by Richard Nell
“We break their will, cousins.” Ruka roared over the wind. “Hit them, then ride past and away. We are here to shock and terrify. Follow mighty Sula. For the Ascom. For the dead.”
“For the dead,” growled Magnus, a great chief of Orhus, bloodlust steeling his eyes. The men whooped and clanged long-spears against shields or iron armor or barding. All had waited a decade and perhaps all their lives for this moment—for an enemy to kill that wasn’t their countrymen, a target for their skill and fury that would win them great fame and glory and place them with the heroes of old.
They were heavy and sweating in the heat, weighed down by armor, spears, swords, and javelins. But they would charge over the dryest sand, and the fight would be short. The enemy would have no concept of what was coming. If Kale had magic, he would surely use it, Ruka would see with his own eyes, and then his men would withdraw.
Two hundred coursers in steel and leather trampled the beach, crushing drywood and crabshells and the corpses of dead fish as they shook the earth. They rounded the last bend and saw the edge of the enemy. Ruka’s men took up their shouts, growing wild with the excitement. Ruka felt it, too.
There was maybe a god on that beach.
“Ride Sula,” Ruka hissed, drawing a flaming lance from the realm of the dead, holding it high before lowering it to charge. He had drenched it in pitch so it would burn long after being summoned. Both he and Sula were covered in rune-stained steel, made with fangs and spikes as if to resemble a demon out of hell. He wanted every man before him to see his doom, and flee.
But he did not hate his enemy. He did not believe they deserved the death they’d be given. Yet nor were they innocent. They were soldiers who had come here to destroy Ruka and take away his people’s dreams—to impose their will and arms against his, no matter their reasons. If a man lifted a spear, he should not be surprised to die by one.
Ruka snarled as the final moments arrived. The islanders panicked long before contact, but didn’t know where to run. Men on the edges pushed against the others. Many ran straight back towards their boats or simply fled into the sea. Ruka saw wide eyes and frantic movement as they looked back towards their leaders. Some few held their short spears towards the enemy.
The charge at last struck. A thousand bodies stood in opposition, and Sula did not disappoint.
Without slowing, the great patriarch of the Sons trampled the first man with his iron chest. Ruka skewered the spearman beside him, ripping a half-naked soldier from his feet by the shoulder as if with a battering ram. All around him islanders screamed and fell to the sand even before being attacked. The Sons behind him threw javelins and cried out as they rammed spears into their enemy. Ruka kept them moving forward.
He saw the three groups of Pyu soldiers and marines and intended to ride along them, keeping to the coast. To his left, raised on a hill, he saw real spearmen and soldiers in tight formation with shields and armor. Already they were advancing to intercept, and he would have to move quickly or the rear of his formation would be caught.
“Ride! Forward!” Ruka threw down his spear and drew a long, heavy-ended sword made for this purpose. He kicked Sula’s flank, hacking as if with a sickle at any man brave enough to stand in his path. Arrows zipped about him now, some striking Sula’s barding or his armor uselessly. Others threw their spears or knives or even rocks rather than come any closer. Their weapons were crude and equally useless.
Ruka did not turn from giving death. His people could not have peace without respect, and they could not have respect without fear. First they would bloody this would-be hero, and show their strength. Only then would they talk.
Their charge shattered the first group and snaked past them towards the second. Ruka glanced back to see his men in good order. These were leaders of men and they knew how to follow. He snarled and spun his sword as he pushed into the saddle, his feet dug deep into the stirrups, his blood up and his next targets clear. They were all but unopposed, and he saw nothing to challenge his charge.
He blinked as the air all around him blurred. He felt the moment frozen, as if only a memory, a scene from his youth plucked from his mind to be examined. Thunder cracked as if beside his head, and the world seemed to turn upside down.
Grains of sand raised from the beach without being touched, hanging suspended in the air. All at once Ruka’s vision clouded as more of it swirled to life. He cried out and covered his eyes as Sula slowed and reared. A storm of sand engulfed them, blinding and pelting his armor hard enough the sound was deafening.
