by J. S. Bangs
“The banners of the Mouth of the Devourer are falling,” Aryaji said. She pointed to their left, at the point where the Mouth of the Devourer had been waiting.
Mandhi peered out to the place where Aryaji pointed. Jhumitu squirmed in her arms, and she ran her fingers through his coarse black hair. “I don’t see anything.”
“Because they’re down.” There was nervousness in her voice. “Sadja’s group must have reached the Mouth of the Devourer.”
“The stars upon them,” Mandhi said. “Destroy the monster. Where are the os Dramab?”
“I lost track of them,” Aryaji said sheepishly. “Can’t tell from this far out.”
They should have been on the Emperor’s right. The melee near the fallen banners was sparse and chaotic, and Mandhi couldn’t pick out anything that happened. She thought she caught a glimpse of the fallen palanquin.
Then Aryaji screamed. She fell to her knees, her hands over her eyes. “He falls! Oh, my brother! The mouth of the amashi is closed, the prophecy is ended! Woe, woe, woe!”
Her words melted into a piercing, wordless scream.
Mandhi grabbed her shoulder and shook her violently. “Aryaji. Aryaji!”
She looked up. Most of the bodies fighting around the Emperor and the palanquin vanished in a sudden eruption of black. A moment later, the swing of the battle around that point shifted. Men started retreating and running back toward the walls of Jaitha. The ranks on either side of the Mouth of the Devourer suddenly regained their courage and began to surge forward, pursuing their prey toward the city. There were knots of men who still fought, isolated and alone, but they were pushed back.
The first runners reached the walls of Jaitha. Shouts sounded through the dried-up ditches of the streets. At first, incoherent wailing and screams of panic. The hubbub spread along the walls, echoing through the city, until Mandhi could make out the words.
The Emperor is fallen. The Emperor is fallen.
Mandhi pulled Aryaji to her feet. “We should go.”
“Yes, go,” the girl said, her eyes wide, her lips trembling. “Away from here. Out of Jaitha.”
Mandhi squeezed Jhumitu into her chest. “I’ll go talk to the rest of the Uluriya. Stay here and pray for the return of our men.”
“No,” Aryaji said. She pulled herself from Mandhi’s grip and rubbed her eyes. When she looked at Mandhi again, she seemed more herself. “I’m going down to the base of the wall.”
“By the battle? Aryaji—”
“No, listen,” Aryaji said. “The os Dramab men will be returning, and we have to tell them what we’re doing.”
Mandhi heaved a heavy breath. “Go.”
“When they come, I’ll send them to the encampment,” Aryaji said. She bowed her head. Her fingers brushed against Jhumitu’s head, then she scampered down the ladder toward the place where the wall opened toward the Amsadhu.
Mandhi descended after her, clutching Jhumitu to her chest. The child squirmed and yowled with displeasure.
“Hush,” she said. “I’m going to keep you alive, but so help me if you start making a fuss—”
Jhumitu let out a full-throated scream. He grew rigid in Mandhi’s arms and started kicking his little legs. Mandhi spat in frustration and started running to the Uluriya encampment with the tantruming child pinned to her side.
Mandhi’s remnant of the Uluriya had camped on the easternmost part of the city, taking up residence in the tents and abandoned homes that Gauhala had offered them. The path to their encampment would have been a torturous maze through the wooden walkways above the waters if the river hadn’t been dry. Mandhi jumped down to the dusty riverbed and ran.
“We’re fleeing,” she shouted through the doorway of the first house she passed by. Two Uluriya looked at her, uncomprehending, taking in Jhumitu’s fits and Mandhi’s dusty figure.
She swore. The next house held was Josi and Peshdana, sitting side-by-side with a palm-leaf page between them. Sacks of rice and a bronze-clad treasure box were stacked in the back of the room.
“Josi, rouse all of the women.” Mandhi said. “Peshdana, go to the saghada and the older Kaleksha men.”
They both looked at her with incomprehension. “What’s happening?” Josi asked finally. “Is Jhumitu okay?”
