As the conflict in the seats grew fiercer, Çeda and Sehid-Alaz traded blows. He was fearfully strong, but his movements were neither quick nor precise, and she was able to dodge his blows or block them with sword or buckler. His eyes going wild, he lifted one hand, and the ground exploded beneath her feet, tilting the world as she was thrown skyward. She landed hard, her breath whooshing from her lungs as her head slammed against the ground.
As stars filled her vision, Çeda became vaguely aware that Sümeya and Kameyl had swooped in and were trading blows with Sehid-Alaz. She rolled onto her knees, coughing, and realized she’d lost both River’s Daughter and her buckler.
Sehid-Alaz, roaring, bashed Sümeya with one hand and brought his sword against Kameyl’s defenses in a move that sent her reeling. Freed from them, he turned and stalked toward Çeda. When she tried to stand up, he kicked her in the chest to knock her back down.
“Don’t,” Çeda called as he loomed over her. “Please listen!”
But he wouldn’t. He’d given himself over to his rage. He was going to kill her just as he had Zeheb.
Chapter 46
SEHID-ALAZ LIFTED HIS BUZZING sword high into the air.
Çeda had felt the power of the desert keenly in the past, but never so strongly as she did just then. With a speed driven by her desperation, Çeda raised her right hand. Feeling in that moment not merely a part of the desert, but its master, its creator, she called upon that well of power. A dread wind pressed against Sehid-Alaz, and he was flung away so forcefully that his body spun and twisted until he struck the wall of the arena. As he fell to the ground, stunned, the other asirim backed away, shying from Çeda with fearful looks in their eyes.
“Raise no hand against the Kings,” Çeda said to them. “None of you. They are under my protection now.”
The asirim scrabbled and whined as they crawled away. What they might see in her that would scare them so she had no idea, but just then she didn’t care.
As the battle continued to rage around her, she snatched River’s Daughter from the rough earthen floor of the arena, then used it to cut the bonds at Ihsan’s wrists and ankles. After removing his gag, she tried to wake him, but he didn’t so much as move a muscle, so she shifted to where Husamettín lay and cut his bonds as well. She was just heading toward Cahil when she noticed a woman in the stands on the far side. She was wearing a red dress, and was watching the battle unfold with a wide grin, like a princess on her birthday.
By the gods, it was Queen Meryam.
Her gaze suddenly snapped toward Çeda. She’d been using a spell to conceal herself, Çeda realized—she’d been watching this entire time—but Çeda’s gaze had alerted her to the fact that the veil of her spell had been lifted.
“Release me!” Cahil shouted.
Çeda stared down. She’d practically forgotten he was there.
After a fleeting thought of simply leaving him there, she knelt and cut his bonds while, in the stands, more soldiers were revealed: a dozen Blade Maidens, Qaimiri knights dressed in plate armor, forty Silver Spears wearing chainmail and white tabards bearing the King’s sign, a shield with twelve shamshirs fanned around it.
Cahil retrieved his war hammer from the asir who’d dropped it. Nearby, Husamettín had picked up Night’s Kiss. Ihsan had woken at last. He was standing on wobbly legs and gaping at the unfolding battle as if he was living through a nightmare. “Stop!” he yelled, but the battle raged on.
All too soon Çeda was lost in a storm of Silver Spears and swinging swords. Husamettín stood by her side, defending her, the two of them trading whistles to warn one another of threats and to position themselves more advantageously.
Cahil was there as well, swinging his golden hammer. Sümeya and Kameyl and Macide all joined in the fray.
Still in command of the desert’s power, Çeda used it to send soldiers flying with gouts of wind and dirt, but the effort was weakening her, and the more that were felled, the more that seemed to rush in and take their place. Swords flashed. Steel rung on steel. Blood flowed in rivers. They fought, even Ihsan, who had taken up the sword and buckler of a fallen Spear, but gods, their enemies were so numerous.
One of Queen Meryam’s Blade Maidens was a terror, full of fury and well-honed instincts. Çeda struggled to hold her ground against her, and then was stunned when the Maiden spun and bashed Çeda with her shield. The Maiden was readying a swing Çeda was woefully unprepared for when an arrow suddenly sprouted from her neck. More arrows sunk into the chests of the nearby Maidens. The Silver Spears as well. One of the Qaimiri knights caught an arrow in the hip. He stumbled along the arena floor, lost his sword while struggling to keep his feet, and was felled when Shal’alara ran her sword across his throat.