Hairs stood all over his body. Force seemed to surge all around him followed by thunder. Even in his Grove the sky darkened with lightning crackling high above. Bukayag woke all at once. He screamed as if in rage, or maybe agony, though Ruka did not know why. He knew only he must not stop.
“Show them your courage,” Ruka tried to yell over the storm, “ride Sula, forward!”
Whether the animal could hear him he did not know, but he dug in his heels and flicked the reins, and Sula ran. In only moments his vision cleared. With stinging eyes he and Sula burst again into open ground, turning away from the second group of islanders to bolt straight for a gap.
With a shudder, he looked back towards his men and saw only a cloud of swirling sand. Above it lay thick, dark clouds far too low to the ground. They loosed lightning into the dust storm over and over, thunder blaring like a hammer striking iron. Ruka saw several shattered men, burnt and fallen bodies of horse and rider outside the unnatural force. He turned his eyes away and towards the cluster of spearmen moving down the hill, and he saw the source.
Farahi’s son floated in the air like the sand. He was the same young, thin man Ruka saw in his Grove, though he wore Alaku colors now. His hands were outstretched, his face calm but pointed towards the sky. As he hovered there above his men, face almost serene, his enemy trapped in his power, Kale certainly looked like a God. Ruka resisted the urge to summon a spear.
Instead he turned and fled. He did not know how many of his men managed to escape behind him or perhaps another route, but there was nothing he could do for them now—not against such power. Incredibly, and as usual, Farahi was right.
Ruka’s ride back to the palace was very long, and very strange. All his life he had been surrounded by lesser things—creatures ultimately weaker and frailer than he. He had felt some guilt in opposing them, some feeling of cruelty as a wolf might feel eating the fawn instead of the doe. But here, finally, was a different sort of life. This was no fellow wolf or any beast Ruka knew. It was not a man, not truly, but more like a flood, or a flashfire. No sane thing stood against it.
Ruka would not send more men to die. Farahi would have to convince his son to join their cause, or he would surrender. Perhaps the men of ash would not begrudge kneeling to a god. And what a world we might make with such power, he thought.
Perhaps even the great feats Ruka had imagined could be surpassed. Perhaps together they could re-shape the land and the sea for the betterment of mankind, learn all the secrets of their hidden worlds, and who knew where it might end?
He closed his eyes as he rode, giving thanks to the warriors and animals who gave their lives in that terrible storm. In a way, he thought, no man should have such power. But that was not up to him. Even the strange might of Ruka’s grove frightened him, and for many years had made him wonder if he could wield it and still be just a man at all.
But next to this boy, his powers were nothing. Ruka re-visited the memories of the miracle on the beach, in awe as it seemed somehow Kale could alter the very fabric of the world. It frightened him in a way he had not considered since meeting Ando of Bato—another mystery one day to solve.
For what man could wield such power with wisdom? What might he do in a fit of rage? At the death of a lover, or a child? What would a man like Bukayag do?
Such thoughts plagued him even as he arrived safely at the palace, telling his men to hide within while he spoke to his prisoners. He and Farahi perhaps would go ou
t together to meet the boy, and maybe even bring his brothers and son. With time, and patience, they would convince him.
Ruka had long suspected he’d meet other men with gifts like his, or like Farahi. But he could not have imagined. The world had changed in a heartbeat—a world he thought he knew and was working to improve. But perhaps like the great mountain Turgen Sar, in a rage spewing lava and ash, or a huge wave striking the beach, this boy could take it all in his hands and destroy it. Though he tried to hope, Ruka felt his brother clench their jaw.
Chapter 72
Most of the strange warriors and their beasts scattered and fled Kale’s storm, though maybe only half escaped alive.
Kale stood on the beach with his men as they stared in horrified fascination, or looked to their own people’s corpses. Osco moved about the fallen with a furrowed brow, checking for survivors amongst the enemy.
“Do you speak Naranian?” he tried, then again in a dozen other languages, before eventually trying Pyu common.
