In Her Name: The First Empress: Book 01 - From Chaos Born (28 page)

After the last wounded
magthep
had been dispatched, Dara-Kol collapsed on its still-warm body, utterly exhausted. She barely noticed as Kunan-Lohr sat down beside her.

“You fought well today, child.” He put a bloodstained hand on her shoulder.

“Thank you, my lord.” Her voice was hoarse from shouting and screaming. She could barely hear herself speak, for her ears still rang from the din of battle.

“I have one more task for you, which I fear will be most unpleasant for you to bear.”

“My life and honor are yours, my lord.” She bowed her head and saluted, wondering at how she had become so covered in blood. As with all warriors, she had fought many times in the arena, and had also fought in some of the smaller battles of this war. But it had never been like this. She had never seen the gloss black of her armor so thoroughly covered in crimson.

Kunan-Lohr was silent for a moment. Then he undid the scabbard of his sword from the belt around his waist. He slid the weapon a hand’s breadth out of its scabbard to admire the glittering blade. While it had been nicked and torn from the savage use to which he had put it this day, the living metal had already mended itself. He could take a strand of hair and let it fall upon the edge, and the hair would part in two.
 

With a sigh, he slid the blade back into the scabbard before handing the weapon to Dara-Kol. “You are to take two warriors with you, whomever you should choose. I would give you more, but a larger party will only draw more attention in a land where we are now the enemies of all. Take as many
magtheps
and provisions as you need and ride south. The queen has not yet taken all the lands there, and there are other roads that will lead you west toward home. I wish you to find Ulana-Tath, and give her this sword. I intend it for my daughter, when she comes of age.” A wistful smile crossed his face. “Perhaps as a priestess, if that should come to pass, for I hope you will find my consort and daughter at the temple of the Desh-Ka.”
 

He shook his head as Dara-Kol opened her mouth to speak. He could sense the disbelief, the anger, the hurt in her heart. “This is a hard thing to ask of a proud young warrior, I know. But this is my last wish before the queen’s blade falls, and I know that you are resourceful enough to see that it is done.” He looked at the devastation around them. “It is a far greater honor than dying at my side.”

“Yes, my lord.” She took the sword as black mourning marks began to make their way down her cheeks from her eyes. “I shall not fail you.”

“I know, child.” He stood, and she followed suit. “That is why I chose you. Tell Ulana-Tath…tell her that I shall await her in the Afterlife.” Extending his arms, he gripped hers. “May thy Way be long and glorious, Dara-Kol.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“He will strike today.”
 

Anin-Khan had whispered those words to the other warriors in the dark of early morning before they began the final leg of the journey to the Desh-Ka temple. After hours of riding, the great plateau now rose above them, and he could clearly see the zigzag trail that led up its face in the bright golden glow of the late morning sun.

The party rode in the same formation as they had before, with scouts out ahead and behind, and the young acolyte at the head of the main group.
 

As before, Anin-Khan rode beside the nurse bearing Keel-Tath, with Ulana-Tath on her other side. His senses were tingling with alarm. What worried him was that it was not just his suspicions about the acolyte, that he would choose this day to unveil his true intentions. There was something else, as well.
 

“You feel it, too?”
 

He glanced over at Ulana-Tath, whose face betrayed the tension within her. The nurse also looked worried, and she had no inkling of the threat posed by the acolyte.

“Yes, I am, mistress. I believe we should…”

His words were stolen by a sharp cry from the warriors riding ahead. The road here was straight enough that they were within his sight. The two scouts had whirled around on their
magtheps
and were racing toward him when one was caught by a
shrekka
that sailed out of the thick woods along the road. She fell from her saddle, dead. Another
shrekka
flashed out toward the surviving scout, who batted it away with his sword. A cloud of
shrekkas
erupted from the trees, and he and his mount were cut to ribbons.

“Honorless ones!” Anin-Khan bellowed his warning, although he need not have done so. The other warriors in the escort had already discerned the nature of the threat. They pulled up in a defensive circle around Ulana-Tath and the nurse as over twenty riders emerged from the brush and trees around them, swords drawn.

He heard Ulana-Tath hiss in anger, and could feel her rage and that of the other warriors in his blood.