“The Emperor is fallen,” Mandhi said. Jhumitu nearly squirmed out of her grip. “Jhumitu is fine—be quiet!—but the battle will be lost. We’re running.”
“Running?”
Peshdana’s face fell into an expression of horror. He pushed himself to his feet and put a hand on his wife’s head. “We have to go.”
Josi looked from her husband to Mandhi, and her expression grew serious. She nodded and stood. “I’ll take the houses on the north side of the camp. You take the ones on the south.”
“I’ll find someone to speak to the saghada,” Peshdana said. “Where’s Nakhur?”
“I’ll go to him next,” Mandhi said. She paused in the doorway. “And pray for the return of the men who went out fighting.”
Then followed a long, frantic period of going door to door, sharing the news, and organizing the exodus. The walkways around their houses turned into a chaos of sacks, tents, and hand-carts as the Kaleksha and the Uluriya cleared out what little they had in their homes.
The sounds of shouting grew louder in the streets. Mandhi heard Aryaji’s voice. She ran around the corner of a building toward the sound, and ran directly into a sweaty, blood-spattered bulk of a Kaleksha man.
She staggered backward, and the man caught her wrist. She looked up into Kest’s face.
“You’re alive!” she shouted.
He smothered her for a moment in a desperate embrace. Jhumitu yowled and squirmed for Kest. Kest took the boy with a glance of surprise. Jhumitu quieted.
Kest only looked at the child for a moment, uncomprehending surprise darkening his eyes, then he pointed behind him. Ten more Kaleksha men followed, with a handful of dark young Uluriya faces mingled with them. “This is everyone.”
“Everyone who…” She didn’t complete the thought.
“Once we saw things were going badly, we managed an orderly retreat, and once we were out of the melee, we outran them.” Kest said. “We have perhaps a minute before they get here. Are you ready?”
“We’re moving the encampment,” Aryaji said. She pushed herself to the front of the group of warriors. “Is everyone ready?”
“Most of them,” Mandhi began. She pointed to the knots of os Dramab women holding baskets and cotton sacks on the walkways above them.
Kest shook his head in fury. “We’re going now,” he bellowed. “Whoever doesn’t keep pace, his blood is on his own hands!”
There was a moment of silence among the Uluriya. Then everyone flew into motion.
Kest handed Jhumitu back to Mandhi and said, “What’s the fastest way out of the city and away from the battle?”
“The east gate,” Mandhi said. “But the battle line stretches much farther than the gate. If we don’t hurry, then the Devoured could break through and overtake us on the road.”
“Then we hurry,” Kest said. He hoisted a heavy sack of rice onto his shoulder. “Lead the way.”
They marched to the east. Kest never looked back, taking long, fast strides with the enormous sack of rice on his shoulder and a sword in his right hand. Mandhi followed him with Jhumitu in her arms. The line of the mingled Uluriya and Kaleksha stretched behind them, faces painted with worry. Their mouths echoed with muttering and squabbling, but they followed Mandhi and Kest.
They passed beneath the stone of the east gate and emerged onto the road, a trampled expanse of yellow clay stretching between lines of crackling, shriveled palms. The tents of the encamped armies lay lifeless and deserted on south side of the road, while to their left they spotted the dried-out bed of the Amsadhu through the gaps in the trees.
Cries of dismay went up as people spied the scenes of the battle. The Amsadhu was filled with bodies, writhing and fighting in mad d
iscord. It was impossible to discern the sides of the combatants from this distance, but the chaos was clear. Any orderly battle formation had been lost. All that remained was slaughter.
“Faster,” Kest said quietly. He turned and shouted over the lines following them, “Faster!”
He quickened his pace. Mandhi half-ran to keep up. She looked back and saw Aryaji huffing.
A holler of movement in the woods to their right. Kest turned and raised his sword. A band of twenty half-starved peasants bearing cudgels burst out from the dried foliage hanging over the bluffs. For a moment they stood and stared at the line of Uluriya and Kaleksha marching down the road. Mandhi’s heart beat faster.
“Move along!” Kest shouted to them. “Leave us alone.”
“The Devoured are coming,” one of the men said, panicked.