“I bloody knew it,” Kale muttered without any feeling. Osco ignored him, and so did the enemy.
The huge warrior was almost white-skinned as the messages had claimed. He had thick black hair on his head and face, now stained with blood and sand. He lay beside his even more massive animal, a curved blade clutched in one hand. He looked up at Osco with a mouth full of blood to spit, then lay flat with a groan.
The Mesanite frowned. He lifted one of the attacker’s spears, tested the point, then clanged it against his blade. He shook his head. “Their weaponry is…incredible,” he held one up in awe. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Their armor, these animals, and that charge.” He glanced at Kale with eyebrows more excited than they’d ever been.
“I’m going to see how many of my men just died,” Kale snapped. “And if my childhood friends are amongst them. By all means, keep enjoying yourself.”
He turned and walked towards the site of the first slaughter, and Osco followed, looking suitably chastised. Together they spoke to Admiral Mahen, who said it looked like at least a hundred were dead, or near enough, with four times as many wounded.
“I thought it would be worse,” the admiral said, clear remnants of fear still haunting his eyes.
Kale had the bodies lined up on the sand and walked amongst them, horrified at the grisly wounds. Most had been trampled and crushed rather than struck by a weapon. He stopped when he found Fautave.
The big boy’s eyes were closed in death. A spear had been rammed straight through his torso from the side, and looked to have pierced his heart. Over the pull of his own grief, Kale thought at least he hadn’t suffered long.
“He stood,” Thetma said, already kneeling beside. His eyes were red and his chest smeared with blood. “He should have run like the rest of us. He always was a stupid bastard, Captain.” He wiped at his nose with a fist, and Kale put a hand to his friend’s shoulder and tried to smile.
“Brave, too.”
Thetma nodded reluctantly. They took a moment to touch his body, but Kale already felt Osco’s impatience behind him and knew they were still in danger. He had little time for this.
“Let’s get off this damn beach,” he said, rising and turning towards the outer edge of the city. Despite the power he’d used against the invaders, his strength had hardly dimmed. All around him threads of creation surged with strength, as if begging to be pulled, or changed. “They can’t charge with those god-cursed…animals, if we’re in the streets, I expect.”
Osco nodded slowly. “It will disrupt our formations, islander, but I agree.”
Kale used his spirit to whisper the plan to his soldiers, hoping the first encounter hadn’t already broken their morale. He thought maybe a speech might help but frankly he wanted only to move forward and start ripping giants apart with air. Let the men do what they will.
He walked ahead and heard some following—at least Osco and Asna, but soon the Mesanites and perhaps the Tong spearmen on their heels. Kale roamed with his spirit as they moved.
Sri Kon still looked largely as it should, with almost no signs of looting. It seemed the invaders had closed off the military districts, though, placing small groups of men all around the closed gates. After spotting no army anywhere else in sight, Kale flew inside one out of curiosity.
The first thing he found near the border confused his eyes. All along the wall were stakes, or wooden signs, placed in row after row. Some few women moved or knelt about them, placing little white stones at the base. It was these that made him realize, and with horror—he’d found a graveyard.
In Sri Kon, children were always buried with white stones, turned towards the sky so Rangi might see them and feel ashamed. At least half of the hundreds of stakes and headstones before him were covered in them.
Most of the women amongst the graves wept openly. Kale wanted to speak to them, but feared his spirit would terrify. He took a breath and whispered to one old woman who looked more stoic.
“Do not be afraid, grandmother. I am a good spirit of the sky. Tell me, what has happened here?”
The old woman startled and looked first to the clouds. She shook her head, and put gnarled, bony hands to her face. “There is evil here, spirit, such evil. Monsters make us drink potions and tinctures. They poisoned my grand-daughter. They’re not even men. They rape young girls and eat their flesh. They sacrifice children to their dark gods. And they say nothing, never. They never speak. Help us, spirit, help us, I beg you.” The woman bowed low to the sand and moaned in grief, tears running freely from her eyes. Kale could think of no words of comfort as his mind reeled. He felt bile in his throat. It was worse even than he’d feared.