Only Ria-Ka’luhr’s emotions remained calm, which worried him more than anything else.

“We ride with the consort of Keel-A’ar’s master,” Anin-Khan announced, “and are bound for the Desh-Ka temple. By what right do you bar our passage?”

The leader of the group, an older female warrior, bared her fangs in challenge. One of them, Anin-Khan could clearly see, had been snapped off at the root. She was dirty and unkempt, her exposed skin discolored and twisted with scar tissue from terrible burns. Her breastplate was in deplorable condition, the many dents hammered out by hand, probably with a rock. It was so old and in such poor condition that the metal had begun to oxidize, transforming the gloss black of the metal into a scabrous patchwork of rust. The leatherite armor that covered the rest of her body was old, abraded, and poorly fitting. Even her
magthep
was in poor condition, the undernourished animal’s ribs showing through its dull fur, and a stream of yellow mucus dripped from its nostrils

The others in her party were little better. Some had newer armor and weapons that they had no doubt taken from their previous victims. In all they were a sorry lot, pitiable in Anin-Khan’s eyes.
 

Only the fact that they outnumbered his warriors by two to one gave him any pause at all. Otherwise he would have simply brushed them aside or, failing their willingness to yield, slaughtered them.

“Leave us now,” he told the elder warrior, “and you shall not come to harm. We have no quarrel with you.”

“Spare me your compassion, captain of the guard of Keel-A’ar.” The leader of the honorless ones spoke in a rasp. Her throat bore a scar from a long-ago battle that had damaged her vocal cords.
 

Anin-Khan grunted in surprise.
 

“Yes, I know who you are.” She pointed her sword at Ulana-Tath. “And we recognize you, too, mistress.” With a twisted grin, she told them, “But you need not worry for your lives. Dismount from your animals, and we will spare you.” Then she turned to Ria-Ka’luhr. “Such will not be the case for you.”

“You would dare threaten an acolyte of the Desh-Ka?” Ulana-Tath exclaimed, shocked. “If you had even the sense of a
magthep
, you would flee for your lives.”

Ria-Ka’luhr, Anin-Khan noticed, said nothing, nor did his emotions betray anything other than placid calm.

The leader of the honorless ones shook her head. “The Dark Queen long ago offered a great bounty for any who captured an acolyte and delivered him to her alive. We captured three who did not survive.” She gave Ria-Ka’luhr an appraising look. “Perhaps this one shall be different.”

Anin-Khan watched as another two tens of honorless ones, on foot this time, stepped from the woods. They all carried swords and spears, which would be effective weapons against the
magtheps
.

In the short time he took to reflect upon it in the moments that would follow, Anin-Khan realized that, had he not been staring right at the leader of the honorless ones, his life and honor would doubtless have come to naught. He would have failed in the greatest responsibility with which he had ever been entrusted.

The leader of the honorless ones was staring at Ria-Ka’luhr, and in a single instant, Anin-Khan saw her eyes widen and her body tense. Her emotions betrayed not fear or anticipation, as might have been the case had she been the focus of an attack, but surprise and shock.

Reacting purely by instinct, Anin-Khan flicked his sword to his right, bringing up the flat of the blade as a shield in front of Keel-Tath, who was snuggled tightly in the bundle bound to her nurse’s chest. The child cried out, and he could sense a spike of fear and anger in her that he had never felt before from an infant.
 

Whipping his head around toward the child, he saw a
shrekka
glance off his blade. It missed Keel-Tath by no more than a hair’s breadth before the whirring blades sliced into the nurse’s upper chest. With a wet gurgle, blood spewing from both the wound and her mouth, the nurse slid from her mount.

“Ria-Ka’luhr!” It was all he had time to say before chaos exploded around him.

* * *

As the dying nurse fell toward the ground, Ulana-Tath dove from her own mount, her hands reaching for her helpless child. Taking hold of the bindings that held Keel-Tath to the dead nurse, Ulana-Tath’s talons sliced through the tough material. She pulled Keel-Tath to her armored breast just before Ulana-Tath slammed into the ground on her left side. A painful crunch told her that something, some ribs, perhaps, had broken, but she forced the pain aside. Fighting against the helpless, panicked feeling of having had the wind knocked from her lungs and the sudden agony of taking a breath, she struggled to her knees, cradling her daughter.
 

