The Blade Bearers (Blade and Bone Book 6), page 32
He unsheathed his sword.
“What do you think you’re doing, Joshinz?”
The man stared at Honaaz as if he didn’t see him.
Maybe they were still somehow being influenced. But how? His people had immunity to magic, didn’t they? That was what he’d believed.
Someone started to laugh. Honaaz spun and saw a dark-haired woman near the helm of the ship.
“So predictable,” she said.
“You wanted us to come out here?”
“We wanted a sense of how many were willing to respond. Given that it’s the same few each time, it leads us to believe that the city’s defenses aren’t nearly as significant as what we had feared. Once we deal with you, we will report back, and then the attack can begin.”
“The fuck it will,” Honaaz said, his voice low and dangerous.
A whistle sounded from somewhere else, and it was followed by a strange cry. He didn’t have an opportunity to figure out what Reims was doing.
He had to deal with these men but not kill them. Somehow, he was going to have to get out of this without hurting people. It would be harder than it should be.
He punched toward a man, but somebody chopped at his arm. Honaaz jerked back, only to find somebody trying to grip his arms.
He kicked, forcing himself free, and then he spun in the air and drove out with the hilt of his blade. It connected with the belly of one man, who doubled over. That wasn’t what Honaaz wanted to do, but maybe he had to injure his opponents in order to save them.
“Let’s take care of this, Boney,” he said.
The berahn talisman tilted his head up and surprised Honaaz with a loud, long howl. Another howl answered, and then another.
Several giant berahn jumped onto the ship.
Honaaz looked over to Boney. “Make sure they don’t kill all of them.”
He slipped away. When Joshinz tried to grab for him, Honaaz punched him in the forehead once, then again, before the man collapsed.
He strode toward the woman, feeling her power and the way she attempted to constrict bands of energy around him. He had felt that before. At least this time he was prepared. He had his bone blades, and whatever magic was stored within them. They sliced through her magic.
She started to move her hand, but he realized what she was attempting. He slashed at her wrist, but not fast enough. Bands of energy began to compress around him again.
She took a step toward him. “Feisty, but nothing I haven’t dealt with before.”
“You haven’t dealt with anything like me before,” Honaaz growled.
She grinned, which only irritated him more.
He forced his arms out, felt the pressure against him, and then slashed up with the blade, catching her in the midsection and carving through her completely. Her eyes widened, and a burst of energy came from her, but Honaaz brought his hand down on the top of her head, and she collapsed.
Reims appeared next to him. “What was that about?”
“Can’t let her use some final magic.”
“Final magic?”
“Like the man back in the city. He tried to release something as he died. Maybe a summons, but I don’t fucking know. Whatever it was, I know better than to let her get away with it.”
“This was a trap,” Reims said.
“They wanted to know how many we had defending the city,” Honaaz said.
“Do you think they got word back to them?”
“I don’t know.” Honaaz looked over to the two small tenders that had been pulled up on the rocks. Talismans pressed down upon three men in one boat, and two in another. “You didn’t kill them.”
“You asked me not to.”
“You aren’t the man I thought you were.”
Reims snorted. “I’d say the same about you. Let’s get them back to the city and question them. Then we can figure out what we need to do next. If they’re making their move, we have to be ready.”
“I’ve got to take the ship.”
“Just the ship?”
Honaaz looked over to the tenders. “Well, we can either leave those on the shore, or we can tie them up to the back and I can sail the ship with the tenders over to the docks.”
“Is that hard?”
“It would be for you. You know, it would be a whole lot fucking easier if we had more sailors. Biggins can help, but we just don’t have enough people in the city who know how to sail.”
Reims looked down at the other men from the Isles, before turning his attention to Honaaz. “What would you say if I told you I had an idea?”
Chapter Thirty-Two
LILY
Lily sat on the end of the dock, blade sweeping across the Alainsith bone. If there was one thing that could be said about this mysterious war that she’d gotten caught up in, it was that there was an endless supply of bone like this, or seemingly so. She could keep carving her talismans, and she didn’t feel nearly as limited with what she had access to as she would have without it. With the Alainsith bone, she could create talismans that were far more powerful than anything she’d ever made before. And with that, she was left with the knowledge that she should have enough to protect them. Even as she carved, though, she kept feeling like they were still trying to catch up, still trying to make enough, and still failing.
A ship started toward the shore, and Lily sat up, using her connection to the talisman that circled out in the distance. She saw Honaaz on board and realized he had three boats dragging behind the ship. On those three boats were men like Honaaz, with one of her talismans resting on top of each of them.
She could tell that he had been the one to activate those talismans because there was a distinct sense from each one, along with the fact that any time he had done so, the talisman ended up being larger than they did otherwise. There was simply something about Honaaz and his connection that made those talismans so profoundly different, and so useful.
