As Iron Falls (The Wings of War Book 4)

by Bryce O'Connor

  To Syrah’s impressed surprise, Karan answered at once.

  “Flour,” the girl said, blinking and finally tearing her eyes away from her scaled palms. “Wheat. I can smell them.”

  Raz sniffed at their surroundings, and Syrah saw his forked tongue flick out to taste the air.

  “Aye,” he grunted in agreement. “And sugar and bread.”

  “There are bakers a few roads over,” Karan nodded, pointing south, through the wall to their left. “The markets are just beyond them.”

  “Is there somewhere we could find shelter?” Syrah asked, looking up and down the road. “Where do they store the grain?”

  Karan looked suddenly uncomfortable. “N-Not near here,” she said fearfully. “Soldiers every night, all night.”

  “Karesh Syl is a big city,” Raz said with a thoughtful nod. “They’d have to protect their food from thieves carefully.”

  “Not thieves,” Karan corrected with a glance at either end of the alley. “Slaves. It’s the slaves they worry about. We have it best, the city laborers, almost as good as the palace workers. They feed us enough to keep our strength.”

  Syrah felt a chill, and a queasiness in her stomach. “And the others?” she asked, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.

  Karan’s ears flattened miserably. “Hungry…” she said softly. “Always hungry…”

  Raz and Syrah kept their silence then, she out of sadness and he—she could tell—out of fury.

  “Where else, then?” he growled finally, and Syrah hoped Karan would understand that the subliminal anger in his voice wasn’t remotely directed at the female. “We can’t be caught out here, come morning.”

  “That’s assuming they don’t find us earlier,” Syrah said with a grimace.

  Both of them looked at Karan expectantly.

  “There… There is a place,” she said, but the words quivered uncertainly. “Somewhere they won’t look. Not yet.”

  “There is?” Raz demanded, suddenly interested. “Where? Is it close?”

  Karan nodded. Then, looking like it was the last thing she wanted to do in the world, she lifted a hand and pointed west, up the way, deeper into the city.

  “Very close,” she answered. “But we will have to wait a little while more.”

  “Wait?” Syrah asked, confused. “Wait for what?”

  Karan was positively shaking as she answered.

  “For the masters to drive the others home.”

  CHAPTER 47

  It seemed strange at first, when Syrah considered it, to keep a slave camp in the middle of the city. The compound was utterly out of place, a large enclosure of some dozen simple two-story buildings separated from the streets and structures around them by an eight-foot wall of granite and timber. Karan explained to her, though, as the two of them had waited on their own in the shadows of the alleys to the east, that she and the others of Karesh Syl’s laborers were responsible for much more than tending to the farming lands when the need arose. Only the atherian worked the fields, that was true enough, but this was simply because they could toil for longer under the sun with much less water than their human counterparts. In the city itself, the slaves worked frequently as hands on the outer and inner walls, repairing and constructing fortifications under the guidance of masons and smiths who were only slightly less cruel than the overseers. They maintained the roads of the city—and there were many, many roads—tearing up and replacing old cobblestone when it became loose or worn. They cleaned the sewers and water channels, worked as mules for the Tash’s merchants and hunters, and were even responsible for ridding the city of refuse once a month, carting out whatever the residents of Karesh Syl deemed worthless to bury in pits in some barren part of the savannah to the south. Having the slaves in the city—particularly here, right on the cusp of the inner ring—saved time and energy, allowing the Tash to get the most out of his slaves. Karan told her there had to be at least three or four score such compounds throughout Karesh Syl, ready to serve at the pleasure of the sovereign.

  Syrah, though disgusted, couldn’t help but be impressed once again by the infuriating efficiency of the whole thing.

  The Tash had mastered all the cruelties of practicality.

  “How many are there?” she had asked at one point, trying to do the math in her head as she gave a guess as to how many bodies could fit in any one of the buildings. “How many slaves?”

  Karan had only shrugged, her reptilian face growing harder and more certain than Syrah had yet seen it.

  “Too many to count,” she’d answered simply, “but one less, tonight.”

  The conviction in her voice lit a warmth in Syrah’s heart, and she’d had to hide a smile.

  It wasn’t more than five minutes later, the pair of them waiting silently in the dark and ducking away as five-man patrols marched past their hiding place, that a massive form dropped lithely down from the roofs to land in a crouch before them.

  “It’s as you said.” Raz looked at Karan. “There’s a small army at the enclosure entrance, maybe fifty men, but only a dozen or so within the walls themselves. If we can get inside, it shouldn’t be too hard to sneak by.”

  The female nodded, but some of the confidence faded from her face. Syrah wanted to reach out, wanted to comfort her, but knew there was nothing she could do. The girl was being braver than anyone she had ever met as it was, running right back into the arms of the beast that had kept her chained her entire life. She gave Syrah a new appreciation of the men, of Akelo and Cyper and Aleem and all the rest, who had followed her and Raz once more into the mouth of cruelty just for the barest chance at purging Karesh Syl of its rotten affliction.

