They made it, Torsten thought.
“Retreat!” he called out. “In Iam’s name, Mulliner, get everyone out of here!”
The Shieldsmen broke rank immediately. They were young, probably more terrified than he could even imagine. He was too. Possessed people were one thing, but these legendary monsters were pure evil.
The one he’d injured propped up above Torsten, using its tentacles like legs, covering him in cold shadow. Its head turned, so its one remaining eye stared directly at him. Torsten’s heart was a heavy stone and felt like it was trapped in a vice as he froze there. All the other sounds of death and chaos were muted.
Even Torsten’s fear melted away. He felt only crushing and immeasurable sadness. Pain, as if he’d lost everyone and everything he loved all at once. He could do nothing but focus on the eye and discover that it wasn’t soulless like how it appeared; it was filled with pain and rage and suffering. It was precisely the absence of light, of Iam’s grace.
The wianu descended upon him, ready to devour, shadowy tendrils extending around him.
Then, it screeched.
Barbed Shesaitju arrows peppered every inch of its backside, some sneaking through its tentacles to clatter on the stone around Torsten. It must’ve absorbed more than a hundred—enough to bring down even the mightiest beast.
Not this one.
The distraction, however, allowed Torsten out of its soul-crunching gaze. It also guarded him against a barrage of arrows that would’ve shredded him with his lack of armor.
He ran up the stands. There was no time to whisper a prayer as he grabbed a shield off a fallen Shieldsman, chest caved in by a blow from the monster. Glancing back, he saw Shesaitju ships sailing into the flooded arena. Somehow the approaching storm broke right at the breach in the dam, guiding them in on a robust and focused current.
He’d never been one for naval warfare or ships in general—that was Lord Jolly’s purview—but none of it made sense. The Boiling Waters were said to be treacherous and violent, with safe access routes pathed out to existing docks like the one King Pi had arrived on. A fleet couldn’t merely approach, miss a labyrinth of razor-sharp rock, and avoid being spotted.
And then Torsten saw her... On the bow of the lead ship, floating over the deck, streaks of energy crackling over her fingers, a mystic. Torsten had fought in the Third Panping war, and it was like he was thrown back in time, the way her red robe seemed to ripple in a wind that didn’t quite match what he felt.
At first, he thought it was Sora, back again at the least expected time. But this woman was old, ancient even. He could tell, even from so far away. He didn’t have time to study her much longer. The wianu went into a rampage, its tentacles slapping and breaking apart Tal’du Dromesh with new fury. Another across the arena was struck by arrows and lost its grip on the stands. It tumbled down in a mess of dust before splashing in a heap.
The Shesaitju archers arriving with the fleet nocked more arrows and let loose another volley.
“Retreat!” Torsten screamed. “Back to the Keep.”
He sprinted up the stands, long legs taking him from one row to the next. Shieldsmen and stragglers throughout the place ran for whatever cover they could find as well. His acute hearing picked up the thrum of another volley fired. He dropped into the space between two levels—amidst bodies already skewered by the first salvo—and raised his shield. The three-pronged projectiles battered against it. It took all his strength to hold it up, considering the injuries he’d already sustained. One arrow stabbed down, missing the flesh of his foot by the length of an eyelash. Others tore through a group of Shesaitju women and children nearby.
There was no strategy for the attack beyond instilling fear. Wasting arrows on innocents and remnants? The last fell and Torsten sprang up, his arms sore at every joint. Unable to carry the shield, he was forced to drag it up to the top row of the arena. He peered back as often as he could. Straggling Glassmen and Shesaitju were picked off one by one. The ships all approached the lower concourse, the wianu leaving them be and instead, continuing to rage and break apart centuries of history. Zhulong statues broke free and tumbled down the entire height of Tal’du Dromesh, crushing and maiming as they went.
And so Torsten did the same. He reared back with the shield using two hands and bashed the base of one of the still-standing statues. Once, twice, using his mass and might until the stone broke. He wedged the shield behind it and gave it a shove to send the massive statue bouncing down the stands.
It crashed through the bow of one of the invading ships. Wood splintered everywhere and at least a dozen gray men were thrown into the water. The one ravenous wianu still swimming lost control, devouring many in a single gulp.
