The Rage of Dragons

by Evan Winter

  “It won’t matter,” Hadith said, pointing to the unconscious Indlovu. “When Uduak hit that one, we chose sides.”

  Uduak brushed himself off. “Right side.”

  “Fighting for the queen, a Royal Noble, is the right side?” Themba asked.

  “We have to hurry,” Zuri said. “We don’t know how much time the queen has. If Odili kills her, this is for nothing.”

  “Eh, we’ll also be hanged as traitors, don’t forget that part,” Themba said.

  “Themba,” muttered Hadith, “always seeing the sunlight.”

  “Just want to make sure everyone understands the urgency, is all,” Themba told him.

  “Kellan!” One of the initiates from Scale Osa, a bulky brute with a block for a jaw, had marched his way through Scale Jayyed and up near the front. “What’s the meaning of this?” He pointed at the unconscious Indlovu. “Have you turned traitor too?”

  “Chidubem, these full-bloods are working with Odili to overthrow the queen,” Kellan told his sword brother.

  “Guardian Councillor Odili, you mean?” Chidubem said.

  “They’re sieging the Guardian Keep. We need to get to the queen before Odili can—”

  “No! I don’t want to hear this.”

  “It’s a coup!”

  “It’s Royal Noble business.”

  “You can’t be serious,” said Kellan as the rest of Scale Osa and Scale Otieno came within earshot. He raised his voice, speaking to them. “Odili seeks to murder our queen. This Gifted knows a way that we can come to her aid. Brothers, you are needed, called to—”

  Chidubem shouted him down. “Shut it, Okar! I’m not fighting against Odili and full-bloods on your word and the word of Lessers. Who knows why Odili has chosen to siege the keep?”

  “The queen—”

  “We heard,” said Umqondisi Otieno, moving through the men and standing nearby. “She wants to surrender.” Then, raising his voice, he pointed to Chidubem. “Hear me! Like this initiate, I will not fight against my own. However, I will not hinder Okar or these Lessers either. Go your way and I will go mine, with my scale.”

  Kellan tried again. “Who will join me? Who will fight for the queen?”

  A voice called from the crowd. “Chosen don’t surrender.”

  Otieno walked away. “I’m for the Indlovu Citadel, as I was ordered to do on the authority of the chairman of the Guardian Council.”

  He left. So did the Indlovu. All but one of them. Jabari Onai held back and tried to make them see sense.

  “Tau, don’t do this,” he said. “It’s madness. Kellan, come with us. This is not our affair.”

  Tau said nothing, but it was disturbing how different Jabari seemed. He was still bigger than Tau. He always would be. It was just that he no longer seemed that way.

  Kellan answered. “This is exactly my affair. I’m valuing my life and honor in the best way I know how.”

  “That’s it, then?” said Jabari.

  “It is.”

  Jabari sighed. “I would be no kind of Noble to leave my inkokeli to this task alone.” Jabari joined them, though he did not look happy doing it.

  “Nobles,” said Hadith. “They’ve abandoned you. Such loyalty.”

  Kellan looked down and away. Tau saw it and could imagine what he was feeling. These were the same men Kellan had led for a cycle, the ones he’d taken to the melee.

  “Are we sure we’re doing the right thing?” Jabari asked.

  This time, Tau responded. “I’m going,” he said. “I need to speak with Odili about my father.”

  “Very patriotic,” Hadith said. “I’ll go too. Not for revenge, but to try and save my people from annihilation.” He turned to what was left of Scale Jayyed, fewer than thirty men. “The Indlovu Citadel is that way,” he said, pointing toward it. “I’m going this way with Tau, this beautiful Lady Gifted, my close friend Nkosi Kellan Okar, and this other Indlovu initiate. I’m going to fight with them because, in spite of our differences, we would all like to see an end to this war that has taken our mothers, sisters, fathers, and brothers from us.

  “We go to save our queen and queendom from a tyrant who’d happily let all of us die so he can call himself a Royal Noble for a few more moons. That’s what I’m doing, because it’s the right thing, and because it’s what Jayyed would have wanted.”

