As Iron Falls

by Bryce O'Connor

  At once, Aleem could understand why the sergeant had called a pause in their march. This wasn’t the first group they’d come across in the last week and a half. The roads of Perce, even these smaller trading routes, were well-travelled as the cooler seasons fell over the South and commerce was bolstered with the fringe cities. There was something distinctly odd, however, about this particular convoy, something not quite right. Glancing at Rafik, the man’s narrowed eyes told Aleem he had noted the oddities as well, and the slave grew suddenly anxious.

  For one thing, the soldiers of the approaching caravan appeared to have no order to their ranks. Even this small patrol, with only five men, a horse, and Aleem trailing behind, marched in form: the sergeant in front, two rows of two behind him, and the animal between them and their slave. The group coming toward them, on the other hand, looked scattered, dirty, and disjointed, almost like a cohort returning from battle. Aside from the two men ahorse on either side of the woman they appeared to be escorting, there was no method to their procession, the men on foot slogging along here and there, sometimes alone, sometime in small groups. What was more, even from this distance Aleem could say with certainty that the men’s armaments included anything but the standard sword and shield of the army. Before long he could make out spears, axes, knives, even the gleaming head of what looked to have been a round-mace. Given that soldiers in service to the Tash were allowed to choose their own weapons from anything they claimed in battle, it might not have been all that strange to see one or two such oddities. In this case, though, only a single figure—one of the mounted soldiers—appeared to be carrying an army-issued blade, which did nothing to balance out the fact that he had a bow slung across his back.

  Combined with the undisciplined order of the group’s ranks, Aleem could understand why Rafik looked so tense.

  They waited for the caravan to approach, nearly ten minutes spent baking in the heat of the morning, but for once Aleem was not so grateful for the reprieve from their eastward drive. As the rumbling of the cart became audible, the tension in the men before him redoubled, and with a word from the sergeant, Kano—a soldier who sported light cavalry armor as opposed to the heavier chain and leather of the others—hurried back to the horse and slung himself up into the saddle. Aleem watched this happen with a frown. It had been the same on every occasion they’d passed another group on the road. Rafik would call a halt, and Kano would mount expectantly, like he was waiting for a word from his superior to bolt. Inevitably, when the travelers passed and nothing out of the ordinary occurred, the sergeant would order the rider back off the animal, and the march would start anew. Aleem wasn’t sure what was going on, but he had set his curiosity largely aside, reminding himself that it was not a slave’s place to question the actions of his betters.

  Now, though, as he made out the details of the men coming closer, he couldn’t help that curiosity from lighting anew.

  When the two groups were no more than twenty feet apart, the sergeant raised a hand, indicating that the caravan should stop. It did at once, a barked command from the man with the sword and bow bringing the entire procession to a halt. This soldier, indeed, looked to be the senior officer. He had the brass marks that denoted him as a captain fastened into the leather of the white-dyed cuirass about his chest, but they were pinned to the wrong side. Rafik seemed to take note of this, because his frown deepened as he spoke.

  “Declare yourself, by order of the Tash!” he shouted across the space between their two parties. It was the same order he’d given every group they came across. Having never been outside of the city walls in most of the last decade, Aleem had no idea if this was procedure on trips to the coastal towns.

  Before them, the man who’d spoken raised a hand in greeting.

  “Hail, brothers!” He had a low, rough voice, like stones crunching underfoot, and as he heeled his mount forward—a massive black stallion that would have caught even Ekene Okonso’s eye—he kept his hand lifted, like a sign of peace. “I am Akelo Aseni. My men and I are returning from assignment along the coast. We have been tasked by the First Hand with escorting the Lady Ilyane back to Karesh Syl unharmed.” He motioned to the veiled woman with a jerk of his head over his shoulder. “She is to be his third wife.”

  That seemed to take the sergeant by surprise. The man looked uncertainly around at the mounted figure—the “Lady Ilyane,” if this Captain Aseni was to be believed—giving Aleem time to take in the others with greater detail.

  Aseni was surprisingly old for a lesser officer of the Tash’s army. He was Percian, obviously, but the bush of his beard was streaked with silver, and his face was so leathery he would have fit better as a seaman than a soldier. His dark eyes were bright beneath his helm, his right encircled by what might have been the remnants of an old bruise, and despite his apparent age he was broad-shouldered and strong, his armor a little snug over his muscled frame. The army-issue blade at his hip was a splash of normalcy, but did not offset the bow slung about his shoulders, nor the quiver of arrows hanging from the small of his back. If the man was an archer, it seemed strange that he would have been sent out into the savannah as a mere escort. Marksmen were generally kept within the walls of the city in case of attack, or trained as game hunters so that the Tash was always a powerful contributor to the lucrative pelt and ivory trade between Karesh Syl and Karesh Nan.

  The others surrounding the captain did nothing to help the oddity of the scene. The three soldiers were similarly built, broad men who looked to ill-fit their uniform, white-and-gold armor. They wore curved swords on their belts—none of which matched the other—and the two on foot were holding their shields improperly, as though they’d only been taught how to handle them recently. The last man, who’d stayed ahorse beside the Lady Ilyane as his superior cantered forward on his black stallion, look distinctly rigid in his saddle, like he was unaccustomed to riding.

