Of Sand and Snow, page 30
part #5 of Wings of War Series
WHOOSH!
White fire streaked across the ground between Raz and the chieftains, rising and billowing in a flickering wall four or five feet tall. It rippled and swayed, roaring as though displeased with the fight, and on the other side of the flames Raz saw the females yell and leap back, clearly taken by surprise.
“That’s enough.”
The phrase was clear and loud, and sufficiently simple for Raz to understand. He looked left, in the direction from which the familiar voice had come, and had to disguise a grin.
Syrah, as always, had made herself known at exactly the right time.
The woman entered the ring in dramatic fashion, following the trailing line of fire so that the spell split and warped around her with every step. More flames engulfed her hands and forearms, dancing as she walked, so that she looked like some black jewel in a massive crown of ivory magic. She’d pulled her hood back up, but her face was still uncovered, and Raz made out gasps and hisses of confusion, curiosity, and fear from the warriors of the tribes to the right as they took in her pale features. Across the waving wall, Cyrla, Rhega, and Valytha were watching Syrah with wide eyes, half-mesmerized, half-terrified.
In a single move she had ended the fight, and proven that Raz wasn’t the only one whose strength was worth respecting.
Thank the Sun for this woman… Raz thought privately, feeling a swell of pride that was only partially hampered by the sadness the sight of her dark silks always brought.
When she reached the center of the wide ring, standing between Raz and the three females, Syrah let the magics fall away. The flames blinked out of existence in a shower of white dust, almost like snow, scattering and fading across the blood-stained stone and earth until nothing remained of the spell. Raz kept a cautious eye on the chieftains, as well as the gathered warriors some fifty feet west of them, but if any wished he or Syrah additional harm, they seemed smart enough to know this was not the moment to try. They stood in stunned silence, the atherian at the back straining long necks to make out what was going on, and once again the wind and buzzing flies and calls of the nearby vultures could be heard over the quiet.
Taking advantage of the pause, Syrah began to speak.
There were several hisses of shock and awe as the atherian language rolled skillfully off her tongue. Raz couldn’t follow what she was saying, but he knew that—at the very least—the tribes were listening to her, listening to this strange, breathtaking human woman who had appeared among their number. After a while he made out the crunch of clawed feet across loose shale, and Raz looked around to see Karan and Zal’en approaching him across the emptiness of the ring, the Queen and Sassyl Gal not far behind them.
“What’s she saying?” he asked of the two females when they’d reached the spot where he stood behind Syrah while the woman continued to speak.
“She is telling them she understands their anger, and their fear,” Zal’en answered first, golden eyes on the woman’s back, and there was something almost like respect in her expression. “She says she knows that they have never been given any reason to trust ‘her kind’.” Zal’en’s brow raised, then, and Raz turned to see Syrah raising an arm before her, tugging free the leather glove from her fingers and pulling the silk sleeve away from her wrists.
The old scar was clear against her ivory skin, iron grey with knotted splotches of pink and red.
“She is telling them that they are not alone in their hatred, and that the men that follow you wish only for the same thing as the tribes.” Zal’en grimaced, clearly hard-pressed to keep at bay her own emotions as Syrah addressed the atherian. “She says that they want only to live their lives free. Free of chains. Free of fear.”
As Raz watched, Syrah swept her bare arm back, indicating the gathered atherian soldiers behind them.
“She has said to ask those of their kind who have already stood by your side,” Zal’en continued, “already stood shoulder-to-shoulder with men and women from every corner of the known world. She requests they seek out those who have been so fortunate as to reunite with their clans, to ask them what sort of men follow you, the Dragon who can so easily defeat the greatest warriors the people of the mountains have to offer.”
Over Raz’s shoulder, he heard Sassyl Gal mutter something that sounded impressed, and he glanced at Karan, who stood closest to the spymaster.
“He says Syrah has a silver tongue,” Karan interpreted with an amused smirk. “He wants her to work for him.”
