She released a long, pent-up breath. “Yes.”
We extinguished our torches and piled up at the entrance to the cavern the land eaters worked in. The ledge directly in front of the cavern wasn’t wide. It was simply another landing before the staircase continued down again.
The land eaters emitted a blue glow, similar to the blue dragons that feasted on the poison the air jellies emitted.
I found the girl who held the cup of water for our lethara. I knelt beside her, grasping her arm. “I want you to stay out here. Do you understand me?”
Her dark eyes were huge in the darkened tunnel. The only light we had was the glow of the blue dragons and our lethara. The girl nodded.
I looked up at the skitter unit standing guard over her. “You’ll stay and protect her?”
“He will stay,” Haji said in my left ear. “We know the importance of your lethara.”
As the one creature capable of commanding and controlling all the menagerie, he was the most vital aspect of the ship. The Layal could practically fly herself. Not quite, but it did, at times, seem possible.
I crept to the rock wall, finding it mostly by feel and the absence of light than by any other method. The light from the land eaters reflected off the armor of the remaining six skitters as they were the only people in our group who wore anything reflective.
“How do you want to do this?” Haji asked in my ear.
I scanned what I could see in the other cavern. They had nowhere to go. Trapped, probably counting on the rigger and the destroyers to deflect anything we might lay on them. “Send in the blue dragons,” I ordered.
“And the air jellies?” Haji asked. “They would be faster and more effective. The dragons move slowly, especially from this distance.”
A fair statement, but we weren’t short on time. The storm was coming in, yes, but we were underground and the Layal was grounded. Could she be hurt down there? Yes. But she was safer down there with the skeletal crew she currently housed than in the air where she could be attacked.
Though, she could be attacked on the ground as well.
The only thing working in my favor was that storm. It needed to hurry up to annul any ground force attacks on my ship.
“Just the blue dragons for now. Once they’ve reached the first line, we’ll launch the air jellies and falcons.”
Haji nodded the head of his skitter, which was still odd for me. I knew his head was located somewhere in the chest of that thing, but I couldn’t see it.
We waited, glancing at each other, our eyes seeing more and more as they grew accustomed to the near complete lack of light. I had nearly a complete crew still. We’d lost a few on the last destroyer, their crew being a bit more cunning than the previous two, but no fatalities. At least, not yet. They’d been alive enough to be carried or helped out. The path up to the mouth was long and difficult and the only issue I could foresee in the next stage of the battle would be the storm cutting us off from the ship if we had more wounded.
If.
I snorted to myself. We would. There was no way around that.
We watched the glowing slime trails of the blue dragons.
The men standing guard didn’t seem to notice. They spoke to one another around the noise of the land eaters just behind them.
Just a little more.
I looked around the shadows I couldn’t penetrate and wondered how far within the mountain we’d traveled. Far enough that the Layal could no longer reach us. The silence in my right ear was evidence of that.
I shook my head and refocused. Soon now. Soon, we would storm that cavern and reclaim Pleron City.
It didn’t take Nix long to find another group of men along the base of the mountain. They waited in clumps for new orders. She’d already forced two squadrons of men over the cliffs. There was no sense in keeping so many alive. She only needed one. One alone, away from the protection of others.
The last squad had eighteen men. She gave them a choice. Help her or walk.
Three of the seventeen men had already walked over the cliff. Nonchalantly, Nix folded her arms over her chest, her new Mark twisting in the air above her, flicking away the flying leaves and bits of debris filling the pounding wind.
The storm was nearly upon them. She’d have to find shelter, but before that happened, she needed her one man. The last man standing in this group would serve her fine.
She released a bored sigh as the cry of yet another man was cut short. She leaned against the tree behind her and waited for the other men to find their death.
They stopped. The men. They stopped walking forward and turned as one on her.
She pushed herself off the tree, her arms unfolding from her chest. Her Mark withered like a dying plant and retreated back to her shoulders. Holding up her hands, palms out, she stepped around the tree behind her and retreated a step. “Gentlemen, I’m sure—”
A deep, male voice interrupted her from behind. “Nix. What a pleasant surprise to find you here,” he said in fluid Sakin.
She turned and found a group of men in turquoise and blue uniforms. She closed her eyes and groaned, turning back to the Han’s men. “As you can see, I’m a bit preoccupied at the moment.”
The Ino soldier stepped into her line of sight, his black hair slicked into a tight topknot, his leather armor immaculate. “Men of Han, Ino Nami wishes a word with Nix. We relieve you of your burden.”
The man behind the leader growled low. “No you don’t. She is ours.”
“I was hoping you would say that,” the Ino man said with a cold twist of his lips. He flicked his head.
The rest of the Ino soldiers leapt forward, their swords naked and blurring with movement.
The Han’s men didn’t last long.
Nix watched the scene in confusion. She’d thought the Han worked with Ino. If that was the case, why was Ino attacking Han?
The Ino man grabbed Nix’s arm with a painful grip and marched her forward. “Ino Nami has something special planned for you.”
Nix grimaced as she attempted to keep pace with him on her tiptoes. This wasn’t the escape she’d been looking for.
