Unless Narina altered the nature of their encounter.
She hurried past the armory, her hand fully healed now, which allowed her to grope ahead to test the auras of the ground, the buildings, and the surrounding trees. She couldn’t afford surprises, whether it was crows or demons rising from the ground. Or worse, Damanja materializing on the path in front of her.
The battle continued behind her; already her companions had bought two or three valuable minutes.
The shrine appeared in its clearing. Black chunks of rock littered the ground outside the walls, but the buildings themselves seemed to have deflected the crowlord’s bombardment, as the auras shaped by generations of bladedancers had done their work. Its freshly lacquered wood gleamed, and the columns and curved edges of the roof looked untouched.
Her sowen sensed a change from behind. The battle had ended. Damanja had escaped and was on the loose again, no doubt hunting for the bladedancer sohn. What Narina had to do would only take a matter of minutes, at best, but there could be no rushing it.
Narina stopped at the carved wooden trough outside the shrine and pumped the handle to let water enter. She washed her hands and face, then bent to remove her slippers and pour a dipperful over her feet. She replaced the slippers, retied the straps holding her pant legs to her calves, and straightened the bun in her hair.
Finally, she approached the training ground, which stretched between the wings of the shrine where she’d observed sparring matches and been observed many times in turn. The ground had been freshly raked that morning, which gave her comfort, and hers were the first footprints to disturb the sand. She eyed the three standing stones that stood amid the swirling patterns and finally settled her gaze on the middle of the three.
This middle stone didn’t stand out in any way, and she’d used it less than the others when sparring, as it offered neither a superior defensive position nor a good vantage point for launching attacks. Mainly, she’d used it as a stepping stone to leap to one of the other two, but something told her to take position there now. She leaped up, both swords sheathed, and dropped to her haunches.
The other stones now took on the symbolic presence of fallen allies. The tallest stone honored her father, killed by Miklos’s men when the warbrand had been suffering the demigods’ curse. The shortest and squattest of the three stones could easily have been said to honor Abelard, her fellow sohn, whom she’d fought here numerous times, and who had died while under the curse, foolishly attacking the firewalker temple.
But instead, she thought of Gyorgy. His power had not yet grown to its full strength, but his commitment had been wide and solid, and she’d felt his presence that day fighting on the roof of the farm compound, when he’d stood by her side, taking down enemies and protecting her from sneak attacks. So much potential in that boy, never to be realized.
She must stop this.
Movement caught her eye, and she turned warily, only to discover Ruven standing on the covered walkway, together with Skinny Lad, one of the lurchers. Boy and dog stared at her intently.
“Ruven, what are you doing?” she demanded, alarmed.
“There were rocks falling from the sky. My da is gone off with Kozmer and the rest.”
“But you weren’t to come here.”
“We were in the cottage when rocks smashed in the roof. I had to take the dogs and run. We came here because it was the only place not getting hit.” The boy licked his lips nervously. “The other dogs are inside, but Skinny Lad was whining to come out. He must’ve known you was out here.”
Could be. The lurcher still seemed to maintain a connection with her even after all these months. But that wasn’t going to help either dog or boy at the moment.
“You have to leave. Someone’s coming. You’ll be killed.”
“But Narina, what if the rocks come down again?”
“I don’t care. You have to go. Now!”
It was too late. A shape fluttered in the sky, and an enormous black crow came fluttering down. As it dropped, the spread wings changed into arms clad in black sleeves, and Damanja materialized. She landed on the sand, glanced up at Narina, and bared her teeth in an eager smile.
“A clever trick with your servants. I see they held me off long enough for you to heal your hand. But don’t worry, I’ll settle them as soon as we’re done here.”
That they hadn’t yet been “settled,” as Damanja put it, gave Narina hope that Drazul and Bartal and hopefully all or most of the rest had escaped into the woods as Narina had ordered. Relief flooded through her. To have sacrificed their lives only to buy two or three minutes was more than she could have borne. She steadied her nerves.
