Atalia stood on the hillside, panting, axe and shield in her hands. Staring. Shaking.
I can't. I can't breathe. I can't breathe.
Her head spun. Blackness spread around her. It felt like staring down a tunnel, the darkness growing, the light tapering, contracting toward unconsciousness. Sweat soaked her with the rain. Her heart wouldn't stop thumping. So loud! Her heart was so loud it roared in her ears.
I'm going to faint.
Daor roared at her side, but she couldn't hear him, could hear only the blood in her ears. He swung a sword that he'd grabbed, and a legionary raced toward him, thrusting a spear. Men and women fought all around her in the forest, and the rain kept falling. Sandals thumped on corpses.
"Commander!" Daor shouted. "Commander, can you hear me? To the gully!" He pointed. "After them!"
Atalia blinked and gulped down air. The darkness lifted.
Be brave. Be strong. You are a lioness of Zohar.
She looked down into the gully, where the legions had been ambushed. The heart of the battle raged there—and the Gaelians were winning. Javelins slammed into the legionaries. With their soaked bows, the strings flaccid, the Aelarians could not fire back. Some legionaries still tried to climb the hillsides, only to be slain and knocked back down. Most were racing along the gully road, trying to make their way east, to escape the inferno raining down from the hillsides. Their commanders raced ahead on their horses, abandoning the infantry in the gauntlet.
"They're dying," Atalia said. "The legionaries are dying. They can be defeated. They can be killed. I told you, Daor." She raised her voice to a howl. "To battle! For Zohar! For the wrath of lions!"
They ran down toward the gully, where the rainwater was gathering into a stream. Atalia swung her axe, and Daor lashed his sword. They cut legionaries down. The Gaelians ran with them, killed with them, died around them. Horses fell, legs snapping. Javelins kept flying. Screams filled the forest. Catapults fired flaming barrels, and trees burned, and rain extinguished the fire with clouds of smoke. Men begged for mercy, called out for their mothers, only for axes and hammers to swing, to end their lives in the mud. A burning man fell into the stream, only for a javelin to impale him.
"Eastward, eastward!" cried an Aelarian centurion on his horse, pointing along the riverbank. "Charge east, full speed!"
The legionaries were in a full rout. They fled down the gully, not even fighting, just trying to escape the gauntlet. And still the Gaelians raced down the hills, emerged from the misty forest, and delivered death with iron and fire. Two men wrestled, stabbing with knives. A towering Gaelian—seven feet of muscles—was pounding a legionary's head against a boulder, shattering the skull, scattering the teeth, smearing the brains across the rock.
Atalia ran, swung her axe, and knocked down a legionary. Her chain flailed behind her, scattering dry leaves, slamming into the legs of soldiers. Two Aelarians rushed toward her, shields raised, swords stabbing. Atalia lashed her dragon axe. The enemy's shields were waterlogged, heavy and bloated after hours of rain. Her axe tore through the layers of leather and wood. She dodged a sword's thrust and swung again, axing a man's chest, denting the lorica segmentata. Another blow shattered the man's ribs. Daor fought at her side, using all the skills she had taught him, and his sword cut through the other legionary.
They kept fighting, chasing the legionaries along the stream. The water rose halfway up their shins. Wherever the enemy fled, the Gaelians emerged, more and more of them, an unending flow. Aelarian corpses filled the gully, sinking into the mud and water, crushed under fleeing feet.
"Eastward, eastward to the vale!" their commanders cried from horseback. "Rally in the open vale!"
Atalia sucked in air. Aelarians were devastating at sea, unstoppable at siege. In open fields, they would reform their lines, create walls of shields, become invincible again. Here in the dense forest, they fell, but once in this eastern vale, when they could reform their ranks, would the tides turn? She ran after them. She cut another man down.
"The vale is near!" shouted a centurion. "Eastward, eastward!"
Atalia ran with the crowd of barbarians, pursuing the legionaries. Ahead, the forest plunged down, and when Atalia raced up a hill, she could see it ahead—open grasslands, free of trees, spreading for parsa'ot. Natural habitat for the legions. Atalia raced downhill again, back toward the ravine, swinging her axe at enemies.