Çeda turned and saw, fates be praised, Emre—Emre!—sprinting down the stairs, bow in hand, releasing arrow after arrow in such rapid succession his bow string was a blur.
“Come on!” he said, waving Çeda and others toward the gladiator’s ramp.
It was a wise move, but the entire arena was madness, what with the tribe fighting its own and both the Silver Spears and Blade Maidens entering the fray.
A small contingent of Meryam’s forces had turned to meet another foe. Meryam herself was wielding a twisting cyclone of fire against a pair of men who stood high in the stands. One was, of all people, Ramahd Amansir, who seemed to be snuffing out the roiling column of fire before it reached him and his companion. The other was a man in robes who had his hands lifted high. They were surrounded by men who wore the same colors and style of armor as Queen Meryam’s knights.
Çeda had no idea what was happening, only that Ramahd had somehow found his way here, and so must be continuing his quest to bring Meryam to justice.
Suddenly, all around the arena, the earth began to split. It ruptured, lifted in places, creating gaps through which hands could be seen, lifting, grasping, clawing, as if a company of soldiers had been buried alive just beneath the surface. Bodies were revealed—men in rusted, broken armor, the mail and tabards of the Silver Spears. They looked like poor simulacra of their live brethren.
Eyes vacant, skin torn and putrid, blood stains and wounds all over their bodies, they lifted from the ground—ghuls one and all. As they stood, Ramahd and his men slowed. Hamzakiir and Queen Meryam did as well, their spells sputtering then vanishing with the spitfire sound of forge-heated steel being doused in cold water. Strangely, the queen’s soldiers were standing stock still, as if turned to stone. The same was true of the Blade Maidens, the warriors of the thirteenth tribe, the Kings, and the asirim all around.
Çeda, too, felt herself slowing. Becoming immobile. The air felt heavy as water, soft but unyielding. There was a strange counter-effect, however. The more the air pressed on her, the more her right arm burned. It suddenly felt as if she’d taken up a burning piece of coal, hoping to extinguish it in her grip.
Çeda’s nostrils flared as a terrible stench wafted into the arena. It was caustic like lye and stank of rotting flesh. She thought it was due to the ghuls—the dead Silver Spears—but a memory nagged at her. She’d smelled the scent of ehrekh before. First from Rümayesh, then later on Goezhen himself. This peculiar scent reminded her of another.
But it cannot be. He’s dead. Rümayesh killed him. I saw his body fallen on the sand.
Footsteps approached, a tympanic rumbling Çeda could feel through the soles of her feet. It rattled her bones. At the edge of her vision she saw something massive duck beneath the archway of the gladiators’ entrance. It was nine feet tall, with massive horns that curled around its head.
Guhldrathen. It’s the ehrekh, Guhldrathen.
He hunched low, sniffing the air like some grotesque bone crusher on the hunt. As he headed toward the center of the arena, Çeda realized he hadn’t been healed. He wasn’t even alive. With milky eyes he scanned those nearest him, then those in the seats. His chest still lay open.
Other terrible wounds marked his skin, proof of the ruin Rümayesh had made of his flesh—evidence of the Battle of Blackspear, the clash between King Onur and the thirteenth tribe, where Rümayesh and Guhldrathen had fought a battle for the ages.
Behind his terrible, shambling form came a woman in a flowing jalabiya and a white hijab that made her blackened skin stand out in the sun. It was Anila, the necromancer, the one Davud had brought to the very threshold of death in Ishmantep while trying to douse a burning caravanserai.
As her undead soldiers fanned out, protecting her, Guhldrathen’s corpse stepped aside. Anila strode across the arena floor, her eyes locked on Hamzakiir. “I’ll admit,” she declared, “I was beginning to think I’d never find you.” She stepped on the back of a prostrate ghul to reach the stands, then waved one hand toward Guhldrathen. “But the ehrekh are wondrous creatures. Even dead, they can catch glimpses of the future.”
Hamzakiir quavered.