Standing before her was one of the honorless ones who was on foot, his spear held at Ulana-Tath’s throat.

“Mercy!” She would never have begged for her own life, but she would for that of her child. She had dropped her sword, and the warrior facing her would have killed her before she could draw her dagger. “I bear a child! You may have strayed from the Way, but even you would not let a child come to harm! I beg you!”

The warrior’s expression softened in the moment before a charging
magthep
crushed him to the ground, the beast’s talons tearing into the his vitals as it stomped him.
 

“Mistress!” The warrior, one of her own, who rode the beast slid quickly to the ground and reached for the child. In the heat of the moment, Ulana-Tath had forgotten the warrior’s name. “Take my mount and flee with your daughter!”

She did not argue. Handing Keel-Tath to the warrior, Ulana-Tath leaped into the saddle. The warrior carefully handed her the bundle containing her precious daughter, whose mouth was open in a ceaseless scream. Then he handed her his sword.

“Go!” He brutally slapped the
magthep’s
rump, sending it into a full gallop just before a spear emerged from his chest, driven by one of the honorless ones. He crumpled to the ground, his hands wrapped around the spear’s bloody shaft.

Ulana-Tath snapped her attention to the desperate battle that had engulfed her companions. She saw that Ria-Ka’luhr was surrounded by Anin-Khan and several other warriors, of Keel-A’ar and the honorless ones alike, their blades flashing in the sun like the deadly silver fish that inhabited the Lo’ar River as they fought the acolyte and one another. It was clear that the Desh-Ka acolyte was trying to fight his way toward her to finish the task of killing her daughter. Ulana-Tath felt boundless shame that she had not heeded Anin-Khan’s warnings.
 

For a brief moment, their eyes met, and he nodded.

“Protect our mistress! Protect the child!” Anin-Khan’s shouted orders carried over the furious sounds of clashing steel and raging warriors who fought in a snarling melee that swept outward from where Anin-Khan fought to block Ria-Ka’luhr’s advance.

Ironically, for just that moment, none of the warriors, hers or the honorless ones, had their attention focused on her. While she wanted to fight to help kill the treacherous Ria-Ka’luhr, she did the only thing she could.
 

Savagely kicking the big
magthep
in the ribs, Ulana-Tath clung tightly to her daughter and fled. The
magthep
knocked down a pair of grappling warriors as she passed beyond the boundary of the swirling battle, just before another
shrekka
hurled by Ria-Ka’luhr found its mark in her back.

* * *

Anin-Khan fought as he had never fought before in his life. The Desh-Ka acolyte was a demon with his sword, holding his own against as many as six or eight other warriors trying to take him down.

The acolyte’s only weakness, Anin-Khan had discovered, was that his skills at handling a
magthep
in combat were weak. Despite the acrobatics he had used when he had saved Ulana-Tath from the queen’s riders, he clearly had no experience in mounted combat.

Having served as a mounted warrior for many campaigns in his younger years, Anin-Khan could make any trained
magthep
move in a coordinated display of lethal grace. Now, he constantly drove his
magthep
against that of Ria-Ka’luhr, shoving it off-balance before Anin-Khan whirled his own beast around to slap the acolyte’s mount again with the tail. Were not so many other warriors crowded in against the acolyte, inhibiting Anin-Khan’s own movements, he might have been able to kill Ria-Ka’luhr with his
magthep
.

But there was no point in wishful thinking. There were too many others pressing in around them, and it was just as likely that Ria-Ka’luhr’s superior swordsmanship would have decided the issue in any case.
 

Anin-Khan took a precious moment to glance back at where he heard Keel-Tath’s high-pitched cry. He saw Ulana-Tath mounting one of his warrior’s
magtheps
, just before the warrior was stricken by the spear of one of the honorless ones.
 

He saw her gaze meet his own, and he nodded his obeisance to her, unable to make a formal salute of parting.

Turning back to the warriors struggling to keep Ria-Ka’luhr at bay, he bellowed, “Protect our mistress! Protect the child!” Then he again drove his
magthep
into the fray, his sword seeking the young acolyte’s neck.