The legionaries kept racing forward—whoever was left of them, at least. Thousands of dead littered the stream behind them. Their officers charged on their horses, and their infantrymen followed, and Atalia began to fear that they would reach open ground.
There, at the mouth of the vale, rose a great cry, and blood washed the forest.
"The way is blocked!"
"A wall! Smash the wall!"
"Break it down!"
Atalia ran. Daor ran at her side, a pilfered helmet on his head. She axed a man's leg out from under him. Gaelians ran with her, furs fluttering in the wind, hair streaming. Ahead, past corpses and burning trees, Atalia saw it.
"By God," she whispered.
A wall of earth and boulders rose ahead, high as a fortress, connecting two hillsides, blocking passage to the vale beyond. It was a makeshift wall, constructed in haste, not a fine wall like one around a city. Yet crude battlements still rose atop it. Gaelians stood there, roaring and chanting, demonic in their horned helms. Legionaries tried to climb the wall, only for the guardians above to pelt them with stones and arrows. Other legionaries tried to smash the barricade, but death rained onto them. They fell. Their comrades ran toward them, trapped between the wall and the pursuing barbarians who still emerged from the forest.
The perfect ambush, Atalia thought. The Gaelians herded the legionaries along the gully, and now they smash them against the stones. She growled. I will smash them too.
Among the barbarians, she ran toward the trapped legionaries, and Atalia killed.
Like they had slain her comrades in Gefen, she slew them. Like they had butchered ten thousand of Yohanan's men, Atalia butchered them. Like they had smashed her kingdom, she smashed them here against the wall. Their corpses piled up, sank in the mud, littered the hillsides.
As she fought, flashes of white and gold caught her eyes, and Atalia gasped. She paused, staring at the strangest warrior she had ever seen. He fought near the wall, a massive Gaelian astride a white stag. Not a horse, not a camel—an actual deer, white as snow, larger than any stallion Atalia had ever seen.
The rider's hair streamed like molten gold, spilling from beneath a silver helmet with scrimshawed horns. His face was scarred, his blond beard thick, his arms like battering rams. He swung a great hammer, its head shaped as a snarling ram—a weapon that Atalia doubted she could have lifted. His shield was the size of a tabletop. Gaelians rallied around this golden giant, pounding at the enemies.
"For Chieftain Berengar!" the tribesmen cried. "For Chieftain Berengar, smash the enemy!"
The warrior on the elk—presumably the chieftain—swung his hammer into legionary after legionary, cleaving helmets, shattering chests. He looked like a barbarian, war paint and tattoos covering his beefy arms and cheeks. And yet there was something different to his fighting style. It was not as wild as the fighting of the tribesmen who followed him. He seemed to fight with a calculated ruthlessness, methodical as he killed.
This one had formal battle training, Atalia thought. In a castle, not just in a forest.
Atalia slew a legionary, stood over his corpse, and stared down the ravine. Now flashes of gold and red caught her eye, drawing her gaze away from the chieftain on the elk. A group of legionaries was trying to flee along the riverbank into a thicket of trees. They carried a standard with them. The rod held a banner showing the name and number of their legion, and above perched a golden eagle, wings spread. Atalia's eyes widened.
"An Aquila," she whispered.
Aquilae—the golden eagles of Aelar—were more than just standards of war, more than just s
culptures. They were idols, as holy to Aelarians as their marble gods. The legionaries worshiped them, carrying them not only as symbols of Aelar but as deities. The loss of a single eagle, the stories told, could devastate an emperor and send all of Aelar into mourning.
This eagle will be mine.
"Daor, with me!" she cried.
She ran and he followed, chasing the legionaries. The Aquila rose ahead above the heads of the men, the golden eagle like a living animal. Atalia knelt by a corpse, grabbed a javelin, and tossed it. The weapon streamed through the air and plunged into a legionary. The man fell. His comrades turned toward Atalia, raised their swords, and charged to meet her. Atalia wore no armor, only tattered rags. She was a woman, not even an ethereal Gaelian, just a dark Zoharite covered in mud. Perhaps the legionaries in their armor, holding their golden idol, thought her an easy target. Atalia grinned as she swung her axe. Daor fought at her side, sword clanging against the enemy's shields.
