Ironically, Narune sensed that this was also the reason why everyone grew increasingly anxious and tense, himself included. Too many questions remained—Why were there so many halja and where did they come from? Why were so few of them greater halja? Had something happened to the warbands?—and then, of course, there was also the obvious realization that such a soft bite would never have broken the skin of any tribal village, least of all theirs.
Kayuya Village was old, and it had grown hard and sturdy like a tree-lord.
But Peacemaker surely knew that, and that meant these halja could very well be little more than the turbulent waves and stormwater that heralded the furious destruction of the storm itself.
This pressed down on their minds, souring moods and shortening tempers. Ixchel began to spend the time pacing and complaining, her irritation over all the waiting obvious, and more than a few of the other novices agreed that they should be biting back.
Narune, on the other hand, said nothing. He was content to give up a chance at glory in exchange for the return of his mother and the rest of their warriors.
On the third day, just as it became dawn, the storm still raging above them, Narune stood with the other novices on a war tower and watched the greater halja emerge from the forest.
There were so many that the archers stopped their previously tireless firing. Those closest to the towers rushed up to see what was happening.
Narune stared. What… is this?
The stunned silence continued as it became clear that the halja were mimicking warband formations. Each false warband was also a false mass of camaraderie, with each warband’s members moving in perfect unison even though the halja breeds themselves were different.
Beastly lesser halja continued to surge around them, seemingly indifferent to whatever had made their greater kin gather neatly in such numbers.
“Seas and skies aflame,” he muttered, his tail falling limp.
Kisari and Ixchel stood to his right. Both of them were staring across the stretch of grass and curving land, out toward the forest line where more and more of the greater halja were still appearing.
“Why?” Ixchel eventually said, her voice hard. “Why now? Where the fuck have they all been?”
Ixchel got her answer almost immediately.
The elder halja emerged through the forest line, almost three times the height of a warrior. It was vaguely human-shaped, though its chest was a cage that was hollow even for a halja, and within it lay a thick, lumpy shape that he feared might be mimicking a heart.
Its legs, however, were thick, muscular, and detailed, the openings along them smaller than on most of its kind, making them appear more solid. The same could be said of its arms, but there were four of them—they split at the shoulders, as if two warriors had been fused back-to-back—and they each held war axes with long hafts. Like Empty Victory, the monster had no head, just a cavity with what might have been shoulder blades and a collarbone on a human.
Narune had never seen an elder halja before, but he somehow knew that’s what it was even before veterans cried out warnings and a strange feeling overcame him. Kisari clutched her throat and Ixchel looked around in panic—something was being torn from deep inside his chest, from his very spirit.
Whatever it was, it felt like a wiggling parasite desperately trying to free itself. The sensation made its way up his spine, through his mind, and then somehow dropping down to his lungs before forcing its way back up his throat.
When the words finally came, it was like spewing out something foul and grotesque:
“Know me, for I am Azaag, the Empty War,” he and every other Islandborn whispered hoarsely in unison. Then it raised one of its axes and pointed, and the greater halja began their slaughter.
Narune gasped and shuddered. Conchs sounded off warnings, but their outmost immediately sentinels fell beneath the coordinated attacks of the halja warbands. Narune awakened his Flowing Blade and began Channeling, watching as archers, who had resumed firing, suddenly stopped. Warbands made entirely of Empty Furies hefted their own axes and rushed the war towers, their drums beating a single unified rhythm that cut through the storm.
Narune whirled as panic overtook the archers. They’re blinded. We need to defend—
Ixchel stepped by him and rose her own amber Blade, deflecting a cord from an Empty Hunt, but many of the archers weren’t as lucky. Those that weren’t outright killed were brutally wounded, and in a single volley they lost their greatest advantage. The Empty Furies continued without pause, their extra hands beating against the strange, fleshy drums on their backs without pause as they rushed the towers.
“We need to go,” Narune said, arms trembling.
Kisari nodded.
Ixchel, however, frowned. “But—”
She was caught off by the sound of conchs signaling a retreat to the next layer of defenses. Narune gave her a meaningful look, and together they hurried off the tower. The other spiritseer novices and the Violetflow adept in charge of them were already waiting for them at the first row of bohíos and makeshift defenses.
They had been held in reserve, but now that they were finally needed, they hadn’t even been able to slow the loss of the towers.
Wardens crowded the area, adults, wise ones, and sproutlings, all with spears and knives. It still shocked him to see them armed—warriors like Narune chose to fight exactly so wardens wouldn’t have to. Even Kisari had a spear, but at least she was one of the few who held it as if she were instead a warrior.
She saw his look and grinned, hefting the spear. “Because of you.”
He smiled grimly, then turned to see the cacica calmly leaving the towers with her sentinels in tow. Most of the western towers had already been abandoned and sentinels were rushing toward them now, but bows continued to fire from the towers to the north and south.
“Take all the sages and anyone too old or too young to properly hold a spear to the center,” Cacica Yabisi commanded without looking at anyone in particular.
Sanemoro and the other sages with him bowed. “If you will permit it, we would like to help carry wounded from the front lines?”
