Mistress Of The Ages (In Her Name, Book 9) (25 page)

The warrior bowed his head and saluted, but Uulan-Rul’te had already turned away, the warrior forgotten. Making his way across the blood soaked battlefield, not even bothering to step around the mangled bodies, he headed to where the porters of water and tenders of animals had established the field kitchen. He had not eaten since late the day before, and the exertions of battle had left him famished. Cutting to the head of the line of warriors of his cohort who had already gathered to eat, he took for himself an entire haunch of a food animal and a mug of ale that would have been a small cask in the hands of a warrior not of Ka’i-Nur.
 

Taking a seat on a grassy hillock that was largely free of the detritus of battle, he sighed with relief as he removed his helmet. It was a necessary encumbrance to make the most of the advanced armor he and his companions wore, but he spared no love for it. While the armor afforded him immense protection in battle, making him nearly as powerful as a priest, in battles like the one fought today he would have preferred his traditional armor. In truth, he was ashamed to face regular warriors while wearing anything but simple metal. His opponents were already badly outmatched by warriors such as he, who were far larger and more powerful, and the armor made them nearly impregnable.
 

Nearly
. He noted with grudging admiration toward the day’s opponents that a number of his warriors lay among the dead, the rust orange light of the afternoon sun reflecting from their armor. His was the First Cohort of one of the Ka’i-Nur legions that had been sent to subdue T’lan-Il, with eight hundred warriors under his command at the time they landed. From his vantage point he could see no fewer than twenty dead, and no doubt there would be more tallied by his First when she presented her report. He could see her, perhaps a quarter league distant, giving orders to the most junior among his warriors, who were bearing the bodies of all the cohort’s dead to one of the landing ships. The fallen would yet serve Syr-Nagath, their essence used by the builders to create more ships, or whatever else his great mistress might require.
 

He tore off a hunk of meat with his massive canines and began to chew, ignoring the fatty juices that ran down his chin and neck to soak the black undergarment he wore beneath his armor. The conquest of this world would not take overlong, he knew, now that the priesthoods had been gutted. They must never have suspected that all these long generations since the Final Annihilation, the Ka’i-Nur had been quietly preparing for just such a day. Having banished his ancestors to their ancient fortress in what was now the Great Wastelands, but had once, long ago, been a tropical paradise, the other priesthoods had done their best to forget their ancient kin.

But the Ka’i-Nur had never forgotten. Even as the waters had dried up and the trees had died, even as the desert had swallowed up their solitary redoubt, the Ka’i-Nur had prepared. They had dug deep into the earth and built a chain of subterranean cities with the same care that they had crafted their own offspring. Every pairing between male and female was deliberately chosen by the elders, guided by the healers and the keepers of the Books of Time as they sought to keep the bloodline as pure as possible, preserving the desired qualities of the past while eliminating weaknesses in future generations. As time went on, the warriors became far more powerful and ferocious than the greatest of those birthed by the other bloodlines, and the robed castes became ever more powerful in their own arts. While the robed ones often lived to be as old as three hundred cycles, few of the warriors survived beyond the age of thirty. Uulan-Rul’te himself was twenty-five, among the very oldest in his cohort. Unlike their counterparts in the other bloodlines, who outside of war fought to the death only during infrequent ritual challenges, Ka’i-Nur warriors over the age of twenty faced a series of trials every two cycles that was to the death. One of them was to face a genoth with nothing more than claws and swords as weapons. He had slain two, and proudly bore the scars on his body and the eyestones on a crude collar about his neck. Only the very strongest and most capable warriors survived. And it was those warriors who filled the ranks of the Dark Queen’s legions.

The Dark Queen
. He snorted at the pathetic war name the other bloodlines had bestowed upon Syr-Nagath. To him and the rest of her people — her true people of the Ka’i-Nur — she was a goddess made flesh and blood. She was the sacred redeemer of his ancestors, the avenger of the humiliation they had endured for millennia. While her body was not cast from the same mold as his own, but had been specially crafted for the peculiar task she was destined to fulfill, her heart and spirit were worthy of the greatest of the bloodline. Her spiritual voice was a sacred melody in his Bloodsong, savage and feral, terrible and beautiful all at the same time. Hers was a roiling river of emotional extremes that was as intoxicating as it was powerful. While he had never beheld her with his own eyes, he would gladly have torn out his own heart should she but ask it of him. It was for her that he and his kin now lived, and it would be for her that they died.
 

