by Evan Winter
“Then they’ll fall, my queen,” Tau told her.
“Vizier, have you nothing to say?” Hadith asked, begging her to help him make his argument.
Nyah had not cried, but when she looked to Hadith, Tau saw that her eyes were red, swollen. “The walls will fall and Odili will die,” the vizier said.
The nod from Hadith didn’t come quickly. “Wanjala, order the water and reserve prongs to cross the Amanzi and join forces with us here. Ready our ponton bridges. As before, the supporting boats go in the water two spans before dawn and our army will cross each bridge as it’s laid.”
“Your word, my will, Grand General,” said Wanjala, turning for the tent’s entrance at the same moment as a thunderous boom shook the earth.
Shouting from outside followed the blast.
“What in the Goddess is that?” asked Kellan.
Not waiting for an answer, Tau moved in front of Tsiora, hands on his swords, and the handmaidens dashed to the queen. He could hear that the shouting outside the tent had given way to panicked screaming.
“An attack,” said Uduak as a closer boom hit hard enough to make it feel like Tau’s very bones were vibrating.
“We’ll see how they like it when we fight back,” said Wanjala, opening the flaps of the tent to step outside.
Past him, Tau could see a thick line of fire burning across the ground like a giant had raked a flaming torch through the dirt.
“Goddess,” Wanjala said, his eyes on the night skies and his voice faint. “They’ve called their dragons!”
The next blast hit then, strafing across the tent’s entrance and burning through Wanjala like he’d been made of wizened straw.
The aftershock and eruption of dirt from the firebomb threw Tau back as the air in the tent flared with sparks and evaporated, sucking the structure in on itself and collapsing it on them. One moment Tau was standing, seeing Wanjala die, and the next he was on his back, ears ringing like in Daba, wrapped in burning canvas.
“Tsiora!” he yelled, cutting his way free of the tent’s remains. “Tsiora!”
He saw a form writhing beneath more burning cloth, and ripping it away, he pulled Nyah clear.
“The queen,” she mouthed—or shouted. It was hard for Tau to hear anything over the ringing in his ears.
He spun round, looking for Tsiora, and felt his stomach clench. The area of the camp closest to the river was on fire. Three or four of Odili’s dragons were already in the air, blasting fat gouts of twisting flame into their army’s midst, and though the city was too far away for Tau to see its gates, he knew Odili had ordered them opened.
There was no other way to explain the mass of Palm City’s soldiers running straight for the Amanzi, the ones in the forefront carrying the tools to cross it. They ran in groups, holding either ponton boats or the hemp-strapped wooden planks that would be placed on top of them to make temporary bridges.
Odili’s army was coming for them.
POWERFUL
Tau turned away from the approaching disaster. “Tsiora! Tsiora!”
Nyah grabbed him by the elbow, pointing and shouting something he could only half hear in one ear.
Following her pointing hand, he felt relief flow through him, and Tau ran to help Auset and Ramia cut themselves and the queen out of the mess that had been the war council’s tent.
As soon as she was free, Tau wrapped Tsiora in his arms, lifting her clear of the smoking canvas.
“Are you well?” he said, holding her.
She shook her head, worrying him until he realized it was because she couldn’t hear.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, exaggerating the words so she could follow the shapes his mouth made.
Understanding flooded her face and she shook her head again. She was fine.
“Tau!”
With the ringing in his ears subsiding, Tau looked over his shoulder. It was Hadith with Uduak and Kellan. They were making their way over the embers and disarray of the toppled tent.
Tsiora, still in his arms, pressed her lips to his good ear and came close to deafening him when she shouted in it. “We need to call to our Guardians!” He flinched and her eyebrows shot up. “You can hear?” she shouted.
Nodding, he turned to the rest. “Vizier, bring the Entreaters. Uduak, gather the Ayim and meet us in front of the queen’s tent,” he yelled. “Hadith, Kellan, Odili’s army is crossing the river. He knows the rest of our soldiers are on the river’s north side. You need to defend the camp with what we have.”
