The Winds of Khalakovo (47 page)

“Which?” Grigory asked Atiana.

Again she tried to hide the information by focusing on other things: the cold, the snow, her anger at being held prisoner within her own skin, but it was useless.

“The center,” Alesya said, pointing.

They followed the brigantine as the clipper behind them angled starward to pursue one of the other ships. Cannon fire tore into the hull. Surprisingly, Alesya’s fear stood out strongly. She ducked down, putting her hands over her head as the concussion traveled along the deck.

For a moment, Atiana could move again. She crawled forward of her own free will, but the next moment found herself trapped once more. Alesya forced her to stand. She composed herself, anger and embarrassment emanating from her.

In the confusion, Nikandr’s ship was lost in the drifting snow. Grigory called out for the
Kavda
to drop in pursuit. One moment everyone was grabbing onto ropes or railings or rigging, and the next moment Atiana’s stomach was in her throat. She held onto the rope of a nearby deadeye and held on for dear life, sure the ship would crash to the ground.

“She’s ahead, Kapitan,” a crewman shouted, pointing off the windward bow.

The ship leveled off, and Alesya was able to restore control once more.

She could see through the snow the barest hint of the ship’s form, but she could also feel Nikandr somewhere below. The feeling was beginning to fade, though she didn’t understand why.

Alesya forced her to the gunwale. Far below, there were two skiffs, barely visible. They were lost among the currents of snow a moment later.

“Nikandr is on one of the skiffs, along with a score of streltsi.”

“Prepare the skiffs!” Grigory shouted. “Quickly.”

“
Nyet
. Let them go.” Alesya stared downward, into the swirling snow. “Allow Nikandr to think that he hasn’t been seen.” She turned back to Grigory. “
Then
we’ll fill our skiffs and send them hunting.”

Nikandr watched as the streltsi spread out in rows of four and began marching forward, muskets at the ready. The snow was falling so heavily he could see little more than white. The snow was already a foot deep and getting deeper by the moment, making the going slow and arduous.

The site of the suurahezhan’s crossing was less than a mile ahead. So far there had been no sign of the Maharraht, but the sounds of the battle for the eyrie and Radiskoye had shown no signs of letting up.

Then he heard it. Chanting, from a single voice. He signaled to the sotnik to slow the men, and to spread them out. They obeyed silently, all except the sotnik and his two desyatni.

The snowfall had eased. They could see dozens of yards ahead of them. The ground was white except for the blackened face of a small outcropping of rock and the handful of scrub brush that dotted the terrain.

Nikandr turned to Ashan, whose forehead was pinched in concentration. He looked to Nikandr and shook his head. There was nothing, apparently, he could do to help.

If Ashan were powerless, Nikandr wondered if it had more to do with the rift than the Maharraht.

He waved for the men to lower themselves to the ground. They did so, crawling through the deep snow until they saw a depression in the terrain. A man sat in the middle of it. His eyes were closed, and he was chanting softly. He wore a black turban dusted with snow. Upon his brow was a brown gem of jasper, sparkling brightly despite the relatively dim light.

The sotnik turned to Nikandr and pointed his finger at the Maharraht, cocking his thumb like a musket.

Nikandr shook his head. He didn’t want to do anything rash. They had no idea where Nasim might be, and he refused to jeopardize him needlessly. He turned to Rehada, who was studying the man with a piercing stare. She was conflicted—sadness and doubt clearly warring within her.

Nikandr moved to her side and whispered to her, “Who is he?”

He never heard her response.

A series of sharp cracks resonated beneath him. He could feel it running along his hands and knees.

“Back up!” he shouted.

Before any of them could react, the ground erupted.

Nikandr felt himself lifted and thrown through the air like dust on the wind. He fell softly onto his back in the deep snow, his knee burning from the awkward angle at which he’d landed. Several yards away, standing tall as two men, was a mound of snow-covered earth not unlike the vanahezhan he had seen on Ghayavand. It stalked toward Ashan as the sotnik fired his musket. The flash from the pan was dimmed by the burlap sack protecting it against the snow. The musket ball struck the beast’s head as two more shots tore into it. Nearly all of the streltsi discharged their firearms into the hezhan.

