A Desert Torn Asunder

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Chapter 45

  A stiff wind bore the Amaranth, and Ihsan, toward Sharakhai. Their fleet was now considerable. It was comprised of the remains of the royal navy, the ships of the desert tribes, and those from Qaimir that Ramahd Amansir had somehow, miraculously, liberated from Meryam. The air grew cooler as they headed toward King’s Harbor, and when they passed through the vault’s glimmering curtain, the temperature dropped precipitously. It felt bizarre, the heat of a summer day being so rapidly replaced by winter’s chill.

  Ahead, the skiffs near the harbor doors continued to burn. The corpses of Ihsan’s envoys, who’d carried his offer of peace, burned along with them. That Queen Alansal had declined didn’t particularly surprise him. That she’d delivered her answer in such a manner did, until he remembered how their new Crone, Shohreh, had seen to the deaths of all but one of her water dancers.

  Ihsan looked to Husamettín, who stood on the foredeck beside him. “It’s not too late to continue north and enter the city from the Fertile Fields.”

  “No.” Husamettín peered at the formidable harbor doors, at the towers along the walls. The morning sun sent harsh shadows across his angular face, making him look severe. “We’re taking our harbor back.”

  Ihsan paused, waiting to see if it was a joke. He needn’t have bothered. Husamettín never joked. “And how by the Great Mother do you expect to do that?”

  “Through the doors, Ihsan. We’ll go through the doors.”

  “If you’re depending on my power—”

  “You’ll have your chance to sway them but one way or another, I promise you we’ll gain the harbor.” Ihsan was about to object when Husamettín, clearly distracted, broke away and headed toward a cluster of wardens in black battle dresses and other commanders in steel armor. He waved to the Qaimiri fleet as he went. “As we agreed, speak to King Hektor. Have him cede command to me.”

  “He may not be amenable—”

  “I don’t care how you do it, Ihsan. Send their fleet commander to me when it’s done.” A moment later he reached the other group and began speaking to them with a grim intensity.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Ihsan said softly.

  When the fleet anchored a short while later, Ihsan disembarked and headed across the sand toward the Qaimiri ship, Alu’s Crown. By the time he arrived, Ramahd Amansir was walking down the gangplank with his man, Cicio, and, surprisingly, the ghul, Fezek, who for some reason was wearing antiquated Qaimiri garb: a ruffled shirt, wool trousers, and a coat that, with his prosthetic leg, made him look rather piratical.

  “Well met!” Fezek said with a smile.

  Ihsan had seen a litany of gruesome things in his unnaturally long life. Fezek’s smile was close to the very top of that ignominious list.

  Cicio slapped Fezek’s shoulder with the back of one hand, and pointed to the chaos around them. “Open you eyes, ah? You call this well met?”

  “Yes, I see . . .” Fezek’s smile faltered, then returned, brighter and grislier than before. “At least we managed to wrest control of the fleet from Meryam.” He waved to the fleet with a theatrical flourish. “Surely that’s worth a smile!”

  “I’ll grant you that.” Ihsan bowed his head politely to Fezek, then to Cicio, then focused on Ramahd. “I take it you didn’t manage to stab her in the heart before leaving.”

  “No,” Ramahd said. “And I didn’t intend to. Nalamae came to us before the battle. She had concerns about what might happen if Meryam was still controlling Ashael as she died. My purpose was only to break her hold on him.”

  Behind Ramahd came a woman with long, curly hair. Ihsan recognized her as Amaryllis, a spy and assassin for Queen Meryam. She’d been a sultry beauty once. Now she was a bedraggled husk of a woman.

  “You were with Meryam on that tumbledown ship, were you not?” Ihsan asked her.

  Amaryllis’s nostrils flared. “I was,” she said, her Qaimiran accent strong.

  “A loyalty she repaid by enslaving you and her crew.”

  Amaryllis scowled. “I presume you have a point?”

  “I’m trying to get a lay of the land, as it were.”

  “Well, the lay of the land,” Amaryllis said with a sneer, “is that you have a madwoman on your hands. Meryam is nothing like the woman I once knew.”

  Ihsan nodded. “And where is your former queen now?”