  The Lady herself was even stranger. A purity veil was common enough—though a tradition Aleem had heard was dying out with the younger generations of the Percian nobility—but traditionally wives-to-be chose only to hide their faces from view. This woman, on the other hand, seemed to have taken the concept to heart, because every inch of her body was covered, from the thin, white-dyed leather of her boots and gloves to the hooded silk robes that hung loosely about her frame. For all any of them could tell, she might not have been Percian at all. Odder still, Aleem guessed that the other men, beyond her and the soldiers, were sellswords under employ of the lady’s family, because not one among them looked to be a son of Perce. Five in total, Aleem made out Southerners, Northerners, West Islers, and even a borderer. The strange part was, though, that—apart from one thin man at the back of the group whose mismatched armor looked almost to be falling off, it was so loose—the men were each as broad as any of the others, like whoever had put together the caravan had wanted only the largest and strongest guarding the veiled woman.

  Something was definitely not right, Aleem knew. Everything was off about this escort.

  Whether fortunately or unfortunately, Rafik was clearly of the same mindset.

  “Your men are in disarray, Captain,” the sergeant said stiffly, enunciating the last word like Aseni should take more pride in his title. “Should you present yourself to the city like this, I would not expect to be greeted well by the gate commanders.”

  In response, the captain smiled in a tired sort of way. Aleem might have imagined it, but for a moment before the man spoke he could have sworn Aseni’s eyes flicked right to him.

  “You are correct,” the officer said in an apologetic tone. “We have had a difficult road. Are you familiar with the lady’s family, the Ilyanes?”

  The sergeant shook his head, still looking annoyed.

  Aseni groaned resignedly. “I’m not surprised. The lady’s father is only just growing in power. He is responsible for much of the head trade Karesh Syl has been building with the eastern pirates.” He waved a hand back at the veiled woman. “A few days
ago, we came under assault. We suspect he intended to kill the lady in retaliation.”

  “‘He?’” Rafik asked incredulously. “Who is ‘he’?”

  Aseni looked unsure, glancing back at the lady as though asking permission. When she nodded, he sighed, as though hesitant to share the information.

  “The lizard,” he said simply.

  Aleem, it seemed, was the only one not to understand the context of the man’s answer. “Lizard” was a common enough slur. He had heard it a thousand times, muttered and hurled at the atherian slaves in the city and palace. For this reason, it seemed strange indeed that the sergeant and his men all stiffened as one, Kano hissing in a sharp inhalation of excitement from atop his horse.

  “Arro?” Rafik demanded gleefully, taking several steps forward. “You have Arro?”

  Abruptly, Aleem felt his hands go numb. Where “lizard” had meant nothing to him, that name, spilled with such excited anticipation from a soldier of the Tash’s army, squeezed at his heart, making it suddenly difficult to breathe.

  Arro. Raz i’Syul Arro.

  “We do,” the captain was saying with a nod, looking curiously down at the man. “You seem less surprised by this fact than I would have assumed.”

  “We were tasked with cutting the lizard off if he came by way of the eastern roads,” the sergeant said hurriedly, all suspicion apparently forgotten as he took another step forward, scanning the group like he expected to see the atherian bound and chained among them. “Us, and some two-dozen other patrols like ours. The Tash wishes to know if and when Arro would have arrived at the gates of Karesh Syl.”

  This, oddly, made Aseni frown, and his helm turned to take in Kano.

  “I see,” he said, as though considering this new information. “A rider to return word to the city.” Again, shockingly, his eyes fell on Aleem. “A slave to distract the man, and soldiers to slow him down. Very clever.”

  At his words, Rafik looked annoyed again, pulling his gaze from where it had settled on the covered cage.

  “Arro is no man,” he spat, like he’d been offended by some filthy vulgarity the captain had uttered in his presence. “He is an animal. No more than any other scaly.”

  “Of course,” the captain said almost too quickly, clearly intent on correcting himself. “As you say: an animal.”

  The slip-up, though, seemed to rouse the sergeant from his momentary elation. The man was looking at the group with suspicious eyes again, like he was still deciding what to make of them.

  “I’d like to see the creature,” he said eventually, speaking in a surprisingly harsh tone for a man who was technically addressing a superior. “Where is he?”

  As he said it, though, Rafik’s gaze seemed to fall again on the shape of the cage.

  Aseni made a face that looked a little too much like he was trying to seem unsure, though the sergeant didn’t appear to notice.

  “Are you sure?” the captain asked. “It’s been four days since we killed him. His remains aren’t anything you’d want to look at…”

  “He’s dead?” the sergeant demanded, and he almost deflated under the weight of this news. “I was ordered to return him to Karesh Syl alive, if possible.”

  Aseni shrugged apologetically from atop his horse. “I had no such orders, and he took us by surprise. We had to defend ourselves.”

  Rafik, in turn, grunted, clearly not happy with the circumstances.