Skah paused, her enemy lying dead at her feet. The winds had picked back up. She turned, scanning the skies. She and her people should have been safe. The storm had been moving north.
Except that by all appearances, it was circling back around to the south again.
She bit off her curse and focused on finding her people, specifically, Tahatan who carried the horn.
The earth blasted several feet to her left, far enough away that she didn’t stumble from the repercussion, but close enough to be hit by some of the flying debris. Skah continued on.
The Basilah had helped divert the cannon fire for a short moment.
The cannons Shankara used scarred the earth with an ease she’d never seen before. The caves the Paha tribes used in storms such as this were too close to the surface. Those who had evacuated in time would be buried in the rubble.
Thankfully, Shankara’s bombs had stopped. The only cannon fire now was from the air battle.
Though, even that seemed to have stopped.
She paused in the wind-blown silence. No more cannons. No more guns. No more sounds of fighting. Just wind and rain and an approaching storm.
Reprieve?
She scanned the area for cave openings, or new openings to the tunnel system below. After several minutes, she found a group of her warriors on the other side of the hill. They were regrouping and retreating to higher ground, their eyes to the sky.
Thank the gods. Skah scanned their faces to see who had survived.
Tahatan towered over them, a dark giant among his people. He saw her and his thick face settled in calm.
Skah joined them and touched his arm.
The group of survivors, eight of them, circled around her.
“Where is Neira,” Mina asked, her voice low and raspy.
“I don’t know.” Skah looked up at Tahatan. “Sound your
horn to regroup. Do we know why Shankara’s cannon fire has stopped?”
“We need to retreat, Skah.” Wasula pushed her brown hair out of her face and pointed to the storm threatening to overtake them. A wet leaf flew through the air and clung to her hand. She shook it off. “We’re running out of time.”
“If we retreat to the Paha caves, we will die. Shankara will bury us. And that is if the caves still stand.”
Lootah stopped Skah’s hand as she reached for Tahatan’s horn. “Listen.”
The wind roared, screaming at them to run.
The rain beat at them plastering their clothes to their body.
The temperature dropped, their breath billowing in clouds.
Gooseflesh ran up Skah’s arms. They were out of time. Cannons be damned. Perhaps the reason Shankara was no longer firing on them was because they’d fled the storm.
“The cannon fire has stopped,” Lootah shouted over the rising winds. “For whatever reason, that is good for us. Sound the retreat and our survivors will go to the caves.”
Skah didn’t like acting on assumptions. She couldn’t assume Shankara had fled the storm. She had to assume they would continue to fire on the Paha caves because that was the worst case scenario. “But Shankara—”
“Is a problem someone else has already solved for us!” Lootah tugged on her arm. “Skah, let us be gone from this place!”
Except the Shankara were no longer the worst case scenario. Not really. This storm was picking up in power. It was the greater threat. “Sound the retreat.”
Tahatan straightened to his full height, placing the bone horn to his lips. He blew the signal for retreat into each direction.
Taileh stood on the rise above the Paha caves and watched the bay the Shankara lethara stood in. Stood. He quivered and shook from the damage of the foreign looking sky ship.
She couldn’t call it an air ship. It had annihilated four of the smaller, slower sailed ships with ease then followed the last on its slow retreat to the ground as if mocking the captain.
Tokarz, however, was that captain. She didn’t mourn his passing or his possible suffering. The man deserved everything he got and more.
Shankara’s cannons were as out of commission as its lethara. Taileh couldn’t even see how the city would survive in this storm. The veil wasn’t dropping. More of the platforms were falling into the ocean.
The lethara, it appeared, was losing the battle to survive.
What power had the El’Asim’s sky ship brought that bring down the great Shankara’s formidable missiles?
However, Shankara’s missiles had done considerable damage the to the Paha caves. Just like she’d known they would when she’d fed the Han the information he’d demanded.
Which was the reason Taileh hadn’t taken Neira inside those caves where she could receive medical attention. First, she didn’t want to be surrounded by the Paha, who knew her to be the enemy. Second, well, she didn’t want to be inside of a cave system that had been so drastically destroyed. Even if there were tunnels that stood, she didn’t know if they would collapse again.
The air dropped in temperature.
Taileh stilled. Hail. Burial by cave-in, or bombardment by hail? She had to choose which way she wished to die.
Movement in the bay far below her caught her attention.
A giant explosion erupted around the base of the crippled lethara. Debris flew everywhere. Tendrils. Platforms. People.
Taileh couldn’t make out all of the detail, but what she could see was bad. For Shankara. For Ino. For the Han.
She smiled. Good for everyone else, though.
The lethara crumpled toward the crashing surf. The veil fell, though it didn’t look as though it had fully encapsulated the city before sinking.
Could the great Shankara tribe fall so easily? Queen Nix with all her power had been unable to bring about the fall of Shankara, no matter how hard she’d tried. Shankara had sunk out of existence, making the world think they’d died by her hands.
But this time—this time was different. Shankara fell by the might of the great El’Asim.
Taileh had heard rumors of his power. Whispers of fear and derision.
Staring in disbelief as the lethara fell, one thing became painfully clear to her.