“They’ve got us, Tau. We have to run!” Hadith said, half his words lost beneath another burst of dragon fire.
“No!” Tsiora shouted, hearing enough of what her grand general had said. “Do as our champion commands. Fight back.”
“Uduak, go!” Tau said.
The big man saluted and ran off through the haze of gathering smoke to get the others.
“Mama!” called a thin voice.
Tau swung round, pulling the queen behind him, and saw a small girl running for the vizier, her arms spread wide. Seeing her, Nyah gasped, dropped to her knees, and embraced the child, crying as she held her. “Chibuye!”
It was Hafsa; she’d brought the girl, and Tau’s mother too. “The hospital tents were hit … they’re burning … not safe. I brought … I’m trying to save as many as I can. There’s nowhere else to—”
“You’ve done well, Priestess,” said the queen. “Thank you.”
“I—I have to go back and try to get more out.”
“Go,” Tsiora said. “And when you’ve done what you can, meet us at our tent.”
“Tau?” His mother, hearing that Hafsa was about to leave, cast about with her free hand, trying to find him.
“He’s here,” the priestess said, handing her over before running back the way she’d come.
“What’s going on?” Imani asked, latching on to Tau’s wrist. “What’s happening?”
“We’re under attack,” he said. “Odili sent dragons and his army against us.”
“Guardians will do his bidding?” She was rattled but shook it off. “It doesn’t matter. You were given your strength for a reason. You’ll see us through.”
The queen touched the back of his mother’s shoulder. “He was and he will.”
“Nyah, the Entreaters,” Tau said, hemmed in by their closeness and expectations.
But the vizier didn’t move. “My daughter …”
“She’ll be with us,” Tau said. “Call the others or we all die.”
“The queen’s tent?” Nyah asked.
“Yes, there. Meet us, with the Entreaters.”
“Take my daughter, Tau.”
“Vizier …”
“I want you to take her. You.”
“We’ll take her, the champion and us,” the queen said. “Go, Nyah.”
Nyah stood, holding her daughter’s face in her hands. “They’ll keep you safe.”
“I’ll come with you, Mama,” the girl said. “I’m safe with you.”
Nyah gave the child a smile. “Trust me, Chibo. Hold tight to the queen and her champion. There are no two people more powerful in the whole world.”
The words were spoken in earnest, and Chibuye gave Tau a sideways look, wanting, he knew, to believe her mother, but the dragons made mock of Nyah’s talk of power, pounding the ground mere strides away with enough fire and fury to kill more than two dozen women and men cowering behind a train of supply wagons.
The girl jumped in fear, crying out and clinging to her mother’s robes, but Nyah pried the small hands open and thrust them at Tau.
“Take her.”
“Vizier …,” Tau said, unable to tear his eyes from the burning bodies not a spear’s throw away.
“Keep her safe.”
He looked at Nyah. “I will,” he said. “I will.”
Breathing out and letting go of some tiny part of her worry, Nyah gave the girl a last kiss before disappearing into the smoke as Uduak had done before.
&nb
sp; “Mama!” the girl yelled, trying to pull away from Tau.
“Kellan goes for the officer’s tents,” Hadith said. “Tau, I can’t move as fast and feel a coward for even saying it, but I told him to send runners back to us. I’ll come with you and use the runners to relay orders. I swear I’ll be more use that way than trying to set up a command position out there.”
“You’re no coward, Hadith. You’ve never been and you’re not one now. If that’s the way to do it, then it is. Let’s go,” Tau said, eyeing the horizon and seeing the dragons banking for another pass. “Auset, Ramia!”
“We have the queen,” Auset said, and the two women flanked her.
“Take my arm, Mother,” Tau said, moving his mother’s grip away from his wrist. “I’ve got you, Chibuye. Your mother will be back, she knows where we’re going.”
They went as fast as they could, running from the chaos and the dragon fire. Behind them, the camp had turned into a stampede of people trampling one another in their attempts to flee the flames. To stay ahead of the madness, Tau pulled his mother and Chibuye along, while, over his shoulder, he saw people knocked down and crushed by their fleeing fellows. No one helped, and whether hurt or dead, the fallen remained where they fell to burn either way.
