The Rage of Dragons (The Burning Books #1) (24 page)

It was the hottest day of the cycle and things were not going well. The skirmish had already lasted longer than most, and more than half of Scale Jayyed was still in play, as well as two-thirds of the citadel warriors. They were fighting on the mountain battleground, which favored the Indlovu, who could use the rocky terrain to avoid taking fights with odds worse than three to one.

Jayyed’s six had been reduced to four—Hadith, Uduak, Oyibo, and Tau. Yaw had been disabled by the Enervator’s first blast and knocked unconscious by the Indlovu follow-up. Chinedu had gone down a few moments later, trying to rally near a choke point where several Indlovu had sheltered. The skirmish had become hit-and-run among the diminutive cliffs of the battleground, and Hadith was loath to commit his men to a full assault.

Tau knew he was worried about the Enervator. They hadn’t isolated her position and it had been more than half a sun span since she’d fired off a blast. She’d be ready to use her gift again.

“We can’t stay out here all day,” Tau told Hadith as he slicked a river of sweat from his brow. They were crouched behind an outcropping of rock, looking up. Twenty strides away, several Indlovu were entrenched in an improvised stronghold of boulders. Tau couldn’t be sure how many others were there, or if the Enervator was with them.

“I know,” muttered Hadith.

“We have to do something.”

“Like what? Call dragons out my ass?”

“Calm,” rumbled Uduak.

“She has to be up there,” Hadith said. “She has to be.”

“But if she’s not, and we go in…,” said Runako with his paper-thin voice.

Hadith shook his head. “She’s there. I can feel it. Get ready, everyone. Three prongs. I’ll lead middle, Tau takes left, Uduak right.”

It was dangerous. If the assault didn’t work, they’d lose too many men to win the skirmish.

“Goddess go with you,” Hadith said.

“If She’s not already with them,” Themba whispered, as the three prongs arranged themselves.

Oyibo glared at Themba, cowing the talkative initiate and then glancing at Tau for approval. Tau nodded. Oyibo’s idolization was a little awkward, but he was a good fighter and Tau would exchange any amount of awkwardness for that.

Tau saw Hadith check the position of the three prongs. They were in place. Tau would stream up the left side of the hill with eight other men, Hadith would charge the center, and Uduak the right. It was a simple plan. Tau hoped that would count for something.

Hadith raised an eyebrow at Tau. Tau pointed a finger toward the Indlovu. He wanted to go.

“Where we fight!” Hadith shouted.

“The world burns!” bellowed the twenty-seven remaining Lessers of Scale Jayyed as they rose from their redoubt and streamed up the hill. They were spread out far enough that the Enervator could not get them all, if she was there.

She was. Tau saw her stand from behind one of the larger rocks and raise her arms in his direction.

“Cek!” yelled Tau as the wave of enervation struck him, hurling his spirit into Isihogo.

The wind’s howl was deafening, the sky dark, and Tau’s blood ran cold as he imagined all the horrible things that could be hiding behind the rocks. He looked back at his men. The collective glow from the other eight fighters was blinding, and they had been noticed.

Demons, misshapen and terrible, emerged from the mists. They keened and bayed, predators on the hunt. Tau heard men wail in fear, their voices muted by whatever forces controlled this place. Many cowered and some broke, running for their lives, as if there was anywhere to run. Tau gritted his teeth, thinking, If you’re already in the underworld, don’t stop there. He pulled his swords and charged, heart hammering and filled with blinding fear.

“The world burns!” he roared as he ran into and right through the lead demons, emerging into the bitter heat, harsh sunlight, and divine blessing that was Uhmlaba. He stumbled, almost fell, and tried to right himself, but the world spun in a dizzying wobble as he spotted and struggled to hold his eyes on the stunned Enervator standing just a few steps ahead.

She had lowered her arms and was staring at Tau in disbelief. He looked back at the way he’d come. His prong was a shambles, not a single man up. Oyibo was closest, but on his knees, head bowed, chest heaving.

The Enervator’s blast had been particularly brief. It was her duty to release them before the demons attacked, but she’d gone too far the other way. Tau’s lesson with Zuri, learning how to let his soul slip to the underworld, had made the Enervator’s forced transition less stupefying. She’d weakened but not broken him.