  Hadith put his hand on the hilt of his sword and drew it from its scabbard. He held it aloft and examined the blade, blood still on it. He nodded to the weapon, as if to say it would serve, and he began walking toward the Gifted Citadel. Tau, Zuri, Uduak, Yaw, Kellan, Themba, and Jabari went too. Following them was every man left in Scale Jayyed.

  KEEP

  The city had obeyed Odili’s curfew. They saw no one along the paths, and every house was shut tight. The citizens of Citadel City were afraid. The Xiddeen were coming and Odili would let half the city burn so he could finish the queen.

  “We’re almost there,” said Zuri. “Wait here, I’ll go around the corner and ask to be admitted. When they open the gates, rush in. Try not to kill anyone.”

  “We’ll try,” said Themba.

  “I mean it,” she told him. “These are our people.”

  Zuri went around the corner and Tau heard her speaking. The voice that responded was gruff, male, an Indlovu. No doubt one of Odili’s men, which meant he had already stationed fighters in the Gifted Citadel. Tau wondered how many and if their small party could take them.

  He heard the gates creak. It was time. Hadith, who was in charge since the men were almost all Lessers, signaled the charge, and everyone rushed the gates.

  Kellan, Jabari, and Uduak, using their long strides, got there first. Tau, Hadith, Yaw, and Themba were right behind. The lone Indlovu opening the citadel’s bronze gates yelped as Kellan cracked him across the head, and the scale streamed into the citadel.

  Tau had expected the Gifted Citadel to look like the isikolo. It did not. Its adobe buildings had been painted black, and at night they looked more like shadows than structures. Many of the buildings had a second floor and many were domed. Most of the buildings appeared to be interconnected, and Tau guessed an initiate could travel much of the citadel without having to venture outside.

  “Weapons down!” Kellan hissed at the four remaining Indlovu on guard.

  “What’s this, then?” one of them asked.

  “Respectfully, nkosi, there is little time to explain. We’re here on orders by Abasi Odili,” Hadith told them. “The siege is taking too long and we’re to join the attack. We’ll use the tunnels that lead from this citadel to the keep.”

  The Indlovu looked at Hadith but spoke to Kellan. “We have Lessers fighting with us?”

  “We do,” said Kellan.

  “Why do we need more men? Why did you hit Alinafe?” The Indlovu had not lowered his sword. “And did you say you spoke with the inkokeli? Odili has already gone through the tunnels.”

  Uduak looked at Tau. Tau nodded. They attacked. Tau had two of them down, including the talker, as Uduak, Kellan, Hadith, and Themba took on the last two.

  “I didn’t kill them,” Tau told Zuri when it was over.

  She looked at the others. They all nodded, except for Themba, who looked down at the Noble by his feet and shrugged.

  Zuri closed her eyes for a breath. “This way,” she said.

  “Close the gates and you five stay here,” Hadith told a few of Scale Jayyed’s fighters. “We can’t leave the citadel completely undefended. Actually, one of you come with us to find these tunnels. If the citadel is overrun, gather up as many Gifted as you can and take the tunnels to the keep. Hopefully it’ll still be standing.”

  The plan set, they carried on. Zuri led them deep into the grounds, to a small common area, a circle in the citadel. The buildings surrounding the circle looked alike enough to be replicas; there were many doors, and several paths leading out of the circle. Zuri chose one of the doors and they went inside.

  Tau had never seen anything like
it. From the outside he’d thought the building had two floors. He was wrong. It was one floor, but the ceiling was two floors high. It made him uncomfortable and he felt as if the whole thing could come crashing down at any moment.

  The room was also larger than anything he could remember being in. They were in a rotunda; the edges of it had columns and hallways leading into darkness. The space had no adornments and the floor was pristine. It was the statues that held his attention, though.

  In the rotunda’s center was a statue of a familiar and beautiful woman dressed in black robes. Towering over her, its head reaching past the height of the building’s two floors and extending into the rotunda’s dome, was a dragon. The statues were made from bronze, lifelike, and the woman stood twice as tall as the average Noble, but the Guardian, no doubt due to the limitations of space, was a fraction of the size of an actual dragon. Still, the proportions on both woman and dragon were perfect.

  Of course, there was no way to capture the eye-bending effect of a dragon’s scales, but the artist had created a reasonable facsimile by bending the bronze this way and that in minute variations. It must have taken an eternity. The result was worth it. Light hitting the dragon statue reflected at a thousand angles and the thing’s beauty and power stole Tau’s breath.