  Amaryllis gestured toward the approaching horde. “We searched for her after the ifin released us but never found her. She’s out there somewhere.”

  “The important thing,” Ramahd cut in, “is that we disrupted her plans. We have a chance to fight thanks to Nalamae.” His gaze shifted to the Amaranth. “I saw her being taken to the ship. Is she well enough to speak?”

  “She hasn’t awoken since the battle,” Ihsan said. “She nearly died fighting Ashael.”

  Ramahd touched his forehead with his right hand, a sign of prayer in Qaimir. “May Alu grant her mercy.”

  “Yes, well,” Ihsan replied, “would that Mighty Alu had decided to come and help.”

  Ramahd seemed displeased by the comment, Amaryllis turned and walked away, and Cicio spat on the sand, but notably, none of them spoke against him. They, too, had likely been wondering where their patron god was.

  Ihsan arranged for the leaders of King Hektor’s navy to meet with Husamettín and the tribal shaikhs. Restless earlier, Husamettín was now the calm, decisive commander Ihsan had come to know during their centuries of rule together. He spoke briskly and efficiently, relaying his plan for the coming battle. Soon they broke, and orders were spread among their hastily cobbled army.

  Work gangs moved their ships into a grand crescent that ran from one rocky shoulder of Tauriyat, beneath the aqueduct, to a jagged promontory south of the harbor. When it was done, the gangs proceeded to saw or chop at the ships’ struts. One by one, galleons, clippers, sloops, and yachts tilted and dropped to the sand, creating a defensible wall. The line would have gaps—the ships could only be fitted so close to one another—and they didn’t have enough work crews to hobble every ship, but it was a damn sight better than fighting on open sand.

  Within the crescent, the wounded were placed on skiffs and sleighs cobbled from the recently detached ships’ skis. Crewmen unfit to fight were stationed with them, ready to drag the wounded into the harbor quickly if and when the doors were breached.

  From the nearby towers and atop the walls, ranks of Mirean archers watched silently. They could have sent arrows raining down if they’d wanted, but so far they seemed content to let the gathered army founder as the horde approached.

  Near the wounded, Ihsan spotted Frail Lemi dragging Nalamae on a sleigh. The goddess tossed and turned, as if in the throes of a nightmare.

  “Has she awoken?” Ihsan asked when they came near.

  “No.” It was easy to think the big man was made for fighting and little else, but Frail Lemi stared at Nalamae with a surprisingly tender expression. “She started thrashing as soon as it got cold.”

  “Not when it got cold,” Ihsan countered, “but when we entered the vault.” He was certain the nature of the vault, the outer boundary of the gateway itself, had done something to stir the goddess’s soul.

  “Ihsan?”

  He turned to find Çeda headed his way. She held an engraved wooden box, the sort women in the desert kept kohl in. She handed it to him. “The ivory you asked for.”

  On the flight toward Sharakhai, the Alliance ships had gathered all the ivory they could find and ground it down. Ihsan opened the box and stared at the dirty white powder.

  Nayyan, wearing her violet battle dress, joined them with Ransaneh, swaying the baby back and forth, consoling her as the babe cried from the raucous noises around them. “Well?” she asked while nodding toward the box. “Do we use it or not?”

  Ihsan took a pinch of the powder and held it to his nose. It sm
elled faintly of toasted cumin and white pepper. Please let this work. He inhaled sharply. Over the following moments, Ihsan tried not to show his disappointment. The sounds of the fleet preparing for battle grew loud in his ears. He felt the chill air on his skin more acutely. He felt the irritation of the powder in his sinuses, and the mild pain from the tumors in his mouth deepened into an ache. But it went no further than that.

  Ivory was supposed to be linked to truth. He’d expected an expansion of his senses, a certain clarity of mind, but there was nothing mystical or magical about it. He’d been so sure the powder would provide a way for them to save themselves. Now he saw it had been a fool’s errand all along.

  He wanted to dash the box against the sand. He wanted to scream and shout. He wanted to rail against the fates.

  Nayyan, the Great Mother bless her, knew him well. Her eyes reddened, understanding that the powder was useless.

