp would not have gained without her sacrifice. Even as she died, Harrier and the Isvaieni were running to attack.

  The first of the Black Dogs skipped out of Harrier’s way, red tongue lolling as if it was laughing at him. MageSight showed him a tracery of light over its body and out across the desert, red and yellow and blue and green. Where it had been. Where it would go. His attacks. Its attacks. Red and green faded away as he watched. He wasn’t its prey, and it was out of his reach.

  In that moment, all the pent-up anger Harrier had felt since the moment they’d spotted the Shambler army—feelings he’d tried to wish away, talk himself out of, turn into something else—boiled over. If he’d possessed the spells to Call lightning from the skies, he would have incinerated the entire pack—and possibly a good portion of the camp as well.

  The Book of Sun said that anger was a tool of the Knight-Mage.

  Time seemed to slow.

  The traceries of light faded away.

  Harrier ran into the path of the next Dog. It didn’t seem to see him until he’d made his first attack. The red droplets of its blood flew from the blade of his awardan and hung in the air like snowflakes swirling in the wind. It turned to snap at him, but he already knew where it would be. He stepped closer, inside its attack, and struck again. His second blow severed its spine. He knew he didn’t have the strength to do something like this. He didn’t care. The Knight-Mage moves through the battle as a fish moves through water, but all gifts come at a cost. He sought out another target.

  In his next fight he lost his geschak.

  It was as if the Black Dog cooperated in its own destruction, moving slowly, like it was underwater. Harrier knew it couldn’t be, but it didn’t matter what the reality was. The illusion was enough to allow him to slide by, close enough to touch, and slam his geschak into its eye. He was afraid it wouldn’t be a killing blow, but he’d struck hard and true, and as the Black Dog foamed and howled and thrashed out its death agonies upon the ground, he sought another target. The knife was jammed too deeply into the eye-socket of the Black Dog to be pried loose; he left it behind.

  His third opponent nearly killed him. He knew every move it was going to make before it happened, but whatever speed and power and MageSight he’d managed to draw on burned through his strength to the point that even determination wasn’t enough. Harrier could feel the blackness of unconsciousness licking around the edges of his vision even as he closed with the Dog. Seven dead—the Isvaieni’d killed five—the rest still heading for the camp, and if he couldn’t kill this one nothing else would matter to him, because it would have killed him. He wasn’t thinking any of this in words. He wasn’t thinking at all. He was preparing his attacks, lining them up, and one and two and three and the attempt to sever the Dog’s spine with an overhand cut didn’t work because he’d lost the spell-driven edge of strength that let him do it the first time, and that left him at the wrong angle for a direct cut to the throat, and the Black Dog bled from his strike where its neck met its shoulder but that wasn’t a killing blow, and he reversed the awardan and brought it down with all the force he had left across the top of its muzzle, letting the shock of impact bounce his sword-arm back, watching as the Black Dog dropped its head, snarling in pain, then raised it, and finally—finally—the blade of his awardan buried itself heavily in the monster’s throat.

  And his fourth attack killed it.

  His awardan slipped from his fingers as the Dog’s lifeless body slumped to the ground. Harrier stared at the awardan in faint surprise. I didn’t mean to drop that. He thought he should pick it up and go back to the encampment, but suddenly his knees buckled and he dropped to the ground, kneeling beside the Dog’s body. Whatever had been going on to let him do what he’d done stopped going on, and Harrier realized that he could feel the night wind again, and smell blood, and that he’d dropped his cloak somewhere because he was cold, and that in the distance he could hear screams and shouts and Saravasse bellowing.

  Yeah, okay.

  He meant to say it out loud, to get up, to go help, or at least to look in the direction of the camp, but he was too exhausted to move. He was thirsty and starving and his head pounded and he thought that it was somehow terribly unfair that whatever had happened to him was something he’d managed to do to himself.

