Forged In Flame (In Her Name: The First Empress, Book 2)

by Hicks, Michael R.

  What frightened her was not that she might die in the coming maelstrom, but that she might survive it to face the future as foretold in the prophecy. If Anuir-Ruhal’te had truly foreseen her destiny, Keel-Tath must unite all her people. To do that, she would have to lead them through a war, first against the Dark Queen, and then against the Settlements, such as had not been seen since the Final Annihilation.

  I am not ready, she told herself as the horizon burned. I can never be ready for such a burden.

  She felt a gentle touch on her shoulder and looked back with frightened eyes to see Dara-Kol, standing close behind her.

  “Have faith,” Dara-Kol said, her words barely audible above the booms and cracks of the battle.

  Keel-Tath, feeling tiny against the storm sweeping in upon them, nodded and tried to smile her thanks. But inside she felt as brittle as a thin sheet of glass.

  That was when she heard something, a deep hum that grew against the background of the battle at sea.

  “Look!” Drakh-Nur pointed to the sky.

  Keel-Tath looked up and gasped in both fear and awe.

  Approaching from the north were enormous ships, easily as big as the largest of the vessels Keel-Tath had seen in the harbor. But these flew in the air. They were powered not by sails, but by some sort of engines driving propellers, in principle the same as those used on the Dark Queen’s ships. These aerial leviathans had streamlined shapes much like giant fish and were painted to match, with gaping maws and leering eyes. Down their flanks were emblazoned the runes of the Dark Queen, leaving little question of their origin or intent. She counted them as they swept over the maze of rocky spires that thrust upward from the thick rainforest toward the sky, and stopped after she reached a hundred. But there were many more, at least twice that number, sailing with regal malevolence in close formation toward the city.

  The lead ships slowed and dropped lower as they neared the northern approaches, and the formation blotted out the sun as they passed overhead. Not wasting any time, the city’s defenders opened fire. Harpoons and lances, along with weapons like the one on Wan-Kuta’i’s ship that had cut down the warriors on the beach, arced skyward. Almost every one hit home, but caused no visible damage: they simply disappeared through the skin of their targets.

  Then the enterprising crew of one of the catapults arrayed along the walls managed to turn it just enough to bear on the parade of airships. They flung a stone that Keel-Tath judged to be about the size of Drakh-Nur and hit one of the bulbous gondolas that stood out from the bottom of the ships like fat ventral fins. The stone smashed through the gondola and passed through the inside of the ship, emerging on the far side to take out one of the pods, each with a whirling propeller, that protruded from the airship’s sides. The pod exploded in a cloud of fiery debris.

  The defenders gave a cheer that turned to a cry of disbelief as the ship caught fire from the destroyed propulsion pod. In seconds, the entire vessel had been transformed into a gigantic torch that collapsed to the ground. Small black objects, warriors, Keel-Tath knew, leapt from the doomed ship in an effort to save themselves. But their escape was short-lived, for the ship settled on top of them, burning them alive.

  The handful of other catapults along the wall that could be brought to bear began to fire. Some flung stones, but others hurled clay pots filled with a volatile substance that burned with wild abandon. More airships exploded and crashed to the ground, setting parts of the city on fire. Keel-Tath shied from the thought of how many innocent robed ones must have been caught in the conflagrations, and her mind flashed back to the sight of the tens of thousands who had burned and died in Keel-A’ar. And somewhere in there, she knew, was Han-Ukha’i, and she was in peril. Keel-Tath could feel her fear and pain, but she had to force aside her fears. There was nothing she could do for the healer now.

  As the lead ships neared the southern wall, dozens of ropes uncoiled from the gondolas of every ship and warriors, hundreds from each vessel, began slithering down. Some landed on the walls, where they were set upon by the defending warriors, while others landed inside the city proper. The enemy swarmed through the heart of the city, where there were precious few warriors to oppose them, most of the defenders having been concentrated along the fortifications within and atop the walls.

  It was Tara-Khan who recognized the danger first. “We must get off the walls!”