He waved down at her, and once he skillfully brought the ship into the docks, he hopped down and secured it. They had six ships now, and Honaaz had taken five of them from their attackers. Well, all of them had come from the attackers, but five of them had come from their time on shore.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I thought I was following Reims, but it was Biggins,” he said, looking up at Boney, who remained on board the ship.
She wondered why, until she saw Boney grabbing something—a body, she realized, and probably Alainsith, given that this was Honaaz. Then Boney jumped down.
“They were testing us,” Honaaz continued. “They’re trying to determine how many of us are defending the city. They’re waiting. And I don’t know if they managed to get word back out to the rest, but the woman made a comment about the fact that it was only the same people defending this city each time.”
Lily paused to look behind her. Her talisman was partially carved. It was another berahn, which she made many of these days. Honaaz had said the weasel talisman tended to be quite useful, which surprised her. She wondered why that would be, but she had made him a handful of weasel talismans as well. One of them was in a boat, resting on top of three men who hadn’t moved. Maybe the weasel had some extra strength within it, or perhaps it was simply a connection to Honaaz that made it so the weasel could hold them down in a way that wouldn’t naturally occur.
“We’ve been evacuating,” she said, “but if they come after us, we aren’t going to be able to get people out of the city fast enough.”
“I know,” Honaaz muttered, irritation in his tone. “Fucking attackers.”
“Where did Kanar go?”
“He took Biggins, and they came across land. They were going to check on something, I think.”
“So the attack is imminent, and there’s just us, and we have more prisoners now.”
“Well, that was one of the things that fucking Reims had in mind. He figured that with the way the talismans can hold them, we might be able to force them to sail for us.”
“That’s trusting an awful lot,” she said.
“That’s what I told him, but if we have a couple of our men on each ship, along with several talismans, all it would take would be one man from the Isles who understands how to sail in order for us to do this.”
“Do what, exactly?”
“Make a run at the other ships,” Honaaz said.
Lily held his gaze, and she waited for him to tell her more about the plan, but he didn’t. That was it?
“You want to make a run at the ships with our people, knowing that if this fails—”
“I know what it fucking means.”
“It’s suicide, Honaaz.”
“Only for those who are on the ships,” he said.
“You can’t be serious.”
“What other choice do we have? We’ve got to get people out of the city, and there are just too many. We need to buy you time. If they plan to attack, I’ve now got six ships that I can take, and bring them against—”
“Nearly two dozen,” she said.
“More.”
Lily shook her head. “That’s stupid. I can make more talismans, and we can use those to attack the ships, and then we can decide what else we need to do.”
“We need time,” Honaaz said. “How fast can you make them?”
“You’ve seen how fast. I’m working as quickly as I can.”
It wasn’t as if she were taking any longer than necessary. Ever since the last attack, she had been carving nonstop, using the Alainsith bone so she could create more and more powerful items, thinking that if nothing else, they would have some way of defending themselves. And that was because she had known that they needed more time, and more talismans, to deflect the possibility of an attack.
“I know,” he said, “but there’s going to come a time when we’re out of options. I know what you want to do, but—”
“We don’t take any action until we’re certain they move. We still have some time. How long do you think it would take them to coordinate their attack on the city?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know. It depends on if they have some way of talking across the distance, or if they talk ship to ship to coordinate it. I just don’t know. I’m not even sure if she managed to get word out, but she made it sound like she did.”
“Fuck,” she muttered.
“That’s my word.”
“Let’s take as much time as we can and see how many people we can get away from the city. I’ve got talismans with the hegen who are helping the others evacuate. And if we can buy more time, maybe we won’t need you and this terrible plan.”
He nodded. “It’s a terrible plan.”
“Then why do you keep suggesting it?”
“No other options,” Honaaz said, looking up at the ship. “I’ll get the men tied up. I might leave them on board, with some of these talismans guarding them. Should be secure enough, especially since the rest of the city is empty.”
“If you think that’s a good idea.”
“I don’t know that anything is a good idea any longer. It’s an idea.” He sounded far more confident than Lily.
But he wasn’t wrong. They’d been thinking they had an endless amount of time to work and continue to evacuate, but they didn’t. They were limited by how much time they had and what they could do with that time. They had been trying to move around the city, but if the place were attacked with a full-on onslaught, they didn’t have enough people to defend it. The talismans might deflect some of the attack, and given the types Lily had started to put around the city, she knew they would be able to stop some of the attack, but it wouldn’t be perfect. And there would be some that managed to get through.
And then what would happen?
Eventually, the people who remained would get overrun. The whole purpose of this plan was to evacuate as many of them as he could and get them to safety, but Lily didn’t know if that was even going to be possible.
She made her way back to her bench on the dock, where she took a seat and started carving her bone again. As she sat, she realized that the only thing she could think of to do was make talismans, even if she knew that it was unlikely to be fully effective.