In the tumult, Tau thought, the army would kill as many of their own as the dragons would, but in the long term, if they did not find a way to contest the Guardians, the civil war would be over in a single span.
“He found them!”
Hadith was pointing up the low hill on which the queen’s tent had been pitched, and Uduak was in front of it with Yaw, Themba, and Jabari. The Petty Noble, freshly bandaged and hood up, was watching the skies. He was watching the dragons.
“Quickly,” said Tau, urging more speed from the girl and his mother’s stumbling steps. “Almost there.”
“They attacked us at night,” said Themba when they were close. “What kind of inyoka does that?”
“We were going to do that, you simpleton,” Auset said.
“Ours was predawn. Predawn, not night,” Themba told her. “What now?” he asked, turning to Tau.
Tau didn’t answer right away. He handed his mother and Chibuye into the care of the nearest of Tsiora’s actual handmaidens. “Take them inside the tent, but all of you, stay near the entrance. If we need to run, you have to be close at hand.”
The handmaiden, a wisp of a thing, bobbed her head and took hold of Chibuye and Tau’s mother. “Your word, my will, Champion,” she said.
“Close, neh?” Tau reminded her. “If I open the tent flaps, you all need to be right there.”
The same head bob and she was off with them, leaving Tau feeling guilty. He’d promised Nyah he’d stay with Chibuye, and though she was just a few strides away, he worried about protecting her if she was beyond arm’s reach.
“They’re as with us as they can be, Tau,” Tsiora said, reading the emotions behind his face. “We have our own fighting to do, and if we fail, it won’t matter how close we keep them.”
“Incoming …,” muttered Themba.
“What?” Tau said, finding the answer himself.
Two more dragons had joined the others.
“Tau, tell me something good,” Themba said.
Tau shook his head. “They’re not ours.”
Hadith pointed to a group running toward them. “But they are,” he said, and Tau had never been so relieved to see Nyah in his life.
CALL
Nyah was not alone. Behind her and Thandi were seventeen Gifted, and without a word, they arrayed themselves into four groups, Nyah leading one, the queen another, Thandi the third, and in the fourth grouping, two Gifted, whom Tau did not know, stood apart from the rest. Each Hex, each grouping of six, linked arms.
They’d not done that in Daba, but Tau could imagine that it helped their nerves if not their powers. After all, though some had their hoods up and others not, the one thing they shared was something with which he’d become intimately familiar. They were afraid.
“There are three Hexes and two additional Gifted,” Nyah said to him. “The two will not call to the Guardians. Instead, they’ll remain in Isihogo to watch for the strength of our shrouds. When our shrouds fail, they’ll come to you and you must join us.”
“We’ll come when called,” Tau said, thinking of the dragons that would do the same.
They’d race from their nests in the Central Mountains to see if it was actually their youngling crying out to them.
The dragons were intelligent; they had to be to hold the Gifted in Isihogo. They must have some sense that the calls they answered were a trap, and they came anyway. Without regard for themselves, they answered every cry, holding hope that one day it would be their missing child they found instead of bondage.
“Chibuye?” Nyah asked, drawing Tau from his thoughts and sounding frightened of what he might say.
“Inside the tent, right by the entrance. She waits for us. She waits for you.”
“Thank you,” Nyah said, inclining her head, surprising Tau with the show of respect.
“You know what it is we must do,” the queen said to her Gifted, “but there is something you have not been told.” The Gifted were trained and disciplined. There was not even a shuffling of feet as they waited for their queen to say more. “We have trained warriors to come into Isihogo as our shrouds begin to fail. They have trained to face the demons, match them, and hold them back.”
That caused some shuffling. The news was too big to be heard in stillness.
“When our shrouds fail, we will remain in the underworld. When our shrouds fail, we … will … not. We must hold to our Hex until the demons break the circle of warriors, and then and only then may we return to our world. Is this understood?”
They answered as one. “It is,” they said.