  “Very well,” he snapped irritably. “In that case, I wish to see the body.”

  Again, the request came out as a command, and the captain took it without so much as blinking.

  “As you say.” Aseni looked around at one of the men standing on foot in front of the Lady Ilyane. “Zehir, show them to the corpse.”

  “No,” the sergeant said quickly. “I will suffice. A moment, though.”

  Rafik turned his back to the mounted man, facing his patrol, and spoke in half-a-whisper so that only they could hear.

  “Kano,” he said first to the rider atop his horse, “if anything goes wrong, make for the city at once. Don’t wait. Tell them what you’ve seen here. The rest of you,” he looked around at the others, “be ready to defend Kano’s retreat, with your lives if necessary. For the Tash.”

  “For the Tash,” the soldiers all said as one in reply, the three on the ground moving hands to the hilt of their blades. When he was satisfied they were prepared, Rafik turned back to the caravan.

  “Show me.”

  Swiftly the soldier who had been designated—Zehir, Aleem thought the captain had called him—led the sergeant toward the back of the procession. The rest of the patrol watched expectantly, tense and ready, Kano and his horse shifting side to side nervously. Quietly as he could, Aleem slid to the edge of the road, ignoring the rustle of the winds through the grasses around him as he did his best to steer clear of the rider’s potential path.

  Rafik passed Akelo Aseni and the Lady Ilyane without incident. He didn’t even glance at the other soldiers as he marched by with a stiff posture, like he was modeling what a true member of the army of Karesh Syl should act like. He approached the cart, his helmet tilting up to take in the oddity that was the covered cage.

  Then one of the lady’s men—the borderer—stepped rudely across the sergeant’s path, and no one even managed to blink before it was over.

  Aleem had just enough time to reflect on how badly he would have been beaten if he’d ever been foolish enough to cut off an officer when Rafik staggered, stumbling into the side of the cart. He didn’t make a sound, but there was a glint of steel, and Aleem thought he saw the borderer tuck a pair of blades away as the sergeant convulsed, turning to put his back against the wood and slide heavily down to the ground. He coughed once, spraying blood across the road.

  Then the sergeant keeled over, one hand dropping from where it had been trying to hold together a massive gash that had appeared in his stomach, the other falling from the dissected remnants of what had been a whole, healthy neck not three seconds before.

  There was a horrified shout from the patrol, and three swords were drawn in unison. Someone yelled “Kano! Go!” and the soldier’s horse reared as Kano brought the animal around, kicking it into a gallop back up the road. Dirt and dead grass churned, tossing dust into the air. Aleem staggered back, nearly stumbling right off the road as the rider drove his mount by so quickly the slave felt the wind of their passing.

  Then there was a zip, followed by an ugly thud, and an arrow sprouted like magic from the back of Kano’s head.

  The horse screamed in confusion as the soldier tumbled from the saddle, one foot caught in the stirrups. Aleem couldn’t look away, staring after the pair of them, the mount dragging the corpse of its former master with it as it ran, Karo’s limbs bouncing gruesomely over the stony ground. The slave had just begun to consider that he, too, might be in danger, when the wind shifted in the grass around him once more.

  Only this time, Aleem was made to understand that it wasn’t, in fact, the wind.

  As lithely as a snake sliding out of its hole, a dark figure rose from where he had crept to lie in silent wait behind them, stepping out of the field onto the road. He was a behemoth of calm, supple power, his dark, scaled skin rippling and glimmering in the Sun, his golden eyes shining like fire against his reptilian face. The steel of his armor and clawed gauntlets glinted, as did the blades of his strange straight sword and the twin-headed spear Aleem would have been able to name in his sleep.

  The winged form of Raz i’Syul Arro, the Monster of Karth, the Dragon of the North, stood before him, the legendary Ahna held in one hand like she weighed no more than a walking stick.

  Aleem thought, in that moment, that he should have been terrified. As he gaped up at the atherian—who stood several inches taller than even the largest lizard-kind the slave had ever met—he thought he should have cowered in fear. Instead, though, he felt a warmth well within his chest, a spark of something he hadn't experienced in a long, long time.

&n
bsp; Hope.

  Arro’s eyes fell on him, but there was nothing but a sad sort of kindness in that gaze. Without saying a word, he nodded toward the ground, like he wanted Aleem to sit. The slave did so at once, crumpling at the edge of the road and continuing to stare as the Dragon stepped past him, the earth crunching lightly beneath his clawed feet.

  The atherian moved with all the grace of his kind, the nimble poise that was the first thing stolen away from lizard-kind slaves by the chains they were bound in. Still without speaking, he approached the threesome of soldiers who hadn't looked away from the caravan, blades out and shoulder-to-shoulder in a wall formation as the man who had called himself Akelo Aseni put arrow after arrow into their raised shields. His own “soldiers,” along with the “Lady Ilyane’s” men, were closing in on the patrol as well, weapons drawn, though they made no move to step within striking distance. Aleem would have wondered why, except then the Dragon stopped some ten feet behind the three’s turned backs.