But they needed time.
Unfortunately, it seemed as if their time was nearly at an end.
The next two days went far too fast for Lily. She hadn’t slept, spending most of her time making talismans as quickly as she could. She allowed herself to be satisfied with half-carved ones that looked like little more than blunted shapes of berahn, though she had poured as much of herself into them as she thought she could, which was really the key to it. She had stationed bone berahn around, each of them activated by Honaaz, despite his objections that it might do something to him, and each of them far larger than any of the other talismans Lily had made. There had to be live berahn outside the city too, as she kept hearing their howls, though Kanar had told her that they would come when they were needed.
The attack still had not begun.
The ships remained out at sea, not moving. And as far as her scouting talismans had shown her, there was no evidence that any more of the smaller boats even attempted to come inland.
For some reason, that had made Honaaz even more uncomfortable. He kept muttering under his breath, checking the ships that were docked, before making his way up the shore.
Kanar strode over to her. “If we face an attack, I’m going to stay in the city.”
“I think all of us are,” Lily said.
“Not you.” There was heat in his words, and his face looked wrinkled, his eyes darkened as if he had not been sleeping well lately, which she suspected he had not. None of them had been. “The evacuees are going to need somebody. You can lead them, but more than that, you can offer them a measure of protection that the rest of us cannot.”
“It’s not just me who can have a hand in this,” she said, peering out to where Esmerelda sat near the water, working with grasses that she kept pulling out of her pouch. She had disappeared the first day after the attack and must have gone harvesting, Lily had decided, as Esmerelda had come back with fresh grasses, sunflowers, and even some stones that she had started weaving together into her art. “They don’t need me. They have somebody like Esmerelda, who is a much more natural leader.”
“Perhaps in her city, but not here,” Kanar said. “Here the people look to you. I see it. And they do that because you’re the one who saved them. That needs to be your role.”
“I don’t know if I can sit back,” Lily said.
“Honaaz is going to be needed here.”
“I know.”
“And I’m going to fight as much as I can, but you have to be prepared to move as quickly as possible. Make talismans that can carry the injured or infirm, and be ready to use them as often as you need. Right now, you’re making talismans that will protect the city, but I’m starting to think that isn’t even going to be possible any longer. I don’t think we need that protection so much as we need ways to escape.”
“I have been,” she said.
Kanar’s eyes widened. “You have?”
“I’ve known that I needed to make different kinds of talismans. Not just those that can defend the city, though I’ve made those, but others that could help those who’ve remained to escape. I probably have about thirty of them. Not all are made from Alainsith bone, so they won’t be quite as powerful, but I don’t know that it’s essential.”
Kanar looked out over the water. “You know, if you would’ve told me five years ago that I would be in some foreign city, evacuating the people from a dangerous kind of magic while also using my own magic, I would’ve thought you were mad.”
Lily was quiet for a moment. “I’m glad you’re here, Kanar.”
“I wish things could be different. I need you to get back to Verendal for me. I want you to relay a message to Morgan.”
“Kanar—”
“I’m not planning to die. I’m just ready for the possibility that things may not go the way I want. And if that happens, I want Morgan to hear from somebody I trust. Will you do that for me?”
Lily glanced back. The city was empty, and there was something almost haunting about the quiet within it. Most of the people had been evacuated, and the only ones remaining were their small crew, along with the prisoners. They had not wanted to evacuate them quite yet, as none of them knew if the prisoners were going to cause problems, and that would involve activating talismans that might be needed for other purposes.
“I will find her,” she said.
Kanar breathed out, as if it was a sigh of relief. “Thank you. Let her know I made a mistake. All those years ago, I made a mistake. I was caught up in what I was doing, I thought I was right, I never listened to her when she tried to tell me to open my mind and learn. Tell her… Tell her that I wish things could’ve been different.”
“I’ll tell her. But I want you to do something.”
He turned to her with a frown on his face. “What?”
“In this fight, I know you’ll do your best. And I know what your best is.”
Lily paused. At this point, she wasn’t even sure if that was true. She had seen Kanar fight before, but ever since he had come here, some part of him had been different. His connection to the blade, the way he used it, the power he seemed to summon with his fighting—all of that had been different. It was significant, and impressive, in a way that Lily did not fully understand.
If only Jal had not returned to his homeland, maybe he could’ve explained it for them, but he wasn’t there. Lily still held out hope that Jal and Wular would get the Alainsith to help, and that they would have a way of defending this attack, but she didn’t know if that would even be in time, if it came at all.
“I want you to help Honaaz,” she finally said.
“We’re going to be fighting on the same side.”
“I know you are, but I want you to help him. He’s important to me, Kanar. I haven’t had anybody like that before. I thought that we might have a chance… but with this happening, and with what happened in Sanaron, and everything we’ve gone through—”