Çeda’s arm, meanwhile, burned. She willed it to greater heights. She felt her heart beat harder. Felt Guhldrathen’s spell working against it. But her fear that everything—the future of the tribe, the future of Sharakhai, the very future of the Great Shangazi—might end here drove her on.
Like a flame melting ice, the spell’s effect ebbed. Her arm, though leaden, began to move. She was able to shift her head, her torso, her legs, in the same deadened manner. She forced the same effect on those around her, concentrating on Sümeya and Kameyl, Macide and Emre, then the Kings. In dribs and drabs, they began to move as well, but so did the queen’s nearby soldiers.
Surely sensing her efforts, Guhldrathen turned and roared. He pounded over the broken earth toward her. Çeda lifted River’s Daughter, but too slowly. The spell’s effect on her had only been diminished, not banished altogether. Breath of the Great Mother, how could she hope to stand against such a beast when she was trapped in honey?
Guhldrathen was so focused on her, he didn’t see Husamettín. As the King of Swords brought Night’s Kiss down in a blinding cut, a dark veil fluttered in the sword’s wake. Night’s Kiss buzzed angrily, and the blade cut deep into Guhldrathen’s right calf. When the ehrekh turned, Cahil sprinted forward, leapt high into the air, and drove his hammer hard against the ehrekh’s skull.
Guhldrathen stumbled and fell. Twisting his massive torso, he smashed Cahil with one flailing arm, then lifted one cloven hoof to stomp him where he lay, but Çeda, throwing off the effects of the spell at last, sliced his shoulder open.
His aim was thrown off enough that Cahil was able to scrabble away. By then a dozen asirim were swarming Guhldrathen, including Sehid-Alaz. Guhldrathen backed away, trying to throw them off, but there were simply too many, and his body was failing him. He’d suffered too many cuts, too many wounds. He fell roaring, snapping his jaws like a rabid dog.
The battle around Çeda had resumed, but most now seemed content to retreat, to escape what was now completely out of control.
“Where’s Macide?” Çeda asked. She didn’t see him anywhere.
The queen’s contingent had started to move with her toward the far exit. The faction of the thirteenth tribe loyal to Hamid were retreating, while those loyal to Macide gathered on the arena floor. Macide himself, however, was nowhere to be found.
“There!” Emre yelled.
He was pointing toward Queen Meryam and her cadre, where a burly Qaimiri knight was carrying Macide over one shoulder. Moments later, Queen Meryam herself swept through an archway and was lost to the darkened stairwell beyond. Her guard followed, including the one carrying Macide.
A terrible battle had broken out between Anila’s undead soldiers and Ramahd’s contingent of Qaimiri knights. Hamzakiir was on his knees, staring at Anila, one hand on his chest, powerless before her righteous anger.
Just then Ramahd caught her eye. Çeda wanted to speak to him, wanted to help him, but she couldn’t—her tribe came first. “With me!” she shouted. “We must hurry if we’re to save Macide!”
She and a dozen others ran through the gladiators’ entrance. They wended their way through the arena’s stone-lined halls then burst into an empty alley, hearing the clop of horse hooves on stone as they made for the stadium’s northside plaza. When they reached it, a space bordered by squat, sandstone buildings, they found Meryam and her cohort. The first of them were already galloping out of the plaza.
Several of Çeda’s fellow tribesmen launched a flurry of arrows, felling four Silver Spears who were just mounting their akhalas. Çeda leapt onto one of the abandoned horses and rode hard while, behind her, Emre, Sümeya, and Kameyl mounted more slowly.
“Follow me!” Sümeya shouted, and reined her brass-and-iron akhala into a narrow side street. “I know the way!”
The streets they followed were narrow but clear of debris and mostly straight. They flew toward the caravanserai’s large, northern harbor, a handful of falcons chasing a host of fleeing crows. As they broke free of the caravanserai’s squat buildings and filed onto the clear, dusty earth, they saw the queen’s cohort break from the main thoroughfare and pound toward a small fleet of four royal galleons.
During their chase, Emre had gained steadily on Çeda, bow in hand.
“Go back, Emre!” she shouted to him.
“No!” he shouted. He still looked strange with his head shaved, like an ascetic who’d chosen to wander the desert in search of peace.
“Your head!”