“Then run for your lives,” Kest said. “But leave us alone.”
A gap formed in the line of the Kaleksha, and the band of peasants darted through. The Uluriya continued to march.
More men ran away from the battle as they marched, hollering warnings in terror or offering desperate threats. A group of six men bolted from between the trees and ran straight for Kest.
“Help us!” the lead man cried. “They’re right—”
And the Devoured rushed out from the trees behind them.
Kest dropped his sack of rice to the ground and came out swinging his sword. He pushed Mandhi back and bellowed something in Kaleksha.
The first Devoured reached Kest. He swung a sword and cut the man’s gut open, barely even slowing him. With his elbow he knocked the man to the ground, and he leaped forward to stand on his chest while his sword threatened the others.
Mandhi staggered backward into the arms of Aryaji. Other Kaleksha men rushed forward carrying spears and cudgels, meeting the approaching Devoured. Jhumitu cried. Her pulse thundered in her ears.
Kest swung his sword and cut clean through the neck of one of the Devoured. The other os Dramab battered the Devoured aside, crushing limbs with cudgels and slicing open limbs, but the Devoured continued to advance.
“We have to run,” Mandhi said. She struggled to her feet.
More Devoured leaped out of the trees. Mandhi could see the look of despair on Kest’s face. She clasped Aryaji’s hand.
“Run!” she shouted to Kest. “We can’t defeat them! Just run!”
She sprinted forward.
She weaved past the bodies of the Devoured that the Kaleksha men had hurled to the ground, though they pawed at her ankles. A moment later Kest rushed ahead of her. He rammed his shoulder into one of the Devoured along the road, sending it tumbling into the brush, then he whirled his sword and sent another attacker sprawling in the dust. Mandhi could hear the sobs of Aryaji behind her, but she couldn’t stop to look back.
Kest and the other os Dramab leapfrogged ahead of her, knocking the Devoured aside and clearing a path for the fleeing women. She heard roars of anger as one of the Devoured connected with its crude club.
One of the Devoured stumbled into her path and looked at her with hungry eyes. It leaped forward and closed its hands around her throat, crushing Jhumitu between them. She gurgled and screamed.
Kest’s fist clubbed the side of the Devoured man’s head. His grip loosened. Kest grabbed his arm and pulled him away, hurling him bodily into the dry foliage beside the road.
“Run faster, Mandhi.” He turned, bellowed, and charged into another group of the Devoured.
She ran. She heard Aryaji’s harried breathing, looked back once and saw the young maid holding hands with an old Uluriya woman, ducking down and hurrying through the melee.
The road crested at the top of a hill. She caught a glimpse of the road ahead: a sharp drop-off, where the road narrowed to a footpath and wound down the steep face of the hill, slippery with yellow silt. She was running too fast to stop. She closed her arms around Jhumitu’s head.
They tumbled down the hill.
The world spun around them. Dust swirled, and her shoulders thudded into the ground. Jhumitu bawled in her arms. Her head and ribs ached with bruises. She couldn’t hear anything. No—it was almost silent aside from Jhumitu’s cry. She opened her eyes.
Aryaji was just cresting the top of the hill behind her. “Mandhi!” Aryaji cried out. She scrambled down the footpath as quickly as she could, coming to a stop just where Mandhi’s roll had ended. She knelt and touched Mandhi’s face.
“You’re bleeding,” she said.
“I’m fine,” Mandhi insisted. “Help me up.”
Aryaji pulled at Mandhi’s elbow and helped her to her feet. Mandhi put the sobbing Jhumitu into Aryaji’s arms and touched her own face. She had a long scratch down her cheek, and her fingers were wet with blood when she withdrew them. But she felt nothing.
“Where is everyone?”
“Just behind us,” Aryaji said. “Kest—”
Her heart fell into her gut. “Is he safe?”
“Yes,” Aryaji said. “He and the men held back to protect the women and the elders as they fled.”
“But the Devoured—”
“We outran them,” Aryaji said. “Don’t you hear?”
The silence. “None of them are following?”
“It looks like most of them are going west, toward Jaitha and the encampments. I think we’re safe.”