“You fell back quickly enough,” Narina said. “Weren’t too eager to fight me, were you? And how is your thigh? What about the other wounds? You think you’re invincible? You think I can’t take you here? This is my home, Crowlord.”
Damanja opened her mouth to respond, then seemed to notice the two figures standing beneath the arcade surrounding the training sands. She whirled about, sword at the ready, but relaxed her posture as she took in Ruven and his dog.
“What is this lowborn child doing here?” Damanja asked. Suddenly, she laughed. “Wait, is that a ratter? And his filthy dog, too? What are these insects to you?”
“You’re surprised to find people taking refuge at our temple?” Narina said. “You left the lowlands a burning ruin—someone has to stretch out a hand.”
“To a ratter and his dog? What fools you are, then. Even Lord Balint wasn’t as nostalgic about his peasants as this.”
Ironically, Ruven owed his freedom to Balint, though the man rescuing the boy from brigands after his mother died hadn’t been an altruistic act. Ruven’s father had been compelled to spy for the crowlord. Ruven looked as if he were going to say something, and Narina knew that to do so would be death. This woman could stretch out her sword without moving and send a dark shaft through his heart. The boy’s best hope was to remain an insect in Damanja’s eyes, below her interest.
Narina shot the boy a glance, eyes narrowed, and he wisely remained quiet. His hand dropped to the scruff of Skinny Lad’s neck to hold him back in case the dog decided to do something foolish.
“So,” Damanja said, “are you going to talk me out of the fight? Order me to surrender like that woman in the mountains did?”
“Maybe instead you should order me to bend a knee and accept you as my master so I can help you destroy the world,” Narina said.
Damanja chuckled. “Well said. I wouldn’t bother, and neither would you. We’re both too far gone on our respective paths.”
“Yes, that is one thing we agree on.”
“There’s another, too,” the crowlord said. “You were right about your swords. They do inflict pain. But so does mine.”
The crowlord jumped forward with her weapon outstretched. Narina prepared to leap, either from her stone to the next, or into the air in an attempt to come down behind her enemy, who had proven vulnerable to rear or flank attacks as she tried to bring the unwieldy falchion to bear. But instead of swinging at Narina, Damanja went for the stone itself.
The woman’s falchion was warbrand-made and held additional powers that had grown alongside the increasing strength of its master. No doubt Damanja thought to cut the stone in two, then kill Narina as she fell.
The temple stones, however, carried the strength of generations, and Narina’s father had told her they’d come from across the Narrow Sea, imbued with power from the wizard monks. Damanja’s sword struck the rock, and shadow exploded off it. The stone rang with a deep, shuddering thud, but remained undamaged as the woman staggered backward from the impact.
Narina dropped down with her swords slicing. One blow missed, but the other caught Damanja across the chest. The woman threw out her sword to stop the blow, and a black cloud burst from its surface. Narina coughed on the fumes, and by the time she’d dispersed it with her sowen, Damanja was leaning against one of the pillars holding up the
shrine arcade, with her hands over the bloody wound, which was already healing. It hadn’t been deep enough, dammit, but it had caused the woman pain.
Damanja threw back her head, sword held outward, and screamed in rage. The demonic crows reappeared before Narina could press her advantage. They fell from the sky, together with a shower of black stones. Most of them bounced off the auras that protected the shrine, but others struck the roof or landed smoking on the raked sand, which was already disturbed from the fight.
One hit Narina’s head. She’d been so surprised by the bombardment, both that the crowlord could call it while wounded, and that its fury had penetrated the shrine, that she hadn’t been able to dodge in time. She wasn’t stunned for long, and had enough presence of mind to fight the crows swarming about her face.
The other woman was on top of Narina before she could get clear of the crows, swinging her falchion, stabbing with the shadowy tip, and trying to overwhelm the bladedancer with the sheer weight of her attack. She pressed Narina against the tallest of the three stones, and the clawing, spitting crows struck her from all sides, while the shadow weapon came up and around her swords.
