No one outruns me, he knew.
No one catches Galen.
Instead, he spun around and tackled Elia high, rolled with her into a shallow stream, and came up holding her startlingly close. The arrow meant for her head had splashed harmlessly into the water several feet away. She hadn’t heard it or seen it.
She didn’t understand why he’d tackled her.
“Galen, what—?”
He pressed one dirty finger against her mouth, pushed himself to his feet, and faced the hilltop from which the arrow had come.
Three men.
One archer.
Two with glass-tip spears.
Habiru.
They shouted at him using words he only halfway understood.
“…food.”
“…Nemesis man.”
“…take the girl.”
The archer nocked another arrow, but by the time he aimed, the rock Galen had hurled hit him square between the eyes. The archer staggered, and the other two bellowed with rage. Like the wind, Galen stormed up the sandy hillside. He snaked left and right, knowing how to step so lightly nothing could slow him. The Habiru archer gazed at his bloody palms, and the other two unslung their spears.
Ugly things, their glass-tipped spears.
The Habiru, too, with only twenty teeth between them.
Somehow, Galen did it quietly. His sword came out without a sound, and he cut down the first man after catching a spear-thrust in his cloak and sweeping his black blade across the Habiru’s throat.
The second one lashed out wildly with his weapon. Galen wished the Habiru hadn’t made such a noise. The man’s shouts were loud, and liable to attract more bandits.
Galen slapped aside the clumsy spear-jab, spun in a flurry of cloak and sand, and clipped the ugly man’s head clean from his shoulders.
Best you’ll ever look, he thought.
…before finishing the archer in the same fashion.
Killing them…too easy.
It’s always too easy.
But when he looked down the hill and saw fifty more Habiru nestled into a sprawling camp in the gulley beneath the hill, he lowered his sword and shook his head.
“Elia,” he said to himself. “Her fault.”
He looked down upon the Habiru. They saw him standing above the bodies of their three brothers. For one frozen instant, he lingered atop the hill and glared. Maybe they’ll be afraid, he thought. Maybe they’ll think I’m with the Nemesis.
Not a chance.
Of the fifty Habiru, twenty roared, picked up whatever weapon was nearest, and stormed up the hillside after him. Their boots sent flurries of sand into the air, and their shouts filled the dry, hot air.
Galen considered fighting all of them. He’d faced worse odds, of course, during the last five-hundred years.
But then he looked down to Elia, still dazed in the stream at the hill’s far bottom.
He cursed.
And he ran.
Elia saw him soaring down the hill, his cloak like the wings of some dark, terrible thing, and she ran after him. The Habiru crested the hill, screamed a thousand angry words at their newfound prey, and pursued.
Galen soared through the sand, a cloaked raven, his sword banging against his shoulder.
Elia tried to keep up.
Thirty steps ahead of her, he called back to her. “Run, girl. Run faster. They catch you, you’ll wish you were dead.”
She tried. Arrows whistled past her head. One Habiru threw a stone that smacked her in the shoulder. She stumbled in the sand, but kept running. A dozen more Habiru rounded the hill’s bottom and joined the wild-eyed horde. The filthy, screaming mass looked much larger than it was. To Galen, it felt as if the entire world were chasing him.
Alone, he could’ve outrun them. They were already panting, their mouths hanging open like dogs, and yet they gained on Elia. She was malnourished, her feet a ruin of blisters and cuts, and her legs too weak to outpace the hungry bandit army.
Galen considered leaving her.
How easy would it have been?
Some oath, he thought, that she can’t even last two months without dying.
And yet...
In a shallow stream at the junction of three dusty hills, he stopped running. His sword came out into his hands, and he faced the Habiru. They were only fifty steps behind Elia, and fast gaining.
What am I doing?
When’s the last time you fought thirty-two men?
He stood at the ready. His feet were set, his mind cleared. Elia splashed through the stream a few dozen steps ahead.