  “STAY here,” Saravasse said, the moment she and Tiercel heard the whistles shrill. She stepped carefully away from the edge of the shotor grounds. People were already running toward them carrying saddles—so that as many of the shotors would be ready to ride as possible—and others were carrying swords. Tiercel saw Saravasse lift her head, searching for the source of the threat. He didn’t wait to see what she found. He turned away and headed back toward the center of the camp.

  Harrier wasn’t there by the time Tiercel reached it, and none of the Isvaieni who were there knew what the danger was. Tiercel thought he should try to get back to their tents—after the way Harrier had left things with Lord Felocan, Magistrate Perizel, and the others, Tiercel wasn’t sure they’d stay put when the camp was in an uproar, and he knew nobody had explained to them yet what the whistles meant. But whether it was a good idea or not, he couldn’t do it. He was too desperately needed here. The sheep and goats smelled something—Tiercel didn’t know what—and because Bisochim wasn’t here to bespell them, they were trying to bolt between the tents. Every hand was needed.

  While he was wrestling a muddy goat—and losing—Tiercel found out what the danger was that they were facing. He looked up and found himself nose-to-muzzle with a dog the size of a pony. Oh, so that’s what Harrier meant when he talked about the Black Dogs . . . Its lips drew back in a silent snarl, and without even thinking about it Tiercel let go of the goat and flung himself backward. The goat sprang out of his arms, and the Black Dog whipped its head sideways, crushing the goat’s body in one bite. As Tiercel scrambled into the middle of the herd on hands and knees, one of the Isvaieni guarding the herd stepped over him to move into the Dog’s path. Tiercel knew who she was—Naura of the Tunag—but in the chaos he didn’t see what happened next, although he didn’t see the Dog again, either. (It wasn’t until the following evening, when he heard the final reckoning of this evening’s dead—by name and tribe, from the lips of their Ummarai—that Tiercel heard from Ummara Sumadar of the Tunag that Naura was dead.) Now that they’d actually seen one of the Black Dogs, it wasn’t possible to keep the livestock from panicking, but the Isvaieni were all grimly attempting to keep them from bolting outright. It seemed like an eternity—during which Tiercel was both trampled and bitten—before Bisochim arrived to bespell them before running off again.

  In the abrupt silence that descended when the sheep and goats shut up, Tiercel could hear Saravasse roaring. And then, as his ears adjusted further—like when your eyes adjusted from light to shadow—he could hear the cries of pain and the shouts for aid coming from nearby. He knew he wasn’t that badly hurt. He dragged himself to his feet and went to find someone who needed help.

  IT didn’t seem to matter how many times he was in what Zanattar and other Young Hunters said were battles, he never seemed to learn anything from them, Tiercel thought gloomily. He told himself that he should
be inured to the sight of blood and wounds and death by now, to the fact that there was nothing he or anyone else could do for a dying man but sit beside him as he screamed for a wife and children who’d died sennights before. But somehow it didn’t get less terrible just because it was familiar. Each time was worse. Each time was more of a shock, as if every time his mind had decided: yes, that was horrible, but it was the last time and it will never happen again. And it always did.

  He didn’t know how Harrier stood it.

  It was hard to say that the battle was going on this minute and over that minute. Scraps of information were passed from one person to the next until they reached the center of the camp, only to be contradicted in the next moment. The shotors had bolted. The shotors were all dead. Hundreds of people had been killed. Ahairan had come in person. Goblins were fighting beside the Black Dogs. No, their casualties were light, and the Black Dogs all but slain. After the first several rumors, Tiercel tried not to listen to any of them, and simply worked. Here the carpets had to be stripped from the floor of a tent so that the dead could be piled inside and guarded in case they rose up as Shamblers. There another tent—two, three—were thrown open so that the wounded could be sorted out for Healing; the most serious cases together, then on and on to the ones who might heal by themselves—did the Isvaieni dare allow any injury to be left untreated. Most of the lightly-wounded had been bitten or trampled by animals, one woman had a broken leg.