  The great walls, which had always been the city’s first line of defense behind the fleet itself, had suddenly become a death trap. If the enemy warriors gained control of the entrances to the wall’s fortifications, they could simply bottle up the defenders. It would be nearly impossible to fight their way out, for only a few warriors could fight together in the space of the entrances, and there was no way to scale down the outside of the walls.

  “Do as he says!” Dara-Kol bellowed. “Warriors! Abandon the walls! The fight is within the city!”

  The warriors around her instantly obeyed, turning toward the nearest entrances to the stairs inside the walls that led down to the city.

  Dara-Kol turned to follow them, but she felt a restraining hand on her shoulder.

  “Wait,” Tara-Khan told her. “We must not go that way.”

  “Why?” She asked.

  “Look at them.” He nodded toward the line of warriors pressing their way into the stairway entrance. “If we go with them we will find ourselves trapped in the wall.” Pointing down to the city below, where hundreds of enemy warriors were already approaching the wall near their position, he said, “We must find another way.”

  “I know,” Ka’i-Lohr said. “Follow me.”

  He turned and ran along the wall as the attackers and defenders began to clash far below them. Reaching one of the catapult platforms, whose warriors still fired on the airships, he led them to the winch and basket assembly that was used to bring up ammunition to the catapult from the magazine at the base of the wall.

  “We cannot all ride down that thing!” Drakh-Nur said, seeing that it was barely large enough for him.

  “We will not ride,” Ka’i-Lohr said as he climbed onto the winch support struts. With a deft slash of his sword, he parted the heavy rope between the struts and the winch capstan, then tied it off on one of the struts. “We must slither down the rope, as the enemy did.”

  Looking down, Keel-Tath saw that there were no enemy warriors down below. Yet.

  The others were looking at her, waiting for her decision. “We go,” she said, reaching for the rope.

  “No, mistress.” Drakh-Nur gently nudged her aside. “We will go down first to protect you.”

  Not waiting for her approval, he quickly sheathed his sword and took hold of the rope with his hands while gripping it between his knees and feet. With a fierce grin, he began to slide down toward the ground below.

  Dara-Kol went next, then Tara-Khan.

  “I would not be the last,” she said to Ka’i-Lohr, hoping that he would understand. She did not want to command him to go after her, for that could stain his honor.

  With a salute, he stepped aside. “After you, mistress.”

  When she was halfway down, Ka’i-Lohr just behind her, the first enemy warriors appeared around the nearest buildings, swarming against the defenders who had finally made it down the stairs and were now charging at the enemy. Above, the airships, having discharged their living cargo, gained altitude and moved off over the ocean, where they circled over the battling fleets.

  “Hurry!” Ka’i-Lohr urged her and the others who were still on the rope.

  Loosening her grip slightly, Keel-Tath began to fly down the rope. Her palms, inner thighs, and ankles began to burn as she tried to keep up with her companions.

  Drakh-Nur reached the ground and drew his sword to stand guard for his comrades. In short order, Dara-Kol, Tara-Khan, Keel-Tath, and finally Ka’i-Lohr formed up beside him, weapons in hand.

  Tara-Khan turned to her, his eyes reflecting the fire in his blood, the same fire that burned in hers. “Fight or
flee, mistress.”

  Keel-Tath did not give a thought to her response. Prophecy or no, she was a warrior, and she was tired of running. She would rather face an honorable death in battle than whatever the Dark Queen had in store for her.

  “We fight!”

  With swords raised and battle cries on their lips, they charged forward into the snarling melee.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Dark Queen

  Keel-Tath’s world was filled with raging screams and awash in blood. Blood. It was everywhere, covered everything, including her. The air was thick with the smell of it, mixed with the smoke that had spread across much of the city from the burning airships and the smell of gunpowder that drifted in from the battle at sea. Her sword slashed and parried, thrust and blocked with the blinding speed and deadly accuracy born of years of tutelage under Ayan-Dar and Ria-Ka’luhr. In her veins she sensed countless songs of fear and bloodlust, the pain of the injured and the joy of the victorious. It was horrible and terrible, and every one of the warriors in that desperate fight loved it.