  “Is there somewhere we can get over the wall?” she asked Raz. “A good point of access?”

  Raz frowned. “I don’t know about ‘good’, but the west corner is something of a blind-spot, I think. One of the buildings blocks it from sight of the entrance, and the Moon is in the east.” He pointed up at the sky behind them, the faded glow shifting behind a blanket of clouds. “The light would be in our favor.”

  Syrah glanced at Karan, thinking to give the girl some encouragement, but the atherian was staring apprehensively at the compound across the way. She looked to be steeling herself, gathering her resolve again, and Syrah decided not to distract her.

  Turning back to Raz, she took a breath.

  “When you’re ready.”

  A minute or so later, Raz gave them the all-clear, and together the three of them darted across the broad expanse of the street, a much wider and well-worn thoroughfare leading toward the center of the city than the looping road they had navigated the night before, around the inside of the inner wall. It took them several seconds to cross the open space, Raz trailing to make sure no one spotted them or tried to follow, and in that time Syrah felt her chest constrict with the fear that they might be caught. She recalled, for a brief moment as she and the two atherian slipped back into the cover of the buildings on the other side of the street, a time not so long ago when she’d constantly felt such helplessness, such utter defenselessness in the face of a greater enemy. It saddened her to consider—not for the first time—what it must have been like to live a life in which there had never been any other understanding.

  Stealing a look over at Karan again, Syrah’s admiration of the young atherian grew once more, taking in the determination in her gleaming yellow eyes.

  They reached the east corner of the compound without incident, and Syrah stopped to glance around the bend while Raz continued to watch their backs. Seeing a clear, narrow road, she whispered the order to move, and as one they took the turn, hurrying into an even deeper darkness. They made it to the end of the way, and without hesitating Raz took a running leap, vaulting atop the wall in the shadows of the building that loomed over the corner. Dropping Ahna down behind him, he turned back and extended a hand to Karan, who jumped and took it, grunting as he heaved her up and over the granite capstones.

  Bef
ore he could do the same for Syrah, she drew her spellwork into her hands and arms, leapt three feet into the air to snag the top of the wall, and powered herself over to land beside Karan on the thin grass inside the enclosure.

  Turning to look up, she grinned at Raz’s astounded expression.

  “Don’t treat me like some helpless damsel,” she whispered with a teasing wink.

  Apparently, he decided no reply was the best reply, because Raz did nothing more than scowl back as he dropped down, snatched Ahna from the ground, and slipped behind the cover of the nearest building.

  Abir Fahaji had hoped, for the length of a pair of blissful days, that the dreams had finally abandoned him. He recalled still the words he’d spoken in the thralls of his gifts as Karan had shaken him from sleep two evenings prior, but they meant no more to him now than they had then. More importantly, though, they’d been the last vestiges of the nightmares he’d suffered since. Abir had prayed to the Twins, pleading with them to continue to keep the cursed voices silent. He’d fallen asleep hoping to doze in continued empty bliss, something he’d only ever rarely experienced since the visions had bloomed late in his youth.

  Cruelly, though, the gods appeared to have other plans for him.

  Perhaps it was the smarting lashes Abir had earned himself that day, when he’d dropped a pot of wet clay intended for the top of the inner wall where he’d been assigned for the morning. Or perhaps it was the groaning ache of his belly, disgruntled and sad and hungering after the dinner Brahen had stolen from him, snarling something about “hoping he’d starve so the rest could sleep in peace.”

  Most likely, though, Abir thought the dreams bloomed from the fear he’d felt as the soldiers had come about to lock them into the room for the night, the very moment he had realized Karan hadn't returned with the others from the fields that day…

  The thralls of his slumber took him deep now, plunging him down and down and down into the accursed caverns of his own mind. The voices whispered in his ears as he fell, and even in his disappointment at finding himself once more within the chambers of his gifts Abir didn’t bother trying to block them out. When he’d been younger he had tried, attempted everything. He’d burned incense and herbs—his old life had allowed him such luxuries, then—in an attempt to rest peacefully. He’d plugged his ears with wax and cotton, and once even hired a minstrel for an entire night to play soothing music as he slept. Nothing had ever worked, and eventually the aging man understood that it was a nightly battle best surrendered.

  Images flashed before his mind, drowning him in other senses. A bloody sword accompanied by the smell of burning ash and the salty air of the sea. The porcelain mask of a pale, feminine face, smooth and beautiful until it cracked in twin diagonal patterns from around its right eye, falling away to reveal the leering, worm-riddled skull beneath. Two images mirrored at the edge of a lake, a wounded snake staring at the handsome grey-eyed hawk looking back at it, the water so still and clear Abir couldn’t be sure which was the reflection. A mountain turned upside down on its horizon, the white snows capping its crown melting into blood to drip down and splatter in constellations across the heavens below. Finally, an old woman, her skin bronzed by the Sun and her hair as grey as her eyes, bending down to whisper something in his ear.