Cacica Yabisi nodded distractedly and waved him away. Sanemoro rushed to Narune, squeezed his and Ixchel’s shoulder before smiling at Kisari, then went to herd the sproutlings and wise ones toward the heart of Kayuya. The rest of them, including some who were still sproutlings, but large enough to hold a spear, stood trembling, and waited.
“Cacica, would you please join them?” the Violetflow adept asked. Narune had learned that his name was Khuvo.
“No,” she said and spread her arms. “My sentinels refuse to abandon their oaths to protect me. This way, they can do both.” She paused, head tilting. She had given up her headdress sometime earlier and now wore her hair loose and slick with rain. “Besides, nowhere is really safe. Either we hold, or we don’t.”
The cacica had tried to send out small groups of sentinels to scout a distance from the village, but they had stumbled onto Empty Patience, another rare breed of halja that burrowed and waited within adaptive traps. When the traps were sprung, Empty Hunts had appeared in neat lines and massacred the fleeing survivors.
If Azaag was responsible for the coordination of the halja, then it was obvious the monster had no intention of letting anyone leave alive.
Khuvo left it at that and snapped orders at them as the first Empty Furies crossed the towers, enraged that their prey were already dead or gone. Beastly halja surged around them, and far behind marched the slowly advancing clusters of Empty Hunts, Victories, Hunger, and other breeds he didn’t recognize. At their center, towering above all save the Hunts, lumbered the elder halja—Azaag.
“Cover the retreating sentinels, but don’t go far,” Khuvo commanded. “We need to funnel them here and make our stand.”
Narune nodded, though he wasn’t sure the spiked barricades or the bohío were sturdy enough to keep a greater halja from crashing right through them, let alone Azaag.
Narune, Ixchel and the other novices rushed forward, Flowing Blades raising, sentinels and some of the braver wardens to either side of them, and they did as they were shaped to do. The Furies continued blinding them, and, to Narune’s pain, whenever it was anyone but a spiritseer the halja’s victim often died a short moment later. At least a spiritseer could endure the savage rush of a Fury, and had the means to deal with their explosive strength, even if only while waiting for aid.
Narune himself maintained Hunger’s Ward and tried his best to act as a shield for the sentinels and wardens in the same way the Umberflow spiritseers did, positioning himself so that the Furies were more likely to choose him.
It was fierce work, and the seashell tiles of the village were soon covered with swirls of blood and gore, but the Islandborn held—
—until Azaag and the rest of the halja finally arrived.
Conch horns sounded, and archers moved back across the tiles while firing arrows, hoping to wound or at least damage as many as possible. Empty Hunts responded with a volley of liquid spears, bursting out from within their sensory camouflage and cleaving through an alarming number of Islandborn at once.
The Islandborn retreated again, abandoning the outer layer of the village as the elder halja stomped past the empty towers. All that was left were the reinforced barricades at the center of the village where those unable to fight huddled.
Narune ground his teeth and struggled to keep his Channeling in balance while sweeping his tail low across the ground. Everything was becoming a mess; the Empty Hunts remained out of their reach because of the Empty Victories and Empty Hunger that guarded them almost mockingly. Even worse, they were being torn apart by the advancing line of Furies, the rest of the Victories, and other breeds he didn’t recognize but had already grown to despise or fear—usually both.
In fact, the Islandborn weren’t doing much of anything at all. No one wanted to admit it, but they were mostly just dying and retreating. The toll was already staggering; too many wardens had fallen and the sentinels had fought for two days already, so even the survivors looked like animated corpses. The fangs of their final, desperate bite would be Narune and the other spiritseers, but they were just novices and one adept against an elder halja.
An answer to that problem practically bashed itself against Narune’s skull as he fell back to catch his breath; the Jurakán screamed nonstop now, closely as if right next to his ears, and the voices had only grown louder as the halja drew closer. It promised power and an end to the confusing chaos of the battlefield. All it wanted in return was an outlet for its raw, undiluted hatred.
He wasn’t ready—actually, he still wasn’t certain it was possible to ever be ready. The Jurakán remained as much a mystery as it always had been, and that terrified him. But did it matter if they would all die anyway? Narune’s mother would never forgive him for throwing his life away, but her mistake ensured that he would have to stay here, for better or worse. Even now the compulsions lanced through him, and the very idea of fleeing the village or battle was absent from his mind as if it had been sliced out.
It was a chilling thing, knowing where he stood was where he would probably die, but if he saved one life in exchange for his own, or distracted the halja enough to—
“I know that look,” a voice beside him said.
He jolted and whirled to find the cacica standing next to him, her expression more tired than grim as she stared through the rain. A sentinel stood beside her, bleeding but standing as if he were pristine, and he held up a red coral lantern whose light made everything seem menacing.
“It was the same look Colibrí had before she became wild,” Cacica Yabisi continued. Then, she looked at him.
Narune froze, tail motionless, and didn’t know how to respond. But the cacica said nothing, only boring into his eyes with her own, then she smiled and left to speak with the others.
He watched her give encouraging words to those who were wounded or crippled, and place hands on the dead and dying. Their pained cries now formed a chorus with the storm winds and the patter of water. They were Islandborn, but they were still human. They might refuse to break, but being bent still hurt.