  Çeda stared at them both, then nodded resignedly. “We’ll find another way.”

  Ihsan said nothing. There was nothing to say. He’d been holding out hope that he could fix the world before the black mould took both of Ransaneh’s parents from her, and now he had nothing.

  Çeda left to prepare as she could. Nayyan pulled him in for an embrace, then went to do the same. Ihsan turned to look at the horde. They were only a league away now, a black tide that would soon crash against the harbor walls, against the city itself.

  And who can stop it? Ihsan wondered.

  As the sound of the horde grew, the bulk of their soldiers went to defend the line of ships. Reserves were organized into three regiments, ready to rush in and overcome the breaks in the line that would inevitably come. Husamettín had called for ship’s masts to be sawed down and denuded of spars, sails, and rigging. In time, over two dozen of them lay in ordered rows. Troops made up of Silver Spears, desert warriors, and Qaimiri infantry hefted them and pressed them against the harbor doors like battering rams.

  Ihsan had lost track of Husamettín’s preparations, but he noted the dismantled ballistae, which had been strapped below the masts, surely to hide their presence from the archers above. More interesting were the satchels some of the Silver Spears had slung over their shoulders—they were filled to bursting with fire pots.

  Frail Lemi noticed the satchels as well. “Those aren’t going to budge,” he said, motioning to the harbor doors. “Not in a thousand years.”

  The big man’s thoughts echoed Ihsan’s precisely. The fire pots might be used to burn the doors, or even create an explosion, but the doors would take hours to burn through, and an explosion, even a large one, couldn’t hope to shatter them.

  Mirean archers stared down, some with looks of smugness, others with stiff, worried expressions. The demons, meanwhile, screamed, chittered, and wailed.

  Ihsan took it all in with a sweep of his gaze—the rams, the wounded on their skiffs and sleighs, the three reserve regiments, the semi-circle of ships and the thousands upon thousands of soldiers preparing to defend it. Bakhi’s bright hammer, it looked hopeless. What were they now but children cornered by a pack of wolves? And that was without Ashael, who loomed like a dark sentinel in the midst of the demons.

  After adjusting the positions of the soldiers and the masts they bore one final time, Husamettín handed Ihsan a white pennant. “Now’s your chance, Ihsan.”

  Taking a deep breath, Ihsan waved the pennant at the harbor’s defenders atop the wall. When he saw many of them watching, he gathered himself, cupped his hands to his mouth, and poured as much power into his voice as he could. “Open the gates!” he cried in Mirean. The pain it brought on was terrible, but he didn’t stop. “Open the gates! Give us shelter!”

  But the archers didn’t budge, and soon the pain became too much and Ihsan was forced to give up.

  In truth, it had gone precisely as he expected. Even so, in all his years walking the sands of the Great Shangazi, he’d never felt like a greater failure.

  Husamettín gave him a look of deep disappointment. As he turned and headed toward a group of nearby commanders, he called over one shoulder. “Best you return to the wounded, Ihsan. Things are about to get bloody.”

  Chapter 46

  Moments after Husamettín left, winged demons began harrying the archers aboard their crescent of ships. Other demons stormed the hulls and threw themselves against the soldiers. Yet more skittered over the sand, squeezing through the gaps between the ships. They were met by the defense’s front ranks, who had shields interlocked and spears set for the oncoming charge.

  The sound was terrible: men and women shouting, demons screeching, the ring of steel rising as soldiers fought to stem the tide.

  Atop the nearby wall, all hints of smugness from the Mirean archers had vanished. Many watched the horde’s approach, others stared down at Ihsan and the soldiers holding the battering rams. Their expressions were grave, as if they were finally coming to grips with the fact that their enemy’s fate would soon be theirs.

  The first gap in their defenses appeared. Along their right flank, demons poured between two galleons and fell upon the defending soldiers. A reserve regiment charged forward, screaming as they went, and laid into the demons, pushing them back.

  The line held, but they’d no more than shored it up than another gap formed, this one along the center. As the second reserve regiment rushed in, Ihsan tried again to command the Mirean soldiers, but it was useless. His mouth burned as if molten iron had been poured into it, and he was forced to give up.