As soon as she reached him, he’d—
A noise like thunder cracked open the sky. A vast shadow arose over the Habiru’s hill, a black thing, dark and menacing as a storm at nightfall. Galen saw it first, and for once in his life he felt afraid.
Truly afraid.
The ship.
The Nemesis.
How did he find me?
The giant warship hovered higher into the day. Its shadow spread across the Habiru, who stopped chasing Elia and gazed with idiots’ eyes at the terrible thing floating over their heads.
Galen saw the four obsidian discs on the ship’s bottom. The Scimitar discs sparkled black, meaning they’d just been fired.
The Habiru camp…already cooked.
Elia slowed, and Galen shouted at her.
“Don’t look back. Keep running. After me, now!”
She staggered another thirty steps and collapsed against him. Her breaths were ragged, her face slick with sweat. He put away his sword and scooped her into his arms.
She weighs nothing. Half-dead already.
Carrying her, he sprinted into the deep shadow between the three hills. He glanced twice behind him as he ran, and watched the Habiru die. The Nemesis’ ship hovered over their heads, and though they scattered, the giant Scimitar discs did their work quickly. Sand, water, dirt, and flesh caught fire like paper. Cloaks turned to ashes, and screams melted away into ghastly whispers. In seconds, thirty of the thirty-two Habiru became ghosts, the black dust of their remains drifting with the breeze into nothing.
Galen kept running. He rounded the hill, sprinting at a pace no man could match. Like a feather, Elia bounced in his arms.
“No dying today, little one,” he said to her. “Take a deep breath. This will hurt.”
Wide-eyed, she stared up at him. “What will hurt?”
In the deepest shadow of the three hills, he dropped her onto the sand. In the next instant he began digging, scooping great clods of glass dust with his bare palms.
“What are you doing?” Elia asked blearily.
“Take a deep breath,” he said.
“A deep breath?”
He snared her by her cloak, pulled her hood over her wide, beautiful eyes, and pushed her into the hole he’d dug. His hands bled on her, torn by the silicate dust.
“Deep breath. And then shallow breaths.” he said again, and then he pulled great armloads of dusky sand atop her.
She let out a muffled scream.
And then she was quiet.
He sank his palms into the sand beside her and dug a shallow pit for himself. Just as he finished, and just as he buried himself beneath several inches of black glass, he sensed the shadow falling on the three hills. The Nemesis’ ship had destroyed the last of the Habiru, and now was directly overhead.
Beneath the sand, he found Elia’s fingers and held them tight.
He wanted to tell her to wait, to barely breathe, to hold out for as long as she could before bursting back into the sunlight.
If you move, girl, we’re dead.
9
In a vast, shadow-filled chamber, the Nemesis bent a knee.
How long had it been since he’d come to his father’s fortress?
Fifty years?
A hundred?
In the great empty space, the air tasted impossibly clean. The sand, conqueror of all other places in the desert, was nowhere. Cool air, conditioned by
machines, swept down from places unknowable, washing the desert heat away.
He’d forgotten what luxury felt like.
He remembered all the promises his father had made.
‘…an eternity as my ward.’
‘…never sickness, never hunger, never wanting for pleasure.’
‘…and power, such power. We alone, you and I, Lords of Earth’s kingdom until the breaking of the world.’
Atop a chair—no, a throne, the Pharaoh sat. Some five-hundred feet away, draped in copper-colored robes, he was a statue whose shadow stretched into forever. The Nemesis stood, and when he did, he felt small. He wasn’t the Nemesis, not here. He was Eadunn, son of his father, progeny of the Pharaoh, Menkaur Varwarden.
He walked.
At thirty feet away from his father’s throne, he knelt again.
“Father—” he began.
“Remove your mask.” The Pharaoh’s voice spread to all corners of the giant chamber.
Eadunn pulled the featureless mask away. The colors of his father’s room: shadowed copper, grey, and umber, drowned his vision. He realized he hadn’t looked upon the world with own two eyes in many, many days.