The mass of archers had stowed their bows to prepare for the invasion, but a handful dotting the masts of the nearest ships fired arrows up at him. Torsten deflected them with the shield, nearly slipping from the upper ledge. He glanced down. The long drop was sure to break his legs, if not bring death. But nearby, damage from a rampaging monster caused a portion of the arena wall to fall, bashing through the square and revealing a part of its extensive undercroft. Water surged the rift like it had an appointment.
It was a longshot, but Torsten had no choice. He skirted the top row toward the arch nearest the break, arrows whizzing by his head, or glancing off his shield. He struck the statue at that arch until another arrow grazed the back of his calf. The thing started to wobble loose, but he couldn’t wait for results.
Torsten dropped the shield, removed his blindfold, squeezed it tight in one fist, then threw himself off the top of the arena toward the water-filled opening.
Blindly, he plummeted, air rising all around him. He had no time to be nervous. But Iam made his leap true, and Torsten’s fall broke in salty water. Water rushed up his nose and filled his mouth, completely disorienting him. He flailed to find anything to push off of, and his finger sliced against something sharp. He pulled it back, but as he patted around more, he realized that it was a sword stuck somehow between two metal rods, or a cell.
Torsten knew that smooth groove down the center of a claymore blade anywhere—impossibly smooth, perfectly balanced. Even as his lungs struggled, he pulled himself to the side of it until his back hit a surface. He wrapped his blindfold around it, then pushed off with his feet.
Stone shifted, nearly crushing his arm as it ripped a portion of his sleeve. The flat of the blade slipped forward and slapped the top of his boot. A pair of hands grasped the back of his shirt and heaved. The next thing he knew, he lay upon a ramp of rubble extending from the hole in the Tal’du Dromesh square. He huffed for air, hacking up water.
“Sir Unger, you’re alive!” Lucas said, coughing as well.
Torsten slid the sword up the stone, then tied his blindfold back on. The thing was soaked, blurring his vision—light and shadow bleeding over one another.
But he was alive, thank Iam.
“I suppose I am,” he said. “How did you—“
“Rand got away, Sir,” he groaned as dragged himself farther up the rubble. “I failed again.”
“We have other things to worry about.”
Torsten flipped over and searched for Salvation. After locating it, he used it to push up to his knees, aiding Lucas as well. The chances of him finding that sword in all this mess, it gave him a spurt of hope that Iam was still with them.
Markless Shesaitju men and women stampeded all around them, running for their lives, screaming. Zhulong tusk horns bellowed throughout Latiapur, summoning warriors. One voice, however, rang louder than all things—that of Caleef Mahraveh across the square.
“Here, we fight for our city!” she yelled, standing atop a zhulong so all could see her in her shredded but still sparkling golden clothes. “Stand with me, warriors of the Black Sands.”
“Stand with your Caleef!” her guardian Bit’rudam echoed. Then, he barked orders in Saitjuese.
Torsten pieced together the blurred figures as the hot sun quickly dried out
his enchanted blindfold. Serpent Guards fell into formation around Mahraveh, armed to the teeth, facing the entries of the Tal’du Dromesh. Shesaitju warriors fell in around them throughout the square, those without weapons handy wielding whatever they could get their hands on.
Torsten approached the familiar faces, while Lucas struggled to keep up. He looked as bad as Torsten imagined he did himself.
Sir Mulliner stood with a pack of Shieldsmen, brow furrowing with disbelief when he saw Torsten nearing.
“I thought you were done for,” the Shieldsman said, breathless. His tanned skin was coated in blood, dust, and grime, as were all the other Glassmen.
“You’re not so lucky yet,” Torsten replied. “The King is supposed to be holed up in the Keep. We have to get to him.”
“We have to survive first.”
“Sir Danvels, we’ll handle here,” Torsten said. “You reach the King.”
Metal clattered and men chanted. Torsten looked back and saw the rival Shesaitju army amassing around the entry arches of the arena. Many painted their gray faces with stark white lines like skulls. The patterns were indicative of the far eastern and island afhemates he’d fought against in the wars.
