Blood's Pride

by Evie Manieri

  Eofar climbed up in front of her and began fastening the buckles. Aeda’s tail thumped the ground in expectation.

  She had to say it to believe it; it felt so unreal.

  Eofar answered darkly, and took up the reins.

  * * *

  Jachad seized Harotha’s arms and pulled her further back into the tunnel. “For Shof’s sake, stay here!” he pleaded as her stunned face stared into his. “Let me handle this,” he insisted a little more gently. He released her and charged into the stables after Meiran, skidding to a halt almost immediately as he stared at the naked blade of Frea’s sword. He tried to ignore the choking stench of the triffons as he flicked his fingers over his palms. Fire blazed up from his hands.

  he warned the Norlanders boldly, but he wasn’t fooling them. They could feel his uncertainty and he could feel them feel it.

  Frea warned him. Her fury was like a wall of ice, slamming into him. The fire in his hands dipped.

  “Meiran. Let the boy go,” he said in Nomas, bringing the flames back up again, but he couldn’t look at her; he was too afraid he’d see this betrayal written across her scars. He reminded himself that this wasn’t his fault; she had left him no choice. He couldn’t stand by and allow her to harm an innocent child. He would never be able to live with himself. “Let him go. Now.”

  “Jachi.” Meiran’s expressionless voice was as keen as the edge of the knife in her hand. “You don’t understand.”

  “You’re right: I don’t,” he agreed. He still couldn’t look at her. He wanted to go back to the desert; he wanted to see his mother; he wanted to feel the sun on his face. “Put the boy down and you can explain it to me.”

  “You can’t stop me,” she told him. It was a statement of fact, not a warning. “You can’t change it. No one can.”

  “Let him go!” he heard himself roar.

  Frea’s silver helmet flashed; she was looking up at something. He looked up as well, and watched a solitary triffon rise into the air on the opposite side of the cavern. There were two passengers, a man and a woman: Isa and Eofar. He heard an odd, jagged shout, and with a start he realized that it had come from Daryan; the Shadari king’s face was alight with some unknown triumph. Jachad saw him stretch his arm back, ready to fling the lit torch in his hand at the bale of hay behind him.

  But in a flash Rho was there, bringing his right elbow down hard on Daryan’s forearm and knocking the torch out of his hand. It bounced on the ground, spattering the floor with droplets of hissing oil and sending up a shower of sparks; before the fire could take, Rho had grabbed a bucket of slops and dumped its stinking contents over the flames. The repulsive smell rolled past Jachad, gagging him.

  Frea commanded Rho.

  The fireball had already formed in Jachad’s hand long before his sluggish thoughts had put words to his intentions. He flung the flames upward with all of his strength, feeling the fire leech the strength out of him. It traced a brilliant arc over the heads of the Norlanders and Shadari, and he watched as two decades of Nomas neutrality came to an abrupt and decisive end. Jachad’s arm fell heavily to his side, weak and tingling all over.

  The flames struck the hay-bale. For a moment, nothing happened—then the sparks caught the oil, there was a sucking noise and a muffled thump, and the fire rolled upward and greedily swallowed up the dry straw. A column of winking cinders swirled upward, caught in the updraft from the open roof.

  The triffons bellowed in fear and launched themselves into the air, colliding dangerously with each other in their haste to reach the open sky. Their heavy bodies blotted out the moonlight, and in the deeper darkness the fire glowed more brightly still, sending shadows dancing over the rock walls.

  With whoops and screams, the Shadari rushed forward to attack.

  A hand gripped Jachad’s arm and he turned in alarm, but it was Harotha, her face streaked with color from the firelight, her eyes wide with fervent gratitude but burning with intent.

  “Look out!” he cried, hooking his arm around her thick waist and swinging her around just in time to avoid a Shadari armed with what appeared to be a roasting spit.

  She grabbed his shoulder. “Where’s Dramash? We have to—”

  But she stopped abruptly as they both saw the boy at the same time, running through the confusion.

  Jachad looked for Meiran, but he didn’t see her. He didn’t know how the child had managed to get away from her.

  “Dramash!” Harotha called out over the noise of the fighting and the fires. She pushed past Jachad and moved toward the boy with her arms outstretched. He turned at the sound of his name and Jachad saw the child’s dark eyes rest for a moment on her face. He saw a tiny spark of recognition—perhaps the resemblance she bore to his father?—but instead of changing course toward his aunt, he ran even faster and threw himself headlong at the unsuspecting Rho.

  * * *

  Rho couldn’t take his eyes away from Daryan’s face. He could feel the Shadari’s scalding blood splattering his neck, soaking into his tabard. His gauntlets dripped with it. He could even taste it, a metallic taint at the back of his throat. The fire roared around them, but he was oblivious to the heat and the danger. Triffons swarmed overhead, beating waves of searing air back down into the cavern, but he hardly noticed; all that mattered was the blood.

  Daem’s voice came crashing into Rho’s head.