Atalia fought as she had never fought. For her fallen kingdom. For her fallen father. For slavery at sea, for the loss of her family, for the light of Zohar. She kicked, swinging her chain, knocking men down. Her axe painted the forest red. Daor fought with her, always at his commander's side. Before the army of Zohar, the legionaries fell.
Atalia dealt her last blow, cutting down a legionary, and grabbed the standard from his dead hands. She raised it overhead. The clouds parted above, and light fell through the rain. The eagle gleamed atop the shaft.
"The eagle is mine!" Atalia cried. "Aelar falls in the forest. The eagle is mine! Do you hear me, Porcia and Seneca? I grabbed your eagle, and I killed your men, and I'm coming for you! I'm coming to kill you next!"
Around her, the last legionaries fell. There was no escape for them. Trapped between gorge, wall, and hillsides swarming with Gaelians, they fell by the thousands. Atalia had read the histories of Aelar in a hundred scrolls. Here, she knew, was the Empire's greatest defeat. The Aelarian civilization was centuries old, and never had they suffered such loss.
"Here the end of Aelar begins!" she shouted. "The eagle is mine! Next their city will fall."
Across the battlefield, she saw the tall chieftain on his elk. He turned toward her, hammer bloody, and nodded. Even from this distance, Atalia could see the smile in his eyes.
"Come on, soldier," she said, turning to look for Daor. "Let's go meet that chieftain of theirs. We'll align our forces. We'll—" She frowned. "Soldier, where the hell are you?"
She looked around her, seeing only bodies, only blood and severed limbs across fallen logs. Trees burned in the distance.
And then she heard him.
"Commander."
Atalia looked down, and she saw him there, lying at her feet. Her soldier. Her countryman. Her lover. Her Daor.
"Daor," she whispered and knelt before him.
He held a shield above his torso. When Atalia pulled it back, she felt the blood drain from her face. A gladius had pierced him, embedded down to the hilt. She grabbed that hilt, and she was about to pull it, but he held her wrist, stopping her.
"It's too late." His voice was barely a whisper, and his face was ashen, the blood flowing from him. "Just . . . be with me, Commander."
"It's Atalia," she whispered, tears falling, splashing onto him, onto her boy, the warrior who had followed her through fire and rain.
"Atalia." He clasped her hand, but his grip soon weakened. "Atalia Sela of Zohar. Our homeland. Our home . . ."
"We'll be there again someday." Atalia caressed his cheek. "I promise you. We'll be back in Zohar, and we'll watch the sun set into the sea. Did you know that Gefen is the only port in the Encircled Sea where the sun sets into the water? We'll sit there on the beach, watching it, and be at home. Just at home. In peace. On our sand, by our water, with our kingdom of light rising behind us."
He smiled softly, as if he could see it already. His grip weakened. His blood would not stop flowing. "Take my bones there, Atalia. If you make it out . . . if you win this war . . . take my bones home. Bury me by the sea."
"You're going to live." She growled. "You're a fighter. You're a soldier of Zohar. You're my soldier. My soldier! You are a lion of light." She was weeping now. "You can't leave me. Don't leave me alone here."
But he was already silent. He had already gone where she could not follow, was already waiting on some distant shore beyond veils of mist and morning. She lowered her head and closed her eyes, still holding his hand.
"Farewell, son of Zohar," she whispered, tears falling. "Hear, O Zohar! Ours is the light."
The sun set, but many lanterns and torches lit the forest. Around her, the warriors of Gael cheered for victory, and songs filled the night, and the legionaries lay dead in their greatest defeat. But Atalia could not rise to rejoice. She could not sing with the others, could not dream of conquest or freedom. Her last soldier had died. The man she loved was gone. All memories of her home faded, leaving her alone, lost in a northern forest, a lioness in shadows.
ADAI
He rode his elephant through Shenutep, pulling the wagon across the city's cobbled roads. Inside lay the iron to crush and cut his people . . . or perhaps to liberate them.