Mere moments later, a cry rose up behind them.

Nikandr turned, recognizing the trap well too late.

It was the Maharraht—at least a score of them—advancing through the drifts. They trained their muskets as they advanced. A split second later, they stopped and released a clatter of musket fire.

Nikandr’s men cried out in pain as musket shots tore into them. Four dropped to the snow. Ashan spread his arms wide, and gazed to the sky. A musket shot pierced his pale yellow robes just below one arm, tugging at the fabric like a child trying to gain his attention.

“Ashan, beware!” Nikandr shouted as he backed away, but Ashan didn’t listen.

The vanahezhan pounded through the snow, but before it could come within striking distance its feet were caught as if it had stepped into deep, sucking mud. Its momentum carried it forward. Loud snaps broke above the din of battle. The beast’s body tumbled to the ground, and though its arms caught it, they were held by the same effect. The thing struggled like a collared wolf against the restraints holding it.

As one, the streltsi began retreating toward the depression where the vanaqiram had been only moments ago.

The Maharraht pressed their advantage, but then several of their muskets discharged before they were ready. Rehada’s doing.

“Something is wrong,” Rehada told Nikandr as she knelt down beside him.

“You noticed?”

Rehada shook her head. “I mean this doesn’t feel right. Soroush should be here, and so should Nasim.”

“Behind!” the sotnik yelled.

Nikandr glanced back while reloading his own musket. Several dozen yards up, firing from the top of a small knoll, were more Maharraht. Another strelet and the burly desyatnik were felled as the sotnik ordered half of them to return fire.

After one volley, as his men were reloading their weapons, the Maharraht charged.

Nikandr stared at them, knowing they were severely outnumbered, knowing they would most likely die whatever they did.

That may be true, Nikandr thought, but he would not go easily.

He drew his shashka and held it high over his head. “Charge!” he yelled as he sprinted forward.

Atiana watched in horror as Bolgravya’s streltsi unloaded from the skiffs. They marched forward, muskets at the ready. She could feel Alesya’s growing desire to have this done with and to rid herself of Atiana—she was growing increasingly disgusted by her nearness to Atiana’s emotions and thoughts.

Meanwhile, Atiana’s awareness of the rift had been growing like the coming light of dawn. There was a distinct feeling of familiarity to it that she could only attribute to her discovery of it within the aether. It lay wide open, a gaping maw in the fabric of the world, and through it she could feel the touch of Adhiya. She could feel warmth and earth and water, even air.

And running through it all was the scent of life.

But there was something else, the feeling that this place—the rift—was like one of any number of threads that ran through the fabric of Erahm—as if the filaments of Adhiya were spread throughout the world like thistledown. The nearest was the one on Duzol, all the more familiar since she had just come from there, and it felt—as it had within the aether—ripe.

Alesya paid little attention to these thoughts because the sounds of battle had broken out. And it was close.

Very close.

The shouts of Duchy men could be heard, as well as the high calls of the Maharraht. The crack of musket fire pattered like the first heavy raindrops of a terrible summer storm. Flashes of white were seen through the curtain of snow.

Grigory raised his fist, a signal that was quickly passed down the line. The men halted.

“Can you feel the boy?” Grigory asked.

Alesya forced Atiana to shake her head. “
Nyet
. There is nothing.”

“Where is he?”

“She does not know.”

And then Nikandr’s voice filtered through the cries.

Grigory’s face hardened.

He motioned for the men to fan out to his left, to converge on the sounds of the musket fire that lay between them and Nikandr. They stalked forward, but one of the Maharraht called out a warning. Many of them turned and fired, as Grigory’s men laid into them.

It was then, with several Maharraht dropping their muskets and charging with wickedly curved shamshirs drawn, that Atiana realized why Duzol felt so near. Why it felt
ripe
.

The rift here on Uyadensk was not the place where Nasim could be used. It never had been. Ashan had been wrong in the beginning, and she had been wrong in the end. Like a jeweler calculating the perfect angle with which to strike the uncut stone, the Maharraht had understood that the key was not the rift on Uyadensk, but the one on Duzol—not because it was the largest, but because by ripping it wider it would cause a chain of events that would lead to the destruction they hoped to wreak.