They should fear the El’Asim, not ridicule him.
Hail the size of fists fell from the sky.
Grabbing Neira by the leg and armpit, she quickly darted beneath the bar covering of the hollowed wall and slipped into the cave, bruises forming along her arms and shoulders.
A tall, forbidding woman greeted her at the cave entrance, an arrow notched and sighted. “Taileh,” the woman said. “I thought you were told never to come back.”
Taileh raised her head and slid Neira to the ground. “I was needed,” she said softly. “I couldn’t stay away.”
Pleron City: Haji
HAJI WAITED FOR SYNN TO give the order. When had the man become patient? Haji hadn’t seen it coming and didn’t know when that attribute had sprouted, but he wished it hadn’t. He wanted to be in that cavern at that moment, tearing the enemy to shreds before more came at them from behind.
Granted, Synn had set up their own people at the rigger and the destroyers, but he’d been able to disable the mechanical beasts. If Synn, of all people, could figure it out, Haji was sure the Han could as well, especially since they were his units, likely by his design.
Though how many leaders were as careful with their designs as Synn and Haji?
He didn’t know. He could hope the Han wasn’t, otherwise, they were pinned with an enemy on either side of them and only a tight stairway to traverse.
The trails of the blue dragons disappeared up the legs of several of the soldiers. Hundreds of blue dragons, no larger than a thumbnail, took down a dozen of the Han’s men without lifting more than a finger.
The men collapsed. The few remaining ran to them, trying to discover what had taken them out.
“Release the air jellies,” Synn ordered, his voice low and quiet in Haji’s ear.
Haji didn’t have to repeat the order as it hadn’t been given to him. He didn’t understand how Synn had bonded to a lethara, much less to the falcons who fluttered their wings around them. One more thing to add to the great mystery of Synn El’Asim.
The air jellies launched into the air and moved like ghosts in the night, the blue from the land eaters reflecting on their pale skin.
A half dozen of the remaining leather armored men shouted an alarm.
One of the three land eaters twisted, removing its wide-mouthed face from the wall.
More of the Han’s men fell as the blue dragons moved from one man to another, sliding their poisonous slime along the flesh of their victims. The air jellies only had to touch a man with the tip of a tentacle. Their victims fell to the ground in convulsions.
Haji stared at the top of his best friend’s head with a bit more respect than he ever thought he’d feel for the man. Synn was stupid, rash, moved without thinking.
But this.
This was well thought out and brilliant.
They hadn’t needed all these men after all. He had thought that many more of these men and women would be lifted home to be buried or cast off with the rest of the dead.
“Du’a,” Synn said softly into the communication unit, though he wasn’t speaking to any of his leaders. “Take the menagerie home.”
Haji didn’t hear a reply, but the air jellies retreated from the cavern they’d invaded. The girl holding the cup of water backed up, the lethara in tow, and all the falcons launched themselves into the air with a cacophony of sound.
“I will,” Synn said quietly. “Haji, the land eaters are yours.”
Haji didn’t have Briac’s plows with him. They were too big to maneuver down the stairs, and the Layal was vulnerable on the ground. They’d remained behind as protection. Haji turned the head of his skitter around, what the eyes saw showing on the screen in front of Haji’s face.
They’d trained, but had never brought their combined powers into battle. Not like this. “Wynne. Rashidi.”
Wynne stepped up, fluttered her wings for another two steps, and then launched herself into the other room, her unit following. They went to the ceiling and disappeared into the darkness.
The one land eater swayed its head first one way, then the other as if trying to see the people attacking them.
Rashidi slung his bag over his shoulder and jerked with his head. His unit preceded him into the room. He knelt just this side of the door and pulled out a glowing blue ball. “Flash,” he said into his communication unit.
The remaining two land eaters stopped mining the wall and turned. Their metallic limbs clanked on the hard, rock floor.
Gripping the rough opening with one hand, Rashidi hopped on the balls of his feet. He released a puff of air then twisted, rolling the ball along the floor. He ducked into the room, disappearing from Haji’s view.
A searing light filled the room. The light didn’t diminish.
The land eaters stumbled, their multiple limbs flailing.
“Fahd. Jabr,” Haji ordered.
His remaining skitter units rushed into the room.
Wynne and her flying dragoons launched themselves from the ceiling, attacking the land eaters from above, finding chinks in the armor, inserting blasting sticks.
Rashidi’s shield unit did the same from the ground.
Haji engaged his skitter unit and ran along the base of the wall, trying to find an opening.
The large land eaters were not immense, not like the destroyer they’d encountered above. And they weren’t versatile or mobile like the skitters. They were slow, heavy.
“They’re loaded down with pleron,” Synn said. He entered the room, a bandana wrapped over his eyes. Haji wasn’t sure how he could see as he stared up at the land eaters in the cascading light from the flash bomb, his Mark hissing along his bared chest and arms as if he were surveying a sunrise.
Haji turned to the land eaters. “How many people do you think reside inside each unit?”
“Three.” Synn’s tone was confident.
Whispers of the Skyborne (Devices of War Book 3) Page 29