Mandhi’s chest heaved. At the top of the hill, Mandhi saw more Uluriya women approaching and slowly making their way down the footpath. She became aware of the throbbing pain in her head and the aches along her thighs and ribs.
“We should keep going,” Aryaji said.
“I want to stay….” Mandhi began, thinking of Kest and the other os Dramab behind them, battering back the deathless Devoured.
But Aryaji was right. Mandhi turned and began limping ahead. They continued down the dusty clay road toward the east, slower now with pain and exhaustion. The Uluriya and os Dramab congealed into a wide, slow-moving stream behind them.
The sun rose another palm’s width in the sky before she heard the rumor passed up from mouth to mouth.
“Kest,” someone said. “Kest is coming.”
She stopped. A large red-headed figure with another half-dozen Kaleksha following him pushed through the slow-moving mass of Uluriya. Mandhi stopped and waited.
He pushed himself past the last of the women along the road behind Mandhi and crushed her in his arms. He smelled of sweat, mingled with the putrescent reek of the Devoured. He bent down and kissed the top of her head.
“We made it,” he said. His voice was hoarse with relief and exhaustion.
“Did we lose many?”
“Many people? No. The Devoured didn’t want to chase women. A lot of us are injured, but we’re limping along.” He paused. “We lost most of our belongings. Dropped them in the flight.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Mandhi said. “We have our lives. Let’s go.”
“What happened to you?” he asked. His finger brushed against the scratch on her face and bruise on her forehead for the first time.
“I fell,” Mandhi said. She smiled sheepishly.
“Ah, well,” he said. “Jhumitu is safe?”
Aryaji put the boy into Kest’s arms. He squirmed in his father’s hands and wrapped his arms around Kest’s red, sweaty neck.
“We made it,” Kest said softly. “We made it, my son. And now?”
“We follow this road to the mouths of the Amsadhu,” Mandhi said. “Find the fleet of Davrakhanda and go…. somewhere.”
“If the Devoured catch us?”
“We run again,” Mandhi said.
Kest nodded. His eyes had a glassy, distant look. He limped worse than Mandhi did. She squeezed his forearm.
“We will make it. We’re alive. Ulaur is with us.”
Kest looked back at the ragged, wounded trail of Uluriya and os Dramab following them. An expression of grim determination showed on his face. “He’d better be. Because no one else is.”
NAVRAN
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“Hold!” Dastha shouted. “Retreat slowly!”
The rear line held spears low, crouched with their wooden shields facing the approaching Devoured. The enemy came across the dried floodplain as inexorably as the waters of the Amsadhu. With a crunch they threw themselves against the spears of Navran’s force.
“Hold!” Dastha screamed again.
Navran was astounded every time by the savagery the barely-armed Devoured brought to the battle. They had no weapons other than clubs and farm tools. They launched into the line of spears, indifferent to the gashes torn by the spearpoints, and hacked violently at the shields with fists and sickles. They impaled themselves on spears in order to strangle the spearmen. The only way to slow them down was to incapacitate them.
A Devoured man pushed through the spears of the front line, and a swordsman in the second rank fell on him. The sword slashed through the tendons behind the man’s knee, and he fell to the ground, unable to stand. He crawled forward. Joined by another swordsman, they hacked at his hands and feet.
Navran stood atop the stone-paved pier near the entrance to the palace. The floodplain was three yards below them, and the Devoured swarmed across it. They had drawn up the ladders which allowed the men to climb from the pier to the dried-up river, but they couldn’t yet withdraw entirely. Not until the palace was empty.
Archers stood around him, loosing arrow after arrow into the advancing flood. The arrowheads drew black blood, but otherwise helped not at all.
Another wave of Devoured launched itself against the shields. Several more bashed their way past the shields of the front line and were attacked by the rear guard, trying to hack off hands, feet, and heads—anything to slow them down. Dastha looked backward and gave Navran a desperate glance.
“Navran-dar!” someone behind him shouted.
A man came sprinting from the entrance of the palace. Behind him, a small group of women bolted out of the palace entrance and ran down the south road.