“Go, Lucas!” Torsten demanded. “And don’t return without him.” He clutched the weary Shieldsman by the shoulder and shoved him toward the markets before he could protest. Then, Torsten turned to the enemy, tightening his grip on Salvation.
“Shieldsmen!” he bellowed. “The Black Sands stand with us in the light. We are the shield that guards Iam’s Kingdom. Stand with them until the bitter end!”
The Shieldsmen pounded on their chest plates. He could hear their nervous breaths, their unsteady footsteps—they, and all the Shesaitju allies standing with them. Only the faceless Serpent Guards stood in eerie silence.
A large portion of the arena’s upper level crumbled as one of the wianu clambered over it. Its midnight black eyes peeked over the crest, and then, it unleashed a bloodcurdling roar. At that, the enemy army charged, rushing out of the archways in the thousands.
Torsten twirled Salvation and dug in to face them. “Iam is with us, my friends!” he shouted. “For our King!”
XXI
The Caleef
Surrounded by Serpent Guards, Mahi was transported out into the square beyond the curved entry colonnade of the Tal’du Dromesh. They led her to the mass of Shesaitju warriors who’d been patrolling the city. Now, they surrounded the arena to see what was happening and why all the markless, merchants, and cowards fled.
“What is—“
Mahi snatched the spear from the hands of the approaching commander addressing her from atop a zhulong. She elbowed aside the Serpent Guards around her and whipped back to face the arena.
“My Caleef, you must get to safety!” Bit’rudam said, taking her arm.
She shook free. “Safety is for the King. Babrak has gone too far this time.” She pushed off with the spear to stand atop the zhulong. She turned back to its rider. “Go to the stables and get any man or woman old enough to fight mounted.”
He nodded and hopped off, summoning a few other warriors to run with him.
Then, perched atop the beast, Mahi raised her spear and shouted in Saitjuese, “The traitor comes! Stand with me, my people. In the name of the God and Sand and Sea and his true Caleef, we must hold his city!”
She didn’t tell them that their God was dead.
The Serpent Guards immediately formed lines on either side of her and raised their weapons. More warriors fell in behind them, heeding the commands of their leader. Zhulong horns bellowed from former afhems, directing the formations. Even some unarmed civilians caught in the retreat were inspired to stop and stand with them.
For a moment, Mahi was glad the stripping of their stations was mere ceremony. Without them to lead, there would’ve been confusion.
“You saw what they have,” Bit’rudam protested, refusing to join the other guards. “Mahraveh, you must get to the Keep with King Pi. We’ll set up a second defense there in case—“
“In case what?” Mahi growled. “If Babrak wants to fill the streets of this sacred city with blood, then let it be more of his own.”
The ferocious roar from a Current Eater within the arena drew their attention. Babrak’s army had arrayed themselves beneath the arena’s entry colonnade.
Mahi felt sick to her stomach. These were her own people, prepared to ravage Latiapur. All because an angry, pis’truda of a man refused to bow to a woman as his Caleef. Everything else fell from her memory. Pi, the marriage, Nesilia—she just wanted to kill Babrak.
“My father fought on those sands!” Mahi screamed. “I fought on those sands! It was not the marks we earned that made it mean something. It was our hearts. As Shesaitju. Babrak would destroy that!”
Her people voiced their agreement.
Across the square, Babrak’s army riled up in their own manner, their leaders probably telling them lies about how Mahi had stolen her title. How she, Yuri, and her father had planned all of this, as if what she’d endured when she hit the Boiling Waters and met Nesilia face to face could’ve been planned.
“He will lie and say I destroyed our history,” Mahi continued. “But we don’t need afhemates. We need only to flow in one Current. The souls of those who perished on those hallowed sands stand with us!”
Her people broke out into raucous cheering, cursing Babrak—all but the Serpent Guards who stood firm and silent as always, and Bit’rudam, fretfully watching her. Their opponents did the same as their numbers amassed within the Tal’du Dromesh.
“One Current,” Mahi said to him, softly. “I must stand with them. Besides, we have with us the man whose battle with my father ended in a draw.” She nodded down the line of their forces, toward where Shieldsman gleamed in their pearly armor. Torsten stood in their lead, somehow escaping the arena after helping them.