“Leave her alone!” Ruven screamed from behind the fight. The boy. By all the demons and demigods that tormented this world, why wouldn’t he listen to Narina and run?
Damanja swung her sword at Narina’s head. She ducked, and when it struck the stone at her back, she tried to get under the weapon, but Damanja kneed her in the chest. Narina slammed into the stone and dropped her demon blade. She glanced at her hand to see it withering, with black spots crawling up her wrist. She must have taken shadow without noticing, and now it was crippling her again.
Her dragon blade was the only thing left to defend herself with, but it had dropped to her side when she’d fallen into the training stone, and she couldn’t get it out in time as Damanja pulled back to swing her falchion.
A snarling figure exploded across the sand, and the crowlord cried out in pain. Her blow fell wild. Narina ducked clear, then made a tremendous leap and landed atop the stone. Damanja was below her, reaching around her back to get at something worrying her leg.
It was Skinny Lad. The lurcher had seized the woman’s calf and shook his head furiously, like he’d caught the world’s biggest rat and was breaking its neck. Damanja got her sword around and made an awkward swipe. Skinny Lad yelped as the shadowy tip raked across his back. The dog fell back, writhing and twitching and enveloped in shadow. Ruven cried out from the arcade.
Narina crouched and sprang, dragon blade in hand, pointing downward.
The crowlord glanced up, mouth agape, as the bladedancer flew down at her. One of the woman’s hands was on her calf where the dying lurcher had bit her, and the hilt of her sword slipped in her blood-soaked hand when she tried to get a grip on it.
Narina’s dragon blade slammed down with all of her weight behind it. The sword point penetrated Damanja’s collarbone, and the force of Narina’s fall drove the entirety of the blade into the woman’s chest cavity. Damanja sank to her knees and dropped facedown in the sand. Her mouth opened, and she coughed, as if to spit up blood, but what came out was a thick, oily substance that smoked with heat. Narina ripped the sword out.
Damanja shuddered once and was still. Crows fell flaming to the ground, where they burst into clouds of ash. The bombardment from the skies ended, and an eerie still settled over the shrine and the surrounding woods.
Narina’s left hand was numb and turning gray as it withered into a claw. Only her sowen could heal it, but her first worry was Skinny Lad. There was a sinking fear in her heart, fed by Ruven’s shriek in the background, that told her it was too late to save the dog. A full measure of shadow had struck the poor, faithful animal.
And yet she was surprised to discover Skinny Lad still alive. Ruven climbed the railing from the surrounding walkway and ran across to cradle the lurcher. The dog shivered and coughed in the boy’s arms, but there was none of the shadow eating him apart as Narina had expected.
She looked down at her own hand and was surprised to see the gray hue fading, replaced by the healthy pink of blood rushing into the flesh. It tingled painfully, like it had fallen asleep, but the numbness was gone, and she could flex her fingers.
Damanja’s withering attack must have died when she did. The crows had collapsed and vanished, the shadowy falchion now bent in on itself like a rusted sword dug up from an ancient battle site, and even the woman herself was dissolving into ash and a viscous, tar-like residue. Soon, nothing would be left of her.
“Didn’t I tell you to run and hide?” Narina scolded Ruven when he helped Skinny Lad to his feet. The dog shivered and whined, but was already recovering. She couldn’t keep the smile from her face. “Why didn’t you listen?”
Ruven looked at her, and his eyes blinked as if he’d come to a surprising revelation. “Skinny Lad did it! He saved your life, didn’t he?”
Narina’s grin widened. “Yes, Ruven, he did. And so did you. You sent Skinny Lad, didn’t you? Or at least you let him free without trying to stop him. That was very brave. She’d have killed you both.”
The boy beamed in delight. “That lady called us insects, but we helped. We made sure she didn’t kill you before you could get back into the fight. Wait until I tell my da.”