  Tiercel was about to go and fetch water before returning to sit with the most seriously injured when Thadyan—who had taken Hadyan’s place among the Kadyastar as Liapha’s chaharum and the Kadyastar’s Ummara-in waiting—grabbed his arm and shoved him into the tent with the most lightly wounded.

  “See, northerner?” Thadyan said, prodding at Tiercel’s arm. “That blood is not all Isvaieni blood, though I grant that by now you bleed sand like one of the desertborn.”

  “Ow,” Tiercel said reflexively. He pulled up his sleeve, pulling the fabric of his robe out of his flesh to do it. “Ow,” he repeated, looking at the bruised and torn flesh. It hadn’t hurt until he’d looked at it. “What bit me?”

  “Easier to say what did not,” Thadyan answered brusquely. “Come and sit and stay where you are set.”

  It was sensible advice—even if it wasn’t very welcome—but it did seem to mean that the danger was over. That didn’t mean they had any real news about how the fight had gone—other than that they’d won—and the things Tiercel did hear were still unlikely. Harrier had flown up into the sky. Harrier had become invisible. Harrier had broken the neck of one of the Black Dogs with nothing more than his bare hands. About the time Tiercel began to seriously worry, Jekin and Kamar came in, supporting Harrier between them.

  “What happened to him?” Tiercel demanded, springing to his feet at the same time Harrier said, “You’re bleeding,” and pulled away from Kamar and Jekin. Harrier took an unsteady step forward, and staggered into Tiercel. “On me,” Harrier added.

  “I got bitten,” Tiercel admitted.

  “By a goat,” Kamar added helpfully.

  “Oh, sit down before you fall down,” Tiercel told Harrier, irritable with relief.

  The two of them never did figure out what had actually happened to Harrier. He admitted to Tiercel that while he hadn’t flown through the air—nor, as far as he knew, turned invisible—he had killed three of the Black Dogs by himself. “How” was simple enough—he’d used an awardan—but as for what had enabled him to do that . . . Harrier was just as baffled as Tiercel was. All he knew was that he’d barely managed to kill the third, and felt terribly weak afterward, and if Jekin hadn’t ridden out and found him, he’d probably still be sitting out there on the desert.

  “You shouldn’t do things like that,” Tiercel said helplessly. Harrier only snorted.

  HARRIER refused to go off and rest until he knew how many they’d lost tonight. The Black Dogs’ targets had clearly been the animals—a hundred and thirteen people were dead, and more than three hundred injured, many in ways that Bisochim couldn’t repair, though he could Heal them—but everyone’s tale was the same: over and over the Dogs had broken off attacks on people to go after shotors or to try to reach the herds. Thirty shotors were dead and another hundred had required Healing, and over three hundred of the goats and sheep were dead. At least having the full tally of the dead told them who wasn’t dead: none of the Armethaliehans were among the casualties.

  The one glimmer of good news in all of this was that the flesh of the dead animals could be salvaged as food—both Harrier and Bisochim agreed the meat wasn’t Tainted—so everyone who was neither injured nor on guard was set to work butchering.

  Someone had brought some of the younger ikulas puppies into the tent. One of the youngest, a bit over five moonturns and all legs at the moment, was flopped across Tiercel’s lap. He rubbed its ears absently as he spoke.

  “I just wish that some of this made sense,” he said. Tiercel was still waiting for Bisochim—and not looking forward to having a Wild Magic spell actually cast on him (for the third time), but the alternative, as Harrier had cheerfully informed him, was having the wound go bad, since they had no medicine left.

  “You expect a Demon to make sense?” Harrier asked idly. He was sitting on the floor beside Tiercel, another ikulas beside him. “I wonder where she keeps things like the Black Dogs when she isn’t sending them after us. They’re flesh and blood. They have to eat. Don’t they?”