Narune frowned.
Khuvo pointed his violet Flowing Blade forward, signaling them to prepare for another sortie. “Ready!”
Everyone tensed.
“Don’t die on me, Narune,” Ixchel said from beside him. She pinched his side and her face softened. “I mean it, alright? I still need to make things up to you and Kisari.”
He nodded and raised an eyebrow. “You have to be alive for that too, you know.”
“Eh, I know you’ll carry me back if I fall, so I’m not worried.”
“And all the while, you’ll complain I’m too slow,” he said with a snort.
“Exactly. See?” She elbowed him. “You know me better than anyone—well, except maybe Kisari.”
“Focus,” Khuvo snapped. He eyed the approaching swarm of greater halja. “This is it. No more retreating. Remember that you are spiritseers, greatest among already great warriors. For us, that is always a story lived and not told!”
They all gave a tired cry and then moved forward into the slow, apathetic surge of halja that continued through the stormwater. Ixchel and the other novices led with their as of yet imperfect Glimmering Strikes, scraping every last bit of power from their Gourds. Narune’s own Gourd was heavy with Blackflow, but he didn’t even have a simple spell-technique capable of pulling from it; the swirling power within the Gourd remained useless to him.
Khuvo used his own Glimmering Strike, redrawing his Blade and then sending Violetflow rippling ahead of them. His spell created countless mirror images of their forward charge, dancing silhouettes that distracted the halja and drew away blows as the real spiritseers arrived.
Narune cleaved and cut with his Flowing Blade, separating himself a little from the others so he could safely cast Thousandth Sun without having to worry about wasting strength trying to control it. His Hunger’s Ward kept him alive, and he used the slow return of the lines across his body to judge when to be aggressive or defensive, dipping in and out of the worst of the fighting.
Based on what his manuals had said, Narune really should be consuming Flow from the other novices to help him fight, but he was already pushing his limits. Besides, he still wasn’t used to casting foreign spells—the memories within Blackflow only told him what they did and how to forge them, but not how to use them safely and effectively.
So, he stayed with Blackflow and struggled to keep it moving and in balance, and pushed his Channeling even after his limbs felt numb and his lungs burned.
Then Azaag arrived behind the false warbands of halja.
Arrows sunk into the halja’s flesh, but they were pushed back out in heartbeats, the wounds sealing themselves instantly. Khuvo glanced at the elder halja, his jaw clenched and Flowing Blade trembling in his hand. Narune knew what the adept refused to say—that killing Azaag would not only remove the greatest threat to them, but maybe also return the halja to how they were before. Khuvo probably realized the words would be cruel and pointless.
Narune gasped and paused to spit out blood and rain, then wiped his face with an arm. Ixchel tore her Blade free of a Fury while screaming, then glanced at him and looked ahead.
Azaag continued through the rain and the halja’s four arms hefted their axes. It leaned toward them, then burst forward with such unnerving speed that it made enraged Empty Furies seem slow.
Khuvo didn’t falter. His violet Blade rose to parry an axe swing and gray light ripped across the halja, then Khuvo parried another, and then a third axe crashed down far off course—likely aiming for Khuvo’s phantasm. Ixchel’s expression tightened, then she turned, parried and leaped aside from the liquid cord-spears of an Empty Hunt, and then went to help the adept.
“Ixchel, wait—” he began calling after her, then realized he was following too and clamped his mouth shut.
Khuvo’s Blade
was a blur as he struggled hold back the giant halja, but every blow he was forced to parry sent him staggering back and it was obvious that he wouldn’t last for long.
They arrived too late to save the adept.
Khuvo evaded one blow and parried another, but then Azaag used the momentum to continue spinning around like an unbalanced dancer. The halja should have fallen over. Instead, it remained impossibly balanced, its rear arms now facing Khuvo, and cleaved with both at once.
The adept blocked one axe, and then splattered into two pieces.
Ixchel screamed angrily and continued her charge despite the adept already being dead. Narune chased after her, terrified of all the halja now swarming around them. Chaotic shouts and screams told him they had been separated, and everyone was fighting in isolated groups.
Azaag parried Ixchel without turning, then spun again to strike. She used Amberflow to dance below and above the quick, brutal swipes, but Narune could tell by her pained expression that she was pushing herself to the limit. Narune joined her a heartbeat later, moving in as a strike missed her and swung his Blade down.
One of Azaag’s arms was cut at the wrist, the axe thudding onto the ground, but it simply spun and shook off the stump as if shedding water—and its hand sprouted back while its other set of arms crashed down at them.
Narune and Ixchel leaped away, allowing the elder halja to shift between them, its regrown arm picking up its fallen axe, and then it fought them both at once. Narune tried launching Thousandth Sun at it, but his spell only left thin black scratches across the giant.
Azaag slammed an axe down and shattered through his Devour, to Narune’s utter shock, and then his stupid lack of warrior discipline allowed the other one’s edge to slam into him. Narune cracked down onto the slick tiles at his feet, and skidded back until a patch of corpses slowed him.
Cradle of Sea and Soil Page 36