Raz snorted. “Tell him he can ask, but not to get his hopes up.”
He looked back at Zal’en, who was still translating as the woman continued her address.
“She has promised the tribes they will be surprised by what they hear.” The older female was nodding along in a resigned sort of fashion, looking like she wanted to sigh in defeated agreement with the woman. “That there are friendships aplenty between the atherian and the humans within your ranks. So many of them spent years bound to one another in irons, spent countless days toiling under the heat of the Sun and accepting the sting of the whips together. She says it is not possible to keep from growing closer under such conditions, and that the war to rid the world of its chains has only strengthened those bonds.”
At this, Syrah looked around briefly, pointing to Karan, who went rigid in clear surprise at being called out.
“Syrah is telling the tribes of their friendship, and how Karan has so often been her wall to lean on in the difficulties of the last months.” Zal’en said, almost chuckling now. “She says that without her companionship, she so frequently feels that she would be lost in the darkness of our current ti—”
Zal’en choked on her translation, then, because Syrah’s finger had shifted from Karan right to her. She didn’t manage to get the words out, but Raz caught enough to figure out that the woman was telling the tribes of how Zal’en was among the generals of the army, that she was as essential to the successes and victories of the last half-year as she or any of the other officers who’d earned a place at the table with Raz.
It was Raz’s turn to nod along.
Syrah spoke only for a short time, after that, not even long enough for Zal’en to find her voice again. Raz knew she was asking the tribes for their support, telling them that the promising future of which they were now catching a brief glimpse would only be possible with their help. Alone, neither of their armies had the strength to guarantee a victory.
Together, though, they numbered enough to challenge the Mahsadën at the very heart of the society’s shadowed empire.
The pause that followed Syrah’s speech was only brief, because Shas-hana Rhan herself stepped around Raz, then, moving to stand beside the woman. Gently, she rested a clawed hand on Syrah’s shoulder, giving her a quick smile when she looked about at the Queen. Then, though, the aging female addressed her people again, requesting of them the same thing she’d done not even five minutes before.
“Will you help? Will you summon the other tribes, and those you have left behind?”
The first time she’d asked, only sour glares and bared teeth had answered her. On this occasion, silence hung in reply, lingering like an uncertain spell over the eight thousand atherian. It stretched on, second by second, almost uncomfortably so.
And then Gyssa of the Upper Caverns, the chieftain who’d called out her paired male champions to fight in her stead, took a step toward them.
Raz watched her approach with nervous anticipation, though he was careful to keep his face steady. The female was older, about Zal’en’s age, but she walked with the confidence of one who had ruled for a long time, and with good reason. It took almost half-a-minute for her to close the gap between her tribe and their gathered party, passing the trio of other females who still stood, watching her go by, some dozen feet from Syrah and the Queen.
When Gyssa reached the pair of them, she looked Syrah up and down carefully, then let her attention wander over the woman’s shoulder to Raz. She held his gaze, and Raz felt himself being analyzed yet again.
Whatever the chieftain saw must have satisfied her, however, because a moment later she eased herself down on both knees, kneeling before the Queen in an obvious sign of submission.
Zal’en interpreted for Raz in voice shaking with pride and sad joy.
“The tribes of the Upper Caverns pledge themselves to your will, great Queen,” Gyssa said aloud, her words ringing over the quiet of the empty battlefield. “Yours, and that of your champions.”
At her words, Cyrla, Rhega, and Valytha, still bearing weapons in hands as they stood behind the older female, exchanged a questioning look.
Then they, too, lowered themselves to their knees.
Not long after, Raz’s army was suddenly eight thousand stronger, with runners already being sent out to spread the word of the Dragon who would free the mountains forever from the whips of man.
XXV
“Being taken for a fool is, in-and-of-itself, nothing less than a distinct advantage in any circle. Let them think you the village idiot. People are so much quicker to make mistakes in your presence when they underestimate the function of your faculties… “
— private journal of Vyres Eh’ben, Karthian šef
Adrion felt his heart sink ominously, and his left arm—whose shoulder Lazura’s hand had so casually been resting upon—suddenly began to prickle as the woman’s grip spasmed and dug into his skin.