He shook his head, hoping to tear loose the last hooks the journey to Isihogo had on him. His mind was a muddle, but he knew enough to run for the Enervator, making it her turn to cower. He managed several strides and was almost on her when two Indlovu, the Nobles assigned to guard her, rose from behind the boulders, greeting him with bronze.

Tau slashed at the nearest man, his attack premature, clumsy, a result of his time in Isihogo. The Indlovu blocked and the second Noble swung for Tau’s head. His instincts saved him. Tau dropped to his knees and the sword his body told him was coming whistled overhead.

Tau smacked his weak-side blade into his attacker’s calf and was rewarded when the man yelped. Tau stabbed up and forward, aiming for the groin of the first man in a move that would disembowel had his practice blade possessed anything resembling a true point. The Indlovu blocked the strike and Tau sprang to his feet, pressing him further.

The Indlovu’s eyes, deep set beneath a heavy brow, shone, and the man was grinning. He’s enjoying this, Tau thought, noticing that the Enervator was scrambling away. He needed to get to her, fast.

No time to waste, he sent his blades spinning in attack after attack, showering himself and the grinning Noble with sparks. The man’s smile slipped as he struggled to weather Tau’s storm. Then it returned.

Tau leapt to the side. He wasn’t fast enough. The other Indlovu, the one behind him, cracked him in the shoulder. The blow had been aimed for his neck. Not that it mattered, much.

The strike fired a wave of pain down Tau’s arm, sent his strong-side sword flying down the hill, and knocked him to the ground. Certain they weren’t done with him yet, Tau rolled and avoided getting his face stomped by a boot. He darted to his feet and both men were on him.

He tried to keep them away. He tried to regain his momentum. He was down a sword, Isihogo sick, and defending against two citadel-trained men. He was losing.

The grinning Noble was beaming now, sweat dripping down his thick brow and tongue flicking out to catch it. The other Noble, even limping, was quick. He looked like a lizard with his widespread eyes and thick, long nose.

Tau swore he would not lose to the sweat licker and lizard face, and the fighting began in earnest. He took a glancing but painful hit to the side, when he had to choose between accepting that and risk taking a blow that might break his arm. Soon after, he was doubled over when he chose a thrust over a riposte that threatened to disarm him.

Short on breath, he sprang back and straightened. Both Indlovu were swinging, and he blocked the blade coming for his chest, accepting, in trade, the sloppy backswing aimed for his helmet. The last was a mistake.

The blow to the head stunned Tau, and he stumbled away, tripping over loose rocks. He was in pain. His breathing was ragged. He could not last much longer.

Common sense told him to run. He’d already lost sight of the Enervator, and she was his reason for facing the two Indlovu. But Tau stayed. He would not run from Nobles.

They came at him together, swinging hard enough to cripple. Tau defended as best he could, yelling with frustration and anger. He could not turn the fight around. He took two more heavy hits and came close to going down.

The attackers moved to his sides, making it impossible for him to defend against both. They’d be able to circle him and beat him to the ground. Tau hissed at them, striking out this way and that. The sweat licker smirked like he knew the world’s best joke, and, as one, they pounced.

Tau was hit twice, his sword almost taken out of his hand, and he took a shield to the face. His nose didn’t break, but blood gushed from it anyway.

He’d let them kill him before he’d beg for the Goddess’s mercy.

“Where we fight!” a voice screamed, startling the sweat-drinking Indlovu as he was tackled. It was Oyibo.

Tau had a chance. “The world burns!” he shouted, remounting his offense against lizard face, who squawked in dismay at having to deal with Tau one-on-one.

Lizard face was quick, precise. He reminded Tau of a larger Yaw, but Tau treated him with far less love than he would have his sword brother.

He slashed a bright cut across the Indlovu’s face, darted back, giving himself enough room for a powerful cross-body swing, and pounded his blade into the man’s helmet. Lizard face went down like the bones had gone out of him.

Tau spun, found his second sword, and snatched it, running to help Oyibo. Oyibo was on the ground, the sweat licker standing over him, sword up. Oyibo smiled at Tau; he’d saved him and made the upcoming fight an even one.

“Goddess’s mercy,” Oyibo said, no shame in his voice. Tau would finish this one off.