“Grigory, stop!” Alesya yelled through Atiana’s voice. “Stop!”

Grigory didn’t listen. He couldn’t. He was locked in swordplay, parrying the fierce slashes from a tall Maharraht warrior.

That was when it struck.

A musket ball.

Without warning.

Straight through Atiana’s chest.

The enemy on the knoll had inexplicably pulled away, leaving Nikandr’s men free to face the Maharraht to the rear. The two forces crashed together. Men shouted as steel fell upon steel. In moments, their line was complete chaos. Blood fell upon the snow as soldiers dropped on both sides.

Nikandr parried the attacks of a warrior with a long black mustache. He retreated, keeping his parries slow, baiting the other man. When he finally overextended his advantage, Nikandr sidestepped quickly and drove his shashka through the man’s gut. He withdrew quickly and slashed the man across the throat before he could attempt a dying stroke.

His men were in disarray. There were less than a dozen left against twenty Maharraht. It would be over in moments.

But then a cry rose from beyond the knoll. Nearly two dozen streltsi came running over the hill.

“Hold, men! Hold!”

They did, and soon after the other group of streltsi fell upon the Maharraht. None of the enemy withdrew, however. None turned to run. They fought to the death, the last cutting four streltsi down before he took a musket shot at point-blank range through his chest, and even then he grabbed the end of the unfortunate soldier’s musket and swung his shamshir high over his head and swept it across the other man’s neck. The strelet’s head fell against the beaten and bloody snow, emitting a sound like a fallen gourd.

The Maharraht tried to fight on, but he fell to his knees while stumbling against the uneven, blood-matted snow. He blinked several times before the streltsi nearby fell upon him, unleashing their fury, their swords rising and falling and cutting him into barely recognizable pieces.

And then Nikandr saw the commander of the streltsi.

It was Grigory.

And he was pointing a musket directly at Nikandr’s chest. “Lay down arms, Khalakovo.”

Nikandr stood there, blood trickling across his elbow and along his forearm. He shook his head and allowed his shashka to fall to the trampled snow at his feet. They were in no position to disobey, and he would not sacrifice his men for one last, meaningless gasp. “Lower your arms.”

“My Lord Prince,” a Bolgravy and esyatnik called from the top of the knoll. “It’s Lady Vostroma. She says we are not in the right place.”

“I can spare no time for her now.”

“She is calling for you. She’s been shot.”

Nikandr’s breath fell away.

Grigory’s face went white. He turned and with two of his men and a havaqiram ran toward the top of the rise.

Nikandr tried to follow but was stopped by Grigory’s men. He railed against them. “Let me pass!” he shouted. But they would not.

Grigory turned, pausing to stare at Nikandr with a look on his face like he was considering allowing him to come. He looked—in that one brief moment—like a boy who was having trouble with the mantle that had fallen into his lap. It looked like he desperately
wanted
help, even from a man he called an enemy. But then his expression hardened, and he motioned for the streltsi to lead Nikandr back toward his men.

Rehada was being held closely, her circlet gone. Of Nikandr’s men less than twenty remained. They stood there, haggard, and it was then that Nikandr realized that Ashan was missing. He scanned the bodies of the fallen, becoming frantic when he didn’t see Ashan among them, but when the wind began to blow across the battlefield, he knew that the arqesh had managed to slip away.

The wind gained in intensity, lifting new waves of snow from the ground and pushing men back who were unprepared. It ebbed for one moment, giving everyone a chance to regain their footing, but then, as if the brief pause had been an inhalation, the wind howled with the force of a gale. It sounded like a great, ravenous beast ready to devour them all.

Nikandr fell to the ground as men were swept from their feet. Their kolpak hats flew off their heads as wet snow and dirt pelted them. One man even fired his musket in the direction of the wind, perhaps seeing something he thought was the enemy. The next moment, he toppled backwards and was lost in a rain of white.

The wind cut fiercely against the Vostroman soldiers, pushing them from the lip of the knoll, and Nikandr understood what Ashan was trying to do.

“This way!” he shouted from hands and knees. He dare not stand up lest he be blown about like the men standing only a few paces away. In fact, the intensity increased even more, forcing him to drop to the ground and lay prone.