  And there, lingering behind every premonition, a blaze of golden light, drawing ever nearer, splitting into twin points like eyes as the images flickering about Abir suddenly fell into violent shades of red and black.

  As his consciousness began to shake, like the caverns of his thoughts were crumbling around him, the old man made out two words among the whisperings, growing louder and louder as the darkness descended in a wrathful cascade around him.

  “HE COMES!”

  Abir came to all at once, howling the premonition and hurling upright, ignoring the pain of the raw lashings along the frail skin of his back. All around him the other slaves awoke abruptly, most muttering in annoyance and resignation, though a few groaned angrily.

  “Hrar a’sy.”

  The words came as a low, threatening growl, and at once the room fell silent. Abir was not all that well-versed in the throaty language of the atherian, but Karan had taught him enough in their years together to understand at least what the simple phrase meant.

  “Enough of this,” Brahen had said, and it was as Abir translated the sentence in his head that he made out the dim form of the male climbing slowly to his feet from his space on the floor, towering up like a titan in the dark.

  Though he couldn’t make out the details of the lizard-kind’s face, the old man could envision them plainly even as the lumbering figure began to approach, chains dragging and clinking across the wooden floor, humans and atherian alike scrambling to get out of his way. He could see Brahen’s cruel golden eyes staring at him with that cold, almost-hungry expression. He could imagine the white markings across the scales of the male’s hands and forearms, like he’d dipped them into one of the buckets of blanching paint the slaves used to bleach new walls and old stone. Abir could even pretend to discern the dark red blade of the atherian’s crest rising over his head, announcing to the world that blood was about to be spilled.

  For once, Abir’s fear and common sense won over the lingering compulsion of the visions.

  “I’m sorry!” he moaned in panic, scrambling away from the approaching figure as quickly as his weathered limbs would take him. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to wake you!”

  “You never mean to wake us, old man,” Brahen growled in the Common Tongue, following Abir. As he passed by the faint light of the window, Abir briefly made out the atherian’s broad, muscled chest. “And yet you do. You always do.”

  There were curses and angry yelps as Abir turned over and outright crawled on his hands and knees over any and all who got in his way, desperate to escape. Before he could get far, though, there was a quick shuffling of steps and shifting iron, and clawed fingers grabbed him by the grizzled hair along the back of his balding head, hauling him up. Abir started to howl in pain and surprise, but Brahen’s other hand clamped about his mouth, cutting off the cry.

  “You bring the masters down on us, old man, and I’ll pluck your eyes from your skull and leave you to die blind and alone,” Brahen growled in his face. The lizard-kind’s breath smelled like rotten meat. “Stop fighting, and I’ll end this fast.”

  Abir, of course, did nothing of the sort. In panic, his aged body fought harder for life than he’d have thought possible, his thin hands pummeling at the thick muscle that knotted the atherian’s arms, his bare, callused feet kicking at legs and stomach. He managed to catch the male a decent blow to the gut, making him grunt and wince, but the act only resulted in Brahen’s hands tightening in his hair and across his face. Abir felt his scalp stretch and tear, and the claws piercing the skin of his cheeks.

  “You want to do this the hard way?” the male snarled furiously, lifting him right off the ground so that his neck popped and strained. “Fine! Then I’ll—!”

  The sounds of footsteps, light and hurried on the stairs outside, were audible even to Abir in his state.

  Instantly Brahen let go of him, and the man would probably have broken something if he hadn't landed on some poor unfortunate’s tail. The female, whoever she was, squealed in pain, then again as Brahen himself dropped to lie on the floor, half-crushing her beneath him. The atherian hissed at her to shut up in their native tongue, and Abir couldn’t actually blame him. If any of them were caught by the Tash’s soldiers up and about after the door was locked, they would all be whipped bloody.

  If that happened, the whole room would probably turn on him.

  Collectively, the slaves waited in frightened silence, every eye on the door, every ear strained for shouts of warning or displeasure from outside. Instead, though, they heard the footsteps reach the landing, then a brief rattle as someone tried the latch, like they didn’t know it was locked. There was a muttering of voices Abir didn’t think even the atherian would have
been able to make out, then an altogether different sound, a sort of sizzling, like lingering lightning, or the doused flames of a fire.

  Then, with a strange flash of white light that made everyone jump in surprise, there was a clunk of the lock sliding free, and the door creaked open.

  Three figures, hunched and black against the barest glow of the night outside, slid into the room, one after the other. The first of them, a thin, tall outline Abir could have sworn he recognized, turned as the last entered, closing the door behind them.

  “Should I lock it again?” a stranger’s voice, a human woman’s, asked in the renewed dark.

  “Do it,” the deeper, throatier growl of a male atherian responded. “If they catch us, you might as well blast it down. No sense in subtlety, at that point.”

  There was a pause, then a second flash as the latch thunked back into place. A few yelped at the sudden blinding brightness, but Abir couldn’t have closed his eyes if he wanted to. He’d seen the three figures, if only for a moment, and did indeed know one of them all too well.