Narina’s mood darkened as she thought not only about Andras and the others, including her sister, who’d gone down the post road to investigate the demonic canals, but about Bartal and Drazul and the others who’d held off Damanja for those crucial moments while Narina fled to the defensive position of the temple shrine. The crowlord would have surely won if they hadn’t bought her time to heal her hand and gather her sowen in this place of meditation and power, where she had sparred so many hundreds of times before.
Unfortunately, that had meant abandoning them to face Damanja’s wrath alone. Skinny Lad may have survived, together with Narina and the boy, but a feeling like a cold stone settled into her gut as she thought of what she would discover below. Some had died in the fight; she knew this instinctively.
It fell on her now to discover how bad their losses had been.
Chapter Seven
With their battered sowens, Katalinka and the companions could barely fend off the third and most ferocious aerial bombardment yet. The strange, smoke-spewing crows blocked their way forward, and the demons continued their advance up the road. Death seemed to be only moments away.
Sarika let out a low, almost feral growl by Katalinka’s side. Her lips curled into a grimace, her gaze savage, as if she were burning with thoughts of revenge. Miklos had a grim set to his mouth—most likely similar to what Katalinka herself was carrying—and seemed determined to sell his life as dearly as possible. And then there was Kozmer, who looked tired and old and resigned to their fate.
“I never thought it would end like this,” he said in a low voice, as if to himself.
But it was Andras that Katalinka truly felt sorry for. The ratter and his dog had no hope of defending themselves against the attack, and could only hover in the poor defense offered by the elder and the three sohns.
What about Ruven, the poor boy? Mother already dead, father about to follow. And Ruven himself would join them in death as soon as the demonic attack swept over the temple grounds. How was it that of all the peasants on the plains and even the simple farmers and woodcutters of the canyon, this ratter, his son, and their pack of dogs had found their way into the care of the temple? There had to be a meaning to it.
“Kozmer, use your sowen against the crows,” Katalinka said.
“I’ll try.”
“The rest of us fight the demons. We’ll take as many as we can before we fall.”
She winced as a stone struck her between the shoulder blades. More were crashing through the tattered remains of the sowen shield.
Several overseer demons burst from the smoke. Their skin glowed brightest where the smaller slave demons had doused them with fresh lava. The overseers snarled
and hissed with forked tongues and gaping jaws while the slave demons danced jubilantly to the rear, sensing victory.
Katalinka cast a final, desperate look over her shoulder at the swarming crows, only to see that they’d already broken through Kozmer’s defenses and spewed stinging smoke as they darted toward the old man’s head. Another stone struck her, this time on the thigh, and her leg buckled painfully. By the time she recovered, the first of three demons were on top of her with clubs and lashing whips. The other two sohns were even more beset by enemies.
There was a sudden change in the auras all around, like a hand had grabbed the threads connecting earth, sky, and water and given them a pull. Her first thought was demonic trickery, some new way of weakening the humans as the battle began. But the demons hesitated, almost seemed to flinch. At the same time, the crows let out a collective screech and began to fall from the sky, flaming and smoking as they struck the ground. The bombardment ceased as well, ending not in a gradually slowing hail of stone, but all at once.
The demons below were still hesitating, while the crows up the road had already been reduced to piles of ash and some lingering smoke. The choice was clear.
“Fall back!” she cried.
Kozmer grabbed her arm with one hand and gestured with his staff at the demons. “No, wait. Look.”
The creatures were moving sluggishly, still hot with molten lava, but their joints seemed to seize up as if they were cooling inside. They were no longer pushing forward, either, but trying to regroup and fall back. Something had happened; some magic had dissolved. Who knew why, but Kozmer was right not to retreat in the face of a clear opportunity.
Katalinka changed her mind in an instant, and waved her swords at the demons. “Don’t let them escape. Take them all!”
Sarika, who’d been prepared to sacrifice her life moments earlier, needed no further invitation. She charged with a cry, forcing the other two sohns to follow before she landed in their midst alone. The three companions attacked the lead overseer, who had been directing the others into the fight and now commanded the retreat.
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