“What did you just say?” Lazura hissed down the dais stairs, her voice dangerously low. For once—and despite his own trepidation—Adrion couldn’t blame her fury.
The pair standing below them, looking with uncertainty from Lazura to him and back again, had not come bearing good news.
Geal Hareth and Evangalyn Thesus were dirty, sweaty, and clearly exhausted. The Cyroan šef had passed through Miropa’s eastern gate not a half-hour before, and Adrion—on Lazura’s orders, of course—had summoned them to the marble audience chamber of his home at once. It was concerning enough that they’d reached the city more than a week later than Ysera Ma’het had said to anticipate their arrival.
It was far more alarming that the pair arrived at the head of less than half the reinforcements Cyro had promised to deliver.
“Yres Ma’het is missing,” Geal Hareth repeated slowly, the accent of the Southern Cities thick across his words. “Likely dead. It was his intention to traverse the Crags, after we reached them, with the expectation of cutting several days off of the journey. Evangalyn and I—” he indicated the old Southern woman at his side, who hadn’t even been allowed a chair to sit in “—attempted to dissuade him, but there was no doing so. He led five thousand of our number into the mountains.”
“And never came back down…” Lazura finished for the man, and Adrion felt the prickling intensify to the point of pain throughout his arm.
Hareth nodded, eyes narrowed at the Northerner, taking in her paper-thin silks with something between distaste and lust. He and Thesus were the newest to join their gathering, and Adrion hadn’t had time to give them the subtle warnings he’d woven into the meetings they’d had with the other šef.
He had a bad feeling as to how this audience would end…
“You sent men into the mountains, I assume?” Adrion asked, hoping to defuse a little of the tension. Hareth blinked, and the man’s pale eyes fell to him from beneath bangs of wild red hair, his expression becoming inscrutable. Adrion didn’t mind. He was accustomed to being assessed at a glance, given his missing left leg, but he was confident by now that the Citier would have heard enough about his “reputation” to keep a civil tongue with him, at the very least.
“We did,” the šef answered promptly. “When we found no indication that Yres had marched ahead of us, we deployed a dozen scouts into the ranges. We waited more than five days for word from them.”
“And?” Lazura demanded in an impatient hiss, earning herself Hareth’s attention once again.
“None among them returned,” the šef replied simply.
There was a cold sort of quiet after that, broken up only by the faint jingling of Ysera Ma’het’s silver and gold bracelets as she fought to control the trembling of her hands from where she waited before a nearby pillar. Adrion might have pitied the one-eyed woman the loss of her brother, but his mind was busy processing the other implications this news carried with it. All around the chamber the others stood gathered in silence, taking in the Cyroan’s words with similar trepidation. The scouts were one thing. Sending a dozen men into the atherian homeland had, if anything, been a waste of lives.
But five thousand trained soldiers, under the command of an accomplished officer like Yres Ma’het…
“The lizards are stirring,” Ahthys Borne of Acrosia finally said, voicing the concern they had all been mulling over.
As one, a dozen of the others, including Adrion, nodded in agreement.
Not good, Adrion thought to himself. Not good at all.
Raz i’Syul Arro, the Monster of Karth, was problem enough for them. Word had come from loyalists in what was left of Dynec that the beast had delegated some three thousand troops in the fallen city as a garrison to keep the peace. If the same could be assumed of Cyro, then Arro’s army would drop to not much more than forty thousand, counting the injured they’d left behind after the battles. That was almost thirty thousand less than the force this unprecedented cooperation of the šef of the fringe cities was expected to garner, including the sarydâ companies they’d contracted to bolster their number. All the same, Adrion had long since known that his cousin was not a creature to be underestimated, and the approaching battle made his stomach twist whenever he considered it. The Mahsadën would come out victorious, he believed, and stronger for it, but a nagging, worried voice whispered at the back of his mind that the war wouldn’t be won so easily.