  “I don’t know,” Tiercel said simply. He’d gotten familiar with this mood of Harrier’s over the past several moonturns: too tired to sleep, too tired to do anything but keep picking at the same unanswerable questions. Thirty-one Black Dogs had attacked them and they’d managed to kill all of them. That was something. “Maybe she makes new ones each time she needs some.”

  “That would at least be convenient,” Harrier muttered. The ikulas beside him yawned—a wide gape of white teeth and pink tongue. Harrier yawned in sympathy and Tiercel found himself echoing the two of them.

  “Go to bed,” he begged. “Otherwise, you’ll still be here when Bisochim gets around to me.”

  “Yeah, and then I’ll get to watch you vomit and pass out,” Harrier said.

  “Find something else to do for fun,” Tiercel said. “Go bother Eugens.”

  “Yeah,” Harrier said with a sigh, groaning as he got to his feet. “He’s probably still awake. They’re probably all still awake.” He yawned again. “I can go have a lovely conversation with Madame Magistrate and His Noble Whatsis about Ahairan being out to kill all of us so negotiating with her probably isn’t a really bright idea.”

  “Tactfully,” Tiercel reminded him.

  “Tactfully,” Harrier agreed.

  THE young ikulas followed along at Harrier’s heels as he walked across the camp. Saravasse was standing guard over the not-exactly-burial parties out on the desert; the camp would still be recovering from the attack at dawn, but they couldn’t spend a full day here. The smell would be too bad once the wind shifted—if not today, then certainly by tomorrow. And besides, who knew what might be out here that would be attracted to all that spoiling meat?

  Harrier was just as glad not to have to be there when Bisochim Healed Tiercel. He knew Tiercel wasn’t looking forward to it at all, and they both knew there wasn’t any other choice. The camp might be relatively clean, but an animal bite turned poisonous quickly.

  When he reached their tents, the ikulas puppy suddenly bounded ahead into Shaiara’s tent. He hurried after it, suddenly worried. If Ahairan had sent something besides the Black Dogs—If there were atish’ban-jarrari in the camp—

  But no.

  When Harrier got to the entrance, he saw that the tent was empty, but that everything in it had been mixed up. All the chests that held food had been moved away from the tent walls and stacked in the middle of the floor. The ones that Bisochim had bespelled shut were still intact, but the others had all had the ropes securing their tops cut. The ikulas
had pushed the lid off of one of them and was nosing into it. As he watched, it balanced on the edge, a nearly empty sack of candied dates in its jaws.

  “No,” Harrier said, taking the bag away from it.

  It pranced around him, begging. He reached into the bag, pulled out a date and tossed it to the ikulas before pulling the cord tight again and tossing it back into the open chest. Then he conjured a ball of Coldfire and inspected the damage more closely.

  The kaffeyah was still here, and the spices. All the dried fruit except those last few dates was gone. The few sacks of roasted nuts, the six tightly-wrapped packets of oiled paper, that contained—or had contained—about ten pounds of various kinds of candy, the honey and sugar, and both the jugs of date wine—gone. Well, so much for my ability to do a Scrying Spell if we happen to need one, Harrier thought distantly. He quickly inspected the other two chests. One held nothing but ground flour. It had been completely searched, but its contents were still intact. The other chest held dried salted fruit, some blocks of a vegetable paste the Isvaieni used in stews, a few bags of xocalatl beans. Some of the blocks of the vegetable paste had been unwrapped, and the bags of fruit and xocalatl had been opened, but most of it was there.

  He closed up all the open chests and shoved them more-or-less back into their places, breathing hard. While everyone else in the camp had been out fighting for their lives—and fighting to protect these people—the Armethaliehans had repaid them by looting and gorging themselves. He went into the other tent.

  Kave, Eugens, and Magistrate Perizel were there, but they were the only ones in the tent. All three of them were sound asleep on their sleeping mats. The two jugs of date wine lay on the rug between them. He stepped over Eugens and picked up the nearer one. Empty, just as he’d thought. He kicked Eugens. Hard.