“May the Goddess give you strength, courage, wisdom, and love,” Tsiora told them. “May She accept the sacrifices we make tonight in Her name and for Her glory.”
“May She accept us as we are,” the nineteen Gifted intoned.
“Her grace, my salvation,” muttered Yaw to himself as the twenty women closed their eyes and sent their spirits to the underworld.
“Are you ready?” Tau asked the Ayim.
Themba spoke before the others. “Does it matter?”
“Not even in the slightest,” Tau said, clapping his sword brother on the back.
“Then,” Themba said, “we’re ready.”
Auset snorted. “The Goddess is great. She gives even the lowliest among us a chance to speak Her truth.”
“She is great,” said Yaw. “She’ll help us.”
“Good,” Themba said, lifting his chin to point toward the front of the army. “We’ll need it.”
Odili’s dragons were coming in for another pass, and under the cover of their constant barrage of flame and smoke, Odili’s army had completed their ponton bridges and were crossing the Amanzi.
“We can’t fear them,” said Yaw. “Odili and his followers move behind the Goddess’s back. We stand in Her grace.” He called their attention to the bottom of the hill on which they stood. “Look, a sign. The runners arrive with messages.”
Lightly armored Ihashe and Indlovu ran up the small slope and saluted Hadith, taking turns to give him their reports, and he, in his turn, gave them orders to send back to their scales or claws, and, in a few cases, wings.
“The reserve and water prongs are crossing the Amanzi from north to south,” Hadith told Tau. “We’ll have them with us in a couple spans.”
“Tonight, a couple spans is a long time,” Tau said.
“It’s faster than I’d dared hope,” Hadith said.
Tau took his friend by the shoulders. “Then it’s fast enough, neh?”
He didn’t look convinced, but Hadith returned the gesture, putting his hands on Tau’s shoulders, and the two men bolstered each other with shared strength. “We’ll make it fast enough.”
“You’ll hold Odili back
with our Indlovu?” Tau asked. “Where will you have Kellan and his men fight?”
Hadith paused, took his hands from Tau’s shoulders, and shook his head. “Kellan should have his scale ready soon, but I can’t risk losing them to dragon fire. They won’t engage until our Guardians are in the air too. They won’t go in until the Guardians aim their fury at each other instead of our soldiers. If we’re going to win this battle, we need our Indlovu. I can’t risk them needlessly.”
Tau didn’t understand. “Needlessly? Without Kellan’s Indlovu to blunt the strength of Odili’s soldiers, we’ll lose hundreds of Lessers.”
Hadith’s eyes dropped, settling on Tau’s chin. “The Ihagu, they’ll hold until our Guardians are in the air.”
“What? The Ihagu can’t hold against Odili’s Indlovu. They’ll be slaughtered.”
There was silence as Tau realized he was talking through things Hadith already knew. The Ihagu were the cost to be paid to buy the time they needed to get their dragons in the fight. The Ihagu would stand, fight, and fall, so that the reserve and water prongs, filled with Ihashe, could cross the river and join the rest of the army.
“Hadith …,” Tau said, the despair on his friend’s face stopping him from finishing the thought.
“We need the time,” Hadith said, his voice shaking as he turned to issue the order for the Lessers to hold.
Tau didn’t stop him. The grand general had his duty and Tau had his. “Ayim,” he shouted, wondering if the Ihagu with the unusually large throat stone who had found him and Jabari after their night in Isihogo would be among the ones ordered to stand and fight, “form our circle!”
The six moved to his side. From his right it was Jabari, Yaw, Auset, Ramia, Themba, and, immediately to his left, Uduak. The seven of them sat on the mix of dirt and dead grass that had been tromped into nothingness by the passage of thousands of feet.
“Care,” Hadith said to them all, his eyes on Uduak.
“You too,” Uduak said, and then more messengers had come and Hadith was with them, and the Ayim, surrounded by twenty Gifted, military runners, Queen’s Guard, and the tumultuous fear and fervor that were ubiquitous in war, were somehow still significantly alone.