“I know!” he said as he pulled even with her. “Isn’t it wonderful? I feel great!” He whooped and pulled ahead, holding his bow high, sending arrow after arrow against the Silver Spears as their groups closed ranks.
“Emre!” she called.
But he wouldn’t listen. He just kept riding.
Knowing he wouldn’t relent, Çeda called upon the wind to drive against the queen’s soldiers, to slow them down. The strength of it wasn’t nearly as impressive as it had been in the arena. Even still, it spoiled the flight of the enemy’s arrows, allowing Çeda and the others to close the distance between them and Macide, who lay across the saddle of the burly knight in the bright armor.
Their two groups clashed. Çeda lost track of Emre as she, Sümeya, and Kameyl drove into the queen’s men, slashing with their shamshirs, using only their legs to guide their horses, which were clearly trained for war. Several enemy soldiers engaged with her, only to be felled by an arrow streaking in from behind—Emre, protecting her.
Cahil and Husamettín crashed into their opposite flank with a dozen more warriors from the thirteenth tribe who whooped and cried in high ululations as they met the enemy. Surprisingly, Yndris had joined them, though she was favoring her left side, and half of her face was covered in dried blood.
Çeda was close to Macide now, only a few horse-lengths away. Ahead, one of the queen’s blood magi had turned in his saddle. His arms were raised high, and a thin tendril of blue light running from one hand to the other. He spread his arms wide, stretching the glowing thread into a tight line, which sped from his hands toward her.
In a blink, her horse was screaming, falling, suddenly, tragically limbless, and she was flying through the air. She fell to the ground and rolled away, trying to avoid being crushed by other horses, but something clubbed her head and made her ears ring painfully. All around, soldiers shouted in surprise and pain. Some of the horses, bloody along their front legs and shoulders, bolted upright and galloped away, riderless. Others did not.
Emre flew past, his bronze horse unharmed. He crouched in the stirrups, bow up, shooting as he went. He was slowly gaining on Meryam’s cohort. Meryam had noticed, however, and had turned in her saddle.
Just then Emre released an arrow fletched in red—an arrow tipped with ebon steel, which struck Meryam’s shoulder just as she was releasing a fan of green flames. Instead of spraying over Emre, the flames fell upon the Blade Maidens near her, knocking two from their horses.
&n
bsp; By then Çeda was up and running alongside one of the healthy horses. “Hiyah!” she cried and used its building momentum to pull herself up and into the saddle. She whipped the horse’s rump with the reins, moving faster and faster toward Emre, who was nearly even with the knight who bore Macide’s limp form in the saddle behind him.
Emre, out of arrows, crouched on his horse’s shoulders and leapt for the knight’s horse. It was a bold and foolish move. He might even have made it had a Blade Maiden not lashed out with a whip and caught him around the neck.
The Maiden immediately reined in her horse and pulled on the whip, yanking Emre off the knight’s horse and onto the packed earth. His hands reached up to the lash cinched around his neck, and just in time—the Maiden, having tied her end to the pommel, kicked her horse into motion, and Emre was dragged behind her toward one of the royal galleons; his grip on the lash had prevented her from snapping his neck outright.
The galleons’ sails were already set, their crews ready on the decks with bows to hand. Çeda watched as Emre was pulled one direction, Macide the other.
Gods help her, for a moment she wasn’t sure what to do. Ihsan’s vision haunted her. The lives of two who are close to you are threatened. You can choose one, and only one, to save.
She knew it was a risk—a terrible, perhaps disastrous risk—but she couldn’t abandon Emre. She couldn’t.
She kicked her horse into a faster gallop over the dusty ground, then onto the open sand of the harbor. With Emre’s weight slowing the Blade Maiden’s horse, she gained on them easily. As Çeda pulled even with him, the Maiden drew a throwing knife from her sleeve and launched it at Çeda. Çeda ducked the throw, then blocked a second and a third with her shield. Before the Maiden could launch another volley, Çeda swiped down with River’s Daughter and cut the whip cleanly.
As Emre rolled to a halt, Çeda kept her pace to make sure the Maiden wouldn’t suddenly turn and try to take Emre down. The Maiden did indeed slow, but instead of heading for Emre, she began trading blows with Çeda.
When Jackals Storm the Walls Page 42