With Blood Upon the Sand

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  As the Blade Maidens and Silver Spears charged, a great moaning came from the inside the towering harbor gates. It was muffled, though. The shamblers had been positioned inside the harbor. Mournful cries and explosions followed. In four precise locations, sprays of liquid shot out from the gates like ghostly green fans.

  The hinges, Çeda realized. They’d positioned the shamblers to release their viscera over the hinges. They were trying to weaken the gates. It wouldn’t work, though. The gates were far too large. What good would weakening the hinges do with those monstrosities still standing upright?

  Arrows began to fly against the men wrapping the rope around the upper spans of the aqueduct, but they were protected by shields held by others. The shamblers below reached the aqueduct’s stone support, the very one the men above had tied ropes to. Like beggar children surrounding an unfortunate visitor to Sharakhai who’d been foolish enough to offer up a coin, the shamblers crowded the base of the stone column, directly beneath the men and the swinging ropes above. They locked elbows, pulling one another tightly against the column as a host of arrows sunk into their flesh.

  “Leave the shamblers!” Husamettín called, pointing with his inky blade. “Take the men above!”

  Çeda made sure to send her shots wide, but many of the Maidens’ arrows, even loosed from horseback, struck home. The scarabs of the Moonless Host fell to the sands, landing with dull thuds. The two men wrapping the ropes around the column were slain with precise shots, but four more slipped down the ropes from above to take their place, and more after those men were shot down as well. Soon the stone of the channel had been wrapped tight.

  Below, the shamblers began to moan in unison. Their bodies shivered from pain or ecstasy or who knew what?

  Husamettín, instead of charging toward them, guided Blackmane toward the gap between the aqueduct’s columns. He sheathed his sword and crouched upon his saddle. Timing his leap as Blackmane charged across the sand, he shot upward and grabbed the lip of the first stone span eighteen feet above. He lifted himself up and moved to the column to his right and began climbing hand over hand with powerful ease. He knew what the Host was trying to do and meant to cut the ropes before they could.

  He’d no more reached the second span, though, when the shamblers burst. One by one, and then in a huge, collective explosion, their bodies erupted. A great bloom of sand and stone flew outward. The nearby dunes shivered from it, sand lifting and shifting in strange patterns. And then a rattle-clap thunder that sent sharp pain into both of Çeda’s ears fell over the desert.

  As the sound began to settle, Çeda heard a sizzling—the acid, she knew, eating away at whatever stone remained. Husamettín had hidden from the explosion inside the upper archway, but as soon as it died away, he leapt to the nearby column and resumed his climb toward the water channel.

  The clearing of sand and dust revealed the damage to the base of the column. Much of it had been gouged away, as though insects had eaten it. The apple-core center still held, but more stone was sloughing off as the viscous shambler acid devoured it.

  Husamettín reached the channel at last, where four or five of the Moonless Host were trying to knock him free. He waited as they swung down at him, then timed one neat slice at the nearest man’s neck.

  Blood flowed.

  As the swordsman tipped forward, his brethren grabbed him to keep him from falling. The moment they did, Husamettín clambered up, using the man as a handhold, blocking several hasty swings along the way and gaining the channel.

  “Husamettín!” one of rebels called. “Husamettín has come!”

  At these words, a host of scarabs, hidden until this moment, rose up from the channel on either side of Husamettín. There must have been three dozen of them. They charged the King of Swords, but Husamettín stood his ground. Night’s Kiss arced through the air, creating a low hum like the buzz of a beetle’s wings. It batted away swords ahead and behind, sliced arms and legs, slit neck and chest and belly, and all the while Husamettín crept steadily toward the spot where the ropes were tied.

  The base of the column was beginning to crumble. The stones along the bottommost spans began to fracture and fall away. Husamettín fought to within a few scant yards from the ropes. He was going to reach it.

  But then came a tall man with a short spear held in one hand. In his other was a glowing ball of orange flame. Hamzakiir. The soldiers made way for him, clearing a path to Husamettín. The King of Swords stood his ground, ready, waiting. Then he charged.

