‘Astor Talon?’ one of them queried. ‘Have you come to save us?’
‘My mission here is to destroy the oil barrels and rescue Anzaii Jaalta,’ I replied without preamble. ‘You will help me.’
‘Yes, of course,’ the man sputtered, belatedly adding a ‘sir’.
One of the others rubbed his arms and legs, trying to get the feeling back into them. The rest straightened their clothing and used scraps of cloth lying around to bandage their injuries. We tried not to look at the beaten and mangled bodies of our fallen comrades. Nor did we speak of what had happened to any of them.
Jaalta hobbled to her feet, but was so weak from blood loss that she nearly fell over again. I caught her around the shoulders and held her against my chest.
I reached into my pocket with the other hand and gave out the knives, flint and wicks.
‘We don’t have much time,’ I said pointing at one of the men. ‘You carry Jaalta. The rest of you will follow me and cut holes in the oil barrels where I tell you. Empty one out of about eight barrels onto the others, put the wick in one and light it up with the knife and flint. We are hoping that the whole lot will catch fire and burn out before the Zeikas can stop it.’
‘What about the guards?’ one of the Tanzans asked me.
I nodded impatiently. ‘Yes I counted seven in this area. I will kill them quietly. We must not wake any of the sleeping Zeikas.’
‘How are we getting out of here?’ one of the Tanzans asked incredulously.
‘We can’t risk the front gate,’ I said. ‘I can take elephant form and lift each of you over the fence down this end.’
An angry looking Zeika paced around the corner of the Harledo, pausing when he saw me. Before he had a chance to react to the standing Tanzans, I dived onto him. The shift to icetiger form came to me so quickly that I had clamped my jaws over his throat and killed him without even thinking about it. My fellows stared with open mouths at the swiftness of the kill. I would think about it later. There was no time for squeamishness now.
I tilted my head to the right and the Tanzans followed me carefully around the corner. We slipped behind two wooden buildings and I nodded at the first stockpile of barrels. One of the Tanzans got to work straight away, stabbing his knife into one of the barrels and spilling its contents over the others.
I didn’t wait to see the outcome of his efforts. I knew there were two guards on the other side of the pile who would soon see what was going on. Sitting up on my back legs, I held up one paw, gesturing for the group to wait for me. With that, I ducked into the sleeping tent and crept through it as silently as a ghost. In icetiger form, I could easily see all of the bodies in the room. It was somewhat emptier than it had been before.
I spied the two guards and felt the fur stand up along my spine. There was a lot at stake still. If we couldn’t get Jaalta out of here, there’d be nothing we could do about the wave-imbued wristguards. When both of their backs were turned, I pounced. One man hit the ground hard and I spun to grapple with the other before he could raise the alarm. My claws raked across his chest, tearing him open. I spun mid-air as the other Zeika was coming to his senses, and crushed his forehead in with my teeth. It was an effort not to growl. The blood that spurted over me was just an inconvenience. I closed myself to the instinctive bloodlust that rose within me.
The Tanzans had seen me from the other side of the barrel pile and so they pushed their way between the crates and barrels to join me. I resumed my human form just in time to stop one of them from striking the flint.
‘Don’t light it yet,’ I said. ‘They must all be ready at once. Wait for my signal.’
Jaalta and the Tanzans were staring at me in shock. I tasted the blood on my lips and could only imagine how horrifying I looked.
‘You, prepare that pile,’ I said, pointing at the barrels on the far side of the entrance to the sleeping tent. ‘You other two get to work on those over there.’
The final stockpile was the biggest of all and covered half the length of the sleeping tent. This would be the most difficult part of our mission. I took icetiger form again and jumped onto the barrels, searching for the other guard that had patrolled the pathway here.
He was somewhat closer to the main tower, when he spotted me, than I liked. Within seconds I had closed the distance between us. His shout drew the attention of another pair of guards, but by the time they reached the corner where the guard had been, I had killed him and dragged the body into the nearest tent.
I hoped that the other Tanzans would have the good sense to lay low while the guards were there. To my dismay I heard one of the guards moving away leaving one behind to investigate further.