  “The Goddess?” asked Yaw, whispering.

  “No, it’s Queen Taifa and the Guardian that burned back the hedeni after we made landfall,” said Zuri. “Quickly now. If they’re expecting the hedeni attack, the preceptors and Gifted initiates will be in this network of buildings. They could hear us and come.…”

  “Lead on, Lady Gifted,” said Hadith. “I have no desire to meet a scale’s worth of angry Gifted.”

  Zuri guided them across the rotunda to a heavy door.

  “Is it wood?” asked Tau, touching it and pulling his hand back. It was wood, but unlike any he knew. It was heavy, dark, and solid.

  Zuri pulled a necklace from her black robes. “It’s wood from the Targon, Queen Taifa’s warship. It’s wood from Osonte.”

  Tau returned his hand to the door, letting his fingers press against it, feeling its warmth. Wood from Osonte, he thought, from the motherland.

  Beside him, Zuri manipulated the bauble on the end of her golden necklace, one of the ones all Gifted wore, revealing a key. The key slid into the door’s lock, Zuri turned it, and the door opened onto a dark passageway with stairs descending into the earth.

  “This will take us to the tunnels, and they will take us to the Guardian Keep,” she said.

  Kellan pushed his way to the front. “Let’s go. The queen needs us.”

  “I’ll guide you to the tunnels that go up and into the keep, and that’s where we’ll part,” Zuri said.

  “What? No,” Tau said.

  “You need to get to the queen as fast as possible. Nothing matters if she dies. But even if you save her, we cannot hold the keep against Odili’s Indlovu.”

  “That’s what I keep thinking,” piped in Themba. “It’s all I keep thinking.”

  “The keep will fall to Odili’s men or, failing that, it’ll be taken by the hedeni. We need to make sure we have enough time to hold talks with the hedeni, to tell them we’re innocent of Odili’s betrayal.”

  “And,” Tau said, “our odds don’t change if you’re with us or not. So, stay.”

  “Our chances do change. I’ll go to the coterie. There are enough of them to form a Hex. There are enough to call our Guardians.”

  “A Hex?” asked Tau. “I wouldn’t have thought a Hex could be formed without its members having trained together.”

  “When it’s necessary, we do what we must.”

  “Coterie?” asked Kellan.

  “They tend the youngling beneath the Guardian Keep,” said Zuri. “The youngling is the link between us and the Guardians.”

  “The Guardian here is immature?” Kellan asked, locking eyes with her. “Lady Gifted, is the youngling a captive?”

  Zuri looked away. “Yes.”

  “Why? The dragons are our guardians.”

  “Not by choice,” she said.

  “How does any of this help us against Odili and his Indlovu?” asked Hadith. “The Guardians nest in the Central Mountains. They can’t get here in time.”

  Since looking away from Kellan, Zuri hadn’t faced any of them. Instead, she kept her eyes forward and into the gloom of the tunnels ahead. “Sometimes, a Guardian in flight will wander closer than the Central Mountains. We’ll look for and entreat the closest one. We’ll call it to our purpose. It’s the only way.”

  Kellan added his voice to hers, bolstering her argument. “She’s right. We can’t defend this keep with just a half scale of Ihashe and whatever is left of the Queen’s Guard.”

  Tau shot a look at Hadith, hoping his sword brother had another plan or objection. Hadith opened his hands, palms up. He had nothing.

  “Zuri, promise that you’ll do the entreating,” Tau said. “You can’t be just one of the Hex. Promise.”

  “Tau—”

  “Promise.”

  “I promise, Tau. I promise.”

  Tau nodded.

  “The queen,” said Uduak, and they began their descent.

  The tunnels were rougher than Tau would have imagined. They were hardly wide enough for two to walk abreast, the ground was bare dirt, the ceiling low, and the walls coarse and uncolored adobe.

  Torches burned every twelve strides. They lit the way but couldn’t banish the tunnel’s murk, and in the flickering light, Tau’s mind turned heaving shadows into lurching demons.