“Never, your mask,” said the Pharaoh. “Not when you kneel before me. You are not this thing, this Nemesis. Not here. You are my son, my servant, and you will look upon me as you did when you were a child.”
“Yes, Father.” He found the courage to lift his gaze.
Looking up at the Pharaoh, Eadunn felt as though he were staring into a mirror. More than two centuries lay between him and his father in age, and yet he and Menkaur could have been brothers. Black hair, bronze skin, and hard, chiseled-in-sandstone faces—all but identical.
The difference lay in the Pharaoh’s eyes. Though the same golden color as Eadunn’s, Menkaur’s were sharper than any sword, carving their way through all things.
“It has been many years, Father,” said Eadunn. “It feels as though I’ve been away for a lifetime.”
“You have.” The Pharaoh inclined his chin.
A quick judgment, thought Eadunn. For my failures.
“What things should I know, Father?”
“We will soon arrive to all that which has changed in your absence.” A sneer passed over the Pharaoh’s face. “First, your report. Your cloak is clean, I see. And your sword unsullied. I will trust these things to mean you bring me no gift.”
He knows all of this, thought Eadunn.
Days ago, he was told.
“May I stand, Father?” He exhaled.
“Rise.” The Pharaoh rapped his fingers against his throne.
“And may I explain?”
“You will.”
Standing in his black armor, his mask still dangling from his fingertips, Eadunn told his father everything:
“In the west, before the mountains and after the plains, we laid a trap,” he began, his voice steady. “We suspected the Prey would seek the ocean to find a secret means of crossing. With his vial-port installed, he intends to move against Japas. He knows of our factory. To infiltrate the island and find a Blue-Vial will be his only goal.
“But…
“…while waiting in a glass city, I received word that he’d moved south. While marching in the hills, he was set upon by a Habiru horde. Our vessel used Scimitars to exterminate the Habiru…and presumably the Prey.”
The Pharaoh’s expression never changed. He sat on his throne, not needing to ask the thousand questions on his tongue.
“I say presumably because no bodies were found, Father.” Eadunn lowered his gaze back to the floor. “The Scimitar discs…they annihilated everything. My men, they did not realize whom it was they had uncovered. After searching the hills from the sky, they found nothing. If it was him, Father, he’s dead. And yes, I know your edict. You wished his body not to be destroyed. It would have been so…had not my men believed it was only the Habiru they were destroying.”
The echo of his voice bounded through the chamber and arrived at last at silence. For breaths uncounted, the Pharaoh gazed into nothing.
Eadunn understood.
He’d predicted this moment many days ago. He’d dreamed it. And Thessia had told him the things he’d uttered in his sleep.
“Your men, have they been punished?” said the Pharaoh.
“Yes, Father. Dead. All who were aboard the ship.”
“And the ones who waited with you? The ones who stood beside you in the valley while he slipped through your fingers?
Eadunn willed himself to reveal no emotion.
“Yes, Father. I did as I knew you’d desire.”
He thought he saw the Pharaoh smile.
“What of the girl? The one who travels with you? The pretty thing you spared when her village rebelled against me? What about her, my son?”
Eadunn blinked, and a shadow passed through his eyes.
“She lives, Father. You allowed me mercy enough for one—one among thousands. She rests in my quarters now. She sleeps better when not aboard the ship. Shall I slay her, too?”
The Pharaoh moved his arms, and his copper sleeves rippled. If he were enraged, amused, or indifferent, Eadunn could not tell.
“This word—‘presumably,’” rumbled the Pharaoh, “I do not think you know what it means. You will study it, and you will come to find it means nothing. He is not dead. You know this. It is only through fear of me you will not say it openly. The Prey lives, and you have failed me again.”
Eadunn had expected this. He knew his father’s mind. He’d slain half his men the very eve they’d returned to him to admit their failure, and the other half the next morning. He’d imagined himself standing before his father, saying exactly the words he’d said, waiting for chastisement with every syllable spoken.