Taking a swallow from the enormous mug of ale to wash down the meat, he knew that his own life would likely be spent in this war, but he could imagine no greater end, no more meaningful death, than to perish in true battle for one such as his queen, his high priestess. For a hundred thousand cycles, his ancestors had been pitted against one another in the arena, honing the great sword that Syr-Nagath was now thrusting into the heart of her enemies. The thought that he was part of that great weapon made him swell with pride and honor. Getting to his feet, he threw back his head and let out a primal roar that was echoed by his brothers and sisters across the battlefield while their vanquished foes looked up in fear.
As well they should
, he thought savagely. The false Way they had been following while the Ka’i-Nur quietly rebuilt their strength was now ending, and the true Way that his own people had maintained since the fiery end of the Second Age would be upon them. Then they would know the true meaning of honor.

He roared a second time, giving vent to his bloodlust, and was again joined by a fierce chorus from his cohort. Even some of the vanquished joined in, which further stoked the fire in his veins. Hurling his mug to the ground, he drew his sword and charged toward the nearest group of T’lan-Il warriors, who drew their own swords and turned to face him. Ritual combat among the Ka’i-Nur had never been something that needed to be satisfied in a formal arena. He could sense their fear, but gave them credit for standing fast. Inferior as they were, they would not die as meat animals.

Before he reached them, the battlefield was shaken by echoes of thunder. Looking up into the cloudless sky, he saw a group of perhaps two dozen warriors falling toward the earth. But they did not fall so much as descend with a peculiar grace, their cloaks fluttering behind them like wings. He threw his arm up to cover his eyes as bolts of lightning exploded from their outstretched hands and he felt the voices of a number of his kin silenced in the Bloodsong, then more and more, and not just here, but far away. When he dared to look again, the battlefield was littered with pyres of molten silver metal and scorched bodies.

“
Attack!
” His scream was drowned out by the sudden bedlam that erupted around him. His warriors needed no orders to attend to such a threat. Energy beams crisscrossed the sky, but each time one came near a target, the floating warrior vanished, only to reappear above and behind one of the warriors who fired. More cyan bolts lanced down, killing more of his warriors.

Dropping his sword, which any other time would have been an unthinkable act, he drew his energy weapon. He lifted the muzzle toward the sky, but never got a chance to fire. The cold eyes of a Desh-Ka priestess a stone’s throw away were the last things he saw before she vaporized him in a blaze of cyan.

***

The Ka’i-Nur warrior’s body flashed to steam inside the superheated metal armor an instant before the remaining flesh and bone burst into flame, blasting his exposed head into the air as the body collapsed to the ground in a heap of red hot molten slag.

Alena-Khan did not pause to savor her victory before she stepped through space to appear above and behind another silver clad warrior. The tactic she and the others of the Desh-Ka were using was not one they ever would have employed on a normal field of battle, but with only seven priests and priestesses in her hunting party against an entire cohort of Ka’i-Nur warriors with advanced weapons and armor, she hardly needed to worry about dishonoring herself. The enemy still held an overwhelming advantage.

A bare instant after she appeared in the air, gently falling toward the ground, she blasted the warrior, who had just squeezed off a shot at one of her priests, but missed. Her bolt of lightning, however, did not. The warrior exploded like a bomb as the internal pressure of the body’s expanding gasses ruptured the superheated armor. Nodding in satisfaction, Alena-Khan winked out of sight again just as a pair of energy beams ripped the air where she had just been.

It was then that she saw the ship squatting to one side of the field of battle. It was not one of the great starships Keel-Tath and the other boarding teams would be attacking, but was a smaller vessel, no doubt launched from one of the greater ships. But it was still a valuable target. “El-Shula’an! Zhur-Marekh!" she called to the nearest of her fellow swords. “The ship!”