If I fail today, I die. Adai stared at the crucified men along the roadside. If I fail today, my nation perishes. Please, forbidden gods. Grant me strength.
A century of legionaries marched around the elephant and wagon, armored and armed, bearing iron forged here in Nur. All across the city, Nurians moved aside from the convoy. Children peered from rooftops, clad in loincloths. Men and women stared from windows, eyes dark, the wealthy in embroidered linen, the poor in homespun.
Adai himself looked like any other commoner of Nur. His skin was deep brown, his hair closely cropped, and a week-old beard covered his cheeks. A cotton cloak wrapped around his shoulders, and a hood hid his face. Stubble and a hood wasn't much of a disguise, but Adai smiled wryly.
To the Aelarians, we Nurians all look the same.
Back in the pyramids in the heart of Shenutep, he was Adai Koteeka, Prince of Nur, younger brother of Queen Imani. Back there, he wore lush, embroidered garments and jewels, a crown rose atop his head, and his cheeks were clean-shaven. Here on this elephant, pulling this wagon, he was a shadow. He was a man in danger. He was the hope of his nation.
"Move, damn it!" shouted a legionary on the road ahead, swinging a whip. The lash slammed into a beggar, a child with one leg. The child fell, bloodying the cobblestones.
Adai sucked in breath, struggling to curb his rage. He wanted to charge forward on his elephant, to trample the legionary, to kill them all. He forced himself to breathe, to remain silent.
Soon, he told himself. If I rise against them today, we all die. If I wait, if I succeed today, there is hope.
The one-legged child pulled himself onto the roadside, and the procession continued. All along the road, they groaned, screamed, died, rotted—Nurian children nailed to crosses. It was Governor Cicero who had ordered them crucified, who had swung the hammer himself, delighting in the screams.
Adai clenched his fists as he rode. Cicero Octavius would be waiting for him today, and Adai didn't know if he could control his temper. He had seen the looks the old man often gave his sister.
He desires her, Adai knew. He wants to bed Imani like he beds the Nurian girls he buys from our streets. He would too, if he didn't fear her claws. A savage grin tugged at Adai's lips. Soon he'll see how sharp all our claws are.
He looked over his shoulder at the wagon. It rolled along the road, so large it barely fit. The iron jangled within. Swords. Javelins. Shields. The tools Aelar used to conquer the world. The weapons that had been bleeding Nur for a generation.
The weapons that will bring us hope.
He rode onward, leading his elephant past temples—once temples to the Nurian spirits, today temples worshiping the marble idols of Aelar. They crossed a bridge over a river. They passed through the city dregs, moving between sweatshops and brothels and beggars, th
e legionaries shoving and whipping their way through.
Finally Adai saw it ahead: Castrum Nuria. The center of Aelar's power in the southern continent. The great fist of the Empire in Nur.
The fortress was massive, a city within a city. Soaring curtain walls of limestone surrounded the complex. Towers rose along them, topped with battlements, archers, and mounted trebuchets. A barbican thrust into the city, containing gates of wood banded with iron. Beyond the walls, Adai could see the tops of more towers, their roofs tiled red.
Castrum Nuria. Home to an entire legion. The slave collar around the neck of Nur.
Several legionaries stood outside the gates, red crests sprouting from their helmets. At the sight of Adai and his elephant, they pulled the gates open, revealing a tunnel that plunged through the barbican.
It was a tight squeeze. Adai had to flatten himself upon his elephant, and the tunnel walls scraped against the beast's sides and grazed the wagon's wooden flanks. Arrowslits pierced the tunnel walls, and archers peered from behind them. Should any enemy break the gates, they would face a long, devastating gauntlet before emerging into the fortress grounds.
Finally the tunnel ended, opening into a courtyard.
Entering this place, it felt as if Adai had left Nur, as if he had ridden through a portal and emerged into Aelar itself. A cluster of buildings and courtyards filled the innards of Castrum Nuria. Armories. Mess halls. Training yards where legionaries drilled with swords and spears. Temples and cloisters and silos. Columns lined great houses where soldiers lived. Towers soared, topped with battlements. A villa rose ahead, its colonnade capped with gold, and statues of Aelarian gods stood on its roof.
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