  She and her companions had formed a circle, the eye of the storm that the battle at the base of the wall had become. Tara-Khan was on her right, Ka’i-Lohr on her left, with Dara-Kol and Drakh-Nur protecting their backs. Amidst the chaos with warriors all armored alike, they could sense friend and foe instinctively. Their swords and claws struck down those whose honor was pledged to the Dark Queen and her minions, and saved many warriors of Ku’ar-Amir who fought beside them. They fought together like a single organism, and nothing could stand before them.

  She did not know how long the battle went on. Time was no longer measured in minutes or hours, but in the number of bodies that had piled up around them and the fire in her muscles and lungs from exertion.

  As if a storm front had moved on, the fighting died off. The five warriors stood there, panting, staring around them. The surviving warriors of Ku’ar-Amir were on either flank, but the queen’s warriors, who greatly outnumbered them now, pulled away, lowering their swords.

  Keel-Tath was seized with a sense of dread as a commotion began at the rear of the ranks of enemy warriors. Then, as if they were a flowing river commanded by a master porter of water, they parted, then knelt, revealing a single warrior striding toward her through their ranks.

  “Shil-Wular,” Keel-Tath breathed, tightening the grip on her sword.

  He was not alone. Holding his sword in one hand, he pulled along a wretched creature with his free hand. She was badly burned, the skin of her left arm and the same side of her face blackened, and she whimpered in agony. She wore soot-stained rags that only covered her lower body, but revealed feet that, like her arm and face, had been burned nearly to the bone.

  Feeling as if she was falling into an endless abyss, Keel-Tath realized who the poor wretch was. “Han-Ukha’i,” she whispered. She made to step forward, but Tara-Khan put a hand on her shoulder, holding her back.

  “Mistress, no!”

  She shrugged off his hand, but remained where she was as Shil-Wular dragged his captive closer.

  When he was a few paces away, just out of sword range, he stopped and let the healer fall to her knees on the blood-soaked cobbles and put the edge of his sword against her neck. Looking at Keel-Tath with cold, emotionless eyes, he said, “Yield, or she dies.” Looking around at the warriors around them, he raised his voice and said, “Li’an-Salir is dead. Syr-Nagath commands your honor now.”

  The warriors of Ku’ar-Amir lowered their swords, while those of the Dark Queen looked away from the spectacle unfolding before them as an uncomfortable silence descended.

  Enraged, Keel-Tath stepped forward, shrugging off Tara-Khan’s restraining hand. To the queen’s warriors, whose shame echoed in her blood, for they were born of the Desh-Ka bloodline, she said, “Warriors, have you no honor?” None would meet her eyes. “You were taught the Way since the day you were born. You know this is wrong, yet you do nothing.” Pointing to Han-Ukha’i, she shouted, “She is a healer! To touch one such as she, to harm any of the robed castes or children, is the greatest dishonor. But to stand by and do nothing while another commits such a sin is even worse. You were taught to defend such as her, even if she is not beholden to your leader, even if she serves the enemy. And yet you cower in silence and do nothing. Syr-Nagath has defiled everything our Way holds sacred. You need not follow her, for a leader who strays from the Way is not worthy. The Dark Queen is without honor and will someday rot in the long dark, but you do not have to fall with her. Pledge your swords and your honor to me and return to the Way as you were taught!”

  Her words were met by utter silence, and none who faced her would meet her eyes. But in her blood she sensed something all too clear from these, her distant kin who had come thousands of leagues to kill her and bring death to this great city: fear. Bone-chilling, unrelenting fear.

  “There will come a day of reckoning,” she told them. “And those of you who would allow such as this to happen, who would not raise your swords to protect those who are sacred to the Way, will find no place in the Afterlife. You will find only frigid darkness for all eternity. This, I promise you.”

  “Enough.” Shil-Wular leaned down and plunged the talons of his free hand into the cooked flesh of Han-Ukha’i’s left shoulder. She shrieked in pain and tried to pull away, but he held her there, his fingers tightening, cutting through the seared flesh to spear the bone.

  “Stop!” Keel-Tath sensed Han-Ukha’i’s agony and could stand it no longer. “If I yield, do you give your word that she will live?”

  “I will not kill her,” Shil-Wular said.

  His words gave her little comfort, but there was nothing more she could do. For now. “Then you may take me.” She sheathed her sword. “But neither you nor your queen will hold my honor.”