  Hamzakiir released the ball of flame, and Husamettín brought Night’s Kiss up in a vicious arc, splitting the flame with a low thrum. The flame was cut in two, the halves flying wide, twisting crazily through the night as Hamzakiir released another. Husamettín sliced that as well, then a third, then the two men were too close for anything but armed combat.

  Hamzakiir’s broad-bladed spear darted in, but was met time and again by Night’s Kiss, which hummed as it blocked, as it riposted, as it came in from on high.

  “Away! Away!” came a call from somewhere along the water channel.

  At this, Hamzakiir sent a flurry of blows against Husamettín, then retreated as the column beneath him collapsed. The stone spans nearest the ground fell away completely. Then the second set of spans above that. Finally, the topmost arches—which supported the water channel itself—crumbled and fell, taking with it the massive section of stone held together by the ropes the men of the Moonless Host had tied around it.

  A deluge of water rushed down through the freshly made gap in the channel, filling the desert with the sounds of a great and sudden tempest. The colossal stone weight of the aqueduct’s roped section fell straight down, powered by the rush of falling water. It drew on the sets of rope, which were in turn tied to a thick cable, a hawser like those used to tow ships.

  The hawser pulled taut, lifting a set of rigging with block and tackle. The other end of the rope was secured to the top of the harbor gates. Çeda was well aware how doubling or tripling sheaves in the blocks multiplied the strength being applied to the other end of the rope, and indeed, as the weight of the aqueduct’s stones rushed down a massive groan came from the harbor gates—a sound like one of the old ones waking from his slumber, ready to walk the world and rend it in two for its many offenses. Metallic pinging sounds followed, and a creaking that made it seem like the whole of the House of Kings was slipping down along the slopes of Tauriyat.

  But by Iri’s black teeth, the gates still held. They held, and there was no way that the Host would breach the harbor, damaged gates or not.

  Several of the Maidens had leapt from their horses and were climbing to aid their King. Above, Husamettín pressed forward, hoping to rout these lesser men from the top of the channel, but this was when the men on the opposite side of the divide began pulling together.

  “Hup!” one of the scarabs called, and his men pulled.

  “Ho!” And they pulled again.

  “Hup! Ho!”

  “Hup! Ho!”

  As the air filled with a rain of arrows, the men pulled in unison, drawing on the rope, pulling the gates just a little bit farther. With so many, and with the gates’ hinges already weakened, it was working. Slowly but surely the massive doors leaned farther outward.

  Husamettín leapt the gap and continued his attack, but Hamzakiir was there to meet him. He blocked blow after blow from Night’s Kiss. He was not nearly as gifted as Husamettín, but he didn’t have to be. He was only buying time. He blocked and retreated, choosing his attacks with care. Other swordsmen helped, and still Husamettín crept closer to the men working the thick rope tied to the gates.

  Hamzakiir had been pressed against the rearmost of those men when a great cacophony of splintering wood and shearing metal and men straining at the top of their lungs led to the fifty-foot-tall gates tipping to the point that nothing would hold them.

  For a moment,
all movement ceased.

  The Maidens pulled up their horses. Husamettín’s blade stilled in his hand. The men in the water channel stood stock-still, their eyes on the gates. Even the water seemed to freeze in midair.

  All as the gates fell and crashed upon the desert floor like the doom of Sharakhai.

  Chapter 61

  IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON AS SUNLIGHT SPEARED through the dusty air in the upper reaches of the Qaimiri embassy house. Ramahd and thirteen of his men stood in a room that had once been the banquet hall but had since been transformed into a makeshift audience chamber. All but Meryam wore thawbs cut in the desert style, turbans that one might find among the wandering tribes, as well as armor beneath, some small protection for the night’s endeavor.