He flew on and found more of his people huddled inside cloistered buildings. Many lay in poses of agony, as if starving or poisoned as the woman claimed. They were sprawled on beds or lain out on the floors, and outside every house and entrance stood white-skinned giants with weapons, as if holding them prisoner.
“There, islander, we should take the main road to the palace. If they come with their giant donkeys we can fall away to the side-roads.” Osco pointed, and Kale blinked and returned to his senses.
He felt a rage building inside him now, far worse than he’d expected—far worse even than he’d felt for an unknown foe with selfish intent. These pirates had attacked a peaceful people without provocation, without explanation. Now they were holding them as prisoners, subjecting them to maybe rape and torture, and if nothing else trapped in fear. And they are killing our children.
“I’ve seen enough.” Kale trembled now with an impatience, his hands clenching as he felt the urge for violence in a way he had never believed himself capable. “There’s endless power here. I’m not wasting more effort on pawns or sending men to die.” He pointed at the palace. “Their leaders will be in there. Tell the men to hold their ground and guard the ships. I’m going to end this. I’m going to rip it all apart until I find whichever bastards are responsible. Are you coming with me?”
Asna stepped forward and half-drew his sword to make sure it was free, a grin spreading across his face. “More fly? I will be prettiest bird in paradise.” He fluffed his plumage for emphasis.
Osco made a long, drawn out sound, and turned to his men as he shouted orders. “I recommend against it,” he said simply, then spread his legs as if in a battle stance to fight the air.
“Noted.” Kale closed his eyes. With a tiny thread he lifted them all into the power-filled air. As the men watched in awe, he flew them over Sri Kon proper wondering if the citizens were watching. He hoped the enemy saw a prince soaring over their heads and learned to fear—a little taste of their helplessness.
With his spirit he raced ahead, hungry for blood, and called out to the palace, to anyone and everyone, knowing it would translate to any man no matter what language he spoke.
“I am prince and sorcerer of this city, pirates, and now I return. Get back on your god-cursed boats. Run like the cowards you are, or I swear on the graves of
my people, every one of you is going to die.”
* * *
Kale couldn’t be sure where the enemy would stay, but he could guess. Farahi’s only opulence lay in the main throneroom, on the second level of the palace. To reach it required penetrating the outer courtyard, then climbing a winding flight of stairs and breaching another gate, all the while surrounded by murder holes and archers hiding above. Kale flew over all of it.
As he did he saw hundreds of men waiting in the grass below. Even from a distance he could see they wore armor and carried weapons like those found on the beach, and he fought the very strong urge to start raining death. He would kill them happily, but he’d rather they fled. First he would rip their leaders apart, scattering the bodies down like chum, and perhaps they’d get the message.
Two giants stood guard before the iron doors. They were already wide-eyed and sweating, staring at Kale as he floated ahead of them. One opened his mouth as if to speak, but Kale was not interested in talk. He seized both with two threads of power, and flung them screaming from the rampart to the courtyard below. With another, he ripped off the door.
Asna landed gracefully behind him, while Osco shouted and spun, dropping to his knees on the stone with a curse.
Kale knew without looking there would be men waiting inside to ambush. He considered sending his spirit inside to find the men he needed, but he was all out of patience. He wouldn’t wait one more moment while his people suffered at the hands of these beasts. His chest heaved with ragged breaths, something like a righteous purpose settling inside him, making everything easier. With a tangle of threads he could never have touched a year ago or in a place with less power, he seized the entire roof of his father’s palace.
The thought of the enemy beneath made him picture vermin cowering inside, protected from his sight only by stolen stone and pitiful darkness. But they couldn’t hide what they’d done. Not anymore.
Voices cried out in terror as Kale lifted the throneroom ceiling. Wood and stone cracked as he tore the marble from its pillars and frame, letting it crash to the side as rubble rained and one of the walls sagged outwards