The priest and priestess shouted acknowledgement before they vanished. A score of sun bright beams speared through the air where they had just been. Alena-Khan vaporized another Ka’i-Nur warrior before she herself shifted through space.

A few moments later, the ship, its huge loading ramp still open, began to lift from the ground with a deep rumble from its engines. Ka’i-Nur warriors leapt from the cargo bay to the ground. Rolling on the ground with unexpected grace, they regained their feet and began to run.
 

None had made it very far before the ship exploded, and Alena-Khan’s heart was filled with the pain of loss as the spiritual voices of El-Shula’an and Zhur-Marekh were silenced. The fleeing Ka’i-Nur were consumed by the fireball, and flaming debris arced in all directions to rain down on the enemy warriors below.

Forcing her sorrow and rage into a dark corner of her soul until she had time to grieve properly, Alena-Khan did exactly what she had ordered of the rest of the Desh-Ka: with methodical precision, she killed. With swords sheathed, they only used their higher powers to blast an enemy, then disappear and reappear at a new vantage point to blast another. If an enemy warrior was close by, the priestess snatched him and whisked him into low orbit. That became a frequent tactic, for it was far less taxing. The unfortunate Ka’i-Nur warriors spent their final moments as shooting stars sweeping across the darkening skies. Unlike in the earlier battles, both among themselves and against the Ka’i-Nur, the priests and priestesses carefully paced themselves. As they began to tire and their powers waned, they retired to a vantage point atop a mountain with a view of the battlefield, where they were tended to by robed ones and rested until ready to rejoin the battle.

In not a single case did they attack a warrior not of the Ka’i-Nur. The warriors of T’lan-Il who had surrendered their honor to the silver-clad invaders did their best to bring the Desh-Ka to battle, but all they could do was hurl shrekkas ineffectually at the priests and priestesses who floated above them, well out of range.
 

The battle —
the slaughter
, thought Alena-Khan later — went on well into the night. The priests and priestesses, using their second sight, had no need of light by which to see. The helmets worn by the Ka’i-Nur gifted them with night vision akin to full daylight, although it failed to help them anticipate where the elusive Desh-Ka might next appear. The darkness was riven at rhythmic intervals, the lightning and thunder of the Desh-Ka countered by the sun bright beams of the Ka’i-Nur. The T’lan-Il warriors, frustrated by the Desh-Ka refusal to give battle and ignored by their new masters as they fought for their lives, had gathered around bonfires arranged in concentric rings around the center of the battlefield. Meat was cooked and ale was served as the warriors played the unaccustomed role of spectator to the carnage exploding around them. None had ever witnessed such a battle, nor heard tales of such from the keepers of the Books of Time. Their hearts and the song of their blood were filled with a tangled harmony of fear and anticipation, but for now they could only wait in silence until the battle came to an end.

As the midnight hour approached, that end was well in sight. Unlike the Desh-Ka, the Ka’i-Nur had no respite. They could not retreat, could not advance, could not rest or regroup, and could not recharge their weapons. As the energy rifles ran out of power from near constant firing, the Ka’i-Nur flung them to the ground and drew their swords, and the Desh-Ka happily obliged them with more traditional single combat. But even now, the Desh-Ka fought to kill, and not just to win an honorable victory. As skilled and fierce as were the Ka’i-Nur, they could never hope to compete with the priests and priestesses in sword craft, especially as exhausted as the huge warriors now found themselves. The living metal blades of the Desh-Ka parted Ka’i-Nur heads from necks or pierced deep into vital organs with surgical thrusts through gaps in their opponents’ armor. With roars of rage and grunts of pain did the Ka’i-Nur fight and die. They died hard, most of them stricken with half a dozen wounds before they finally succumbed, but they died.

Setting aside their food and drink as the ring of steel and cries of the dying began to ebb away, the T’lan-Il warriors began to form into ranks for battle. They had no idea what to expect once the last of the Ka’i-Nur had been vanquished, but they were determined to acquit themselves well against the Desh-Ka and prove themselves worthy to those who would soon take their lives.