  He looked down at his sword hand. The gauntlet was clean and white; the blade shone, pristine, in the firelight. His new tabard, with its embroidered imperial signet, was immaculate. Daryan stood waiting, quietly watching the tip of his sword.

  Daem shouted again, struggling against an ill-armed but frantic group of Shadari trying to go to their daimon’s aid, but before Rho could even think about helping him, Ingeld came swooping in from the other side.

  he hollered, charging forward toward Daryan with his sword already drawn.

  Rho turned smoothly, and Fortune’s Blight crashed against Ingeld’s blade.

  Ingeld trailed off, speechless.

  Rho was nearly as surprised as Ingeld, but he understood something now. He regarded Ingeld over their crossed swords and said, simply,

  Ingeld stared back at him, laboring to catch up, but it wasn’t long before Rho felt the acid burn of the big Norlander’s pleasure as he took in Rho’s meaning and tightened his grip on his sword. he growled.

  Rho heard voices shouting aloud behind him and a heartbeat later he felt a rush of air as a host of dark shadows streaked past him. The Shadari who had been struggling against Daem tackled Ingeld to the ground.

  Daem grabbed Rho from behind and swung him around. he demanded. His chin was bleeding, his cape was gone and the left sleeve of his shirt was hanging by a thread.

  he started to say when something slammed into his stomach, his legs gave out and he dropped to his knees. Pain snatched his breath away. He looked up into Dramash’s wide, dark eyes.

  The boy’s hands, hot as blacksmith’s tongs, squeezed his arm before flinching away. “I’m scared,” Dramash confided to him in a tight little whisper. A pair of large tears rolled down his cheeks.

  “How did you get away from the Mongrel?”

  “She let me go.”

  “Did she hurt you?”

  “No. She said she wouldn’t if I stayed still.”

  Rho lurched back to his feet.

  Frea commanded. She was tracing the same path as the boy and was not far behind, but now Shadari were throwing themselves upon her with suicidal abandon. She cut them down, barely looking at them, slicing at t
hem with Blood’s Pride, then elbowing or kicking them out of her way. Rho saw Dramash’s eyes following the faceless silver helmet, the white cape spattered with gore.

  “Don’t let her get me!” The boy shrank back in terror, pressing his scorching body hard against Rho’s leg. Rho pushed him off with his gauntleted hand.

  Was he imagining it, or was the floor trembling under his feet?

  “I won’t,” he said hastily, moving the boy around behind him. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. Everything will be all right, I promise.”

  “I want my mama,” Dramash whimpered behind him.

  Frea stopped in her tracks and Rho saw the black eye-slits fix on his face. Hollow: that was what he would become if he joined her. Each time he obeyed an order, each time he followed a command, that emptiness would swallow him, piece by piece, until he was a just a shell, as lifeless as the figurehead on the silver helmet.

  But Frea really did care for him, as much as she had ever cared for anyone; he knew that now. As she began to understand his betrayal, he felt it stab into her heart, wounding her far more deeply than he could have imagined possible.

  he told her.

  Daem, by his side, looked from him to Frea, then back again. he said. He heaved his sword above his head and cried out,

  A strange tension sang in the air, a silence completely separate from the cacophony of the room.

  From within the ranks of the Norlanders, Rho saw Falkar raise his sword above his head. His battle cry throbbed with a kind of wild relief.

  Ongen shouted, standing right next to Falkar. he roared again, pumping his sword in the air, and the next moment the competing battle cries of the Norlanders crashed down over Rho’s head like an avalanche. Over the shouting of the Shadari and the noise of the fire rose the heavy clang of swords and he watched, aghast. Somehow he had started all of this.

  He looked back at Frea, but the Shadari rebels had surged between them and he could no longer see her. The fighting was completely chaotic now, with the Norlanders fighting each other, the Shadari attacking them indiscriminately and smoke, ash and knee-buckling heat everywhere.

  Daem stepped out in front of him.

  Rho gingerly touched the boy on the shoulder. The wound in his side raged hotter than the fire, and he felt weak and lightheaded. He wondered in a vague way if he was going to die, but that wasn’t something to think about now. He had a task to complete, and it deserved his full attention.

  After that, he didn’t care what happened.

  * * *

  Eofar apologized over and over again, repeating it a hundred times, and still Isa would not stop screaming at him, or pounding his back with her fist.

  she broke out savagely. Finally he felt her sag down against the saddle behind him.