  Meryam stood before Luken, who held a bandage in his left hand. Meryam took his right and pressed the sharp tip of her thumb ring into it. “Know that tonight you do the will of your queen.” Blood pooled in Luken’s palm. “You are the swords I cannot lift, the knives I cannot thrust. Be sharp, children of Qaimir. Be quick. And return to me unharmed.”

  As one, all fourteen men replied, “Yes, my queen.”

  Speaking under her breath, Meryam touched her fingers to the blood and drew a sigil across Luken’s brow. She did the same on both his cheeks, then his chin, and then, with the loving touch an artist has for her canvas, she brushed her fingers over Luken’s skin. The blood smeared with her movements, but something else happened as well. His very skin changed—the color and the texture. The ridges over his eyes became less pronounced, his cheeks smoother, his chin more rounded. His nose widened. Even his beard changed. She ran her fingers through it, and it lengthened like thread being drawn from a skein of wool. After sliding her thumbs along his eyebrows, raising them slightly, she pinched his jaw between her thumb and forefinger, turning him this way, then that, inspecting him.

  He looked a completely different man. Sharakhani, not Qaimiri. This was necessary, Meryam had said, and Ramahd had agreed. Should any of them die tonight, it was paramount that Qaimir be above suspicion.

  “Go well,” she said to Luken, then kissed him on both cheeks. After wrapping the bandage around his right hand, Luken bowed, then left the room to prepare the wagon they would take to meet Hamid and the men of the Moonless Host.

  Tiron came next, and she did the same to him, pressing her ring into his palm, chanting ancient verses, using Tiron’s own blood and the magic the gods had granted her to alter how he looked. She was done in little time—Tiron had a bit of Sharakhani blood in him already—but Ramahd could tell Meryam was already beginning to weaken. Her hands shook, and she was starting to breathe heavily. She was a gifted mage, but doing this, altering a man, was both complex and arduous. Most couldn’t even attempt it, and those who could had to tread carefully lest they foul the ritual and cause permanent damage: scarring skin, blinding eyes, or turning bones to jelly.

  But Ramahd had confidence in her. She had both the will and the power to see this through, so he let her continue. As Tiron wrapped the bandage around his hand, Meryam moved on to Cicio then Vrago then Gautiste, kissing each of them before they left. With each man, Meryam shook just a little bit more, so that by the time she came to Ramahd—the two of them now alone in the expanse of the room—her lungs were heaving as if she’d run from Sharakhai’s west end to the top of Tauriyat. Nostrils flaring, she held Ramahd’s hand. A count of ten heartbeats passed. Then twenty.

  “I could go as I am,” Ramahd said.

  Meryam glared. “I only need a moment.”

  After a few more deep breaths, she pressed the ring into Ramahd’s palm. The ring bit. Blood gathered. Meryam used it immediately, as if she were worried that even a moment’s pause would lead to her surrendering to exhaustion. As her fingers brushed over his skin, he felt a twinge of pain. It spread quickly as she moved, pinching here, stretching there. It was uncomfortable, but little more than that.

  He didn’t mind the change in and of itself. If all went well they would return to their former selves in a day or so. But not if they died. That’s what shook him to his core. If he passed to the farther fields, would Yasmine recognize him? Would Rehann? If not he would regret this forever but, as was so often the case, the needs of this life outweighed those of the next.

  By the time she was done, Meryam shook from head to toe. Ramahd, however, had the good sense not to mention it. He was just glad he was the last.

  “Go well,” she said to him, but instead of a kiss on his forehead, she pulled him in for a kiss on the lips. Some small amount of the passion they’d shared in the desert returned, and then she was pulling away and motioning him toward the door. “Now send Amaryllis in. I will finish with her before you leave.”

  “She needn’t come. We have enough.”

  “She’s asked to go and I will allow it.”

  “Meryam—”

  “My queen.”

  “My queen. There’s no need for Amaryllis to—”

  “She has long been an asset to me and Qaimir. She’s earned the right. Now send her in. There’s little time.”

  He bowed to her. “Of course, my queen.”

  He found Amaryllis waiting outside the room. She stared at him for a moment, but then her look hardened. “Do you think I’ll hinder you, my lord?”

