Forged In Flame (In Her Name: The First Empress, Book 2) (24 page)

Wan-Kuta’i silently moved up the line, disappearing into the brush and trees ahead, beyond which Keel-Tath could hear the surf breaking on the shore.

A few tense moments later she returned to where Keel-Tath and the others waited. “The shore is clear,” Wan-Kuta’i said, “but we must move quickly. The entire coast has been under close observation, and we will almost certainly be seen.”

Nodding, Keel-Tath got to her feet and followed after Wan-Kuta’i, with Ka’i-Lohr and Tara-Khan on either side and Dara-Kol right behind her. Keel-Tath was proud that she moved as quietly as did the older warriors, and noted with some pride that she was quieter than the young warriors escorting her. It was yet another blessing of Ayan-Dar’s teachings. Behind them, the four big warriors carrying the wounded Drakh-Nur stood and lifted his body to their shoulders, an anxious Han-Ukha’i by their side. 

With a nod from Wan-Kuta’i, the group stepped from the trees onto sand, pure white, that stretched a quarter league to the lapping water of the ocean. While the caps of the waves were white, the water itself was brown and green, murky from the sediments discharging from the river.

But what caught her attention was the ship that stood just offshore. It was nothing like the gigantic vessels she had seen during her visit to Ku’ar-Amir, but was sleek and rakish, like a sword in the water. While it was much smaller than the hunting ships, she could see that it was still quite large, judging from the comparative size of the warriors lining the rail. The ship was not riding at anchor, but was sailing before the wind on huge triangular sails flying from the ship’s three masts.

Closer, nearly to the roaring surf now, two boats approached, each one powered by a dozen warriors who strained at the oars, sweeping them in a precise rhythm.

“Look!” Tara-Khan was pointing up the beach toward a line of mounted warriors pounding down the beach toward them. It was impossible for Keel-Tath to judge how many they were, but one thing was clear: they greatly outnumbered Wan-Kuta’i’s forces.

She began to draw her sword, but a sharp word from Tara-Khan stopped her. “Keep your weapon sheathed.”

Keel-Tath stared at him in disbelief. “But we will have no choice but to fight!”

He looked at her as if she was a suckling babe. “Not until after words are spoken, words that will buy the boats time to get closer.” 

She bared her fangs at him, but left her sword in its sheath. 

“Do not let my tresh offend you,” Ka’i-Lohr said. “He has never been one for manners, but he more than makes up for it with the skill of his sword.”

“I will try to remember,” she told him. She wanted to say more, but that would have to wait.

“Form a line,” Wan-Kuta’i bellowed, “but do not draw your weapons!”

Her warriors immediately made a battle line facing the approaching enemy, with Keel-Tath and the others behind them. 

When the queen’s warriors drew near, just within shrekka range, they halted. Keel-Tath half expected that Shil-Wular would be at the lead, but he was not. 

“We come for the white-haired one,” the leader, an unusually tall and slender male warrior, said in a voice that was at once soft, and yet filled with steel. “So wills Syr-Nagath, ruler of these lands.”

“She is under the protection of my mistress, Li’an-Salir of Ku’ar-Amir,” Wan-Kuta’i said as she stepped forward a pace. “If your queen desires to take the child, she must negotiate with my mistress. I have no power to release her into your hands.”

The warrior gave Wan-Kuta’i a disgusted look. “Then we will take her.”

Before he could say anything more, Wan-Kuta’i shot back, “Is your queen prepared to make war upon Ku’ar-Amir and the rest of Ural-Murir now, this day?”

“She is. But there will be no Messenger to your people. They will know war has come when the swords of our warriors pierce their hearts.”

Keel-Tath gasped. Wars always began with one side first capturing a warrior of their would-be enemy, then returning the warrior bearing tidings of the war that was coming. The Messenger was marked, so that forever he or she would be known to both sides as sacrosanct, untouchable and inviolable. It was a tradition dating back to the time of the First Age, and to be a Messenger was the greatest of honors. To make war without a Messenger was unthinkable.

And yet, it did not surprise Keel-Tath that Syr-Nagath had dispensed with that tradition. What did surprise her was that the warriors who had sworn their honor to the Dark Queen followed her in blind subservience, and did not balk at such a fundamental departure from the Way. In the past, leaders who strayed so far were cast down in dishonor, for the obedience of those who followed was earned in blood and maintained by the ancient code that had sustained their people through the ages. If leaders acted with dishonor, their lives were forfeit.