  He took a deep breath of the cool night air. Riderless triffons wheeled about them in the sky. It was strange to see them like this, flying free, rolling and diving as they could never do with a rider strapped to their backs. He patted Aeda’s neck gratefully: She had brought them safely through the stampede when he was sure they would be killed, and all the time, Isa had been screaming for him to go back for Daryan.

  he called back to her, but she didn’t answer him. A strange kind of tension was pulling at her; he could feel it. It felt as if a cord was wrapped around her waist, and each beat of Aeda’s wings drew the cord a little bit tighter.

  he tried to explain to her again. He wished with all his heart that she hadn’t spotted him, or that he’d made Daryan explain it to her himself.

  she said, dredging the words up from somewhere deep and dark.

  he told her sharply.

  she said. Her words were calmer now and quieter, but they slid into his mind like the blade of a well-honed knife.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Rho lurched through the crowd herding Dramash in front of him, trying to shield the boy from sight with his sun-proof cape. He felt naked without Fortune’s Blight in his hand, but the child had been too scared to move until he’d sheathed it; the boy was still shivering, from fear or from Rho’s chill, or both. The shifting firelight and the smoke added to the confusion, but made it easier for him to avoid both Shadari and Norlanders as he made his way to where he’d seen her last, in front of the little doorway. She was still there, and the Nomas king was with her, but there was no one else close by. At first he thought Jachad was protecting her from some danger, but as he got closer he realized they were arguing. It sounded like he was trying to force her out of the stables.

  Her eyes widened when she caught sight of Rho coming toward her.

  “I remember you. You’re Harotha—” he started, but a rasping cough took hold of him and he half-shoved Dramash toward her. “Take him,” he choked out. He waved his hand meaningfully at her belly. “You must know some place to hide if you’ve been here all this time—a safe place. Take him there, now!”

  “Wait,” said Jachad. Little yellow flames wound around his fingers and whisked up his arms, singeing the sleeves of his robe. “What’s this all about?”

  Dramash’s eyes were shut tight and his shoulders were hunched over protectively, but relief broke over Rho as he watched Harotha grab the boy by the hand and pull him toward the doorway—until the child dug his heels into the ground and raised his shrill voice over the rest of the din, screaming, “Rho! Rho!” Harotha pulled him back against her and clapped her hand over his mouth.

  Rho ran forward. “Dramash, stop—” he began, but the boy burst from Harotha’s restraining embrace and clamped his arms around Rho’s leg. Rho rocked back with a gasp of pain but Dramash gritted his teeth against the cold and held on. “No, no! You must go with them!” he pleaded, trying to push the child away without hurting him. “Go to your family!”

  The light dimmed as a cloud of smoke rolled over them. Rho covered his mouth with his sleeve and wiped at his burning eyes. The others were gasping and coughing around him, but out of the smoke two Shadari rushed up to them: Daryan, with another, much taller man just behind him.

  “You! I’ve been trying to find you. You saved my life. Why?” Daryan demanded of him. His face was patched with soot now, and the knuckles of both of his hands glistened with fresh blood. Blue blood. “Why are the Dead Ones fighting each other? What’s going on?”

  Rho coughed again as he started to answer, but this time he couldn’t stop. Every convulsion pulled at the wound across his abdomen; he pressed his forearm hard against it as if he could somehow keep in the pain. At last, eyes streaming and doubled over, he managed to gasp, “Frea’s gone too far. She plans to burn your city to the ground. Take the imperial ship, attack Norland. Attack the emperor himself.”

  Daryan looked back at his companion and laughed; to Rho’s ears it had a strained, panicked sound. “You’re saying you’ve t
urned against her—that you’re on our side now?”

  “Some of us.”

  “Well, which ones? How are my people supposed to tell which ones to fight and which one to help?”

  “I don’t know—they can’t!” he shouted hoarsely. He shoved Dramash away from him with both hands and drew Fortune’s Blight, desperate for the feel of the cold metal in his hand. He began backing away from the Shadari and the Nomas. “I don’t know anything—I don’t know what I’m doing. Just take the boy and go! I have to help my friends.”

  Harotha knelt behind Dramash and circled her arms around his chest. “It’s all right,” she said, “You don’t remember me, but I’m your aunt. I’ll take you some place safe. You’ll—” But then she stopped, and Rho noticed two things simultaneously: first, Dramash was standing as straight and rigid as a stake instead of struggling in her embrace or trying to run back to Rho; second, a soft shower of dust was raining down onto Harotha’s brown scarf.

  “No!” he screamed wildly. He charged forward and grabbed Dramash’s arm. “Stop!” he ordered, shaking the boy fiercely. “Stop—you’ll kill us all!”

  The boy looked up at him with an indecipherable expression on his face, but the tension in his arm melted away. He had been trying to get Rho’s attention and he had succeeded.

  Rho glanced at Harotha. Her lack of surprise was enough to tell him that she already knew what Dramash could do.

  “I have to get him out of here,” she said, her voice low, but her dark eyes blazing with meaning. “You’ll have to come with us.”

  “Yes,” Rho capitulated heavily. He sheathed his sword again. “Where?”

  “Someone tell me what is—” Daryan interrupted, but Harotha cut him off.

  “Dramash was born with the power of the ashas and the White Wolf knows about it,” she said. The expression on Daryan’s face changed dramatically, as did that of his companion. “We need to get him as far away from Frea as possible.”