  She wouldn’t. She was in fine shape, and an agile climber. It would be hard to argue she wouldn’t be an asset. “Take no offense. It’s only . . . You’re young, Amaryllis. You have much to live for. We may none of us see the sunrise.”

  The glint in her eyes was like a knife’s edge now. “I am my own woman. I’m not afraid of dying, and our queen has already given her leave.” She paused, daring him to speak. “Would you seek to deny her?”

  He bowed and stepped aside, waving to the door. “Of course not.”

  When she’d entered, Ramahd made his way to the rear of the estate where a tall, windowless wagon awaited. He climbed into the dark, dank interior. Amaryllis soon joined them, rushing in and reaching for the door. She’d changed much in so little time. Her beauty stolen from her, her face was broader, longer than it had been. Her lips were wider. And her long black hair—all gone now, shorn close to her skin as if she’d just survived a bout with lice. Then she closed the door and the interior plunged into darkness, some small amount of light angling in through the gaps in the planks.

  At a knock from Ramahd’s boot on the floor, the wagon rumbled into motion. The smell of sweat and men’s breath filled the tight space. The wagon shook them, leaning as it turned and slowed near the gates of Tauriyat. The driver spoke to the guards in muffled words. Even though they’d arranged this ahead of time and secured it with a healthy bribe, Ramahd worried that they would be inspected or stopped altogether, but soon they were off and into the city.

  They clattered through the streets of Sharakhai. The wait felt interminable even though he knew they weren’t going far. Finally the wagon came to a stop. Amaryllis opened the doors, and they all filed out. They were south of the collegia grounds, a busy enough place normally, but today it was practically deserted.

  The wagon rumbled away as their group of fifteen made their way farther south toward Karakir Square. When they arrived, the city was still, nearing its slumber. The square was empty save for three young girls sitting at its center. When the girls saw them approach, one of them stood, stared at them with wide brown eyes, and sprinted down a narrow alley situated between a cooper and a chandler. In short order, a stout fellow wearing beaten but serviceable leather armor came striding out from the alley. He snapped his fingers at the remaining pair of girls and pointed down a side street. “You know better.” The doe-eyed girl joined them, and the three of them ran, but not before sending interested glances back at Ramahd and the others.

  From the alley came four more men, Çeda’s friend, Emre, among them. The other three he’d never seen before, but one was a huge hulk of a
man with a gritty look to him, the sort who looked for fights, the sort good at finishing what he started. All of them bore weapons: bows, swords, knives. The big one held a massive battle axe, the butt of it capped with a gleaming, steel spike. Çeda, however, wasn’t among them. Ramahd wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or worried.

  Before anyone could say a word, the sound of horse hooves pounded along a street somewhere to the west. Nearer and nearer they came, dozens of them, steel-shod hooves ringing against stone. A full company of Silver Spears, most like. Or Blade Maidens. All turned toward the sound, eyes wary, hands on weapons, but then, thank the gods, the sound began to fade.

  “You’re Hamid?” Ramahd asked.

  The man with the sleepy eyes nodded. “Juvaan sent you?”

  Ramahd nodded back.

  Hamid looked over their group, then made a show of looking beyond them, as if more were coming. A dark laugh erupted from him a moment later. “Fifteen of you?”

  “Fifteen finer you’ll not find in Sharakhai,” Ramahd replied, “but if you wish us to leave, you need but say so.”

  Hamid’s laugh faded to a smile. “Let it never be said a Qaimiri places humility above pride.”

  Tiron bristled at this, but Ramahd held up his hand.

  Emre stepped closer and whispered something to Hamid. “No,” Hamid replied, loud enough that Ramahd could hear. “I know Ramahd Amansir.”

  “I am Ramahd Amansir,” Ramahd cut in, “though not so long ago I wore a different face. All of us did.” When Hamid stared doubtfully he went on. “Come, if you know Ramahd, as you say, then you also know the nature of his queen.”