And now the atherian of the Crags seemed to be gathering for some reason, the scattered tribes of the mountains amassing at least enough to challenge Yres Ma’het and his army five thousand strong…
Do they sense weakness among the cities? Adrion wondered to himself, looking beyond Hareth as he turned this new threat over in his head. It seemed reasonable enough that the atherian could have eyes on Cyro, at the very least. Despite what many of his counterparts might think—not to mention the vast majority of Southerners as a whole—Adrion knew firsthand the lizard-kind were not a thoughtless people. He’d grown up bartering with them throughout the hot summer months, when the tribes would descend to greet the trading caravans who’d circled in and around the Garin, the great desert lake of the Cienbal. He had been raised alongside one of their kind, had seen Raz i’Syul Arro develop from a quick, clever child into a cunning, dangerous man. If the tribes managed to come together, managed to gather in truth…
Abruptly, Adrion wondered if summoning the entirety of Cyro’s fighting force had been a wise decision. No one had any idea how many atherian lived among the Crags. It could be ten thousand, or a hundred thousand, or five hundred thousand. If the lizard-kind decided to press south, taking the undefended city while he and the other šef were busy with Arro, the Mahsadën would lose their foothold in the region and their greatest source of income when it came to trading with the Seven Cities.
One problem at a time. Adrion forced himself back to the larger issue at hand. One problem at a time.
“So we are five thousand short of our estimate…” he thought aloud, eyes on Geal Hareth and Evangalyn Thesus, still waiting below. “Fortunately, in the grand scheme, that doesn’t make for much of a difference. We will still number more than half-again Arro’s troops.”
“He has his atherian, though,” Serys Benth interjected from the right wall of the room where she stood between Ahamed Ehmeth and Kusu Kehsym, two of the three šef who’d arrived from Karavyl a week earlier with their promised ten thousand men. “Our eyes in Dynec say they’re well-trained, too, and well-armed. Overwhelming numbers will only do so much against a stronger adversary.”
Adrion conceded the woman’s point with a shrug. “True, but they number less than a third of the Monster’s army, last we heard. The advantage is still largely in our favor, and there are other opportunities we might seize.”
“Such as?” Casius Jules, a West Isler and the newest šef to arrive from Karth, asked coolly.
“Our positioning,” Ahthys Borne answered, the former general glancing quickly at Adrion for a permitting nod before continuing. “We have been in discussion as to our assault tactic for the last half-month.”
“Our assault?” Evangalyn Thesus repeated in an angry hiss that belied her age. Once more, Lazura’s hand spasmed on his shoulder, and he was forced to clench his fist to keep from screwing his face up in pain. “What is this rubbish? Miropa is the most well-defended of our cities. Forcing Arro to attack us here would be at a great advantage to our—!”
“Not so.” Borne cut the women off sternly, frowning at her manner from among the other Acrosian delegates. “On the contrary, we’d be better served falling on our swords here and now than wait for Arro to reach Miropa.”
“How so?” Ahamed Ehmeth asked from beside Serys Bern, watching the old general suspiciously. “I too, feel as though we would be casting aside the benefit of the city walls were we to—”
“Food.”
It was Adrion who answered this time, seeking to take control of conversation again as Lazura’s grip trembled in anger. Without looking around, he knew the woman was still glaring at Hareth and Thesus below them, and he wanted to avoid a firestorm that would leave everyone else—including himself—likely little more than charred bone on blackened marble.
When he was sure he had everyone’s attention, he continued.
“Your arrival—along with that of the sarydâ—has more than quadrupled the size of my city’s standing army. Supplies will last, for the time being, but even a short siege would put a strain on provisions, especially water.”
“Then we commandeer food and drink from the masses,” Hareth said snidely. “Enact martial law until the Monster’s army breaks.”