I crawled out of the tent on my belly, using my whiskers to navigate between barrels and casks without knocking anything over. The remaining guard’s stink made my lips curl up in a silent snarl. I rushed him, flailing with claws and teeth. Stripping the flesh from the backs of his legs, I pushed him over and forced his face against the ground. He struggled against my considerable bulk for long moments, but his shouts were muffled by the soft pine needles and reeds that covered the pathway. I closed my teeth over the bones in his neck, killing him.
‘This is necessary,’ I said to myself. ‘This is war.’
When I returned to my natural form, the Tanzans had finished coating the oil barrels in the spilt liquid and were ready to light the wicks.
‘Do it,’ I said. I jogged to the main entrance to the sleeping tent and found one of the Tanzans hiding between the barrels on that side.
‘It’s time to light them up,’ I said. ‘Then follow me.’
All this running backwards and forwards to communicate was totally foreign to me. I had always had the help of the waves to get such information across to others. Or others had done it for me.
It took several tries for the steel knife to spark against the flint and light the wick. I lead the Tanzan back to the others whose flames had already caught on the outsides of many of the wooden barrels.
‘This way,’ I said, leading them back past the first stockpile, the two wooden buildings and the Harledo.
The Tanzan carrying Jaalta looked like he was about to collapse.
‘There may be guards on the other side,’ I said. ‘Have your knives ready.’
The Tanzans nodded, looking worried, but ready.
I took a deep breath and imagined my body in the form of an elephant. My ears strained outwards, my back arched up and my nose surged out into a long, grey trunk. Ever so silently, I settled into my new shape, flapped my, now enormous, ears and wrapped my bloodied trunk around one of the Tanzan’s bodies. He felt very heavy and I wondered if my neck would be able to lift him up high enough to get over the fence.
It was only possible if I pushed up with my forelegs and stood half against the fence. The Tanzan was agile enough to avoid the points at the top of the palisade and wiggle his body out of my grip to jump down on the other side. I winced at the noise his fall made and the vibration I felt through my softly padded hind feet.
The next Tanzan was a little lighter. One by one I lifted them over until only Jaalta and her carrier remained. I lifted her over first and was grateful for the Tanzans on the other side having devised a way to climb partially up the fence to help her down from my trunk. The last Tanzan felt the heaviest of all in my trunk and I strained to get him to the top. One of the posts I was leaning my front feet on groaned and cracked. The Tanzan slipped just at the top of the palisade and cut his arm on one of the spiked logs.
I stepped back in time to prevent the log from giving way. Perhaps an easier way to escape would have been for me to use my weight to knock down the fence. But that would surely have attracted too much attention.
Now I had only to save myself. I relaxed back into my human form and tried to catch my breath. It came in huge gasps. Blood thundered in my ears and a sensation of dizziness nearly overcame me. I tried to wipe the congealed blood from my eyelashes and found that it was stuck fast. The scratches on my forehead were barely noticeable against the aching muscles in my face; a remnant of using my trunk in elephant form? It felt like somebody was trying to wrench my teeth out.
‘Hoi!’ A shout from behind. I stood up, barely remembering in time that I was still garbed as a Zeika.
I spat at the guard’s feet. He sneered at me, gesturing at the blood all over me and babbling something in Reltic. I grunted at him and pretended to be drunk. It was easy to make myself vomit. I had only to think on the things I had seen and done that night and taste the blood that lingered in my mouth.
The guard turned away, muttering. I rested there for some time, waiting for the guard to walk down the path and back past the quartermaster’s tent.
Drawing on my last reserves of concentration and strength, I blurred down into rat form and scurried up the wooden palisade. I paused at the top to survey the area outside the walls. Four guards had been killed and dragged up against the wall. Jaalta and the Tanzans were nowhere to be seen. I puzzled on this for a moment, wondering where they had got to.
A light breeze touched my face and I looked up to see Ciera descending through the clouds. He landed just long enough for me to hop onto his nose and run up along his neck to the battle-seat, before taking off again.
Up high in the sky was a shroud with Jaalta, Jett, Ptemais and the Tanzans on it. I waited until I was on the flat, white surface of the cloud before transforming back into myself. I crawled to the edge and looked down over the Zeika encampment, pleased by the billowing red flames and black smoke that rose from their oil barrels.