He’d expected the coldness.
The casual cruelty.
And to spend the next thousand years chasing shadows in the sand.
“What will it be, Father?” He spoke louder than before. “Shall we set a trap on Japas? Should we look to the seas? Should we deploy more bounties, more assassins? I will do what I must to please you, Lord. I want what you want—to see our kingdom reign forever.”
The Pharaoh looked at Eadunn as though he didn’t believe his son.
And then, in a swirl of copper robes, he stood from his throne.
“None of these,” the Pharaoh boomed. Eadunn had always needed his mask to amplify his voice, and yet it seemed his father needed no such device.
“You’ve something to do, and you will do it quickly.” The Pharaoh paced. “Raise yourself a new fighting force. One-hundred men. There’s a city you will destroy. It belongs to Saeed, our rival.”
Lord Saeed.
Chief of the Habiru. King of the Rebellion.
Father wants him dead almost as much as the Prey.
“Father, what city? Is it Delhi? The rebel capital?”
For the first time since arriving, Eadunn saw the hint of an emotion flash through his Father eyes.
“No,” said the Pharaoh. “Not Delhi. Not yet. Our supply roads run too close. Our agents are in too deep. The city you will destroy is Umbali.”
“Father, are you certain? Umbali is—”
“A peaceful city?” The Pharaoh gazed through him. “Of no threat to us? Not involved in our rivalry with Saeed?”
Yes. All of those things.
“All the more reason to destroy it.” The Pharaoh walked to him. Eadunn and his father were the same height, and yet it seemed Menkaur was taller, his shadow stretching into forever. “Umbali is peaceful, yes,” the Pharaoh continued. “And they manage it without breaking our sacred laws, without machines. It is also sacred to Saeed. It was his home…did you know? And it will grieve him endlessly when he learns we have destroyed it. He will know that we are the Lords. He will understand that no one can resist us. In burning Umbali, we burn him, and greatly injure our last remaining foe.”
Eadunn wanted to say many things:
When Saeed fall
s, another will rise to take his place.
So long as we live, others will oppose us.
And Saeed is not our last remaining foe.
Galen is. And he’s coming for us.
All this and more, he thought.
But beneath his father’s gaze, standing in the Pharaoh’s shadow, he said nothing.
“Go,” ordered the Pharaoh. “Gather your men. You have permission to use all armaments. Burn away their fields. Rip down their houses. When next my satellites look down upon Umbali, I want to see nothing but craters. Saeed will know it was us. He will weep. And he will break.”
Eadunn left his father’s hall in silence.
This is what I am, he told himself.
This is what I do.
* * *
In the long, sterile halls of his father’s fortress, Eadunn walked alone.
Thousands of years ago, workers in an ancient desert civilization had built vast pyramids of stone, but none of them had ever rivaled the gargantuan thing Eadunn’s father had constructed. It was a city of its own, a four-sided monolith thrusting high into the heavens and low into the deep void beneath the sands. Miles of tunnels snaked through its innards, and rooms vast enough to swallow thousands of people pocked its shining steel heart.
Eadunn had never liked the Pyramid. It was cold, like his father. And no matter that hundreds of people lived within, it felt empty at all times.
He’d walked ten minutes down the steel halls after leaving his father’s room, and he’d only seen three living humans.
All of them, guards.
Masked and armored like me.
He arrived at a nexus of eight hallways. Through glass panes in the walls, he watched dark water move. The Pharaoh’s reservoir, captured inside the Pyramid, flowed west from the great Nile in pipes buried deep beneath the dunes. Purified, it was the cleanest liquid on the planet.
Enough water to supply a hundred cities.
Locked away forever.
He understood why Saeed hated his father.
Jealousy. Envy. A desire to survive.
Saeed and Galen both want Father dead.
…for different reasons entirely.
He passed through the nexus of hallways, marched another quarter mile, and came at last to a blank steel door.
Lords of the Black Sands Page 7