Looking at the warriors arrayed against her, she saw and sensed in her blood both determination...and fear. Syr-Nagath was destroying the foundation of the Way one soul at a time, replacing honor with terror. Warriors fearing those to whom their honor was pledged was nothing new, for not all warrior leaders were kind or enlightened. But this was on an altogether different level. The warriors here who had come for her did not bear the evil of their queen, but the bone-deep fear of her displeasure. They were afraid of being cast into eternal darkness, or perhaps worse. Keel-Tath wanted to somehow reach out to them, to help them return to the Way and to honor, but there was nothing she could say. Not here, not now. If their leader gave the word, as she knew he would, they would take her.

“When I say,” Dara-Kol whispered beside her, “run for the nearest boat, and do not stop. Do. Not. Stop. Do you understand?”

Keel-Tath gave a jerky nod. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the four warriors carrying Drakh-Nur, with Han-Ukha’i still at his side, moving toward the incoming boats. She realized that the enemy warriors must not have realized Drakh-Nur and Han-Ukha’i were with her, as they were both shielded from view by the warriors carrying him. And Han-Ukha’i certainly blended in better without her healer’s robes. They must have thought the two had belonged to Wan-Kuta’i.

“We will make sure she reaches the boats,” Ka’i-Lohr said, bowing his head. Tara-Khan only gave a sharp nod.

“Is this how wars are to be fought?” Wan-Kuta’i asked the leader of the queen’s warriors, taking another step forward. “Without the honor of a Messenger? This is not the Way.”

“It is as the queen wills it, and that is all that matters.” He brought his
magthep
forward a few paces and his expression hardened. “Yield now and proclaim your honor to Syr-Nagath and join us, or hand over the white-haired one and depart. Your only other choice is to die, and we will still take her.”

Wan-Kuta’i was silent, a thoughtful expression on her face. On the shore behind them, the first boat grated onto the sand and a pair of warriors leaped out to hold it steady while others reached out to help pull Drakh-Nur and Han-Ukha’i aboard. On either side of her, the warriors were tense, hands on their weapons. 

Out of the corner of her eye, Keel-Tath saw the ship turn about, coming perilously close to the shore before again swinging parallel to it, nearing their position. She could hear the big sails flutter for a moment before the booms on the mast swung and the sails again caught the wind. As the ship reached their position on the beach, Wan-Kuta’i bellowed, “May your queen rot in the eternal dark!”

Several things happened at once. There was a ripping sound from the ship, and a volley of flying weapons, the likes of which Keel-Tath had never seen, raked the mounted riders, tearing apart warrior and beast alike. 

Wan-Kuta’i’s warriors took advantage of the shock and surprise to hurl their shrekkas at the enemy, inflicting further losses before the queen’s warriors could respond.

Dara-Kol turned and shoved Keel-Tath toward the nearest boat, and Keel-Tath ran as fast as her exhausted body could carry her, with Tara-Khan and Ka’i-Lohr on either side. They were surrounded by more of Wan-Kuta’i’s warriors, who shielded them from the shrekkas thrown by the queen’s warriors as they regained their wits.

As she neared the side of the boat, her left leg was stricken with searing pain as a shrekka sliced through her outer thigh. She stumbled and would have fallen had not Tara-Khan deftly scooped her into his arms, barely breaking his stride. As he dashed up to the boat, he tossed her into the boat before leaping in himself. She landed in a tangle of arms and legs among the warriors who had been manning the oars, but who now lent their throwing arms and shrekkas to the fight. Turning, Tara-Khan then pulled Ka’i-Lohr aboard, then Dara-Kol. 

The ship fired again, and more enemy warriors were torn apart by the flashing blades of its weapons. Under the cover of its fire, Wan-Kuta’i and the others made for the boats, holding off the enemy with their swords as they retreated. Keel-Tath could see that most of them would not make it: they were outnumbered at least five to one, even after the ship’s bloody work had been done, and their backs were against the deadly sea.

Wan-Kuta’i and perhaps a quarter of her warriors made it to the boats as the rest turned to stand their ground in a semicircle on the beach before the boats.

Warriors pushed the boats back into the sea, but they did not even try to climb in. Instead, they quickly saluted Wan-Kuta’i, then returned to the hopeless battle. Keel-Tath saluted them, too, knowing that their deeds this day would be recorded in the Books of Time, and they would die with great honor.