“Then none shall get near you, my Caleef,” Bit’rudam said. Without waiting for an invitation, he hopped onto the back of her zhulong and laid his weapon across his lap.
“Circle flanks!” he ordered. “Drive them toward the serpent’s fangs, and we’ll cut them to pieces.”
Not all the Shesaitju in their makeshift army understood his tactics. Still, enough former afhems were amongst them to relay the orders. Fanning out from the core of Serpent Guards, the ranks curled in, forming a U-shaped broader than that of the arena. When the enemy charged, they’d be funneled toward Mahi’s best warriors before they even realized it.
She hoped. They could do little else to prepare before arrows started zipping over the arena walls. Then, without so much as a war cry, Babrak’s army charged.
Hundreds of angry, gray faces rushed at her. Mahi clenched the shaft of her spear and prepared to kill however many she needed to. Ever since her reincarnation, staying calm had been an easy thing. It came with the onslaught of memories and the knowledge of what she was. Yet, Babrak changed that. Rage fueled her. Bit’rudam’s chest heaved against her back as he, too, prepared in his own way to battle his own kind.
The forces crashed upon each other, and her zhulong bashed the first wave aside with its mighty tusks.
Then hers and Bit’rudam’s blades went to work. They were like one artist painting the same canvas with two brushes, flowing this way and that, never clashing, always in sync.
Torsten barked orders across the battlefield. His men plowed through the enemy ranks in a wedge formation, driving more toward the Serpent Guards, whose sickle blades and fauchards twirled without relent, dousing the stone in blood. The Glassmen didn’t move with the same grace, but Mahi had to admit, their tack was effective. They, themselves, were like a herd of angry zhulong in their heavy armor and giant shields.
Mahi had sacrificed so much to stop the infighting between her people, yet here they were again. It all seemed so inevitable. Two clashing tides, only one to prevail. The old ways and the new.
Their lines held in places, collapsed in others. Brave
citizens of Latiapur flung vases and wares from the markets at the enemies—anything that could do damage. They weren’t archers, but it was better than nothing. From a numbers standpoint, now that most of the city’s army had arrived, Mahi had the advantage. Especially when her commander came from the stables with a horde of zhulong-mounted warriors, barreling toward the enemy’s east flank through the afhem housing district.
Mahi stabbed a man’s chest, then ripped her spear out and slashed another across the jaw.
They brought this upon themselves, she told herself. Babrak did this.
Her zhulong took a spear to the hide and bucked so hard it snapped the weapon. Bit’rudam beheaded the attacker with one smooth stroke, while Mahi took down a warrior aiming for his back. Then, her attention returning to the arena, she spotted Babrak watching through an arch at the arena’s upper level.
“Come and face me, you worm!” she shouted up, spinning the spear above her head and slicing it down through an enemy soldier’s shoulder.
The zhulong cavalry crashed into Babrak’s forces, trampling them like ants. Babrak didn’t seem fazed in the slightest by the sudden turn in tide. He grinned directly at Mahi, then spun and lumbered away. In his place, hundreds of archers filled the open arches of the Tal’du Dromesh.
He’d waited for all of Mahi’s forces to converge, then gave the order. Barbed arrows, loosed from high ground, lanced down in straight lines, maintaining full velocity, and peppered the battlefield. Babrak didn’t seem to care who they hit.
Bit’rudam screeched, and Mahi glanced back. Her heart jumped, but only for a beat. He’d been clipped on the thigh. Nothing serious. Mahi yanked on the zhulong’s wild mane to turn herself toward the attack, swatting away one arrow and dodging another. By the time the last of the volley fell, men on both sides groaned everywhere. Shesaitju arrows weren’t built for range, but they shredded like no other. They were meant to intimidate with brutality. And it worked.
“Caleef Mahraveh, it’s time for you to fall back!” Torsten called out, fighting toward her. His massive sword cleaved a man in two while a Shieldsman moved along at his side, shield raised to deflect arrows.
The Nesilia's War Trilogy: (Buried Goddess Saga Box Set: Books 4-6) Page 136