The sweat licker saw Tau coming and looked down at Oyibo.

Oyibo’s smile vanished. “Mercy!” he said again, as the Indlovu brought his blade down, smashing Oyibo’s helmet and skull to pieces, killing him.

Tau stopped dead. It didn’t make sense. The Indlovu pulled his gore-soaked blade from the mess that had been Oyibo’s face and raised the weapon at Tau.

“He asked for mercy,” Tau said, trying to piece the world back together. “He asked for mercy.”

The Indlovu, still standing over the body, grinned, and that made Tau attack. He knocked him to the ground, landing on top, and was on his feet first, firing strike after strike. The Noble tried to defend, but this was not a fight; it was an obliteration.

Within the first few sword crosses, the smiling Noble lost his grin, his nostrils flaring like an animal driven to slaughter, his eyes rolling, desperate. “Goddess’s mercy! Goddess’ mercy! Stop, damn you! Stop!”

Tau’s next swing broke the Noble’s arm, and the follow-up crashed into his head, knocking his helmet off and rendering him near senseless. Tau backhanded him with his sword’s pommel, tearing the man’s bottom lip to bits and bashing teeth from his mouth. The Noble staggered and Tau hammered a blade into his leg, fracturing his femur and dropping him to his knees.

Tau raised his sword and the Noble tried to speak, blood flowing from his ruined mouth.

“Merthy! Gawdeth merthy,” he managed to spit.

“Here’s my mercy!” Tau said, bringing his sword down and hitting bronze on bronze, hard enough to shake his bones. Uduak stood beside him, his oversized blade holding Tau’s killing blow aloft, a handspan above the Indlovu’s head.

“Move!” Tau screamed at Uduak, the rage in him enough to make the big man take a step back.

“No,” Uduak said. “They will kill you.”

“He murdered Oyibo!” Tau told him, eyes blurring with tears. He hadn’t cried since Aren and didn’t want to now, but watching Oyibo die had made old wounds new again.

“They will kill you,” Uduak repeated, using his blade to turn Tau’s aside.

“Yeth. Merthy!”

Uduak clubbed the kneeling Noble in the side of the head, knocking him unconscious, and Tau stumbled back, away from his beaten foe. He let his swords fall to the dirt and went to Oyibo, knelt beside the body of his sword brother, and cried.

All around him was chaos. He heard the tumult, but it seemed a thing apart, a thing across a distance he could not traverse. He heard they had won. Uduak’s prong had bored through the Indlovu’s defenses with ease. Hadith’s prong had struggled until Uduak’s men joined them, helping them finish off the rest of the defenders.

They’d found the Enervator. Not enough time had passed for her to manage a third attack. She’d surrendered and they had come to sweep up these last two Indlovu, her bodyguards. That was when they saw the skirmish’s true cost.

The rest of the morning went by in a blur. Oyibo’s body was taken from the battlefield and prepped for burning as the umqondisi from the citadel suggested punishing Tau with death, or at least whipping. In skirmishes, men were injured and sometimes killed, but the citadel umqondisi argued that Tau had forfeited his right to protection under skirmish rules when he ignored the Noble’s calls for mercy.

Jayyed and several other umqondisi protested this, begged even. They claimed Tau had become emotional at the death of a sword brother. They claimed he had not heard or, at least, had not understood the calls for mercy from the Noble’s mangled mouth.

The citadel had not liked that but stopped short of calling the claims lies. Instead, they focused on the Indlovu’s condition—a mangled face, a broken arm and leg!

Things that happen in a skirmish, Jayyed told them. He asked, who among them had not broken limbs or received a lump or two? They were warriors, not farmers. Besides, was it not an Ihashe initiate they had to burn this day?

A Lesser, a Common, the citadel umqondisi had replied, as if they spoke of grains of sand on a beach, all the same and easily replaced.

A man who would have fought for the Goddess and the Omehi against the hedeni, Jayyed told them, his anger beginning to show. It all flowed over and beyond Tau, as he tried to understand Oyibo’s death.

Tau had begun to treat the world of the isikolo and citadels as a game. Fighting with dull swords, playing at battle. He had let himself forget that everything they did, they did to be better at real war, at actual killing. Oyibo had looked up to him, and Tau, forgetting the nature of their world, had let Oyibo down, just as he had let his father down.