Shrekkas whistled overhead and thunked into the boat as more enemy warriors crowded against the surf to get close enough to land a strike against the frantically rowing warriors. Some of the weapons struck home, rending flesh and armor, and warriors fell across their oars, injured or dead. 

Tara-Khan shoved her down and covered her body with his own until they were out of the enemy’s range, Ka’i-Lohr kneeling beside them and sending shrekkas he plucked from the steel-hard wood of the boat back at the enemy. Keel-Tath screamed at the arrogant young warrior to let her up, that she had to see, but he ignored her pleas and threats. As she lay there, struggling uselessly against his bulk, the bottom of the boat ran red with blood.

***

Syr-Nagath bolted upright from a deep sleep. Beside her, the warrior she had taken to bed stirred, but remained silent. So much the better for him. Had she wanted him to speak, she would have commanded him to do so.

She smiled in the darkness, barely able to contain her jubilation. Ka’i-Lohr had crossed paths with Keel-Tath. Ka’i-Lohr, the product of the union between herself and Kunan-Lohr, Keel-Tath’s father, was her only offspring. Before and after his birth, she had been cursed with nothing but stillborn children until she had finally had the healers, incompetent fools who could not remedy what ailed her body, render her infertile. Not long after he had been born, she had sent him in company with a wet nurse and two warriors to Ku’ar-Amir, both to remove him from potential harm and put him in a position to aid her plans in later years. When his body came of age, she sailed in secret to Ku’ar-Amir. Her servants had captured him while his ship was in port and brought him to her bed, where she worked the dark magic upon him as she had the Desh-Ka priest Ria-Ka’luhr and so many others. She had improved on the workings of the magic since she had first used it: Ka’i-Lohr would have no recollection of what had transpired, no knowledge that he was being used as an instrument of her will. She returned him that same night, and since then he had been a window upon the workings of the kingdom and the city that bore the same name. She had learned much in the time he had been her eyes and ears there.

But this, this was a boon that she never could have foreseen. To have him in company with her nemesis, in a position to tear out the white-haired child’s throat or pierce her heart with a dagger at a mere thought from her, his mother, was a most intoxicating ecstasy. 

With her blood rising, she took her lover by the shoulder and rolled him over toward her. Straddling him, she bent down to kiss him as he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tight against him. She pulled back enough to stare in his eyes, promising both pleasure and pain. “Please me,” she commanded.

***

Keel-Tath watched from the ship’s side rail as the queen’s warriors unceremoniously dumped the bodies of the dead of both sides into the sea. The water began to churn as the vicious smaller fish came in to feed, and the water turned a dark, ugly color. Larger creatures swam in to join the feast, eating both the flesh of the fallen and the smaller fish that did not get out of the way in time. Even in the murky water, she could see shadowy shapes swim under the ship, speeding toward shore. Most were small, but some were longer than the boat she had ridden to the ship. In short order the water near where the queen’s warriors stood watching the spectacle was roiling with living death.

She was about to turn away, sickened, when something, a creature at least as large as a full-grown
genoth
, exploded from the water near the beach. It had a long, spiny neck and a head that was mostly tooth-lined jaw. In two rapid undulating movements of its body, which had flippers where a
genoth
would have had legs, it reached the nearest warriors and their
magtheps
. Using its head as a club, swinging it side to side, it bowled over three mounts and their riders before gobbling them up, swallowing them whole while the other warriors and
magtheps
ran screaming in terror. 

“A
kalakh-hin’da
,” Ka’i-Lohr said from beside her. “That one is still young, not full grown. But even the full grown ones are far from the largest beasts to be found in the sea, although they are among the most dangerous. They are cunning and swift, hard to kill, and can leave the water for brief periods of time.”

“We killed one,” Tara-Khan boasted. “It attacked one of the ship’s boats. Ka’i-Lohr and I slew it before it could feast on the boat’s crew.”

Keel-Tath said nothing as the beast attacked another warrior, who had been wounded by a shrekka and was unable to escape. She ran a hand along her thigh where she had been struck in the escape from the beach. Han-Ukha’i had healed the wound and preserved the scar, but in her mind Keel-Tath could still feel the pain as she listened to the warrior’s screams, and imagined the sounds of his bones crunching as the beast ate him. Sated for the moment, the thing turned and slowly wriggled back into the water, snapping at the smaller creatures that continued to feast.