  “I do not care.” He pulled his talons from Han-Ukha’i’s shoulder and she fell forward to the crimson-stained ground, gasping.

  Dara-Kol said, “Mistress, you cannot…”

  She turned to her and the others. “I can, and I must. We cannot hold out here forever, and I cannot bear to see Han-Ukha’i suffer.”

  “Take them,” Shil-Wular ordered, and warriors came forward with chains to bind Dara-Kol and the others. A warrior stood beside Shil-Wular with a set of chains, and Shil-Wular said as Keel-Tath came to stand before him, “The last time I saw you, you were in chains. So shall you be again.”

  As the warrior put the heavy chains on her wrists and ankles, while another stripped her of her weapons, she looked down at the shivering, burned, bloody body of her healer, the woman who had saved her life and that of so many others. “Han-Ukha’i,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “I am so sorry.”

  The healer gave no answer, nor any sign of recognition.

  “I would carry her.” It was Drakh-Nur, who trembled with barely suppressed rage.

  Shil-Wular eyed him, then looked at Keel-Tath. “You will carry her,” he said. “And if you drop her or fall, I will kill her and your companions. The queen has no use for them.”

  Sparing him a hate-filled glance, she knelt down beside Han-Ukha’i. She noticed that there was no sign of the healing gel. Shil-Wular must have left it behind, assuming it had not been killed by the fire. Her heart sank, for without it, Han-Ukha’i would die. A healer may somehow be able to save her, a tiny voice in the back of her mind whispered. Do not abandon hope. And even if Han-Ukha’i was doomed, she would not abandon her here to die in a sea of blood. “I must lift you up,” she whispered. “Prepare yourself.”

  Han-Ukha’i said nothing.

  Keel-Tath took her in her arms as gently as she could, cursing the awkwardness of the chains. Han-Ukha’i moaned as Keel-Tath pulled her up in what passed for a seated position, then lifted the healer over her shoulder. Keel-Tath winced as her hands touched the burned flesh, and the healer’s skin sloughed away to reveal raw flesh and bone beneath.

  Beside her, Drakh-Nur growled deep in his throat, an ugly feral sound that
echoed across the quiet square. Shil-Wular drew the grakh’ta whip from his belt and lashed the giant warrior across the face. One of the seven tails of the whip caught him square across the cheek, the barbs tearing his flesh when Shil-Wular snapped the whip back. Clenching his giant fists, Drakh-Nur leaned forward, intent on killing their captor.

  Before he could take a step, Keel-Tath whispered, “Stay with me. I command you.” She looked up at him with pain filled eyes as she cradled their friend, who was also the woman she knew to be Drakh-Nur’s love.

  Looking down at her, his face under his eyes black with the mourning marks and blood from the wounds Shil-Wular had given him, Drakh-Nur quivered in helpless rage and pain. Then, as quickly as his anger had overwhelmed him, he forced it back. He had pledged her his honor, and would not break his vow. And a misstep now would mean Han-Ukha’i’s life. “Yes, mistress.”

  Keel-Tath nodded. Pulling Han-Ukha’i up over her shoulder, Keel-Tath struggled to her feet. Her muscles quivered from the exertion of battle, but her fury gave her strength.

  Without a word, Shil-Wular coiled up his whip before he turned and headed toward the city center, his captives shuffling along behind him, chains clinking, as their escort of a hundred and more warriors, shame filling their hearts, marched beside them.

  ***

  By the time they reached the great hall, Keel-Tath’s breathing was ragged and every muscle in her body was burning like the fire that had ravaged Han-Ukha’i. She had stumbled twice and nearly fallen, but Drakh-Nur and Dara-Kol, who had come to walk beside her, held her up. Shil-Wular had cast a glance over his shoulder, but otherwise had not seemed to care. Tara-Khan and Ka’i-Lohr shuffled behind them, wretched expressions chiseled on their faces.

  The hall had survived the invasion untouched, but it held none of the fascination and wonder for her that it had upon her first visit. She staggered across the floor, witnessed by thousands of warriors and robed ones who served the Dark Queen, who herself sat upon the great chair that had once belonged to the now-dead Li’an-Salir.