Jayyed suggested they cancel the second skirmish. The citadel umqondisi refused. Had they not given enough by agreeing to spare the Common from a whipping, from a hanging? So, a second Ihashe scale took the field and lost.

Anan proposed they leave. The other aqondise and umqondisi disagreed. They shouldn’t break with tradition, not on a day like this.

They wanted the men to be able to go into the city, drink some of their sorrows away, if they must. Maybe they would also remember a victory had been won today. Though the price, set at a man’s life, had been too dear.

Tau remained numb. Scale Jayyed intended to stay with him in the Crags, but he remembered Zuri would be waiting, and feeling more than ever that he needed to see her, Tau said they should go to the city. They should drink to Oyibo’s life and memory. So, Jayyed’s six, once again Jayyed’s five, went with the rest of the scale and the two isikolo to celebrate a victory and mourn a brother.

Tau drank one jug and left. His sword brothers let him go. They knew him to be solitary. He walked to the circle, not expecting to see Zuri there. It was too early, and that was fine. He’d take the time to sit and think. Maybe offer a prayer for Oyibo’s soul.

But Zuri was waiting; rather, she was pacing. When she saw him, she let out a cry and ran into his arms. “I heard someone was killed. I thought… By the Goddess, I was so frightened.”

“I’m well,” Tau mumbled.

Zuri knew he wasn’t. “You knew him?”

“My sword brother. He fought beside me. I didn’t save him.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“You said the same thing when my father died, and here we are again. Me, alive, and the man who came to my aid, dead.”

Zuri opened her mouth to try a response, then closed it.

“How did you hear?” Tau asked.

“A friend, a small and bold Gifted initiate who always seems to know more than she should. You’d like her. I wish you could meet…” Zuri looked down and Tau was reminded of the great distance their world sought to keep between men like him and women like her. “She knows about you and came running to tell me that there was…” Zuri didn’t seem to want to say the rest. “There was an accident in the morning’s first skirmish. A man went to the Goddess.”

“Went? Oyibo was murdered. He asked for mercy. The Noble killed him anyway.”

“Tau,” Zuri said, reaching for him. He felt her delicate fingers tracing the hardened calluses on his palms. She looked around. They were alone in the circle, but it was early enough that others could come by at any moment. She wanted to hold him. He could see that. Propriety held her back.

Tau rejected propriety. He wrapped her up in his arms. She didn’t hesitate then. She put her arms around him, pulling him tight to her body.

Tau’s eyes grew damp. He hated himself for being so weak. He squeezed them shut to quell the tears and leaned against Zuri, drawing comfort from her presence.

“Lesser!” a man yelled. “What in the Goddess’s name!”

Zuri jerked back. Tau opened his eyes. Three Indlovu, first cycles, by the look of them, were striding over.

“Get away from her, you disgusting nceku! What do you think you’re—”

The Indlovu did not finish his sentence. In a single, unbroken motion, Tau drew one of his two practice swords and struck the man on the temple. He was unconscious before his body hit the floor.

“Ukufa’s tongue!” yelped the second Indlovu, drawing his blade, its sharp edge hissing on the scabbard as it was pulled free.

“Stop this! Stop it now!” Zuri ordered.

The third Indlovu looked at her, and Tau drew his second practice sword. That ended the man’s internal argument and, seeing little else for it, he drew his very real sword, readying himself.

“Put them away. My name is Gifted Zuri and I order it.”

Both Indlovu looked uncertain. By rights they should accept Zuri’s authority. Tau decided the case for them. He attacked. “Tau!” Zuri called, but he’d already bled and dropped the second Indlovu and was working on the third, whom, he could tell, he’d overwhelm in moments.

“Stand down!” called another Indlovu from across the circle. Tau slapped the man he was fighting across the face with the flat of his blade, sending the Noble reeling. That one dispatched, he turned, eyes blazing and heart on fire, seeking out the speaker.

Tau recognized him immediately. How could he not? Barely a dozen strides distant stood a third-cycle Indlovu of the citadel, guardian dagger recipient, and murderer. Barely a dozen strides distant stood Kellan Okar.