Altogether I estimated about a third of their supply had lit up so far. The Zeikas weren’t ones to keep large volumes of water lying around and so they would have little with which to douse the fires. Although we had only poured oil on and lit a small number of the barrels, the heat and flames would hopefully soon burn through the wood of the other barrels and bring each pile crashing down. I smiled to myself and flopped down onto my back.
Jaalta was lying on the cool surface of the shroud next to me. Ciera stood at the pointed front-end of his cloudy creation as if steering a great ship. Apparently he and Ptemais had dispatched any Zeika sky patrols that had remained near the camp. We floated serenely over the Zeika encampment and continued north east along the line of towers on that side of Condii city.
Although I told myself that I had achieved the mission, I knew it hadn’t all gone to plan. As I nodded off to sleep, it did not even occur to me that there were no voices in my head. My mind remained closed to the crashing waves and the havoc the Zeikas were now wreaking.
Chapter Twenty—Violation
‘W
ake up, Astor,’ one of the Tanzans nudged me awake. I shook my groggy head. Dried blood made it difficult to open my eyes again.
Ciera’s shroud had not even made it back past the protective line of Condii’s towers. One of the Tanzans had spotted dozens of dragons making their way straight towards us. One carried a brilliant green flag, which whipped in the breeze of their passage. I groaned and rolled into a sitting position.
‘Are reinforcements coming to aid us?’ I asked Ciera.
He glanced down at me worriedly. ‘Yes, Talon. Can you not unblock your waves now?’
‘What is the point?’ I replied. ‘Anything we say over the waves has the risk of being heard by the legion commander now.’ The truth was, I wasn’t sure how to unblock them.
‘We will kill him,’ Ciera said.
‘He is there,’ Jaalta whispered hoarsely. She pointed in the general direction of the approaching squad. ‘He means to claim me so I cannot be killed.’
‘He thinks we will kill you?’ I asked.
She nodded.
‘We will not,’ I told her firmly. ‘Corypha would have, but he has been apprehended. He will pay the full price for his betrayal.’
‘Expulsion,’ Jaalta whispered.
Ciera roared as the Zeika squadron veered closer.
‘Everyone together with me,’ I shouted, getting to my feet.
Jett and the battered Tanzans clustered around Jaalta and myself. If they didn’t want to kill Jaalta then they wouldn’t be able to use the flame-breath of their dragons against any of us. They flew in tight circles around the shroud, perhaps gauging what to do or waiting for more dragons to arrive.
Six dragons landed on the shroud and the Zeikas dismounted. Barely had two of them found their feet when they hefted a large cross-bow each and fired upon us. Ciera stepped into the path of the vicious bolts to protect us. They penetrated deeply in his softly furred side, but he was so enormous the bolts weren’t able to do any serious damage.
I could not sense his pain, but I knew that, to him, the sharpened bolts would be like someone driving splinters of wood into my flesh. Ciera bellowed at the Zeikas, stepping forward on all fours to snap one in half. Four of the Zeikas raised their hands in the air, and a dim white shape started to form.
Ptemais tried to protect us from flying Zeika bowmen on the other side, but one of the Tanzans was shot in the neck and died.
‘You must kill me,’ Jaalta whispered, hoarsely, tugging at my bloodied Zeika garb.
I shook my head. ‘Never.’
‘I can sense him,’ she said. ‘Harolak—the legion commander—he is morally deranged. It seeps into me…’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ I replied firmly. ‘You have Krii.’
‘I have… something else now as well…’ she whispered.
She rolled onto her side, holding the newly tightened bandages the Tanzans had strapped around her. She pushed herself up, holding out her hands. Green flames danced there, like little spirits on her palm. The Tanzans stared at her in shock.
‘What is this?’ one of them demanded.
‘An effect of the waverade spell?’ I queried.
Jaalta shrugged with irritation.
Meanwhile the conjurers had finished whatever they were conjuring. Combining their thoughts and powers into one, they had managed to conjure a gigantic theros about half as tall as Ciera. It’s thick, muscled arms swung at my Sleffion-kin, pounding him. Ciera snapped his jaws at the theros frantically, but somehow it always managed to duck and spin away. It swung on its enormous arms like a wild gorilla and beat its chest with rage.