  All the while, Ashael gained ground. Though his eyes were hidden, he appeared to survey the battle. His broad horns swept the air as his head swiveled, and a perverted smile lit his gaunt face, as if the struggle playing out at his feet amused him.

  It wasn’t long before the line broke along their left flank, and it was the worst so far. Hundreds of demons poured through. It was met by the third and last reserve regiment, led by Çeda herself. She charged forward in her white armor and the mask of Nalamae, her black sword high, and fell against the demonic horde. Sümeya, Kameyl, and Shal’alara ran beside her. A cadre of Shieldwives came next, a fighting force nearly as impressive as the Blade Maidens. Last came the warriors of the thirteenth tribe.

  Çeda fought with fearsome skill, and commanded the desert to obey her as well. Gouts of sand pushed the enemy back. At one point she stumbled when she was bull-rushed by a hulking demon, and those around her swarmed to her defense, cutting the demon down as Çeda regained her feet.

  As they stemmed the tide, Ihsan caught movement along the ranks of battering rams. Every third soldier was releasing their hold on the masts and unwinding the ropes that held the ballistae parts in place. Moments later, they were assembling the ballistae. Two dozen were erected on wooden pedestals that would allow them to fire their bolts straight up.

  The archers above hardly seemed to notice, focused as they were on the battle with the demons.

  The teams of soldiers who’d constructed the ballistae each split in two. As one soldier cranked the ballista’s winch to tighten the firing cord, another ran a rope through the eye of a bolt, the sort used to catch an enemy ship’s rigging. The bolt was then laid in the ballista’s slider. Curiously, one end of each rope was coiled neatly beside the ballista, while the opposite end was tied to the belt of a Silver Spear.

  Near the crews, Husamettín had Night’s Kiss held high above his head. The sword thrummed loudly in the air, a sound Ihsan had long ago come to associate with an eagerness to taste blood.

  “Now!” Husamettín cried, and brought his dark shamshir down with an angry, rattling buzz.

  A score of ballistae let loose in unison. The bolts streaked upward, the ropes attached to them wavering in the air like smoke from burning incense.

  As they arced over the battlements, the ballistae teams pulled the ropes tight, arresting their forward momentum, then began running away from the wall. The hoo
ks caught along the wall above, the ropes sizzled through the iron eyes, and the Silver Spears tied to the ropes’ opposite ends were whisked upward, flying through the air until they could plant their legs against the harbor doors and fairly run to the top. It made for a peculiar sight, like the world had suddenly been tilted sideways.

  The Mirean archers, caught completely flat-footed, shouted warnings. Some drew knives and attacked the ropes, but the ropes were zipping through the eyes so quickly they had no hope of cutting them. Others were felled by archers on the sand who were targeting sections of wall where the Silver Spears were closest to gaining the top. Before Ihsan could count to five, there were a dozen soldiers atop the wall and more on the way. Some were felled by the Mireans. But the Sharakhani soldiers had all been hand chosen by Husamettín. They were the Silver Spears’ elite, devils with blade in hand. They fought viciously, clearing space for others. In a blink there were three large clusters of Silver Spears atop the wall.

  More hooks flew from the ballistae. More soldiers, these bearing the fire pot satchels, were lifted up. Some were struck through with arrows. Others plummeted as their lines were cut by the Mirean soldiers above. But many reached the top and joined their brothers in arms, adding to their advantage. They fought the Mireans hard, driving the enemy back to make room for yet more on the wall.

  Husamettín sheathed Night’s Kiss. “Be ready!” he shouted, then grabbed one of the ropes and began climbing hand over hand with remarkable speed.

  The Mireans were finally stemming the momentum of Husamettín’s surprise offensive and starting to push the Silver Spears back when Husamettín reached the top of the wall, slipped through a crenel, and drew his sword. Night’s Kiss blurred as he blocked blow after blow from the Mireans who stood against him. Even from this distance, even through the thunder of battle, Ihsan heard the sword sizzle as enemy after enemy fell to its keen edge. Husamettín pushed into the leftmost tower. A line of Silver Spears followed him while, along the righthand side, more Sharakhani soldiers pressed toward the opposite tower.