  “How much farther?” he asked, growing anxious so far beneath the surface. The walls, he thought, kept closing in, getting tighter, restricting the space and his ability to breathe. “How much farther?” he said again, panting.

  “We’re almost there,” Zuri said, taking his hand and holding it. “Focus on your breathing. This happens to some.”

  “What does?” Themba asked, watching Tau.

  “The tunnels, some find them disorienting.”

  “I’m fine,” Tau said, trying to stop the ground ahead from tilting and his hands from shaking.

  “Shhh!” hissed Hadith. “Voices.”

  “Indlovu,” Kellan said. “Around the next bend.”

  Tau looked ahead. The tunnel did bend; he couldn’t see more than thirty strides off before the torches disappeared.

  “Odili came through the tunnels with men,” Hadith said. “He knew a siege would take too long. These tunnels were his insurance.”

  The voices of the Indlovu grew louder and Kellan broke into a trot. “Hurry! We may be too late!”

  Tau slid his hand from Zuri’s and ran after Hadith, stumbling like a drunk. He had to get out of these Goddess-cursed tunnels. The scale ran with him. They made no cries of war, but the clamor of twenty-five-odd fighters with armor and weapons was more than enough to alert the Indlovu.

  The scale rounded the bend, coming face-to-face with six of Odili’s men. The narrow tunnels made the difference in numbers mean little. At most two could face two.

  Ahead, the lead Indlovu was one of the fattest Tau had ever seen. He had shiny beetle eyes that his face seemed to be trying to swallow and a thick-lipped mouth that was curled like it had tasted something sour.

  “Hold there!” he ordered.

  Kellan pushed his way to the front, past Hadith and Tau. “There’s treachery here. Guardian Councillor Odili means to murder the queen. Stand aside.”

  “Tsiora the surrenderer? She’s no true queen. If you’re loyal to the Chosen, return the way you came.”

  Tau couldn’t take it anymore. He had to get out of the tunnels. “Out of the way!” he said, throwing himself at the fat man.

  The earth beneath his feet seemed to shift, and he almost fell, righting himself just before the fat Noble swung for his neck. Tau threw himself to the side, banged against the tunnel wall, and fell back. He heard the scrape of bronze scuffing adobe and, stomach churning, he crawled away from
the Indlovu as fast as he could. He felt hands grip him by the shoulders and was about to swing his sword when he heard Yaw call out and drag him back, away from the fighting that Uduak and Kellan had joined.

  “What’s wrong with you?” demanded Hadith, looming over him.

  “It’s the tunnels,” Zuri said. “Their closeness bothers some.”

  “The closeness?” Hadith said.

  “He’ll be fine when we reach the surface.”

  Tau dry heaved and began to shake. It was like the storage barn in Daba. It was like his first few times facing the demons in Isihogo, the fear, the tension. He tried to adapt. It wouldn’t take. He had no experience with this, no clue how to conquer it, and realizing that made it worse.

  “It’s clear!” Kellan shouted. “Let’s go.”

  Tau was pulled to his feet and his arms were thrown around Hadith’s and Yaw’s necks. They half carried, half dragged him down the tunnels. His head was down, dangling loose, so he saw the fat Indlovu. The man was dead from a thrust through the chest. They ran on for a hundred strides and Tau tripped on the ground when it began to slope upward.

  “I leave you here,” Tau heard Zuri say to the scale. “But, I need a few fighters to help me convince the coterie of my plan.”

  “Of course you do.” Hadith picked five men to go with her.

  “Sharp bronze does make good arguments,” Themba said.

  “Continue up this tunnel,” Zuri told them. “It will take you to the surface.”

  Zuri went to Tau. Hadith and Yaw stepped away, giving her space. “You’ll feel better soon. Be careful, Tau.” She hugged him. “I love you,” she said. “I always have.”

  Tau groaned. He heard her. He wanted to tell her to stay. He could protect her. He had learned all he had so he could do so. He hugged her with arms as firm as seaweed, trying to hold her to him, trying to make her understand that she needed to stay. He had to protect her.

  “Let’s go,” said Hadith.

  Zuri kissed Tau, touched his face, and mouthed the words again. “I love you,” she said. Then she stepped out of the embrace, wiping at her eyes. “Goddess be with you,” she said. “May She be with you all.”